A rutted dirt road cut through a wooded park north of Hamburg. The moonless night deepened the darkness within the tunnel of tall pines. A wild swath of brush, brambles, and thorns sprawled along a crumbling stonewall to rusting wrought-iron gates opened wide for the evening's guests.
During the reign of the Baader-Meinhof Gang the Von Hausen estate had been guarded by electronic sensors, video cameras, and attack dogs, and armed guards. Most of the revolutionaries were prisoners, fugitives or deadand neglect served as the best security measure for Germany's uncrowned aristocracy.
Flickering torches flared before a 19th-Century mansion. Laughter echoed through the savage rose gardens. The men appeared powerful and the wives looked ten years younger than their real age. The uniformity of their faces and bodies shared the success of ageless interbreeding.
Dexy's COME ON, EILEEN blared from the speakers. Exquisite teenage girls moved sinuously, while the blasé young boys shrugged listlessly from side to side.
Behind the twin turntables Bertram Bellepas was dying to dance with several of the female guests, but Kurt had warned the DJ against fraternization.
This gathering preferred the help in their place and the older set viewed Kurt with all the suspicion the rich hold for the lower classes. Few could understand their host’s association with such Gesindel. Lukas Von Hausen simply called the nightclub owner 'entertainment'.
His young wife skated through the crowd on high heels. A shimmering silk sheath clung to her tanned body and her silver-blonde hair cast an unearthly halo around her face. Vanessa Von Hausen greeted Lucas with a kiss. Her marriage to a man over twenty years her senior and the antithesis to her ingenuous purity mystified everyone.
Lukas' golden hair had thinned to patches and his flesh was mottled from drug abuse. His bright smile had been replaced by decaying teeth. Considering how hard the baron had abused himself throughout the Sixties and Seventies, his achieving forty-two years amazed no one more than himself, but he had not always been as ruined as he was today and kissed her cheek, consummately acting the role of a loving husband.
“Having a good time, darling?”
"Lots of fun," his wife whispered in her ear and touched a red spot on his shirt. His grimace confirmed another meeting with mistress and she withdrew her hand, as if his masochism might be contagious, saying,
“Come dance with me.”
"Dancing is best left for the young in body and heart. You’ll have more fun with Kurt.”
“I’d rather dance with you.” Vanessa prayed for his salvation, but turned her turquoise blue eyes on Kurt Oster. She motioned to him. They met on the dance floor. Many of guests scrutinized their every move and Kurt asked, “You us want to dance in front of these people?”
“Lukas gave me permission, so I’ll ask again. Dance?"
"With you. Anywhere at anytime."
Vanessa swayed back and forth to synthetic-pop of Tabu’s ALLEIN. Silky strands rippled across her spine like a theater curtain closing on the stage and a lengthy gold necklace swung between her compact breasts. The melting scent of her perfume wafted in the night air. Feeling hard nipples shift across his chest,
Kurt stepped back from Vanessa.
“What is wrong?”
“These people are the upper echelon of Northern Germany. Their lineage stretches back in time to the Middle Ages and their families control riches beyond imagination, but these people only have money, because they were born rich, married someone rich, or stole it. My father vanished after Stalingrad and my stepfather was a brutal Hafenstrasse butcher. I was born with a bone in my mouth. Not a silver spoon. I will never be one of them."
Germany's complicated laws of inheritance protected any true redistribution through marriage, so Kurt could only achieve his dream by robbing from the rich to give to the poor and he held Vanessa tighter.
"Like Lucas?"
"I will never be him, but that is good, because you do not love Lukas and he does not love you"
“How can you say that? He is my husband."
"Yes, he is." He understood that it was better for him to say nothing about Lukas' arrangement with Petra. His hand slipped down her back and then he spun her in a dizzying circle. “I am not here to schmatzen with these people. They have no use for me. I am here to see you."
"Me?"
"You know how I feel about you and I think you feel the same way too. I am working on something that could change both our lives and then I will ask you to leave this all behind. Somewhere in your heart you will find a way to say, "Yes."
Her life belonged to Lukas and Vanessa demanded without any conviction, “Stop.”
"Why?" Kurt sidestepped around her, then pulled Vanessa tight like an Apache dancer. “You want us as much as me."
Bertram segued into LE FREAK. Chic's hit launched the dancers into a frenzy.
On the terrace Lukas clapped his hands in feigned delight and waved for his wife to come over. Once she was next to him, he put his arm lovingly around her and asked, "What did Kurt say to you?"
She paused for a second, attempting to tell a lie, only her upbringing wouldn’t allow anything, but the truth.
"Kurt wants to take me away."
"Oh, don't they all, my dear? What else did he say?" Kurt and Lukas had met countless times at parties, concerts, and clubs.
"That he had something big planned that could change everything for him."
"What? Like rob a bank?"
"He did not say." Vanessa lowered her head.
"Of course he would not." Lukas cautioned her like a concerned husband, "You should stay away from Kurt. There was nothing more pathetic than a lower-class fool in love with their better."
"Thank you for the warning." Vanessa was trapped playing the princess in a diabolical fairy tale. "If there is anything I have learned from you, it is that no man is harmless."
“And few women too.” Lukas walked away, as tears formed in her eyes. Only one woman could satisfy his libido and he should have married Petra, except his titled prejudices forbade such a luxury.
Entering the library, Lukas stood before the monumental 32-volume dictionary of the German language started by the Grimms Brothers and completed in 1961. Only a thousand copies were sold, since few people could afford a full set.
Books crowded the library's shelves. His father hadn’t read any of them. Lukas had upheld the tradition and lifted Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig, as if the sentences, paragraphs, and chapters could be absorbed through the power of osmosis, though not a single word passed through the covers to his hand. Lukas hated books as dusty reminders of the past, since he had come to view that his entire life as various remakes of his favorite movies; DARLING, SUNSET BOULEVARD, INFANTS DE PARADIS, SALO, and most lately Jean Renoir's black-and-white version of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
Lukas slammed his fist against the wall. He had been tricked by an addendum to his father's will that he would be left out of the inheritance, unless he married an honorable woman.
The old man had been mad to think his sacramental union with a girl as pure as Vanessa could rescue his soul from damnation and he would have disinterred his father's corpse for the forest animals to scavenge, except his designs were on the living.
Someone knocked on the door.
"Come in."
The door to the library opened for his guest.
Lukas motioned for SS Tommy to sit.
Cali's right-hand man bore a close resemblance to a boar wearing a blonde wig.
"Good evening, Herr Von Hausen."
"Yes, it is." Lukas pulled the shades shut and SS Tommy sat in a rich leather chair.
“Embarrassed by me?”
“You wouldn’t fit into this crowd.”
“And Kurt Oster does?”
“He has his uses as do you.”
“Just not socially other than right-wing meetings.”
"One day the Reich will rise again."
"Like the sun." SS Tommy leaned back to look at the party. “The rich having fun.”
"Sadly I am not rich. My beloved father had spent everything trying to save our steel mills. I inherited this 'mansion' and nothing else."
"I know your situation and that you can't pay me back. That is a problem, but the Party has asked me to give you time." SS Tommy hated the aristocrat, but the Party was in no position to exclude upper-class members. He picked up DER TOD IN VENIDIG without reading its title. "But you didn't invite me here for a social chat, so what do you want?" SS Tommy
"Besides a united Germany, what is your fondest dream?"
"To be King of the Reeperbahn."
"Those are dangerous words.”
“For you more than me.”
“Do not worry I will say nothing, but what if I could make your dream come true?" Lukas had continued associating with the Neo Nazis in case the connection might come in handy one day and today was that day.
"You? How could you help me?"
"Who stands in your way? Ein Schwartzer. Kali Nordstrum."
"Everyone knows this?"
"I hired someone to follow my wife. She had several innocent meetings with Kurt. I told him to follow Kurt. Two nights ago he reported that Kurt and Nigger Cali met with a transvestite, who turned out to be a banker. It seemed like nothing."
"Cali does nothing for nothing."
"Exactly." Lukas faced SS Tommy. "Cali and Kurt Oster might have something big in the works. Something that could help both you and me, if we were to interfere."
"Such as what?"
"A robbery worth several million Deustchmarks. The whos are connected, it is strictly a matter of finding out when and where."
“And you’re asking me to help you?”
“Asking you to be a partner is as dangerous as grabbing an egg from a snakehole.”
“I feel the same way about you, but while a snake might bite any hand stuck in the hole, no one said you had to be the one snatching the egg, but I'm no sucker." SS Tommy slammed down the book and seized the baron by his lapels.
"No one said you were. Lukas and Cali will be our Sonderboch." Lukas answered and the pimp loosens his grip. “Now I understand why the rich are rich. Because they cheat everyone.” SS Tommy let off Lukas.
“So what is next?”
"When my man tells me any new information, I will tell you."
"Is he police?"
"Yes, but he can be trusted."
"A Nazi?"
"Yes. Are you in or not?"
"If I find out you have been lying to me in any way, I will kill you."
"I hope you find that will be unnecessary." Lukas flipped his arm against the pimp's wrists, knocking himself free. His right hand struck the pimp's throat and his fingers choked off his air. "You may think me a weak man. An ex-junkie. A masochist, but I am not what you think. Not at all."
Lukas released SS Tommy and the baron slapped him on the back.
"Breathe slowly and the pain will go away faster."
The taller man could have easily killed him a few seconds ago and the blonde pimp would not underestimated the Count twice.
"When would this happen?"
"Maybe a month. Maybe two."
"Will this cost me any money?"
"Only time and your special talents." Lukas adjusted his jacket, strangely aroused by the confrontation. SS Tommy pointed a thick finger at the count, trying to regain some of his confidence.
"Remember. If you fuck with me...."
"You will kill me." Lukas displayed no fear of SS Tommy’s threats. “So are we in agreement?” The blonde pimp nodded and the two men shook hands. Lukas opened the door.
"You'll understand, if I ask you to leave by the back."
"No offense taken," SS Tommy fantasized about paying back this insult and walked through the woods to his car parked on the nature park’s road. He rubbed his throat and drove his Ferrari from the state forest.
The title of King of the Reeperbahn appealed to him, not because of money. He had more than he needed as well as every type of woman in this world. He craved the power to strike back at everyone who had ever stood in his way and that list was topped by Cali, because as much as he enjoyed the sound of 'King of the Reeperbahn', it would even sound better once SS Tommy was ruled the street and Cali was floating in the Elbe.
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