by TR Kenneth
“How did you get it?” Portier was clearly a man who had his questions answered.
“My friend you murdered found it. I want to know what you’d be willing to pay.”
“Yes. I’ve expected you. We’ve read about your interest in settlements.”
A rage volcanoed up in Stag for a moment. But then with Herculean willpower, he tamped it down. “Unless you can bring Harry back, what else is there?”
Portier assessed him. “What suits a man like yourself? An island in the South Pacific? A town house in Mayfair? Nothing is out of reach, of course.”
“How about I want to be Prime Minister of the UK? Or perhaps I want the House of Saud to work for me for a change?”
Caution seeped into Portier’s cold stare. “Those things would surely take time, but, certainly, they are not impossible.”
“I can give you what you want.”
The words hung between them.
Portier nodded. “Can you prove this?”
“Yes.” Stag stared full bore. He took the sheet of silk out from his pocket and flashed it at Portier, not long enough for him to see anything but the fact that there was a lot of writing on it. “Just call me a close acquaintance of Heydrich’s.”
The hatred on Portier’s face sparked, but it was quickly replaced by the facade of reason. He was, after all, the consummate businessman.
“I see,” he said.
“I plan on doing a trade. A lucrative trade. With you,” Stag said. “However, I insist you treat me fairly. This”—he gestured to the silk stuffed in his pocket—“has been copied and is with various persons. I think this is what they call the Dead Man Switch. Should anything happen to me, it will trigger several emails to Interpol that will reveal the rest of our complicated relationship, along with your connection to 12A and the need to autopsy Harry for traces of Micotil.”
Portier nodded slowly. “We are open to negotiation. What are your terms?”
“I want to meet with the full board of Tarnhelm. The negotiations will be with them and you, not you alone.”
The older man was clearly not used to meeting demands. It obviously galled him. “That, of course, can be arranged, but perhaps it would be more efficient to deal with me. Here and now.”
“No. I demand witnesses.”
“It’s an unnecessary precaution. I can do anything you might need.”
“I want the entire board.”
Portier seemed to mull this in his head. “You really don’t need—”
“And I want full third-party participation in my safety, or there will be no meeting.”
“If you’d like the board to meet with you, that can be arranged.”
“I’m the ‘little guy’,” Stag said. “I want it my way.”
“Of course. When would you like to schedule this meeting?” Portier made no attempt to hide his impatience. He clearly didn’t like anything Stag was saying.
“Wait for my phone call. I’ll set the terms.”
Portier’s mouth turned down. His stare remained unbroken. “We will meet your terms, Mr. Maguire. Simply let me know when you can return and meet the board.”
“The board will meet with me, not the other way around.”
Grudgingly, Portier said, “However you like.”
“I’ll arrange the flight.”
“Flight?”
Stag nodded. “Yes. You and the board will meet using my choice of security force, not yours.”
“You hardly look like a man who has his own security force.”
“Oh, but I do. We’re going to have a board meeting aboard a commercial Airbus A380. My security system will be TSA approved.”
“What?”
“Singapore Airlines, first class, from Frankfurt to Singapore. That’s the kind it will be. A secure one. And that is not negotiable. Our next meeting will take place aboard the commercial flight of my choosing with you and the rest of the board in tow, or it will not take place at all. And if it does not take place, then you can watch this beautiful little dream”—Stag gestured around the enormous office with the Picassos on the wall and the Modigliani sculptures on pedestals—“become nothing but a forlorn memory of days past.”
Portier finally boomed out in anger. “Who are you to dictate these absurd terms to me?”
Stag stood and began his stilted journey to the double doors, his back to Portier’s shouting. Then he paused but he did not turn around. “To rich and privileged people like you, I’m your worst nightmare. I am an unreasonable man.”
Portier stared knives into Stag’s back until he disappeared through the glossy double doors.
Alone in his office, Portier knew he should take a moment of reflection and ponder his options. But when he looked down at his newly arrived blood tests, now neatly stacked on his desk, the rage was impossible to bite back.
He was not going to have terms dictated to him by some cripple from Wisconsin. And Tarnhelm was not the corporation it was, to take orders from a snickering little journalist.
No, this was not going to happen.
Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.
And he was the fucking Lord—of Tarnhelm, of the entire world.
It didn’t matter how many blood tests they took. He was still here, and he would be till his last breath.
He reveled in the lowbrow, peasant satisfaction of being able to annihilate his enemies, the ones who mocked him, underestimated him, weighed upon him. But as much as Stag Maguire affronted him, Portier knew it was prudent to get as much information as he could before Maguire was snuffed. He hadn’t become head of Tarnhelm by being a hothead, or by behaving like a renegade. He was known for his patience, his astuteness. It was the bedrock upon which Tarnhelm had thrived.
No, it would not do to pick up the phone and order Maguire to be crushed. There was the Dead Man Switch to think of. And the information they still needed. Besides, if Luc Portier was honest with himself, as the white count on his blood tests insisted he be, the man he most wanted gone was Sadler. The American blueblood. His Washington connections went so far back that his family farm had made up the land for Congressional Country Club. It didn’t pass Portier’s notice that Sadler seemed mighty relieved his home was in America. Away from whatever beast Heydrich still could unleash on Europe.
His anger intensified. Sadler was always snickering behind his back. The man’s amusement at his prostate problems was legend. Payback from years of competition was still not settled, though Portier had been at the top of Tarnhelm for years.
Oh, but the sweet foolish notion of getting rid of all of them was delicious. Until then he would need to wring out the very last drop of his patience.
CHAPTER THIRTY
IT WAS NOW a calculated risk. Taking down Tarnhelm was not going to be easy. Not when he was the consummate nobody, left behind by everyone he’d ever loved, to limp through life with a bullet-scarred leg. Stag didn’t know if that made him weak or nihilistic or both, but deep inside, it seemed to have created a strong place for him to reside. He was going forward. No matter what.
Logic told him that the only way to take out Portier and Tarnhelm would be with something bigger. The Settlement was a drop in the bucket of Tarnhelm’s worth. He could not compete with money. The only thing he could do well was research and write. He was a journalist.
He would have to take that skill and strangle them with it.
Back in his room at the Baur au Lac, he propped his leg up with pillows and took out the diary.
A miserable January.
You’ve come back from your “very important” meeting at the house on the lake, and now you’re quite pleased with yourself. You’ve got everyone’s cooperation for your grand plans, including mine, it would seem.
It is cold and snowy in Prague as well. Instead of rushing back there, you landed your plane in Templehof and came to me. The world and I blossom for you, as is your right as the übermenschen. If only those damned Russians were not entrenched at the front! But that is
not your worry. No, your cares all end at the tip of your nose, and I make sure to keep it that way for you.
But behind your back, I take my slips of silk to the art shop in the guise of buying more paint. “Cerulean, please, and some tubes of flake white!” I say cheerfully to the clerk, while taking the silk from beneath my sleeve lining. I pass it along, then tote my oils home to paint your portrait, content in the knowledge that today I told them about your meeting at Wannsee. And gave them news of the new bomb being developed in secret.
You’ve been instructed to guard this new weapon more fiercely than the heaped-up bodies of all your Jews.
Stag leaned back on the pillows and closed his eyes, running a timeline. The Wannsee conference was where Heydrich organized the necessary factions of the Third Reich in order to implement the Final Solution. The date of the conference was January 20, 1942. A few months later, Heydrich died June 4th in Prague. Everything in the diary going forth would be relevant to the letters he’d discovered in the Bundesarchiv.
The diamonds are in a truck at the bottom of the lake.
There was much more than diamonds at stake here. He couldn’t quite figure it out. The diamonds might have been financing for arms. They could have been industrial diamonds needed for Heydrich’s Skoda Werks in Prague. To fashion a bomb casing perhaps?
His thoughts began drifting. He wondered if there were more letters tucked into the National Archives in DC or perhaps in Moscow. But even if there were, Tarnhelm had to already know about them. Also, it was highly unlikely they hadn’t already investigated the newly available letters at the Bundesarchiv by now. They were, after all, in the security and information business. The only thing they didn’t know was what was on the slip of silk in his possession. They didn’t know how to translate the diary. That was the key.
The next logical step was to head to the Königssee and look for that truck at the bottom of the lake. If it still existed.
He probably had enough money in the Settlement to run a salvage operation if he found it. Diamonds would sure come in handy in going against Tarnhelm, he thought blackly. He was taking on a behemoth that fed on shadows. Tarnhelm lurked in every dark corner. He didn’t know how to break their nefarious hold, but, in the end, if the SD had been defanged, Tarnhelm could be too. If the creature was afraid of the dark, then light must be cast upon it, to see it for what it really was, cowering in the corner and shivering in the spotlight. Tarnhelm had to be revealed in words, just as Isolda Varrick forcefully cried out her very existence in words written in her copy of Mein Kampf.
Tomorrow he would buy a laptop and begin his first article. He already knew what he wanted to research and how he would like it all to end. That was his last coherent thought before he fell asleep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
STAG WALKED THE few blocks to where he’d parked his rental car, making sure he was not followed in the darkness of pre-dawn.
Then he climbed into the buttery leather seat of the Porsche. It was a five-hour drive to Königssee through the beautiful Alps, and he saw no reason not to enjoy every bit of it.
The sun just lightened the mountains as he drove east into the Alps. The ice and snow had been scrupulously removed from the roadways—nothing like that German engineering, he thought to himself ironically, putting the roadster on cruise control.
The lowering sun cast deep teal shadows across the waters of the Königssee. Above, the mountains were tipped in red-gold. Buds had begun to explode on the beech trees. Evergreens deepened the blue shadows into black. A boating party was out on the lake. The electric motor was drowned by the tinkle of music. It went past, finally hushed by the creeping darkness.
One thing struck Stag as he stood on the shore. Sometimes a writer has to put all his research aside and just experience what he’s writing about. Just go there. Smell the smells, see the sights. This was the perfect example. The Königssee, indescribably beautiful, was also the clearest body of water he’d ever seen. It wasn’t just clear, it was fucking crystal clear all the way down to its cold, clear, magnified bottom.
There was no way a truck had fallen into this lake that everybody didn’t already know about. And if they knew about it, it had certainly been explored thoroughly. There was no secret Nazi treasure in the bottom of the Königssee. It was a dead end. There was nothing else to do but get ready to fly to Singapore.
Troost got on the phone to Interpol’s Operations and Command Center in Washington, DC.
“I’ll need the Wisconsin authorities to issue a warrant for Hyortur Maguire.” He paused and listened. “The reason?” Troost looked at the poster of the beach mocking him. He sighed. It certainly wasn’t getting any closer. “Fugitive wanted for questioning in the death of Harold Gerde.” He looked down at his notes.
He ended the call with a nod. Looking up, he saw Special Agent Jones.
“We’ve lost him again.”
Troost couldn’t hide his annoyance. “The man has so many people following him, we’re bumping up against the crowd at his elbow. How the hell can we lose him?”
“He has another set of IDs. Has to have.”
“Obviously,” Troost said, his voice enough to freeze-dry. “Why don’t we know who they are?”
“We’re on it. But without being able to question Aradi—”
“Fuck Aradi and her little spook operation. I want you to do your job, not depend on others.”
Jones nodded. “Of course. But you can imagine it’s hard to toss his room without a warrant.”
“We are Interpol. We do not search rooms without a warrant. That would be illegal.”
“I understand.”
Troost stared. “I wonder if you do.”
I went for a walk today. The Nazi banners flying along the Ku’damm snapped, their color in sharp contrast to the pale blue sky overhead. I could do nothing but marvel at them. The Nazi red is a most beautiful red. It is not at all the blood red one would think, but an optimistic carmine with the slightest hint of orange. One can’t help but be impressed to walk down a street alive with these glowing red banners. And you cannot flee the swastika. A little boy ran in front of me on the sidewalk, bouncing his rubber ball; again, the hakenkreuz printed on it. The clerk at the KaDeWe jangled as she wrapped my package. I admired her charm bracelet, full of little Nazi flags from all her Strength Through Joy travels. She proudly showed me all the lovely swastikas on her bracelet from Frankfurt A.M. to Dortmund. How mighty the Thousand-Year-Reich will seem to be from all the swastika-laden debris that will be left behind.
And left behind it shall be, for I went to the art store today with my little slip of silk. I told my contacts how they are baling the hair shorn from the victims in the east. You, of course, laughed when you told me about these bales. You then bragged about your German efficiency. The hair will provide superior soundproofing for our submarines, you told me—your U-boat. The hair would be appropriately used to bring about the end to the enemies of the Reich.
I reply like the smart Aryan I am.
At last, the Jews shall merit some worth! I say, laughing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE ALPINERS CRAWLED down the face of the cliff via ropes and carabineers. Up top, Macintosh “Mac” Killburn looked down at them with all the burly pride of Reinhold Messner reaching Everest for the first time. “That’s it. Belay! Belay!” he bellowed down to his students. The acne-bloomed fifteen-year-old faces looked up at him, encouraged and terrified all at once.
The Berchtesgaden Alps were the picture-perfect place for mountain climbing. It was Mac’s penance in life that, in order to live there, he was forced to teach the brats of the wealthy how to maneuver a lame twenty-five-foot cliff. He’d much rather have taken his expertise to K2, but climbing the Himalayas was expensive. And there was no need for a children’s instructor there. Broke children didn’t take climbing lessons, and if they did, the Sherpas already had their future jobs covered. Hell, the Sherpas put him to shame. They put them all to shame.
“Mac! Mac!” A young voice below him cried out. He looked down past the snow bank and saw the problem immediately. The rope was caught on a rock and little Dallas Ann Vetrova was dangling over the cliff trying to swing it free.
“Hold on there!” He swooped down on his line. Dallas, all red hair and freckles, smiled her relief. Mac gave her line a confident yank. “You’ve got this!” he told her, pleased by the renewed look of confidence and determination on her face. She gripped the rope and continued her descent. Little Dallas was as hell-bent to rappel the cliff as her mother had been to escape the strip club. Certainly no one could accuse Dallas’s daddy of cowardice. He’d been the first to encroach upon Soviet oil. His buddy Putin, strangely, never put up a grumble.
Mac’s sudden laughter boomed all the way down to the Königssee, the sublime crystal-clear lake below the ice-covered peaks. He sure as hell would rather be in the Himalayas, earning renown, breaking records on K2. But due to a case of adulthood mumps and the news of his dashed dreams of a big family full of children, he’d come to realize that the wholesome smiles of some of these fucked-up kids was, in the end, perhaps enough.
Clinging to the side like Spider-Man, he watched as the other two kids, one, the scion of a tech genius, and the other, a mass-tort attorney who was now two wives removed from this kid’s mom, got to the ledge. The cliff was Mac’s go-to favorite climb, easy for beginners, not too far to fall in case disaster happened.
Plus, it had the benefits of a history lesson. He followed the group to the ledge below, stood, and released his carabineers. Walking to the hump of rusted metal, he placed his hand on the truck door handle, pulling it open in a flurry of green-gray flakes. The truck had been here since the war. It had crashed off the roadside above, probably because of ice, and fell down the mountainside to finally lodge in the crevice between the ledge and the rock face. Other than climbers, most didn’t even know it was there. It was impossible to see from the road, and because of the crevices in the rock face, it was hidden from below. The cleanup after the war had probably left it because it wasn’t really visible, and from the mountain, it would have been cost prohibitive to retrieve.