DR. CUBA – First Chapter (free sample)

Chapter 1: All Things Are Born

Dr. Cuba liked the smell of gasoline. It reminded him of his childhood in Ancash, his father, and that battered red bus. He relished the smell of gasoline, but the taste of it was bitter. Nevertheless, he downed the entire glass.

Todas las cosas nacen, he thought to himself. All things are born.

_____________________

The ink from yesterday’s newspaper headlines had barely dried. El Mercurio had reported on the robbery of a large number of gold bars stolen while en route to an official government warehouse in Argentina, and now its ink-stained workers found themselves setting type for a nearly identical story in the paper’s home city of Santiago, Chile. It may have been too early to connect the events, but the editors were more than willing to do so anyway.

ROBAN CASI 2,500 KILOGRAMOS DE LINGOTES DE ORO
¿Es el año 1945 una continuación de esta ola de criminalidad??

Just a month earlier, in March of 1945, Chile was fixated less on the nation’s tardy entry into World War II and its inevitable declaration of war against Japan and more on the third-place finish of the country in the Americas Cup. Football had, as always, the ability to nudge war and cataclysm onto the second page.

In the absence of either, the theft of 200 gold bars from the Central Bank would have to do. For this week, anyway.

The robbery defied logic. The gold had been stored in a highly secure vault that had been touted as theft-proof. To enter the vault, one would have first to pass a set of bored and underpaid national police guards, then make way through a main building built of concrete walls reinforced with steel bars, and then into one cage of hardened steel bars, through to a second, inner cage with even more bars, until one reached the vault itself. Each cage was sealed by a metal door of increasingly complex design and security, with the vault door being the state-of-the-art for 1945 Latin America. To blast one’s way into the central vault, a variety of explosives would have been necessary, with more and more destructive power needed as one reached the center. One of the building’s designers had insisted that thieves would have an easier time penetrating the deepest circle of Dante’s Inferno than breaking into that vault.

But there had been no explosives used. There was no sign of any force used at all, not a bent hinge nor a pried lock. Everything looked as pristine after the robbery as it had before. The Inferno appeared entirely unmolested.

And yet, 200 gold bars were missing. There were many other items of value in the very same vault, but these were left untouched. Jewels, currency, and even coins had been left behind. Ingots of platinum, of a value far beyond the stolen gold, had been left in their place. Entire caches of silver were likewise ignored.

Only gold.

The next question was just how the thieves moved their prize. The gold weighed nearly 5,500 pounds, demanding both time and equipment to move it from the vault to … well, wherever the thieves called home. A train?  There were open tracks in the Central Bank’s main warehouse, but these were blocked by a disused engine parked immediately outside of the warehouse. To use a rail car, the thieves would have had to carry the gold from the vault through all the inner buildings, with their respective cages and gates, into the railyard, and then somehow get it past the dead engine.

Even with hauling barrows and railcars, the amount of work would have required hours and working in near silence over many days. Yet somehow, the thieves performed the entire operation within a single night, silently, invisibly, and without bending even one hinge or prying a single lock.

The Mercurio reporter, Jose Vargas de la Cruz, had uncovered no possible explanations in his brief, but moderately thorough, investigation. He had interviewed a smattering of the Central Bank’s employees—at least those he was able to reach before government officials pushed them into a back room away from the press—and received nearly identical accounts from everyone. None of those whom de la Cruz interviewed had seen anything, heard anything, or suspected anything.

“An inside job,” El Mercurio’s editor muttered, scanning de la Cruz’s draft. “No other explanation.”

“There were at least 50 or 75 people working the day shift,” de la Cruz said, with a slight air of defense. “Then, at least 25 night-shift men took over. All the normal procedures were followed.” De la Cruz clearly felt his reporting was being challenged.

“Print it,” the editor grumbled, shoving the draft back into de la Cruz’s hands. Nothing more. De la Cruz understood his boss wasn’t questioning him after all; he was just filling the air with his uninformed opinion before yielding to the clock on the wall, which demanded the day’s stories be filed within the half hour.

_____________________

In New York City, the Homunculus walked the streets with an aura of confidence and, one might say, elegance. It wasn’t because he was particularly confident or elegant but simply because he lacked a soul and, therefore, did not care at all for the creatures scurrying around him on Fifth Avenue.

He wore a tailored black suit, a crisp white shirt with perfect cuffs, and a fashionable, even modern, bespoke fedora with a shocking red hatband. Black leather gloves snapped tight on each hand. Again, the ensemble would have led anyone to believe the Homunculus was wealthy when, in fact, he had paid for none of it.

The suit was hand-made by an old seamster who had been tied to an oak post in a dilapidated warehouse on Canal Street, copper wires running from his feet and neck to a rusty car battery. Once the suit was made and the fit checked for perfection, a switch was thrown, and the old tailor’s career rapidly ended. The elegant shirt, meanwhile, had been crafted by a Chinese tailor, also near Canal Street, who was spared the indignity of electrocution once the last button was affixed; instead, he was thrown into a fire. The hat was made by a relatively young milliner who studied under one of the more famous fashion houses in the city and had a surprising and unfortunate encounter with the front of a train—but only after finishing that lurid red hat band, of course.

It’s best not to discuss the gloves at all.

In the end, the Homunculus had filled his closet with an assortment of fine garments, each with a story to tell and each costing him absolutely nothing.

His choice of clothing was neither the product of his upbringing—if you could call it that—nor any particular sense of fashion. It was purely a necessity. If he was to enmesh himself in the fabric of society as his goals required, he would need to dress the part. In that same closet were other types of clothing for other types of needs: mechanic’s overalls, a butcher’s apron, even a heavy fur-lined coat for use in the Arctic.

The black suit with red-banded fedora was the appropriate dress for today’s objective. The Homunculus rounded the corner and entered an opulent restaurant attached to an equally opulent hotel renowned for business travelers of the highest classes. He removed his hat and gloves.

“The name for your reservation, sir?” the maître d’ asked, feigning interest. The Homunculus silently noted how the man’s face changed to genuine curiosity—if not concern—when he noticed the forefinger of the Homunculus’ left hand. The skin was colored a deep, ruby red. If this was some sort of sailor’s tattoo, it was unlike anything the maître d’ had seen before. The maître d’s face oozed suspicions about this strange patron’s social status.

“I’m here as a lunch guest for Mr. Leonard Port,” the Homunculus said, ignoring the man’s poorly disguised disdain; he was used to it. He also knew the name Leonard Port would cut short any lingering doubts as to whether he belonged in this restaurant or not. Port was one of the wealthiest men in New York City and, while no figure of history nor much public renown, maître’d’s in opulent restaurants nevertheless knew who he was. Port likely had his own table in most of the city’s expensive spots, as he clearly did here.

“Yes,” said the maître d’, consulting his reservation book. “I see Mr. Port is expecting one for lunch. May I have your name, sir?”

“Mr. Guest,” the Homunculus replied. Ridiculous, of course, and no one would have believed the name was real, but it hardly mattered. It matched what Port had given the restaurant’s management.

“Please follow me,” the maître d’ sniffed.

Now, as they walked, the Homunculus noticed the maître d’ examining him a bit more closely. For sure, he noticed the pure white skin, with an unnatural smoothness that gave the appearance of literal ivory; if the Homunculus had pores, they were too small to see. For sure, he noticed the coal black hair, neatly styled and recently trimmed. For sure, he noticed the straightness of the nose, the sternness in the eyes. Those eyes, too, were black. In fact, it likely appeared as if the Homunculus had stepped out of a black-and-white film, as the only dashes of color breaking up his stark, monochrome appearance were the red hat band and that single, ruby finger.

They approached a table in the rear, noticeably away from any windows and far from the kitchen, undoubtedly to give Port some intentional privacy for whatever business he might conduct there. Port himself was already seated, drinking a light white wine while fussing over some papers. He was oblivious as the Homunculus approached with the maître d’.

“Mr. Port,” announced the maître d’, with exaggerated respect, “your guest, um… Mister Guest … has arrived.”

Port acknowledged them with a nod. Leonard Port was younger than one might guess from his wealth; about 40, with a stylish suit, stylish short hair, and thin frame. There was more color in his appearance than the Homunculus. Perhaps having a soul did that to a person.

But few might accuse Port of having a soul. He was ruthless in business, uncaring for his workers, and interested in only two things: the profits from his investments and—only rumors, of course— of an enthusiasm for sexual deviance.

The Homunculus was focused on Port’s first interest, not his other.

“Please, have a seat,” Port said. “I ordered a German white, given the hour.”

A look of relief passed over the maître d’s face, and he left the two to their privacy.

The Homunculus sat. “Mosel Sahr,” he said, glancing at the wine’s label.

“The Germans may be terrible at world conquest,” Port replied, “but they can grow a few good grapes now and then.”

Port moved the papers to one side, now giving the Homunculus his full attention. “Pardon all this,” he said, indicating the papers, “some unexpected and tiresome last-minute wrangling. A birthmark?” Somewhere during that last comment, Port had turned his attention to the Homunculus’ red finger. The question was abrupt, but people of Port’s wealth rarely had time for courtesy about such things. He was, no doubt, sizing up the man before him.

“Exactly that,” the Homunculus responded. “The maître d’ likely assumed I was a brawler from the docks, tattooed and such. I daresay he hesitated to bring me back to you.”

“Jeffrey is a prude, but he keeps the riffraff out. It’s his job, in fact. But he can’t tell the difference between a tattoo and a birthmark, unfortunately.”

The Homunculus nodded, even as he thought to himself, It’s neither.

“Your letter intrigued me,” Port said, looking into the Homunculus’s black eyes. If he saw anything strange in those eyes, Port didn’t telegraph it.

“I surmised as such. If it hadn’t, you wouldn’t have invited me here.”

“Correct,” said Port, curt to the point of rudeness. “Tell me—why, exactly, do you need private access to one of my largest warehouses in one of the most remote locations in the city? Why must it be empty? A less cautious man would suspect you have something illegal planned for it.”

Port certainly was direct. The Homunculus was unshaken, however. Such behavior had little effect on him, no matter how wealthy or powerful the person in front of him might be. More importantly, what Port thought about anything was irrelevant since, in twenty-four hours, he would be dead.

“You are, if I may be blunt, a wealthy man.” The Homunculus matched Port’s tone. “There isn’t any amount of money I can offer you for the use of the warehouse because you don’t need the money. And given my admittedly opaque conditions, I can understand if you are wary of the risks.”

“Ha! I’m not worried about risks,” Port snorted. “Challenging risks directly is how I make my money.”

The Homunculus knew Port would fall for this trap. If he challenged Port as a coward, Port’s only possible response was to reject the accusation and open himself up further to the deal. Manhood, and all that. “But as I mentioned in my letter, I have something you need that, I believe, will see your way to agreeing to my terms.”

Port answered with a raised eyebrow. “I’m curious. What is it that you think I may need?”

“My contacts include men from all levels of society, from those at the highest levels to those that walk beneath their feet. The birthmarked and the tattooed, if you will. My associates in Chinatown alerted me that you were moving large quantities of opium between locations there in an effort to distract ongoing police investigations.” The Homunculus paused. Port appeared shaken.

Excellent.

The Homunculus continued. “I am not interested in how or why you are engaged in this business. I have even less interest in reporting such things to the police, who I view with I daresay more contempt than even you might.”

If that was intended to relieve Port, it had not.

“I am also wholly disinterested in bribing you, which is an activity I find repulsive. My offer is quite the opposite, one which stands to work in your favor.”

“Get to it,” Port grunted. His tone had changed, of course.

“I possess a vault of significant size. The building goes nearly entirely unnoticed due to its proximity to a meat packing plant and further benefits from being built below ground. This ensures it is isolated, relatively soundproof, and maintains a cool temperature all year round.”

“In Manhattan? How?”

“Not in Manhattan. The vault is located in New Rochelle. One can drive from Midtown to the vault in well under an hour. If you give me access to your warehouse for two days, I will give you the vault. Forever. You can do whatever you want with it, store whatever you want. It would be suitable for both currency and, well, … products.”

“Its size?”

“The vault’s interior is just under one thousand square feet.”

“And you’d give it to me. Permanently?” Port sounded unwilling to believe the offer.

“It no longer serves a purpose for me. I have not used it since before the War, and for me, it has little value. For someone engaged in your business, however, I think it could have value.”

“There must be some other angle here.”

“I simply have need of your warehouse. The only requirement is that to keep my activities in the warehouse private, you hand me the keys personally. No one else must be involved.”

“A huge vault for a tiny warehouse?” Port asked. “This makes little sense.”

“I am more interested in the location of your warehouse rather than its size. Again, I cannot say why, but it is closer to the ocean than New Rochelle, obviously.”

“And when do you propose to begin this transaction with me?” Port asked.

“You can have the vault immediately. I have already drawn up the bill of sale for the price of one dollar.” The Homunculus withdrew some papers from his breast pocket. “If you sign it, the transfer is complete.”

Port took the papers and examined them. His eyes darted quickly over the pages, but the rest of his body remained still. “There is nothing here about using my warehouse,” he said. “According to this, you are merely giving me a vault.”

“No. That is to keep our arrangement entirely private. I am trusting you, Mr. Port. I believe that you will honor the arrangement.”

Port’s face finally relaxed, somewhat. The Homunculus knew what he was calculating. Port assumed that the activities planned for the warehouse were far more nefarious than even his opium smuggling operations, so much so that his monochrome guest was willing to make an extreme offer. And likewise, a vault such as that described would have incredible value to Port for reasons not only limited to his Chinatown business.

“I will sign this,” Port agreed, pulling a pen from his vest pocket. “But I will need to see the vault before I agree to open my warehouse to you.”

“I assumed as much,” the Homunculus said politely. “Take a week. Send men to see the vault or visit it yourself. There are three main locks, and the combinations for all of them are listed in that contract. I am sure you will be satisfied. Then, we can arrange a date for you to bring the keys to your warehouse to me. Again, however, I must insist you come alone. No driver, no bodyguard. Alone.”

Port signed the contract. “Done,” he grunted. It was also his invitation for the Homunculus to leave.

He did.

_____________________

Inspector Heiner Thumann disembarked the SS Kerguelen with some visible stiffness. The nearly monthlong trip across the Atlantic, from Marseille to Buenos Aires, left him not only stiff from a lack of exercise but creaking and wheezing due to extended exposure to sea air.

Thumann was a giant. Standing at six-foot-four, he seemed even larger due to his penchant for wearing a huge overcoat. His face was buried beneath a bushy beard, mustache, and sideburns; it looked like it belonged on currency from some third-world nation fifty years ago. His hands were the size of melons, huge knots like New York City street pretzels but made of solid bone. When he walked, his colleagues said, China reported earthquakes.

Thumann was fat and unhealthy before he boarded the Kerguelen. The long journey and the ship’s limited menu may have allowed him to shed a few pounds, but it had not made him fit. With little else to do but read and smoke, Thumann arrived in Argentina in worse shape than when he left.

Thumann was a man of the street, not the ocean. His expertise was in solving murders, conspiracies, major crimes. His main places of work were the pavement under his big, clomping feet and his shoddy wooden desk back in the office. For two decades, he worked the dirty alleys and sidewalks of Berlin. When the Nazis took away the only thing that ever mattered to him, he fled to the UK, where he continued his work in dirty alleys and sidewalks, but now the ones in London. There, he was recommended for hire at the prestigious Scotland Yard; Thumann’s reputation and references were enough to overcome the Yard’s hesitance about hiring a German at this particular time in history.

Thumann already hated the relatively short trip across the English Channel, one he was occasionally forced to make in service of the Yard. Coming by ship to South America to investigate a rash of crimes linked to similar ones plaguing London? No, he felt this voyage was a mistake. But he had his orders.

Next time, they need to send me by aeroplane, Thumann thought. Damn Scotland Yard’s paltry budget.

Now that he had disembarked, it felt good to be standing on a surface that was not in constant movement. At the bottom of the gangplank, Thumann lit a cigar and waited. His portly frame filled his waistcoat, and his pants and overcoat were filthy from the trip. He smelled of fish guts and diesel fuel, but his nose had stopped picking up the scents about two weeks ago. Others around him were not so lucky; Thumann stank.

He scanned the port for Gentleman, his assistant. Gentleman should have found Thumann’s trunk and bags by now, but he was nowhere to be seen. This might be a two-cigar wait, he thought to himself.

It was morning in Buenos Aires, and the air was still cool, filled with voices speaking the sing-song Spanish of the region. Thumann spoke only German and English, so he was already at a loss. He had been promised an adequate interpreter, however, a woman named “Hee-main-ah,” but she would not be joining them until Thumann and Gentleman reached Chile, still many days away. Until then, he’d have to muddle along in the languages he knew.

Thumann spotted a small restaurant—if one could call it that—across the dock. It was little more than a flimsy shack with a gas burner in the back but had a few rickety chairs and tables outside, no doubt to serve passengers in circumstances such as Thumann’s. He crossed the boardwalk, his heavy shoes waking the Chinese beneath him, and lowered himself into what he imagined to be the least rickety of the chairs. For a moment, he felt it might collapse under his weight.

The proprietor emerged, a thin man with sweaty hair and a dirty apron, muttering something in Spanish. In reply, Thumann simply pointed to the coffee pot visible in the back of the kitchen. The thin man nodded and scurried back inside.

As he waited, Thumann scanned the port for Gentleman while running the facts of the case once more through his head.  In just over one year, a series of crimes burst across the map of Western Europe.  The earliest was a case from March of 1944, where three banks were robbed in France. A massive amount of gold was taken, with no clues left behind. One month later, a high-ranking businessman in Spain killed himself, but only after having deposited his fortune in a secret safe deposit box, which was promptly emptied upon his death. Investigators suspected foul play: someone had induced him to put his wealth into the box and then commit suicide.

And, then, more: in June of that year, two banks and one warehouse were robbed in Germany, while a train in Portugal was also derailed and left without the contents of its high-value cargo. The crimes continued without any apparent pattern: Switzerland, Italy, even Morocco were added to the map.

Now, it was the end of April 1945, and the crimes continued. Thumann had been paying a bit of attention to the various incidents, but—like so many other police detectives around the world—he had failed to notice them as part of a pattern. That is, until they also began occurring in the UK, on Thumann’s patch. A wealthy actress in Scotland was murdered, her private safe found empty at the scene. Four banks were robbed in London, and one more in Wales, until finally, Thumann was personally assigned to oversee the crime wave. Thumann now saw patterns.

In each case, no matter where the crimes occurred, the loot taken was nearly always gold. Jewelry was never stolen, nor were other metals, such as silver or platinum. When documents of value were taken, these were somehow tied to gold deposits or other related interests. Paper currency and bonds were ignored.

In each case, the loot was heavy, suggesting a team of robbers were responsible, but without any clues or evidence left behind. The police were baffled. Moving heavy loads of gold would require men, specifically those with the necessary equipment. Confounding the police, there were never any signs of such things.

And, finally, in each case, there were no witnesses. There should have been since there were people at the scene in each case. Night guards, tellers, passersby, train conductors… there were always people present at the time of the crime, but later, everyone insisted they had seen nothing. Heard nothing. They did not have even a passing knowledge of what had happened under their very noses. The lesser press gave the criminal various melodramatic names, like “The Ghost” and “The Invisible Devil.”

It was Thumann who began to scour the non-English press for similar crimes, thinking the events might be occurring in countries outside of the ones he’d visited during vacation. Thumann ordered copies of newspapers from Northern Africa, the Middle East, and—eventually—South America. Struggling to understand the printed words, Thumann nevertheless realized the crime wave was a global phenomenon. Similar crimes had occurred in the United States as early as 1943 and were spreading across the Americas with lightning speed. Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Panama… there seemed to be no country that was safe from this Invisible Devil.

An associate of Thumann from Germany, Dr. Brühl, was the man responsible for organizing a global search for the criminals. Brühl was a retired police chief with an impressive military background who had excellent contacts in the halls of multiple governments. Brühl now worked for the International Criminal Police Commission—known to telegraph operators as “Interpol”—and asked representatives from across Europe to put together a task force to investigate the crimes. It was Brühl who recommended Thumann to head it up, and Scotland Yard agreed.

Thus, Thumann now found himself sipping bitter Argentine coffee from a filthy teacup at a rickety wooden table across from a grimy metal ship while listening to local fish sellers shout offers for the day’s catch in Spanish at the top of their lungs.

Thumann knew what he’d find in Chile if he ever got there: an empty safe or warehouse or bank vault, with no sign of forced entry and no sign of anyone having removed the contents. And no witnesses.

Only whispers of one name. A name he heard a few times muttered by informants in Edinburgh, by prostitutes in London, by gamblers in Lisbon. By an opium addict in Berlin and by a 12-year-old street thug in Madrid. Always one name.

“Dr. Cuba.”

If the Invisible Devil had a name, it was that.