Ruins of War (32 page)

M
ason slammed on the brakes in front of Laura’s hotel, jumped out, and ran for the door. One of the MPs guarding the hotel called out to him as he bounded up the front steps.

“Mr. Collins?” he said with confusion in his eyes. “I thought a building had just collapsed on you.”

Mason stopped just before charging through the hotel’s front door. “What did you say?”

“A German cop said so. He ran up to Miss McKinnon and said you were seriously injured chasing the killer when a building collapsed on you. Miss McKinnon, her bodyguards, and the German cop all got in a car and took off to find you.”

Mason tried to make sense of it. It took only a few seconds to figure it out. “Where are they headed?”

“The German cop said something about Saint Michael’s Church.”

Mason could hardly get it all out: “It’s Ramek. Ramek’s the German cop.” He shot down the steps.

“They headed west on Maximilianstrasse,” the MP said.

As Mason ran up to the jeep, he called back to the MP, “Call headquarters and tell them that Ramek is at Saint Michael’s Church.”

Maximilianstrasse was a wide boulevard, but it narrowed after
only four blocks at Max-Joseph-Platz then ended and split off into three smaller streets. Mason stopped the jeep at the intersection. He was in the old city center, where the tangle of streets still followed the random layout from its medieval past. He had to choose. Ramek could have led them anywhere, dumped the escorts, and subdued Laura. There was no guarantee Ramek intended to go directly to the church. He usually held on to his captives, possibly torturing them before the final butchering. Mason’s only option was to head for Saint Michael’s and search the surrounding area. The MP at the hotel and Private Wilson at Ramek’s house had called headquarters by now, so help would be on the way.

Mason hit the accelerator and took Weinstrasse, the most direct way he knew of to get to Saint Michael’s. He turned right on Kaufingerstrasse, the main street leading to the church. Streams of pedestrians, cyclists, trolleys, and wagons impeded his path. After passing the Frauenkirche he saw the MP roadblock. He made a hard left, betting that Ramek would have wanted to avoid the roadblock and guided the driver somewhere into this maze of small streets.

At Färbergraben he made a right. That brought him to a narrow street running parallel to Saint Michael’s. He looked to his right and caught a glimpse of Saint Michael’s beyond the piles of brick and stone.

Now where?

He slammed on the brakes. Two women stood in the middle of the street, waving their arms at him.

“Get out of the way!”

One woman ran up to his jeep, while the other still blocked the road.

“Lady, I have an emergency,” Mason said.

“Please. Come quick. Two Americans have been shot.”

“Where?”

The woman pointed to a street up ahead and to his right. “They are in a car.”

Mason ran into the street the woman had pointed out. A hundred feet down the street, Mason ran up to the black sedan and immediately recognized Laura’s escorts. He could tell right away they were dead. “Did you see a woman with a tall German policeman?”

“We only saw a German policeman run into that building.” The woman pointed to the eight-story office building next to the passenger’s side of the sedan. The building still stood but was nothing but a shell. The two flanking buildings had collapsed in on themselves, making the entire area extremely unstable.

Mason slipped inside the building through the opening where a revolving door had once been. He found himself in a lobby with smoke-stained marble, charred wood paneling, and fallen plaster. A few light fixtures hung by threads. A black sludge from the mix of ash and water covered every surface and excreted an acrid odor.

Fifty feet ahead of him, the entire center of the building had fallen in. Every floor, from the roof to the lobby, had crashed into the floor below. Mason eased up to the edge of the hole and saw that it continued on to the basement. He surveyed the exposed floors above. Nothing moved.

From somewhere above came the sound of running footsteps on rubble.

He had to choose: try stealth, hoping to surprise Ramek, or, in case Laura was still trying to evade Ramek, let her know that help was near. . . .

“Laura!” Mason spun around, looking for a way up. Just off to his right, a staircase. He ran up one flight of stairs.

The sound came again, from higher up. Laura hadn’t responded to his call. That could only mean that Ramek was close to her and she was afraid to give away her position.

Mason continued up the staircase. With each successive floor he encountered more destruction, more charred walls and office furniture. Each floor had the same gaping hole, and it was spanned by
wood beams set down by search-and-rescuers who’d had the grim task of removing the dead.

On the fifth floor, Mason stopped on the landing and listened. Silence. Why had she gone up here? It was the worst thing to do. Her panic had driven her deeper into Ramek’s trap.

A creak of wood just above his head. The sixth floor.

Mason crept up the stairs, pistol ready. Ramek was armed, but Mason worried only about Laura. If Ramek felt cornered and unable to capture her for his ceremony, Mason was sure Ramek would kill her rather than let her go.

The building fell silent, and he imagined Laura hiding and Ramek stalking his prey. Mason stepped carefully to avoid debris as he climbed up to the sixth floor. He hid behind the return wall at the doorway between the staircase landing and the hallway. He peered around the corner.

On this level a hallway led to doorless offices. The monotony of black was broken only where fire had stripped the inner walls down to concrete and steel supports. As on the other floors, and eighty feet from where he stood, a few wooden planks lay precariously across the expanse of the gaping hole where the floor had collapsed.

Mason sneaked into the hallway, taking one careful step at a time. His ears strained to hear anything move. A few steps farther, he heard it. Soft sobbing somewhere across the gap. Laura. But where was Ramek? Ramek had to have heard it, too.

Mason took longer strides, checking each room as he passed. Still fifty feet from the hole his foot broke through the flooring. Floorboards gave way. Wood and plaster tumbled to the floor below.

Laura wailed in panic. Like a trapped animal, she shrieked and shot out of a room on the other side of the hole. She ran for a back stairway.

“Laura!”

Laura stopped, recognizing his voice. She burst into tears and ran
recklessly across the planks spanning the hole. Mason tensed with alarm as the planks jumped and bent under the force of her steps. He broke into a trot, eyes alert, expecting at any moment for Ramek to attack.

Laura leapt the last few feet onto solid flooring.

At the same moment, Ramek burst through an adjacent office door and grabbed her from behind. His muscular arm wrapped tightly across her neck, choking off her screams. He used her as a shield and aimed his pistol at Mason.

Mason dived into another office just as Ramek fired. The bullet ripped into the door frame, dusting Mason in plaster and splintered wood.

“I told you that you and I were not done,” Ramek said. “I have been sent a perfect Chosen One. You can’t imagine my joy that she is also your lover. Let us leave, or I will kill her, Herr Collins.”

“You know I won’t let you do that.”

Laura screamed in pain. Mason extended his head and gun arm out of the doorway and took aim at Ramek.

“You kill her, and I’ll kill you,” Mason said. “Now, let her go and put the gun down—”

“I have nothing to lose. You
have
. You will please throw your gun away, or I swear I will kill her. Her head will explode before your eyes. . . . Do it!”

Mason had no choice. He was sure Ramek would follow through on his threat. He tossed the pistol forward. It rattled along the floor and dropped into a fissure, clattering to a stop below.

“Now you will let us pass,” Ramek said, and he took a step forward.

“I will let
you
pass, but only if you let her go.” Mason poked his head out beyond the doorjamb when he heard Ramek’s footsteps.

Ramek fired again, the bullet piercing the wall near Mason’s head. Mason ducked inside. He was trapped, and every step Ramek advanced brought Mason closer into Ramek’s line of fire.

Quickly, Mason tried to recall all he’d learned about Ramek, from the interviews, from Ramek’s own diary, from the basement shrine. . . .

Against every ounce of self-preservation in his body, Mason stepped into the hallway.

“I met your mother, Doctor,” Mason said.

Ramek froze.

“You butchered her and lashed her to a cross. How can you expect to go to heaven after doing that to your mother?”

Ramek gripped Laura tighter, but his gun hand trembled. “You know nothing about it!” he shouted, as if the memory of it brought him pain. “She was my first beatification. Through her suffering, she became a saint.”

Mason took a step and kept his voice calm. “I know you hear voices, Doctor.” He paused to let Ramek process that. “I hear them, too. And your mother whispered a prayer to me: ‘O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. . . .’ She knows it’s your favorite.”

“That was her prayer,” Ramek breathed.

Another step. “She wants you to realize that those evil spirits, the ones that prowl the world, are also the voices that speak to you, and they seek to ruin your soul. She begs you to show mercy, that mercy is the path to heaven. Otherwise, you will never be free from what you’ve done. Letting this woman go is a first step. Letting her go and delaying your path to ascension will be your greatest sacrifice. A selfless act that will go far in cleansing you of sin.”

“You lie!” Ramek jammed the pistol into Laura’s temple and released her throat long enough for her to scream. “My mother would never say such things. We must all suffer. We are all vessels of sin and depravity . . . and it must be cut out!” He squeezed Laura’s neck so hard that it lifted her off the ground.

Mason hesitated. Talk of his mother seemed to push him closer to losing what sanity he had left. He took another step forward while desperately thinking of a new tack. . . . “I know you are tormented because you let the little girl, Angela, go.”

Ramek stopped breathing.

Another step. “That was an act of mercy. Don’t you see? You saved that child. You have goodness in your heart. But the voices want to keep you blind to that. And that is why they had you mask your mirrors, isn’t it? To prevent you from seeing the truth? The truth that lies deep within you? This woman, who looks like your mother, was sent to help you back from darkness. I was sent to help you, not destroy you.”

“This woman was sent to me by divine grace,” Ramek said. “Not by you.”

Mason took two steps and opened his arms as if daring Ramek to shoot.

“You remember Dr. Blazek, don’t you, Doctor? You two talked in the night and shared your fears and desires in a barrack at Mauthausen.”

Stunned, Ramek relaxed his hold on Laura. His gaze went elsewhere, as if remembering.

Mason continued. “Dr. Blazek said that you, like all the prisoner doctors, felt terrible guilt about working for the SS doctors. That you survived by making a pact with the devil for the chance of survival. Do you remember that? You were
forced
to assist in savage and inhumane experiments. You were never a monster. You have simply lost your soul.”

Another step.

Ramek regained his composure. “You know nothing.” He aimed the pistol at Mason and pulled back the hammer. “Not another step further.”

But Mason took another step, even as he braced himself for the impact of a bullet. “I can see into your tortured soul. I can see within your mind all the innocents you made suffer at Ravensbrück and Mauthausen. All their suffering . . .” He took a step. “Remember the innocent people you strapped to operating tables? Doing Dr. Kiesewetter’s bidding? They screamed in pain at your hands.”

Ramek tensed as if hit by an electrical current. He panted and sputtered incoherently.

“Drop the gun and let her go. God commands it. Your mother begs you.”

“I won’t. . . . I can’t. . . .” Tears came to Ramek’s eyes and he began to mutter a prayer. His trembling had grown almost out of control. His gun arm began to sink.

Mason saw his chance. He charged.

Ramek tensed and aimed the gun at Mason. “No!”

Mason jumped to his right, and Laura slapped Ramek’s gun arm. The gun fired. The aim was wide. Ramek flung Laura aside and fired again. The bullet sliced across Mason’s rib cage. It felt as though he’d been hit with a sledgehammer, but his momentum carried, slamming him into Ramek. To Mason it felt like he’d run into a brick wall, and searing pain from his wounded ribs paralyzed him. Ramek stumbled backward, losing his grip on the pistol, and it tumbled into the hole.

Ramek growled and slammed his fist into the bullet wound in Mason’s ribs. Mason’s entire body convulsed as if receiving a jolt of electricity. His lungs froze and his knees buckled. Ramek immediately wrapped both hands around Mason’s throat. The man had unbelievable strength and he held Mason tight to his body, almost lifting Mason from the floor. Mason struggled to maneuver out of the hold, but the incredible pressure from Ramek’s grasp cut off blood to Mason’s brain. He felt his hyoid bone strain under the pressure and it threatened to break. He lost feeling in his legs, and he began to lose consciousness.

A cry from Laura brought him back momentarily, and Laura struck Ramek across the back with a piece of wood. Ramek hardly registered the blow, but it had distracted him for a split second. That brief moment was enough.

Summoning his waning strength, Mason thrust his open hand into Ramek’s trachea. Ramek gagged and his grip loosened. Mason then twisted his body and raised his right arm up high. With all the
power he could muster, he brought his arm down on Ramek’s wrist, breaking Ramek’s hold. Mason reversed the twist and rammed his elbow into the bridge of Ramek’s nose. Mason heard the crunch of bone, and blood spurted from Ramek’s nose.