In fact, she found it annoying that the rich people lived in such a bubble that they never took a moment to consider the average, middle-class people who needed help with food or clothing. Cassandra had grown up struggling like that, but her family was never given aid because they “had enough.” It infuriated her that only families with unemployed parents or severe social and financial conditions were helped, while she spent many a night going to bed hungry.
Nobody ever thought to feed her family because her dad had a job, even though his salary could not cover their living expenses and they often went without food, electricity, or decent clothing. Cassandra hated the preferential treatment given to textbook cases, while those who did not “qualify” as starving or poor were as famished and cold as those the charities saw as officially needy.
The promotions and adverts for the upcoming charity at the castle pissed her off, so she promptly switched off her television. Such unfairness still stung after all these years, even though she was now married and well cared for. It made her understand better when people who were dressed properly and groomed themselves asked the church for food parcels. She knew all about that and never judged them. Her husband, Patrick, grew up more fortunate than she had, but he always joined her in delivering a bit of nosh or new stockings to acquaintances. Through word of mouth she always determined which middle-class people were in need of help, and then she would jump in with a surprise package.
Tonight was such a night. Even though the rain was a bitch and she would have to later throw away her favorite red lace-up boots (because the water destroyed the joining glue and damaged the leather), she looked forward to braving the hideous weather to make someone’s day. And today was the day of one Leigh Crompton and her family.
Cassandra heard about Leigh through a lady at the office, lamenting the fate of the single mummy who was laid off over a year ago and just could not find new work. With two young children and an ex-husband she could not afford to sue for maintenance, Leigh was in dire circumstances. But since she was still receiving a small check from her unemployment insurance, she was not eligible for official assistance—Cassandra’s favorite kind of charge.
When Cassandra returned two hours later, soaked from her boots to her drenched hat under her not-so-water-resistant coat and hood, she felt amazing. The cold of the Scottish autumn did not perturb her in the slightest, not with the true warmth she felt inside her for watching children munch into chocolate for the first time in months and a desperate parent’s sincere gratitude.
Patrick was away on business, but he would be home soon from the Himalayas. Cassandra hoped he would bring her a trinket from the gift shop at his lodge. She envied her husband for being able to travel the world and see places she would never see, even if his job was very dangerous. He checked in with her every day at noon, just to let her know that “I have not been killed yet,” as he so often glibly stated. It was a statement she did not find half as funny as he and his pal, Sam, did. Maybe she was just paranoid about his safety because she could not do anything if he should be in trouble. The helplessness bothered her. But he was exceptional at what he did and she had enough work at her office to keep her mind occupied from such things most of the time.
When she passed Craigmillar Park she realized she had forgotten to give Leigh her number, but the downpour discouraged her from going back. She decided to call Leigh when she got home to make sure the single mum had her number. It was a relief to be home in Blackford again, after being in Leith for two hours. Cassandra was just a homebody—she did not like other neighborhoods, solely because she was a bit of a timid person. Patrick always teased her about his being the perfect husband for a scaredy-cat wimp like she was, what with his martial arts and weapons training. Mostly it was a lighthearted matter between them, because Edinburgh was not exactly bedlam at the worst of times.
She often wondered how people coped in cities like New York or Beirut, and how such diverse climates still had a relatively high rate of crime and danger. If she ever had to spend one night alone in places like Amsterdam or Johannesburg she would be scared to death. Cassandra chalked up her frail nerves to the loan sharks who used to hammer on the front door and the bedroom windows of her parental home in Glasgow when she was a teenager home alone after school. Even if she knew they could not gain access to the house, their hostile threats and slamming on the house still made her feel violated and unsafe.
Fortunately, for Cassandra, her husband had set her mind at ease by installing top security measures at their new house after he was promoted from DCI to special agent for the British Secret Intelligence Service. He even put a private security company on retainer for her when he went away for work and that set her mind at ease.
Tonight she was going to order food in. There was no way she was going to drive out in the mad wetness to get a pizza. Cassandra opted for horror movies and pizza, as she entered the entryway of the house and kicked off her shoes. She called the local pizza place.
“Just a regular Hawaiian, please,” she smiled, famished, but satisfied by her good deed for the night. “Aye, a large, please.”
After ordering her meal for the night she grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels and poured the amber liquid over ice cubes that just about filled the entire tumbler. So she was not much of a drinker, so what? She liked the taste and the warm sensation, but the daze and headaches, she did not need.
Cassandra shambled into the TV room.
The tumbler of ice and Jack fell to the floor and smashed on impact when she saw the black figure seated in her chair. In the hallway light and the occasional flash of lightning, Cassandra saw the gleam of a gun barrel, pointed straight at her.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she yelped, frozen in her steps where the glass had splattered cold chips of ice and shattered glass all over her feet. The smell of whisky filled the air. “What do you want?” she forced in utter terror.
“What I want is not in your power to give me, but you will help me obtain it, Cassie,” a woman with an accent said from the dark. Cassandra found some solace in the gender of her captor. At least she did not have to fear being raped, she thought in her racing mind.
“And do not think for a minute that the fact that I’m female will exonerate you from grievous bodily harm,” the intruder instantly overturned Cassandra’s momentary respite. “Sit down over there.” The gun waved toward the couch, which was flanked by two glass coffee tables, each sporting a lamp, along with an ashtray that Patrick had fashioned from old pistons he removed from a Mustang he revamped back in 2002. Her knitting crow’s nest was still under the lamp, where she last attempted to knit a scarf. “Move!” the woman shouted.
Cassandra complied and stepped carefully. She cried in pain as the glass shards sank into her soles and stained her socks red. With a limp she fell to the couch, sobbing in fear as the furious rain muffled her gasps.
“Who are you? I don’t have anything you would want! Please don’t hurt me,” she begged the prowler, but she was met with a sobering blow against the head. In the dark she never even saw the vase that was flung at her. Her left eye burned from the unexpected shattering porcelain that buried its slivers in the soft skin of her face and the shock of the cold water splashing all over her.
“Shut your pitiful mouth, Cassandra!” the woman roared angrily. “Don’t ever grovel at my feet. It is unbecoming! I loathe pity and weakness, so you’ll be better off carrying a cogent conversation with me instead of wasting your time and my patience on pointless pleading. Am I clear?”
“Aye. Aye, clear,” Cassandra sniffed, trying to open her injured eye. Her breathing steadied as she aimed to appease her attacker, if only to save herself from being killed.
“Now, my name is Hilda. I am here because your husband failed to keep you as safe as he had promised. But I came here to urge him, not you, to hand over to me something that does not belong to him. Where is Patrick, Cassie?” Hilda asked.
“I don’t know,” Cassandra answered. “But he’ll
be back soon.”
“How soon, Cassandra?” Hilda asked, deliberately repeating Cassandra’s name to agitate the woman more, a form of psychological intimidation Hilda learned as an interrogator for the Vril Society.
“He didn’t say. Look, Hilda, you won’t get what you want until he gets back anyway, so you might as well—”
Her words were cut short when Hilda unceremoniously shot Cassandra in the shin, shattering the bone and splitting open her calf muscle. Patrick’s wife screamed in agony, but in the storm her screams might as well have been a bad horror movie on someone’s flat-screen TV. Hysterically sobbing, Cassandra held her bleeding leg.
“Don’t suggest to me what to do, Cassie,” Hilda cautioned her captive. “I know very well what to do. Besides, I did not come here to wait for your hubby to come home, my darling.”
Cassandra looked up at the beautiful young assailant who came over to crouch next to her, grabbing her by the hair for a cozy one-on-one. She dared not utter another word, in case Hilda decided she did not feel like listening again.
“I came here to hurt you. That’s all. To beg him for what I want is simply not constructive or time efficient, you see?” she disclosed her intention to the dread of Cassandra, who was barely staying conscious. But Cassandra knew she was in for a long night of grievous bodily harm, and she did not think that her weak heart could handle that amount of pain. Making up her mind once and for all, she leapt up on one leg and grabbed the heavy ashtray from the table, using all her strength to strike Hilda against the head.
The blow was more effective than Cassandra ever anticipated she was capable of. Hilda’s scalp split on impact and the wallop sent her to the floor, but she was just disorientated. Cassandra had hoped to put her out with that blow, but the force had dislodged the ashtray from her hand and now she was left unarmed. Hilda bellowed in fury for Cassandra’s impudence and tackled the wounded, screaming woman. But Cassandra realized she was fighting for her life and she grabbed her knitting, jamming it into Hilda’s face. Violently and relentlessly she stabbed, having no idea if it even helped to fight off her attacker.
“You’re dead, bitch!” Hilda growled. She punched Cassandra in the face repeatedly until her face was a bloody mess. Cassandra fell limply to the ground from the punishment, which broke Hilda’s hold on her. It was now or never for Cassandra . . . again. Her adrenaline jolted her body into action and she dashed for the window, flinging herself through the glass to escape. Outside in the mud she crawled to the fence, screaming frantically for the neighbors, who rushed out to find the cause of the ruckus.
Hilda chose to leave it at that. She was far from finished and in a few days she vowed to finish the job . . . with Patrick Smith.
17
Jari watched his guests with a keen eye. His dogs came to sit by his chair, one on each side. It was peculiar. As if they were trained to do so, the large black beasts took their places. Purdue could hardly stifle his eagerness to ask the questions he had traveled so far to ask, but he had to give Sam time to ease into it.
“Jari, do you mind if I ask a few questions?” Sam asked their host.
“Not at all,” Jari replied kindly.
Nina took up the video camera. “You don’t mind being filmed, do you?” she smiled, really working her charm. It was unnecessary, though, for the old man would probably allow her anything.
“You may film, yes,” he nodded, satisfied.
“How long have you been an art collector?” Sam asked, reading from his notepad. Purdue listened as the art and relic dealer answered every mundane question Sam directed at him with professionalism and content. He was getting awfully impatient with their charade and wished he could just come out and tell Jari why they were really there, but gold was not a thing to be given away so easily, especially when the billionaire considered it a godsend, bestowed on him personally.
Dave Purdue was far from a religious or even spiritual person, but he could not deny the blessings that certain people and certain opportunities have brought him under the mask of self-respect and discipline. The place where they were now almost owned a magical quality, full of old-world guile just like the craftiness concealing the house and the precise behavior of the dogs.
“What are their names?” Purdue asked inadvertently. He gasped at the realization that he spoke out of turn, as if sleepwalking, and talked right over one of Jari’s lectures about how to choose a good artifact. Sam and Nina both looked at Purdue in puzzlement as Jari ceased his words.
“Oh, my God, I am so sorry!” Purdue apologized liberally for his error. His open hands were out in front of him in contrition. “I don’t know what happened there. I . . . I just said what I was thinking. My sincerest apologies.”
“Whose names, Dave?” Jari asked, completely disregarding Purdue’s blunder with a twinkle of humor in his eyes.
“The . . .” Purdue cleared his throat awkwardly, “the dogs, your dogs. I’m just curious.”
“This is Geri,” Jari pointed to the dog on his left, “and this is Freki,” he smiled proudly. Purdue acknowledged the answer with a small salute and sat back again.
“So sorry, Sam. Carry on, please,” Purdue smiled.
Nina fixed the lens on Jari, but she was not fully attentive to the conversation. Just like Purdue a moment before, her mind drifted off to seek the reason for the familiarity she felt at the names of the animals. Utterly bemused, she recalled every name of significance in Nazi history, and then proceeded to think of folk tales and foreign friendships she had forged before. Still nothing came to her to match with the two names.
“Can we take a moment, please?” Jari suddenly asked Sam. “I have to take a piss.”
Sam laughed, “Of course, you can take a piss! This is your house, after all.”
“Kiitos,” Jari smiled and disappeared into the dark heart of the house, leaving his two canines on point to watch the visitors. At least that is how it seemed.
“When are you going to get to the real question, Sam?” Purdue pressed in a soft voice.
“Aye,” Nina agreed, “you are taking too long.”
“I have to make it look believable, people!” Sam explained as quietly as he could. “I’ve done this a million times. It is not just for asking straight out, ‘hey, so, who is the artist you inherited the fucking cross from?’ There is more to it!”
“Josef Palevski,” came the answer from the doorway that led to the porch. Jari stood there, lighting his pipe.
Purdue, Sam, and Nina were dumbstruck. They never expected him to be back so soon, nor did they ever think he would be willing to answer this all-important question.
“It’s written on that prob- . . . pro- . . . provenance I sent you with the relic, Mr. Purdue. Or you had a hard time to make out the handwriting?”
Again he delivered a revelation that shook all three of them.
“How did you know who I was, Jari?” Purdue asked, pleasantly amazed.
“Do you think I don’t look for what kind of people I make transactions with?” he asked Purdue. “By the time I sent you the stone cross . . .” he puffed at his pipe, “I knew the size of your shoe.” Jari laughed robustly at their feeble attempts at deceit. “You could have spared much time just by telling me why you came.”
“Truthfully, we didn’t think you would tell us,” Nina shrugged awkwardly.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because you probably did not want to explain who gave it to you to complete strangers, just because they asked for no reason at all,” Sam fumbled his answer ineloquently.
“That is the only time I would have told you,” Jari exclaimed in astounded disbelief. He was obviously entertained by their careful scrutiny. “If for no reason, then where is the harm, eh?”
They laughed at the misunderstanding and only after their merriment died down did they start digging shamelessly. More wine was poured on the stoep of Jari Koivusaari’s hidden house before Nina finally asked, “Did Josef ever tell you why he made the cross?”
Jari pondered a little. His face changed into contorted sorrow. There was no doubt that he knew the artist well and missed him in his absence. The old man composed himself and cleared his throat. “Pretty woman, why you want to know this? David Purdue, are you not satisfied with your purchase?”
“I am more than satisfied with it, Jari. That piece is very special to me and I just have a connection to it, for some reason,” Purdue explained to Jari, and every word he spoke was gospel truth. The cross held an appeal since the moment he laid eyes on it, long before he knew it contained a king’s ransom in gold. “Somehow I feel that it speaks to me, that it has a story to tell.” Purdue shrugged. “That was why what Sam said was so true. We . . . I . . . just needed to know more for no particular reason.”
Nina and Sam glared at him, both wondering if he was just a very good actor or if there was something about Purdue’s expedition he was too embarrassed to share with them. He was well-known as a materialistic hedonist who did not put much stock into the deeper meanings of the things he chased after, except maybe for Nina Gould. And here he was confessing to having an emotional attachment to something he purchased, worth no more than what he had on his credit card balance at any given time.
“Josef Palevski contacted me to ask if I could be a broker for his art. He said he heard I was good, honest man who did not cheat people out of their money. I liked his work very much, so I said yes,” Jari told them with a steady thread of emotion in his words. “We became very good friends, even if he was more than thirty years older than I was.”
“Wow,” Nina whispered, evoking a slight smile from Jari.
“So, then he starts telling me his past when we become better friends. He tells me he had a bad life. Not for years could he stop having nightmares of the Second World War,” the old man recounted. Nina and Sam perked up at the mention of the war. It was a sign that they were on the right track, finally. However, Purdue listened intently, uncharacteristically ignoring the facts for the sake of the tale.
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