The Blood Lance (45 page)

'Astrid will anchor me deep in the ground,' Rahn told them. 'I will be a changed man, that I promise! You will see!'

'When are you going to ask her to marry you?' Elise asked.

'I'm working up my courage. . . but soon, I think.'

'I would not delay,' Bachman told him. There was a warning look as he said this, and Elise could see that Rahn saw it as well. Something terrible was about to happen.

That evening as they prepared for bed Bachman said that he was worried about Rahn. Elise tried to console him. Things were improving. He had stayed mostly sober, hadn't he? And the girl, Astrid, he seemed serious about her. As she said this, it occurred to Elise that Rahn had been grimly serious about Astrid. She even wondered if Astrid was some kind of morbid joke - a dark reference to suicide. Something very awful seemed to lurk in his eyes when he spoke about her, and she worried, because despite everything she loved him.

'I am not at all sure he can save himself at this point, Elise. Himmler has ordered an investigation. I am under orders to say nothing about it to him, but the situation is very delicate, and our friend could very well lose everything.'

'Why? What has he done that is so terrible?'

'It's not what he has done. It is what he is.' At her look of confusion, Bachman added, 'There is some concern he has been concealing things.'

'What sort of
things?'

'That he is a Jew for one. He has been very coy about the matter when pressed to submit his documents confirming his racial purity, and so Himmler has decided he must have something to hide. He has put a request through channels for someone to take a serious look at the family's history.'

As her own ancestry included East European Jews who had become financially successful after their move to Germany, Elise felt a tremor of fear pulsing through her. Had it come to that? That they were digging up family histories?

'I think this evening ought to be our last dinner together with Otto for a while,' Bachman remarked. 'We should get some distance from him, just in case the report confirms the worst.'

'And what do we tell Sarah? She is very fond of her uncle!'

'Tell her what you have said before. He has business and can't come by as frequently as he used to do.'

'But you are talking about stopping his visits entirely!'

'If it turns out he is a Jew, Elise, none of us must have anything to do with him. Especially Sarah!'

Soglio, Switzerland

Thursday March 13, 2008.

The village of Soglio lay on the side of a mountain overlooking the Bergell Valley and the year-round glaciers atop a range of mountains that included the Piz Cengalo and Piz Badile. The village had come into being some three or four hundred years ago and was made almost entirely of grey fieldstones and old timbers. At its centre lay the Hotel Salis — formerly the Palazzo Salis. The hotel had been in operation for over a century, but the name Salis was one of the oldest in the region. The family had originally made its fortune selling Swiss mercenary soldiers to the monarchs of Europe.

A single road wound up the mountainside through lush groves of enormous chestnut trees and came finally to a large parking area at the outskirts of the village. Driving into the village required a permit. At this time of year, on a cold, sunny March day, the parking lot was mostly empty - cluttered only with the cars of the some thirty or forty year-round residents.

The Hotel Salis was open for business, of course. A seventeenth century palace, it had rooms for guests and advertised fine cuisine. At the front of the building there was a plaza where three cobblestone alleys converged. At the back was a garden featuring the two tallest trees in Europe - sequoias brought back to the Old Country in the late nineteenth century. Beyond the garden lay a high grey wall. Beyond the wall was a vast wooded mountainside.

In March of 1997 Roland Wheeler had brought his daughter here to meet with her godfather, Giancarlo Bartoli. Father and daughter had spent the night in the hotel. Giancarlo had come over the Italian border by car the next morning and had met with them in Kate's room.

Kate got the same room this trip and spent a surprisingly comfortable night - the result no doubt of the fresh mountain air and the kind of silence modern people rarely experience. She had a light breakfast early the next morning, and then limped back upstairs on her crutches. Once in her room she sat down to wait for the man she had once trusted like a father.

Giancarlo arrived with a driver and one additional bodyguard. His dark green Mercedes had no permit, but no one asked his driver to move it when he parked in the middle of the plaza. Giancarlo seemed uneasy as he crossed the plaza. He sent one of the bodyguards to Kate's room. Kate thought the man might just shoot her, but that was simple paranoia. Giancarlo would not want to be so close to his crimes.

The bodyguard said he needed to check her room before

Signor Bartoli came upstairs. Kate allowed him his freedom. After he had looked for recording devices and weapons on her person and throughout the room, he ran an electronic scan across the walls looking for any kind of transmitting devices. That finished, he took Kate's cell phone and went downstairs. A few minutes later Giancarlo climbed the stairs and stepped through Kate's open doorway. The old man gave the room a curious look, checking his memory, it seemed, and then nodded, as if pleased by Kate's sense of irony. It was in
this
room he had made his promise to find Robert Kenyon's killer.

They did not kiss as they always had done. Giancarlo stood self-consciously by the door and set Kate's cell phone on a table close by. Kate remained seated in her chair. No smiles and no greetings.

'Did
I
kill Robert?' he asked her, his lips offering the pale imitation of a smile.

Kate's message had told him she knew the identity of Robert's killer. She had said she wanted to meet in Soglio at the Hotel Salis at ten o'clock Thursday morning.

'Nobody killed Robert,' Kate said. 'You know it, and now I know it.'

The old man smiled almost genuinely now. 'Is this the point where I tell you I don't know what you're talking about?'

'Don't do this,' she said, feeling her passion at his betrayal choking her. 'Don't lie anymore. Kill me if you want, but just stop lying!'

'All right then. Robert is alive and well. Are you happy?'

'Getting there,' she said. 'But I want to know why.'

Giancarlo shook his head. 'It's old business. No longer very important.'

'It's important to me.'

'There were people in the House of Lords who had started an investigation against him. There was talk about bringing him up on charges of treason.'

'You let me go up that mountain to die - for the sake of a
traitor.'

'No! I helped Robert arrange his financial affairs. He did not tell me you were a part of his disappearance.'

'It was murder, not a disappearance.'

'Luca and I knew about the money, but Robert handled the rest on his own. If I had known. . .'

'You knew. I saw it in your eyes at the wedding. I thought. . . I thought you were sentimental! But that wasn't it.
You knew.'

'I knew he meant to break your heart! I knew that he meant to leave you a widow!'

'A very poor widow.'

'You never suffered financially, Katerina.' The old man's eyes cut away from her.

'It was for the money, wasn't it?' she asked. 'His marriage to me? He saw a ten million pound trust fund that had just passed to my control, and he took it because he could!'

'Robert cared for you deeply.'

'Robert only cares for himself. What I find so impossible to understand is that
you
don't see that.'

'I have seen the affection in his eyes! His regret at losing you!'

'Let me tell you about that regret. He sent assassins to kill me in Hamburg.'

'Because you would not stop looking for his killer! I told you—!'

'Tell me where I can find him.'

Giancarlo shook his head. 'I can't do that.'

'You owe this to me!'

'I cannot betray an oath.'

'An oath?'

'I swore a sacred oath - as he did. We are bound by it, Katerina. I am not sure you can understand such a thing, but I cannot betray it.'

'It seems to me no matter what you do now you betray a sacred oath. You
do
remember when you stood in a house of God and swore to protect me if anything should ever happen to my parents? Do you remember
that
oath?' Bartoli did not respond. 'My father and mother are dead, Giancarlo. Where is my protection?'

'Katerina. . .'

'I am not your
little Katherine!
Not anymore. Honour your oath. Stand beside me as a father stands with his daughter. Tell me where he is!'

'I didn't know he meant to hurt you!'

'Are we talking about the first or the second time he tried to kill me? Was he there? Was he in Zürich watching us as we talked? Watching me?'

'Let me talk to him. If you agree to let this thing go—'

Kate shook her head. 'No. I agree to nothing. His word -
his oath
- means less than nothing at all! Just tell me where I can find him, and your obligation to me is finished. Believe me, I will never ask anything of you again.'

Giancarlo stood before her without answering. He looked, she thought, like a man lost at a crossroads.

'What do you want?' she asked when it seemed he would not break his silence. 'Do you want money? Do you want. . . I don't know. . . ten million Euros? Twenty? I know how important it is for you to have
enough
. God forbid you lose all your money and end up in the gutter!'

The old eyes went dark and cold at the insult. 'Are we finished?'

'No. You and I are not finished until you tell me where he is!'

'Are you threatening me?'

'Do you really want to go to war for the sake of a man who murders his friends? Do you want to know why I am still alive? It is because Robert is greedy. He could have murdered me and put an end to his problems, but he saw a chance at Jack Farrell's money and he could not resist taking it. Did he tell you about that part - that he murdered his own cousin so he could steal half-a-billion dollars?'

'That's not true! Jack is—'

'Jack Farrell is dead. You didn't know? You thought he got away? Let me tell you the truth about your friend, the good Lord Kenyon. If he thought he could get away with it, he would come after your money too.'

When Giancarlo did not answer her, she pushed on. 'Do you know what I think? I think you
want
to tell me where he is. I think Robert has become a disappointment to you - with his treason and his larceny and his attempts at murdering me. I think the fact that he failed to kill me in Hamburg amuses you. I think you are loyal to him for the sake of some oath that once meant a great deal to you but doesn't mean anything to you now. I think secretly you must hate him
and
the oath you swore!'

Without answering her, Giancarlo turned and left her.

Kate stood at the window so he might see her when he came out of the hotel. She saw his driver and bodyguard come to attention the moment Giancarlo appeared. She watched his tall, gaunt frame as he walked into the plaza.

The bodyguard opened the back door of the Mercedes and stood at attention, but before he got in, Giancarlo took off his coat and folded it neatly. He looked round the plaza as he did this. Did he expect a bullet from a rooftop, or was this a signal for his men to move in? She could not read him and realised with a sudden emptiness she never could. Like Robert, his affection was counterfeit.

Giancarlo sat down in the backseat and the bodyguard went to the front passenger seat. For a long beat the village was silent. Finally, inevitably, he looked up at the window where Kate stood. Their eyes met briefly, and then the car drove off.

Kate looked at the rooftops and alleys. The village was still quiet. She waited until he was surely gone and finally decided she had misjudged the old man's sense of decency, along with everything else. She was getting ready to call Ethan and Malloy, who were waiting at the bottom of the mountain, when her room phone rang. 'Yes?' she said.

'I have been thinking,' Giancarlo said to her. 'You haven't been to my farm in Majorca for years. Maybe you should go there for a day or two to let your leg mend. Just make sure you get there before next Monday. I understand bad weather may be coming by then.'

Thank you,' Kate whispered.

'Be careful.'

Majorca, Spain

Saturday March 15, 2008.