The Black Sun

by James Twining

  “Forget the money, Raj,” Tom said, earning himself an angry look from Archie. “We need your help. Let’s just call it quits on what you owe us.”

  There was another, even longer pause, then the door buzzed open.

  “Half that money’s mine, don’t forget,” Archie reminded Tom as they stepped inside.

  “Next time, you might want to ask me before just giving it away.”

  “You drop more than that every time you pick up a hand of cards,” Tom said quietly. “I don’t think you’ll miss it.”

  They found themselves in a steel cage, half blinded by the powerful lights trained on them from the far side of the room. Several dark shapes loomed on either side of them, none of them moving, while the smell of decay rose from the damp concrete floor.

  “Raj?” Tom called, holding his hand up to his face and peering through his fingers in an attempt to see beyond the glare. A silhouette appeared in front of the lights.

  “Quits?” came the voice again.

  “That’s right,” said Tom. “We’re not here to make any trouble, Raj. Just to get some advice.”

  The lights snapped off and Tom made out a slight figure approaching the cage, fumbling with a huge bunch of keys. Raj Dhutta was a willowy five foot four, with slender arms and skinny wrists. He had wavy black hair with a knife-edge part on the left-hand side, and a narrow, feline face, his eyes furtively skipping between them, his black mustache quivering nervously.

  He selected a key and inserted it into a lock. Then he repeated the action with a second and then a third lock, pausing before the final turn of the key.

  “We have a gentleman’s agreement?” said Dhutta, his tone still disbelieving.

  “Yes,

  we’ve

  got

  an

  agreement,”

  Tom

  confirmed.

  the black sun 153

  “Excellent!” Dhutta’s face broke into a broad smile. “Excellent.” The cage door finally swung open and Tom and Archie were able to step into the room, Dhutta immediately slamming the cage shut behind them and sliding the deadbolts into place.

  “Let’s shake on it.” He grabbed Tom’s hand and pumped it up and down vigorously, his grip surprisingly fierce.

  “This is the first time you two have actually met, isn’t it?” asked Tom, retrieving his hand.

  “Yes, indeed.” Dhutta turned his smile on Archie. “It is a pleasure to meet you finally, Mr. Connolly.”

  They shook hands awkwardly, as if renewing a dimly remembered acquaintance.

  “Is there somewhere we can talk?” Tom asked.

  “My apologies.” Dhutta gave a half bow. “I am indeed a poor host. Come, come.”

  He scampered across to the far side of the room, Tom and Archie now able to see that the dark shapes they had noticed previously were large pieces of rusting industrial equipment, long since decommissioned.

  “What is this place?” Archie asked, watching where he was stepping. “Or rather, what was it?”

  “An old electricity substation.” Dhutta led them up a short flight of stairs to another steel door, which he unlocked with a second set of keys.

  “You live here?” Archie again.

  “No, no, no. This is merely my workshop. I reside on the street overhead. There’s access through the cellar so I never have to go outside. Come, come,” he urged, stepping through the doorway.

  On his previous visit, Tom had not been invited into this part of the complex, Dhutta having insisted that he wait within the gloomy confines of the anteroom they had just come from. Now he saw that the door opened onto a vast hall, the arched brick ceiling rising twenty feet above their heads. A series of lights hung down at regular intervals, their steel shades as big as umbrellas. The concrete floor had been whitewashed and covered in an uneven quilt of overlapping rugs that felt soft and warm beneath their feet. 154 james twining

  “Tea?” asked Dhutta. “I have many different varieties from my uncle in Calcutta—Earl Grey, Darjeeling, Assam, Nilgiri . . . Whatever tickles your fancy. I have just boiled the kettle.”

  “Earl Grey,” Archie replied distractedly, still taking the room in.

  “Coffee. Black,” said Tom, to Dhutta’s obvious disapproval.

  “As you wish. Please make yourselves at home.”

  Dhutta waved them to two battered and threadbare sofas arranged around an old tea chest on the left-hand side of the room as he darted to the sink and busied himself with mugs and milk. Tom and Archie both dropped their small overnight bags by the door and sat down.

  “I must admit, I am surprised to see you, Mr. Tom. I had heard that you would no longer have need of my services.”

  “It’s true. Archie and I have moved on.”

  “The business is losing all its gentlemen.” Dhutta sighed. “The young people coming through have no respect.”

  “Things change, Raj,” Tom replied.

  “In the Hindu religion, we would say that you have moved on to Vanaprastha, or retirement, when you will delegate responsibility to the younger generation and perform selfless social services yourself,” Dhutta said solemnly.

  “And after that?” Tom asked in mock seriousness.

  “Sanyas. The complete renunciation of the world for union with God.”

  Tom laughed. “I think I’m a few years from either of those.”

  Dhutta handed them their drinks and sat down opposite.

  “You not having anything?” Archie asked.

  “Just this.” Dhutta reached behind him for a bottle of brightly colored cough mixture. Tom and Archie watched in disbelief as he unscrewed the white cap and took a long swig, emptying almost a quarter of the bottle.

  “That can’t be good for you,” Archie observed with a frown.

  “Prevention is better than cure, Mr. Archie.” Dhutta nodded toward a shelf above the sink

  that

  was

  stacked

  with

  medi

  the black sun 155

  cine bottles full of pills and vitamins and other unidentifiable supplements, not to mention a rainbow of neon-colored syrups and liquids. “Would you like to try something?” he suggested eagerly. “Maybe for hay fever or malaria?”

  “We’re just here for some information,” said Tom.

  “Information?” Dhutta’s gaze flicked regretfully from the shelf, back to Tom. “What sort of information?”

  “There’s something I want to show you,” said Tom. “Obviously, what we’re about to discuss doesn’t leave this room.”

  “Of course.”

  Tom

  placed

  the

  walnut

  box

  on

  the

  tea

  chest’s

  rough

  surface.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  January 7—11:31 p.m.

  Dhutta pulled the box toward him, then hesitated before opening it, his fingers rubbing across the twelve-armed swastika on the lid.

  “This?”

  “No. Something inside it.”

  Dhutta flicked the box open, frowning when he saw it was empty. He picked it up and shook it, then examined it again. Tom eyed him with amusement, wondering how long it would take him to work out that the box had a false bottom, let alone how to get into it. But in four quick movements, Dhutta slid the various interlocking pieces of the box aside and exposed the secret drawer.

  “I see you’ve not lost your touch,” Tom said with a smile.

  But Dhutta had already slid the drawer out and snatched up the key and didn’t seem to be listening. He looked at them, his mustache quivering as he turned the key over between his fingers.

  “Well, well!” he exclaimed. “Interesting. Very interesting. May I ask where you obtained this, Mr. Tom?” Tom arched his eyebrows and pressed his lips together, unwilling to divulge any more than he had to at this stage. Dhutta shrugged. “Not everything
/>
  has

  changed,

  I

  see,”

  he

  observed

  wryly.

  the black sun 157

  “What do you think it’s for?”

  “A safe? A deposit box? Something like that. Somewhere with tip-top security.”

  “What about the initials? Do they mean anything to you?”

  Dhutta squinted at the italic script etched into the key’s rubber grip. “It looks like a V

  and a C,” he said, shaking his head. “But that’s impossible.”

  “Why impossible?”

  “It’s the logo for Völz et Compagnie, the private bank. But they do not offer safedeposit boxes. Not anymore.”

  “I’ve never heard of them,” said Tom.

  “You wouldn’t have, unless you had an account there.” Dhutta twirled the key between his fingers. “They’re based here in Zurich. Very prestigious. Very secretive. They don’t advertise, don’t even have a sign on their building. If they think you are suitable, they find you.”

  “Well, if their logo’s on it, the key must have some connection with the bank,” Tom insisted.

  “Come, gentlemen”—Dhutta jumped up, tossing the key in the air and deftly catching it again—“I want to try something.”

  The hall was divided into three main areas. The smallest was the one they had just come from, a sort of makeshift sitting room on the left. Steel shelving formed a ten-foottall metal barricade separating this area from the rest. Dhutta led them through a gap in the shelving to his workshop area.

  Several industrial metalworking machines—grinders, drills, saws, and the like—were bolted to the low workbench or freestanding, and small piles of metal shavings crunched under their feet. The shelves were full of baskets that contained further pieces of cutting and shaping and welding equipment. At the far end of the workshop area, thousands of keys dangled from huge black boards that had been screwed to the shelves. House keys, car keys, safe keys, shop keys: every possible combination of size, shape, and color glinted in the overhead light like the individual links in some enormous chain-mail shirt. Without

  pausing,

  Dhutta

  led

  them

  to

  a

  gap

  in

  the

  next

  158 james twining

  bank of shelving and through to the far end of the hall. As he walked into the third area, Tom’s eyes widened. Where the workshop had been primitive and grimy, reeking of oil, this final area was a sleek, symbiotic amalgam of stainless steel and silicon. Along the far wall were half a dozen LCD panels, each plugged into a different piece of hardware, their screens small puddles of light. In the left corner two large racks groaned and hummed under the combined weight of the computer and telecom equipment loaded on them. Scanners, printers, CD burners, and other unidentifiable pieces of electronic hardware jostled for space along the right-hand wall, their displays flashing like a Times Square billboard. Three plasma screens dominated the left-hand wall, each tuned to a different news channel; one, Tom noticed, was showing a cricket match. Dhutta caught sight of Tom’s surprised expression.

  “The steady march of progress,” Dhutta explained with an excited sweep of his arm.

  “Nowadays people are preferring to place their trust in passwords and firewalls rather than springs and tumblers. But a lock is a lock, and I have to keep ahead of the game, whether the key is made from metal or from binary code.”

  He pulled a chair out from under the worktop and, switching on a desk lamp, examined the key carefully.

  “It is as I thought,” he exclaimed after a few seconds. “A three-dimensional lasertooled varying matrix.” He sounded impressed.

  “Which means what, exactly?” Archie asked.

  Dhutta turned to him with a smile. “The key has no teeth, Mr. Archie, as you can see. Instead, when you insert it into a lock, four separate electronic eyes examine these laserburned markings to ensure that they are correctly sized and positioned. It’s almost impossible to duplicate.”

  Tom’s eyes met Archie’s.

  “And if I’m not mistaken . . .” Dhutta pointed the key at a black box screwed to the wall and pressed the small button in the key’s rubber grip. Almost immediately a long series

  of

  numbers

  flashed

  on

  the

  screen

  beside

  him.

  the black sun 159

  “What’s that?” Tom asked.

  “When the key has been inserted into the lock and successfully read by the laser, you press this button to trigger an infrared data exchange with the locking mechanism. Based on this”—he indicated the display on the screen—“it seems to be an algorithm, probably a 128-bit key. Very hard to break. A complex mathematical formula changes the code at regular intervals—once a day, once a week, depending on how it has been programmed. Unless the codes match, the lock won’t open.”

  “You ever see anything like this before?”

  “Only once, on a system developed for the Israeli military for access to their missile silos. Except that they insisted on one extra level of security.”

  “Which was?”

  “A key can be lost, stolen even.” He flashed his teeth at Tom and gave him a knowing wink. “Biometric analysis was therefore deemed a necessary additional precaution to ensure that the person inserting the key was indeed meant to have it.”

  “Analysis of what?”

  “In the Israeli case, palm prints.”

  “So we’ve no way of getting in without—”

  “Raj,” Archie interrupted, “how many numbers are there in a typical Swiss bank account?”

  “Between eight and sixteen. It depends on how many accounts they have and the security setup.”

  “So ten digits, for example, could make up an account number?”

  “Oh, certainly,” said Dhutta.

  “What are you thinking?” Tom took a step toward Archie, curiosity in his voice.

  “I’m just wondering whether that’s why Cassius wanted Weissman’s arm. Maybe the tattoo was an account number, not a camp number.”

  “But why would Weissman have had the account number and not the key?” asked Tom.

  “Just because we didn’t find a key, doesn’t mean he didn’t have one.”

  160 james twining

  “And we don’t know for sure that Lammers had the key but no account number,” Tom said, picking up on Archie’s logic. “They probably both had access.”

  “It would make sense,” Archie agreed. “Especially if what they were hiding was valuable. The only problem is, they’re both dead. Even if we’re right about the key and the account number, there’s no way we can get into that box.”

  Tom

  smiled.

  “Isn’t

  there?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  AU-HAIDHAUSEN DISTRICT, MUNICH

  January 7—11:55 p.m.

  The garage was small but well equipped, with tools hanging neatly along the far wall and oil sumps and inspection hatches set into the concrete floor. Toward the rear stood two large hydraulic car lifts, squat as tanks, their stainless-steel pistons gleaming in the muted light.

  “Could we not have met here rather than the hotel?” Renwick asked angrily. “Then we could have avoided tonight’s little circus.”

  Although, in the end, their escape from the hotel had gone well enough, he had since had time to reflect on the evening’s events. It had been a mistake, he realized now, to place himself in the hands of people he did not know or trust. He had made himself vulnerable.

  “Because the staff would still have been here then,” Hecht explained patiently. “The owner is a sympathizer. He lets us use his premises after hours if we need to, but that’s it.” There was a pause. “Besides, Dmitri is cautious . . .” Hecht spoke with an apolog
etic tone now. “He prefers not to let outsiders get too close to our operation.”

  “His caution very nearly got us all caught,” Renwick snapped, gingerly rubbing the place

  where

  the

  prosthetic

  162 james twining

  hand joined his arm. “Next time, I will choose the venue and you can leave the fancy dress at home.” He flipped a hand at the fireman’s uniform he had just discarded.

  “Next time, there will be no need,” Hecht reassured him. “You’re with us, now.”

  “I am with nobody,” Renwick corrected him. “We have an arrangement. Nothing more.”

  “As you wish,” Hecht conceded. “And your plan . . . You’re still confident?”

  “If I’m right that the painting’s sitting in some private collection somewhere, then he’s the one to find it.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because he is the best. And because he has every incentive to succeed.”

  “What incentive is that?”

  “Stopping me. All we need to do is watch him and make our move at the right time.”

  Renwick pulled his gold watch from his top pocket and glanced at it. “Talking of which, what is keeping them?”

  “I don’t know.” Hecht frowned. “They should have been back . . . Ah.”

  A car had pulled up outside, its yellow headlights flooding in through the cracks around the sides of the steel roller shutter, before being extinguished. The sound of doors opening and closing was followed by the murmur of voices, then footsteps and something heavy being dragged. A minute or two later the shutter rattled as someone knocked heavily on the narrow door cut into it.

  Hecht opened the door. Konrad stepped in first, followed by the two men from the hotel, Karl and Florian, heaving a large sack, which left a smeared trail of oil and dust in its wake. All three were still wearing their fireman’s trousers but had stripped down to T–shirts, the tapestry of angry, twisting tattoos that adorned their arms and torsos slick with sweat.

  “Any problems?” Hecht asked.

  “Nein,” Konrad answered. “Except he cries like a girl.” Karl and Florian both laughed as they heaved the sack upright. Konrad produced a heavy-duty hunting knife from inside his

  left