The butterfly hunter, p.1
The Butterfly Hunter, page 1
First published in Great Britain in 2024 by
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Copyright © 2024 A. B. Stone
The right of A. B. Stone to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with theCopyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This work is entirely fictitious and except in the case of historical fact bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.
ISBN 9781835741627
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
To my family and friends, be they near or far.
And, though the villain ’scape a while, he feels
Slow Vengeance, like a bloodhound, at his heels
JONATHAN SWIFT
Contents
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
About the Author
One
Manaus, Brazil, 1963
Another sweltering day. The stray dogs are back, lying on their bellies in little groups of two or three, quietly appreciating one another’s company like old men relaxing at their club. Women at the roadside market are busy swapping gossip and haggling with the stallholders over the price of papayas and farinha. A noisy rabble of men, most of them overweight and shirtless, are hanging around under the big mango tree, drinking beer and playing games with the metal caps off the beer bottles. No one seems to give a damn about the dead body lying in the street.
It made Klara wonder whether stumbling across a corpse in this godforsaken Brazilian backwater was as commonplace as seeing a tramp sleeping in a shop doorway back home in New York. At first, she thought it was the body of an old woman, maybe someone who’d succumbed to the heat. But when she got closer, she found herself peering into the face of a woman of her own age, blonde like herself, and a lot better dressed than the local women. It was almost like looking at her own body sprawled on the ground. She shuddered at the thought. Same build, same height, more or less. Then, she saw the blood. The gunshot wound. She understood immediately. A case of mistaken identity, that’s what it was. Tragic for the dead woman but providential for her. She was the one those bastards were after, the one they wanted to get rid of, not this unfortunate lookalike who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She felt an urge to offer an apology, but she didn’t. That would have been absurd. Anyway, she wasn’t responsible for what had happened, was she? At least, not directly.
She heard a flurry of wings. A pair of vultures swooped down from the mango tree and alighted on the ground in front of her, their beady black eyes fixed on the corpse. She screamed blue murder at the unholy creatures. They hobbled backwards, hissing defiantly, then spread their wings and flapped their way back into the mango tree. They were still watching her. She could feel it. They were waiting.
New York, two months earlier
In an empty room above the art gallery at the corner of 89th Street and Fifth Avenue, Klara was standing at the window, watching the rain spattering on the glass, half hoping that the man she was supposed to meet there wouldn’t show up. Even over the phone his voice had sounded threatening. She’d told herself a million times she’d be a fool to come, but in truth he’d left her little choice. He knew too much about her. About her family. She lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke through her nostrils.
A voice behind her made her swing round. She recognised the German accent. It was him.
‘So, Fräulein Brandt, here you are.’ There was no warmth in his greeting – if you could call it a greeting.
He was a lot older than he’d sounded on the phone and walked with a slight limp.
‘You sure took your time,’ she said. ‘I was just about to give you up. And by the way, it’s Miss Brandt, not Fräulein. This is America, you know, not your precious Fatherland. Okay, I came. I’m here. So why don’t you tell me what you want?’
The old man raised his hand like a policeman holding up the traffic. ‘A little patience, please, Miss Brandt. You please come with me. The others are waiting.’
‘What d’you mean? I thought it would just be you.’
‘Then you were mistaken.’
He looked harmless enough in his baggy tweed jacket, puffing on his pipe like some old professor, but she didn’t trust him an inch. That phone call. He’d alarmed her by talking about things she’d never mentioned to anybody… the nightmare of her childhood in wartime Germany… the father she’d once respected, even loved, but now wanted to forget. How could he have known all that? Then came the crunch. ‘Klara Brandt,’ he’d said. ‘I like that name. It has a nice ring to it. Certainly preferable to your real name. I wonder if those people in Washington would be interested if someone were to tell them that the daughter of Colonel Hans Friedrich Weber has been living in New York for the past eighteen years under an assumed name. I think they would, don’t you?’
That was a week ago. When she’d asked him what he wanted, he said they needed to talk and told her to meet him at this gallery. It wasn’t far from the Guggenheim and seemed like a safe enough place for a rendezvous with a stranger. She hadn’t reckoned on being left on her own in this shabby attic several floors above the public exhibition space.
‘You please follow me,’ he was saying. He ushered her into a room at the end of the corridor and gestured towards several people sitting around a table. Someone was wearing an expensive perfume, most likely the woman with the blue-rinse hair. There were four men and two women. None of them could have been a day under sixty.
She flinched when she felt his hand on her arm. ‘My friends,’ she heard him say, ‘allow me to introduce our guest, Miss Klara Brandt.’
Six pairs of eyes turned to look at her. She pulled her coat more snugly around her shoulders. She had the impression they’d been expecting somebody else, someone different, not this young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes, wearing coral pink lipstick. There were a few perfunctory nods and some mumbled hellos. She heard someone whisper ‘Klara Weber!’
He pointed to an empty chair. ‘Now, you please come and join us.’
There was a hush as she took off her coat and sat down. She looked around the room. It was gloomy. Faded brown wallpaper. No carpet, just bare wooden floorboards. And these curious old people staring at her. They looked as if they’d just stepped out of one of those dusty picture frames stacked against the wall.
He leant over to her. The smoke from his pipe had a sickly-sweet aroma. ‘Let me pour you a cup of coffee, yes?’ There was a glass jug half full of coffee on the table and a jumble of white paper cups. In front of him was a black leather attaché case, which he pushed to one side. ‘So, Miss Brandt, if you’re ready, perhaps we can get down to business.’
What business? she wondered. Who were these people, with their furtive, watchful eyes? Most likely a gang of goddamn fascists operating right here in the middle of New York, scheming to recruit her because they knew her father had been a high-ranking officer in the Wehrmacht. She could see him now, in his smart uniform, clicking the heels of his shiny polished boots as he welcomed important guests to their house in Berlin. But it wasn’t just that. He’d been a member of that privileged clique that gathered around the Führer himself, a coterie of the trusted and the faithful. Something to be proud of, then. But not now. Don’t these people know the war’s been over for almost twenty years?
She turned to the man with the pipe. ‘Okay, let’s talk business then. You can begin by telling me who you all are, and why I’m here.’
He waved aside a lingering cloud of smoke. ‘Sorry, no names. You must understand that in our kind of work secrecy is paramount.’
‘Oh? And what kind of work is that?’
‘Come now, Miss Brandt, I think you must have some idea about that.’
Yes, she thought, a pretty good idea. She’d been lucky. After the war, she’d been put on a boat to the United States, just a child, carrying false papers. She’d been given a new name to sever her from her father’s unsavoury legacy. The shadows of her past didn’t belong in the new life she’d made for herself, so s
‘Miss Brandt,’ he was saying, ‘there’s something we want you to do for us. You have assumed as much, yes?’
‘Have I? Go on.’
‘All of us around this table have one single objective, one dream.’
She knew what that was. World domination, that’s what.
‘It boils down to this,’ he continued. ‘We need to find a certain man.’
‘I see. Who?’
‘Someone from the old days. In fact, someone who knew your father.’
‘Really?’
‘Certainly. This man we want was also a member of the Führer’s inner circle. A particularly zealous member, and clever enough to avoid getting captured when the Allies reached Berlin in ’45.’
‘Well, he’s probably dead by now.’
‘No. We believe he’s still alive, hiding somewhere, even now, as we speak. A living remnant of the Third Reich, no less. A very important remnant. We have to find him.’
So, it was just as she’d thought. A pack of lousy Nazis still dreaming about resurrecting themselves.
He continued. ‘Fräulein Weber…’
She corrected him. ‘Miss Brandt.’
‘Of course, Miss Brandt. You must understand that I’m not talking about any ordinary war criminal. This man was one of the top-ranking members of that evil gang responsible for death and destruction all over Europe.’ He fixed his eyes on her. ‘Each one of us here today was a victim of their madness. Every member of our families dragged away and murdered, even the children. Yet, somehow, we survived. You survived. Why? For what? Think about that.’
For a moment, Klara was confused. Had she got the wrong end of the stick about these people? She lit another cigarette but said nothing.
‘Excuse me.’ It was the woman with the blue-rinse hair. She’d taken off her thick glasses and was waving them at her. She sounded Polish, or perhaps Czech. ‘I understand you were only a child when you left Germany, Fräulein, but perhaps you remember what life was like in your country under those people, yes? How old are you now? Thirty-three? Thirty-four?’
‘My country? My country is the United States of America, but I know what you mean. Of course I remember. All too vividly. I and my family had first-hand experience of the way those people did things. I wasn’t a baby when I left. I was sixteen.’
‘Then you should understand why we are here, why fate has spared us. You want I tell you? Listen to me. We have a job to do. A sacred duty. We have to find this man, this criminal, this… monstrosity.’ Her voice started to shake. ‘Catch him, trap him, grab him… whatever is necessary to bring him to justice.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling and uttered something unintelligible. It sounded like a curse.
‘So that’s it,’ Klara said. ‘That’s what this is all about. But you’re not really going after him, are you? All that was twenty years ago.’
The man with the pipe was shaking his head. ‘Miss Brandt, the number of years is irrelevant. This man was one of the most ruthless operators among that entire pack of wolves. He made sure their outlandish ideas were brought to life. How much do you remember about the Nuremberg trials? Those at the top of the heap were tried, and many were executed. But the man we want disappeared, so they tried him in absentia. He was given a death sentence, but it was never carried out. How did he manage to get away? We don’t know. Where has he been hiding for almost twenty years? We don’t know that either.’
‘Well, that doesn’t help terribly much, does it? Anyway, what’s all this got to do with me?’
‘Believe me, Miss Brandt, it has more to do with you than you might think. Besides, you’re a journalist, aren’t you? A story like this—’
‘I’m sure that’s not why you got me here, just for a story. There’s something you haven’t told me. Who is he, this man? Doesn’t he have a name?’
‘Oh, he has a name all right, and it’s a name I think you’ll recognise. You want to know?’
He pushed his chair backwards, pressed the palms of his hands on the table to lever himself up, and limped across to the window. He appeared to be gazing at something in the far distance. Then he said, ‘His name is Walther Schacht.’
Klara froze. A cold shiver ran down her spine. Walther Schacht! She knew that name as well as she knew her own. Walther Schacht! The words rang in her brain like a rattle from Hell. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stiffening. Schacht! He was the bastard who’d ordered the slaughter of her family… father, mother and her two brothers, all murdered on his instructions. She thought he was dead. All those years. How could he still be alive? Her head was spinning.
‘Yes, Miss Brandt, SS-Gruppenführer Walther Ludwig Schacht, a man with almost absolute power. A ruthless administrator of murder.’ She had the strange feeling he was speaking in slow motion, through a sort of haze. Suddenly he was standing right next to her, pounding his fist on the table. ‘We have to find this man, this fucking… monster. Do you understand, Miss Brandt? We must not let him get away with his crimes and live and die a free man. We’ve got to find him now, before it’s too late.’
Klara’s head was bursting. Schacht, alive! ‘My god! If I ever get my hands on that filthy bastard, I’ll give him something to remember! Listen, after all these years, you don’t really believe there’s any chance of finding him, do you? He could be hiding anywhere. You sure he’s still alive?’
‘Oh yes, he’s alive all right. But the question is, where? It’s common knowledge that quite a few of them ended up in South America. Mainly small fry, but not all.’ He took two staccato puffs from his pipe to try to keep it alight. ‘South America is a big place. A very big haystack in which to search for a needle, wouldn’t you agree?’ He paused. She nodded. ‘We’ve had fragmentary reports from… from certain people we know… that lead us to believe he’s holed up somewhere down there. Most likely somewhere in Brazil. Maybe Paraguay.’
‘You mean… you don’t actually know where he is? Oh, that’s swell.’
The heavily built man sitting opposite her stubbed out his cigarette with such sudden force it made her jump. She’d never seen anyone with so black an expression on his face.
‘Know where he is?’ He spoke with a thick accent that she couldn’t quite place. ‘If I knew where that fucking bastard is hiding, I wouldn’t be sitting here. I’d…’ He shut his eyes and shook a fist in the air. He seemed scarcely aware that he’d picked up a paper cup and crushed the life out of it.
The man with the pipe waited for him to settle down. ‘So, now we come to the point, yes? My dear Miss Brandt, this is what you can do for us. We want you to find out where Herr Schacht is hiding. In what circumstances. In what sort of place. We’ve spent many years trying to locate him. We’re no longer young, and time is running out – for us and for him. This is our last chance.’
She knew they were going to ask her to do something for them, but not this. Walther Schacht! She was gripping the edge of the table with both hands.
‘Me? Why me? It makes no sense. Surely you have people specially trained for jobs like this. Professionals.’
‘Miss Brandt, two of our agents – yes, professionals – have tried to find him, and failed. Schacht and his minders managed to give them the slip.’ He took a box of matches out of his jacket pocket and fussed with his pipe. ‘As a matter of fact, one of them didn’t make it back. That was unfortunate, but we’ve lost agents before. It happens.’
Klara caught her breath. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘That’s why it’s time to take a different approach. That means you. No one would suspect a woman like you of being a secret agent on a mission. You’re more likely to be taken for an American tourist.’
‘Are you kidding? You want to know something? There’s plenty of people who don’t look like secret agents, not just me. So why me?’
‘True, but how many of them can speak fluent German, and have the military skills you picked up in the US army?’
