Black Order (35 page)

The hall ended at three steps that led up to a massive steel exterior door.

It stood open, guarded.

Gray stepped out of the sterile cellblock and into a dark and verdant wonderland. A jungle canopy climbed high all around, trailing thorny vines and flowering orchids. The dense leafy foliage hid the sky. Still Gray knew it must be very early in the morning, well before sunrise. Ahead, black Victorian-era iron lampposts marked paths that trailed off into a wild jungle. Birds twittered and squawked. Insects droned. Farther up in the canopy, a single hidden monkey announced them with a staccato, coughing call. His outburst woke a flame-feathered bird and set it to wing through the lower branches.

“Africa,” Monk mumbled under his breath. “Sub-Saharan at least. Maybe equatorial.”

Gray agreed. He estimated that it must be the morning of the next day. He’d lost eighteen to twenty hours. That could put them anywhere in Africa.

But where?

The guards escorted them along a gravel pathway. Gray heard the soft measured step of something large pushing through the undergrowth a few yards off the trail. But even so close, its shape could not be discerned. The forest offered plenty of cover if they could make a run for it.

But the chance never arose. The path ended after only fifty yards. A few more steps and the jungle fell away around them.

The forest opened into a stretch of manicured and lamplit greensward, a garden of dancing waters and flowing springs. Ponds and creeks trickled. Waterfalls burbled. A long-horned antelope lifted its head at their appearance, froze for a heartbeat, then took flight, bounding away into the forest cover.

The sky, clear above, twinkled with stars, but to the east, a pale rosy glow hinted at the approach of morning, maybe an hour off.

Closer at hand, another sight drew Gray’s eye and fully captured his attention.

Across the gardens rose a six-story mansion of stacked fieldstone and exposed exotic woods. It reminded him of The Ahwahnee lodge in Yosemite, but this was much more massive, Wagnerian in scope. A woodland Versailles. It had to cover ten acres, rising in gables and tiers, balconies and balustrades. To the left, a glass-enclosed conservatory protruded, lit from within, blazing in the predawn darkness like a rising sun.

The wealth here was staggering.

They headed toward the manor house, across a stone path that split the water garden and arched over a few of the ponds and creeks. A two-meter-long snake slithered across one of the stone bridges. It was not identifiable until it reared up and fanned open its hood.

King cobra.

The snake guarded the bridge until the white-blond man broke off a long reed from a creekbed and shooed it away like an unruly cat. The snake hissed, fangs bared, but it backed down and sashayed off the planks and slid into the dark waters.

They continued on, unfazed. Gray’s neck slowly craned as they approached the manor house.

He spotted another eccentricity about the construction. Spreading outward from the upper stories were forest-top pathways—wood-slatted suspended bridges—allowing household guests to step out of the upper-story levels and into the very jungle canopy itself. These paths were also strung with lamps. They cast a constellation through the dark jungle. Gray turned in a circle as he walked. They glowed all around.

“Heads up,” Monk mumbled, nodding to the left.

Up on the canopy trail, a guard marched slowly into view, limned against one of the lamps, rifle on his shoulder. Gray glanced to Monk. Where there was one, there must be more. An entire army could be hidden up in the canopy. Escape seemed less and less likely.

At last they reached a set of steps that led up to a wide porch of polished zebra wood. A woman waited, a twin to their escort and as nattily attired. The man stepped forward and kissed each of her cheeks.

He spoke to her in Dutch. While not fluent with the language, Gray was familiar enough to catch the gist.

“Are the others prepared, Ischke?” he asked.

“We just wait word from
grootvader
.” She nodded to the illuminated conservatory at the far end of the porch. “Then the hunt can begin.”

Gray struggled for any clue to their meaning, but he was too much in the dark.

With a heavy sigh, the blond man turned back to them, fingering a stray lock of hair back in place. “My grandfather will see you in the solarium,” their guide said, biting off each word. He headed down the length of the porch toward it. “You will speak to him civilly and with respect, or I will personally see you suffer for every word of disrespect.”

“Isaak…,” the woman called to him.

He stopped and turned. “
Ja,
Ischke?”

She spoke in Dutch again. “
De jongen en het meisje?
Should we bring them out now?”

A nod answered her, followed by a final order in Dutch.

As Gray translated this last bit, he had to be tugged to move. He glanced over a shoulder at the woman. She vanished inside the house.

De jongen en het meisje.

The boy and the girl.

It had to be Ryan and Fiona.

The two were still alive. Gray took some consolation in the revelation—but Isaak’s last words chilled and terrified him.

Bloody them up first.

5:18
A.M
.
AIRBORNE OVER AFRICA

Painter sat with a pen in hand. The only noise in the plane was the occasional snore from Gunther. The man seemed oblivious to the danger into which they were flying. Then again, Gunther did not have the same time constraints as Anna and Painter. Though all three were headed toward the same place—
devolution
—Anna and Painter were in the fast lane.

Unable to sleep, Painter had used the time to review the history of the Waalenberg clan, gaining as much intel on the family as possible.

To know your enemy.

The Waalenbergs had first reached Africa by way of Algiers in 1617. They proudly traced their family history back to the infamous Barbary pirates along the North African coast. The first Waalenberg was a quartermaster for the famous pirate Sleyman Reis De Veenboer, who operated an entire Dutch fleet of corsairs and galleys out of Algiers.

Eventually, rich upon spoils from the slave trade, the Waalenbergs had moved south, settling into the large Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope. But their piracy didn’t end there. It just went aground. They gained a powerful stranglehold on the immigrant Dutch population, so that when gold was discovered in the lands they settled, the Waalenbergs profited the most. And the gold found was not a small amount. The Witwatersrand Reef, a low mountain range near Johannesburg, was the source of forty percent of all the world’s gold. Though not as ostentatious as the famous diamond mines of the De Beerses, the gold of the “Reef” was still one of the world’s most valuable storehouses of wealth.

It was upon such wealth that the family set up a dynasty that transcended the First and Second Boer Wars, and all the political machinations that became South Africa today. They were one of the richest families on the planet—though for the past generations, the Waalenbergs had grown ever more reclusive, especially under the auspices of their current patriarch, Sir Baldric Waalenberg. And as they disappeared from the public’s eye, rumors grew around the family: of atrocities, perversions, drug addictions, inbreeding. Yet still the Waalenbergs grew richer, with stakes in diamonds, oil, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals. They put the
multi
in multinational.

Could this family truly be behind the events at
Granitschloß
?

They were certainly powerful enough and had ample resources. And the tattoo Painter had found on the blond assassin definitely bore a resemblance to the “Cross” of the Waalenberg crest. And then there were the twins, Isaak and Ischke Waalenberg. What was their purpose in Europe?

So many unanswered questions.

Painter flipped a page and tapped his pen on the Waalenberg crest.

Something about the symbol…

As with the history of the Waalenbergs, Logan had forwarded information about the symbol. It traced back to the Celts, another Nordic tribe. Emblematic of the sun, the symbol was often found emblazoned on Celtic shields, earning it the name of
shield knot
.

Painter’s hand paused.

Shield knot
.

Words filled his head, spoken by Klaus as he died, a curse cast at them.

You will all die! Strangled when the knot tightens!

Painter had thought Klaus had been making a reference to a tightening
noose
. But what if he had been referring instead to the symbol?

When the knot tightens…

Painter turned over a fax sheet. He sketched while staring at the Waalenberg crest. He drew the symbol as if someone had cinched the knot more tightly, drawing the loops together, like tying a shoelace.

“What are you doing?” Lisa materialized at his shoulder.

Startled again, he scooted his pen across the paper, almost tearing it.

“Good God, woman, will you please stop sneaking up on me like that!”

Yawning, she settled on the arm of his chair, perching there. She patted him on the shoulder. “Such a delicate disposition.” Her hand remained there as she leaned closer. “Really. What were you drawing?”

Painter suddenly was too conscious of her right breast next to his cheek.

He cleared his throat and returned to his sketch. “Just playing with the symbol we found on the assassin. Another of my operatives saw it on a pair of
Sonnekönige
in Europe. Twin grandchildren of Sir Baldric Waalenberg. It must be important. Perhaps a clue we’ve overlooked.”

“Or maybe the old bastard just likes branding his offspring, like cattle. They’re certainly breeding them as such.”

Painter nodded. “Then there was something Klaus said. Something about tightening a knot. Like an unspoken secret.”

He finished the sketch with a few more careful strokes, cinching it down.

He put one beside the other.

The original and the tightened.

Painter studied both drawings and realized the implication.

Lisa must have noted the slight intake in his breath. “What?” she asked, leaning even closer.

He pointed his pen at the second sketch. “No wonder Klaus was swayed to their side. And possibly why the Waalenbergs had become so reclusive these past few generations.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We’re not dealing with a new enemy here. We’re dealing with the
same
one.” Painter shaded the center of the cinched-down shield knot, revealing its secret heart.

Lisa gasped. “A swastika.”

Painter glanced to the slumbering giant and his sister.

He sighed. “More Nazis.”

6:04
A.M
.
SOUTH AFRICA

The glass conservatory had to be as old as the original house. Its paned windows were leaded and swirled, as if melted under the African sun and set into a black iron framework that reminded Gray of a spiderweb. Condensation on the inside of the glass blurred the view to the dark jungle outside.

After first stepping inside, Gray was struck by the moisture. The humidity in the chamber had to be pressing the 100 percent mark. His thin cotton jumpsuit sagged against him.

But the solarium was not for his comfort. It sheltered a wild profusion of greenery, potted and shelved, climbing in tiers, hanging from baskets held by black chains. The air was perfumed by hundreds of blossoms. A small fountain of bamboo and stone tinkled quietly in the center of the room. It was a handsome garden, but Gray wondered who needed a hothouse when you already lived in Africa.

The answer appeared ahead.

A white-haired gentleman stood on a second tier with a tiny pair of snip scissors in one hand and tweezing forceps in the other. With the skill of a surgeon, he leaned over a small bonsai tree—a flowering plum—and clipped a tiny branch. He straightened with a satisfied sigh.