Katzer stepped away and motioned to the casket to draw McClaine's attention back to the casket. "If you'll excuse me please while I check with Mrs. Katzer. Heather will answer any questions you may have."
Scott walked into his office to find his mother, Heidi Katzer, waiting. She had an ambivalent look on her face, he thought, a mix between concern and relief depending on how the light from the window played across her pasty white skin.
"What's so important, Mother, that couldn't wait until I finished with Mr. McClaine? I was about to cinch a sale on the Mercedes."
She looked at him with her blue eyes, still resilient at her advanced age. "Did you read the newspaper this morning, Scott?"
"Just a quick glance. Looked like the same partisan mudslinging that's been dominating the news for months. Politicians are all crooked anyway." His mother's stern look gave him pause then he thought about what he had said. "Almost all."
He could tell something was troubling her. "What was in the paper?"
She turned the paper facing him and pointed her finger at a small sidebar article no more than three inches tall. "This could be it." She said.
"It?" He gave an inquisitive look and slipped on his reading glasses.
"Just read."
Germany: Hikers find human remains inside glacier
Garmisch | A German news agency has reported that two American hikers have found the well-preserved remains of a man inside the Höllentalferner glacier below the summit of Zugspitze, Germany's highest peak.
Police told the German Press Agency the hikers located the corpse of the frozen man while exploring an ice cavern carved out by the summer's glacial melt. The hikers were scaling the famed mountain located on the German/Austrian border when they discovered the remains.
No identification was found on the dead man but experts say they believe the body dates back to World War II. Authorities conducted an extensive search of the ice cavern but found no clues as to the man's identity or how he got there.
"Wow." Scott Katzer removed his glasses and set them on top of the newspaper. "And you think this is him? After all these years."
"I never knew if Don was still alive or dead." She struggled to stand. "I need you…to go find out."
"You want me to fly to Germany?"
"Yes, I do." She hobbled toward the door. "Find out about the book. I don't want to know how you do it…I don't care how you do it. Just find out whether it's him or not. And if it is him, find out what happened to my journal."
"I can't leave right now, we have three services scheduled over the next two days. And that's provided the phone doesn't ring again." He was protesting her order more than making a solid argument. "You can't handle this by yourself."
"Yes I can. I might be old, but I'm not helpless. Give your mother some credit. Besides, I have Heather."
"But—"
"No, Scott. I need you. I expect you on a plane this afternoon. Tonight at the latest." She stood in the doorway without speaking for almost a minute. Then she spoke without facing him. "Don't come back unless you know for sure about the book."
Heidi Katzer walked out without another word.
The mission was called Task Force Christman in honor of Private William Christman, a Civil War soldier who was the first soldier buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Troops from Delta Company of the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Infantry Regiment were tasked with the execution of the mission. They were known as the Old Guard, the Army's official ceremonial unit, which provided escorts to the President and helped conduct military funerals.
Sergeant Blaine Roberts wasn't dressed in uniform but rather blue jeans, a t-shirt, and flip-flops — all approved attire for this mission. The mission was to photograph the more than 219,000 grave markers and more than 43,000 cremated remains markers at Arlington National Cemetery. The army's task, as mandated by Congress, was to visually account for every grave, update the cemetery database, and digitize the cemetery's maps. In order to accomplish this without disrupting funerals, therefore this portion of the mission was conducted at night after the cemetery was closed to the public.
Roberts had been doing it all summer, walking through the graveyard and taking pictures with an iPhone. The photos taken by him and the rest of his Company were compared and matched with other records in order to identify any discrepancies that needed to be corrected. Congress tasked them with this mission due to the scandal over mismanagement at the nation's most famous cemetery. But the hours were getting to him. All summer he'd been walking the graveyard. Night after night, the same routine, sleep during the day, walk the cemetery all night.
At 3:20 a.m., Roberts wasn't at the top of his game.
His routine had been simple, walk down a row of headstones, stop and take pictures, and log the headstone information on his clipboard. After snapping the photo, penlight between his teeth, he walked to the next marker while writing on his clipboard. Combining the tasks expedited his mission. He'd done it all summer so now it was a mindless rote habit.
Tonight was warm and muggy. His clothes clung to his sweaty body. Earlier in the day thunderstorms drenched the cemetery leaving the ground saturated and the nighttime air hot and sticky. Roberts had just finished a row and rounded the last marker to make his next sweep in the opposite direction. Preoccupied by logging in the last marker, his foot caught on a pile of wet dirt.
Then, he fell.
His clipboard flew from his hands knocking the penlight from between his teeth.
He tumbled against a moist earthen excavation pile, rolled down, and crashed onto something hard at the bottom of the pit.
A casket.
A sharp pain shot through his right shoulder from the impact. Dirt and mud caked his face and clothes. He spit the grit from between his teeth. Musty damp earth filled his nostrils.
How could he have been so careless?
But the bigger question stirring around in his mind was why a grave was left open? Even with the heavy rains, the pit should have been covered. No casket should be left in an open gravesite. And no open gravesite should be left without, as a minimum, flagging to prevent what had just happened.
The casket rocked back and forth while he climbed from the pit. He looked for his penlight and clipboard and found both in the wet grass. He didn't remember seeing any notices of interments among his assigned markers, so why was this one open?
Sergeant Blaine Roberts flashed the beam of light down into the grave.
"Holy crap."
10
Scott Katzer almost missed his connecting flight to Germany because of a weather reroute around thunderstorms in the D.C. area. His flight from Nashville left on time, but with the last minute booking, his layover time at JFK was short. The en route weather delay left him with only twenty minutes to change planes. And at JFK, that meant changing concourses as well.
He arrived in Munich on time, but his luggage didn't. The airline informed him it would be the next day before his checked bag would arrive. Fortunately, Katzer carried the bare essentials in his carry-on. Enough to get him by until the airline delivered his bag to him in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. What he didn't have, he would buy.
Garmisch, in the west, and Partenkirchen, in the east, were separate towns for centuries until 1935 when Adolph Hitler forced the two respective mayors to combine the two towns in anticipation of the 1936 Winter Olympic Games. Even though the two towns maintain separate identities, the twin townships are generally lumped together and referred to simply as Garmisch.