He caught little bits of the news regarding events back in Amsterdam, but he tried not to immerse himself in the details too much. Suffice it to say that the city, the whole nation actually, was still coming to terms with events.
The shock was wearing off and now people were asking serious questions about just what exactly had been going on. The police were typically tight-lipped, but mostly because they didn’t really know much themselves. They desperately tried to play down the more weird and bizarre aspects of the case, denying the rumours of an occult sect, which they described as hocus-pocus nonsense! Instead they stuck to the bare facts: that the murders had stopped, the killers were dead, the police force and public had paid a heavy price in the number of casualties, but the most important thing was that it was over.
But what about the murderers? People asked. Just who were they?
And that was part of the problem.
Of all of the bodies removed from the burnt out shell that was The Waag, together with those killed during the attack at Schreierstoren Tower, which in total numbered around about forty dead, so far only a handful had been identified. Many had been burned beyond recognition, sure, but still, it was expected that through DNA and dental records they should have been able to ID the vast majority of them. But the simple fact was that very few of them were in the police database, either in The Netherlands or abroad. They were not in the system at all. They were known as clean skins, and finding out who exactly they were might prove impossible. They might never know who these murderous fanatics or their leaders were.
It was one huge mess.
Pieter was glad to be out of the loop.
He arrived back at the guest house just after eight and went straight through to the breakfast area, where he enjoyed a quick hello and chat with Ruben and Max, before they left him to tuck in. The radio was on quietly and he caught the weather forecast: cloudy skies with stiff and cold breezes, before a low front moved in later. Maybe he would catch the bus south and then walk back, just for a change. If he got caught in any showers then he didn’t mind that, it would be fun in a way.
Finished eating, he headed back up to his room to grab a few things, passing another guest on the stairs, a young lady wearing a baseball hat. She smiled and then slipped by, and he heard the front door click shut.
Pieter unlocked his room door, and walked in. Then stopped dead.
He looked across at his bed, and the small object lying on top of his pillow.
With his heart hammering in his chest, he walked slowly across. He felt his shoes crunching over something on the carpet, which made him pause and look down at the soil there, and even as he saw this, and picked up the small ring with its familiar skull on the front, he understood.
Pieter flew across the room to the only window and looked out.
And there she was. Standing on the pavement across the street, with the dunes and the sea behind her. The lady in the hat. Looking up at him, and smiling.
But a bus went by then, blocking his view of her, and once it had gone past, he knew, he just knew!
Lotte was gone.
Pieter raised the flat of his hand against the glass and banged it over and over in frustration.
He looked left and right up and down the street.
She was nowhere to be seen.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is of course a work of fiction, but some parts of it are based on actual events:
Unternehmen Werwolf – Operation Werewolf was the brainchild of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Hans-Adolf Prutzmann, General Inspector of Special Defence. Under orders from Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler to create a special commando unit of highly-trained operatives whose role would be to remain back behind enemy lines as occupied Europe was liberated by Allied forces, he came up with the Werewolf Commando Force. Their members were mostly made up of young men and teenagers from the Hitler Youth or young ladies from the BDM – The League of German Girls. Hulchrath Castle was their main training camp. Here they took part in map-reading, rifle practice, first-aid techniques, boxing and wrestling, hand-to-hand combat, preparation for acts of sabotage such as making mines from empty tins of Heinz soup, and learning assassination skills.
Operation Carnival likewise was a real operation. The members of the team, led by Herbert Wenzel, were tasked with assassinating the Mayor of Aachen, Franz Oppenhoff. The mission was pretty much as I have described in the novel, and all of the hit-squad members in my story were real people, including the young She-Wolf Ilse Hirsch. After the operation, Wenzel disappeared without trace, presumably spending the rest of his life living under a new identity. Although the surviving members of the hit-squad were rounded up and arrested shortly after the war, all were found not guilty and released. Hirsch lived to a ripe old age.
Radio Werewolf was part of Joseph Goebbels propaganda machine. The broadcasts were intended both to boost the morale of the Wehrmacht and the German population, as well as to instil fear amongst the Allied troops.
All of the locations that I have used throughout the story are real places, and many are worth a visit:
Schreierstoren Tower (or Weeping Tower) and The Waag are currently very pleasant cafes and bars,
