Chapters 22 through 24
Chapter Twenty-Two
I sat in a quiet office staring at the file folder in the middle of the desk before me. It was thick and looked like it would take a few hours to review. I put off opening it. Procrastination was not unusual for me. Especially when faced with a large unpleasant task. I left the file untouched and looked around the office. Next to the desk where I was seated, there was a credenza, with shelves stocked with some legal tomes, and a few framed pictures. A female, the same female, was in three of the pictures. One alone formally posed, another holding a little girl, dark haired with brown eyes, and the other in the embrace of a man. I presumed the man was the same one who’s desk I was borrowing.
There was nothing particularly interesting about the rest of the office. Typical government office. The dinginess of the walls was broken up by a couple of framed certificates, a diploma, and some forgettable landscape prints I was sure had been rescued from a government surplus warehouse somewhere. No windows. A drab place for what I assumed would be a drab task. At least, I consoled myself, it was unlikely anyone would be able to penetrate this bubble to terminate my city employment. So, while I hid out in the F.B.I. office, I was still on my hourly retainer and the local government financial spigot was still open and the funds were flowing toward my coffers. I could afford to be casual.
I looked around the office once more. Audibly sighed. But it was time. I reached over and opened the folder. I removed the picture of my second victim and set it off to the left. Underneath was a government form. At the top was the title, “Incident Report-Narrative. U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS).” There was a date. It read “November 13, 1945.” I shook my head. This was old. Just months before that day, World War II had ended with Germany’s surrender. Why was I reading this? And how could my victim be this old? The paper the report was printed on didn’t look old, however; neither did the typeface.
I shifted in my chair to get more comfortable. It squeaked, but not bad. I wasn’t irritated. I started reading. I soon forgot the drabness of my surroundings, where I was at, and what my original objective had been in appearing at the F.B.I. office.
The name of the man in the picture was Hans Grable and he had been a scientist. In Berlin, the report said. He had been educated at the university in Hamburg, and he was, according to summaries of school records, conveniently translated and included in a separate section of the file, a brilliant student. But it was also reported he was uneven in his relationships with other students and professors. He wasn’t well liked. Not by either group.
The background study did contain a few grudging expressions of admiration at his relentless attempts to prove whatever theorem he happened to be working on. However, to the chagrin of University’s department administrators most of the projects he took on were unconventional and tended toward the fantastical. The math was right, the physics and the calculus were correct, the formulas and individual experiments documented and recorded in the minutest detail. But the conclusions he drew, his colleagues found, were, to say the least, unwarranted. In fact, they were considered beyond the realm of the possible.
His original work embraced the idea of remaking animal species to better serve Man’s needs. And then he expanded his research into whether man himself might be improved by utilizing advanced physics and chemistry. Such things had been thought of before and even written into literature, halfway seriously debated as theories, but it was accepted improbable and really not seriously considered by the elite of the scientific community.
But evidently it was these theories that obsessed Hans. He spent all his time working on them and, consequently, his reputation suffered. His career was going nowhere and his position at the university was in serious jeopardy. What saved him was his politics.
Though he had held a part time professorship teaching higher mathematics to two sessions of graduate classes, when he became eligible for admission to the tenure tract, his application was not granted. His requests for reconsideration were repeatedly delayed and his dismissal from even his limited sinecure was clearly imminent.
What no one in the Universities’ insular environment knew about was his activities away from the campus.
In the 1930s he joined a small splinter group. The philosophy of the group appealed to him. They promised a new world where the superior individual would no longer be held back by dark international conspiracies. He worked hard for the group. He earned the trust of the organizers. Hans Grable was an early dues-paying member of what would become the Nazi party.
And as the new political party came to prominence his loyalty was rewarded with trust and a certain amount of authority. He was named as the party’s representative to the University. There were many other supporters of the Nazi Party on the campus and in just a few short years, like the rest of German society, the minions at the University soon grew to fear the power of the Party. Offending the party’s representative on the faculty was not something anyone in the administration wanted to do.
With the rise of the Party’s power, not only was Hans’ long denied tenure fast tracked but his influence and authority increased. He was selected as vice-chair of the physics and chemistry department.
To the relief of the leaders of the University, Hans didn’t appear interested in asserting too much control long as the other faculty left him alone to work on his experiments and projects. They hastened to insure he was allowed to order and use any equipment he fancied. The leaders of the university believed giving him free rein was a small price to pay for them not being under the day-to-day dominance of some Party factotum. They knew that other universities across Germany had found themselves in chains to a dominant Nazi representative at their institutions. And when presidents and deans of those colleges had the effrontery to challenge the authority of the party representative; they often found themselves accosted on the streets and either severely beaten by toughs in brown shirts or, especially if they were Jewish or communist, arrested by the local constabulary, held incognito for a period of time and then shipped to labor camps.
No such imprudent challenges were made at Hamburg University. The administrators prudently took care of their party representative. Hans even had assistants assigned to him as he pleased. It was his encounter with one of these, a troubled young woman, according to the diary of one professor, that would eventually lead to Han’s greatest discovery, one that brought him to the attention of the highest officials in the Nazi party.
The report ended abruptly. I had been so ensconced that its end felt like a rudeness. I examined the file to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I could tell pages had been removed, maybe many pages. The last page, still intact, had a simple paragraph reporting that Hans had been ordered to deliver all materials on his discovery to the Party Headquarters in Berlin. He was also granted a request to be accompanied by the young woman, Frau Ermelinda Gunther.
The chair squeaked as I leaned back and rubbed my eyes. There was a second file to read. Attached to it in the top right corner was a young female’s picture. Pretty features with a dreamy quality in her eyes. Her hair was combed and confined in a tight bund though one could tell she was very blonde. Very German looking. Her features were vaguely familiar. Maybe because she was so typical of what I would have expected a young German woman to have looked like back then. She was holding a nameplate at chest level identifying her as Ermelinda Gunther.
I checked my watch. I had been reading almost two hours. I fingered the next report. It wasn’t quite as thick as the one I had just finished. Procrastinating again, I stood and stretched. I walked around the office and gave the wall hangings a closer inspection. Just then there was a buzzing. I walked to the phone and pressed the button.
“Mr. Easley.” It was agent Flannigan. “Would you like to join me for a sandwich in the conference room? We have had some lunch brought in.”
The invitation was welcome. I needed a break.
“Sure.”
I opened the door. The big-butted secretary was waiting for me. She turned and I followed her. I tried not to look at her rumbling ham hocks. Unsuccessfully.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When I walked through the door to the conference room, I was saw that Agent Flannigan and I were to be joined at lunch by a third person. He was considerably younger and most definitely less worn looking than Flannigan. While Flannigan was still in his rolled-up shirtsleeves and suspenders, this person, though seated with a plate of food in front of him, was still wearing his suit jacket and from what I could tell it was buttoned. His tie was smoothed out and knotted at the neck. His hair was dark, not a hint of gray, and to his credit, the color seemed natural rather than out of a bottle of dye. And he was impeccably groomed. Now, I thought, here we go, this is what an F.B.I. agent should look like.
The young man nodded at me and smiled. I noticed that unlike Flannigan who was already two giant bites into his sandwich, the plate in front of the new man was mostly salads and he was picking lightly at his portions with a fork. Napkin was in place on his lap.
Flannigan said, “Take a load off.” He swept his arm at a side table which had an array of food laid out.
“Grab some grub, Easley. There’s all kind of sandwiches. Roast beef, ham, turkey, you name it, and plenty of sides. Help yourself. What we don’t eat, the staff secretarial pool was make short work of. In case you haven’t noticed, they don’t miss out on too many meals.”
I took that as a reference to my pulchritudinous escort to and from the reading room. He smiled and took another healthy bite, tearing at the sandwich with his teeth in a way that reminded me of a lion feasting on an antelope.
“Thank you. I’m famished.” I looked pointedly at the new man.
Flannigan noticed. “Let me introduce Agent Brian Lee,” he said.
Agent Lee, put his fork down and without getting up extended his hand across the table. I leaned over and we shook hands. As we made eye contact, I thought I could detect a slight oriental cast to his features. They had been muted, I speculated, over at least a couple of generations. I straightened up and turned to the side table to select a sandwich. The ham looked good. I grabbed one, took a bag of chips from a basket with a variety of potato chips, Fritos, and some other selections. From a row of sodas, I picked up a can of Pepsi and a plastic glass with ice. I walked over and sat down directly across from Agent Lee. Flannigan was at his usual place at the head of the table.
Talking around the food in his mouth, Flannigan inquired, “How’s it coming with the file?”
I noticed that Agent Lee, as he toyed with his salads, was studying me.
“There are some things that are over my head. Scientific inquiry was never my strong suit. I guess the report is interesting from a historical standpoint. Long time ago. I guess I’m still wondering what this has to do with my case. I get that you are saying there is a connection between this Hans character and my second victim. Guess I haven’t gotten far enough to see it.”
“Well, it’s more than a connection,” Flannigan said. He looked like he wanted to go on, but, at a glance from agent Lee, he stopped. “Well, let’s wait until you’ve finished with the File.”
“Mr. Easley,” for the first time Agent Lee was saying something. I listened while I crunched a chip. “I am told you have been working with a couple of detectives from the local P.D.”
“Yes, and one reason, the main reason, I’m here is one of them is missing, and I want to find out what happened to her. Agent Flannigan here says the file has information that will help me find her.”
Agent Lee nodded his head slowly as if in affirmation.
“So, you agree with that?”
He nodded affirmatively again.
“Maybe you would like to enlighten me. Is she in any danger?”
He laid his fork down and looked at the remaining salad with a slight twinge of disgust. He obviously found it unappetizing.
Returning his gaze to me, he said, “Not in the sense we usually think of danger. But ultimately, her very existence is at risk. At extreme risk for her and for some other individuals as well.”
“Forgive me, Agent Lee, but this is all little too melodramatic. I just want to find her. You can help. Evidently. So, what’s the problem? Let’s get it done. Why read all these files about people long gone?”
He started to speak, but then hesitated. I had been a lawyer long enough to recognize when someone is going to say one thing and, thinking better of it, instead answers a question by saying something entirely different. Still, what he did say gave me the creeps.
“I appreciate what you are saying. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Lives are indeed at stake. And you will need to understand. Some people are going to lose their lives. Some people are going to have to die. So that others can be saved. There is just no other way. The question is who and how. That’s one reason you must finish the files before we go any further. It’s important for you to understand everything. Because Mr. Easley, ultimately, as I said, someone is going to die. And, if you really want your detective back, it could very well be you who may be responsible for other people dying.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
After I finished lunch, I returned to the office, and I sat back down at the desk and stared at the picture of Ermelinda Gunther clipped to the second file. I was trying to place her. I knew this face, but from where? It was almost there at the surface of my consciousness, but I couldn’t quite make the connection. Not yet.
I thought of Agent Lee. He had gotten up and left quickly without finishing his salads. Flannigan had been virtually incommunicative after that and evaded all my attempts to force him to interpret what agent Lee had meant.
I decided I would give the conversation with agent Lee more thought later.
I set the picture of Ermelinda aside and started to read. The reports on her started from her time at the University. Her history before that was missing. I was hoping the missing years would be filled in later in the reports.
She had started her career at the University teaching some basic physics courses to first year students. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about her. She did her job. She got her papers done on time and her grades posted without prodding from the administration, which, if one read between the lines, wasn’t always the case with other professors. Her performance reviews as well as comments from students left the impression that while she was deserving of praise for her attention to administrative detail while her skills as a professor and as a researcher were ordinary at best.
She had written a few articles in hopes of being published, a necessity for her if she was to have any hope of ever being considered for a tenure track.
The report said, it was one of those articles that brought her to the attention of Hans Grable. The report I was reading quoted liberally from the article. The narrative was very obtuse, replete with mathematical formulas and equations, but from what I could tell, it was theorizing about the existence of a parallel universe. That instead of traveling to the stars, across a distance so immense it could never be traversed, that other universes could be explored by the mere penetration of a wall, perhaps opening a gate, a dimensional gate much closer to home. She even theorized that because our side of the wall was so empty of any life beyond our own planet that perhaps we occupied the parallel universe, we were in a purgatory, somehow transported to a lifeless place utterly alone.
According to the report, Hans had taken her under his wing and, thanks to his Party connections, administrators at the University considered her under his protection. She got her tenure track and became his chief assistant. And then there was a change in her research and theories. Hans had redirected her efforts away from physics and toward chemistry. For reasons I couldn’t quite comprehend this seemed to complement his own work.
Changing fields of study didn’t seem to bother her all that much. And, the report noted, while Hans could be indifferent to the other humans around him as long as they allowed him the freedom to pursue his theories and ideas, Ermelinda was much more interested in asserting power and control over others at the University.
It was said by many of those interviewed that she was vengeful against those who slighted her. At first, she tried more often than she succeeded in hurting her enemies. It took a lot for her to light a fire under Hans. But there were occasions she was able to stimulate him to act and it usually meant someone who had crossed her suffered the severe consequences of her wrath. A few had even disappeared. At the time it was thought the Nazis, at Han’s urging had taken care of her demands.
It was toward the end of the reports, where I found what I had been promised. My eyes were weary, and I had utterly given up on attempting to understand the esoteric theories referenced in the reports. I was so tired I almost passed over the information. When it hit me, I had to go back and read the whole article again to make sure what I had read in that one sentence made sense.
It was that one sentence that Ermelinda had put in her article that she had claimed proved an important premise to her old theories. While there was nothing on the other side, the parallel universe was indeed cold and unoccupied, it was possible to penetrate the existence on the other side and while there actually transform or clone one’s being, adjust DNA to create a replica of oneself. “To change an order, a sequence in one’s chromosomes, incorporating or eliminating physical and emotional traits would allow us to create a replica, the same being, but different.”
I thought of the New Wanda at the sidewalk café. I thought I understood what was being theorized, but then she, almost like an addict, returned to her debunked theories of a parallel universe. It was like she couldn’t leave it alone.
She went on for a while trying to marry the chemistry with the physics and then concluded her article with an enigmatic paragraph.
“It would be quite a turn to designate this existence we are born into as the purgatory and the parallel universe a reality. For example, we are utterly alone on this planet in our universe. We have wars and disease and all the manifestations of the Original Sin. What if this earth is where we were cast out of Eden? And the people on the other side of the barrier, even if given gifts of new physical powers, whole new personalities, want to return to this existence with all its struggles. They want to come back because it is home, and they don’t want to change. Or if they change, they have been imbued with ambition here and want to dominate others there they see as lambs. Maybe that other place, maybe what they call heaven is white and cloudy, permanent, and boring.”
The date under her signature read May 1st, 1944.
And then the report ended.
What came after was a report from a British security official. It was dated July 1st, 1945 and described Ermelinda as a prisoner of war who had been taken first by the Russians then ended up in a POW camp in the British zone after the Russians had abandoned their own POW camp in the face of the last desperate counter-offensive launched by the German army prior to the end of the war. She had escaped but had been captured by the British.
Attached to the report was a transcript of an interview with a woman who had been held in the same camp. It was about Ermelinda. It then described her history in the war years. And it had pictures. Pictures I wish I had never seen.
And the last item in the file was a transcript from an interview of a woman identified as Ermelinda. On the cover page in large letters was the legend, “Section Six, British Military Intelligence.” I skimmed the transcript and saw that the interviewer had made some notes about how Ermelinda reacted to some of his questions.
I turned back to the beginning and read.
Q: Do you know who I am?
A: Yes.
Q: Tell me.
A: You are a British Captain. Your insignia say as much. Beyond that I can only speculate.
Q: Then speculate.
A: You are a member of the intelligence service.
Q: And do you know why I am talking to you?
A: I have sent a request to speak with the Americans. They should be on their way by now.
Q: You are a prisoner. First of the Russians and now here. Just how would you have contacted the Americans?
A: There are ways. This is my country. I know many people. They know others. It is not so hard.
Q: Yes. I would imagine you have ways. A network maybe? Of others just like you?
A: As I said.
Q: Of Nazis?
A note from the interrogator said, “Silence.”
A: I am a prisoner. I was a prisoner of the Russians.
Q: But before that?
A: Before that is unimportant.
Q: To some it is. You were a guard. To the prisoners who were held in your camp the past is important.
Another note from interrogator, “silence.”
A: They are gone now. Those were other times. Unimportant.
Q: Why do you want to talk to the Americans?
A: Why would anyone? I have something they will want. Germany is over now. I will emigrate to America.
Q: Maybe they will not want you?
Note: “More Silence but here she smiled.”
Q: What do you have they would want? You were a guard. That is all. You committed crimes. You will have to stand trial. You have nothing the Americans need. Nothing they would want.
Note: “More silence and another smile. A knowing smile.”
Q: Is there a reason you don’t want to tell me? What could be the big secret?
A: I will tell the Americans. They are your closest friends, are they not? Allies. I’m sure they will share everything with you.
Q: Let’s talk about your time as a Hundefuhrerin.
A: And what makes you think I know what that is?
Q: Because I will be honest with you. No games. The prisoners that were there. The other guards. We have talked to many of them. Your name came up. Many, many times. They told us about you. Things you did. They told us about the dogs.
A: People say things. Especially if it will benefit them. You can’t believe everything you hear from such people.
Q: I wish to ask you about what they said.
A: You may ask, of course.
Q: Tell me about Ravensbruck? How you used the dogs on the women there.
Note: Silence. No smile this time. I waited a full minute. We stared at each other for what seemed an eternity.
Q: Then tell me about before. Auschwitz. Tell me about the Doctor. About Doctor Josef Mengele.
A: I knew him. Briefly. He was a very creative.
Q: At Auschwitz?
A: At Auschwitz. I was there a month only.
Q: And you were lovers.
A: I knew him.
Q: Lovers?
A: I knew him.
Q: And did Hans know about him?
A: I haven’t seen Hans since before the war. I hope he is alive. I would like to find him. I will ask the Americans if they can find him. They will help me find him I know.
Q: You never answered my question. Did Hans know about Mengele?
A: Josef admired Hans. The theoretical work. Josef was more, well, he was more practical.
Q: He experimented on human beings. It wasn’t just theoretical with him was it?
A: I heard stories. Later. Who knows if they are true?
Q: Did you talk to the Russians about the experiments?
A: They asked about Hans. His theories. I told them to read his papers.
Q: The experiments. Did you tell them about that?
A: I escaped. We, a group of us, got away. We lived in the forest for days. We got away from the Russians. And then we were found. By you. And brought here.
Q: And before that. After Auschwitz. Where were you?
A: I was at another place. I was given a job.
Q: And you carried on with the experiments, didn’t you? After you were moved to Ravensbruck?
Note: She looked me in the eyes. Didn’t look away at all, but she remained silent.
Q: And these? Do you remember those in these pictures?
Note: She looked at the pictures. So Dispassionate. No reaction at all.
Q: How about these women? They were prisoners and you did things to them. Torture. Mutilation. And these children. These little children. You experimented on babies.
A: I know nothing about this.
Q: Well, we have plenty of witnesses who will say you did this. And let me tell you something else. You are not going to the Americans. We have you. We have jurisdiction over you. You are going to be tried by a special tribunal and you are going to hang. Within the month.
Note: I thought she was getting nasty here. She has the audacity to smile at me again.
Q: I tell you this, so you know you have nothing to lose. Explain what you did to those poor women and their babies. And maybe we will let you see Hans one last time before you and he are hung by your necks until you are dead.
A: You have Hans?
Q: We do.
A: I will see him. Then I will answer your other questions.
The transcript ended. Once again, I had the impression there were missing pages. But I was at the end of the file. I closed the file. I picked the pictures up gently and slid them back inside. I didn’t look at them again.
For earlier chapters and other writings by Phil Cline visit philcline.com