Sue's eyes met mine across the table, but neither of us gave anything away. Unfortunately, Michael Morris wasn't a cop. He didn't know better.
'Fingers and toes!' he exclaimed. 'That's the same thing that happened…' Too late, I silenced him with a reproving glare. He subsided meekly back into his chair.
'You're saying Lars Weber was in on it then?' Sue asked.
Avram shrugged, 'Maybe. Maybe not. The daughter-Erika-did very well in school. She grew up, became a member of the Communist party, and went to work for a branch of Stasi-the feared East German secret police. She dropped out of sight shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We've been looking for her for the past several months.'
'Why?'
'One of our affiliated organizations maintains a data base on the status of known Nazi war criminals-those who have already served their prison terms as well as those who have never been apprehended. When two of the missing Ukrainian guards from Sobibor turned up dead-murdered, or rather executed-under similar circumstances hundreds of miles apart, we started looking into it.'
'Those guards were murdered?' Michael asked. 'We checked on them. Kari and I were told they all died of natural causes.'
'As far as we can tell,' Avram answered, 'six of the guards are dead. Some of them did die of natural causes. Two of them did not. Neither did the sons of two of the others. You must understand that the term ‘natural causes' becomes very flexible in some jurisdictions when inquiries are being made by someone from outside that jurisdiction.'
'You said ‘similar circumstances,'' I prompted. 'Can you be more specific?'
'Burned,' he answered. 'Almost beyond recognition, but not quite. In each case, the fingers and toes were removed but left with the body. As a warning, perhaps.'
'To whom?'
'To whoever had the gold. We believe Erika Weber Schmidt was serving notice to all concerned that she was coming looking for the gold her father had once been accused of stealing.'
'Whether or not he did it,' Sue said. Avram nodded. 'Do you think she was acting alone or in concert with someone else?'
'That we haven't been able to determine. Our assessment is that Erika Weber Schmidt is more than capable of doing it. She's a trained killer. More to the point, she's an unemployed trained killer, or at least she was.'
'What does that mean?'
'We now have reason to believe she has gone to work for one of the newer and more radical neo-Nazi splinter groups.'
'What you're giving us is a lot of ancient history,' I interjected. 'I'd like to know what brought you here to Washington last week when you showed up at Kari and Michael's apartment up in Bellingham.'
Avram looked questioningly at Moise, who nodded. 'A few days ago, while checking Erika Schmidt's back trail, we stumbled over the names of Michael Morris and Kari Gebhardt. One of the survivors mentioned having been interviewed by someone named Gebhardt. Since Hans Gebhardt was one of the missing German soldiers from Sobibor, it struck us as more than just a coincidence. We came here as soon as it was possible to make suitable arrangements. I should imagine Erika located Gunter in much the same way.'
'Mr. Gebhardt's murder is our fault then, isn't it?' Michael murmured, his face ashen. 'Kari's father died because our research called her attention to him.'
'Don't blame yourselves,' Moise Rosenthal said, speaking for the first time since Avram had begun his narrative. 'Gunter Gebhardt died because the neo-Nazis are trying to build an entrance ramp to the information superhighway. It's illegal for them to sell books denying the reality of the Holocaust, and the existence of the death camps. Instead, they're setting up a complicated computer network they plan to use to spread their propaganda. To do that, they need money.'
'We've been convinced for some time that Erika wasn't acting entirely on her own. For one thing, most former Eastern bloc workers don't have enough money to do the kind of traveling she does. They just don't have the wherewithal to pay for tickets. There's also the matter of navigating a complicated bureaucratic maze in order to secure the proper exit papers and visas.
'I personally am convinced that Erika Schmidt is working for one of these neo-Nazi entities, although we're not yet sure which one. They're providing seed money and helping her cut through red tape. In exchange, once the missing gold is found, they'll be reimbursed for their up-front expenses, then they'll split the profits with Erika.'
Michael Morris fidgeted in his chair. 'What am I going to tell Kari?' he said. 'Here's her father, an innocent man and…'
'I wouldn't be so sure about the innocent part,' Moise cautioned. 'For years Gunter Gebhardt has been involved in a joint venture with someone in Vladivostok. I believe he went into it solely in order to establish a cover that would allow him to smuggle his father's gold out from behind the iron curtain.'
Moise Rosenthal sat back in his chair. He looked at Sue and me and smiled as if to say it was our turn. Now that he had told us what they knew, I believe he expected us to return the favor. Unfortunately, I wasn't in any mood for show-and-tell. Impeccable manners to the contrary, I still had a feeling Moise and Avram were playing us for fools. They had only told us as much as it suited them to tell. One important oversight was the fact that so far they hadn't mentioned a word about the toy soldiers they had bought from Else Gebhardt.
I stood up. 'Excuse me for a moment, would you?'
Moise nodded graciously. I made my way to the nearest pay phone and punched in the directory-assistance number for eastern Washington.
'What city, please?' the operator asked.
'Yakima,' I answered. 'I'm looking for someone named Hurtado. First name Sergio.'
Within moments I was speaking to Lorenzo Hurtado himself. I didn't beat around the bush. 'Tell me something, Lorenzo,' I said. 'Was Gunter Gebhardt fishing or smuggling?'
'I am not a smuggler,' Lorenzo answered. 'I am an honest man. So is my cousin. We worked hard for Senor Gebhardt. We caught the fish. We cleaned them. We unloaded them onto the ships.'
'What ships?'
'The Russian ships. American ships can't go into Russian ports.'
'When you unloaded the fish, did you take anything on board?'
'Only food and supplies. Just enough to get back home. Senor Gebhardt would ship some spare parts and tools over ahead of time, so if anything broke while we were out, we'd have replacements. He said things they made in Russia weren't any good. He only wanted American.'
'He didn't load on anything else?'
'Nothing else.'
If Lorenzo was telling the truth, that pretty much blew the smuggling theory. Frustrated, I returned to the restaurant where the plates and dishes had given way to brandy snifters and cups and saucers.
'Look,' I said impatiently. 'Let's not play games. I know where you two were this afternoon. I know what you did. When did you figure out that those soldiers in Gunter Gebhardt's basement were made out of gold? Was it before or after you lied your way into Else Gebhardt's house to buy them?'
For a moment, there was dead silence around the table, then Moise said, 'Those soldiers aren't gold, Detective Beaumont. You can check them yourself. They're made out of some other metal. Lead, maybe.'
The soldiers weren't gold? There went my latest pet theory, shot straight to hell!
'Where is the damn gold then?' I demanded. 'If Gunter didn't use it to make the soldiers, what the hell did he do with it?'
A tweak of amusement turned up the corners of Avram Steinman's mouth, wrinkling the corners of his eyes and twisting his face into a wry grin. 'That, Detective Beaumont,' he replied, 'is what we were hoping you could tell us.'
There was some stiff small talk after that. Moise and Avram were looking for information that neither Sue nor I was prepared to share.
I skipped the brandy. While drinking my second cup of coffee, I caught Michael Morris checking his watch three different times. Obviously, he had an important previous engagement. Our visit with Moise Rosenthal and Avram Steinman was making him late.
