The Isis Covenant

by Douglas, James

  ‘Get him strapped in. We’re going down.’

  ‘Where?’ he demanded.

  ‘There.’ She pointed to what looked like a silver coin in the landscape about two miles ahead.

  ‘It looks like a puddle.’

  ‘Well, it will have to do. How’s Bernie?’

  Jamie felt pressure from the fingers holding his hand. ‘He’s still with us, but I’m not sure how long he has.’

  He bent over the old man to fasten his seat belt. With an enormous effort Bernie Hartmann lifted his head and his eyes opened. Jamie saw his lips move, but the words were less than a whisper and he had to put his face next to the old man’s to hear what he was saying.

  ‘You remember what I said,’ he wheezed. ‘You find Bodo Ritter and you kill him. Tell him Bernie Hartmann will be waiting for him in hell.’

  With the final word, the fingers on Jamie’s hand tightened convulsively. Bernie Hartmann gave the weary sigh of a man who has suffered enough and was gone.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  Danny nodded distractedly, already concentrating on her descent. The lake looked like a postage stamp from up here. Ideally, she would have banked and come in from the east, where there were fewer trees, but the fuel gauge read empty and she couldn’t take the risk. She guessed it would be just wide enough to squeeze the Cessna in, but guesswork wasn’t the best criteria to fly by. ‘You’d better get over here and belt up. This could be a bumpy ride.’

  Jamie clambered into the front to take his place beside her. He hadn’t realized just how small the lake was until now.

  She read his mind. ‘If I tried to put this thing down on one of those ploughed fields down there we’d be joining Bernie before he even reached the Pearly Gates, and they wouldn’t need to dig our graves, because we’d already be six feet under.’ The water was flat calm and wind conditions good, but they were the only things in her favour. She came in as low as she dared, using a red farmhouse as her aiming point. As soon as she was over the trees she knew she was too high and coming in too fast. Jamie gripped the door handle with one hand and the seat with the other and braced himself for the impact. The plane was already at maximum flaps and she instinctively throttled back to get the lowest possible landing speed. The effect was to make the Cessna land tail down and instead of cruising forward and being slowed by the water she bounced and gained speed. Somehow she managed to regain control, but when they landed a second time she knew it was already too late. The trees on the far side of the lake hurtled towards them.

  ‘Brace for crash.’

  Jamie had the impression of the world turning a somersault at the same time as gravity tried to tear him apart. The safety harness cut into his stomach and chest as the floats smashed into the bank and the Cessna went up on its nose. Suddenly the engine was screaming and shards of propeller flashed past inches from his face, accompanied by the sound of tearing metal as a tree branch penetrated the tail and came within six inches of taking off his head. All his weight was being carried by the strap and everything movable in the cockpit fell past him.

  A momentary silence, as if the whole world had decided to stand still, was replaced by the creaking groan of crumpling aluminium alloy, and the ticking of red-hot engine parts. ‘Get out!’ Danny’s shout startled him into motion. The Cessna had settled upside down and slightly on its side, and he noticed his door had burst open. He hit the quick release on the belt to drop nose first onto the roof of the plane and scrambled clear through the opening. He hesitated a few feet from the wreck, waiting to help if she became trapped.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. She could blow any minute. Get the hell out of here.’ The Cessna’s tanks were close to empty, but the vapour from aviation fuel is more combustible than the fuel itself and ruptured gasoline lines and red-hot engine parts do not make a good combination.

  ‘Bernie …’ Jamie turned back towards the plane, but Danny knocked the feet from under him just as there was a soft ‘whump’ followed by a fireball that engulfed the Cessna, igniting the tree branches above and generating enough heat to singe the hair from his forearms.

  ‘Jesus …’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Danny said, staring at the burning aircraft. ‘But with Bernie it’s kinda difficult to know for sure.’

  They scrambled away from the wreckage and sat against the base of a tree, hypnotized by the flames that consumed the Cessna and the earthly remains of Berndt Hartmann; thief, safecracker, SS veteran and millionaire philanthropist. Smoke billowed through the trees and up into the heavens. Jamie found himself hoping it was carrying the diminutive German’s soul to be with his God, but part of him couldn’t escape the image of smoke from a crematorium chimney. He shivered as the sound of a child’s scream split the air, but when he looked up all he could see was a passing gull.

  When he turned to Danny, tears were rolling down her cheeks. They reached for each other and he tasted the salt on her lips. ‘If we hang around here, we’re going to have to explain this,’ he said as gently as he was able. ‘They’ll keep us for days, maybe weeks, and when we finally get out those guys back in Zurich are going to be waiting for us.’

  ‘Maybe that would be a good thing?’ She stifled a sob. ‘It’s odds-on that the men who killed Bernie are the same ones who murdered those people in New York and London. If we can persuade the Swiss authorities …’

  He shook his head. ‘You saw the kind of firepower they had. If they wanted us they’d get us and they wouldn’t worry about who they shot along the way. The only chance we have is to fight them on our own ground and at a time of our own choosing. We’ll get another chance, but enough people have died already. I think we should walk away. Act like a couple who’ve lost their way. We’ll eventually find a bus or a cab.’

  She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. It wasn’t much of a plan, but for the moment she couldn’t come up with anything better. ‘All right, there’s nothing to connect Jamie Saintclair or Danny Fisher to the plane. It’s going to be days before they figure out why there’s only one piece of charcoal in there. We can go back to London. Regroup.’

  ‘Not London.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘I know, but I think I’ve had one of those epiphanies Bernie mentioned. What’s this all about?’

  ‘The Crown of Isis,’ she said without hesitation.

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not about the Crown. The Crown is nothing without the Eye. This is about the Eye of Isis. And what’s the Eye?’

  He read the anger in her eyes, but he persisted.

  ‘The Eye is a diamond.’

  ‘Exactly and if you want to know about a diamond, you go to the experts.’

  ‘Won’t the opposition have done that already?’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘But maybe they don’t have access to the experts I have.’

  ‘So where do we go?’

  ‘Where else but the diamond capital of the world? Antwerp.’

  XXXVII

  THE MAN WHO called himself Max Dornberger experienced one of his familiar fits of panic. Fear rose from his stomach and filled his chest like ice water, crushing his lungs and making it difficult to breathe. It forced its way into his throat and up through the nerves of his face until it entered his brain, exerting a terrible chill pressure that made his skull feel as if it was about to explode. He wanted to scream, but he knew that nobody would hear him in the white desert that was now his existence. He was bleeding to death. Bleeding time.

  Somewhere in his head a clock ticked remorselessly. The pages of a calendar turned. He could tell the position of each phase of the moon, as if Isis was whispering its position in his ear. Ten days, she said. You have ten days before I exact payment.

  The price of what she had given him was truly terrible. What did they know about pain, all those he’d sent to the other side? He could feel them gathering in the outer edges of his world, waiting to exact retribution, and he remembered the words of the priest as he died. May you be cursed by the gift of a long lif
e. Now he understood. Unless the Eye was returned to the Crown of Isis by the first phase of the new moon he would have failed her and the gift he had received would have to be repaid a thousand times in torture and mental torment. A thousand deaths, each more painful than the one before. A child’s voice deep in his fractured mind told him to run, but he knew he had nowhere to go. The Eye was his only hope. He must trust in the son he had created in his image.

  And yet, that very thought brought a moment of doubt. For within the depths of the dream loomed another presence that created a different type of fear. A darkened room. The slap of a leather belt on flesh. Sharp, searing bursts of pain. And words, repeated over and over. Why could he not remember the words? Why was it only emotion and sensation that stirred the memories, along with part-visions he struggled to understand? A medal, polished and bright on a uniform of Prussian blue, gilt eagles glinting between the spread arms of a Maltese Cross. Wrinkled, liver-spotted hands clawing for something in his grasp. He saw what it was and the confusion intensified. Was it the Crown that was keeping him alive, or was it his belief in the powers of the Crown? If this was reality, then what of the dreams that had been his life – lives? If the Crown was a lie, why did he see what he was seeing; feel what he felt? Yet if this dream was real, what did it make him? Squandered. All of it. Every breath wasted. Every moment of his existence an illusion. And at what cost? Suddenly he was a child again, squirming in the grip of strong, merciless hands, but they weren’t the hands that had beaten him, or the hands that had tried to wrest the Crown away. He felt pain beyond imagination as the furnace blast of heat charred his clothing and shrivelled his flesh. Flames all around. Jerking and squirming to escape the agony even as he was consumed, still alive as his eyeballs exploded and his body fats made him one with the fire. He screamed as he had never screamed before.

  Antwerp. It took them four days to reach the Belgian port. On the first, they’d walked along country roads until they reached the nearest town, holding hands like lovers and hearing the sound of sirens in the middle distance. In time the cops would start asking questions and begin the hunt for the dishevelled young man with the shock of dark hair over his eyes, and his tall, angular companion. They might discover that the mystery couple had taken the bus to Constance and boarded the Allmannsdorf ferry to Meersburg; and possibly even the next few convoluted, energy-sap-ping steps by taxi and train. But Jamie reckoned by the time they reached Munich they were safe enough. Then it was just a question of replenishing the clothing they’d left in Zurich – he’d called the hotel manager pleading a family bereavement and asked for their luggage to be sent on to his flat in London – buying bags to keep it in and paying the extortionate ticket price for the flight from Munich to Antwerp.

  Jamie had called in advance to arrange a meeting with the man whose advice he sought. Fortunately, it wasn’t far from their hotel to Samuel Meyer’s office in the city’s Diamantkwartier. As they walked, Jamie tried again to explain the logic that had brought them here.

  ‘The man who took the diamond from Bernie Hartmann in nineteen forty-five was a Soviet political officer who’d fought his way into Berlin, probably with Zhukov’s Third Shock Army.’

  Danny’s face clouded with doubt. ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘I checked it out. When the Russians invaded the Third Reich, Berlin and Hitler were the great prizes. They converged on the city from east, north and south, but when they fought their way to the centre they were in danger of hitting each other with their own artillery. Stalin’s solution was to create a dividing line through the centre of the city, with General Konev’s First Ukrainian Front to the south and Zhukov’s First Belorussian Front to the north. The line more or less took the course of the River Spree. Bernie Hartmann said he was captured near Potsdamer Station, which was in the area of the Third Shock Army’s attack towards the Reichstag. Anyway, Bernie’s captor was wearing blue shoulder boards, which makes him an NKVD officer. You with me so far?’

  She shrugged as if she had other things on her mind, but he took it for acceptance.

  ‘So if he survived the war, our man is a member of Stalin’s secret police who returns to Russia a hero and with a diamond worth God knows how many millions in his knapsack. What does he do with it?’

  ‘Sell it?’

  Jamie shook his head. ‘A death sentence, unless he has serious contacts. No, he’s clever and he’s patient. He knows he can’t touch it. Instead, he puts it somewhere safe and keeps his nose clean. He’s a party member who’s had a good war. If he’s lucky and obeys orders, he knows there’s automatic promotion. Khrushchev and Brezhnev were both war heroes and they made it all the way to the top. Okay, our man may not have risen that high, but in time, maybe he made it to a position where he had freedom of movement.’

  ‘Then he sells it?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. But he definitely wants to know how much it’s worth.’

  ‘And this is where he’d come.’

  ‘If the streets of London are paved with gold, the streets of Antwerp are paved with diamonds. Every year, about half the world’s polished diamonds are sold within half a block of here. There are four thousand diamond cutters and fifteen hundred traders—’

  ‘All right, enough of the history lesson. Just tell me how we’re going to find this guy when the opposition, who it’s now very clear to me possess considerable resources, don’t seem to have been able to?’ Jamie came to the doorway he was looking for and pointed to the small gold plaque. She read it aloud. ‘Meyer and Sons?’

  ‘When Belgium surrendered to the Nazis on the twenty-eighth of May nineteen forty, the Jewish leaders of Antwerp’s diamond industry were less concerned than many of their compatriots. After all, the diamond companies made huge amounts of money; they were run by Jews and run efficiently. And did not the Germans prize efficiency above all else? A loss in status was a possibility, but they could survive that. Unfortunately, they underestimated the depth of Adolf Hitler’s pathological hatred for their race, the ruthlessness of his henchmen in the SS and Gestapo and that peculiarly German need to tidy up every last messy little irritant and tick it off on their ‘to do’ list. They also overestimated the loyalty of the non-Jewish Belgian employees who would soon be sitting in their shiny leather boardroom chairs. Of the thirteen thousand Jews who decided, or were forced, to ride out the storm in nineteen forty, only eight hundred remained in nineteen forty-five. With the help of a family of devout Catholics and a sock full of his merchandise, Sam Meyer’s father had been one of the lucky ones: he survived to revive an industry that now had a turnover of almost forty million US dollars and employed thirty thousand people.’

  Jamie recognized one of the reasons for Herschel Meyer’s unlikely survival the moment he set eyes on Sam. The Belgian was tall and broad shouldered, with slicked-back blond hair and intelligent blue eyes; a picture of the successful Aryan businessman in his two-thousand-euro Armani suit and the spectacular stone that twinkled on his ring finger. His greeting was polite, but wary. Sam Meyer’s cousin had been the client Jamie had recovered the Rembrandt for and Sam had oiled the wheels with the help of his contacts in South America, but that didn’t make them friends.

  ‘Your phone call was intriguing, but not particularly informative, Mr Saintclair. How can I help you?’

  He listened politely and without comment as Jamie explained about the possibility of a large, hitherto unknown diamond being offered for sale or valuation by a Soviet official during the Cold War.

  When Jamie was finished, Meyer smiled, showing teeth almost as sparkling as the diamond on his finger. ‘It sounds like something out of a James Bond movie. You’re serious?’

  ‘I know it’s unlikely, but …’

  The big man shook his head slowly. ‘So we’d be talking about the seventies or early eighties? A long time ago, but if something like that happened, even back then, I would have had some hint of it.’ He waved towards the office window that overlooked Antwerp’s Diamond Club. ‘We inhabit
a small and incestuous world, Mr Saintclair. There are only about ten men I’d trust with this kind of business and seven of them work in that building. The diamond you described – three hundred carats, white, possibly flawless, and yet to be properly cut – would be the stuff of legend. Stones are our lifeblood. We talk about nothing else. If any diamantaire had seen a diamond like that, a stone to rival the Mountain of Light or the Great Mogul, word would have been round the bourse in a matter of days.’

  Danny Fisher spoke for the first time. ‘The man who owned this diamond would have bought his chosen expert’s silence either with cash or by the threat of violence, probably both. If he’s the type of man we believe he is he would be very persuasive indeed.’

  ‘Perhaps that is true,’ the dealer said. ‘But we are talking about decades ago. By now the money is spent and any threat would have lost its potency.’ He smiled. ‘The Soviet Union is no longer the bogey man it once was. New York is still our biggest market, but Russians are some of our best customers.’

  ‘So you can’t help us.’

  ‘Of course, I will do what I can. I will be at the club this afternoon and I will ask a few discreet questions. There are also some phone calls I can make. Give me your cellphone number and I will call you tonight if I have any information.’

  ‘Disappointed?’ Danny asked, as they left the office onto Pelikaanstraat.

  ‘It was always a long shot,’ Jamie admitted. ‘But I wouldn’t write off Sam Meyer just yet. He strikes me as a man who can get things done.’ He studied her and realized how weary she suddenly looked. ‘You seemed a little distracted in there.’

  She hesitated, seeking the right words. ‘I have a feeling time is running out for the case … and for us. The only reason we’re still alive is pure dumb luck. Every face I see, I wonder if it’s one of those goons who killed Bernie Hartmann, or Frederick and his merry band of Nazis, or somebody else getting ready to cash in on the contract that’s out on you. You’re different, Jamie. Harder.’ She reached out to touch his face. ‘I don’t mean that in a bad way. You just seem to coast through it all. Nothing bothers you. After all those years in homicide I thought I was immune to death, but the stories that are associated with the Crown freak me out. How many children have died in an attempt to make the fantasy come true? And how many more if we fail? That’s the problem, Jamie. For their sake, we can’t afford to fail, but all we seem to be doing is fumbling around in the dark.’