Evan Makley had stepped on a few toes over the years he'd been on her staff. It was likely he had made a few enemies that might have wanted him dead. Many with powerful enough connections to make it happen. She shouldn't be too hasty to convict Wiley with the act.
The shrill ring of her cell phone startled her. With Makley dead, it usually only rang when it was her husband Kyle, or Jake Pendleton. This time it was neither.
She answered and listened to the caller. For the first time in her life she wanted to run and hide. She'd never backed down from a fight but the words the caller said threatened everything she'd accomplished. It threatened not just her reputation, one that she'd fought so hard to protect, but her Presidency and the fragile nature of the global economy. If this were true, negotiations would break down and the summit meeting would fail.
The call disconnected. Could it be the caller spoke the truth? Now was not the time to have to deal with this. Too much depended on the next few days. She had to make it go away, but whom could she trust?
She had an idea.
Scott Katzer pushed the casket through the entrance while his mother opened the receiving door. After he arrived at the funeral home and checked on the woman, he realized her condition had worsened. He checked her vital signs. She was alive, but not by much it seemed.
He wheeled the casket next to the embalming table and lifted her out of the casket onto the cold porcelain table. Under the harsh white lights, he could tell her condition was grave. He noticed the skin on her upper chest was marbled in appearance. He unbuttoned her shirt and noticed it extended from her shoulders to her lower abdomen.
"This woman needs a doctor," he said to his mother.
Her glare removed all doubt about the woman's fate.
Many decades ago Heidi Katzer, then Scheller, had been a nurse in Germany. Growing up, Scott remembered how his mother avoided doctors, opting to treat the family's injuries and illnesses herself. She seemed so smart back then. Educated. Now he knew it was the years of deception that made her paranoid, always afraid she was going to be discovered as a fraud, a thief, and even a murderer.
At his mother's request, Scott removed the woman's urine soaked pants. "Look at the swelling and the edema here and here." She pointed to areas of the woman's arms and legs. "I've never seen anything like this before."
Both of them remained silent for a few seconds.
"You say she had a seizure?" His mother asked.
"At least one that I know of. She had two bladder releases on the drive here. One I know came right after a seizure." He looked at this mother. Her eyes never left the woman. "What do you think it means?"
"I think she's dying."
"Of what?"
"I don't know, but I need to question her." His mother looked up at him from the other side of the embalming table. "Where's the journal?"
Scott Katzer reached inside his coat and removed the book from a pocket. He extended it to his mother. "Here."
An awestruck look came over his mother's face as she gingerly reached out with both hands. "I can't believe it." She said. "After all these years. The book has finally returned home."
She removed it from his hands and slowly cradled it against her chest. She held it tight for nearly a minute. She twisted from side to side as if rocking a baby to sleep. Scott let his mother have her moment, knowing full well that her mind was temporarily in 1946 reliving a different time and place.
She pulled it away from her chest and caressed the front with her arthritic hands. He watched her fingers dance across the initials branded on the leather. "Wolfgang," she whispered, "I knew one day you would return to me."
She looked up at him. "Look, Scott. Your father has come home."
It was at that moment he knew his mother was mad. Her mind had finally snapped, he thought. And the book was the catalyst. She'd seemed obsessive about the book, but he assumed it was to get to the treasures Major Don Adams had shipped to the United States hidden away in the caskets.
"Mother?" His voice startled her. "Whatever happened to his family?"
She gave him an agitated look.
"His legitimate family, I mean."
She didn't speak. Her eyes cleared and he could tell her mind had returned to the present and the matter at hand. But for how long?
"Wolfgang's wife, Gisela Fleischer moved to German Village in Columbus, Ohio after your father was executed as a Nazi war criminal. She had a son by him, your half-brother, who is five years older than you. Gisela died a few years back. I don't know whatever became of him."
"All you've ever told me is that my father was a war criminal. You never told me what he did to deserve to be executed."
"Some things you don't need to know, Scott."
"Mother. This I need to know." He'd never used this demanding tone with his mother and he could tell it startled her. "What exactly did he do?"
"Very well." His mother cradled the book against her chest again. "Your father was Commandant of the legendary Dachau Prison and Crematory. During the reign of the Third Reich, he, as did many of Hitler's higher ranking officers, hoarded some of the plundered treasures. He stored most of his cache in the salt mines not far from Dachau."
The woman on the embalming table moaned and started shivering. Scott Katzer went into the hall and returned with a blanket. He draped it over the woman then looked at his mother. She was still holding the book against her chest.
"Continue," he said.
"When the Allied Forces moved in and it became apparent that the Third Reich would fall, Wolfgang loaded his cache on trucks and brought it to Zugspitze."
"And that's when you met him?"
"No. I met him long before then," she explained, "he'd visited Schneefernerhaus Hotel and Resort on Zugspitze numerous times while he was commandant. He was the most handsome man I had ever met. That's when we became lovers."
"Where did he hide his hoard of treasures?"
"Wolfgang loved to hike. During the summer months he'd hike Reintal Valley east of the Resort. During those hikes, he'd discovered several deep limestone caves. When he fled Germany, he hid his cache in those caves then he crossed the border into Austria. He was headed for Italy, but was caught before he got there."
"You knew about the stolen treasures all along?" Scott eyed the woman on the table. Her trembling had stopped but he could tell she was still breathing by the up and down movement of the blanket.
"I went to his trial and was allowed to speak to him alone. He whispered to me about a journal that Hitler had given him for his birthday and where he had hidden it. He said to keep it a secret, that he wanted me to have it." She held the book out in front of her. "This is that journal. I had no idea what was in it until I read it."
"Where did he hide it?"
"Behind a wall in the Reintalanger Hut. I found it right where he said it was hidden. If he hadn't told me about it, it might never have been found."
"When did you find it?"
"Fall of 1945. A week after his execution, I went down to Reintalanger Hut and found the book."
"What about Adams? How did he get involved?"
"In 1945 after bombing Zugspitze and destroying the valley station of the Tyrolean Zugspitze Railway, the United States commandeered Schneefernerhaus. That was when I met Don. He started pursuing me from the beginning but I would have nothing to do with him. I just wasn't interested…until Wolfgang told me about the journal. When I read it, I knew I couldn't retrieve the treasure and get it out of Germany by myself."
"So you slept with Adams to get him to help you?"
"It was the only way." She placed her hand on the journal and rubbed it across the cover. "You must understand we were poor. I had two children to support, there was all the treasure sitting in those limestone caves, so I did what I had to do, Scott. Adams oversaw the return of dead American soldiers to the United States. He had the means to help me accomplish what I needed done. In December, he asked me to marry him and move to the States when his tour was up. That's when I came up with the plan to ship the treasures back in the caskets. He came up with the idea of using only caskets of soldiers who were mangled so badly that a closed casket ceremony was guaranteed. That way no one would be looking around inside. He logged each shipment in the journal by town, cemetery, and soldier's name. And what we put inside the casket. He either modified the casket lid so small light objects could be sealed inside or he made a false bottom for the heavier items. It was a good plan."