The Isis Covenant

by Douglas, James

  ‘What do you want, Frederick?’

  ‘Why you, Mr Saintclair. You.’

  In the same second his arms were pinned to his side and his world went black as some kind of evil-smelling hood was pulled over his head. At least two men dragged him off his feet and threw him bodily into the van where more hands were waiting to pinion his wrists with plastic ties. He felt a bolt of pain as his back was rammed against the metal side of the van. He sensed that Danny must be somewhere opposite him and he opened his mouth to give her some pointless reassurance.

  ‘Dan—’

  Bright colours exploded in his head as something very hard hit him on the side of the skull.

  ‘No move. No speak. Or you get hurt proper, huh?’

  The words were in heavily accented English and in a tone that convinced him the owner meant what he said. Better, in any case, to wait and preserve his strength. That was the advice from the escape and evasion instructors. Then again, they also said the best time to escape was in the minutes after you were captured. Conclusion? The E and A course had been a complete waste of nine hours in the freezing cold, plus four tied to a boiling radiator with a bright light in his eyes and four hulking paras taking turns to kick him in the balls.

  As the van sped away, Jamie’s racing mind fought for calm. Two minutes ago they’d been standing in the drizzle chatting about an East German car park. Now they were trussed up like Christmas turkeys in the back of a van going who knew where and at the mercy of …? Somewhere beyond the shock, his subconscious was working on that question. Frederick. How could it be Frederick? Frederick should be in jail or in hell, where he belonged. Frederick shouldn’t be walking the streets of Berlin. Frederick was, or had been, the leader of the paramilitary wing of the Vril Society, a shady neo-Nazi organization whose origins went back beyond the Second World War. Taking its lead from Heinrich Himmler, the Vril Society was dedicated to discovering the source of the Aryan race and tapping the mythical powers of its founders. At least that’s what they claimed. For Jamie Saintclair, Frederick and his kind were the devil spawn of men like Bodo Ritter and Hitler. When they were bored they’d go out and take over someone else’s country and the more blood spilled, the more glorious the victory. Not that knowing his enemy gave him much comfort. Frederick was not only ruthless, but cruel, with ice water in his veins and not a shred of pity in his make-up. The last time Jamie had seen him had been outside the Frauenkirche in Dresden, bathed in the blue flashing lights of a dozen police cars, trying to explain away a crate of machine pistols and at least two dead bodies. The questions queued up in his head. How had the Vril tracked him down? Was this kidnap to do with the attack in London? Or the Crown of Isis? The Crown was exactly the kind of artefact that would interest a society who got their kicks from secret rituals in the basement of Himmler’s planned SS Disneyland at Wewelsburg Castle. It was even possible that Ritter himself had been a member of the society. His mind reeled with a dozen unlikely possibilities. In all of them the outcome was better than the most likely, and the one he feared most. That this was about simple revenge.

  A few feet away, Danny Fisher cursed herself for a fool. She should have reacted more quickly. She’d been lulled by the smile on Jamie’s face as he’d turned to meet the man from the car. When the four guys had jumped from the van, she’d got in just one good hit before they’d swamped her. Now she was helpless to fight the suffocating hood or the plastic ties that were biting into her wrists. The ties stirred a memory and her mind was momentarily filled with that scene of horror back in the Brooklyn house. The Hartmanns had been pinioned with plastic ties just like these before … Well, whatever happened she would not submit to that. Better off dead. She didn’t know how, but, if it came to it, she’d find a way. She attempted to use the van’s motion and the pressure on her back to figure out how far and in what direction they were travelling, but the map in her head was soon a scrambled mess. Hell, she could barely have found her way back to the hotel. Fear gnawed at her insides, but that was only natural. Anybody who wasn’t scared in a situation like this was either lying or lobotomized. It was a question of ruling your fear and not allowing it to rule you. She hung on to the certainty that as long as you continued to function, there was a chance. And all she needed was one chance. But Christ, she was lonely. She hadn’t even been certain Jamie was in the van until she’d heard the German scumball tell him to shut up. For the moment, she didn’t let the whys or wherefores occupy her. Whether it was about the Crown of Isis or the contract out on him didn’t matter. This was about Jamie. Thinking about his reassuring presence brought her a moment of strength. She had a suspicion their kidnappers might be underestimating Mr Jamie Saintclair. Beneath that slightly bumbling academic exterior she’d sensed a hardness, a kind of titanium core, that wasn’t like other men she’d known. If it came to it, she decided, she could rely on Jamie Saintclair to go the extra mile. All they needed was one chance.

  XXI

  THE DOOR OF the van slammed back with a booming echo that told Jamie they were in some sort of barn or warehouse. It wasn’t much information, but enough to give him a glimmer of hope. Better to be wherever they were than in a field where the likelihood was that the inside of the hessian sack was the last thing he would ever see. He braced himself as two men manhandled him out and held him until he found his balance.

  A shrill protest reached him through the material of the hood. ‘Get your fucking hands off me, you fucking pervert.’

  Danny Fisher’s voice contained no hint of fear and despite their plight he felt a surge of pride. Whatever happened next, they were still together and that dramatically increased their chances if it came to a fight. It was a tactical error. Maybe Frederick wasn’t the mastermind he thought he was. Jamie held that thought as his captors guided him across what felt like a concrete floor and up two flights of wooden stairs. He heard a door open and rough hands propelled him through.

  Inside, someone pushed him and he felt a moment of fear as he fell backwards, only to be brought up with a bump by some sort of chair. He heard a yelp that said Danny was still with him. It was followed by the sound of shuffling feet, until he calculated that at least six or seven men must be in the room.

  ‘Close the door. All right, remove the hoods.’

  The light hit him like a train from a tunnel and it took a few seconds to become aware of his surroundings. He’d counted right. Seven of them, including Frederick. He instantly recognized the type. Regulation dark clothing that was a kind of uniform if you knew what to look for. Either leather jacket and jeans or an expensive suit, though one ugly customer was in a tight black T-shirt, showing off shoulders like a mastodon. Close-cropped hair apart from one with his long hair tied back in a pony-tail. From what he could see, every man had a weapon of some sort; pistols mainly, either to hand or, in the case of T-shirt Hulk, in a shoulder holster that looked suspiciously like a Special Forces’ pattern. And if that seemed like security overkill for two bound captives, pony-tail was toting a sub-machine gun, for Christ’s sake. Clearly, Frederick was keen to ensure there’d be no repeat of Jamie’s previous miracle escape.

  Danny was to his left, closer to the door, and, like him, forced back into a cheap office chair. She had her head up and a dangerous look in her eyes. He met the look with one he hoped would be similarly reassuring. He’d never been in much doubt where this was going, but if he had, the plastic sheeting that covered the floor and the rubber padding that lined the walls would have clinched it. It was the kind of room you held noisy, messy sports like mud-wrestling in. Or alternatively, the kind where you killed people who had become a nuisance. On the one hand, the room gave him a shred of comfort, because if Frederick had been going to kill them immediately they’d already have been in a shallow grave. On the other, it meant that either Frederick wanted to know something and was going to have a little fun finding it out, or he was going to have a little fun anyway. The up side was it gave them more time, the down side that it was likely to be time boug
ht at a painful price.

  Oddly, he felt no fear at all, only the inner calm and a fine, growing, but contained rage, that was the familiar precursor to terrible violence.

  ‘You have no idea what joy it gave me to see you parading around Berlin’s sights with your whore, Mr Saintclair. It was, as I believe the English saying goes, like Christmas coming early.’ Frederick spoke in a distinctive Berlin accent Jamie remembered well – why was it he only remembered it now? – and the little joke raised a few grins among his men. The German words mostly meant nothing to Danny, but she understood whore well enough. She spat at her captors like a cornered wildcat, but Frederick only smiled. He was enjoying himself. ‘You are losing your touch. I preferred your previous girlfriend, the Jew, to this stick insect.’

  Jamie felt like tearing the smile off the other man’s face, but he met the words with a shrug. ‘In that case why don’t you let her go. She’s nothing to you. She’s nothing to me. Whatever it is you want, I’m the one you need, not her.’

  ‘If you’re going to talk about me, Saintclair, talk in English. I assume this vulture can speak it.’

  ‘Oh yes, I speak it quite well, Miss … Please, the lady’s bag.’ One of the men handed him the voluminous handbag Danny had carried. He searched until he found her purse and rifled through it before giving a low whistle. ‘Detective Fisher.’ He shook his head. ‘I am afraid that New York’s finest must remain with us, Mr Saintclair. I am sure she will find it instructive, even entertaining. Perhaps she will see a new side to you?’

  ‘This is just wasting time. What do you want?’

  ‘Want? I want what I am owed. You owe me a life, Mr Saintclair. You remember Erik, from Paderborn, whose skull you smashed in? I never forget debts, or the people who owe them.’ The name wasn’t familiar, but Jamie remembered a tall man who didn’t look in great shape after thirteen and a half stones of Clan Sinclair landed on top of him. The good news, if there was any, was that Frederick didn’t appear to know that he was also responsible for the timely and well-deserved end of Gustav, the Vril Society’s pet torturer.

  ‘Erik was just one of your foot soldiers, Frederick. Cannon-fodder. How much can he be worth?’

  ‘A life for a life, Mr Saintclair.’ The German oozed reason like a bank manager turning down a loan for a kidney transplant. ‘Your life for his.’

  ‘That would be a pity, because I have something to trade.’ An eyebrow rose and he knew he’d hit the mark. ‘How is all your Nazi mumbo-jumbo going? I recall you put a lot of faith in the Sun Stone.’

  ‘The Sun Stone no longer exists, Mr Saintclair, I seem to remember you proving that most conclusively.’

  Jamie nodded at what amounted to a compliment. ‘But you Nazis had also mislaid something just as important. What if I could find you the gold centrepiece to the Wewelsburg Sun. The centrepiece that would allow you to translate all the rune symbols carved into the marble. Whatever that leads you to has got to be worth a couple of lives.’

  Frederick’s eyes glittered. The Black Sun at Himmler’s Wewelsburg Castle had been one of the clues that led Jamie to the hiding place of the Sun Stone, but the golden centrepiece, which was the key to all the information on the Sun, hadn’t been seen since the final days of the war. For a moment it seemed the German would take the bait, then he laughed.

  ‘How can you find something that no longer exists?’

  ‘That’s what I do, old chap,’ Jamie said patiently. ‘I found the Sun Stone, didn’t I?’

  Frederick shook his head slowly. ‘Not possible.’

  ‘Walter Schellenberg.’ He could almost see the Nazi’s ears prick up. The charismatic Schellenberg had been Himmler’s counter-intelligence chief, a will-o’-the-wisp character perfectly at home in a world of shadows. ‘Walter Schellenberg holds the key. I’m willing to bet that Schellenberg was the last man out of Wewelsburg Castle before the demolition charges were set.’

  Frederick was tempted. Jamie could see it in the storm-grey eyes, but eventually he shook his head again, emphatically this time. ‘Ah, Mr Saintclair, if it was only me …’ He stepped aside to reveal the big man with the muscles pulling his T-shirt over his head. ‘You remember Gustav, of course. How we all miss Gustav. Let me introduce Jurgen, Gustav’s brother. Jurgen was most upset at his brother’s death. If I remember rightly he promised to rain all manner of biblical punishments on the perpetrator. And now,’ Jurgen’s smile resembled the grinning skull on an SS death’s head ring, ‘thanks to your timely arrival in this fair city, he has his opportunity.’

  Jurgen pushed himself forward into the centre of the room and drew what looked like a butcher’s skinning knife from his belt. Danny Fisher gave a little cry and for the first time Jamie’s body told him it was time to be scared. Very scared. He could see the rippling blue sheen where the blade had been sharpened to a razor edge. He tried to push himself back, away from the advancing German, but the men behind him laughed and held him in place. Jurgen bent low over him, eyes bright and the flat, moon face inches from Jamie’s, so he could smell the other man’s sewer breath. Very slowly, the knife came up to his waist and his body cringed away from the awful curved blade. With a sharp snick Jamie felt the plastic ties falling away from his wrists and Jurgen backed away, grinning.

  The Englishman let out a long, slow breath and felt something ready to explode inside him.

  Frederick laughed. ‘Jurgen has always planned to take you apart, one piece at a time and with infinite patience, but he is a warrior, as well as an artist. He wants to see how well you can fight.’ Casually, he threw a knife, the twin of the one in Jurgen’s hand, at Jamie’s feet, as the others made a ring with the two men at the centre.

  Jamie’s brain screamed that there had to be a way out, but the warrior inside told him that was just the fear talking and he buried it deep. He studied his opponent. If Frederick was giving him a knife, it was because he knew Jurgen was better with it. And that was only the half of it. Stripped to the waist, the German was massively muscled and his height gave him a longer reach. Something told Jamie that, despite his size, Jurgen would be quick, too. His brother had fought in Afghanistan and enjoyed inflicting pain. It looked as if it ran in the family. He ignored the thrown knife and the ring of bright expectant eyes and slowly removed his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged it off so he was Jurgen’s smaller, leaner twin. He also removed his shoes and socks, which brought a sneer from the other man.

  When he was ready, he stood for a few moments allowing his mind to clear. It wasn’t anger or hate he needed now, but ice-cold calculation. The man who tried to match Jurgen blow for blow was a dead man, but if he couldn’t outfight him, at least he could try to outthink him. In many ways it made it simpler that this was a fight to the death. Black and white. He had no illusions what would happen if he won, but he was certain of one thing. Before he died, Jurgen was going to be saying hello to his brother. He bent to pick up the knife, his eyes never leaving the other man’s.

  The trick in knife fighting is not to be mesmerized by your opponent’s hands. He’ll posture with his left to draw you, while lunging with the blade. He’ll hypnotize you with his knife hand until you see every move but the one that kills you. Don’t watch his hands; watch his eyes – that was what the unarmed combat instructors at the OTC had always said. The problem was that Jurgen was too good for that. Jamie knew it the moment they faced up to one another, each man circling to get the measure of his opponent’s reach, and his balance. Searching out any weakness. Jurgen’s knife hand swayed, jinked and darted, but his eyes never left Jamie’s face, nor betrayed any of those swift, graceful movements. The grin had gone, replaced by the sardonic smile of a professional at work. He had patience, too. After the initial ritual dance, like two cobras swaying in a deadly courtship, Jamie expected a first rush to test his defences. It never came. Gradually, he realized what was happening. To test his theory, he offered Jurgen a potential opening, but the German’s smile broadened and he continued to circle. Now Jami
e was certain. His opponent had a plan. He had made his promise to Gustav. In Jurgen’s tiny mind, Jamie had already been turned into a bloody obscenity, taken apart piece by piece; all that was required was to execute that plan. And that gave Jamie confidence. Jurgen was good. But was he that good?

  A flash of exquisite agony gave him his answer.

  ‘Shit!’ The jeers of Jurgen’s Nazi comrades filled the room. First blood. Where had that come from? Jamie glanced at his shoulder. An inch of skin was missing and blood trickled wine red down his right arm. Jurgen raised his arms in a victory salute. The gesture was arrogant and contemptuous and it almost killed him. Jamie feinted right and lunged, the point of the skinning knife aimed at the German’s protruding belly-button, the strike so fast and so precise he could almost feel it enter the flesh. Jurgen had been expecting it, but even so he was almost too slow. He abandoned the counter-stroke he had planned and danced clear, but the wind of the blade whispered on his flesh like a child’s kiss and he realized he had been a millimetre from being disembowelled. The eyes hardened and Jamie knew there would be no more salutes. Still, he reasoned, Jurgen wouldn’t abandon his plan so lightly. That was Jamie’s edge. Jurgen was like a gladiator performing a piece of theatre for the Emperor, and the longer it took, the more exquisite the end would be. Jamie only wanted to kill. Jurgen wanted him to attack, because that would make it easier. But that was all right, because now Jamie understood that Jurgen’s vanity was his weakness, he was happy to give him what he wanted. Jurgen needed many openings to make his plan work. Jamie only needed one.

  He built up the speed of his movements, circling and dancing, first in, then out, the knife weaving glistening patterns in the artificial light. Inside the circle, Jurgen turned, always facing his opponent, but Jamie saw a faint hint of concern in the close-set eyes, because he was only barely moving fast enough, and he knew it. Jamie’s bare feet allowed him to dance over the plastic sheeting, where Jurgen’s trainers, with their notched soles, moved it with them. Jurgen glanced at his feet and Jamie struck. He darted inside, at the same time bringing the blade round in a slashing arc designed to sever the German’s carotid artery. Jurgen, and every man in the room, thought he had reacted too late. He swayed away from the blade, but it pursued him like a hawk diving on a sparrow. A splash of bright scarlet signalled the hit and Jurgen screamed in fright. Jamie heard Danny’s cry of triumph and felt the volcanic surge of victory deep in his loins. But it was only momentary. A man with his throat cut doesn’t keep moving. A man with his throat cut sways and bleeds and falls and dies. Jurgen raised a hand to his left ear, which had been sliced diagonally, with the lower piece flapping against his neck held by a thin strip of skin. A line of blood appeared where the knife point had traced the flesh of his cheek.