The Isis Covenant

by Douglas, James

  In the morning he telephoned to make an appointment with the lawyer.

  * * *

  ‘First you must know that we have no record of a client named Hartmann.’

  Danny and Jamie exchanged glances of disappointment. ‘Then it seems we have wasted our time and yours, Herr Kohler. I apologize for the inconvenience.’

  They made to get up from their seats, but the lawyer, who spoke perfect, if rigidly formal, English, raised a hand.

  ‘Please, I am not quite finished. Although we have no Hartmann on our files I did receive a telephone call yesterday afternoon, warning me that a Herr Saintclair was likely to pay this office a visit.’

  ‘May one ask the source of this call?’

  ‘One may not. But the purpose of the call was to issue certain instructions in the event of such a visit. These instructions brought into action a long-established procedure, which to my knowledge has never been required before.’ He handed over a white envelope. ‘You should know that I am not aware of the contents of this envelope. Neither do I wish to be.’

  ‘Isn’t that a little odd?’ Danny asked.

  The Swiss gave a thin smile. ‘I am merely a conduit, Fräulein Fisher, a transmitter of information, untouched and unaffected by what passes through my hands. I can assure you, in Switzerland this is a most normal situation.’ He pointed to a painting of a disapproving, stiff-necked man in a wing collar. ‘My grandfather, who founded this firm, would have insisted it was so.’

  A secretary ushered them out of the office on to Forchstrasse, a long, wide street that split Zurich’s Eighth District. Jamie tapped the envelope against his palm.

  ‘Well,’ Danny said, her voice mirroring the frustration on her face. ‘You were right. Another link in the chain, but a goddam daisy chain that just goes round in circles. I am merely a conduit, Fräulein Fisher,’ she perfectly mimicked the lawyer’s stiff, grammatical English, ‘a transmitter of information. Jesus, I wanted to take him by his scrawny neck and shake him.’

  ‘Don’t knock it until we’ve seen what’s inside here,’ Jamie insisted. ‘He talked about a long-established procedure that’s never been used before. How long? Kohler’s law firm has been around for fifty or sixty years at least. Who’s to say that old granddaddy Kohler didn’t take the instructions from Hartmann himself?’

  ‘The only way to find out is to open the letter, so get on with it.’

  Jamie studied the street around them. If someone knew they were going to be here, that someone was likely to be watching. He took her by the arm and led her protesting into a side street, taking random rights and lefts. He made her wait until they were in a tree-lined park just off the street and she was simmering just below boiling point when he finally tore at the seal and removed a single sheet of paper.

  ‘This doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘What doesn’t make sense?’

  He handed her the letter. ‘Proceed to Facet Safes and Strongboxes, Forchstrasse 12, Zurich. Enter by the rear door and await further instructions.’

  ‘Somebody’s yanking our chain.’ Danny studied the park around them, but the only people in view were a young couple playing with a small girl at the base of a tree, while an older boy climbed to a bench that had somehow been fixed to the branches. ‘They’re playing with us. Maybe we should just walk away.’

  ‘I’d agree, apart from two things. The first is that this business is less than four hundred yards from here. The second is the name of the company.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Facet has a couple of meanings. It can be a particular feature of something, but it’s usually only used for one object in particular.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘A diamond.’

  As they left the park neither of them noticed the man who walked up to the front door of one of the houses overlooking the park. Or the fact that he took so long to find his key.

  Facet Safes and Strongboxes occupied a large unit in a modern block of shops and flats where Forchstrasse met Kreuzplatz, a wide intersection crossed by tram lines. Four windows displayed an array of ultra-modern safes, alarms and other security equipment. The only lights were illuminating the merchandise and it looked closed for business.

  Danny shook her head. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, Saintclair, if this has been around since the Second World War I’m Abe Lincoln. A little bell is ringing inside my head telling me to get the hell out of here. If you’ve brought that body armour of yours along, now would be the time to hand it over.’

  Jamie ignored her complaints and they found an alleyway that led to a car park serving the residents of the triangular block of flats. Each ground-floor business had a small yard area for storage and deliveries, identified by a panel with the firm’s name.

  ‘Here it is.’ Danny walked through the double doors that had been left open to reveal the inner courtyard. On the far side, set into the wall, was a wide goods entrance, with a fire door to one side. Slowly, she walked towards it and pushed. ‘For a security company they sure have a strange way of keeping the bad guys out,’ she muttered as it swung back noiselessly.

  They looked at each other. Danny took a deep breath, but when she was about to step across the threshold, Jamie put a hand on her arm. ‘I think in this case we’ll make it gents first.’

  ‘Be my guest, but don’t go trying to be a hero. The first sign of trouble and we are outa here.’

  ‘Couldn’t agree more, Detective Fisher. You wouldn’t happen to have a Glock 9 mm in that handbag, would you?’

  ‘Just about everything else.’ There was a smile in her voice. ‘But no, I left my Glock in Brooklyn. Even a cop can’t get away with carrying on a 747 jet these days.’

  ‘In that case, “Once more into the breach”.’

  XXX

  THE INTERIOR OF the shop consisted of a gloomy maze of enormous safes and stacks of smaller items like strongboxes, security TV systems and alarms. The only true light came from the spotlights in the front windows, which were mostly blocked by merchandise, and some source at the far end of the shop. A flashing red beam in a globe suspended from the ceiling indicated that someone was monitoring their progress, which was comforting, because it should mean that nobody was going to ambush them. Then again, that could be wishful thinking.

  Gradually, they were drawn to the light, which came from what looked like a small and very basic office with a desk at its centre and an unfeasibly heavy door thrown back in welcome.

  ‘Please come in,’ invited a disjointed voice that was unmistakably American.

  Jamie hesitated in the doorway and he almost had a seizure when a hand dropped on his shoulder. He turned and looked into Danny Fisher’s wild eyes. ‘Trap!’ she whispered. His mouth felt as if it was filled with gravel, but he shook his head.

  ‘You wanted to talk, so come in and talk,’ the voice persisted.

  He took Danny’s hand in his and they walked side by side into the room.

  ‘At last.’ The tone was good-humoured, even playful. ‘Now we can proceed. Please take a seat.’

  Two chairs sat behind the desk and they took their places warily. Facing them, above the open doorway, was the lens of a security camera, and Jamie knew that whoever was doing the talking was also watching them on a monitor from somewhere nearby. The voice originated from a microphone set in the corner behind them, which gave him the odd feeling of being surrounded. That feeling was compounded when the metal door of the room silently swung closed with a gentle, but very final ‘thud’. They frantically searched the room for an alternative exit, but it didn’t take a genius to work out that Danny’s prediction had been right and they were trapped.

  ‘Now we have a little privacy,’ the voice said.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be telling us not to be alarmed?’ Jamie indicated the closed door.

  ‘At the moment you will be admiring the interior of the XK-60 vault, our best-selling walk-in safe, complete with eight-inch Titanium-steel alloy walls, fully encrypted lo
cking and guaranteed air tight. Is it a little stuffy in there?’

  Jamie swallowed and felt a tightness in his chest. Just for a moment the walls seemed to be closing in. Claustrophobia had never been a problem in the past. He’d done the water-filled pipe thing on army assault courses and felt nothing more than mild discomfort. But then he’d always known that if anything happened the good guys were on hand to get him out. He’d never been stuck in an eight-foot steel box with every breath using up the available air.

  Danny sat with her head back and her eyes closed and he wondered if it was despair, exasperation or the fact that she wanted to kill him for getting her into this mess. She opened one eye and confirmed the third theory. ‘Did I ever tell you that I really don’t like enclosed spaces?’

  ‘You should have enough oxygen for about thirty minutes, give or take,’ the voice assured her. ‘I am going to allow you ten of those minutes to consider your situation, then we’ll have our talk.’

  ‘We came here to talk about Hartmann.’ Jamie’s voice echoed round the chamber’s metal walls, but the only answer was a low hiss of static. Fisher pushed the desk away with a wooden screech and gave the door an ineffectual kick.

  ‘Okay, Sherlock, what the fuck do we do now?’

  ‘We wait. Maybe he’s bluffing?’

  ‘That’s it?’ She didn’t bother to hide her incredulity.

  ‘We’re not dead yet.’ He stared up at the camera, trying to figure out who was watching them and hoping he lived long enough to beat the living shit out of him.

  The atmosphere inside the safe was already stuffy. Soon the sweat made their clothing stick to their bodies and the air seemed to be thicker and more difficult to breathe. Jamie knew that was only an illusion caused by his own fear, but knowing didn’t seem to help a lot. Danny had taken up a position with her back against one wall and her long legs folded in front of her.

  ‘We’re here because they want something, huh?’

  He nodded. ‘If they wanted to kill us they could have done it in Hamburg. I don’t think this is about the SS and the past any more. It’s about now. By contacting the jovial Herr Kohler we knocked on a door and gave someone palpitations. Now they have to make up their mind whether to open it and let us step through or …’ He shrugged.

  Danny uncoiled herself and got to her feet. She took his hand and drew him to a point as far from the microphone and the camera as possible. ‘So what can we tell them that will keep us alive?’ she whispered.

  ‘Hartmann is the key. If this is about Hartmann,’ he replied in the same vein, ‘whoever is out there is going to want to know why the past has suddenly come back to haunt them. They’ll want to know how we got here and who else knows we’re here.’

  ‘So we tell him about the Crown of Isis?’

  ‘Unless we think the Crown is the reason he’s been hiding all these years. If it is, the very fact we know about it could give him a reason for letting us rot in here. Ouch!’ He touched his ear where she’d bitten it.

  ‘I was looking for something a little more positive.’

  ‘The only way we can play this is one card at a time. If he doesn’t have a reason for keeping us alive, we have to give him one. Maybe that’s the Crown of Isis, maybe it’s not. The Crown is the joker in the pack, but only he knows whether it’s the high card or the low. The one thing I’m certain of is that we can’t play it too early. Am I making sense?’

  ‘As much as you ever do.’

  Another few minutes passed and the air around them became noticeably staler.

  ‘I see you made good use of your time.’ Jamie searched for some emotion or evidence of compassion in the voice, but found none. ‘Twenty minutes left. Time enough for a game of twenty questions. Well, perhaps not twenty, but enough questions to give you an opportunity to convince me that you have a value. First the obvious: why did you come here?’

  Jamie exchanged glances with Danny and she nodded.

  ‘We’re looking for information about a man called Berndt Hartmann.’

  ‘A good start, which confirms what I already know. May I ask what makes Hartmann so interesting?’

  This time it was Danny who answered. She related the story of the murders in New York and London and the link back to the SS man.

  ‘Yes, I can see why you’d wish to confirm the connection, but not why you would want to pursue this man Hartmann, who, after all, is much more likely to be dead than alive?’

  Danny’s head came up. ‘Why would you say that?’ She hadn’t mentioned the details of Hartmann’s career in Geistjaeger 88 or the circumstances of his disappearance in Berlin. ‘Berndt Hartmann would be in his eighties now, along with many people who survived the war.’

  ‘Under the circumstances you’ll forgive me for insisting that it’s I who ask the questions, Detective. I repeat, why would you wish to pursue Berndt Hartmann?’ The question was followed by a long, dangerous pause, filled only with the sound of strained breathing. ‘Don’t take too long. Time – and air – is in short supply.’

  ‘Because … if he’s alive he should be warned.’ Danny felt as if she was walking on quicksand. ‘The name Hartmann was not the only thing that linked the murder victims to this man.’

  Again, the long pause, as if the man behind the microphone wasn’t certain he wanted to know the answer. Eventually, he decided he did: ‘And this other thing is?’

  ‘An Egyptian symbol.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘One of the murder victims had the Eye of Isis carved into her forehead.’

  There was a thump from the microphone: the sound it would make if it had been knocked over. When it spoke again the voice was almost accusing. ‘And what makes you think this Eye of Isis is in any way connected with the man Hartmann?’

  ‘I think you already know the answer to that question, sir,’ Danny said softly.

  She waited for the angry rebuttal. What she didn’t expect was the drawn-out sigh they heard.

  ‘You should not have come here. I am truly sorry.’

  The utter finality of the words froze whatever Danny was going to say on her lips. Jamie knew he only had seconds before the camera and the microphone were switched off and they were left to suffocate.

  ‘Tell him Max Dornberger says hello.’

  XXXI

  JAMIE AND DANNY were lying on the safe floor gasping at the last of the oxygen when the door swung open to allow in a rush of cool air that was as reviving as champagne. They looked up to see three young men dressed in casual clothes and carrying automatic pistols. Two of the men were dark haired and pale skinned and appeared to be twins, but it was the third man, tall, spare and with a sandy complexion and pale blue eyes, who threw a pair of what looked like leather hoods in beside the prisoners.

  ‘Put these on.’

  Jamie picked one up, but Danny stood her ground. ‘The last time somebody got me to wear one of these I ended up in a lot of trouble. You guarantee that won’t happen again?’

  The man shrugged. ‘It’s up to you. You put on the hood and come with us or you don’t and we close the door again.’

  ‘When you put it that way …’

  Another van and another blacked-out mystery tour. They drove for forty minutes before the vehicle eventually parked. But the journey held none of the menace of their trip with Frederick, and willing hands helped them out of their seats and across what felt like a gravel drive and into a building. When the masks were removed they were in a bright room with a view of a vegetable garden, but nothing else that would provide them with any clue to their location. Their passports and wallets had been removed during the trip. Now they were returned, which seemed reassuring. Blinking, they studied their surroundings. Set into the rear wall, which backed directly onto the hillside, was the steel door of a massive walk-in safe, which gave Jamie a shiver. Without a word the twins walked from the room and the third man took up position beside the door. A few moments later they were joined by a shrunken gnome of a man with a badly twisted n
eck, but cheerful, twinkling eyes and an expression of perpetual puzzlement, as if, despite his great age, each day confused him more than the last.

  ‘Thank you, Rolf. Send up the twins with some coffee, will ya?’ He waved Jamie and Danny to a pair of white leather chairs and took his place opposite them on a matching sofa. They stared at each other for what seemed like minutes before Danny broke the silence.

  ‘Berndt Hartmann, I presume.’

  The old man laughed. ‘I like that. Stanley and Dr Livingstone, right? I haven’t heard that name in a long, long time, but sure, call me Hartmann, only make it Bernie. This is a day for memories. Bernie Hartmann. The Eye of Isis. And Max Dornberger.’

  ‘We’ve been looking for you for some time, Mr … Bernie. The last thing I expected to find was a fellow New Yorker.’

  ‘New York, Boston.’ He shrugged. ‘Fifteen years in the States makes an impression on a man—’

  He was interrupted by the arrival of the twins. One of them carried a tray with a silver pot while the other served. There was something about the pale, unsmiling faces and dark hair that was unnervingly familiar. Bernie Hartmann saw Jamie’s look.

  ‘You ever see The Boys from Brazil, Mr Saintclair? Helluva film.’

  Jamie had an image of Gregory Peck as Dr Josef Mengele and darted another startled look at the nearest twin. The old man laughed.

  ‘Just a joke, Mr Saintclair. But you English never did have much of a sense of humour. Too much stiff upper lip, huh?’

  ‘That depends on what we have to laugh about, Bernie. I could swear that about an hour ago you and the Children of the Damned here were hell bent on killing us. Or maybe I mistook that steel tomb for a sauna?’

  Bernie Hartmann shrugged and sipped his coffee. ‘That was then. Right now I’m interested in how you came up with the name Max Dornberger. Max Dornberger was a good friend to Bernie Hartmann, but he’s been dead a long time.’