Midnight came. I could hear the quiet crackle of radios as the marchers assembled right where they were supposed to, in the old part of town surrounded by shops and low buildings hundreds of years old. Just like Recklinghausen, I thought. They always started with Old Germany, the old traditions and history. The way things used to be.
Florian looked at me. “They're on their way. Masks, torches, the usual things.”
I strained to see them as they approached down the main street. I couldn't yet see anyone around the curve, but I could hear singing. In Recklinghausen they had been silent. But tonight they were singing. They kept their voices very low, just above a whisper. But enough to be heard before they were seen.
I could now see shadows dancing on the sides of the buildings as the marchers approached the curve. The light from the torches illuminated everything around as the singers came closer. Finally the leaders turned the curve and I could see them. My heart jumped at the sight of the line of masked people in black capes carrying a large banner in the front of hundreds of marchers, all singing their soft dirge, with a lone cameraman filming the entire procession.
The march slowed as the leaders looked around. Florian watched them. They seemed to be on guard. The marchers stopped dead in the middle of the street a quarter mile away, close enough that I could hear their torches hissing; the same kind of torch that broke the window on my rental car in Recklinghausen
.
Suddenly they laid their banner down on the street. They all turned their backs toward us, facing the way they had come. Before I could figure out what they were doing, they turned back toward us and threw Molotov cocktails into the street toward us. Each of them had been carrying a gasoline-filled bottle inside their cape or coat. They crashed into the street, creating a wall of flames between them and us. They began running back the other way with their torches, as others tossed firebombs down the side streets.
This wasn't just a retreat; this had been planned. There was no panic, no screaming, no sound at all. Even the dirge had stopped. As they rounded the curve in a trot they began removing their capes and masks, leaving them in the street. The flames rose to six or eight feet, too much for anyone to run after them without the risk of setting himself on fire.
Florian's radio cracked as the police tried to decide what to do. All the side streets were blocked by fire as was the main street. The marchers now were unmasked, but couldn't be seen. Their capes lay on the road behind the fire wall, with the white masks and the burning torches next to them. We could see the marchers running fast now, breaking away from the main body and heading for their escape routesâto their cars or bicycles or however they had planned to get out of Koblenz.
Before any backup plan could be put into place they were gone. Florian listened to his radio. “They have captured one of them. Not a marcher . . .” he paused. “Someone on a roof.” He looked up but didn't say anything. “He had night vision binoculars and has been there for hours, they think. Long before we got here.”
“They knew we were coming,” I remarked.
Florian nodded. “These are different Nazis. Perhaps we underestimated them.”
We walked forward to inspect their masks and capes as the flames began to die.
I looked down at the banner in the street that the leaders of the march had been carrying. It was on a pole, and was written in that same old English font I had seen weeks ago. “
Dein kurzes Leben, mach es
eternal
.” I asked Florian, “What does that say?”
“Your short life, make it eternal.”
“Meaning?”
“They are trying to say that the way to become eternal is to recognize you're already dead. The German government has killed you. Emasculated you. You are nothing to them, only others matter. It is what we discussed before.”
I watched diminishing flames around us from the discarded torches and the gasoline. “They are going to attract a lot more people with this.”
He nodded. “That is what we are afraid of.”
As the next day came to a close and I was back in D.C., my BlackBerry rang. “Yes?”
“What are you doing tonight?” Jedediah.
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
“You know Lady Bird Johnson Park?”
“Sure.”
“There's a trail, right by the river. Be there, east side. Nine o'clock. I'll pick you up.”
“I'll be there.”
The connection broke. I went home, had dinner with my family, and then headed to the Potomac River.
I wore jeans and a black North Face fleece, and as usual, carried my Glock nine millimeter.
I arrived fifteen minutes early. It was dark, and traffic rushed by in front of me. I waited. At exactly nine my phone rang again. A different number.
“Yes?”
“Can you get to the river?”
“What for?”
“That's where I am.” He hung up.
I shook my head and headed across the grass and through the trees until I was at the bank of the river. As I stepped close to the water, the lights of a boat came on directly in front of me. It had been there, moving very slowly against the flow of the river to hold its position without its lights. The boat moved sideways against the current and turned upstream as it nudged into the bank. As I jumped on board, the motor roared and we turned away and headed downstream. It looked to be about twenty-two feet long with a small covered cabin. I stood next to Jedediah, who was wearing jeans and a long-sleeve white T-shirt. He was barefoot. He looked at me, unsmiling. There was an awkward tension.
“You finally got a cell phone?”
“Thanks for the reminder,” he said as he reached up on the panel next to him and tossed it into the river.
“That's expensive.”
“Not really. One-time use. You can learn a lot from the people who run drugs. Half the people I know in the mountains of South Carolina run meth. Those boys know all the tricks.”
“You can never be too safe,” I said.
“I would assume you'd know that.”
“That's why I said it.”
He motored downstream around the point of Fort McNair, and headed up toward the Frederick Douglas Bridge. He passed under the bridge and turned to the bank on the right, across from the Navy yard. We approached a soft bank that was marshy and hidden by trees. He drifted between two overhanging trees and stopped. He turned off the lights of the boat and put the engine into idle. He dropped the anchor over the side and let the rope feed out until it touched the bottom. He let it play out a little more, and then tied it to the cleat. He sat in the padded seat in the back of the boat, and pointed at a folding captain's chair for me to sit in front of him. I did.
I said, “So what's going on? I've got a lot to talk to you about, but first tell me what you're doing in D.C.”
He stared at me in the dark. What little light there was reflected off the river onto his face in an uneven way, like a candle through a piece of silk. Somehow it made him look even more dangerous.
“Business. A national chain of body shops is trying to buy me. They flew me up here to persuade me what a good idea it would be to sell my shop to them.”
“You interested?”
“No. But I like free food and drink.”
“So what's going on?”
“Well you failedâthanks for nothingâbut our head guy came up with an idea. I thought I should tell you what it is. It's going to be pretty damned dramatic.”
“No, don't! I just got back from Germany, and have the perfect idea. If we pull it off, you'll be the biggest player in Germany!”
“Too late. He's said what we're going to do.”
“
Can't
be too late. This is huge. You've got to give me some time.”
“I'm not in charge. He is. And he's determined. Once he sets his mind to something, just clear out. That's what's going to happen.”
“What does he want to do?”
“He's sort of a World War II history buff and thinks one of the ways to get back to what Hitler had going was to get some things that were important back then.”
“Go on.”
“There's a display going around the country.
World War II through Russia's Eyes
.”
“And?”
“Hitler killed himself in a bunker in Berlin. The Americans let the Russians take Berlin. We figured why take all those casualties ourselves. Let the Russians die. And die they did, but they took Berlin with a vengeance. And they found Hitler's bunker intact. They pulled all the stuff out of that bunker that was there when Hitler died and kept it. The stuff that was in that bunker, Hitler's personal stuff, is what's on this tour.”
“Wow. So what's the plan?”
“One of the stops is in Atlanta. He's going to break in and take all of Hitler's shit. Shoes, uniform hanging on the coat rack when he shot himself, his riding crop, and his hat. This is the real stuff. It's what Hitler had when he died. And we're going to go get it.”
“Has to be a lot of security.”
“A ton. He doesn't care. He's got a line on some C4, and he's going to do it full on. Get as much of the stuff as he can. We're going to hit it on the last day. We're going to have guys go through with hidden video cameras every day to check out the security, the timing, everything. And then we're going to take it down on the last day.”
“Don't do it. And if they insist on doing it, I don't want you involved.”
“May have to be. I do what he says, or he gets suspicious. He's suspicious anyway. Every time I leave town he's suspicious. He suspects his
wife
. He suspects
everybody
is ratting on him. He's paranoid. So we do what he tells us. Plain as that.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Don't you have a file on him?” I nodded.
Jedediah waited, then said, “His name is Greg Brunnig. He's extremely smart. College educated. Been in some trouble, but nothing serious. He could pass for a banker.”
“It's like stealing a Picasso. People don't get away with that.”
“Oh, he'll figure it out. He's that smart. And nobody's going to be looking for somebody to steal any of that stuff.”
I doubted it. “You think the Russians haven't thought about somebody grabbing this stuff?”
“Well, we're going to. Or at least we're going to try.”
I listened to the dissipated wake of a passing ship slapping against the side of the boat. “Seems like a really bad idea. And I think I've got something better.”
“Yeah,
now
you do. We have our marching orders. It's set. It's going down next week.”
“Next week? How are you going to get a plan together in a week?”
Jedediah thought he heard something in the marsh and waited.
I looked out over the marsh with him. “What are you listening to? How could anybody be out here? There's no place to
be
.”
“I don't take chances.”
“So how does he plan on pulling this off?”
“Even if it's really a sophisticated thing. Even if we have to hack our way in with axes and blowtorches, it's not a problem.”
I was perplexed. “How is that not a problem?”
“Because we have a couple of guys who will take the fall. They've been unofficial parts of our group for years, but they're always in and out of prison. They're fully criminals. They
like
being criminals, and they don't care if they go back to the house. It'd be like a family reunion. They're big-shit Nazis with tattoos they got in prison. They protect each other and nobody messes with them. They've already committed a couple of felonies and the cops are right on their tails. So, they know they're headed back to the slammer anyway. They say they'll sacrifice themselves for the cause. It will be glorious.”
“That's the plan? To get caught?”
“If necessary. We won't know the exact plan until we see the layout. But this thing is on. You should know that.” His eyes narrowed. “And you'd better not tell your police friends what's coming. They don't need any help in catching us.”
I rubbed my fingers through my hair, frustrated not only at this ridiculous plan but at the possibility of a lost opportunity. “You've got to call it off. You've got to get to Brunnig. Not only will they catch your pre-qualified felons, they'll catch all of you.”
“They'll never prove it.”
“Of course they will. You think the police are stupid?”
“Oh definitely. I think some police are dumber than crayfish. Some of them are even dumber than Nazis. Some of them even
are
Nazis and will look the other way.”
“Well the
smart
ones are going to figure this out, and they're going to come after you, and they're going to come after Brunnig.”
Jedediah glanced at his watch, which had a huge luminous dial and was easy to read, even in the pitch darkness. He stood up and bent down right in front of my face. “Then you've got to make sure they don't. You've got to be
some
good to me. I'm here risking my life to give you information. To help you. Well, it's time for you to help me. Keep them off our backs.”
I shook my head. I knew this was coming. The real reason he'd dragged me out here. “Don't know if I can do that. They may not listen to us.”
“They'll listen to you. Make it happen. Do your FBI shit. Get us our ticket to Germany.”
“That's what I've been trying to tell you. I
have
your ticket to Germany!”
“What is it?”
“The Blood Flag.”
He paused in the darkness. “
The
Blood Flag?”
“You know about it?”
“Everybody knows about it. You have it?”
“No. We're going to find it. Then authenticate it and take it to Germany.”