Brandenburg: A Thriller Paperback Read online

  PRAISE FOR BRANDENBURG

  “Meade’s second foray into international intrigue imagines that Nazis biding time in South America hatch a viable plot to take over contemporary Germany. The novel opens with a splendidly tantalizing episode of eavesdropping by a Paraguayan reporter who, before he’s caught and killed, hides a tell-tale tape recording. . . . Fast, sly, and slick, this thriller delivers the goods—tension, action, plot twists—until the smoke clears on the last page.”

  —Booklist

  “Sheer, nail-biting suspense . . . a rare treat.”

  —Sunday Telegraph

  PRAISE FOR GLENN MEADE

  “The Irish-born author teeters on the edge of genius and sacrilege with this thriller about a subject known since the time of Christ. . . . Some who have avoided Christian fiction or only dipped in will find this departure from the mold refreshing, even while some regular readers of Christian fiction may find certain passages revolting. Fans of Davis Bunn or Dan Brown won’t bat an eye at Meade’s unblinking look at the Vatican and the religious secrecy that fuels such novels. With a plot that screams, a controversial edge, and characters with attitude and something to prove, this has all the makings to be the next Da Vinci Code.”

  —Publishers Weekly, on The Second Messiah

  “Dan Brown meets Tom Clancy—Glenn Meade sure knows how to get your pulse racing. I was gripped from page one. Whether The Second Messiah is fact or fiction is up for debate, but one thing’s for sure—it’s one heck of a thriller. You know you’re in safe hands with Glenn Meade—The Second Messiah is a roller coaster of a thriller that lifts the lid on the inner workings of the Vatican and leaves you wondering just how much of the fiction is actually fact.”

  —Stephen Leather, author of Nightfall

  “Reading similarly to both a Thoene novel and The Da Vinci Code, bestselling author Meade’s The Second Messiah will keep readers on the edge of their proverbial seats. . . . The Second Messiah reads quickly and will hold the reader’s attention with its many plot twists. In the story, Meade also addresses the problem of suffering in an insightful comment from the pope. Fans of fiction tied to news headlines will enjoy this geopolitical thriller. Recommended for readers of Joel C. Rosenberg.”

  —Christian Retailing

  “This novel is a Da Vinci Code–type thriller, but it’s far more. The secret scrolls and chases are standard thriller fare, but deftly handled. Some of the characters are particularly captivating, especially the new Pope, a true follower of God who’s tormented by his past and struggling with the future of the Church. This suspenseful book is well worth reading.”

  —CBA Retailers + Resources, on The Second Messiah

  “Written in the mold of The Da Vinci Code—sans all the erroneous claims (thankfully)—bestselling author Glenn Meade’s latest geographical thriller, The Second Messiah, keeps readers on the edge of their proverbial seats with multiple plot twists.”

  —Charisma

  “Meade knows how to entangle, and untangle, an exciting array of characters and plots guaranteed to keep the reader hooked . . . a talented storyteller, he sets the scene quickly before taking off on a rollicking ride that keeps the pages turning. It’s a hard book to put down.”

  —Crosswalk.com, on The Second Messiah

  “In this big-boned thriller, Meade makes his contribution to the distinguished number of first thrillers premised on the attempted assassination of a world leader (e.g., The Day of the Jackal; The Eagle Has Landed) by imagining a CIA hit man targeting Josef Stalin. . . . Meade writes with a silken pen, inking unusually sympathetic leads. Vivid cameos of historical figures, including Eisenhower, Truman, Beria and Stalin, lend credence to the story, which, according to the author, includes events of ‘documented history.’ The Cold War may be on ice, but through this literate, memorable story, Meade shows that it can still freeze readers’ attention and chill their blood.”

  —Publishers Weekly, on Snow Wolf

  “Meade’s research is so extensive yet unobtrusive . . . that it is often easy to forget you’re reading fiction and not history. This is a completely riveting thriller in the tradition of The Day of the Jackal. A white knuckler!”

  —The Washington Post

  “One twisting, breathless chase.”

  —New York Times

  “A tremendous sense of dramatic action and page-turning excitement culminating in a riveting, thought-provoking climax.”

  —The Sunday Times, on Snow Wolf

  “A writer of powerfully built and skillfully executed plots. Immerse yourself in his intricately woven intrigue and explosive action, and enjoy them thoroughly!”

  —Oleg Kalugin, former head of the KGB’s First Directorate

  “Chilling—another literate and suspenseful thriller from an estimable storyteller.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A riveting story . . . incredibly well researched. I urge every American to read this book.”

  —Newt Gingrich, on Resurrection Day

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  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Part One

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part Two

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part Three

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Part Four

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Part Five

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  The Second Messiah Excerpt

  About Glenn Meade

  TO MY PARENTS,

  TOM AND CARMEL

  So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

  —F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, THE GREAT GATSBY

  FOREWORD

  First books are special.

  They’re always a triumph of hope and hard work over despair and sloth.

  They also prove something to the novice author: You’ve climbed Everest by writing a book—even if it felt like you were wearing carpe
t slippers at times. So maybe you can do it again?

  Brandenburg was my first novel. It was published in Europe to far better reviews than I could ever have hoped for and translated into almost twenty languages.

  Except German.

  No German publisher would touch it with a barge pole because of the controversial neo-Nazi subject matter.

  However, soon after the success of another novel of mine, my publisher finally decided to take the risk. Brandenburg became a long-running bestseller in Germany; it’s a book I still get mail about from readers.

  At its core is a very real and dramatic Nazi-era “secret,” one that I happened upon in the small alpine town of Garmisch in the depths of a bitter winter.

  In the course of writing a newspaper article, I interviewed an elderly former SS man, who, wacky as it might sound, enjoyed listening to the music of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin as he languished near death in a local old folks’ home.

  He also told me a true and remarkable wartime story that provided me with the idea for Brandenburg.

  And despite all the effort of writing it in longhand, often after already working a ten-hour shift—I remember keeping my window open most evenings to let cold air in to keep me awake—I truly enjoyed having written it.

  I hope you enjoy reading it just as much.

  1

  ASUNCIÓN, PARAGUAY

  When the doctors at the San Ignatio Private Hospital told Nicolas Tsarkin he was going to die, the old man nodded sullenly, waited until the men had left, then dressed without speaking another word and drove his Mercedes to the corner of the Calle Palma three blocks away.

  He parked the car and walked back the last block to the small commercial bank on the corner, pushed through the revolving doors, and told the manager he wanted to see his safe-deposit box.

  The manager promptly ordered a senior clerk to go down to the vault with the old man: Señor Tsarkin, after all, was a valued customer.

  “Then tell him to go. I want to be left alone,” Tsarkin said in his usual abrupt manner.

  “Certainly, Señor Tsarkin. Thank you, Señor Tsarkin.” A final, polite bow from the manager, and then, “Buenos días, Señor Tsarkin.”

  The blue-suited manager irritated Tsarkin, as usual, but especially so this morning, with his bowing and scraping and ingratiating, gold-toothed smile.

  Buenos días. Good morning. What was good about it?

  He had just been told he had less than forty-eight hours to live, and right now the pain in his stomach was eating into him like a fire, almost unendurable. He felt weak, terribly weak, despite the drugs to quell the pain. What had he to smile about? What was good about this morning?

  The last morning of his life, because he knew now what he had to do.

  And yet the truth was, Tsarkin felt a strange kind of relief: the lie would soon be over.

  He caught a reflection of himself in the cold, stainless-steel walls as the clerk led him down into the cool of the vault. Tsarkin was ninety-one and, until six months ago, had looked ten years younger. He had been fit then, ate the proper foods, never smoked, and rarely drank. Everyone said he would make the century.

  They were wrong.

  His reflection in the stainless-steel wall showed him as he was: emaciated, looking like a corpse already, the bleeding in his stomach so bad that he could almost feel the life draining from him. But he had important things to do, no matter what the pain, no matter what the doctors had told him. And once those things were done he could sleep peacefully, forever.

  Unless there really was a God and a hereafter, in which case he would pay for his sins. But Tsarkin doubted it. No just God would have let him live so long and so full and so rich a life after all he had done. No, you just died. It was that simple. The flesh became dust, and you were gone forever: no pain, no heaven, no hell. Just nothingness.

  He hoped.

  The clerk unlocked the metal gates and led him through into the basement chamber. It was a small room, six yards by six, silent, a cold marble floor. The clerk examined the key number he held in his hand, ran a finger along the shining steel boxes along one of the walls, found Tsarkin’s deposit box, removed and unlocked the box, and placed it on the polished wooden table in the center of the room. He handed over the key, withdrew, and then Tsarkin was alone.

  The vault had the coldness and the silence of a morgue and Tsarkin shivered involuntarily. Soon I’ll be there, he told himself. Soon there will be no pain. As he went to sit at the table he dragged the small metal box toward him, inserted the key, and opened the lid, before removing the contents and spreading the papers out onto the polished table.

  All there. The deeds to his lands, the keys to his past. He reconsidered a moment, putting off what had to be done, thought about enjoying one last orgy of indulgence, but truly there was nothing more he wanted to do. The pain made everything unbearable, and, besides, he had enjoyed everything life had to offer.

  He gathered up the contents of the deposit box in his hands, sorted them neatly into an orderly pile, and placed them in one of the old, large envelopes that contained some of the papers. It made a neat, hefty bundle. Then he pressed the buzzer for the clerk to return.

  • • •

  The house stood on the Calle Iguazu, on the outskirts of the city. White and large and surrounded by high walls, barely visible from the road. The classiest part of Asunción, and Tsarkin had been able to afford it. He opened the wrought-iron gates with the remote control, drove up the curved sweep of the asphalt road, and parked the Mercedes on the gravel driveway in front of the house.

  He grunted when the mestizo butler opened the front door to greet him. He went straight through to his wood-paneled study and locked the door. It was warm in the study. Tsarkin loosened the two top buttons of his shirt as he looked out onto the lush, manicured gardens, the pepper and palm trees beyond the window. He owned a lot of property in Asunción, and three farms in the Chaco hinterland, but this place had always been his favorite.

  He sat down at the polished apple-wood desk and emptied the contents of the envelope onto the gleaming surface and began to sift through the pile.

  He looked at the passport first. Nicolas Tsarkin. Fine. Except he wasn’t Nicolas Tsarkin. His real name—he’d almost forgotten it—and then when it came to his lips, so unreal, he had to smile to himself, weakly. So long to live a lie. He put the passport aside.

  Once he was wanted in half a dozen countries. Once he did terrible things in that old, forgotten name. Inflicted terrible deaths and terrible pain. And yet the truth was, when you boiled it down, he couldn’t stand pain himself. He chided himself: it was no time for thought. Do it.

  He sorted through the papers. Old, tired papers, tattered records of his past. He read through them once again. As in his nightmares, it all came back to him: the cold terror on the faces of his victims, the blood, the butchery. Yet he felt no remorse.

  He would have done it all again. No question.

  He put the papers aside, removed several blank sheets of paper and an envelope from the desk drawer, and began writing.

  When he finished fifteen minutes later, he sealed the envelope and tucked it into his pocket before crossing to the fireplace, clutching the papers from the safe-deposit box in his hands, and making a neat pile of them in the grate.

  He took a match from the box he kept on the mantelpiece, struck it, and set the flame to the papers. Then he crossed to the wall safe hidden behind the framed oil painting, swung back the painting on its hinges, and thumbed through the combination.

  He selected the papers he wanted, making sure there was nothing left that might incriminate anyone, and crossed back to the fireplace. Watching as the flames licked the papers, he added more to the blaze, until there was nothing, only black ashes. He checked through the ashes with the poker.

  The flames had done their work. Nothing remained.

  When he had done all he had had to do, he left the house. He drove to the post office four blocks away,
bought the stamp he needed, and posted the letter, express. He drove straight back to the house, parked the car in the garage this time, and went into his study again.

  Do it quickly, the voice in his head told him.

  No time for thought. No time for thinking about the pain to come. From the top drawer of the polished apple-wood desk he took out the long-barreled Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, checked that the chambers were loaded, then placed the barrel of the weapon in the roof of his mouth, letting his lips form a perfect O around the cold metal.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  It was all over in less than a second, and Tsarkin never heard the explosion that flung him up and backward, shattering half his brain, as the bullet ripped out through the back of his skull, sending shards of bone and bloodied brain matter flying into the air behind him, spattering the white walls gray and red as the blunted lead of the bullet embedded itself in the wood below the ceiling.

  Less than a second of primary pain.

  All in all, Nicolas Tsarkin could not have wished for a more quick and painless death.

  PART ONE

  2

  STRASBOURG, FRANCE. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23

  Sally Thornton knew she wanted to spend her last night with him.

  It was raining hard as they came out of the restaurant near the opera, and when Joe Volkmann hailed a taxi to take them back to his apartment, she knew she was going to stay. Men didn’t ask a girl back for a drink and then send her home in a taxi. Especially not on a rain-soaked night. At least not the men she’d known.

  She wore an emerald-green blouse that hugged her slim figure and matched her eyes. Her skirt was gray and tight, and her legs were sheathed in darker gray-patterned stockings. She knew she had a shape that most women would kill for. But she wasn’t quick to give her sexual favors. Though she knew little about Joe Volkmann, she liked him very much.

  Sally had been in the intelligence services for five years since Oxford, and she had just finished a six-month temporary posting at DSE—Direction de Sécurité Européenne. Created eighteen months earlier by the European Union, the intent had been to form a European equivalent of the United States’ FBI, with investigation and enforcement powers that crossed national frontiers. In practice, DSE didn’t quite live up to that intent. Despite the European Union, nationalism had not withered away. Still, her time in Strasbourg had been fascinating. But now it was time to go home, a week’s leave in London before her posting to New York.