Sniper's Justice (Caje Cole Book 9) by David Healey (best classic books txt) 📗

States? You must mean Union troops? The Civil War?” Mulholland laughed. “I know you Southerners have a different view. Didn’t we decide that we had relatives on opposite sides back then?”

“I reckon we did.”

“It’s funny, but Americans seem to tolerate Confederate monuments. There may come a time when they get pulled down. Who knows?”

“Wouldn’t be right,” Cole said. “It’s our history.”

“History has a way of getting swept under the rug,” Mulholland said. “Anyhow, here in Germany, that’s already been done. There’s almost nothing to recognize that most of the country became a battlefield. There aren’t any monuments, not even to the thousands, make that the hundreds of thousands of Germans, who perished during the Allied bombings.”

Cole looked around at the pristine buildings, but what he still saw in his mind’s eye were the ruins of war.

“The closest you’re going to get around here to a war memorial is Dachau,” Mulholland said.

Cole was familiar with Dachau, one of the original and most notorious Nazi concentration camps, which happened to be located in the suburbs of Munich. Looking at some of the older pedestrians they passed on the sidewalks, Cole realized that it was entirely possible that some of them had lived here when the concentration camp was in full operation.

Cole shook his head. “Dachau. It is hard to imagine the evil that people allowed to be done to one another.”

“Awful,” Mulholland agreed. “But there’s a small museum that recognizes what took place there. The barracks and other buildings where the prisoners languished are being allowed to fall into slow disrepair because no one was interested in preserving that horrible and troubled past.”

“They ought to have bulldozed that place.”

“Maybe. The one museum that Munich is known for is the massive Deutsche museum. There are some exhibits to the aircraft industry that include the development of Messerschmitt fighters, but aside from that, you won’t find much military history. It’s mostly about transportation and science.”

From the back seat, Danny spoke up. The two men had almost forgotten he was there. “Transportation and science? Ugh. Sounds like a place for school field trips.”

“You’re probably right. That reminds me. I brought you something.” Keeping one hand on the wheel, he reached into the glovebox and took out a chunk of concrete about the size of a baseball, then handed it back to Danny.

“A piece of concrete,” Cole said. “That’s right generous of you.”

Mulholland laughed. “It’s not just any chunk of concrete. It’s a piece of the Berlin Wall. That’s the real deal. I picked it up myself.”

“Wow!” Danny said. “I’ve seen the Berlin Wall all over the news.”

“This is a truly eventful time in Germany,” Mulholland said. He was referring, of course, to the fall of the Berlin Wall that had divided free Berlin from East Berlin. “Needless to say, the German people are elated to finally be reconnected with old friends and family that they had not been able to communicate with for more than forty years.”

They had all seen the news reports. The economy of East Germany was far behind that of the West, which had flourished under the capitalist system enabled by the Allied victory. The beautiful city around them was evidence of that success.

Mixed with the elation that the wall had finally come down was the growing concern that the former Communist territory might be a drag on the economy. These Germans would need jobs and decent educations. Germany had a lot of work to do ahead of it in finally reuniting the country. In some ways, the reunification was the closing chapter of the war era. Although Germany could fit neatly inside the state of Texas with room left over, it was geographically large for Europe. It was no small task to combine the two sides into a single modern nation of nearly eighty million people—equivalent to one-third of the current U.S. population. Back during WWII, Germany’s population had been closer to one-half the size of the United States, which had grown exponentially.

“All of the excitement about the Berlin Wall has overshadowed the museum opening somewhat, but I won’t complain. There’s such a thing as too much attention. Our museum board has faced some controversy about opening a museum. Considering the way that Germany has downplayed the war, that’s not surprising. But we need to tell the story of the war before those of us who remember it are all gone.”

In the backseat, Danny hefted the chunk from the Berlin Wall. “This is really cool. Thank you.”

“If you think that was cool, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Mulholland drove past a soaring ultra-modern building built of stone and huge sheets of glass. With the sunlight glinting off it, the building looked like the tip of an iceberg exploding from the ground. This building made it clear that it had something to say.

The BMW pulled into a long entrance road, freshly blacktopped, that led to a parking area.

“Whoa,” Danny said. “Is this the place?”

“Welcome to the World War II Museum of Europe. Or to put it another way, Das Museum des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Europa.”

As Mulholland parked the BMW and they got out of the car, Cole said, “Quite a place.”

“Ha, you haven’t even seen the exhibit hall yet,” Mulholland said. “You’re one of the stars of the show.”

Cole wasn’t sure that he liked the sound of that. Just a few minutes before, Mulholland had mentioned that there was such a thing as too much attention. Cole agreed.

He stood for a moment, taking in the monumental grandeur of the building, and then slowly followed Mulholland and Danny toward the entrance. He didn’t know what to expect, but he suddenly dreaded the memories that this museum was dragging up.

Chapter Five

The museum grand opening was to be held in two days, which left them time to explore the city. Cole wasn’t one to sit in his hotel room. If he and Danny had come all this way, they were going to get out and see something. Plus, he wouldn’t mind tracking down some more