Nick Carter
Ruby Red Death
Dedicated to the men and women of the
Secret Services of the
United States of America
One
August, 1944
The German SS office for the control of internal affairs in Romania was located in Bucharest, at 9 Straulesti Street. It was a three-story, gray stone building. Inside, the floors were chopped up into little cubicles designed to hold mostly file cabinets and few people.
Every hour on the hour for the last three days, Greta Schell left her cubicle and walked briskly down a long corridor to the office of the area commander, SS Gruppenführer Graf von Wassner.
It was four o’clock on the afternoon of August the twelfth. Greta ripped the last coded report from the machine and moved quickly. Her heels tapped heavily on the wooden floors bleached with too much scrubbing.
She knocked once on the glass pane of the door and entered without a command. Wordlessly, she placed the report on the desk and stepped back to gauge its effect.
Von Wassner scanned the latest news quickly, and then read it a second time.
Dressed in the stark black uniform with the twin bolts of lightning on his collar, von Wassner was a striking figure. He stood to pace the room.
He was even more splendid to watch in motion than in repose. His thick blond hair and gray eyes glistened under the harsh lights as he walked with the lithe assurance of an acrobat. At forty-three he looked no more than thirty-five, and carried himself as if he felt another ten years younger than that.
Watching him, Greta Schell felt the same desire she had felt the first time she had slept with him a year before.
His voice, when he spoke, was a rumbling bass. “Hitler is an idiot and Himmler is his ass-kisser!”
“It is bad?”
He looked up. “Worse than bad. It is terrible. The partisans have linked up with the Red Army. They are in the Transylvanian Alps and pushing south.”
The woman’s lips quivered. “How long?”
“Two days, three at the most. Our mighty Führer has ordered us to hold Bucharest to the last man.”
“Can we still get across the Danube to the sea?” Greta whispered.
Von Wassner nodded. “I think so. Order Dieter to bring the car around.”
Greta Schell hurried from the office. Despite the horror of the moment, she had a slight smile on her lips.
He had not mentioned his wife in Berlin. She, Greta Schell, had replaced her. Together, she and the count would be safe in South America.
Graf von Wassner stepped from the black Mercedes and leaned back through the window. “Take Fräulein Schell to her flat and return for me in an hour.”
“Ja, Herr Gruppenführer.”
The count hurried up the three flights, unlocked the door to his flat, and shoved it open.
One step into the room, von Wassner froze. Sitting in a chair, his hands folded across his fat paunch, was the head of the Bucharest Abwehr, Hermann Eisling.
Could the man know?
Von Wassner ignored the knot in his gut, shut the door, and stepped forward. He managed a look of contempt as he lit a cigarette.
“What the hell are you doing in my flat, Herr Eisling?”
“Waiting for you, of course.”
“You have a key?”
“Locks are conceived by fools,” the other man said with a shrug.
Von Wassner stepped to a nearby table and angrily extinguished the cigarette. “I’ve had a difficult day. What do you want?”
“Each day, in these times, is a difficult day.”
“Dammit, Eisling—”
“I know,” the Abwehr man interrupted.
“What?”
“I know of your plans. I know that you have purchased Portuguese passports for yourself and Fräulein Schell. I know that you have stolen a great amount of American dollars and English pounds sterling...”
Von Wassner bristled. “Eisling, do you know what you’re saying?”
“Every word of it. I know that you plan to drive across the Danube to the Black Sea at Constanta. There, you will—”
He was wearing a pair of blue trousers and a large turtleneck sweater, both of which showed his flab to disadvantage. Von Wassner took a firm hold on the bulk of the sweater, just under his chin, and yanked him up to a convenient position. He backhanded him across the mouth with his right hand. Then he let him have one from the opposite direction. He repeated the action half a dozen times. It was like hitting a punching bag. Eisling’s head moved with the blows but he didn’t resist, just hung loosely where he was held.
He whimpered once, and von Wassner let go of him. He flopped back down into the chair.
“What do you want?” von Wassner hissed.
Eisling didn’t answer. Instead he took a handkerchief from one of his side trouser pockets and began dabbing at the blood that flowed from his nose and mouth and at the tears rolling down his cheeks.
“That wasn’t necessary, Gruppenführer.”
Von Wassner’s foot shot forward. His toe connected squarely with Eisling’s knee. The fat man squealed in pain and rolled from the chair to the floor.
“When I ask you a question, you answer me. Don’t fuck around with it. Just answer.”
“I want to come with you,” Eisling whined.
Von Wassner yanked him to his feet. “You are a fool.”
“Herr Gruppenführer, you might as well know that I am an intelligent man and I accept the fact that I am a physical coward, so I won’t fight you.”
Von Wassner threw him back into the chair in disgust. From the holster at his belt he withdrew a 9mm Luger, cocked it, and placed the muzzle against the Abwehr man’s head.
“I have to kill you.”
“No, no, wait!” Eisling’s lower lip quivered and more tears appeared on his cheeks. “The funds you have secured for your escape are not large. They are merely a fraction of what I can offer if you take me with you.”
Von Wassner’s grip relaxed slightly on the pistol. “What are you talking about?”
Eisling squirmed around in the chair, pulling himself together. He balled up the handkerchief and held it tightly in a fist as the arrogance began drifting back into his expression.
“I know where there are enough jewels to last both of us a lifetime, ten lifetimes. They are here, not more than an hour’s drive from Bucharest.”
As he watched the change of expression in the other man’s eyes, he pulled a fresh cigar from a breast pocket and rolled it between his fingers. Now the arrogance pervaded his features.
“Why haven’t these jewels already been confiscated?” von Wassner demanded.
“Two reasons. The first, because their owner has been very helpful to our cause. The second reason is because I have deleted all records of them from my reports. Only the family, myself, and Canaris know of their existence.”
Von Wassner thought about it. As head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris was an honest military man. Unlike Goring, Canaris cared nothing about raping the countries that the Third Reich had conquered.
“Who is the family?” von Wassner asked.
“A very highly placed Romanian family, anti-Bolshevik.”
“You have proof of this?”
“I can lead you directly to them.”
“I didn’t ask you that,” von Wassner barked. “Do you have proof?”
Eisling ignored the question. Calmly, he started to light his cigar. Von Wassner brought the barrel of the Luger down across the other man’s head, just hard enough to stun but not enough to crush the skull.
“The proof, Eisling!”
“The report,” Eisling rasped. “I have the only original copy of the report... the one I never filed!”