remembered him as a good guy.
“The first post-war
“My grandfather in effect said, ‘What the hell, why not? Give him a chance. See if he sinks or swims.’ Billy swam.”
“Herr Oberst,” Yung said. “Billy Kocian’s history is fascinating, but is there a bigger point to all this?”
“Bear with me,” Castillo said. “So things were looking up. My grandfather had two children, my Uncle Willi and my mother. Uncle Willi went to Philipps, took a degree in political science, and went to work for Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, bringing with him his buddy Otto Gorner.
“My mother was the princess in the castle. Everybody thought that as soon as she was old enough to make it socially acceptable, she would marry Otto, who was being groomed to handle the business side—as opposed to just the newspaper side—of the business.
“And then into the princess’s life appeared the evil American—in the right seat of a D-model Huey—playing war with the Fourteenth Armored Cavalry, which in those days patrolled our fence line with East Germany. And three or four days later, said evil American disappeared, never again to be seen by the princess.
“The kindest thing my grandfather had to say when he was told he was going to be a grandfather was that he thanked God my grandmother wasn’t alive to be shamed by my mother’s blatant immorality.
“When I asked why I didn’t have a daddy like the other kids, Grandpa would walk out of the room and my Uncle Willi would tell me—little Karlchen—that that was not to be discussed. All my mother would say was that my father was an American army officer who had had to go away and would not be coming back, and that I was not to talk about him to Grandpa, Uncle Willi, or ‘Uncle’ Otto.
“Then, when I was about eleven, Uncle Willi, with my grandfather next to him on their way home from Kassel, drove his Gullwing Mercedes off a bridge on the A7 Autobahn at an estimated one hundred thirty miles an hour.
“That left my mother and me alone in the Haus im Wald, the family castle, which actually looks more like a factory. Mother again declined Otto’s offer of marriage. She inherited her one-quarter of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, the other three-fourths going to Uncle Willi and Uncle Billy and yours truly in equal parts. Uncle Willi had left everything he owned—his quarter—to my mother in the belief that she would eventually come to her senses and marry Otto. So she got that share, too.
“But it wasn’t in the cards for my mother to live happily ever after with Little Karlchen in the castle. Six months after Uncle Willi and Grandpa went off the A7 bridge, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Terminal. Two months to live.”
“Jesus!” David Yung exclaimed.
“At which point, Mother, apparently deciding that the orphan-to-be needed to establish contact with his father, whether or not the father was going to be pleased to learn that he had left a love child behind in Germany, turned to the 14th Armored Cavalry for help, giving them the father’s name—Castillo—that she had steadfastly refused to give her father.
“The Fourteenth’s regimental commander turned over the task of locating the father to one of his majors, one Allan B. Naylor—”
“Who now has four stars—that Naylor?” Davidson asked.
“That’s the guy,” Castillo confirmed. “He had a little trouble locating a Huey jockey named Castillo who had once maneuvered with the Fourteenth. Reason being: He was in San Antonio, in the National Cemetery there, with a representation of the Medal of Honor chiseled into his headstone.”
“Your father won the Congressional Medal of Honor?” Yung asked softly.
“It’s properly just the ‘Medal of Honor,’ David. And you don’t win it. You receive it.”
“No offense, Charley.”
“None taken. Well, this changed things a good deal. The illegitimate offspring of a Medal of Honor
“That raised the very real possibility that a wetback Texican family living in squalor on the riverbank in San Antonio was suddenly going to get their hands on the considerable fortune of the grandchild, nephew, cousin, whatever, they didn’t even know existed.
“Naylor was dispatched to reconnoiter the terrain in San Antone while the brightest Army lawyers gathered in emergency session to come up with some way to protect the kid’s assets from said wetbacks.
“What Naylor found, instead, was that my so-called wetback grandfather was just about convinced that some greedy fraulein of loose morals was trying to get her hands into the Castillo cash box and he was going to do whatever had to be done to keep that from happening.
“My grandmother had no such concerns. She took one look at the photo of Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger that Naylor had shown her and said she could tell from the eyes—which were the same as his father’s—her son’s— that this was her grandson. Two hours after she met Allan Naylor for the first time, she went wheels-up with Naylor in my grandfather’s Lear for New York, where they caught the five-fifteen PanAm flight to Frankfurt that afternoon.
“My grandfather caught up with her the next day. A week after that, clutching his brand-new American passport, Carlos Guillermo Castillo got on another PanAm 747 at Rhine-Main with his grandmother. My grandfather stayed in Germany a little longer. He buried my mother—she didn’t want me to see her in her last days of that horrible disease—and he left Otto Gorner in charge—temporarily—of my assets. He’s still in charge.
“As far as the German government is concerned, I am Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, which means I have a German passport. That’s proven useful more than once in our line of work, and when, for example, I need a couple of hotel rooms in a hurry.”
“Ace, if you think I’m going to be nicer to you,” Delchamps said, “now that I know how rich you are—well, then, yes, sir, your excellency, mine Fuhrer, you handsome, wise, charming sonofabitch, I certainly will be.”
“Screw you, Edgar,” Castillo said. Then he exhaled audibly and added: “Okay, that’s the story. Aside from bringing Jack Doherty and Sparkman up to speed—Jake has already heard all this—I’d really appreciate your keeping it—especially the soap opera details—to yourselves.”
IV
[ONE]
Das Haus im Wald
Near Bad Hersfeld
Kreis Hersfeld-Rotenburg
Hesse, Germany
2315 26 December 2005
“We’re almost there,” Castillo said as the Jaguar swiftly moved down a macadam road winding through a thick pine forest.
A moment later, he braked very sharply and with a squeal of tires made a right turn onto an almost identical road. The driver of the van behind them decided it best not to try to turn so fast and went past the turn, then stopped and backed up, then followed.
The headlights of the Jaguar lit up reflective signs on each side of the road. Each two-foot-square sign showed a skull and bones and the legend, ZUGANG VERBOTEN!!!
