1503954692 (39 page)

‘I had no idea what your mother knew,’ he continued, ‘but I had to assume she knew as much as your father. Karl was missing by now, and although I’d made sure his disappearance couldn’t be tied to me, she had become a threat nonetheless. I already knew she was staying with her brother in a rented apartment here in Munich.’

‘Her brother?’ Tayte cut in, recalling his and Jean’s earlier visit to the apartment where his parents had been staying with British diplomat, Geoffrey Johnston. Now he knew the motive for Johnston’s murder. He had simply been in the way and was drowned in the Eisbach to make his death seem accidental.

‘Yes, her brother,’ Strobel said. ‘Which of course means he was your uncle. But apart from having to deal with him, there were other complications.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Tayte said, scowling at the idea that Strobel was responsible for the murder of yet another member of his family.

‘Don’t get your hopes up, Mr Tayte,’ Strobel said. ‘Your mother got away from me that time, but I made sure she knew it was Volker Strobel, the Demon of Dachau, who had killed her husband and was now after her. It served to remove suspicion from the respectable Johann Langner, and of course, your mother already knew that Karl had been interested in Strobel. She must have wondered what he’d found, but what could she do? Indeed, what could the authorities have done when she went to them with her story? Volker Strobel was a ghost. So your mother fled the country in fear of her life, and the lives of her as then unborn children.’

‘Children?’ Tayte felt an icy chill run through him.

Strobel gave Tayte a wry smile. ‘You didn’t know, did you? But how could you?’ The revelation seemed to amuse him. ‘You were not your mother’s only child.’

‘I have a twin?’ Tayte said. It was a possibility he’d never considered before.

‘Yes, and your mother was right to fear for your lives as well as her own. I’d learned my lesson with your father, you see. I let Johann’s child live and that mistake came back to haunt me. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.’

The gun began to shake in Tayte’s hand.

‘It took several months to find your mother again,’ Strobel said. ‘She was first traced to England, and then to Atlanta, Georgia. She was doing so well, but how could I let her go? What if she did know something? What if she returned to Germany someday, drawn by vengeance and the need to understand what had happened to her husband? No, I had to eliminate all threats. So when your mother was found again I took care of the matter personally, and let me tell you, it gave me great pleasure.’

Tayte’s grip on the gun tightened. Then as if he had no control over his forefinger, it slowly found the trigger.

‘She was no longer pregnant when I finally caught up with her,’ Strobel continued. ‘You and your sibling had emerged into the world, and it was my aim to kill all three of you—to remove the threat once and for all—but your mother had sense enough to separate you.’ Strobel paused then and smiled at Tayte before adding, ‘You were already out of my reach, but your brother, as I discovered, was still with her.’

My brother,
Tayte thought as he subconsciously reasserted his grip on the gun. But as much as he wanted to end this story, he was compelled to know what happened, or spend the rest of his life wondering, not that he felt he had a very long life ahead of him at this juncture.

‘What did you do?’ he said through his teeth.

‘I found your brother in an open basket in the passenger foot-well of the jeep your mother was driving. He was wrapped so snugly in so many blankets, I almost missed him. But then he began to cry. If my curiosity to look at Johann’s grandson hadn’t got the better of me, I’m sure I could have driven my knife into that bundle without giving it a second thought, but look I did, and then I knew I couldn’t kill him. Unlike you, he had Johann’s blue eyes, you see. He was a beautiful Aryan boy—my beautiful Aryan boy.’

A sudden onset of dizziness almost overcame Tayte as he realised who Strobel was referring to. The gun suddenly felt so heavy, but he held it up. ‘Rudi?’ he said, his brow set in a deep furrow. He could scarcely believe it, yet if it were true it meant that his brother was still alive, and living right there in Munich. His fraternal twin.

Strobel nodded. ‘I saw that baby boy as my opportunity to repent for what I had done to Johann. I would raise his flesh and blood as though it were my own. I would give his child everything, and in so doing I would sleep all the better for having made amends. And for a time, I did, but it didn’t last.’

‘That’s the most twisted thing I’ve ever heard,’ Tayte said.

‘Would you rather I’d killed him? Believe me, Mr Tayte, if it had been you wrapped in that bundle—if your mother had hidden your brother away first instead of you—I would not have hesitated.’

Tayte fell silent, considering how his life had hung in the balance according to which of her children his mother chose to protect first. He thought back to his visit to the Catholic mission in San Rafael, Sinaloa where she had left him, and he heard Sister Manriquez’s words again as she told him what his mother had said as she handed him over.
For the child’s own protection
. . . Tayte knew now how true those words had been.

‘How can I believe you’ll let me go, when you know I’ll tell Rudi everything?’ Tayte said. ‘He’ll know who you really are, and what you did. He’ll hate you for it.’

‘But don’t you see? I want Rudi to know.’

‘Why, so you can mess with his head, too? You want that to be your parting gift to him after you’re dead?’

‘After I’m dead, he’s going to find out sooner or later. I’ve provided well for those who know who I really am, but after I’m gone they will have no one to fear. Eventually someone will talk. I don’t want Rudi to read about it in the newspapers, and who better to tell him than his own brother? It’s because of my love for Rudi that I want you to live, Mr Tayte, so you can be there for him when the time comes. But you must pull that trigger.’

‘So you won’t be around to face the music? You’re a coward!’

‘Yes, perhaps,’ Strobel said. ‘It doesn’t change anything.’ With that, he lifted his hands to the gun and held the muzzle between his open palms, steadying Tayte’s aim.

‘I can’t do it,’ Tayte said.

‘Yes you can. You just need a little more encouragement. I’m going to finish telling you about your mother, and then you’re going to pull the trigger and this will all be over.’

Tayte shook his head. He didn’t want to hear about his mother. He could feel his cheek bones throbbing painfully as he fought to hold back the tears welling inside him.

‘Now as I was saying, when I finally caught up with your mother she was in Mexico. I’d followed her along a dusty track in the middle of nowhere and I ran her jeep off the road. Then I walked calmly up to her as she lay tangled in the wreckage, and I slit her throat.’

A sigh trembled from Tayte’s lips, as if the life had just drained from his own body. He pictured the photograph he had of his mother and the first tear broke and fell onto his cheek. He could hold them back no longer. His lips were still trembling as he extended the gun closer to Strobel, and with the muzzle now no more than two inches from Strobel’s face, Tayte watched the old man bow his head towards it, as though he knew he had done enough to make Tayte pull the trigger.

Chapter Forty-Six

Tayte had suddenly lost all concept of where he was and why he was there. Through a thick veil of hatred and tears, all he could see was the gun shaking in his hand and the man who had destroyed generations of his family: his parents, Sarah and Karl, his paternal grandparents, Johann and Ava, and his great-grandparents, Adelina and Gerhard Bauer. And he was responsible for the murder of his uncle, Geoffrey Johnston. Tayte had never felt so much loathing towards anyone in his life, and he’d encountered a few candidates in his time. All of them combined didn’t come close to how he felt about Volker Strobel.

Tayte tried to tell himself that Strobel deserved to die, and that he would be doing the world a favour, but he reminded himself then that his family were not Strobel’s only victims—far from it. The Demon of Dachau had been responsible for the murders of thousands upon thousands of people. He thought about Elijah and Tobias Kaufmann, and their life-long quest to bring Strobel to justice, to face trial for his crimes against humanity, and it was then that the idea of pulling that trigger seemed entirely selfish to Tayte. He withdrew the gun, and a moment later he tossed it away, removing any last temptation he might have had to pull the trigger.

At hearing it clatter to the floor, Strobel looked up again, disappointment written all over his face. ‘So you can’t do it, either,’ he said. ‘Just as your grandfather couldn’t do it when he came after me that night at Dachau.’ Strobel sighed. ‘But I must thank you for the thrill you’ve given me. I haven’t felt that much exhilaration in a long time.’ His expression became suddenly quizzical. ‘But what is it that makes us so different?’ he asked. ‘I would have shot you to save my own life, and without a moment’s hesitation or remorse. But you . . . Why should you place such value in the life of someone you have every reason to hate? I really can’t understand it.’

‘I think you just answered your own question,’ Tayte said, choking back his emotions. ‘If you understood, you wouldn’t have done the terrible things you’ve done.’

‘Perhaps I would have been more like Johann, eh? You know, you shouldn’t think ill of your grandfather because of who he was or what he represented. I knew him. He was a kind and considerate man. If you had been a young boy growing up in Germany in Johann’s place, don’t think for a moment that you wouldn’t also have been a member of the Hitler Youth. You, too, would have been so proud of your country, and by the time your education and training was complete, you would have gladly fought alongside your
Kameraden
for the things you had come to believe in.’ Strobel paused and smiled to himself. ‘I, on the other hand, am quite Johann’s opposite. But they say opposites attract, don’t they?’

Tayte wiped his eyes. He really didn’t want to get into a conversation about Strobel’s psyche and the things that made him tick. ‘So what happens now? I suppose you get to shoot me instead, right?’

‘My education centre must still burn tonight,’ Strobel said. ‘By now Max will have seen to it that the place goes up in flames at the slightest spark.’ The prospect seemed to excite Strobel. ‘Perhaps I’ll give the order and we’ll both sit here like this, beneath the image of my beloved
Führer
, until the flames come for us.’ He laughed. ‘Then we will both be fighting over that bullet, won’t we?’

Tayte was about to answer, but just as he went to speak, his attention was drawn to the door. He heard a thud, followed by a gunshot that reverberated around the corridor outside the room. When the door opened a few seconds later, he expected to see Keller or Fleischer walk in, one perhaps having betrayed the other for reasons he could not yet fathom, but instead it was Rudi Langner who entered, and Tayte now saw him as though for the first time. There stood his own flesh and blood.

‘
Ist das wahr?
’ he called.
Is it true?

‘
Mein Sohn
,’ Strobel said under his breath.

Tayte thought Strobel’s expression looked as confused as his own. ‘He’s not your son.’ He watched the old man cower from Rudi as he strode towards them, his enraged face red and glistening with tears. For the first time Tayte thought Strobel looked terrified. Tayte noticed then that Rudi had a gun in his hand. He thought it was Ingrid Keller’s gun. He was just thinking that his day couldn’t get any more complicated when he saw someone he’d thought he would never see again.

‘Jean!’

She followed into the room soon after Rudi, shaking her right hand, as though she had just hit it on something, or someone. Beyond the door, Tayte could see Keller lying on the floor. Jean ran to Tayte as soon as she saw him, and by now Rudi had already arrived at Strobel’s side. Words were exchanged in German, which Tayte couldn’t understand, but he gathered from Rudi’s tone and body language that he was both angry and distraught. A moment later Tayte flinched as Rudi slapped his father across the face. Suddenly Jean was beside him.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked her. ‘How did you find me?’

Jean leaned in and kissed Tayte hard on the lips, as if she, too, thought she might never see him again. ‘I’ll explain later,’ she said. ‘We have to get you out of here.’

She removed a shoe and smashed the heel into the portrait of Adolf Hitler. The glass shattered and she began to cut Tayte free with one of the pieces. In the background, the conversation between Rudi and Strobel was growing more and more aggravated, the gun in Rudi’s hand waving with abandon.

‘Rudi knows who his adoptive father is,’ Jean said. ‘He’s inconsolable.’

‘I’ll bet he is,’ Tayte said, thinking that was only the half of it. ‘He’s my brother. Rudi’s my fraternal twin.’

Jean stopped cutting away at the tape for a moment and just stared at him, motionless and clearly dumbfounded. Then she continued working the piece of glass. ‘Well you’d better hold off telling him for now,’ she said. ‘He’s too wound up. I don’t think he can take any more surprises today.’

As soon as Tayte’s arms and chest were free, Jean went to work on the tape around his legs. ‘I could smell some kind of fuel when we came in,’ she said. ‘It’s what led us down here.’

‘Strobel plans to turn the place into his own cremation oven.’

Their attention was drawn to Rudi then as he aimed the gun at Strobel.

Strobel’s hand shot out in front of him.
‘Mein Sohn, bitte!’

‘Sie sind nicht mein Vater! Ich kenne Sie nicht!
’ Rudi replied, and Tayte could see in his eyes that he was going to pull the trigger. He saw that Strobel knew it, too.

‘Don’t do it, Rudi!’ Tayte called, but his words didn’t seem to reach him.

All Tayte could think at that moment was that Strobel had to face his accusers—justice had to be served. And for Rudi’s sake, Tayte couldn’t sit there and witness another innocent life, his brother’s life, being destroyed because of Strobel. As Rudi stepped closer, his gun arm stiffened with determination, and before Tayte’s bonds were fully cut, he leapt out of his seat, taking the wheelchair with him. There was a clatter and the gun went off as both men fell to the floor, and it was then Tayte knew he’d been shot.