The Charlemagne Murders Read online

  ISBN 978-1-59433-628-7

  ISBN 978-1-59433-629-4 eBook

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2016939629

  Copyright 2016 Carl Douglass

  —First Edition—

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in any form, or by any mechanical or electronic means including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, in whole or in part in any form, and in any case not without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  DEDICATION

  To the warriors, the defenders, the restorers, and the historians

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Butugychag Tin Mine, Soviet Gulag Camp for German POWs, Kolyma River, Siberia, USSR, April 1953

  CHAPTER ONE

  Arkhangelskoye Military Convalescent Home, Moscow, USSR, October 9, 1961

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  Alaskan Bear Lodge, Excursion Inlet, Alaska, August 7, 1962

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Alaskan Bear Lodge, August 8, 1962

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Regional Major Crimes Unit [MCU], Alaska Bureau of Investigation Post, Juneau, Alaska, August 9, 1962

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lomas de los Carolinos, Córdoba, Argentina, August 9, 1962

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Central de Policia de Cordóba, Av. Colón 1254, Cordóba Capital [Police Headquarters, Provincial Capital, Cordóba], the same day

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jardin du Luxembourg Park, Rue d’ Assas Entrance, Fauborg Saint Germain-des-Prés, 6th arrondissement [6ème], Paris, Assumption Day, August 15, 1962

  CHAPTER NINE

  47 Rue d’Assas, Fauborg Saint Germain-des-Prés, 6th arrondissement [6ème], Paris, Assumption Day, late morning

  CHAPTER TEN

  26 Rue Vavin, Fauborg Saint Germain-des-Prés, 6th arrondissement [6ème], Paris, Assumption Day, 1962, early afternoon

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Bundesland State of Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, August 22, 1962

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bundeskriminalamt [BKA-Federal Criminal Police Office], Office of Der Polizeipräsident in Wiesbaden [The Police Chief of Wiesbaden], Thaerstrsse 11, Wiesbaden, Germany, August 23, 1962

  Landespolizei [Bundeslandt State Police] Kriminalpolitzei, Detective Branch, Wittelsbachstrasse. 3, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, August 25,

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Thirty minutes later

  Schloss Krupp, southeast corner of Lietzenburger and Pfalzburger Strassen, Charlottenburg Section of City West, Berlin, Germany, six hours later

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Landespolizei [Bundeslandt State Police] Kriminalpolitzei, Detective Branch, Wittelsbachstrasse. 3, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, late evening, August 28, 1962

  Suite 2212, Haus Cumberland Office Building on the Kurfürstendamm Avenue between Bleibtreu and Schlüterstrasse, Charlottenburg, Berlin, August 29, 1962, three o’clock in the afternoon

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Headquarters, Metropolitan Police Service/New Scotland Yard, Criminal Investigation Department [CID], Victoria Embankment, August 21, 1962

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Army and Navy Club in London [popularly known as The Rag], 36-39 Pall Mall, St. James Square, Sixth Floor Conference Room

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Magadan, Siberia, April 1953

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Magadan, Siberia, March 1954

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Magadan, Yakutia, Siberia, late April 1954

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Oymyakon, Yakutia, Siberia, June 1954

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Tommot, Aldansky District, Yakutia, Siberia, July 1954

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Moschendorf Transit and Release Camp, Occupied Germany on the Bavaria, August 1954

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Schlosskirche [Palace Church], Ellingen, Bavaria, August 22, 1954

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Bad Kreuznach—Lager Galgenberg und Bretzenheim PWTE—Bad Kreuznach District, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, August 18, 1954

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Bad Kreuznach—Lager Galgenberg und Bretzenheim PWTE—Bad Kreuznach District, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, August 22, 1954

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  POW Camp 63 Brienne le Chateâu, France [Kriegsgefangenenpost 62: POW Post Office], August 29, 1954

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  POW Camp 63 Brienne le Chateâu, France [Kriegsgefangenenpost 62: POW Post Office], September 1, 1954

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Schlosskirche [Palace Church], Ellingen, Bavaria, August 19, 1954

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Schlosskirche [Palace Church], Ellingen, Bavaria, August 19 to September 14, 1954

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Konstanz Cathedral in Konstanz, Baden-Wurttemberg, Lake Constance Border Region, September 25, 1954

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  UBS [Union Bank of Switzerland], Rue des Noirettes, 35 Centre des Acacias 1227 Carouge, Genève, Switzerland, September 28, 1954

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  UBS [Union Bank of Switzerland], Rue des Noirettes, 35 Centre des Acacias 1227 Carouge, Genève, Switzerland, September 28, 1954

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Corporate Offices of European International Conglomerate, No. 13 Upper Belgrave Street, London, February 2, 1959

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Corporate Offices of European International Conglomerate, No. 13 Upper Belgrave Street, London, September 8, 1960

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Arkady Hotel, Central Moscow, USSR, October 8, 1961

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Arkhangelskoye Military Convalescent Home, USSR, October 9, 1961

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  MYC [Moscow Criminal Investigations Department] Building, Petrovka 38 Street, Moscow USSR, October 9, 1961

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  MYC [Moscow Criminal Investigations Department] Building, Petrovka 38 Street, Moscow USSR, October 9, 1961—afternoon

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  MYC [Moscow Criminal Investigations Department] Building, Petrovka 38 Street, Moscow USSR, October 9, 1961, late afternoon

  CHAPTER FORTY.

  US Army Alaska Defense Command/Alaska Department, 83rd MP Det CID [Criminal Investigation Division], Office of the Special Agent in Charge, Building 47645, Fort Richardson, Anchorage, Alaska, August 20, 1962

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Fort Sam Houston, Camp Bullis Army Base Military Police Office, Bexar County, Texas, Northwest of San Antonio, August 20, 1962

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Fort Sam Houston, Camp Bullis Army Base Military Police Office, Bexar County, Texas, Northwest of San Antonio, August 24, 1962, midmorning

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Fort Sam Houston, Camp Bullis Army Base Military Police Office, Bexar County, Texas, Northwest of San Antonio, August 24, 1962, afternoon

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Central de Policia de Cordóba, Av. Colón 1254, Cordóba Capital [Police Headquarters, Provincial Capital, Cordóba], August 10, 1962

  Police Station 28, San Carlos de Bariloche, Rio Negro Province, Argentina, early evening

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Police Station 28, San Carlos de Bariloche, Rio Negro Province, Argentina, 1900 hours, August 26, 1962

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Le Bureau Central National (BCN) d’INTERPOL pour la France [The International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL], Office of Senior Detective Chief Superintendent Eugène Léon Dentremont, 200
Quai Charles de Gaulle, 69006 Lyon, France, August 28, 1962

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Le Bureau Central National (BCN) d’INTERPOL pour la France [The International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL], Office of Senior Detective Chief Superintendent Eugène Léon Dentremont, 200 Quai Charles de Gaulle, 69006 Lyon, France, August 30, 1962, late afternoon

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Le Bureau Central National (BCN) d’INTERPOL pour la France [The International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL], Office of Senior Detective Chief Superintendent Eugène Léon Dentremont, 200 Quai Charles de Gaulle, 69006 Lyon, France, August 30, 1962, later that same day

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  United States Department of Justice, Office of the Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, August 30, 1962, 12:35 p.m

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Headquarters, Metropolitan Police Service/New Scotland Yard, Criminal Investigation Department [CID], Victoria Embankment, August 31, 1962

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Corporate Offices of European International Conglomerate, No. 13 Upper Belgrave Street, London, August 22, 1962

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Corporate Offices of European International Conglomerate, No. 13 Upper Belgrave Street, London, August 22, 1962, later that day

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Empty lot next to Cantina Rojas, Ojinaga, Chihuahua State, Mexico, September 29, 1962

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Tarrant County Elmwood Sanatorium, outside Fort Worth, Texas, September 31, 1962, evening

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Tarrant County Elmwood Sanatorium, outside Fort Worth, Texas, September 31, 1962, late evening

  Soviet Naval Aviation Office, A-253, Chapayevskiy Per., Dom 19, across from the Moscow Military District Headquarters, 1600 hours Moscow time, the same late evening

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX.

  Soviet Naval Aviation Office, A-253, Chapayevskiy Per., Dom 19, across from the Moscow Military District Headquarters, 1622 hours Moscow time, the same late evening

  Tarrant County Elmwood Sanatorium, outside Fort Worth, Texas, October 1, 1962, 0830

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Tarrant County Elmwood Sanatorium, outside Fort Worth, Texas, October 3, 1962, early morning

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Arbat Street, No. 83, Moscow, October 3, 1962, late morning

  Tarrant County Elmwood Sanatorium, outside Fort Worth, Texas, October 3, 1962, early afternoon

  Abasto Transient Hotel, Ex Abasto District, Córdoba, Argentina, the same afternoon

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Corporate Offices of European International Conglomerate, No. 13 Upper Belgrave Street, London, October 3, 1962, late morning

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Abasto Transient Hotel, Ex Abasto District, Córdoba, Argentina, October 4, 1962, late morning

  Headquarters, Metropolitan Police Service/New Scotland Yard, Criminal Investigation Department [CID], Victoria Embankment, London, the same day

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Boehme New Alemana Delicatessen 420 Avenida Pepito Moreno, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, October 8, 1962

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Le Bureau Central National (BCN) d’INTERPOL pour la France [The International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL], Office of Senior Detective Chief Superintendent Eugène Léon Dentremont, 200 Quai Charles de Gaulle, 69006 Lyon, France, June 12, 1963

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Construction Headquarters, Pueblo Parque National Nahuel Huapi Project, Bariloche, Argentina, September 23, 1963, 0900

  Chocolatería Más Rico de Bariloche, No. 669 Avenida General José de San Martin, San Carlos de Bariloche, September 23, 1963, 0910

  Le Bureau Central National (BCN) d’INTERPOL pour la France, Office of Senior Detective Chief Superintendent Eugène Léon Dentremont, 200 Quai Charles de Gaulle, 69006 Lyon, France, 1300, the same day.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Department of Justice, Office of the Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC, September 23, 1963, afternoon

  Palais de Justice Boulevard du Palais in the Île de la Cité in central Paris, SDM [Service de Contrôle Budgétaire et Comptable Ministériel—Office of Accounting and Budget], Office of Philippe Jean Joseph de Douai, assistant minister, that same afternoon

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations [Mossad LeAliyah Bet], Headquarters of Director Levi Appleman ben Cohen, Glilot Junction on Highway 2, Ramat Aviv Neighborhood of Tel Aviv, September 28, 1963, afternoon

  Boehme New Alemana Delicatessen 420 Avenida Pepito Moreno, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, that same afternoon, four o’clock

  Chocolatería Más Rico de Bariloche, No. 669 Avenida General José de San Martin, San Carlos de Bariloche, that same afternoon, four o’clock

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Vicinity of the Bariloche Train and Bus Terminals, 1622 the same day

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Entre Lagos, Chile, Ruta 215-CH, late evening the same day.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  Municipal Bus Terminal, Puerto Montt, Chile, six a.m. the following day

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Casa Fischer Guesthouse, Calle Mirador 20, Puerto Varas, Chile, the same morning

  Club Aleman, 264 Ave. Antonio Varas, Puerto Montt, September 29, 1963, midnight

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  Super Seiner Factory Ship Port of Embden 220, in the South China Sea near the Spratley Islands, Six bells on the middle watch, October 18, 1963

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Victoria Harbor Port Facilities, Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong British Crown Colony, November 2, 1963

  Le Bureau Central National (BCN) d’INTERPOL pour la France [The International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL], Office of Senior Detective Chief Superintendent Eugène Léon Dentremont, 200 Quai Charles de Gaulle, 69006 Lyon, France, November 28, 1963

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  Continental Hotel, 132 Đnen Khởi, Bến Nghé, Quận 1, Saigon, December 12, 1963

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  EMT [État-major tactique, Tactical Command Post], La Légion Étrangère, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Algeria, December 29, 1964

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  EMT [État-major tactique, Tactical Command Post], La Légion Étrangère, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Algeria, December 29, 1964, late evening

  Le Bureau Central National (BCN) d’INTERPOL pour la France [The International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL], Office of Senior Detective Chief Superintendent Eugène Léon Dentremont, 200 Quai Charles de Gaulle, 69006 Lyon, France, December 29, 1964, late evening

  Oval Office, the White House, Washington, DC, December 31, 1964, 0600

  Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations [Mossad LeAliyah Bet], Headquarters of Director Levi Appleman ben Cohen, Glilot Junction on Highway 2, Ramat Aviv Neighborhood of Tel Aviv, January 1, afternoon

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  Tell Atlas Mountains, Northwestern Algeria, January 3, 0 dark-30

  BOQ [Bachelor Officers Quarters], EMT [État-major tactique, Tactical Command Post], La Légion Étrangère, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Algeria, early morning

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  Armurerie, EMT [État-major tactique, Tactical Command Post], La Légion Étrangère, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Algeria, January 3, 1964, 0715

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Armurerie, EMT [État-major tactique, Tactical Command Post], La Légion Étrangère, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Algeria, January 3, 1964, noon

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Armurerie, EMT [État-major tactique, Tactical Command Post], La Légion Étrangère, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Algeria, January 3, 1964, 1900 hours

  EPILOGUE

  Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations [Mossad Le Aliyah Bet], Headquarters of Director Levi Appleman ben
Cohen, Glilot Junction on Highway 2, Ramat Aviv Neighborhood of Tel Aviv, February 28, 1964

  J. Edgar Hoover Building, FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] Headquarters, Office of the DFBI [Director FBI] Warren Brent Gaines, 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC, later that same afternoon

  PROLOGUE

  The Inscription over the Vestibule of Hell

  Through me you pass into the city of woe:

  Through me you pass into eternal pain:

  Through me among the people lost for aye.

  Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d:

  To rear me was the task of power divine,

  Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.

  Before me things create were none, save things

  Eternal, and eternal I endure.

  “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”

  “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

  -Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia di Dante: Inferno

  [The Divine Comedy - Dante’s Inferno], Canto III: 1–21, 1317

  Butugychag Tin Mine, Soviet Gulag Camp for German POWs, Kolyma River, Siberia, USSR, April 1953

  Across the gravel empty space between the camp security gate and their barracks, two thin graying men shuffled painfully, eyes down, pushed and shoved by brutal camp guards. They were crawling with lice on their bodies which had not been bathed in a year, and their clothing was covered with cassiterite—tin ore dust—which had accumulated since the previous year’s washing. The two specters—barely living ghosts with skin stretched across their bones—wore all the clothes they owned on their backs—ill-fitting maximum security special treatment uniforms consisting of thin woolen pants and camp jackets with dull gray and maroon horizontal stripes and the same decrepit combat boots they were wearing when they were captured eight years previously. A close inspection of their faces would reveal they were twenty years older than their chronological age. They had been reduced to what was known in the Sevvostlag system of hard labor and minimal or no food as helpless dokhodyaga [goners].

  They were POWs and known to the Soviets as zeks—slave laborers—who had lost their identity within the system, and no one in their native France was aware they were alive or had any idea where they had been for more than a decade. The two men and seventeen other survivors were all that remained of the eighty-one members of their 33rd Waffen-Grenadier SS Division when they were originally captured. The Schutzstaffel officers’ prison—since being captured in Berlin by victorious Soviet troops during the last days of the Third Reich—was the Butugychag Tin Mine, a Soviet gulag camp known as the “Valley of Death”—the most notorious of the infamous Soviet internment camps. The majority of gulag camps were positioned in extremely remote areas of northeastern Siberia beyond the Arctic Circle. The Butugychag camp was part of the Sevvostlag—severo-vostochnye lagerya—or SVITL [The North-East Camps located along the Kolyma River]. A nearby area along the Indigirka River came to be known as the Gulag inside the Gulag. In one village in that region, a record low temperature of -96 °F was recorded. Under the supervision of Lavrenty Beria who headed both NKVD and the Soviet Atom bomb program until his demise in 1953, thousands of zeks like Antoine and Michaele were used to mine uranium ore and prepare test facilities at Novaya Zemlya, Vaygach Island, and Semipalatinsk.