Chapters (50)
- Praise
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Teaser chapter
“For Germany, yes. Not for people like Otto Ohlendorf. Being a bastard wasn’t a necessary condition of joining the SS, although it certainly helped. I should know. For a while, I was in the SS myself. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I’m out of step with your new Federal Republic. And maybe it’s just that I’m a bit old-fashioned. But you see, there’s something about a man who massacred a hundred thousand men, women, and children that I just don’t like. And I tend to think that the best way of getting the new Germany off to a flying start is if we just get on and hang him and his ilk.”
FOUR
FOUR
Kaufmann didn’t strike me as spiteful man at all. Merely a pompous one, and I think it irked him a little that I ticked him off about helping the Red Jackets. So I suspected it was he who steered my next client to me, knowing that I would dislike him, and knowing also that I couldn’t afford to turn him away. Not when I was just getting started in business again. Maybe he even hoped to change my mind about how we were going to ensure the best beginning for the Federal Republic.
The phone call told me to catch a train to Starnberg, where a car would pick me up. All I knew about the client was that he was the Baron von Starnberg, that he was extremely rich, and that he was the retired director of I. G. Farben, once the largest chemical manufacturing company in the world. Some of directors of I. G. Farben had been put on trial at Nuremberg for war crimes, but von Starnberg wasn’t one of them. I had no idea of the job he wanted me to do.
The train climbed through the Würm Valley and some of the loveliest countryside in Bavaria before arriving after thirty minutes in Starnberg. It made a very pleasant change from breathing the builder’s dust of Munich. Starnberg itself was a smallish town built in terraces at the north end of the Würmsee, a lake twelve miles long and a mile wide. The sapphire blue water was studded with yachts that shone like diamonds in the morning sunlight. It was overlooked by the ancient castle of the dukes of Bavaria. “Scenic” hardly covered it. After only a minute looking at Starnberg, I wanted to lift the lid and eat the strawberry crème.
There was an old Maybach Zeppelin at the station to collect me. The chauffeur was kind enough to put me in the backseat instead of the trunk, which was probably his first inclination with someone getting off a train. After all, there was enough silver in the back to keep the Lone Ranger in bullets for the next hundred years.