by Steve Berry
“And how do you figure into that?”
Interesting. She wasn’t all that informed. “Admiral Dyals gave the order not to search for NR-1A. Even though the crew agreed to those conditions before they left port, his reputation would be destroyed if that came out. I owe that man a lot.”
“Then why kill Sylvian?”
He wasn’t going there. “I didn’t kill anybody.”
She started to speak, but he stopped her with a halting hand. “I don’t deny, though, that I want his job.”
The room grew tense, like the descending weight of a hushed poker game—which, in many ways, this encounter resembled. He bore his gaze into her. “I’m being straight with you in the hope that you’ll be straight with me.”
He knew from Aatos Kane’s aide that Daniels had been receptive to the idea of his appointment, which ran contrary to McCoy’s theatrics. It was vital that he maintain a set of eyes and ears within the Oval Office. Good decisions were always based on good information. Problem that she was, he needed her.
“I knew you’d come,” she said. “Interesting that you have personal control of that warehouse.”
He shrugged. “It’s under naval intelligence. Before I headed the agency, others looked after it. That’s not the only repository we maintain.”
“I imagine it’s not. But there’s a lot more happening here than you want to admit. What about your Berlin station chief, Wilkerson? Why did he end up dead?”
He assumed that tidbit would make it into everyone’s daily briefing booklet. But there was no need to confirm any linkage. “I’m having that investigated. The motivations may be personal, though—he was involved with a married woman. Our people are working the case right now. Too soon to say anything sinister.”
“I want to see what’s in the warehouse.”
He watched her face, neither hostile nor unfriendly. “What would that prove?”
“I want to see what this is about.”
“No, you don’t.”
He watched her again. She had a pouting mouth. Her light hair hung like two inward-curving curtains on both sides of a heart-shaped face. She was attractive and he wondered if charm might work. “Diane, listen to me. You don’t need to do this. I’ll honor our agreement. But to be able to do that, I have to do this my way. You coming here is jeopardizing everything.”
“I’m not prepared to trust my career to you.”
He knew a little of her history. Her father was a local Indianan politician who’d made a name for himself after getting elected lieutenant governor, then proceeded to alienate half the state. Maybe he was witnessing some of that same rebellious streak? Perhaps. But he had to make things clear. “Then I’m afraid you’re on your own.”
He sensed comprehension washing over her. “And I’ll end up dead?”
“Did I say that?”
“You didn’t have to.”
No, he didn’t. But there was still the problem of damage control. “How about this. We’ll say there’s been a disagreement. You came here on an exploratory mission, and the White House and naval intelligence have worked out an arrangement whereby the information you want will be provided. That way, the base commander will be satisfied and no more questions, aside from what’s already been raised, will be asked. We leave smiling and happy.”
He spotted defeat in her eyes.
“Don’t screw with me,” she said.
“I haven’t done a thing. You’re the one going off half-cocked.”
“I swear to you, Langford, I’ll bring you down. Don’t screw with me.”
He decided diplomacy was the better tack. At least for the moment. “As I’ve repeatedly said, I’ll keep my end of our bargain.”
Malone enjoyed dinner, especially since he’d eaten little all day. Interesting how, when he worked in the bookshop, hunger came with a predictable regularity. But in the field, on a mission, the urge seemed to completely disappear.
He’d listened to Isabel and her daughters, along with Werner Lindauer, talk about Hermann and Dietz Oberhauser. The tension between the daughters loomed large. Ulrich Henn had eaten with them, too, and he’d watched Henn carefully. The East German had sat in silence, never acknowledging that he was even hearing, but not missing a word.
Isabel was clearly in charge, and he’d noted the waves in the others’ emotions as they rode her unsteady current. Neither daughter ever rose to challenge her. They either agreed or said nothing. And Werner said little of anything useful.
He’d passed on dessert and decided to head upstairs.
In the foyerlike lobby logs burned with a warm glow, filling the room with the scent of resin. He stopped and enjoyed the fire, noticing three framed pencil drawings of the monastery on the walls. One was an exterior sketch of the towers, everything intact, and he noticed a date in one corner. 1784. The other two were interior images. One was of the cloister, its arches and columns no longer bare. Instead carved images sprang from the stones with mathematical regularity. In the center garden the fountain stood in all its glory, water overflowing from its iron basin. He imagined cowled figures flitting to and fro among the arches.
The last drawing was of the inside of the church.
An angular view from the rear vestibule facing toward the altar, from the right side, where he’d made his advance through the columns toward the gunman. No ruin was shown. Instead stone, wood, and glass assembled in a miraculous union—part gothic, part Romanesque. Artwork abounded on the columns, but with a delicate modesty, inconspicuous, a far cry from the church’s current decay. He noticed that a bronze grille enclosed the sanctuary, the Carolingian curlicues and swirls reminiscent of what he’d seen in Aachen. The flooring was intact and detailed, differing shades of gray and black denoting what would have surely been color and variety. Dates on each print read 1772.
The proprietor was busy behind the front desk. He asked, “These originals?”
The man nodded. “They’ve hung here a long time. Our monastery was once glorious, but no more.”
“What happened?”
“War. Neglect. Weather. They all devoured the place.”
Before leaving the dinner table, he’d heard Isabel dispatch Henn to dispose of the bodies in the church. Her employee now donned his coat and disappeared into the night.
Malone caught a blast of cold from the front door as the owner handed him a key. He climbed wooden stairs to his room. He’d brought no clothes and the ones he wore needed cleaning, especially his shirt. Inside the room he tossed his jacket and gloves on the bed and removed his shirt. He stepped into the tiny bath and rinsed the shirt out in an enamel basin, using a little soap, then laid it across the radiator to dry.
He stood in his undershirt and studied himself in the mirror. He’d worn an undershirt since he was six years old—a habit hammered into him. “Nasty to be bare-chested,” his father would say. “You want your clothes to smell like sweat?” He’d never questioned his father, he’d simply emulated him and always wore an undershirt—deep V neckline, since “wearing an undershirt is one thing, seeing it is another.” Interesting how the pull of childhood memories could so easily be triggered. They’d had so short a time together. About three years he could remember, from ages seven to ten. He still kept the flag that had been displayed at his father’s memorial in a glass case beside his bed. His mother had refused the memento at the funeral, saying she’d had enough of the navy. But eight years later when he’d told her that he was joining, she hadn’t objected. “What else would Forrest Malone’s boy do?” she’d asked him.
And he’d agreed. What else?
He heard a soft rap and stepped from the bath to open the door. Christl stood outside.
“May I?” she asked.
He motioned his assent and quietly closed the door behind her.
“I want you to know that I didn’t like what happened up there today. That’s why I came after you. I told Mother not to deceive you.”
“Unlike yourself, of course.”
/> “Let’s be honest, okay? If I had told you that I’d already made the connection between the will and the inscription, would you have even come to Aachen?”
Probably not. But he said nothing.
“I didn’t think so,” she said, reading his face.
“You people take a lot of foolish risks.”
“There’s much at stake. Mother wanted me to tell you something, not in front of Dorothea or Werner.”
He’d been wondering when Isabel would make good on her promise of damn good information. “Okay, who’s been trying to kill me?”
“A man named Langford Ramsey. She actually spoke with him. He sent the men who came after us in Garmisch, at Reichshoffen, and in Aachen. He also sent those today. He wants you dead. He’s head of your naval intelligence. Mother deceived him into thinking she was his ally.”
“Now, there’s something novel. Put my life at risk to save it.”
“She’s trying to help you.”
“By telling Ramsey I’d be here today?”
She nodded. “We staged that hostage scenario with their cooperation so they’d both be killed. We didn’t anticipate the other two coming. They were supposed to stay on the outside. Ulrich thinks the shots drew them.” She hesitated. “Cotton, I’m glad you’re here. And safe. I wanted you to know that.”
He felt like a man walking to the gallows after tying the noose himself.
“Where’s your shirt?” she asked.
“You live alone, you do your own laundry.”
She added a friendly smile which sweetened the otherwise tense atmosphere. “I’ve lived alone all my adult life.”
“Thought you were married once?”
“We never actually lived together. One of those errors in judgment that was quickly rectified. We had a few great weekends, but that was about all. How long were you married?”
“Almost twenty years.”
“Children?”
“A son.”
“Does he carry your name?”
“His name is Gary.”
A sense of peace mingled with the silence.
She wore denim jeans, a stone-colored shirt and a navy cardigan. He could still see her tied to the column. Of course, women lying to him was nothing new. His ex-wife lied for years about Gary’s parentage. Stephanie lied repeatedly, when necessary. Even his mother, a reservoir of locked emotions, a woman who rarely showed any feeling, lied to him about his father. To her, that memory was perfect. But he knew it wasn’t. He desperately wanted to know the man. Not a myth, or a legend, or a memory. Just the man.
He was tired. “It’s time for bed.”
She circled to the lamp that burned beside the bed. He’d switched off the bath light when he’d answered the door so, when she pulled the chain and extinguished the bulb, the room was plunged into darkness.
“I agree,” she said.
SIXTY-FOUR
Dorothea watched from her cracked-open door as her sister entered Cotton Malone’s room. She’d seen her mother speak with Christl after dinner and wondered what had been said. She’d seen Ulrich leave and knew what task he’d been delegated. She wondered what her role would be. Apparently it was to make amends with her husband, as they’d been given a room together with one small bed. When she’d inquired to the proprietor about another he’d told her there were none.
“It’s not that bad,” Werner said to her.
“Depends on a person’s definition of bad.”
She actually found the situation amusing. They were both behaving like two adolescents on their first date. In one sense their predicament seemed comical, in another tragic. The tight confines made it impossible for her to escape the familiar miasma of his aftershave, his pipe tobacco, and the cloves from the gum he loved to chew. And the smells constantly reminded her that he was not one of the myriad men she’d enjoyed of late.
“This is too much, Werner. And far too fast.”
“I don’t think you have a whole lot of choice.”
He stood near the window, arms clasped behind him. She was still perplexed by his actions in the church. “Did you think that gunman would actually shoot me?”
“Things changed when I shot the other one. He was angry and he could have done anything.”
“You killed that man so easily.”
He shook his head. “Not easily, but it had to be done. Not all that different from bringing down a stag.”
“I never realized you had that inside you.”
“Over the past few days I’ve realized a lot of things about myself.”
“Those men in the church were fools, thinking only about getting paid.” Like the woman in the abbey, she thought. “There was absolutely no reason for them to trust us, yet they did.”
The corners of his lips turned down. “Why are you avoiding the obvious?”
“I don’t think this is the place or time to debate our personal life.”
His eyebrow raised in disbelief. “There’s no better time. We’re about to make some irreversible decisions.”
Their distance these past few years had dulled her once perfect ability to know for certain when he was deceiving her. She’d for so long ignored him—simply allowed him to have his way. Now she cursed her indifference. “What do you want, Werner?”
“The same things you want. Money, power, security. Your birth right.”
“That’s mine, not yours.”
“Interesting, your birthright. Your grandfather was a Nazi. A man who adored Adolf Hitler.”
“He was no Nazi,” she declared.
“He just helped their evil along. Made it easier for them to slaughter people.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“Those ridiculous theories about Aryans? Our supposed heritage? That we were some sort of special race that came from a special place? Himmler loved that garbage. It fed right into the Nazis’ murderous propaganda.”
Disturbing thoughts swirled through her mind. Things her mother had told her, things she’d heard as a child. Her grandfather’s admitted right-wing philosophies. His refusal to ever speak ill of the Third Reich. Her father’s insistence that Germany was no better off postwarthan prewar, a divided Germany worse than anything Hitler ever did. Her mother was right. The Oberhauser family history needed to stay buried.
“You must tread lightly here,” Werner whispered.
There was something unsettling about his tone. What did he know?
“Perhaps it eases your conscience to think me a fool,” he said. “Maybe it justifies your rejection of our marriage, and me.”
She cautioned herself that he was an expert at baiting her.
“But I’m no fool.”
She was curious. “What do you know of Christl?”
He pointed at the door. “I know she’s in there with Malone. You understand what that means?”
“Tell me.”
“She’s forging an alliance. Malone is connected to the Americans. Your mother chose her allies carefully—Malone can make things happen when we need them to happen. How else could we get to Antarctica? Christl is doing your mother’s bidding.”
He was right. “Tell me, Werner, are you enjoying the possibility of my failure?”
“If I were, I wouldn’t be here. I’d simply let you fail.”
Something in his desultory tone triggered alarm. He definitely knew more than he was saying and she hated his hedging.
She repressed a sudden shudder at the realization that this man, more stranger than husband, attracted her.
“When you killed the man at the lodge,” he asked, “did you feel anything?”
“Relief.” The word slipped out from between clenched teeth.
He stood impassive, seemingly considering the admission. “We must prevail, Dorothea. If that means cooperating with your mother, and Christl, so be it. We cannot allow your sister to dominate this quest.”
“You and Mother have been working together for some time, haven’t you?”
“S
he misses Georg as much as we do. He was this family’s future. Now its entire existence is in doubt. There are no more Oberhausers.”
She caught something in his tone and saw it in his eye. What he really wanted. “You can’t be serious?” she asked.
“You’re only forty-eight. Childbirth is still possible.”
Werner came close and gently kissed her on the neck.
She slapped him across the face.
He laughed. “Intense emotion. Violence. So you are human, after all.”
Beads of sweat formed on her forehead, though the room was not warm. She was not going to listen to him anymore.
She headed for the door.
He lunged forward, grabbed her arm, and spun her around.
“You’re not going to walk away from me. Not this time.”
“Let go.” But it was a weak command. “You are a despicable bastard. The sight of you makes me sick.”
“Your mother has made clear that if we conceive she will give it all to you.” He wrenched her close. “Hear me, woman. Everything to you. Christl has no need for children or a husband. But maybe the same offer was made to her, as well? Where is she right now?”
He was close. In her face.
“Use your brain. Your mother has pitted the two of you against each other to learn what happened to her husband. But above all, she wants this family to continue. The Oberhausers have money, status, and assets. What they lack is heirs.”
She freed herself from his grip. He was right. Christl was with Malone. And her mother could never be trusted. Had the same offer of an heir been made to her?
“We’re ahead of her,” he said. “Our child would be legitimate.”
She hated herself. But the son of a bitch made sense.
“Shall we get started?” he asked.
SIXTY-FIVE
ASHEVILLE, 5:00 PM
Stephanie was a little disconcerted. Davis had decided they’d stay the night and reserved one room for them both.
“I’m not ordinarily this kind of girl,” she said to him as he opened the door. “Going to a hotel on the first date.”