The ambulance came and took the young man and woman to the hospital. As it arrived, Danny woke to find himself in his girl’s arms, not really remembering what had happened. Dresner spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon making sure every scrap of evidence was collected, tagged and sorted. There would be a mountain of paperwork to do, and according to the dispatcher, word was already spreading how Innsbruck’s Inspector Dresner had done it again.
Dresner could have cared less. The adrenaline had sloughed off hours ago and he felt exhausted. As Betz finished things up turning in the evidence, Dresner returned to his office to have just a few minutes alone to catch his thoughts. He wasn’t there thirty seconds before an American major came thumping through his door. He stood straight as an arrow in front of Dresner’s desk.
“This is quite unacceptable. It has been three weeks and your people haven’t been able to turn up a shred of evidence on that truck or its contents. I want more done!” Major Tony Brewster demanded. He stood in the office, resplendent in his uniform, with the arrogance of a conqueror and glared at his victim with unhidden contempt. A US Army truck carrying specialized equipment had disappeared and the Army was searching all of southern Germany and Austria find it. Nothing had turned up so far and the major was determined to turn up the heat. “I suggest you get off your duff and get things going!” the Brewster demanded.
Rolf Dresner glared back at the Major. He didn’t need any of this. Dresner was dead tired, and his patience was becoming a little frayed. Just who did this major think he was? Dresner had an unsurpassed reputation for getting to the bottom of any case and didn’t need this guy poking his face into it. But what upset him more was that the American was right. No one could find a trace of the truck or its contents. Everyone was tired and frustrated. As a former German Army officer, Dresner could understand Brewster’s feelings and understood well the kinds of pressure an officer could get from the top, but no one spoke to him in that manner. He slowly rose from his desk.
“Herr Major, for the past three weeks I have had half my force out combing the trees to find your truck. They are still out there, searching on foot and in the air. I have expended a good deal of our budget in an effort to assist you in your efforts, but I must remind you that those are your efforts. The truck was lost under your supervision, your security, and I believe they say, on your watch. You haven’t even had the courtesy of letting us know what equipment we are looking for. So don’t come into this office making demands just so you are out of your troubles. I shall remind you that the occupation was over years ago. Austria is a sovereign nation. So when you ask, ask politely!” Dresner said slowly but very firmly.
Brewster appeared to deflate slightly. He seemed to realize he had overstepped his bounds, but he couldn’t back down now. “Herr Inspector, it appears you are being uncooperative. I will let my superiors know of your answer, and we shall see what shall be done.”
Dresner sat back down and laughed. The man actually sounded like the old Gestapo. “You do that, Herr Major. I bid you good day. If I find anything, I’ll let you know,” he said dismissing Brewster and returning to the pile of papers on his desk.
Brewster seemed about to explode. He turned abruptly and stormed out of the office heading for the office of the Chief of police. A few minutes later there was a tap at the door and the Chief stuck his head in.
“Did you really have to upset that man so?” he asked with a smile on his face. Dresner motioned to a chair and the Chief sat down and chuckled.
“Arrogant little scheiße. Thought he could come in my office and demand we put more people on the case. I simply informed him he should be polite,” said Dresner.
The Chief chuckled some more. “I bet you did. And I bet your old army training came back again,” he broke out into a laugh. “I told him you were on the case and would remain on it, but that we were going to be cutting back on the search. There’s really too much to do. When he got angry, I told him I would take it up with Colonel Moss. That shut him up.” Colonel Moss was the commander of the American military contingent in southern Germany.
“That was my next call,” said Dresner with a sly smile. “I actually wish I could help the man, but I’m stumped. The only thing I can think is that the truck was taken across a border and is long gone. There is absolutely no evidence it was ever in Austria,” he said with a sigh and sitting back in his chair.
“I agree. I talked with some of our colleagues and they are coming up with the same thing. Let’s let the Americans find this one on their own,” the Chief said as he got up from his chair and turned toward the door. “Nice job this morning. The newspapers are all over us for a story. As usual, I’ll handle it. They are already talking to the young couple. The girl is telling everyone you are a saint. Good thing she doesn’t really know you,” he chuckled.
Dresner chuckled himself. “She is a good girl. Too bad this happened to them. I’m glad we got there in time, or that boy would have been singing soprano,” Dresner said.
“That’s what I heard,” said the Chief. “By the way, Counselor Dietz is on the way here. He says he has a client who needs to talk to you.”
Dresner sighed and placed his face in his hands. “Mein Gott. Now I have attorneys taking up my time. I might as well live in this office,” he moaned.
The Chief laughed again. “I thought you already did,” he said as he left the office.
Dresner sat back and looked at the mounds of paper on his desk. Between the Army, their normal caseload, the Olympics and all it added to his work, he would be busy until 1980. Rubbing his eyes, he thought back to earlier days.
Born in Dresden, he had a pretty normal life when you consider what Germany was doing between the wars. His father had survived the first war and came home to the family business casting metal machine parts. Despite the inflation, the unemployment, and general suffering all around them, his family had survived. As a young boy he remembered his father taking him on camping trips in Bavaria along with some other fathers and their sons. He learned to love nature and respect what it offered. Before long he could climb a tree, ford a stream or climb a ledge faster than any of the boys he knew. He could also read signs on the trail which told him who or what had recently passed by. His attention to detail had astonished his peers on several occasions.
Rolf had taken education as the same kind of challenge, wanting to understand and master just about anything his teachers could present to him. The resulting marks placed him at the top of his class and got him a scholarship to the university. That was in 1934. By then the Nazis had begun dictating what could be taught in schools and how it should be taught. He remembered the day when someone came in wearing one of those brown uniforms and measured each student’s head, eyes, nose and just about everything else. The next week two of his classmates had to leave the university. They didn’t meet the Aryan standard.
By the time Dresner had gotten his degree in business it didn’t really mean much. Although he had planned to continue the family business, the Army had other plans. He was conscripted and made a Leutnant, or second lieutenant. At first he had a blast. Much of this was like the camping days he had enjoyed so much. He and the men under him were assigned tasks and he made sure they were completed in the same detail he drove himself to. This caught the attention of his superiors and soon he was singled out for more challenging tasks. In the Polish campaign he had led a squad of men to surround a strong point of resistance which threatened to hold up the entire advance. Using his prior knowledge of getting around in a forest, he not only accomplished the mission, but did it without the loss of a single man. Then at the end of the campaign when his group had been charged by a Polish cavalry unit, he and his men held their ground killing nearly 200 before reinforcements arrived. That was when he received the Iron Cross. Hitler himself had pinned it on his tunic, calling him a sterling example of the German race.