Chapter 13

Jan Suk
(July 2001; Prague)

The first incident in the Czech Republic was the

September 1997 shooting murder of Mikhail Ivanovich
Petrov...
real name, Reinhart Biermann. Biermann was wanted by the
German government for human rights violations in the
former East
Germany, as director of Kinderheim 511. He was a child
psychologist and psychiatrist working for the Internal
Affairs
Ministry, with his particular calling being scientific
personality correction... in other words, a brainwashing
specialist. He was deeply involved with the
establishment of the facility, but at the time that Johan
destroyed it, he
had left his director's position. Biermann escaped to
Czechoslovakia after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Biermann opened an unlicensed orphanage in Prague to
continue his experiments, but investigations would later
find
no particular signs of mental abuse. In fact, he was
beloved by all his charges. After the murder, the
orphans claimed
to have witnessed a beautiful blonde-haired woman leaving
the orphanage where the crime was committed, but the
Prague
police identified a freelance journalist Wolfgang
Grimmer, who had visited Biermann that day, as their
prime suspect in
the killing. The 2nd incident would occur the following
day.
The bodies of Inspector Zeman, who had been
investigating Grimmer as part of the previous case, and
two other,
unidentified men were found in an abandoned factory in
the district of Prague 5. Later, it would be discovered
that these
other men were former sergeants in the infamous communist
Czechoslovakian secret police, who had turned to
undertaking
unsavory jobs since the fall of such. A suspicious
person was spotted leaving the scene of the crime, the
description of
whom clearly fits Grimmer. The police labeled him wanted
as a suspect in the murders.
 But Zeman's direct subordinate, Agent Jan Suk, came
to a different conclusion. Could the killer's motive be
related to a clandestine duty Zeman himself had been
orchestrating -- fishing out former secret police members
within the
station? He found a large sum of cash in Zeman's
personal locker, and reported Zeman's connection to
former
Czechoslovakian secret police agents on the force, his
corruption, and the illicit money he had accepted to keep
silent
about it.
But the day after Suk's report was given, the station
chief and two police agents accused of being ex-
Czechoslovakian secret police were found dead of
ingesting candies laced with muscle relaxant. The center
of this string
of murders was something deeper and more complex than
just the survivors of the old order making connections
within the
new order.
Acting independently, Agent Suk made contact with
Grimmer, the closest man to the center of the events.
Unable to
believe that Grimmer was responsible, Suk befriended
Grimmer and received the key to a bank safe left behind
by Biermann,
the initial homicide victim. The police began to
secretly trail Suk, suspicious of his actions, but Suk
followed his
conscience and retrieved an audio cassette tape from a
safe at Prochazka Bank. The voice on the tape belonged
to Johan
under hypnosis as a child -- a top-secret piece of
physical information that Biermann had taken from
Kinderheim 511.
After this, assassins would kill both agents sent to
spy on Suk, and had nearly mortally wounded Suk as well,
when
he finally discovered the truth. It had begun when a
powerful figure in the secret police had been hired by a
German to
collect Johan's research data, but when people involved
in the matter started being assassinated left and right,
the case
began to take on a life of its own. It is needless to
say that Johan himself was behind all of it, but the
Prague police
have avoided any official comments to this nature.
As it stands, there are several unexplained mysteries
to the case. I requested an interview with Agent Suk.
While he made it clear that due to multiple sensitive
areas he could not fully divulge all information, he DID
agree to
speak about the case.

When Agent Suk appeared at the Oriental cafe on the

hill leading up to Prague Castle, I thought he made an
awfully
young and dashing police detective. His dress was well-
coordinated, with a navy suit, blue button-down shirt and
bluish
necktie. His straight-parted blond hair sat above kindly
eyes. We shook hands, and he ordered a jasmine tea.

[Picture] (Two photos of ancient buildings in Prague)

The city of Prague, which Johan and Nina remembered as a
"fairy-tale land." It is hard to imagine the terrible
political
scars that lurk beneath the surface of this beautiful
city.

- You solved the serial murders that occurred in the

Prague police force. Are the rumors about Johan's
involvement true?
"First, let me say that I did not solve that case.
Now, to return to your question... From the clues, I
believe
it is appropriate to think of these crimes as being
Johan's. But being comatose as he is, there is no way we
can get
testimony or admission of guilt, so the unfortunate truth
is that we cannot prove it was him, much as we would like
to."
- There are plenty of open-and-shut cases that are
ruled without requiring confession. Why is that not the
case
this time?
"Well... If we tried him as the defendent using my
logic in this particular case... I doubt the courts would
find
it adequate."
- That was a rather vague answer.
"Umm... Well... you are familiar with the person who
was witnessed at multiple crime scenes?"
- Yes, the tall man with the large knapsack... This
is Mr. Grimmer, correct? There is also testimony of a
beautiful blonde woman.
"Now, what I'm going to tell you is exactly what I
experienced, free of any subjective opinions. I'll leave
the
interpretation up to you... The blonde woman was always
at the scene of the crime. She was clearly responsible
for the
murder of those victims. Biermann, Inspector Zeman, the
secret police he was with, the two agents who were
keeping tabs
on me... she shot them all. Separately from this, I met
a woman at a bar I was frequenting after work. I felt
attracted
to her, and I thought that she liked me too. This was
about the time that I got dragged into the whole mess.
She had
blonde hair, and her name was Anna. Anna Liebert."
- And was it the real Anna... Nina Fortner?
"Anyone who looked at her picture would tell you it
was Nina. She was in Prague, herself... But at the
times
that Anna and I met, she was in a different part of the
city, and was recorded in different locations. The Anna
that I
knew was identical to Nina, except perhaps a slight bit
taller."
- Then...
"Do you see how hard it would be to get this past in
court? Still, it is the truth."
- Yes, I see. It is a story that would require
courage to tell.
"Yes. When someone told me to doubt the person you
least want to doubt and the truth will make itself known,
it
opened my eyes. Thinking back, that might have been the
moment when I first gained the confidence to be able to
do my
job."
- Now, assuming it was Johan who is responsible, what
could his motive to kill all of these people be?
"I found a cassette in a safe at Prochazka Bank. It
was a part of East Germany's Kinderheim 511 Director
Reinhart
Biermann's research materials. The tape was a recording
of Johan speaking as a young boy, and I believe that this
tape
became the center of a struggle between the former secret
police and the adult Johan."
- So Johan attacked the secret police to destroy the
tape that proved his existence.
"I believe that was part of it, but it could also
have been because he wanted Biermann's other materials...
for
example, say, a register of all the other boys at the
kinderheim. When I heard the tape, Johan himself had
already
tampered with it, and removed the registry."
- What do you think he'd do with the Kinderheim 511
registry? Not hold a class reunion, I assume.
"He probably wanted to make contact with them, and
control them. That's what kind of person Johan was."
- Next, tell me about Mr. Grimmer. It is vital that
we understand him, if we hope to unravel the mysteries of
Johan.
"When I was questioning the orphans from Biermann's
orphanage, I realized that all of them nearly idolized
Mr.
Grimmer. I wonder if such a man could truly be
responsible for murder, as my bosses told me. So I met
and talked with
him, and decided to help him. He was rather bashful and
kind, and very prudent. He was a gallant man, and I owe
him my
life."
- What does "The Magnificent Steiner" mean?
"I don't want to talk about that."
- It is said that after the events in the Czech
Republic, Grimmer investigated Johan and Franz Bonaparta
on his
own. There are rumors of a report he wrote up about
this. Have you seen it for yourself?
"I haven't. After I was shot and admitted to the
hospital, I never saw him again. But the German lawyer
Verdeman
might know. I've heard he was the one who arranged Mr.
Grimmer's articles after his death."
- You just mentioned Verdeman. You two questioned
members of the reading seminar at the Red Rose Mansion
together.
"Yes. This was something that came up while looking
into crimes committed by our country's former secret
police
and military... But we could not possibly prosecute the
crimes. We still don't know what happened at that
mansion. Out
of all the members that attended, we barely managed to
get five to agree to speak with us, and even they didn't
remember
anything that happened there. The one unsettling
commonality, however, was that while each of them had
normal jobs and
were married, all except for one had their marriage end
in disaster, and all except for one had suffered the
death of
their children..."
- How did the police track down these members of the
Red Rose Mansion seminar?
"There wasn't a single piece of bureaucratic
paperwork left about the Mansion. No records about the
facility's
connection with the government, no reports of what
experiments were being run there, no files detailing
where their budget
came from. The remains of the Red Rose Mansion were a
complete void. Well, we know the secret police burned
many, many
records... The only trick we had in our arsenal was good
old-fashioned beatwork: visiting and asking around. We
visited
all of the homes around the remains of the mansion, and
asked them what kind of people went there, did they
recognize any
faces, could they recall anything at all... Then we went
over all the former secret police, communist party
dignitaries,
former government officials, news agency writers,
orphanage workers, internal affairs workers... went over
all of them
with a fine-tooth comb. Then we sought help from a group
seeking damages for the actions of those secret police,
and
finally found some of the people we were looking for."

[Picture] (two sketches of Suk)

Jan Suk solved the puzzle of the Prague Police Station
murders. He says that he only just recently gained the
confidence
to be a detective. It was a surprise even to me that he
listed his personal mentors as not only Grimmer, but
Inspector
Lunge as well.

- So what WAS it?

 "I'll tell you what I know. It was built over a
century ago, and it was the home of a Czech nobleman.
The roses
had been planted there way back then. The owner in the
1930s was a member of the Czechoslovakian National
Assembly, had
been a strong proponent of Czech independence, and opened
up the mansion for studying and the betterment of the
Czech
people. After the Munich Agreement, he traveled Europe,
preaching of Hitler's sinister plans and the danger to
the Czech
people, trying to gain support to scrap the agreement.
But in the following year, he was assassinated... The
next person
to own the mansion was a Sudetendeutsch who had moved
there from Bohemia. He was a former Sudeten German
politician who
took no time at all in joining the newly-powerful Nazi
party, where he had Hitler's stamp of approval to round
up and
imprison anti-German activists. He found it amusing that
his home had previously been used to rally for Czech
independence, and decided to convene gatherings to
"reform" anti-Nazis... As you can imagine, this was not
a peaceful
study group but simple torture. According to an elderly
man we talked to who had lived in the area for decades,
it used
to be called the "Mansion of Terror," that people would
be taken inside and never come out, and that
bloodcurdling screams
could be heard issuing forth from the building late at
night. Another old man said that at that time, the
children of the
neighborhood believed a monster slept in the basement of
the Red Rose Mansion. The monster had once been a Czech,
but now
hated both the Czechs and Germans. Possessing ten horns
and seven heads, it was a terrifying thing to behold, and
if it
were to reawaken, it would cast an evil spell on Prague
that would set the Czechs and Germans to killing one
another. A
sort of an urban legend, if you will..."
- Who owned the mansion following World War Two?
"The day the Germans surrended, the Sudeten German
who owned the mansion was killed. After that, some
government
officials lived in the mansion during the communist
regime, but they would all move out soon afterward. In
the late '50s,
no one lived there at all, as the Internal Affairs
Ministry and secret police used it for secret meetings
and such. I'd
bet Bonaparta first came to the mansion in the early
'60s."
- And what did he end up doing there?
"As I said before, we don't really know. What we DO
know is that this one young, brilliant psychiatrist
managed
to forge an ironclad trust with the communist party
leaders, Internal Affairs ministers, head of the secret
police and
military generals, created a laboratory to work on
recreating the human mind from scratch, matched to his
own whims...
According to one person, he could brainwash the
government's most feared liberal activists in mere hours,
to use as double
agents. According to another source, he was capable of
helping the party elite cast off unpleasant lower
officials by
forcing them to commit suicide. The late '70s through
the '80s was an age characterized by secret battles with
freedom
movements like Charter 77 that nearly did have the power
to overthrow the government... The state was more than
willing to
throw money at people or experiments that promised it the
ability to control peoples' minds."
- It's been reported that a large number of human
skeletons were discovered from the remains of the
mansion.
"That is the truth. We initially found the bones of
45... no, 46 people."
- Initially?
"Yes. After that, we kept digging up more skeletons.
Older ones than the first batch... We guess they're
probably from the days of Nazi control."
- What could possibly have happened there? I am
referring to the original 46 skeletons.
"Actually, some of the bones are incomplete or
damaged. A scientific analysis showed probable damage
from nitric
acid. Which would mean they were poisoned..."
 - Could they be the bones of anti-government
agitators?
"Well, it's true that people were imprisoned inside
the Red Rose Mansion, but these remains appear to belong
to
something else. Of the 46 skeletons uncovered, 40 were
men, 4 women, and 2 children, and thanks to some scraps
of barely-
preserved fabric on the bodies, we know that they died
wearing suits."
- So, they could have been staff that worked at the
mansion.
"I believe that the staff are included in that total.
According to our questioning, we've been told that
several
psychologists and psychiatrists that frequented the
mansion did go missing at some point in time..."
- Who would have poisoned them?
"I don't know. At this point, I don't think anybody
knows."
- Can you tell me what you've learned about the
reading seminar system, through your questioning?
"The number of seminar members that I was able to
find was seven. But as I said earlier, we could only get
five
of them to agree to speak with us... The eldest was in
his 40s, the youngest in his 30s. It seems the seminar
was held
from the mid-1960s to about 1981. At the time, the boys
would have been 5-10... They were forced to participate
once a
week, at 3 o'clock on Friday. There would be five to six
people present. And they would read a storybook."

[Picture] (Two photos of winding, cramped Prague streets)

I searched for clues of Johan in the back alleys of
Prague.

- How were the boys chosen for this?

"We also interviewed their parents, but oddly enough,
none of them had very clear memories of it. All they
understood was that they allowed their sons to take part
in a government-sponsored education program, and aside
from that,
it was as if they had never even considered how the boys
might have been chosen in the first place. And just so
you know,
their parents were neither anti-government radicals, nor
steadfast party members, but perfectly normal citizens."
- How many boys do you suppose participated in the
seminar altogether?
"Well, taking all the details mentioned by our five
interviewees together, we can estimate probably around
two
hundred."
- Who burned down the mansion? It's said it was
arson.
"...I'd say Johan. Wouldn't you assume?"
- Is it possible that he could have taken something
from the mansion? When he burned it down.
"What do you mean?"
- For instance, say there was a registry of the
seminar members, that was still hidden in the mansion...
"Oh, I never even thought of that. If he was looking
for the list from Kinderheim 511, it's certainly possible
he
could have done the same here. But I have the feeling
that even if such a registry existed, Johan might not be
interested
in it. He altered that tape that was in the security
box, to leave a message to Dr. Tenma at the end. He said
that he
finally knew where he was going. He was following his
memories. So in the instant that he arrived at the Red
Rose
Mansion and understood his own identity, he lost all
interest in controlling others... or so I think."
- Lastly, how do you feel personally about the string
of incidents?
"...I feel that evil does exist. Just as a tiny
snowball picks up momentum and grows larger, evil sets
off chain
reactions. Johan just set loose a little bit of evil in
the town, and it turned into an uncontrollable monster.
The
larger case seems to have been solved, but perhaps it was
only that the evil has left the town. Perhaps the giant
snowball of evil is still rolling ever larger,
elsewhere... I still have this nightmare even now."

I still wanted to know more about the Red Rose

Mansion. At the very least, this was the genesis of
Johan's
personality. When I told Agent Suk this, he gave me
three names. One was a member of the seminar, another
was a lawyer
representing a group attempting to have the crimes of the
secret police brought to light and prosecuted in court,
and the
last was a high-ranking member of those secret police.
Agent Suk laughed and said that this last man would
require some
courage to meet in person. Perhaps he meant that I was
not guaranteed to survive such a meeting. But I accepted
Agent
Suk's intermediation.
I was prepared.