Near the end of the last world war when she’d been a little girl, they’d had very little food to eat. So many bombs had fallen and Hitler’s soldiers had been told to kill everyone whether they were American, Russian, German, Polish or Czech it didn’t matter. People no longer knew who was friend and who was foe. If it walked on two feet, according to those who made war, it needed to die.
A popping sound from a burning log in the fireplace wrenched Annalena back to the present. She pulled the blanket around her shoulders tighter and shut her eyes in an effort to recapture the lost thoughts. It was a favorite pastime, trying to remember the childhood she had shared with her mother, who was not much more than a child herself when she gave birth to Anna at eighteen.
Mutti, her mother, was a bright, loving creature who would dab upon her little daughter’s neck a faint trace of perfume. It had been sent as a gift by her young husband, Anna’s father, who had long since departed from both of them and the world. He’d died in the war, gunned down in one of a thousand campaigns, engagements or indifferent skirmishes that had required the blood of the young as payment for the transgressions of the greedy and the insane. His youth was used up in a microsecond of the human story, with the only repercussion being that he never held, laid his lips upon or even knew the name of his only child, a tiny girl, Mutti named Annalena.
The remembrance of the smell of gardenias and warm embraces tugged Annalena’s memory to sink deeper, making her smile as the sweet face of her mother, so familiar for one gone such a long time, formed itself in her memory.
They had continued to live with Oma and Opa working in the gardens, the kitchen and the fields of the old estate even after the war had begun. Their people were the servant class and had been so for generations. Practically on the Czechoslovakian border, the farm was set among hills covered in tall, stately fir trees, rolling pastures and in the distance the tips of the Alps hovered like a mirage on the far horizons.
Annalena thought about the many times she’d been sent to fetch potatoes down the cobblestoned, circular tunnel that lead to the cellars under the schloss where they lived. With only a lantern to light the way, it had terrified her being down there alone. Being a child, it was one of her only ‘big’ jobs, but she’d been certain of feeling unseen things touching her skin and whispers coming from dark, moldy corners.
When she balked at going on this hated errand, her mother would pull her up into her lap and kiss her many times upon her cheeks, her eyes and the top of her head, saying she was too imaginative and that nothing would ever hurt her down in the cellars. The noises were only those of tiny mice chattering and the feelings were just drafts brought on by the changes in temperature. Mutti had said there was nothing to fear but fear itself.
Opening her eyes for a moment and finding herself back in the present, Annalena’s gaze rested on the glowing embers in the fireplace. If only what her mother had said about fear was true. The real things to be afraid of weren’t dark places or ancient graveyards where ghosts roamed and howled. Not it was the living, breathing humans blighted by greed, power and twisted ideologies that were the real things to fear.
Anna’s mind slipped back once more remembering the night Mutti had appeared by her trundle bed. They had always slept at the top of the old schloss in the servant’s quarters. Her mother told her not to speak and then lifted Anna into her warm arms and wrapped her in a soft blanket. In the distance, Annalena had heard what she thought was thunder, but as the sleepiness slipped from her, she knew it was bombs exploding in some far away place.
They had taken back stairwells, long unused corridors filled with forgotten relics of furniture and then crawled down through an unfamiliar hatch into a spider webbed tunnel smelling of mold and centuries lost to time. For days, she and her mother had stayed in the deepest, most well-hidden parts of the underground tunnels of the old castle.
Sometimes they would hear muffled gunshots and bombs hitting somewhere above them, shaking the old dwelling to its foundations. They had only potatoes to eat, but Mutti had told Anna fairy tales and played counting games to distract her. One morning they had awoken to the voices of men speaking a language Anna had never heard before.
“Stay quiet,” Mutti had whispered, her voice frightened but firm.
Flashlight beams had danced along the stone arches and across places where water pooled from drips in the ceiling. The light hovered and stopped over the bedding Annalena and her mother had slept in.
“I don’t know, Sarge,” a man’s voice said, “the old grandma says they gotta be down here somewhere. Look! There’s a little girl's baby doll.”
The beam of light zoned in on Annalena’s innocent mistake, still partially covered by the very blanket Mutti had wrapped her in the first night they fled to the cellars. The same young man said in German.
“Wir werden dir nicht weh tun. Wir sind Ihr Freund.”
It had sounded so funny to Annalena, like if someone was trying to talk with a mouth full of marbles. Her mother had whispered in her ear, “Americans.”
Anna had wondered if they were really coming as friends like he had said.
“Your people are worried and want to know if you are okay,” came the same voice.
Looking back, Annalena knew how lucky they’d been to have been found by the Americans. Her mother had known enough English that at the mention of her people, or family, she had trembled.
“Der Krieg ist vorbei! The war is over!” the man said loudly.
Mutti had pulled Anna up into her arms and stood up. They had moved from the shadows and into one of the flashlight’s beams. The group of men had stood still and both parties regarded each other, one with fear and one with horror and pity. A soldier had walked over to them very cautiously and spoken to them in a soft way. He had bent down, picked up the doll laying at Mutti’s feet and handed it to Anna.
She remembered being hesitant to accept it, but the desire for the doll was too powerful. Reaching out and taking it gently, she stuck it deep into the safest crevice she knew, the one between her small body and her mother’s. The soldier’s face had broken into a tender smile. His eyes and the corner of his mouth had twitched as if he was fighting some kind of deep, strong emotion.
Anna had never seen a picture of herself or her mother from that time period. People couldn’t afford or even imagine that kind of luxury, but if they had looked anything like the other few people she remembered, they must have been practically skeletal. Meals consisted of the rarely caught fish, potatoes not requisitioned by the military and whatever was gathered from the nearby land.
Annalena’s mind lifted involuntarily and left the past. It was important to be ready for her visitors tonight. The knowledge that human predators, like Max and Haimon Keenes, were coming made her glad the young people had left and were far away from the house. She’d planned it all and the most critical part had been Sabine’s, Cara’s and Tom’s safety.
When Jorge was being pressed for the money he owed Haimon and Max, he'd come to her for help and she'd given him the last of her savings. Jorge must have panicked the day he met with Haimon, revealing the potential cash cow. It would have been an accident of weakness and Anna knew they had killed him for it. Since the police never found who murdered him, she planned to get justice for her son’s death.
After his death, she’d grabbed on to any minuscule detail of her last conversation with Jorge and finally remembered something. He had told her that the two men were Americans. On one occasion, he’d seen a US paper laying on the seat of the car they’d ridden in together to talk about business. The paper had been turned to an article about a body being found of a woman named Patricia Keenes. She’d been dead for at least twenty years.
A federal government survey crew had stumbled upon her shallow grave in a border town in Minnesota and the woman’s next of kin were being asked to come forward. People were interviewed and remembered Patricia Keenes having a young son, named Tommy. The authorities were looking for any informat
ion regarding the whereabouts of her husband, Haimon Keenes and his brother, Maxwell Keenes. The descriptions of the two men had fit with the men Jorge knew as Damon and Jack.
Annalena knew if Jorge had told them about the manuscript, they would come after it, and soon. Once this realization had dawned upon her, she had doubled her effort to hunt for the priceless treasure, but had found her physical disability made it nearly impossible to do the legwork. She’d tried to contact the families. No one had been able to locate it within their respective libraries and sending Cara wouldn’t work. She wouldn’t have had the expertise to sift through the collections and Annalena’s money was much too thin to even consider the costs of paying for Cara to go on a long, expensive search.
The police, with nothing to go on but her belief that two men going under aliases killed her son, were of no help. Jorge’s story about the woman’s body in Minnesota, was met by official head shakes and shoulder shrugs. They had explained that if his killers were Americans, they were probably back in the States. So, with only a long shot of a chance, Annalena had taken matters into her own hands and called a newspaper reporter in St. Paul, Minnesota.
At first, the reporter had been dubious, but Annalena had told him her own story and he had explained that a man had come forward who claimed to be the son of Patricia Keenes. His name was now Thomas Lawrence, but after DNA testing, it was found that he was indeed the deceased’s son, Thomas Keenes. The newspaperman had asked if Annalena would give her name and her number, if the authorities needed to speak with her. She did and had asked for Thomas’ address.
After two weeks, she heard back from Thomas Keenes. They had discussed their loss and he had wanted justice for his mother. They believed that together, they would find his father and uncle, Haimon and Max Keenes. Annalena had explained to him that finding his them would be the easy part. They were most likely already looking for her. Tom Keenes was on the next flight to Germany.
Since his arrival, he’d been in staying with her and Sabine. Tonight when Annalena saw Helen and Martha on the Heinrich Gott’s show, a plan congealed and she decided to use the two experts to find the manuscript. This way the young people could be kept safe, and the killers would have no leverage, but to wait. She would explain that qualified professionals were already looking for the manuscript. If they harmed or killed her, they would be completely at a loss to find the manuscript themselves.
Finally, the sound of someone working the door latch came to her ears. She opened her eyes and could hear her heart beating rapidly in her ears. The first man emerged from the shadows of the hallway. He was well-built, dark headed and nicely dressed, looking more like an athlete than a killer. The other man, looked exactly like what he was: a cold calculating brain without empathy.
“You must be Haimon and Max Keenes,” Annalena said without any feeling of fear in her voice.
This should have slowed their forward stride into the room, but only caused the smaller one to smile as if Anna’s words were somehow humorous. Sitting down on the sofa across from her, he pointed to the back part of the house which sent the tall one, like a hound dog, down another hallway probably to see if anyone was hiding in the dark house.
“And you must be Mrs. Kirchner. I knew your son,” he said, taking out a hand-sized notepad from his pocket. “I need you to tell me where a certain manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci is and then I’m going to go find it. If you try and lie to me or not tell me, I’ll make it very uncomfortable until you do.”
He leaned back against the back of the sofa, took out a pack of cigarettes then, removing one, lit it and took a deep satisfying drag keeping his eyes on her the entire time.
“I’ve made it easy for you,” Annalena said. “I’ve sent someone to retrieve it and bring it back here. All you need to do is wait for them to return. If you kill me, they won’t bring it. They expect to hear only my voice. I’ve done it this way so you couldn’t hurt me, hurt the people who may or may not actually have the manuscript and to keep the people searching for it safe. Once it is found, it will be sold and you will get one-third of the take. The other two-thirds will go to the people searching for it and myself.”
For a minute, Haimon watched her face intensely. Max, the retriever, reappeared from his search of the back of the house and bent down to whisper something in Haimon’s ear. Once done, he waited like a dumb animal for his brother’s cue.
“You’ve been expecting me,” Haimon said, releasing a dribble of smoke into the air of the room. “I applaud your efforts. Much better job than your son’s. However, I’ve got one or two slight changes, if you will, to your plans.”
Annalena’s stomach twisted at his cavalier remark about Jorge. She didn’t dare move or take her eyes from Haimon’s face. Better to stand firm in the face of evil than to let it see your fear. She’d learned that in the cellars as a child. You have to believe in hope, in good and in grace, if you had a sinner’s chance in Hell of coming out the other side.
Haimon, not receiving any reply to his statement, continued. “Where did the women go?”
Annalena didn’t move. She didn’t want to confirm anything he said but she wondered how he could have known she’d sent women to find the manuscript.
“Mrs. Kirchner, you have two minutes to tell me where you think the Leonardo is or…”
“Or what?” she finally said back. “You can torture me or even kill me, but you’ll gain nothing. I want this finished and I don’t want to lose anyone else I love. You killed my son. He told you about the manuscript in an effort to save his life, not thinking about mine or his wife’s. I’m sure it was you who tried to snatch my daughter-in-law near the train station. I’m offering you a way to get your money, and all you have to do is wait.”
She hadn’t raised her voice or allowed any emotion to creep into her words, but kept her gaze firmly directed at his eyes.
“Oh but you see, Mrs. Kirchner, I don’t mind waiting here with you. Even a criminal like myself wants a little insurance,” he said, stubbing out the cigarette in one of Annalena’s plants that sat on the table between them. “I’m sending Max here to find the women you’ve sent to bring back the manuscript. He’s going to collect it once they find it and then I’m going to walk out of this door and you’ll never see me again. Paid in full.”
Anna shook her head slowly from side to side, indicating she wouldn’t tell.
Haimon smiled at her.
“Go get them,” he said to Max who stood up from his chair and went through to the back of the house. “You might have had a pretty good game, Mrs. Kirchner, but I’m more practiced at tying up loose threads and not leaving anything or anyone behind that might cause me problems later.”
As he finished, Anna heard the shuffling of footsteps coming back towards the living area. With the turn of her head, she immediately felt her breath slip from her body in one horrified gasp.
There, being held by Haimon’s ape of a brother in one hand, was Cara, gagged and bound at her wrists with a dark, red mark across her cheek. Tom, too, with a black eye and a bloody lip stood beside her as Max held a gun to his back. Against, her wishes, Tom had come back.
“Now before things get ugly and I have to start pulling this little lady’s finger nails out one at a time,” Haimon said softly, “where did the women go?”
“Jince,” she said, her words barely audible. “They went to a village named Jince in Czech. Count von Wallentstein’s castle.”
That was the last thing Annalena remembered before she fainted.
When she revived, she found herself laying on her bed alone in her room. Desperately, Annalena searched for her cell phone she kept under her pillow in case of a medical emergency. Her fingers shaking, she sent two messages: one to Helen and one to Martha. She must let them know. They needed to work fast before all was lost.
Chapter 26
Somewhere in Germany
“My foot is asleep!” Helen cried stamping her left foot vigorously on the car’s floorboard. “How long w
as I out? Is that snow?”
“Oh for about an hour and you might want to buy one of those mouth sling things that stop snoring and maybe a drooling pad for the side of your face before your honeymoon,” Martha said, as she jabbed at some Kleenexes she’d stuffed under Helen’s chin at some point during her nap.
Helen and Martha were on their way to Czech, an eastern European country bordering Germany. According to Annalena’s notebook, the Leonardo manuscript was either in Czech or Switzerland. They’d decided to go east first and then fly to Switzerland if necessary.
The damp, white snow stuck to the windshield and blurred the oncoming headlights racing towards them on the other side of the autobahn. Helen flicked fussily at the tissues until they fell away from her and onto the floor. She blinked at Martha and tried to sit up straight. For the last three hours Helen had been studying Annalena’s notebook and had fallen asleep while Martha drove. A quick glance at the car clock told her it was three o’clock in the morning.
“What’s it doing snowing this late in May? Where are we?” Helen said, reaching for the car’s dash in an effort to turn the heat up.
“Keep your skinny paws off that heat,” Martha said, slapping at Helen’s hand. “I’m having hot flashes trying to drive with these other cars zinging past me at a hundred miles an hour. You cranking up the temperature in here is only going to force me to stop this vehicle and stand outside until I’m cool again.”
“It’s freezing in here!” Helen objected.
Martha put her finger on the window’s electric button and gave Helen a low-lidded look full of challenge.
“You’ll have to wrap yourself up in that thing you call a coat but looks like a grey version of the Michelin Man. It’s not my fault you’re too thin to retain normal body heat.”
Death Drinks Darjeeling (A Helen and Martha Cozy Mystery Book 4) Page 12