George Bartram - Under the Freeze

“I don’t know.”

Repin pushed his lips forward, wrinkled his nose, cocked his head. “It sounds very fishy to me, my friend.” He watched Tarp with his head tilted like a sharp-eyed bird’s. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that we’ve been going after Maxudov from the wrong end of the stick. Now I’m going after what he was buying, not what he was selling.”

Repin narrowed his eyes. He looked at Juana, than at “Mr. Smith.” He sat back and nodded once, as if to say that he was a reasonable man who was willing to listen to the whole tale.

Laforet cleared his throat. “I have been checking into certain new facts that have been brought to my attention in the last two days,” he said rather formally. “These do not fall nicely into the kind of coherence that one would like for them to have. Nevertheless, they are provocative in their outline, and, subject to further investigation — which is going forward even while we talk, let me say — I think they justify a certain course of action that we shall discuss shortly.” He looked at each of them. He rather enjoyed the spotlight and certainly was used to it. And dressed for it.

“One must go back to World War Two for some of this. In the last year of the war, a German ship was sunk near the Antarctic by the cruiser under this Pope-Ginna’s command. On board the German ship were millions in gold that have never been recovered — never, one would have said, until this investigation began. It has always been thought that the gold was simply part of the German hoard intended as a fallback in case of a German defeat. However, also on board that ship were certain German civilians — again, until very recently, believed to be a lucky few sent ahead to set up the machinery for a Nazi enclave. The destination was believed to be — and still is — Argentina.

“For our purposes, the only person of note on board that ship was a biochemist named Gustav Fahner. He is of interest to us because we now believe that some of Fahner’s work has shown up in the enormously profitable enterprises of this Juaquin Schneider — a generation later, in Argentina. What is the connection?” Laforet shrugged. “One could say coincidence. One could say knowledge of some sort — there were survivors of the German sinking, although they were few and none of them, so far as we know, was Fahner. Or one could say that Schneider had gained access to Fahner’s research, which, one would believe, was on board the Prinz von Homburg when Pope-Ginna sank it.”

“Divers?” Repin said. He looked at Tarp. “Is that possible?”

“I’m having somebody look into it. Go ahead, Jules.”

Laforet smiled. “I have been made the expositor of a great deal of work that is not my own; most of this comes from Tarp, of course. Where was I? Ah, the possibility of research records on the ship. Yes. So, one postulates a connection between Schneider and the Prinz von Homburg . There are other correspondences — the emergence of Schneider himself from obscurity as a newly rich man in the nineteen fifties; his rather sudden appearance as an entrepreneur in biochemicals. His marriage. Yes, his marriage.” Laforet again glanced at each of them, and, taking a paper from a case at his feet, he turned a little sideways so as to catch the light from a window.

“All sources available to us have Schneider marrying a woman named Nazdia Becker in July, 1949. The bride was a Jewess, born in Hungary in 1927, a refugee from the Nazis who had made her way to England and then to Argentina.” He turned back to them. “The only difficulty with this, as Tarp discovered in Moscow and as we have subsequently confirmed in Germany, is that the only Nazdia Becker who matches the birth date and Hungarian background even remotely died in Buchenwald in 1943.”

“Somebody used the identity,” the former president said.

“Precisely.”

“Who?” Juana asked.

“Who, indeed?” Laforet paused for effect. “Gustav Fahner had a daughter,” he said softly. He consulted his sheet of paper again. “Ilse Fahner, born Leipzig, 1925. Date and place of death unknown. May have accompanied her father on the ill-fated voyage of the Prinz von Homburg .”

“Schneider married Fahner’s daughter?” Repin said.

“Possibly.”

Tarp leaned forward. “Fahner’s daughter would have known what was on the Homburg . She may also have known her father’s research; the woman Schneider married became a very gifted biochemist. Jules is trying to find out now if Ilse Fahner was already a scientist before the Homburg sinking. But if she survived the sinking, then she would have had access to information and possibly to money — to Argentine accounts already set up. We’re trying to check that now.”

“How would she have gotten the Jewish girl’s identity?” Juana said.

“She would have brought it with her. That would have been a fairly simple precaution. So, let’s say she survived — she’s pulled from the water by a British crew; she’s carrying the papers of a Hungarian girl; she’s returned to England—”

“Pope-Ginna,” Repin said. “Of course. Pope-Ginna!”

Tarp nodded. “That’s what I think.”

“He is the arranger! How does he know who she really is? We do not know; no matter. What does he want? The money, probably — yes? Hundreds of millions in gold, not so bad. And he is an admiral, a naval hero — he can help the girl with her identity, make a place for her, fend off questions.” He frowned. “But that is not enough, surely.”

Tarp nodded. “Correct. Pope-Ginna knew something nobody else did. He knew where the Homburg was .”

He told them about the polynya and the confusion over the ships’ positions when the Homburg was sunk. “Pope-Ginna knew that there was open water in the ice, and he knew what the real position was. It’s my guess that it all happened without his control, and he simply put it together and saw where things could lead. I’d think that the catalyst was discovering who the girl really was — suddenly understanding that a colossal piece of luck had come his way. It doesn’t really matter when he saw it. After the Homburg went down and before he filed the final report in London. Plenty of time, I think. Plenty of time.”

They were all silent, not looking at each other. “And Schneider?” Laforet said after they had sat that way for a time. “What of Schneider?”

“I don’t know,” Tarp said softly. “But I’m going to find out.”

“How?”

“I’m going to go look at the Prinz von Homburg .”

Juana’s voice was very controlled, very professional. “Under the ice?”

“It isn’t under the ice now. The polynya is open. Mr. Smith?”

The former president produced several photographs. “These are satellite photos. The only one we’ve got that goes over the area. It’s fall down there, so it’s getting colder, not warmer, so it looks like the hole is closing. Still, you can see it.” He handed the photographs around. From the altitude of the satellite, the polynya looked small — an uneven black mark in a white surface. In the last photo, taken only five days before, it was smaller than in the other two.

“The ship is under that spot?” she said.

“Not quite,” Tarp said quickly. “Just off the left-hand edge, I think. I’m estimating from what a man in England told me. He was in the polynya in 1944, at a time of year when it would have been at its biggest. Jules is having somebody look through the admiralty records to see if any of the other ships’ logs from Pope-Ginna’s force show a different position, even one that was later corrected. The officially accepted position is two hundred miles from here, which is much too far.”