The Nazi's Son Read online

  The Nazi’s Son

  A Joe Johnson Thriller

  Andrew Turpin

  Contents

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part II

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part III

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part IV

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Epilogue

  Reviews

  Thanks and acknowledgments

  Author’s note

  Research and bibliography

  About the author

  Welcome to the Joe Johnson series!

  Thank you for purchasing The Nazi’s Son — I hope you enjoy it!

  This is the fifth in the series of thrillers I am writing that feature Joe Johnson, a US-based independent war crimes investigator. He previously worked for the CIA and for the Office of Special Investigations — a section of the Department of Justice responsible for tracking down Nazi war criminals hiding in the States.

  The other books in the series about his various war crimes investigations are all for sale on Amazon. So far, in order, the books are:

  Prequel: The Afghan

  1. The Last Nazi

  2. The Old Bridge

  3. Bandit Country

  4. Stalin’s Final Sting

  5. The Nazi’s Son

  If you enjoy this book, I would like to keep in touch. This is not always easy, as I usually only publish a couple of books a year and there are many authors and books out there. So the best way is for you to be on my Readers Group email list. I can then send you updates on the next book, plus occasional special offers.

  If you would like to join my Readers Group and receive the email updates, I will send you, FREE of charge, the ebook version of another Joe Johnson thriller, The Afghan, which is a prequel to the series and normally sells at $2.99/£2.99 (paperback $11.99/£9.99).

  The Afghan is set in 1988 when Johnson was still a CIA officer. Most of the action takes place in Afghanistan and Washington, DC.

  Details of how to join the Readers Group and receive your free copy of The Afghan can be found at the end of the epilogue of this book.

  Andrew Turpin, St. Albans, UK.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my parents, Gerald and Jean Turpin, who are getting to grips with technology and enjoying my books in Kindle format at the ages of ninety-four and eighty-nine respectively.

  “We know that this mad dog of the Middle East [Muammar Gaddafi] has a goal of a world revolution, Muslim fundamentalist revolution, which is targeted on many of his own Arab compatriots. And where we figure in that, I don’t know. Maybe we’re just the enemy because—it’s a little like climbing Mount Everest—because we’re here. But there’s no question but that he has singled us out more and more for attack.”

  US President Ronald Reagan speaking at a news conference on 9 April, 1986, four days after the bomb attack on the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin and six days before retaliatory air strikes were launched against Libya.

  Prologue

  Saturday, April 5, 1986

  West Berlin

  The KGB officer pulled out a half-empty pack of his favorite Belomorkanal cigarettes from his jacket pocket and put one in his mouth. He offered one to his colleague, who was standing on the darkened balcony beside him. She accepted. He lit both using a cheap red plastic lighter, cupping his hands around it to prevent the breeze from extinguishing the flame.

  He shivered as he took a deep drag on the cigarette, which glowed bright. The nicotine hit felt good. They were standing on the sixth story of an apartment building overlooking Hauptstrasse, the main street running through the Friedenau district of West Berlin. Across the street, high up on the soaring brick tower of the town hall, a giant illuminated clock read quarter to two in the morning.

  The two Russians smoked in silence for a few minutes.

  “Skoro sluchitsya,” the woman eventually said in her native language. It’s coming soon.

  The man nodded. “Oni uzhe opozdali.” They’re already late.

  On the sidewalk far below the KGB apartment where they had been staying undercover for the previous few days, a group of West Berlin youngsters staggered along, laughing and drunkenly trying to support each other. He had watched as they emerged from the entrance of a nightclub, more than two hundred meters from their vantage point. A red-and-white sign above the door read La Belle Disco Club.

  La Belle was on the ground floor of the four-story art deco–style Roxy Palast building that had originally been a cinema. At this hour it would be packed with hundreds of music and dance lovers writhing to the latest American sounds, some of which were not yet even available in West Berlin’s record stores.

  A few minutes later, another group emerged from the club, walked along the street, and climbed into a car. From the way they looked and dressed, the KGB officer knew they were United States soldiers. The club, southwest of Berlin’s center, was very popular with American servicemen stationed in the city.

  On the sidewalk nearby, someone had painted in large white letters the words Amerikaner Raus! Americans get out.

  One of the city’s ubiquitous white police cars, an Opel with its distinctive green doors, Polizei sign on the side, and blue light perched on the roof, crawled along Hauptstrasse.

  The man stepped forward and leaned over the iron railing at the edge of the balcony. He scrutinized the street scene below and pointed. “I think that may be them.”

  Two women, both brunettes with shoulder-length hair, had exited from La Belle and were crossing the street, striding away quickly without looking back. It was a giveaway. Both were dressed in tight black skirts and leather jackets. They disappeared around the corner and out of view.

  “Yes, it was them,” the KGB woman said. “A couple of minutes now.” She finished her cigarette, stubbed it out on the balcony railing, and tossed the butt out into the gloom, where it floated to the ground. Then she gripped the rail, her knuckles going white as she leaned forward and watched.

  The man also finished his cigarette and threw the butt off the balcony.

  A group of twentysomethings, laughing and joking, crossed the street below, followed by a couple who were holding hands. Neither the man nor the woman on the balcony spoke as the people below crossed the road, drawing closer to the disco entrance.

  A few seconds later, a boom tore through the night air, causing the
KGB man to jump involuntarily. Despite the distance, he felt a little of the force of the explosion against his face. The entire ground-floor frontage of the building that housed La Belle disco was blown outward across the street in a storm of glass, steel, concrete, and wood debris.

  The group of youngsters vanished behind a cloud of smoke and dust that was propelled outward and upward, hiding much of the building from view, and the sound of people screaming echoed up from the street.

  Security and fire alarms triggered by the explosion were ringing, and after a short time, the sound of police sirens could be heard in the distance.

  As the dust cloud began to clear, blown by the breeze, the piles of rubble scattered across the street gradually became visible. A man ran over to two girls who were lying spread-eagled on the road amid the debris and knelt next to one of them, placing his hand on her body.

  “My God,” the woman said. She instinctively stepped back from the balcony’s edge into the shadows as two police cars screeched to a halt at the point where the spread of rubble began. She turned to face her colleague. “They did it.”

  The man pressed his lips together and nodded. He reached out and caressed the nape of the woman’s neck. The entire operation had gone completely according to the plan that he had seen in meetings. The Libyans had done a good job: the carnage inside La Belle must have been enormous. “I need to let the boss know,” he said.

  He walked to the rear of the balcony and through the open door into the dimly lit living room of the apartment. He went into the bedroom and sat on the mattress. The sheets were still all awry from their lovemaking earlier.

  The man picked up a secure phone that lay on a table. Next to the phone was a West German passport and papers that identified him as an interior design adviser. He dialed a number.

  After the usual three rings, a voice answered in Russian. “Da?” Yes?

  “FOX is done,” the man replied. “FOX is done.”

  “Understood. Thank you. Please keep me informed about the next one.” The line went dead.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Tuesday, March 4, 2014

  Washington, DC

  Applause rang around room 603 at American University’s College of Law as Joe Johnson wrapped up his lecture on the history of Nazi war crimes prosecutions and the effectiveness over the years of the International Criminal Court in implementing them. He concluded, as he often did, with a few thoughts about the validity of continuing to pursue former SS officers who were now almost all in their nineties.

  About 120 students had turned up, which pleased him. Usually his occasional talks for the college’s War Crimes Research Office attracted fewer than that. And judging by the reaction, almost all of those attending seemed to agree with his closing comments that there was complete justification for pursuing justice on behalf of the estimated six million Jews who had died at the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War.

  Johnson turned off the PowerPoint slide deck that was being projected from his laptop onto the screen behind him to illustrate his talk. He slowly gathered up his lecture notes from the wooden lectern and shook hands with the director of the WCRO, Sarah Southern, who had been sitting nearby with her deputy, William Cadman.

  “Thank you, Joe,” Sarah said, a twinkle in her eye and a half smile creasing her face. “That was incisive as usual. It might just get you another invitation sometime.”

  Sarah’s mother, like his mother, Helena, had been a Polish Jewish concentration camp survivor, and they had developed a close bond through their shared family histories. Sarah was passionate about her job, something he greatly respected, and he always appreciated the guest-lecturer invitations she still sent him. The WCRO ran a regular program of guest speakers on a wide variety of topics relating to international criminal law and human rights.

  “Sure,” Johnson said. “I’d like to talk about Afghanistan next time. I was there last year. There’s a lot of interesting issues.”

  “Afghanistan would be a good idea,” Cadman said. “We haven’t done anything much on it for some time.”

  Johnson always smiled every time he bumped into Cadman: the academic was almost a spitting image of Johnson himself. He was of similar age, at fifty-five, of similar height and build, and even had the same semicircle of short-cropped graying hair. The only difference was that Cadman wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses. The two men got on well—like twin brothers, Sarah often joked.

  Sarah indicated with her thumb toward the back of the room. “There’s someone over there who came in to see you just before the lecture started. I found him a seat at the back.”

  Johnson didn’t need to be told to whom she was referring. He glanced in the direction she was pointing. Most of the students had stood and were filing out of the room, chatting and laughing as they went. In their midst, still sitting in the rear row of seats with his arms folded, looking utterly out of place among a crowd thirty years his junior, was a familiar figure.

  He had seen Vic Walter sneak in just before he began his talk. His friend and former CIA colleague had known Johnson was going to be in town for the lecture because they had spoken briefly on the phone the previous week. But he had given no indication that he was going to turn up and listen. Something must be afoot if he had taken time out from his now crazily busy job at the Agency’s Langley headquarters to drive the seven miles to the College of Law.

  “I spotted him. I’d better go and have a chat,” Johnson said to Sarah. “Thanks again, and let’s speak soon.”

  He picked up his coat, tucked his papers under his arm, and ambled down the aisle between the rows of seats to the rear of the room.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Johnson asked, looking down at Vic, who hadn’t moved.

  “You need someone to tidy up those slides for you,” Vic said in his familiar gravelly voice. “They’re high school standard.”

  “Thanks. Carrie helped me with them, actually,” Johnson said. His daughter, aged seventeen, was in high school. “I thought she did a good job.”

  Vic grinned and looked at Johnson over the top of his metal-rimmed glasses. “Ah, sorry. Don’t tell her I said that.” He stood, tossed his empty plastic takeout coffee cup into a nearby trash can, and shook hands with Johnson.

  “You having an easy day today, Vic?”

  “Not really. None of my days are easy now. Quite the opposite.”

  “But you need to talk?”

  Vic waved a hand. “I thought it would be good to catch up for a chat while you’re in town. Don’t see you very often these days. Spur-of-the-moment thing. But let’s not talk in here. Outside?”

  Johnson suppressed a grin.

  Spur-of-the-moment? Bullshit.

  But he nodded, put on his coat, and turned to head out of the room, Vic following behind. They moved down the corridor and out through the glass and metal swinging doors that formed the entrance to the College of Law’s sprawling brick and stone building at 4801 Massachusetts Avenue NW, about a mile and a half east of the Potomac River.

  It was an unseasonably warm March afternoon, and daffodils in a bed around the circular fountain in the plaza were waving in a light breeze. A few students, some of whom had removed their coats, were sitting at outdoor tables on the white concrete surface.

  Johnson stopped next to a row of bike racks, to which were chained an assortment of bicycles in varying states of repair. He turned to face his former colleague. He and Vic had worked together for the Agency, mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan, in the 1980s.

  “So, how’s the new job going, Vic? You surviving up on that seventh floor, buddy?”

  “Not really. I’m still suffering nosebleeds from the height.”

  Johnson chuckled. His old friend’s self-deprecating air was one of his most endearing characteristics.

  To many people’s surprise at Langley—mostly those who hadn’t worked directly with him—Vic had been appointed the previous September as acting director of the
CIA’s National Clandestine Service, generally known as the Directorate of Operations. Despite being seen by many as something of a fringe candidate, he was then confirmed in the role in December by his boss, Arthur Veltman, the director of Central Intelligence, confounding the promotion ambitions of two associate deputy directors who had both upset the DCI in the preceding months.

  Vic’s appointment followed the eventual resignation of the previous director of the NCS, Terry Jenner, in the wake of two successful investigations by Johnson and Vic into one of Jenner’s senior lieutenants and close ally, Robert Watson.

  Watson was convicted and imprisoned on an assortment of charges, including corruption and illegal profiteering from arms deals over a long period of time while he was a senior CIA employee. Indeed, Watson had been Johnson and Vic’s boss as chief of the CIA’s Islamabad station in the 1980s and had been largely responsible for having Johnson fired from the service in late 1988.