a black leather jacket and blue jeans.
Lieutenant Manfred Remmer of the Bundeskriminalamt, the German Federal Police, stood six foot four and weighed two hundred and thirty-five pounds. Emotional and outspoken, ten years younger and he could have played linebacker for any team in the NFL. He was still that solid, that coordinated. Married and the father of four daughters, he was thirty-seven and had known McVey since he’d been sent to the LAPD as a young detective twelve years earlier in an international police exchange program.
Assigned to a three-week stint in Robbery-Homicide, two days later Manny Remmer had become McVey’s partner-in-training. In those three weeks, trainee Manfred Remmer was present at six court dates, nine autopsies, seven arrests, and twenty-two questioning and interrogation sessions. He worked six days a week, fifteen hours a day, seven of those without pay, sleeping on a cot in McVey’s study instead of the hotel room provided, in case something happened that needed their immediate and undivided attention. In the sixteen-odd days he and McVey were together, they arrested five hard-core drug dealers wit outstanding murder warrants and tracked down, apprehended and obtained a full confession from a man responsible for killing eight young women. Today, that man, Richard Homer, sits on San Quentin’s death row, having exhausted a decade of appeals, waiting for execution.
“I am glad to see you, McVey. Happy to see you well and joyful to hear you were coming,” Remmer said as he fishtailed a silver unmarked Mercedes off the meadowland and onto a dirt road. “Because I turned up a little information on your friends inside Interpol, Herren Klass and Halder. Not easy to get. Better to tell you in person than on the telephone—He’s okay, yes?” Remmer threw a glance over his shoulder at Osborn sitting in back with Noble.
“He’s okay, yes,” McVey said, with a wink at Osborn. There was no longer need to keep him in the dark about what else was going on.
“Herr Hugo Klass was born in Munich in 1937. After the war he went with his mother to Mexico City. Later they moved to Brazil. Rio de Janeiro, later Sao Paulo.” Remmer banged the Mercedes hard through a drainage ditch and accelerated onto a paved road. Ahead of them he sky was brightening, and with it came just a hint of the baroque Havelberg skyline.
“In 1958, he came back to Germany and joined the German Air Force and then the Bundesnachrichtendienst, West German Intelligence, where he developed a reputation as a fingerprint expert. Then he—”
Noble leaned over the front seat. “Went to work for Interpol at headquarters. Precisely what we got from MI6.”
“Very good.” Remmer smiled. “Now tell us the rest.”
“What rest? That’s all there is to tell.”
“No background information? No family history?”
Noble sat back. “Sorry, that’s all i have,” he said dryly.
“Don’t keep us guessing.” McVey put on his sunglasses as the rising sun filled the horizon.
In the distance, Osborn saw a gray Mercedes sedan pull out of a side road and turn onto the highway in the same direction they were going. It was moving slower than they were, but when they caught up to it, accelerated to speed and Remmer stayed directly behind it. A moment later he was aware the same kind of car had pulled in behind them and was holding there. Turning, he could see two men in the front seat. Then, for the first time, he noticed the submachine gun in a holder on the door at Remmer’s left elbow. The men in the cars in front and behind were obviously federal police. Remmer was taking no chances.
“Klass is not his birth name. It’s Haussmann. During the war his father, Erich Haussmann, was a member of the Schutzstaffel, the SS. Identification number 337795. He was also a member of the Sicherheitsdienst, the SD. The security service of the Nazi party.” Remmer followed the lead Mercedes south onto the Uberregionale Fern- verkehrsstrasse, the interregional through-route highway, and all three cars picked up speed.
“Two months before the war ended, Herr Haussmann vanished. Frau Bertha Haussmann then took her maiden name, Klass. Frau Haussmann was not a wealthy woman when she and her son left Germany for Mexico City in 1946. Yet she lived in a villa there with a cook and a maid and took them with her when she went to Brazil.”
“You think she was supported by expatriate Nazis after the war?” McVey asked.
“Maybe, but who’s to prove it? She was killed in a 1966 automobile accident outside Rio. I can tell you, however, Erich Haussmann visited her and her son on more than two dozen occasions while she lived in Brazil.”
“You said the old man vanished
“And headed straight for South America, along with the father and older brother of Herr Rudolf Halder, your man in charge of Interpol, Vienna. The man who helped Klass so deftly reconstruct Albert Merriman’s fingerprint from the piece of glass found in the Paris apartment of the dead private investigator, Jean Packard.” Remmer took a pack of cigarettes from the dashboard, shook one out and lit it.
“Halder’s real name was Otto,” he said, exhaling. “His father and older brother were both in the SS and the SD, the same as Klass’ father. Halder and Klass are the same age, fifty-five. Their formative years were spent not just in Nazi Germany, but in the households of Nazi fanatics. .Their teen years were spent in South America, where they were educated, overseen and funded by expatriate Nazis.”
Noble looked at McVey. “You don’t think we’re looking at a neo-Nazi conspiracy—”
“Interesting idea, you add it all up. The killing of Merriman by a Stasi agent the day after he’s discovered alive by a man strategically positioned in a place where worldwide police inquiries come and go a hundred times a day. The hunting down of Merriman’s girlfriend and the killing of his wife and family in Marseilles. The shooting of Lebrun and his brother when they started looking into what Klass was doing in Lyon, pulling the Merriman file from the NYPD by using old Interpol codes most people don’t even know exist. Blowing up the train Osborn and I were on. The gunning down of Benny Grossman in his house in Queens after he collects and passes information to Noble about people Erwin Scholl allegedly had killed thirty years ago.
“You’re right, Ian. Put it all together and it sounds like the work of an espionage unit, a KGB kind of operation.” McVey turned to Remmer.
“What do you think, Manny? Does the Klass-Halder connection turn this into some kind of neo-Nazi thing?”
“What the hell do you mean, neo-Nazi?” Remmer snapped. “Head-busting, sieg-heiling, skinheads with potatoes in their pockets filled with nails? Assholes who beat up immigrants and burn them out of their camps and are TV news every night?” Remmer looked from McVey to Noble behind him and then to Osborn. He was angry.
“Merriman, Lebrun, the Paris-Meaux train, Benny Grossman, who, when I called him for where to stay when I took the kids to New York, said, ‘Stay at my house!’ You say KGB like I think we should be saying not neo-Nazi but neo-Nazi working with
“Manny,” McVey said quietly. “I hear you talking your private war. Guilt and shame and everything else thrown at you by another generation. What happened was their doing, not yours, but you bought the ticket anyway. Maybe you had to. And I’m not arguing with you about what you’re saying. But, Manny, emotion is not fact.”
“You’re asking if I have firsthand information. The answer is no, I don’t.”
“What about the Bundeskriminalamt or Bundesnach christ and dice—or however the hell you pronounce the name for German Intelligence.”
Remmer looked back. “Has hard evidence been found of an organized pro-Nazi movement large enough to have influence?” . . .
“Has it?”
“Same answer. No. At least not that I or my superiors are aware of, because such things are discussed all the time between police agencies. It is government policy to Remain
