Opening the window from the outside didn't take much effort, only a crowbar and some patience. The trick was prying the window quietly so that he wouldn't wake Martin or his wife. Once inside, Indy began exploring the house. He snuck from room to room, careful to close the door before taking out his flashlight to rifle through closets and drawers.
He slunk around the first floor like he was exploring an ancient ziggurat, but instead of setting off traps, he had to worry about the still living inhabitants. With its pots, pans, and metal cooking utensils, the kitchen posed the more obvious danger. It's not that he believed Martin would have stored his precious paintings under the sink. But he thought there was a good chance that they could be stored behind a lock, and he hoped to find a key or even a safe combination, perhaps written down as insurance against an aging memory.
He had no such luck on the first floor but hesitated before heading upstairs where Martin and his wife were sleeping through the twilight hours. Once heading up there, he wouldn't have to worry about accidentally knocking over a lamp. Stepping on a loose floorboard would be enough to wake the homeowners.
Indy navigated the stairs carefully, testing out each step to make sure it didn't set off a creak, and changing where his foot landed when he started to hear a sound. Upstairs, there were three rooms and a second bathroom. The master bedroom was obviously off limits, but Indy explored both the guest room and the office. Moving at a snail's pace, he again checked every drawer, closet, and corner of both rooms. He hesitated before entering the bathroom. After all, it didn't seem like the most likely place to hide anything of worth, but he knew that if he didn't look, then it would weigh on him afterwards.
While riffling through the medicine bottles behind the mirror, Indy heard the haunted moan of a door opening. If he left the bathroom, he would be quickly spotted in the hallway, so Indy stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain across the tub. He sat down with his knees pulled to his chest, feeling a little like a child hiding from his parent's wrath after breaking a household rule.
Indy could hear Martin stumble into the bathroom. It took him a couple of tries to turn on the light as he groggily slapped at the switch and then he relieved himself. Indy kept his breathing light and steady, for fear that any sound could be heard in the twilight stillness.
Even after Martin had turned off the light and left the bathroom, Indy sat hunched in the bathtub another five minutes, hoping that Martin will have drifted off to sleep. The upstairs held no more secrets anyway. Unless there was something hidden in the bedroom, there was nothing to find up here. And there was one last place Indy planned to look.
Carefully stepping down the basement stairs, Indy continued using his flashlight. Although it was safe to turn on the light without Martin noticing, he didn't want to alert any neighbors who might see lights turned on in the basement windows in the middle of the night as signs of an intruder. The finished basement served as repository to all sorts of boxes, all those items that you accumulate over time, and perhaps no longer need, but can't quite let go of. They were carefully arranged around the basement borders, but there was one particular container that stood out. Among the cardboard boxes there was a perfectly square wooden box.
Using the same crowbar he used to unlock the window, Indy began undoing the nails, which landed on the floor with a ping like a drop of water on metal. When he had finally removed all the nails, Indy stood over the box for a moment. If the artwork wasn't here, then he wasn't sure he would have time to search the rest of the basement.
Inside, the ghostly white image of Trude Steiner lay on top of several other paintings. Indy carefully removed the Klimt painting, leaning it delicately against the box, and found at least a half a dozen painting lying underneath. Klimt and the Steiner family weren't the only victims of Martin's avarice.
But before he could take an inventory, Indy heard footsteps behind him. His attention had been consumed by the unearthly beauty of Klimt's painting, and he didn't notice Martin sneak up on him with a lead pipe.
Indy woke with his hands tied above his head and his feet barely able to touch the ground. As his eyes adjusted to the bright light of the naked lightbulb, he saw Martin standing in front of him.
"You're not following the restraining order," he said with a smile. "I knew you couldn't stay away. It's just not in your nature, is it?"
"It was all a trap. You were waiting for me." Indy adjusted his body, but when he tried to put more weight on his feet, it felt like his shoulders were going to dislocate, and his ankles ached when he put more weight on his toes.
"I had hoped that your time in jail would be enough to keep you away, but I had a feeling that wouldn't be the end."
"I found your collection, and I know who you are, Gottfried Friedrich Bauer. You're going away for the rest of your life."
"I haven't heard that name spoken out loud in so many years," Martin said as if in a revery. "It almost seems like an artifact from another time. I suppose it is. A name from a past life."
"No. You don't get to discard what you did that easily. You helped commit the greatest crime of the 20th century. You don't get to just live the remainder of your life."
"But why not? Look at me. I'm old. I'm not going to hurt anyone anymore."
Indy looked around at the situation as if presenting evidence at a trial.
"Well, I'm not going to hurt anyone else. You have to understand that you put me in quite the position. I didn't realize I had moved in next to a detective."
"I prefer academic."
"I hope you're happy. I've lived in this country for over thirty years, and I've been on the run for longer. And you're only one of two people who figured me out. You have to be proud of that. I hope it's some consolation before you die."
"But why return to the States? You had fled Germany for Chile. Why risk entering the United States in the first place?"
"The problem with Chile is all the Chileans. Just like the problem with Argentina are all the Argentinians. I had no desire to live out the rest of my life among a mongrel people."
"A true believer to the end."
"Why shouldn't I believe in racial superiority. The Third Reich is dead. Buried under ashes of that terrible war. But the central truth, the idea of Aryan superiority lives on. You asked me why America. Well, America is where I felt most at home.
"When my wife and I married we took our honeymoon in Georgia. And everywhere I turned, I saw your Confederate flag. A country that lasted a handful of years, and still the people of America were in thrall to this idea. I read a bit more about your history. Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, called white racial superiority the cornerstone of their new nation. I saw this flag, and I thought to myself, I'm home."
"You forgot something else about Nazi Germany and the Confederacy: they both lost."
"But the ideas live on. Even now, America is as racially segregated as it has ever been. You're as much an apartheid state as your friends in South Africa. Deep down, you know this is how it must be."
"A lot of good men died to bring down the Nazis. And after the war others still gave their lives to get civil rights and voting rights laws passed. Progress doesn't come easy."
"You believe in fairy tales."
"And what about your 'Jewish heritage,'" Indy said disdain.
"When you're in a foreign land what best way to hide than as one of your enemies. My wife, bless her soul, is Jewish. I didn't know when we first met, but as they say, the heart wants what it wants. She was devoted and demure. Thankfully, she's not like most of her people. What is the phrase, she's 'one of the good ones.' Exactly what I would want in a partner. Why give that up. In fact, I started to see it as an opportunity. I came up with my tragic backstory. My time in the camps and the trauma of it."
"But she doesn't know you were the one running those camps."
"Of course not."
"And what about all the numbered tattoos? I know that they were forced on you during your prison uprising. What did you tell your wife?"
"Someone has been doing research. I told her I was tortured by the guards, of course. They weren't content with just one string of numbers. They painfully stitched them into my skin as punishment for some act of defiance." Indy could see how much he reveled in his lie. He enjoyed so much finally revealing to someone his meticulous plans. It must have been boiling inside of him all these years, this desire to lay out in detail his genius to a captured audience.
"But it was actually the prisoners who did this to you. An ironic punishment for the man who had held their lives in his hands."
"Imagine my surprise when they let me live."
"And what about the reporter in Albany? He discovered who you were, didn't he? And you had to take care of him."
"You really did your homework. Craig was a fellow traveler. He was obsessed with the history of the Third Reich, and he was the first person who ever suspected I wasn't who I said I was. After all these decades, I suppose I still retain some of my old visage."
"So you became chums?"
"He wanted to learn about those years from someone who actually lived them. He had a whole collection of memorabilia. Collectors like that always seem a little stuck in the past, but I agreed to meet with him and tell him what it was like growing up in Germany before the war and about my military career. I'll admit that it was nice to unburden myself after decades."
"Until he became inconvenient."
"Craig had something of a gambling problem. He needed money quickly, and he thought he had leverage over me."
"And that's why you killed him."
"I had little choice. If I paid him, he would just come back for more later. A man that deeply in debt didn't get there through his own free will. He had a compulsion. The suicide was convincing enough, although the police were skeptical at first. And that's why we moved. I also thought it was a good opportunity to be closer to our son. But clearly we should have paid better attention to who our neighbors were going to be."
"Do you remember escaping Heidelberg on a train?"
"Strange you should ask."
"The two Americans who almost caught you, I was one of them."
"Then this must be schicksal. We were bound to meet again. Too bad you didn't catch me then, or too bad I didn't finish you forty years ago."
"What do you think you will do? Make me disappear? Assume everyone will forget about the crazy neighbor? Once I'm gone, people will look for me."
"It will be harder to get rid of you than it was Craig. He was a loner with few attachments. And you've already made too much noise, attracted too much attention. No, I will have to start again. It won't be easy, but I've always planned for this possibility. It's a big country, and there are plenty of places to hide."
As he explained his future plans, the basement door opened and the stairs creaked as someone made their way into the dark interior. The broad-shouldered silhouette of a man stood just outside of the arena of light that spread across the basement. It was Martin's son, Chris.
For a moment, Indy thought that he was being rescued. Chris had stumbled on his father holding a man prisoner in the basement. The next stop would be the police. But then the father spoke.
"You're finally here, Chris. I'm going to need your help."
"You really should have minded your own business," the son said to Indy, admonishing him like he was called into an afterschool meeting with for his troubled youth. He wasn't mad, just disappointed.
"I've been told I can be a problem," Indy said. "If you think this is bad, you should have seen me as a kid."
"Has he been like this the whole time?" Chris asked his father.
"It's been annoying."
Chris turned back to Indy. "You don't realize how much trouble you're in," he said as he rubbed his eyes in frustration. "We can't let you leave."
"I know exactly what you and your old man have planned for me. But you should consider why you're doing this. He must have taught you about his past. Did he ask you to hide it from you mother? Maybe you even buy into all that Nazi crap. Do you know what your father was responsible for? What he did during the War?"
"You're not going to tell me anything I don't already know, so if you're trying to turn me against my father, you can stop right now."
"As a father," Martin started, "I found that I had a responsibility to teach my son about how the world really works. I've had to protect him from all the lies his school told about equality and all that garbage. He knows everything about my past. Your words will have no effect on him."
"Keep on going," Indy said. "You're making me realize I wasn't such a bad father after all. Compared to you, I was Andy Griffith. And how will you explain this to your wife?"
"My wife is loyal. She will listen to what I have to say."
"And my guess is that what you have to say won't be the truth. What sort of lie are you planning?"
"What's the plan?" Chris turned towards his dad. Clearly, he believed ignoring Indy was best.
"We have to make this quiet." Martin pulled a gun from his pocket, a 9mm luger that he must have carried with him since the war.
As the father and son were planning his execution, Indy wriggled his wrists to loosen the ropes. Hanging from the basement ceiling had been painful, which was clearly Martin's intent, but the weight strained the knots he had tied. Decades ago, when Martin had regularly used stress positions, those knots would have been as tight as a sprung trap, but he no longer had the strength or dexterity to tie and hoist his victim as effortlessly. Indy could feel the knots loosen. He only had to complete the job.
"It has to be done here. We can't risk him making noise while carrying him to the car. And we can't use the gun because it would alert too many people, especially in this neighborhood. Not to mention your mother."
"And you want me to do this?" Chris said, hesitant.
"Look at these hands. They are too old. It took too much effort just to tie him up. You just take the garrote wrap it around his neck and pull. It will be over before you know it."
Chris appeared lost in thought, perhaps weighing other potential options.
"We have been in this together, you and I. I invited you into my world, taught you what is right what is true. Believe me when I say that as your father, I need you."
"And what happens when I'm dead?" Indy interrupted.
"Will you please shut up," Martin said, starting to lose his calm.
"You're going to dispose of the body and then what happens? Your father goes on the lam and leaves you here dealing with the clean up. Talking to the cops. They're going to suspect the neighbor. And when he's not around, they're going start looking at his son."
"You are a nice, white Christian boy. You have nothing to worry about."
"That's easy for him to say when he's going to be on a beach in El Salvador."
Martin snapped around and pushed the luger under Indy's eyepatch shoving the barrel of the gun into his socket. "I told you to shut up. You are not making it out of here alive no matter what you say, no matter how much you plead."
Martin took a moment to gather himself after his outburst. He tugged on his shirt. "You say you didn't lose your eye during the war?"
"That's right."
"I have to admit, I'm curious. What was it, then?"
"Whatever you have in mind, whatever your imagination might conjure, I guarantee you the real story is crazier."
"Really?" he said skeptically.
"Hey, look. You let me out of here, and I'll tell you all about it."
"If circumstances were different, I think we could have been friends."
"There's just one problem. I don't befriend Nazis."
Just then, Indy and Martin were interrupted by the high moan of the basement steps. Martin's wife surveyed the scene before her with a mix of horror and confusion. Her eyes darted back and forth as she couldn't process what she saw. When her eyes settled, she was aghast.
