sThe Quiet Wart (11 page)

‘Okay,' Sean said. ‘Makes sense, I guess. Liz?'

‘I'll go home. I don't want to leave Praew with Mum for too long, in case the Home Office come snooping. I can do the background work from there.'

‘Done.' Sean nodded his head.

After flying to Munich, they took the short drive east towards Braunau, crossing the Inn River into Austria at Simbach. ‘This is the same route Hitler took in the Anschluss in 1938,' Terry said.

The comment surprised Sean. He saw Terry as more the action type rather than a history buff. ‘Really?' he said.

‘Yep, he was born here and apparently wanted to show off upon his victorious return,' Terry replied, as they drove into the main village square, with its colourful traditional buildings and cafés spilling onto the street.

That's it,
Sean thought, suddenly realizing where he'd heard the name of the town before.
It's Hitler's birthplace.

Quickly turning off the elongated square, they pulled up outside a small hotel, unloaded and checked in. Once in his room, Sean checked his email. Liz had sent some information on Glas.

Sean responded quickly.

After settling in, Sean joined Clive and Terry in a traditional
Bierkeller
for dinner. On the way there, he noticed a large boulder with a polished brass plaque, outside an empty building. The sign was in German, but he thought it claimed to be the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, marked like a tourist attraction.

‘Why are we here, Clive? Wouldn't our time be better spent in Brussels following Glas?' Sean said.

‘He comes home every Thursday evening and stays until Monday. In the meantime, we can do a little background checking on him. If he's up to anything unusual, I bet it's here, not there, where he's in the public eye,' Clive said.

It seemed logical, Sean conceded. He shouldn't have questioned Clive's logic, which was always sound.

After a couple of very large beers and a pork-knuckle dinner, Sean was falling asleep in his seat. Making his excuses, he decided to leave Clive and Terry in the beer cellar, while he returned to the hotel to get some sleep.

When he made his way out into the square, a group of youths had gathered around the fountain at its centre. He paid them no attention, but as he got closer, Sean noticed that they were skinheads, wearing 1980s' style ska clothes and Doc Marten boots laced up over their calves. They were drinking schnapps from the bottle and pushing each other around boisterously. A knot tightened in his stomach as he passed them, avoiding eye contact.

‘Hey,' a voice shouted out from behind him, just after he'd passed.

Ignoring it, Sean kept his head down and continued walking.

‘Hallo, Blondie, ich spreche mit Dir
' the same voice called out.

Without understanding the words, Sean knew they were directed at him and again he just continued walking, picking up his pace.

Then one of the youths appeared in front of him from nowhere, forcing Sean to stop. The intruder was in his late teens or early twenties and had a muscular build, with a completely shaven head. He had the words ‘
Ich hasse Juden'
tattooed over his right ear. Even with his limited knowledge of German, Sean knew that it meant ‘
I hate Jews'.
Four other members of the gang soon gathered in front of him, as Sean stood still, looking for a way out.

‘Bist Du taub?'
the first of the group shouted at Sean.

‘I'm sorry. I don't understand you,' Sean said.

‘Er ist Engländer,'
the first youth said and then shouted to the group that was still by the fountain.
‘Roland, er ist Engländer.'

Responding to the call, a young man in his mid-twenties came over from the fountain. He also had a completely shaved head and wore a green fishtail parka. Sean could see that he had tattoos all over his neck, but one stood out: it was just four characters, BR18, but it took pride of place in the centre of the elaborate artwork. ‘So,
Engländer
, what do you make in the birthplace of the
Führer?'
The rest of the gang parted to allow the speaker to enter. By the deference they gave him, Sean could tell that he was the leader.

Pulling his hands out of his pockets slowly, Sean prepared himself for a fight, quickly assessing his best option to get away. When a young couple came out of a café opposite the statue and looked at the group gathered around Sean, he quickly waved his hands in the air. ‘Help!' he shouted. But the couple just lowered their heads and walked away.

‘They are scared. They won't help you,' the skinhead leader said.

‘What do you want?' Sean asked.

‘I want to know why a fancy Englishman like you is in Braunau, the home of the
Führer?'

‘I'm just passing through. I have no business here,' Sean said.

‘I don't believe it. There is nowhere to go from here for people like you. Why are you here?' the leader pushed.

‘As I said, I'm just passing through,' Sean said a little more forcefully.

‘Ich glaube er ist ein Jude, hast Du seine Nase gesehen?'
the first of the gang interrupted causing the leader to smile.

‘He thinks you're a Jew. He says you have a Jew nose. Is that true? Are you a Jew?' the leader spat out the word ‘Jew' like it was dirt.

‘No, I'm not. But, why would that matter?' Sean said, somehow feeling obliged to ask the rhetorical question of why it mattered.

Smiling sadistically, the leader pulled a flick knife from his pocket and opened it, pointing the blade towards Sean. ‘Because if you are a Jew, you will soon be a dead Jew.'

Remembering how he'd fought David Findlow on the beach in Tuscany, Sean watched the blade of the knife intently. But he'd made mistakes in that fight and had been stabbed twice in the process. He hoped that the skinhead leader wasn't as skilled a fighter as Findlow, as adrenalin forced his senses into overdrive.

‘Sieh Dir seinen Pimmel an,'
the first gang member said, pointing towards Sean's groin.

‘You say you're not a Jew. Prove it. Show me your dick. If it has the skin taken, I'll cut off the rest,' the leader said.

Panic welled in Sean's body. Even though he wasn't Jewish, he had been circumcised, but convincing one of these thugs that it was for medical reasons would be impossible. He balanced his weight between his two feet, preparing himself for the imminent lunge of the knife.

‘Open your trousers,' the leader said, edging forward, wielding the knife in Sean's direction.

‘No. Now let me go,' Sean said forcefully, in a last attempt to negotiate his way out of the fight.

Seemingly angered by Sean's resistance, the leader jabbed forward with the knife. But Sean was ready for it and moved back, comfortably out of its reach. This seemed to anger him more and he tried again, this time more aggressively, but Sean glanced his hand away with his forearm and the knife passed aimlessly by his side.

Seeing an opportunity while the leader was off-balance, Sean instinctively pushed him back and ran to his side, colliding with one of the other gang members, knocking him to the ground with his shoulder. It worked! A space opened up in the group and he charged through the gap, picking up his pace to a sprint.

Heavy footsteps pounded against the cobbles behind him, but Sean knew that he would be able to beat them in their heavy boots and the gap grew quickly.

As the noise behind him grew fainter, he continued to sprint in the direction of the hotel, with relief starting to make its way into his thought process. Just then, he felt a hard crack on his shin and he tumbled forwards onto the cobbled footpath, rolling three times before stopping face-down on the cobbles. When he looked back to see what he'd run into, he saw a leg with a Doc Marten boot, extended from a shop entrance.

Without warning, the boot's owner pounced on Sean, trying to pin him down, but Sean lashed out with his fists and knocked the young skinhead off him, springing back to his feet. As he scrambled to run again, the other skinheads arrived and grabbed him roughly by the coat and hair.

Still fighting and trying to escape, Sean was frog-marched by the group of youthful skinheads back to the leader, who hadn't given chase and was swigging schnapps from the bottle, still playing with the long flick knife.

‘Zieh ihm sein Hosen aus,'
he instructed his followers.

Terror was shooting through Sean's mind as he tried to get free, but it was no use: he was held still by four people, while a fifth undid his belt and pulled his jeans down to his knees, then the same youth pulled down his boxer shorts.

‘Keine Vorhaut. Jude,'
the undresser said.

‘So, after all, you are a Jew,' the leader said.

Abject panic replaced any other feeling Sean had felt when the youth that undressed him dropped to the floor and held onto his legs. He was now held by five people. Escape was impossible.

‘Now I'm going to cut your Jew dick off, so you won't be able to make any more Jew pigs,' the leader said, stepping forward and grabbing Sean's penis with his free hand.

‘HELP!' Sean screamed at the top of his voice. ‘HELP!'

‘Hey!' he heard a shout from over his shoulder, but the leader didn't release his grip.

Suddenly Sean heard footsteps running towards them. ‘Hey, let him go!' Terry's familiar voice shouted.

As Terry arrived, the leader stepped back, releasing his painful grip on Sean's penis and holding up the knife towards Terry.

‘Noch ein Engländer,'
the first skinhead said.

Taking his chance, Sean tried again to struggle free, but he was still held firmly in place.

‘Let him go,' Terry said, stepping forward aggressively.

‘Why? Are you going to fight us all? Jew pig!' The leader laughed, swinging the blade of the knife in Terry's direction.

Before he could finish his sentence, Terry reached out and grabbed the leader's wrist. Then in one swift movement he spun under the leader's arm, twisting it around his back and pulled the knife from his hand.

The leader cried out with pain as Terry forced his arm up past his shoulder blades and with his other hand, put the knife to his throat. ‘Now tell them to let him go.'

Without the need for a translation, the other members let loose their grip on Sean, who hastily bent down and pulled up his trousers. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw another one of the gang reaching for a knife. Before he could open the blade, he fell forward at the knees and onto the cobbles. Clive stood behind him and put his foot back on the floor, as the other members of the gang moved away.

Moving Sean and Clive behind him, Terry threw the leader to the ground, keeping hold of his knife, as the leader scrambled to his feet and backed away.

‘That was a mistake, Englishman. You don't know who we are,' the leader said.

Terry smirked. ‘Really? You look like a bunch of idiotic children to me. Now fuck off, before I really get annoyed!'

‘We'll find you Englishman, and your Jew friend,' the leader said, as he backed away, still facing Terry.

‘I'm shaking in my fucking boots. This is your last warning. Fuck off!' Terry said, raising the knife again.

Grinding his teeth in anger, the leader turned and walked away quickly towards the other gang members.

‘Thanks. You don't know how relived I am to see you,' Sean said feeling his crotch.

‘Just kids,' Terry said, dropping the knife into a storm drain.

Just kids?
Sean wondered what kind of people Terry had dealt with in his military career to classify this dangerous gang as
kids
.

‘I don't know. I've seen their type before. Kids yes, but there's usually something more; some kind of club that they belong to, with far more sinister people behind it,' Clive added.

Back at the hotel, Sean called Liz and filled her in on the night's events.

‘Come home. It's not worth it. There's something creepy about the Nazi undercurrents in this investigation. That's the third time it's come up,' Liz said immediately.

‘I know. It's a like a time warp. I thought this lot died off a long time ago.'

‘Sean, if it is some secret Nazi thing you've stumbled on to, it's dangerous and I'm worried. I'd rather you just did boring business reporting.'

‘Come on. We knew that there'd be risks when we set this up. Clive and Terry are looking after me. And believe me, Terry isn't a man you'd want to cross; he didn't even blink when he fronted eight angry skinheads. Clive said he's some kind of ex-special forces, but doesn't like to talk about it.'