Eagle Ascending Read online

  “There’s another reason too,” Dennilson said. “But it’s of a more personal nature.”

  “Which means it’s none of your damn business,” Gates added.

  But O’Brian didn’t move.

  Finally, the young kid sighed and drew closer to the cop. O’Brian noticed that behind his ridiculously oversized glasses were a pair of dark eyes that burned hot with anger.

  “Curt made a substantial investment in the Meyer Cultural Center before the bombing,” he said. “Since the launch of Gemini, Curt has made it his mission to save the history of the ancient Middle East, which is being ravaged by the various terrorist cadres rampaging through those lands as we speak. At enormous cost, and quite some personal risk, Curt and the team he employs have retrieved countless artifacts from war zones and brought them to the United States for safekeeping. Pottery, jewels, papyrus, religious totems, the list is endless. Many of these items were on display at the Meyer Center, and…”

  “…and we’d like them back,” Dennilson said, dropping his friendly façade. “Those that survived the blast, that is.”

  “Even the remnants of those pieces lost in the blast would still hold considerable value,” Gates added.

  “Lemme get this straight,” O’Brian said, lumbering toward Dennilson. “You saw the numbers killed, the families torn apart by this outrage, and you think you can come here and ask for ya finger paintings back?” O’Brian raised his voice, not caring who heard him. Having investigated murders, robberies, and rapes, practically every act of depravity the human mind could conceive of, there was little that could stir him to genuine anger any longer. But callousness masquerading as concern was one of them.

  “Those antiquities are quite literally priceless,” Gates said, his voice dropping to a threatening hiss.

  “And those lives snuffed out by a madman aren’t?” O’Brian replied. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway? Why aren’t you throwing your sugary bribes around at the FBI building?” O’Brian caught the look in Dennilson’s eye, the look which answered his question. “Ahh,” O’Brian said, chuckling, “you’ve tried that already, haven’t you? And Hawtrey told you to get bent. So you thought you’d try your false charm on us blue-collar schlubs.”

  “That’s enough,” said Hassler icily, as if he’d just rediscovered his courage.

  “It sure is,” O’Brian said, departing with a look of rage. “If this is what you futurists do, valuing old art over young lives, then count me out. Oh, and you suck at choosing donuts.”

  That last line tickled O’Brian, and he smiled as he left the three bewildered men standing by the office door. But his smile died the moment he turned and saw the two FBI agents standing with their arms crossed next to Joe Krueger’s desk.

  “Okay joker,” one of them said, “what the Hell did you do with your partner?”

  DETECTIVE JOE KRUEGER slammed his foot on the accelerator, as if trying to escape the misery that surrounded him.

  He drove his old Grabber through Forgeham, the place his mother, Trudy, had moved to when Bill Clinton was re-elected President. The economy was booming, and Trudy, full of the vim that defined America’s immigrants, was going to set up a small farm out in the country, having seen her only son head off to college.

  But this particular scrap of Pennsylvania was not a place where the dreams of people like Trudy Krueger took flight. It was where they crashed into the grey, barren earth. Flying past Krueger in a miserable haze were the scars of a town in decline. Shops were boarded up, and those that remained offered either drugs or booze. The drug Trudy Krueger relied on, religion, was provided by a bare Catholic church just up the road, about where the thunderclouds were presently menacing, as if God intended to wash the filth from the streets.

  Over fifteen years ago, Joe Krueger had dropped out of a Dartmouth MBA program and joined the Army on the promise that he would keep his country from harm. That solemn pledge had sustained him during those long months overseas, where the sundry threats and miseries combined to form a blanket of pain, which wrapped close around his body. That pledge, spoken only to himself, drove him to fight, even as his friends were felled by bullets, grenades, IEDs, and later, addiction, too.

  “And this is what I fought for,” Krueger muttered as he shook his head, turning his car right onto a dirt road. The house on the corner was a nineteenth-century mansion, which in years gone by would have housed a proud, rich family. But now the windows were all smashed, revealing a dusty blackness within. The roof was yawning open like a crooked smile. Shingles were scattered on the overgrown land close by.

  “Nice neighbors, Ma,” Krueger said to himself.

  Half a mile down the road was Trudy Krueger’s attempt at a farm. She owned a single-story house with a well-tended front porch. Richly-colored drapes hung from every window. But her son knew that outside appearances could be deceiving. Trudy had not entertained guests in years, and the home inside was cold and spare.

  Swallowing hard, Krueger pulled onto the driveway and was greeted by three loud dogs, his mother’s sole friends and companions. They escorted him to the doorway, tails wagging, where his wiry, rawboned mother stood waiting.

  “Joseph,” she said, kissing his cheek absently. There was a dullness to her grey eyes, which Krueger could not recall having seen before.

  “Good to see you, Ma,” he said, embracing his sole family member. She’s getting thin, Krueger thought. “You eating, Ma?” Krueger asked, but his mother ignored the question as she brought both her hands to his enormous chin to stroke it.

  She’d performed the same tender rite ever since Krueger had received his diagnosis, as if she was trying to smooth away the tissue that had inflated her son’s cheeks and robbed him of his handsomeness.

  No parent wants to be reminded of their child’s imperfection—and of their mortality. Perhaps they fear it reflects badly on them or reminds them that one day, their progeny will all be spent. Either way, since the cold tragic day when Trudy Krueger was told her son would grow into manhood disfigured, she had always been overly and annoyingly protective of him. Perhaps, Krueger figured, that was why she’d protested so vigorously when he’d joined first the army, and then the police.

  Trudy invited Krueger into her house. It was poorly lit and humid. The air conditioner was either broken or switched off to save money. Each was as likely as the other. Slowly, Trudy led her son down the corridor and into the kitchen, her slippers making shwooshing sounds on the bare floorboards as she did so. There were no pictures of family on her plain walls, just old portraits, ghostly and threatening, of the patron saints of Germany: Saint Ansgar, Saint Boniface, and a half dozen other long-dead men with long-forgotten names.

  “You don’t call, anymore,” Trudy said as she pottered into the kitchen.

  “That not true,” Krueger replied, knowing that it was, in fact, perfectly accurate. “I ask you to come visit me and you never do.”

  This was the pantomime Krueger and his mother practiced every couple of months to prove that theirs was a healthy relationship: he would invite her to New York knowing she would never accept, and she would promise to consider it knowing she never would.

  “I called ahead, didn’t I?” Krueger asked as his mother poured coffee into broken, mismatched cups. He sighed through his teeth when he heard no answer. “How’s Damien?” he asked finally, hating the silence that had covered the house like a grimy shroud.

  “Awful,” Trudy answered. “I should have eaten him years ago.” Damien was a garrulous sheep, the last surviving member of Trudy’s hoped-for farm. “So what brings you here?” Trudy asked, smoothing her hands out onto the Formica table top. “I thought a big cop like you would be busy hunting those terrorists.” Trudy spat the words big cop like they were rancid candies.

  “Well, I’m kinda working on that case,” Krueger said.

  Trudy eyed him suspiciously. They had begun growing distant the moment he had put on a uniform after 9/11. For
this elderly German refugee, uniforms only ever meant bloodshed and chaos.

  “Yet you found time to come visit,” Trudy said.

  “Ma,” Krueger replied, cutting to the chase, “have you watched TV lately?”

  “Oh no,” Trudy answered, waving her hand dismissively, “it’s all potty mouths and violence! The only news you need is the good news delivered by Father Bell at Mass.”

  Krueger suddenly put down his cup and took hold of his mother’s hands. He knew he should have been a better son; should have respected his mother’s contempt for the military and addressed her fears with tenderness rather than mocking indifference. And because he accepted the mistakes in his past, Krueger also knew that he was bound by duty to help his mother through the terrors of the present. He was going to break the news to Trudy and take her back to memories she had tried very hard to forget.

  It would not be easy. But he would be there for her.

  “Ma, the bombing in New York, they’ve got a suspect,” he whispered, and the suspicion in his mother’s eyes turned to dark apprehension. “I’ve got a photo here, and I’m going to show it to you. But…brace yourself, okay? It’s going to be upsetting.”

  “I… I don’t understand,” was all Trudy could say, before Krueger delicately pulled a photograph from his pocket and showed it to his mother.

  Trudy saw the blue eyes, the aquiline nose, and the slicked back grey hair.

  For many moments, there was silence in the room, as if Krueger’s mother was consciously deciding which emotion best fit the moment. He saw traces of each on her face: anxiety, trepidation, even fear. But then she settled on anger and launched herself from her chair and away from her son.

  “You are lying!” she screamed. “Why would you do this?”

  Krueger raised his hands, as if trying to shield himself from his mother’s wrath.

  “What kind of son are you? What kind of son terrorizes his own poor mother?”

  “Ma, it’s the truth,” Krueger said quietly.

  “How can it be the truth?” Trudy replied. Her three dogs, who understood Krueger’s mother better than he did himself, departed the kitchen. “He died so long ago! You think a ghost did it? A zombie?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then how do you think your dead grandfather got to New York?”

  Krueger noticed that his mother had begun speaking in a German accent, which, like her memories of the past, she had spent many years trying to escape.

  “I don’t know,” Krueger said, and found that his own anger had been ignited. “I don’t know anything, goddammit! And that’s why I came to you. You know... my boss is sending a team to come visit this place? They want to interview you. I came here to warn you.”

  Trudy suddenly had visions of men (they were always men) busting through her door, striding arrogantly around the property wearing boots and guns.

  It was more than her frail heart could take, and she collapsed back into her kitchen chair. When Krueger held her hands, she did not resist.

  “I know it’s not easy. I know it doesn’t make any sense. But it’s the truth. Your father, my grandfather, was photographed in New York City planting the bomb.”

  Trudy murmured, as if her imperishable soul was being called to confront something it did not want to face. “It cannot be,” she whispered, as Krueger wiped the tears from her eyes, “he died so long ago.”

  “I know,” Krueger replied, “so let’s figure this out together. General Krueger passed away in 1951, right? In Spandau prison? Due to throat cancer?”

  “Yes, yes,” Trudy replied. “The damned Allies let so many of the officers walk free after the war: von Rundstedt, Guderian, Skorzeny. They all died free men. But Papa! They kept him locked away from his family. Even when he started coughing up blood, Papa was denied his liberty.”

  Krueger had never heard his mother refer to General Krueger as papa before. Her eyes shone with anger, and Krueger wondered to whom that anger was directed. Was it to her father, the black-clad wager of war? Or was it to those who forbade her from seeing him? Handing his mother a tissue, Krueger guessed that Trudy was angry at the world that had denied her the kind, caring father all girls need.

  “Why did they keep him locked away?” Krueger asked.

  “Because they hated him,” Trudy shot back instantly. But Krueger’s suspicion was roused, and he narrowed his eyes.

  “Ma, the Americans would not have locked the general away just because they didn’t like him. Was he involved in the Holocaust?”

  Trudy turned and faced her son with dismay written on her face. “Never!” she replied. “Papa was a Christian. From the moment he could talk, he kept a burning faith in his breast. And he would never had involved himself in such cowardly slaughter, even if that man had ordered him to.” Trudy had never had the courage to refer to Hitler by name, preferring to call him ‘that man’ on the rare occasions she deigned to discuss him at all.

  “Then why was this Christian locked away when other officers were being let go?”

  “He was locked up because of his Christian faith, not in spite of it.”

  Krueger took a step back, confusion roiling his already overladen mind. “Ma, you’re not making any sense!” he cried. “Did your father have some secrets from his time on the Eastern Front? From the Bulge?”

  Outside, the clouds overhead finally burst, and fat drops of rain rattled the window. They were so loud Krueger couldn’t hear his mother as she sighed. It was time at last for her confession.

  “Papa never served in Europe,” she said.

  Krueger felt his entrails run cold. Without knowing it, he cocked his head like a dog who’d just heard a strange noise. “But… but the stories you told me…” he said, “those newspaper clippings…”

  “They were all lies,” Trudy mumbled, and her tears fell again with renewed vigor. “I needed to tell you a story… to keep the truth from your young ears.”

  “Wha—” Krueger’s voice trailed off. He staggered away from his mother and the enormity of her deceit.

  “It was for you!” Trudy protested. “It was all for you!”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Ma!” Krueger cried. “Just tell me who the Hell my grandfather really was!”

  Trudy’s old, cracked lips pursed, as they wrestled with the truth trying to break free. “He was in Africa during the war,” she said finally. “Serving on that man’s direct orders. He was sent because of his love of Christ. He was sent because the Fuhrer wanted immortality… he wanted the lignum crucis... the True Cross!”

  -4-

  JOE AND TRUDY KRUEGER sat on the kitchen floor, listening to the rhythmic fall of the rain outside. Their anger was spent, and they were repairing their relationship over a bottle of bourbon and Joe’s pack of Marlboros.

  “It was his knowledge of the Holy Land that saved him,” Trudy said softly. Two dozen photographs, newspaper clippings, and letters were spread out over the floor, which Trudy had retrieved from a carefully preserved box next to her bed. “The Fuhrer sent the cream of his military into the Soviet Union after the invasion, even after it became a charnel house. Papa would have gone too, but he was too important.”

  “He was a scholar?” Krueger asked hopefully.

  Trudy snorted in derision. “He was a soldier,” she replied, in a tone that suggested she believed soldiers to be incapable of intellectual study, “but a soldier with a keen understanding of religion, and the myths which nourish it. He’d toured British Palestine and French Syria during the 20s, actually became an expert on the imperial administrations there. He was teaching at the Prussian Military Academy when the Nazis seized power, and that’s when Papa caught the eye of… him.”

  Trudy produced a sepia-toned image of her father, Krueger’s forebear, shaking the hand of the leader of Nazi Germany. He shivered, as those ghosts of the bloody past haunted his mother’s small Pennsylvania kitchen. They should have no place here, he thought. And ye
t, their faces, their schemes of decades past, were weighing on his shoulders.

  “The Fuhrer always had a tortured relationship with Christ,” Trudy said. “His father burned with hatred toward the church, but his mother was a good Catholic. I suppose that’s why he made a fetish of Christian icons. And of course, if he suspected that any of them could enhance his worldly power, he wanted them.

  “Before the war, that man created the Ahnenerbe, a group of researchers tasked with finding Christian relics. Papa was its first director. It was he who seized the Spear of Destiny from Vienna when Austria was forced into the Nazi Empire.”

  Trudy picked out another picture. General Krueger was stood alert in the desert, next to a smaller, wiry officer.

  “That’s Rommel,” Trudy said, “the Desert Fox, who commanded Nazi Forces in the Mediterranean. The Fuhrer ordered the Ahnenerbe into North Africa when the fighting broke out there. He thought it a great opportunity to plunder the ancient world. And the one thing he wanted more than anything was the True Cross.”

  “The cross on which Jesus himself was crucified,” Krueger said in hushed tones. He swallowed the last of his bourbon and immediately poured himself another generous glass.

  “Exactly,” Trudy said. “The True Cross taken by Saladin during the Crusades to Damascus, and never seen again. Papa got it into his head that he knew where it was.”

  “And that’s why the Americans kept him prisoner after they released all the other German officers?” Krueger asked. “They wanted it for themselves.”

  “Yes,” his mother said. “They suspected Papa knew the location of the True Cross and refused to release him until he confessed what he knew.”

  “Shame he took those secrets to the grave,” Krueger said, before remembering that his grandfather was last seen walking the streets of New York days ago.

  “Maybe not,” Trudy said, rising to her feet. “It is said that whoever holds the True Cross possesses incredible power. The power, perhaps, to rise from the grave.”