‘I said we had two options, follow the Hartmanns or follow the Eye. Well, you’re going to follow the Eye. In the meantime, we’ve been so focused on the Eye, if you’ll pardon the pun, we’ve forgotten about the Hartmann connection. I’ll dig up everything I can about the last days before the Fall of Berlin and we can meet up again tomorrow.’
‘Okay,’ she said in her slow drawl. ‘But I have a better idea. How about we meet up later and you take me out to dinner. Somewhere fancy. I’d like that.’
He grinned. ‘I’d like that too.’
The first two experts on Danny’s list were, not surprisingly given it was the digging season, working on projects in Egypt, but the third was happy to meet her. Professor Helen Dayton opened the front door of her terraced house in Richmond carrying a feather duster and with two fair-haired toddlers wrapped around her legs. Fisher introduced herself and they shook hands.
‘Please excuse them.’ The Egyptologist smiled. ‘I’ve only been back from Cairo for a week and they’re still a little hyper. To be honest, I’d much rather be up to my neck in dust dealing with lazy Egyptian labourers and argumentative archaeologists, not to mention venal officials from the Department of Culture. Come through into the study while I find them something to occupy themselves with. Coffee?’
‘No thank you.’ British coffee and the American variety seemed to be only distant relations, although it was better than the warmed-up water they called tea.
She was ushered to a book-lined room with a view over the garden and waited until the other woman returned, still carrying the feather duster, which she absently pushed into an umbrella stand made from an elephant’s foot. Two leather chairs sat either side of the window.
‘This is lovely.’ Fisher gestured to the lawn beyond the window, with its apple trees and flower beds where late roses still bloomed among the greenery.
‘All down to my husband and the previous owners, I’m afraid. I don’t have too much time for gardening.’
Fisher smiled at the subtle hint and got down to business.
‘Firstly, Professor, thank you for agreeing to help. We’re very grateful.’
‘You said it was some kind of investigation?’
‘That’s right, a homicide investigation. A young family.’
Helen Dayton’s head came up. In Fisher’s experience most honest citizens were happy to help the cops, but the mention of murder always shook them a little.
‘And you’re working with the British police?’
‘Correct.’ She produced her identification and the accreditation she’d been issued at New Scotland Yard.
‘Well, I’m not sure how I can contribute, but what can I help you with?’
Her face paled as Fisher explained the Egyptian symbolism found on Elizabeth Hartmann and the theory that the killings could be linked to the goddess.
‘So you see, anything you can tell us about Isis might be of use in explaining why the victims were chosen.’
Helen Dayton rose and went to the window. Fisher waited for her to gather her thoughts. Finally, the other woman nodded to herself. Danny Fisher had deliberately made the question as broad as possible to allow Helen to relax into her role as expert witness. She listened as the Egyptian specialist went over the Isis/Osiris/Horus myth that Jamie had already explained.
‘Isis is the divine mother and goddess of fertility. In the Egyptian pantheon she holds her place among the very greatest and is one of the few deities whose worship was exported beyond the borders of Egypt. Temples dedicated to her have been found all over the Roman Empire, even in Rome itself. She was believed to be the most powerful god in the ways of magic, which, I suspect, is what endeared her to the Romans. She had the power to destroy life with mere words, but she is also the only member of the Egyptian pantheon credited with the ability to resurrect the dead and offer them new life.
‘I think you are correct in linking the symbol you found to the goddess. Von Bulow, though his work was dismissed by his rivals after the outbreak of the First World War, was a very meticulous archaeologist and scholar. His paper on the Eye of Isis was the product of years of research. I have no doubt the Eye existed in the form he suggested.’
‘What about in another form?’
‘I’m sorry?’
Danny consulted her notes, although she had no need to. ‘I’m talking about the great gemstone known as the Eye of Isis. The one that is associated with the Crown of Isis.’
The words were interrupted by a high-pitched shriek from the adjoining room, followed by the sound of infant squabbling. Helen pursed her lips, but Fisher couldn’t be certain whether the children had annoyed her, or the question.
‘The Eye of Isis,’ she placed unnecessary emphasis on the words, ‘as you suggest it, does not exist, in any context that I’m aware of. I am an academic, Detective, and as such I deal in fact, not fairytale. I’m aware that over the years there have been whispers about some fabled jewel, but these kinds of stories exist in many different cultures. The “Great Mogul” diamond seen by Jean Baptiste Tavernier in 1665 in India was mythologized into three or four different enormous stones, but is now accepted to be the uncut Koh-i-noor. As far as I know, this all stemmed from a few scraps from a so-called “lost version” of Tacitus’ Annals … You know who Tacitus was?’ Danny nodded, wondering why every Brit seemed to think she was an idiot. ‘The “book” was supposedly discovered in a convent archive in Italy in the nineteenth century and taken to Berlin in nineteen forty-four, where it conveniently disappeared. It was an elaborate fraud that spawned a conspiracy theory, nothing more, Detective Fisher.’
Danny Fisher resisted the temptation to dispute the academic’s hypothesis, but she had another question.
‘Does that mean the Crown of Isis doesn’t exist either?’
‘Oh, the Crown of Isis existed. There is plenty of evidence of that.’ Helen went to one of the shelves, selected a book and flicked through until she found the page she wanted. ‘Look, you can see it here.’ She placed it where Fisher had a view of the page. ‘On the right of the stele is Cleopatra.’ She smiled. ‘Yes, Detective Fisher, Cleopatra, wearing the double crown of Egypt and looking surprisingly manly, is pictured – and named in the inscription below – making an offering to The Lady, Isis, seen feeding the baby Horus at her breast and wearing her own headdress, or crown. The Crown of Isis was a diadem, topped with the stylized horns of a cow, and with the sun disk between them. The sun disk would have been beaten gold, and when the headdress was worn by the priestess at the two great festivals dedicated to the goddess, from a distance, it would have seemed like Ra himself was shining upon them, the goddess was wearing a star plucked from the sky, or perhaps a great diamond.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Detective, is that all?’
‘Just one thing, Ma’am. You said the Crown of Isis existed, past tense. What happened to it?’
For a moment, Helen Dayton’s face went blank and Danny saw the lie that was about to emerge as clearly as if it was written in lights on her forehead. Before she could say anything another burst of screaming froze the words on her tongue and she excused herself to see to the children.
Danny gathered up her things. When Helen appeared in the doorway with a tiny figure in each arm, she was certain she was about to be invited to leave. But the academic sighed and kissed the head of the girl in her right arm.
‘You said children were killed? Murdered?’
Danny nodded.
‘You won’t find this in any books, because no academic would want to be associated with it. It is gossip, no more than that. It may have reached some of the more wild conspiracy sites on the internet, but if it has I have never heard of it.’
‘Yes?’
‘In the resurrection myth associated with Isis, there’s a hint, no more than a hint, that for the dead to become the living, a price must be paid. A blood price.’
‘Human sacrifice?’
Helen Dayton’s face might have been set in concrete, but she managed a
vigorous, almost spastic nod.
‘There’s more. I had a colleague who planned a research project on the Crown of Isis. He came up with a wild theory, which he would only talk about with trusted friends. One night when he was drunk he said that he was on the point of proving that the Crown had reappeared at certain times through history. Times of strife. And that each time it appeared, it was associated with magic, witchcraft and murder.’ She hugged the babies closer. ‘Child murder.’
Danny Fisher caught her breath. ‘Where can I get in touch with this man? It could be important.’
Helen shook her head and Danny saw tears streaming down her cheeks.
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
XV
‘SO THIS GERALD Masterton died in a car crash?’
‘I’ve already checked.’ Danny answered the question in his voice. ‘No suspicious circumstances. He’d visited a bar after work. Hit a tree on a blind bend.’
‘Just bad luck, then?’
‘Uhuh, another of those coincidences.’
A waiter brought their first course. Jamie had chosen an upmarket Italian restaurant just off Portman Square, on the basis – he’d seen it in the movies – that all Americans like Italian food. When Danny Fisher arrived every eye in line of sight had checked her out. She wore a black silk suit with a slightly mannish cut, and she didn’t walk, so much as prowl. He wasn’t sure whether she reminded him of a film star or some sort of big cat.
‘Hey, this is great,’ she said through a mouthful of salt cod. ‘You do classy darn well, Jamie Saintclair.’
‘Comes with the job,’ he admitted cheerfully. ‘My clients are hardly likely to be impressed with the office, so I have to bring them to places like this, feed them fit to burst and get them drunk. Come to think of it, it’d probably be cheaper to rent a bigger office.’
‘I hope you’re not trying to get me drunk.’ She held up her glass for a refill of the Piedmontese red he’d selected to go with the grouse they’d both chosen.
He filled it within a quarter inch of the rim. ‘Never crossed my mind.’
The food was so good they waited until they’d finished eating before resuming their discussion.
‘So what do you think?’
‘You’re the detective.’ He shrugged. ‘But for me it begins to make more sense. The Eye of Isis may or may not exist, but if certain people believed they could lay their hands on a billion dollars’ worth of diamond that would give them more than enough motive to torture and kill. It provides a reason for the deaths of the Hartmanns and the Hartmans, even if it takes us no closer to finding out who did it.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I’ll go along with that. We have the symbol carved into the woman’s skull, which links us to the Eye of Isis, and that gives us our motive: greed. But where do Masterton and his theory fit in?’
‘Maybe, it was a coincidence?’
‘I refer you to my earlier answer, counsellor.’
‘It sounds like something out of a Dracula movie. Historical artefact keeps turning up through the ages and suddenly the local population starts being thinned out.’
‘She said kids, remember. And kids have died.’
‘True. But from what you’ve told me, the Hartmann children died for a reason, albeit a shitty, monstrous reason. They weren’t sacrificed, not in a sense that I’d understand it, because there was no evidence of ritual.’
She went silent and he could see her running the alternative scenarios through her mind. He waited until she was satisfied. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘It’s progress, of a sort. Now tell me about your day.’
‘Firstly,’ he took a sip of water, ‘I think your initial instinct about Hartmann was correct. We have two sets of victims with a link to a man last seen in Berlin in nineteen forty-five. The Crown of Isis is exactly the kind of artefact that Geistjaeger 88 was set up to find. If it was hidden somewhere in Europe the most likely time for it to surface was in the chaos of war.’
‘Plunder, like the Koh-i-noor.’
‘That’s right. Plunder. Secondly, Hartmann was a thief. Let’s just say, for instance, Ritter, and Dornberger and Hartmann smash down the door to some mansion or chateau. Chances are they are there for a reason. A tip-off, or information collected from someone in a concentration camp by means we don’t want to think about? They search the place for whatever it is that they’ve been told they’ll find there. Probably take it apart. But Hartmann, the thief, stumbles on the Crown of Isis, with its whacking great diamond. Does he hand it over? Not on your life. This is his chance to make sure that, whoever wins, he has a very comfortable start to the post-war era.’
‘The Crown of Isis is a sizable object, remember.’ Danny giggled and it was odd to hear a little girl’s laugh from a full-grown woman. ‘He could hardly just put it down his pants.’
‘Don’t underestimate Hartmann. I have this mental picture of someone young, resourceful and cocky; a kind of Nazi Artful Dodger. He would have found a way. Maybe he broke it up. Anyway, the point is that whoever killed those people in Brooklyn and out in Docklands believed Hartmann had found the Crown of Isis. The question is, did he find it during the war, or after it?’
‘During, I think we’re agreed on that.’
‘Then Berlin is the key. And Berlin is where I’ve spent my day.’
The waiter approached their table, but Danny waved him away. ‘You said that Hartmann and this guy Dornberger took part in the defence of Berlin. I got the impression that maybe you knew more than you were telling me. Now how could that be?’
‘You didn’t pick up on the reference to the Reichschancellery, then?’
‘I thought it was some kinda Nazi telephone exchange.’
He smiled at that. Danny Fisher liked to play the wide-eyed Yank innocent on her first venture beyond Hoboken, but the reality was that she had a brain as sharp as a switchblade. He suspected she knew as much about the Reichschancellery as he did, but she wanted him to spell it out.
‘The Reichschancellery in Berlin was the official residence of Germany’s head of state. When the Russians closed in on the city in the spring of nineteen forty-five, the chancellery and the Reichstag, the parliament building that was nearby, were their primary targets.’
‘All right.’ She nodded. ‘I get that.’
‘The people who defended the Reichschancellery were billeted in a bunker nearby.’
‘So?’
‘Hitler’s bunker.’
‘Holy shit!’
‘Precisely.’
‘So Hartmann was there at the end?’
‘He was certainly there until the last week in April. Quite a few German units, particularly SS units, actually fought their way into Berlin as the Third Reich was collapsing around them and everybody else was trying to get out. Either they still had faith that Hitler would save Germany or they were prepared to defend him to the end, even if it meant their own deaths.’
‘The real fanatics, huh?’
Jamie shrugged. ‘Fanatics, but brave men. The SS knew exactly what their fate would be if they were captured by the Russians. If they surrendered to the Americans they might be roughed up a little and there was a chance they’d be shot, but the best they could hope for from the Red Army was a bullet in the back of the head.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, this doesn’t sound like our guys. Hartmann and Dornberger were Himmler’s licensed plunderers, not real soldiers. And from what you tell me about Ritter, he may have killed thousands of innocent people, but he was a bureaucrat at heart, a pen-pusher.’
‘You’re right,’ he admitted. ‘But in those final days of the war, the Nazis needed every able-bodied man they could lay their hands on. There’s a photograph of Hitler during the defence of Berlin, handing out the Iron Cross to soldiers who single-handedly destroyed Russian tanks. In the picture he’s patting the cheek of a boy who can’t be more than fourteen years old. The German equivalent of Dad’s Army.’ He saw her puzzled frown and smiled. ‘A sort of
home defence force – it was called the Volkssturm and consisted of men between the ages of sixteen and sixty. By nineteen forty-five sailors and Luftwaffe ground crew were fighting as infantry. The chances are that the men of Geistjaeger 88 were reluctantly swept up into some SS battle group. The soldiers they ended up fighting beside in Berlin were a unit of French SS volunteers under the command of Brigadeführer Gustav Krukenberg. A month earlier, the Charlemagne Division had marched out of a station in Poland straight into the German defence line on the Eastern Front with more than seven thousand men, by the time they were forced back to Berlin there were fewer than a hundred of them.’
Danny Fisher held up her hand. ‘Hang on just a minute. I don’t know much about World War Two, but I do know that the French were on our side.’
‘Well, yes and no.’ Jamie smiled. ‘The Free French under General de Gaulle fought on the allied side, and so did the Resistance, though not as many of them as they’d like you to think. But until August nineteen forty-four, France was divided into the Occupied north and Vichy in the south, which was run as a German client state and actively collaborated in Nazi policies like rounding up the Jews. Marshall Petain, the Vichy leader, was a First World War hero and rabid anti-communist. He encouraged his young men and members of the milice, a kind of local militia, to fight for the Germans in Russia. For an organization that began life as the epitome of the Aryan ideal, the SS turned into a surprisingly cosmopolitan institution. It already had the Wiking Division, which was composed of Norwegians, Danes, Dutchmen and Belgians, Balts and even a few Britons. They would have welcomed the French with open arms, especially after they’d seen how they could fight. It seems that Ritter had already slipped away, probably on some concocted mission for Himmler, who was by now playing both ends against the middle and negotiating with the Allies, but Hartmann and Dornberger were trapped in some of the hardest, dirtiest and most dangerous battles of the war. They would have been battered by artillery, fighting day and night from burning ruins and cellars to counter Soviet probes, hungry, scared and entirely without hope. The men of the Charlemagne Division, or what little remained of it, made their name as tank killers. They’d stalk the Russian T-34s through the streets with magnetic mines and panzerfaust rocket launchers, kill the accompanying infantry and blow up the tanks. The Red Army lost at least a hundred tanks in the battle for central Berlin and those few Frenchmen are credited with destroying at least fifty. But gradually the noose tightened and the last remnants of the French SS and the men who fought with them withdrew to make a final stand at Hitler’s bunker in the garden behind the Reichschancellery.’
The Isis Covenant Page 9