The Scarletti Inheritance

by Ludlum, Robert

  The man in the chair raised his right hand with difficulty. ‘Him—Him!’ He pointed to Andrew Scarlett.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I believed! I still believe! Heinrich Kroeger was part of a new world! A new order! The true aristocracy!… In time it would have been his!’

  ‘By why Janet?’

  Heinrich Kroeger, in exhaustion, waved the question aside. ‘A whore. Who needs a whore? The vessel is all we look for…’

  Canfield felt the anger rise inside him, but at his age and in his job, he suppressed it. He was not quick enough for the boy-man beside him.

  Andrew Scarlett rushed forward to the overstuffed chair and swung his open hand at the invalid Kroeger. The slap was hard and accurate. ‘You bastard! You filthy bastard!’

  ‘Andy! Get back!’ He pulled the boy away.

  ‘Unehelich!’ Heinrich Kroeger’s eyes were swimming in their sockets. ‘It’s for you! That’s why you’re here! You’ve got to know!… You’ll understand and start us up again! Think! Think the aristocracy! For you… for you—’ He reached with his slightly mobile hand to his inside jacket pocket and withdrew a slip of paper. ‘They’re yours. Take them!’

  Canfield picked up the paper and without looking at it handed it to Andrew Scarlett.

  They’re numbers. Just a lot of numbers.’

  Matthew Canfield knew what the numbers meant, but before he could explain, Kroeger spoke. ‘They’re Swiss accounts, my son. My only son… They contain millions! Millions! But there are certain conditions. Conditions which you will learn to understand! When you grow older, you’ll know those conditions have to be met! And you’ll meet them!… Because this power is the power to change the world! The way we wanted to change it!’

  The man-boy looked at the deformed figure in the chair. ‘Am I supposed to thank you?’

  ‘One day you will.’

  Matthew Canfield had had enough. ‘This is it! April Red had his message. Now I want it! What are you delivering?’

  ‘It’s outside. Help me up and we’ll go to it.’

  ‘Never! What’s outside? Your staff members in leather coats?’

  ‘There’s no one. No one but me.’

  Canfield looked at the wreck of a man in front of him and believed him. He started to help Heinrich Kroeger out of the chair.

  ‘Wait here, Andy, I’ll be back.’

  Major Matthew Canfield, in full uniform, helped the crippled man in brown tweeds down the stairs and onto the lobby floor. In the lobby, a servant brought over the crutches discarded by the Nazi when he first ascended the staircase to his room. The American major and the Nazi went out the front door.

  ‘Where are we going, Kroeger?’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s time you called me by my right name? The name is Scarlett. Or, if you will, Scarlatti.’ The Nazi led them to the right, off the driveway, into the grass.

  ‘You’re Heinrich Kroeger. That’s all you are to me.’

  ‘You realize, of course, that it was you, and you alone who caused our setback in Zurich. You pushed our timetable back a good two years—No one ever suspected… You were an ass!’ Heinrich Kroeger laughed. ‘Perhaps it takes an ass to portray an ass!’ He laughed again.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Just a few hundred yards. Hold your pistol up, if you like. There’s no one.’

  ‘What are you going to deliver? You might as well tell me.’

  ‘Why not! You’ll have them in your hands soon enough.’ Kroeger hobbled along toward an open field. ‘And when you have them, I’m free. Remember that.’

  ‘We-have a deal. What is it?’

  The Allies will be pleased. Eisenhower will probably give you a medal!… You’ll bring back the complete plans of the Berlin fortifications. They’re known only to the elite of the German High Command—Underground bunkers, rocket emplacements, supply depots, even the Führer’s command post. You’ll be a hero and I’ll be nonexistent. We’ve done well, you and I.’

  Matthew Canfield stopped.

  The plans of the Berlin fortifications had been obtained weeks ago by Allied Intelligence.

  Berlin knew it.

  Berlin admitted it.

  Someone had been led into a trap, but it was not him, not Matthew Canfield. The Nazi High Command had led one of its own into the jaws of death.

  Tell me, Kroeger, what happens if I take your plans, your exchange for April Red, and don’t let you go? What happens then?’

  ‘Simple. Doenitz himself took my testimony. I gave it to him two weeks ago in Berlin. I told him everything. If I’m not back in a few days, he’ll be concerned. I’m very valuable. I expect to make my appearance and then… be gone. If I don’t appear, then the whole world knows!’

  Matthew Canfield thought it was the strangest of ironies. But it was no more than he had anticipated. He had written it all down in the original file, sealed for years in the archives of the State Department.

  And now a man in Berlin, unknown to him except by reputation, had reached the same conclusion.

  Heinrich Kroeger, Ulster Stewart Scarlett—was expendable.

  Doenitz had allowed Kroeger—bearing his false gifts—to come to Bern. Doenitz, in the unwritten rule of war, expected him to be killed. Doenitz knew that neither nation could afford this madman as its own. In either victory or defeat. And the enemy had to execute him so that no doubts existed. Doenitz was that rare enemy in these days of hatreds. He was a man his adversaries trusted. Like Rommel, Doenitz was a thorough fighter. A vicious fighter. But he was a moral man.

  Matthew Canfield drew his pistol and fired twice.

  Heinrich Kroeger lay dead on the ground.

  Ulster Stewart Scarlett was—at last—gone.

  Matthew Canfield walked through the field back to the small inn. The night was clear and the moon, three-quarters of it, shone brightly on the still foliage around him.

  It struck him that it was remarkable that it had all been so simple.

  But the crest of the wave is simple. Deceptively simple. It does not show the myriad pressures beneath that make the foam roll the way it does.

  It was over.

  And there was Andrew.

  There was Janet.

  Above all, there was Janet.