‘God, you’re squeezing me to death!’ she complained. It felt to Matthias like years since he’d held her and suddenly all he took for granted seemed incredibly tenuous. ‘Papa, I’m not going anywhere. Can I breathe now?’
He let her go, a little abashed at his emotional intensity, then threw himself down into the armchair. Liliane joined him on the armrest.
‘Are you okay? You look exhausted and you didn’t come home last night.’ She took in his hollowed cheeks and unshaven chin, the deep shadow under his eyes, and found she wanted to protect him but didn’t know how. Matthias took her hand and stroked it.
‘Listen, Liliane, you and I will have to be very, very careful over the next few days; in fact I’m thinking of sending you to Grandma’s for a while —’
‘But why? You need me here.’
‘Liliane, I’m okay, really. More than that, I feel more alive than I have done for years.’
‘Since Mama’s accident?’ It was a challenge as much as a question.
Listening, Matthias decided to be honest.
‘Yes, since Mama’s accident.’
‘Is this to do with Opa, and those men at his funeral?’
‘Some of your grandfather’s wrongs I’m trying to make right, as much as I can within my power – one man can’t change history,’ he continued, aware that he was rambling, perhaps telling her too much.
‘No one’s expecting you to, Papa.’
‘Sometimes life offers up a clear moral duty. Not often, because most of the time life ends up being a series of compromises, but when it does, it’s important to take a stand, become your own hero. Maybe that’s what you need, Liliane: to believe in yourself.’
‘Papa, you’re tired, you’re not making sense.’ She tried pulling him to his feet to lead him upstairs to his bed.
‘No, this is important. Listen, I spent all night in the laboratory. I’ve had a real breakthrough, perhaps the biggest of my life, and I’ll need to go away again. And if I find what I’m looking for I will be able to make history…’ His whole body was racked by a yawn.
‘You’re not going anywhere but bed. C’mon,’ Liliane scolded, and so she ushered him up the stairs as if she were the parent and he the child.
‘So how long have you known Herr Professor von Holindt?’ Jorges Hatiwais had warmed to this enthusiastic French journalist despite the oddity of his appearance – most journalists he knew chain-smoked and were badly dressed, while this one looked as if he worked out every day and had a healthy pay check, but then, La Recherche was one of the most popular science magazines in Europe and Jorges, a vain man, had particularly liked the way the journalist seemed to linger on his every word.
‘Oh, Matthias? A couple of years. I covered his last breakthrough involving ceramics – superconductivity at thirty-nine kelvin, and I arranged some work experience for his daughter, Liliane,’ Destin elaborated, hoping that Jorge Hatiwais was only ever a work colleague of Matthias’s. His gamble paid off.
‘That’s right, the daughter. Lively little thing, isn’t she?’
‘As for India itself?’ Destin thrust his Dictaphone under Jorges’ nose with the kind of naive urgency he imagined a young journalist would have.
‘Well, there are various crater sites: Piplia Kalan, Samelia, Tonk, Raghunathpura, Desuri, Udaipur among others. All significant but not really important in the grand scale of things. The major site is in Maharashtra – Lonar Lake, which is about 1.8 kilometres in diameter and 150 metres deep and was formed by a two-million-ton meteor nearly fifty thousand years ago. But to my mind the crater site that is of real current interest is in Rajasthan – at Ramgarh. In fact’ – here Jorges began to enjoy the sound of his own authority – ‘there are reasons to assume the meteorite, which I believe is responsible for both the lake and the raised lip of hills and plateaus around it, was made of the most unusual material, one that might be of great scientific interest, perhaps even a historical first.’
Destin clicked off the Dictaphone. ‘Sounds like a scoop, Professor.’
‘Oh, it will be, I am confident of it.’
‘Now, was that Hatiwais with one S or two?’
The homemade altar sat on the circular side cabinet, one of two that ran either side of the two sleeping compartments. A lit candle, its light reflected by the oval mirror set in the wooden panelling behind, flickered at the foot of the statuette, which was flanked by two black-and-white photographs. The first was of Keja and Yojo from before the war, sitting on the same horse bare-backed, Keja a skinny six-year-old olive-skinned girl perched in front, gazing up adoringly at her brother, as Yojo, a ten-year-old, grinned into the camera absolutely carefree. The second photograph, dated ‘1932’, was of the whole family gathered outside Keja’s parents’ painted caravan: the five siblings and her father, standing upright in embroidered velvet trousers and wide leather belt, his deep-set eyes hidden by the shadow cast by the brim of his hat, smiling beneath his moustache. Her mother was tiny next to him, two braids decorated with ribbons framing her face covered by a traditional diklo, her dowry of gold earrings and necklace displayed proudly, the youngest – who lived only a month in the camps – a baby of three months in her arms.
Keja stood in front of it clasping an amulet made of a dried bat’s heart bound with red thread, her head bowed, while Latcos watched from the top sleeping compartment, lying on his side, a rolled cigarette between his fingers.
‘Father,’ she whispered, ‘Yojo kept his promise. We have her back, back in the family, thank the Lord.’ She laid the amulet at the foot of the homemade altar, lifted the rosary she was wearing over her head and carefully draped it over the neck of the statuette, then turned to her son. ‘Latcos, you must think of a way of protecting her. There are others after her now.’
‘I will talk to Raga.’
‘Who makes the antiques?’
‘Arvah, don’t worry, dej, never again will she leave the Romanes.’
A draught made the candle flame flicker, and Kali’s four arms danced in the moving light. Keja turned to the window. ‘There is evil coming, Latcos, I feel it, and we will be drawn right into the centre of it.’
Latcos slipped off the bed and joined her at the window, then drew the curtain across. ‘Dej, your time as a drabarni is over. Now you must rest and fight for yourself. I protect the family now. This is a new beginning; the goddess brings us luck, as will my brother Matthias.’
It was the first time she had heard him refer to Matthias as his brother; smiling, she lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed it.
Matthias lay curled on his side, the eiderdown pulled up to his ears as he tumbled down in the dreamless sleep of the exhausted. Around him the house settled about his breath, the creaking boards and shifting planes of space taking on his rhythm, wrapping him up in a familiar cocoon. Just down the corridor, Liliane, lying in her own bedroom listening, closed her own eyes. And for once she managed to exorcise the events of the day bashing against the walls of her mind like trapped moths. Sensing her sudden surrender, Matthias turned in his bed, happier than he could remember.
The white E-type Jaguar drove slowly past the modernist house; set in the landscaped garden it looked more like a series of cubes glinting between the branches of the trees. Destin had grown to like this house, its clean, exact lines appealing to his need for precision, the race for reinvention that had become his life, his constant disguise. He could imagine living there, could imagine being Matthias von Holindt. He was tired of the constant travel, perhaps even the violence. For tonight, at least, he could envisage being a husband, a father, having those relationships that would anchor him to the civilian world. He slowed down, letting the engine idle. There was only one light on in the house, downstairs – a desk lamp that lit up the long pine lines of a table and low sofa, the copper dome of a freestanding fireplace. Destin had seen the lamp lit before; it meant the whole household was dormant, the housekeeper in her small bedroom that ran off the back of the kitchen, the two other bedrooms o
n the first floor all velvet with the smell of the sleeping.
Looking up at the windows he was filled with the exhilaration of the predator, the stalker who can toy with his prey. He could slip into that house as easily as slipping into a woman and have them all now, but it would be too soon. There was more pleasure in the execution of a meticulous plan, one in which he would be able to extract exactly what he wanted and inflict the most pain. Like a wronged god, he thought, then, feeling the chill of first light, drove on.
Helen was woken by the cry of a bird. At least she thought it must have been the cry of a bird as she lay there, the sound still reverberating in her brain more like a vibration than a noise. Something nagged at the back of her mind, a disturbing remnant from a dream she couldn’t quite remember. She rolled over and peered at the blue neon digits of her electric clock; it was still only five a.m. Filled with a sudden unease she turned and stared across at the shifting patterns of the branches playing over the curtains, images from the past week running through her mind; Matthias, his face staring down at her as they made love, the depth of those green eyes, his expression as he watched the magnet floating magically above that fragment of mysterious ore; old-fashioned rapture, transformative joy. There was a curious juxtaposition in the physicist that fascinated her – an emotionality that burst through his detached, seemingly over-intellectual façade. She’d never met anyone like him, not at Yale, not in the field, not on the circuit of endless conferences and think tanks, and yet there was a part of him that frightened her. A recklessness she recognised when she’d met him. Like a lot of scientists he was myopic when on the brink of a discovery, blind to potential danger, even to his own mortality: it was as if the value of his life did not matter in the face of scientific achievement. It was then she realised what had been haunting her dream – the inscription on the sword arm of the statuette. She’d managed to translate the arcane Sanskrit late the night before.
To release the goddess’s secret is to receive her blessing and free the souls of mankind.
The word free disturbed her. It wasn’t an exact translation, and given the role of the goddess on the battlefield, there was a sinister cast to the whole phrase. When she finally completed the translation her first impulse was to phone Matthias but it had been past one in the morning and she’d been frightened of waking his whole household. There was no doubt in her mind: he needed her even if he didn’t know it; her expertise and her protection.
She rolled back towards the clock, allowing the digits to burn into her retinas until they got smaller and foggier, then finally blurred into the haze of sleep.
TWENTY-FOUR
The doctorate student was early, but she wanted to get in before the others to catch Professor Lund who was supervising her thesis. They’d arranged to meet at seven on Monday but she needed to collect a few samples before going on to his office. As she passed his door she noticed it was ajar – unusual, as it would normally be locked. She paused, wrestling with her ethics; she was curious to see what her two superiors were currently working on, and the office was usually out of bounds.
The first thing that struck her as odd as she pushed open the door was the smell – an acrid smell of something sweet, and over it the scent of urine. The second thing was that the blinds were down; they were never normally pulled shut. Full of trepidation, she switched on the light. Jannick Lund lay slumped on the floor. As she ventured further into the room the side of his purple, swollen face came into view.
Olek waited as Janus Zellweger crumpled the Coke can he’d just finished into a small ball with his bare hand, the single blue vein that threaded through his balding pate visibly throbbing. Still clutching the crumpled can, the arms manufacturer looked out of his office window, from which he could clearly see the top of the clock tower of the Alte Uhr Kirche, a fact he normally found comforting.
‘Priceless,’ he whispered to himself. ‘It is an insult, an insult of the highest order.’
He tried to focus on the face of the clock tower, a small yellow-white disc against the grey-blue of the old stone. Even from this distance it was obvious the clock had no arms. Timeless… It had been his idea to leave it like this – a thousand years they had been promised, a thousand years of a glorious regime.
‘Everything was taken?’ he asked softly, too softly.
‘Everything. The vault is completely empty,’ Olek said nervously.
Janus’s gaze shifted slightly to the east. Here he could see the rectangular windows of the Mueller Bank. Shall I tell him? Nothing yet, Janus reasoned silently. I will get it all back, quietly and swiftly; there will be no upsetting of the order of things.
There had been four of them, like points of a star, stretching as far as East Germany, watching the waves of commerce rolling over the city for decades without a ripple and now this. Janus could kill a man, and he knew which one. His eyes moved towards Altstadt, to the red slate roof of the showroom of the Holindt Watch Company. Christoph always had been the weak link, Janus observed, and his first mistake had been that aberrant adoption. Nature will always triumph over nurture. It was something he’d told the company director from the very beginning. There is no room for sentimentality in the pursuit of superiority, none at all. He swung round abruptly and threw the can into a bin in the far corner of the room, narrowly missing Olek’s head.
‘You want me to deal with the physicist?’ the Slav asked.
‘No, not yet, we have to be careful.’ Janus picked up the telephone and dialled a number. ‘Put me through to Chief Inspector Engels…’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned back to Olek. ‘When you’re robbed, you phone the police, right?’ he joked bitterly. Janus turned back to the receiver. ‘Johann? Listen, I have a problem with Matthias von Holindt. It seems he might have appropriated some property of mine that could prove deeply compromising if it ever saw the light of day…’
Olek leaned forward slightly, straining to hear the sound of the police inspector interjecting as he watched Janus’s face. To his astonishment the arms manufacturer broke into a chuckle. ‘You’re joking. When was this? Early this morning? So you have a whole unit on it? Good… obviously his father’s death has unhinged him. Let me know when you pull him in.’ Janus put the telephone down and turned back to Olek. ‘Matthias von Holindt’s assistant has just been found murdered – and all the evidence points to him. All we have to do is wait for his arrest. Engels will make sure we deal with him.’
It was freezing in Helen’s office. Outside she could hear the morning chatter of some of the students arriving for the day. She’d been there since six, driven out of bed by her insistent fear that her translation of the Sanskrit was not accurate enough to convey the true meaning. So now she was at her desk, surrounded by several massive reference books, staring at a colour illustration of the goddess perched on the dead body of her consort, her four arms waving madly, the spear in her lower right hand, the bloodstained, curved sword held in her top-right hand, her left hands clutching the customary severed head and dish of dripping blood, the garland of skulls hanging to her knees. It was both a seductive and repellent image – but Helen was very aware of her own cultural bias; a devotee would not have seen the goddess as destructive, more a destroyer of unreality, of the fear of death. In this way Kali was the great liberator, Helen told herself, but it was the paragraph beneath the text that disturbed her more.
… therefore to be blessed by Kali is to have the gift of death – to be liberated from one’s earthly body and through death experience nothing-at-all (as the sages call it), the dreamless sleep before returning to the endless cycle of the karmic wheel to be reincarnated… Kali offers freedom; she embodies the Generative womb of All – both the Beginning and the End, she will be the ultimate herald of after-doomsday – the great devourer of Time. When mankind receives her blessing, mankind will receive its end.
As Helen reread the last sentence a chill ran through her. Was the statuette a weapon? It was a terrifying thought. Could it be used as a
destructive force? Perhaps this was why the Nazis wanted it so much?
Matthias lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, having woken early, a deluge of possibilities destroying any further rest. He knew he should set out for the laboratory to do further tests on the sample he’d taken from the fragment, but the question of the valuables kept hijacking his train of thought. Should he just take the whole lot to the commission on war trading? Or to the UN, or just turn them in to the police? The trouble was that he didn’t trust the police, and he didn’t entirely trust the government, given the eminence of the individuals involved. No, he reasoned, perhaps the best plan would be to deliver the valuables to the Swiss Restitution and Research organisation, then take the story to the international press so that the government would be shamed into action. And he would make sure the gold coins and other objects were clearly defined as ‘gypsy gold’. The scandal would destroy Thomas and his bank – of that, Matthias was certain. The sound of the telephone broke into his strategising.
‘Herr Professor?’
The Stolen Page 37