Where the Wicked Tread
A Mason Collins Crime Thriller
He swore to protect a little girl. The Gestapo commander who killed her is still out there.
Italy, 1947. Mason Collins has tracked the man who haunts his nightmares to the escape route Nazi war criminals use to flee the country. But the fugitive is not alone, and his group is hunting a mysterious woman and her young son.
Mason agrees to see the pair to safety while helping smuggle a convoy of Jewish refugees south to a ship in Naples. With the Nazis closing in like a pack of wolves, it can only end in a showdown.
If he watches the man die, maybe the nightmares will stop. Maybe he can finally open his heart to the woman waiting for him in Naples. But first he has to survive.
Nominated for Best E-book of 2022 by International Thriller Writers.
Excerpt from Where the Wicked Tread
Austria 1947
Two British Royal Military policemen had me by both arms, dragging me down a drab prison corridor. After lying most of the night on a cement floor in a frozen jail cell, my leg muscles refused to work very well. The chains around my ankles didn’t help. They were either in a hurry or enjoying a moment of sadism. I had to admit some responsibility because of a comment I made about being treated better by the Nazis in several prisoner-of-war camps I’d spent time in during the war. They hadn’t taken too kindly to that remark.
I’d been a guest of the Royal MPs at their prison in Graz, Austria, for four days, living off cold soup and stale bread. They’d roused me every night and interrogated me, though I didn’t have much to tell. I was sure the interrogations were mostly to deprive me of sleep. The scant food, sleep deprivation, and rough treatment were all punishment for my beating a Brit army major so badly that he was now in the hospital. What they didn’t know was that I’d been through cruel and unusual punishment before, by far more sadistic men.
I figured my friendly tormentors were taking me for another hours-long interrogation, but we turned down another corridor that was unfamiliar to me. They dragged me past two doors before propelling me into a windowless room with two chairs and a square table. One of them put his foot out and tripped me. The only thing that kept my face from slamming into the tiled floor was my chest hitting the table. Marginally better, but it still hurt like hell.
“Cute move,” I said. “They teach you that in dungeon school?”
They lifted me off the floor and shoved me into one of the chairs.
“Fellas, is this any way to treat a fellow cop?”
The one with a brushy mustache pinned my hands to the table, while the other attached my handcuffs to a ring in the center of the table. After flashing me satisfied smiles, they both walked out of the room and shut the door.
Maybe someone with more authority was about to pay me a visit or someone who had a real panache for inflicting pain. Or they were about to hand me over to the Austrian police, who wanted me for murder from my time in Vienna. None of the options offered a good outcome. The only thing I could do was take advantage of the relative comfort of the wooden chair and the warm room. I settled in and immediately started to fall asleep.
Someone pushed the door open until it hit the wall with a bang. I opened my eyes but kept my gaze fixed on the opposite wall.
“This is getting to be a bad habit,” the man said.
I recognized the voice and looked around in surprise. “Mike? What the hell?”
Mike Forester assaulted the chair opposite me before dropping into it. He let out a long sigh and leaned back. “What is it with you and getting into trouble? Is this some kind of self-flagellation? Or do you get a kick out of spending time in jails?”
“What are you doing here? This is the British zone,” I said, referring to the British area of the occupation of Austria.
“They called me because they found that CIC travel pass. The one I issued you so you could get out of Austria.”
“I was working on doing that.”
“Not hard enough, apparently.”
“I ran out of money and was looking for work.”
“I could have gotten you out of Austria and to the States a couple of months ago. And now look at you. What is it with you that you refuse to go home?”
“Did you come here to play parent, or do you have something for me?”
Mike Forester was an intelligence agent in the CIC, the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps. We’d known each other since the beginning of the war—him in the CIC and me in the army’s G-2 intelligence agency. After D-Day, we lost track of each other until meeting up again in Munich, then getting into trouble together in Vienna. He was a good and loyal friend, as well as one of the few people I let get away with giving me a verbal slapping when I screwed up.
Forester righted his chair, and his expression turned serious. “I’m here for two reasons. The first is Laura called me, because she couldn’t get in touch with you.”
That revelation hit me like a punch to the heart. I went rigid in my chair. “Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. She called me about a week ago. But knowing her, anything could have happened between then and now.”
Laura was the love of my life. Ever since we first became an item in Munich, we’d had an on-again, off-again relationship. The last time we hooked up was in Vienna, and we’d gotten pretty serious. At least I thought that until she left Vienna while I was awaiting my fate in an army stockade. I understood her need to visit her deceased husband’s parents in England, but it felt final somehow, and I wondered if I’d ever hear from her again.
Forester said, “She called me from Hamburg, saying she was about to board a ship destined for Naples. She wants you to meet her there.”
“A ship? Why not by train? And why Naples?”
“She wouldn’t or couldn’t share that info with me. The only other thing she did say was she’d be arriving in about three weeks. So that gives you a couple of weeks to get down there.”
“Two weeks? I’m sure the Brits plan to keep me longer than that. Mike, you’ve got to get me out of here.”
“I’m pulling some strings, but there aren’t any guarantees. I don’t have much sway over the Brits, and plus, you put one of their majors in the hospital.”
“He was beating and raping a woman.”
“You managed to attack a guy who has royal connections, and he claims it was consensual, that you attacked him for no good reason. Plus, the woman wouldn’t refute his statement.”
“Come on, Mike. If the military cops had done their job … That guy knew exactly where to strike her without leaving bruises.”
Forester said nothing, as if his silence was enough of an answer—it didn’t matter since the man was a major with connections in high places.
A thought came to me. “You could have told me all this without leaving the comfort of Vienna. You really came here for the second reason.”
Forester glanced at the door as if making sure no one was listening. “About a month ago, a couple of agents caught up with a Gestapo lieutenant hiding out in a cabin in the mountains above Salzburg. He’d been on our arrest list since the end of the war for torture and murder, mostly in Poland and Czechoslovakia.”
The mention of Gestapo and Czechoslovakia together made my stomach churn.
Forester continued. “I wanted him tried and hanged, but my superiors said that because he’d been in German intelligence on the Eastern Front before moving over to the Gestapo, and because of his connections in East Germany and Poland, they determined he’d be a valuable asset to use for counterintelligence against the Soviets.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. Though I had my suspicions, I found it hard to believe them.
“The man I’m talking about is SS Obersturmführer Theodor Ziegler.”
The mention of that name made every muscle in my body tense as if being hit in the stomach. On pure instinct and adrenaline, I shot up from my chair, only to be restrained by the handcuffs attached to the table. A hot sort of bile rose from my guts and burned my throat. “Where is he?”
“Sit down and I’ll tell you.”
It took me a moment to get control of my muscles and sit, but only on the edge of the seat.
“I wanted this man bad,” Forester said. “Not only for his trail of torture and murder but because of what he did to you. Unfortunately, before I could do anything about it, headquarters released him with the understanding he’d work for the CIC.”
“And he disappeared.”
Forester nodded. “Three days ago.” He started to explain the circumstances and extend his apologies, but I wasn’t listening. All I could concentrate on were the events of that horrible day. I’d escaped from a POW death march just months before the end of the war. Starved and frozen, I lay down in a snowy forest to die. Then a little Jewish girl named Hana appeared out of nowhere, looking to me for help. My need to save her brought me back from the dead. Only I failed her when the Gestapo showed up at the farmhouse where we’d taken shelter. Obersturmführer Ziegler shot Hana in front of me, then murdered the Czech family for harboring us. He took delight in the murders and my anguish. I never forgot Hana’s face as she stood before me one minute, then lay broken and bloody in the snow the next. Those images haunted my dreams on most nights. I never forgot the lieutenant’s sadism, and I swore to take him out of this world if we ever crossed paths.
Forester snapped his fingers in front of my face to bring me back to the present. “I didn’t come here just to watch you fall apart. I need for you to concentrate.” He paused, waiting for me to acknowledge my full attention.
When I nodded, he said, “I’m not as enraged as you, but letting this man go really got under my skin. The more I heard about this guy, the more I wanted to break something. But my hands are tied. No one in the CIC is authorized to go after him. He’s small potatoes as far as headquarters in concerned.”
“No need to say any more,” I said. “You get me out of here, and I’ll go after him. And I won’t stop until I find him.”
Forester nodded. “I thought you would.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “The problem is getting you out of here. I think I’ve got a solution, but there’s a risk for both of us.”
“Say no more.”
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