The Stolen

by T. S. Learner

  Outside an old car rumbled past, but Keja was back in the tiny cell of a room, one bed, one chair, a wooden cross on the wall, and the baby reaching up toward her with one blind fist, the new-birth scent of him still clenching around her heart.

  ‘Not even your own father knew this. A few weeks after they took the child I was taken to Buchenwald. I never saw the Nazi officer again.’

  ‘Is he still living, dej?’

  ‘I feel that he is. This child – he is mine.’ She dropped back against the pillow, exhausted. ‘I will not let go until my conscience is clear.’

  Latcos lurched forward. ‘This is not a child! This is vermin! He has nothing but bad blood; he is worse than gadjé – he belongs nowhere except with the people who took him. You must see this!’

  Keja watched his outrage, the sharpness of her pain imprisoning her like a tower, from where she looked down at him.

  ‘Son, I am phuri dej. You forget who I am – you forget I am a curse-maker as well as a mule-vi – one who has reached into the world of the dead.’ Her anger gave strength to her voice, then, seeing his shocked face, she reached out and took his hand into her own.

  ‘Listen, Latcos, when Uncle Yojo left it was our holy relic he was looking for; he thought she would cure me. Now something terrible has happened. I know it in my bones. You must find Yojo and find your half-brother. The woman who took my baby was called Katerina Wattenstein…’ She pulled Latcos towards her across the bed with a desperate strength so that he was forced to look into her eyes, all of her power gathering in her stare.

  ‘On your life, Latcos, swear you will take me to my firstborn?’

  Holding his own gaze steady, he replied, ‘I swear.’

  TWO

  Sipping the excellent whisky sitting in the holder beside him, the first quality liquor he’d had in months, Destin Viscon waited until the lights had been dimmed and the drone of the plane had lulled his fellow first-class passengers to sleep. Then he reached into his jacket pocket to pull out the thin brown envelope that had been left for him at Abidjan airport. The heat and chaos of that city was finally beginning to lift from his shoulders, the stench of his last hit evaporating from his soul – if I have a soul, he observed with a certain amount of bitterness. With his other hand he pulled out the penknife he always carried with him in his civvies. He had security clearance from five countries he could name that allowed him to carry any weapon he liked onto a flight. But he chose to travel light except for the small blade he now used to cut open the envelope, almost as if he were already slitting open the target. Once a soldier, he had turned freelance, a special ops agent renowned for his skill at extracting industrial secrets – information private corporations were willing to pay huge amounts of money for, as long as the methodology remained secret. From oil to nuclear – from the Ivory Coast to Helsinki – Destin had worked them all. And now there were rumours of a potential breakthrough – one that could make a company very powerful if it was the first to capitalise.

  Inside were two black-and-white photographs with two sheets of paper clipped to them. Simple, clean information, the kind he liked. The first photograph – obviously taken clandestinely outside a school gate – was of a tall, attractive blond man, late thirties, opening the door of a Citroën for a black-haired girl of about fifteen dressed in school uniform. The physicist and his daughter, Destin surmised, running the tip of his finger down the figure of the young girl, sullen in her dark adolescence. There was a certain grace to her that appealed to him. An Achilles heel, such a creature, he thought, smiling in the twilight of the cabin. Beautiful prey, the best kind. The information attached was two short typed paragraphs listing characteristics of both individuals: the addresses of home, school, work: the punk club – Rote Fabrik – and the record store – Baph Records – the daughter frequented; her history of drug abuse, the father’s laboratory details and research achievements. A flute-playing work-obsessive widower and a resentful daughter who is promiscuous and impossible to control: should be an entertaining mission, Destin concluded. With the gift of a photographic memory, he had the information embedded in his brain within seconds.

  He flipped over to the second photograph. This was of Matthias von Holindt and his young assistant Jannick Lund, again taken without their knowledge, in the laboratory. The young Dane standing behind the older man bore an expression of faint discontent. It was all Destin needed.

  He slipped the photographs back into his inside pocket, then checked his watch – four hours before they landed in Zürich: plenty of time for another drink or two, then the hunting would begin.

  Matthias studied the back of his father’s head, his thick white hair uncharacteristically mussed up, as if his nurse had forgotten to smooth down the spot upon which he had been sleeping. It made this once omnipotent man mortal, painfully so.

  The wheelchair was facing the window and the view beyond – an oblong of snow fringed by linden trees, their black gnarled arms a yawning plea for spring.

  It was the garden Matthias had played in as a boy and he knew every inch of it. Do you share the same memories, Papa? he wondered. Do you remember Mutti standing by the pond with me aged eight, holding my hand in that awkward manner of hers as if she never quite knew how to touch me? It was cold and you were trying to make us both laugh as you took the photo. The terrible argument we had down by that tree when I was eighteen after I told you I intended to study science and not work for the company… Are these the same after-images that linger or are your memories entirely different? Why can’t I ever tell?

  ‘Papa…’

  Without turning, the old man held up a hand to silence him. A second later the four eighteenth-century box clocks, originally commissioned by Marie Antoinette and now lined up on a side table, began chiming the hour. In the middle of this melodic chorus Christoph von Holindt, patriarch of the Holindt Watch Company, swung round, his face bathed in bliss.

  ‘Hear that, Matthias? With that last chime we are both already a little nearer death,’ he announced gleefully.

  ‘Good to find you so cheerful, are you still winding the clocks?’ For as long as Matthias could remember, Christoph had wound these clocks every week himself, caressing each as if it were an extension of his own flesh.

  ‘Naturally, but a little slower – you think a little stroke would stop me? Isn’t that right, Bertholt?’ Christoph barked at his assistant.

  A desiccated man in his late sixties, Bertholt Tannen had sacrificed his personal and private life to his employer and since Christoph’s stroke five months earlier, had become his unofficial nurse.

  ‘Sir does his best,’ the assistant replied tactfully before they were interrupted by the sound of the front door bell. As Bertholt left to answer it, Christoph turned back to Matthias.

  ‘Matthias, we have to have a serious chat…’

  Matthias settled into the chair opposite. ‘Good, because I need to talk to you about our latest round of funding —’

  ‘Actually, there is something more urgent,’ Christoph cut in impatiently. ‘The doctor left earlier: as usual he was full of good news. If I’m careful I have maybe another year.’ He kept his voice emotionless, then leaned forward. ‘The company needs new, younger leadership. There’s a revolution coming, a wave of cheaper electronic watches of high quality that could destroy our market. I know we are luxury watches but the zeitgeist is changing. We need to redefine ourselves to survive, and you are perfectly placed.’

  It was yet another moment when Matthias missed Marie. His wife had always been the peacekeeper. They’d met at a Jethro Tull concert and fallen in love, after which she ended up working as the financial officer at the watch company. Initially Christoph was against a Holindt – an aristocratic family with its own schloss and summer villa – marrying the daughter of farmers, but Marie, intelligent, beautiful and diplomatic to a fault, won the patriarch over. More than that, she’d provided a bridge between father and son, persuading Christoph to finance Matthias’s research – a bridg
e that had been destroyed with her death.

  ‘There are better-qualified people on the board, Papa. Wim Jollak, for example. He understands the industry. He’s a visionary in terms of the market —’

  ‘I am not going to hand the company over to Herr Jollak! The position belongs to a Holindt; this is what I brought you up for!’

  ‘Superconductivity at room temperature would revolutionise the energy industry. You know I’m closer than anyone else in the world.’

  ‘But you haven’t got there yet, have you?’

  ‘I’m close, maybe weeks away.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before. The company needs you now. I could very well be dead this time next year.’

  ‘You can’t expect me to give up the lab?’

  ‘There is no one else.’

  A silence fell on the two men, stretching out the tension. Outside, on the Zürichsee, someone started up a motorboat, the faint put-putting of the engine a distant sound. Finally Matthias broke the impasse.

  ‘It would be professional suicide for me to stop my research now.’

  ‘Then I have no choice: from this point on, any further Holindt funding for the Kronos Laboratory will cease. You will be entirely on your own.’

  Christoph’s features were mask-like, his blue-grey eyes narrowed in anger. It was almost as if he were ashamed of his son. Yes, that’s it, Matthias thought to himself, he is ashamed of me; he has been all my life. It’s as if whatever I achieve it will never be enough. He wants me to be independent, yet he wants to control me.

  But there was something else… a disconnect, a constant sense that he was not like his father, that, despite their shared ability to become obsessive, they were quite different individuals and this was the real reason why Matthias was always doomed to disappoint.

  ‘Forget it. I’ll raise all the money I need at the fundraiser.’ Matthias stood, anxious to leave but was interrupted by Bertholt’s reappearance in the doorway.

  ‘There is a Detective Klauser to see you, sir – he insists he needs to talk to you,’ the assistant informed Christoph.

  ‘Right now?’ Christoph’s fury was evident.

  ‘Apparently there was a death outside the Altstadt showroom early this morning.’

  ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘I doubt it, sir; the dead person in question was a gypsy.’

  ‘A dead gypsy? In that case why does he have to see me? Send him away!’

  ‘I’ve tried, sir, but he was most insistent.’

  ‘Idiot! He obviously doesn’t know how close I am to the chief inspector.’

  Johann Engels was the chief inspector of the Kantonspolizei, Matthias remembered. His father, Hans Engels, a well-known figure in the political police during the Second World War, had been one of Christoph’s closest friends. When Liliane had been detained for heroin possession Christoph had called upon Johann Engels to ensure a discreet release of his beloved granddaughter. The friendship had paid off.

  ‘Would you like me to remind him?’ Bertholt asked without irony.

  ‘No, I’d better deal with him myself.’ Christoph swung back to Matthias. ‘And you stay where you are!’

  Detective Helmut Klauser glanced round the high-ceilinged reception room. It was ornately decorated, designed to intimidate through wealth and status, but as a good Lutheran of working-class background, Helmut Klauser was not impressed; he knew too much about Christoph von Holindt. He knew that the von Holindts were Swiss aristocrats with family branches that extended well into Germany. Christoph, a larger-than-life figure, known for his generous charity donations, was on the board of one of the most prominent football clubs in the canton, the FCZH. His stroke five months earlier had made the national papers and caused shares in the Holindt company to drop temporarily. By comparison, his only son and heir shunned publicity, although Matthias was famous in his own right as a scientist. Yes, there was no doubt Christoph von Holindt was as well-connected as one could be in the canton, with powerful friends. But charming as he might appear, the pussycat has claws, Klauser thought to himself, staring at a blandly benevolent portrait of the company director. Just then von Holindt’s assistant came to usher him into the inner sanctum. Standing, the detective brushed ash from his shirtfront and repressed the urge to stub out his cigarette on the marble-top coffee table.

  Christoph swung his wheelchair round so that he could face the detective fully. ‘I’d stand, but I’m a little incapacitated. I’m sure you don’t mind my son attending this little chat, detective?’

  ‘That is up to you, Herr von Holindt.’ Klauser shook hands with the two men then walked in a large semi-circle to an empty chair, taking his time to examine the wood-panelled study. The set of clocks caught his attention. Exquisitely crafted, they appeared to have faces based on the four elements: Water, Fire, Air and Earth. Appropriate, Klauser decided, given that the Holindt patriarch himself was a force of nature. Without asking permission, the detective drew up the chair to face Christoph, then sat down and pulled out a tattered notebook.

  ‘Lovely place you have here – a little showy for my tastes but I’m sure it works for some.’

  ‘I’ve yet to have an ancestor complain,’ Christoph said, but a nervous tic appeared below his left eye.

  ‘So can you tell me where you were, Herr von Holindt, between the hours of four and six in the morning today?’

  ‘Riding in the Tour de France, what do you think? I’m paralysed down the right side – that rather limits my options,’ Christoph snapped back.

  ‘My father is nearly eighty, detective, and obviously not a well man. Is this necessary?’ Matthias interjected.

  ‘A man has been killed – murdered – so I’m obliged to investigate all angles,’ Klauser replied calmly, then turned back to Christoph. ‘Sir?’

  ‘I was in my bed, regrettably alone and I have a habit of not rising until seven. You can confirm this with my housekeeper. But what has that to do with the dead tramp?’

  ‘The dead tramp was a gypsy. We have reasons to suspect he was a Kalderash – a gypsy from Romania, a coppersmith, judging by the calluses on his hands. He was a long way from home.’

  ‘So, he was a gypsy; they like to travel. He was not a Swiss citizen. It is an unfortunate incident but one that surely the Zürich authorities should not be wasting the taxpayers’ money on?’

  ‘Gypsies like to travel but not usually to Altstadt and not usually across the Iron Curtain. I suspect he was not shopping for a watch, at least not at five in the morning. Also whoever killed him was professional – it was obvious by the precision of the hit. He… or she… left a signature, another indication it was a professional – many of them are vain and like to tease. The signature was a distinctive one: a black feather placed between the index and middle finger of the left hand.’

  ‘How poetic. But I can’t see what this has to do with me?’

  The detective ignored him. ‘We found this in the victim’s pocket.’ Klauser unfolded a grubby piece of paper. It was a crude pencil drawing of the Holindt Watch Company’s symbol. Matthias sat up; it seemed completely illogical. Why would an impoverished gypsy carry a sketch of the emblem of one of the most exclusive watch companies in the world in his pocket? Was he planning to burgle the premises?

  ‘I have absolutely no idea what any of this is about, but you know gypsies – they love watches, the more gold on them the better,’ Christoph joked. Klauser was not amused. ‘Have you checked the video surveillance camera?’ Christoph continued. ‘It would probably have footage on it. The manageress of my showroom will be able to help you with that.’

  ‘I’ve already spoken to Frau Jools. Apparently the video camera stopped working from ten p.m. the night before until ten a.m. – a strange coincidence, don’t you think?’

  Now the old man looked rattled. It was obvious to Matthias that his father had been taken by surprise – he made a mental note not to underestimate the intelligence of the rather uncouth detective before him.

  ‘I’m s
ure further investigation will bring up some connection. In the meantime I would like the names and addresses of all your current employees,’ Klauser said.

  ‘Bertholt will assist you with that.’

  It was a signal that it was time for the detective to leave. Smiling, Klauser scraped back the chair he was sitting on with a great clamour, then rose to shake hands again. When Christoph ignored his outstretched hand, Klauser turned, unperturbed, to Matthias.

  ‘I’ll walk you out,’ the younger von Holindt offered.

  Just before they reached the door Klauser turned back. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. Another interesting fact, Herr von Holindt, was the number we found tattooed on the victim’s wrist, a number indicating he had once been a prisoner at the Buchenwald concentration camp. They had gypsies there too, did you know?’

  A tiny ripple of anxiety ran across Christoph’s face.

  ‘Indeed? Do give my regards to Chief Inspector Engels – his father was a close friend of mine.’