The Excalibur Codex (30 page)

‘I doubt his Kenyan relatives would be too impressed.’ Nobody laughed and Gault’s grin faded under his employer’s glare. Adam Steele didn’t like to be interrupted.

‘The world’s fault lines are becoming more defined and deeper,’ he continued. ‘We’ve had America and the Twin Towers, and now this. Russia and the Moscow
tube bombings. The Bali bombings aimed at Australian tourists. The Mumbai terror attacks in India. Explosions across the European mainland and the M25 massacre in the United Kingdom. China, too, has its own problems with Islamic extremists, but it does not advertise them and has an effective and very permanent way of dealing with them.’ Jamie looked up and found Steele’s eyes on him. ‘Perhaps we could learn from them.’

The art dealer shook his head. ‘All you’d do is create martyrs for the cause. Abbie wouldn’t have wanted to see any more blood spilled.’

‘As it happens, I agree.’ Steele nodded. ‘But what I’m trying to say is that we are reaching a tipping point, and not just in Britain, when, if Governments do not act, the people will.’

‘I was wondering if there’s a link between Al-Qaida and the sword,’ Jamie frowned. ‘Or the search for the sword. It’s as if they’re shadowing us wherever we go. Madrid, Poland, and now Corfu.’ Steele laid the newspaper down on the mahogany table beside the evidence they’d gathered: the codex, the envelope containing the medals Inge Lauterbacher had given Jamie, the Lauterbacher journal, and Charlotte’s slim file on Heinrich Himmler’s Knights of the Round Table. Jamie wondered if the collection had been put there to embarrass them. It was such a paltry return for all the time and money Steele had invested. ‘I suppose you can explain Madrid and Corfu as unlikely coincidences, but what about Poland?’

He saw Steele and Gault exchange glances. The former SBS man nodded. ‘It is not widely known,’ Adam Steele said carefully, ‘but Mr Gault was involved in certain operations in Afghanistan that resulted in terminal damage to the higher echelons of the Al-Qaida leadership. He was even given a shiny piece of silverware for his efforts, which unfortunately he is not allowed to wear in public. Not the highest level of terrorist leadership, but high enough to make him a target for revenge. That would go some way to explaining their pursuit of you and the attack in Poland.’

‘It’s one explanation,’ Jamie conceded, but he wondered, if that were the case, why Rashid and Hassan had been so keen to remove his head, but had never even mentioned Gault.

‘It is the only explanation. Come, we’re being side-tracked.’ Steele must have made some kind of signal, because Charlotte produced a handful of printed reports, which she distributed to the three men, keeping the last for herself. ‘Your theory about a possible Templar treasure is fascinating, Jamie,’ the banker smiled, ‘but immaterial. My only interest is in Excalibur.’

He nodded to Charlotte and she turned to the first page of the report with a nervous smile at Jamie. ‘The Bialystok Foundation was set up in the early nineteen seventies to strengthen cultural links between Poland and the United States in the wake of the Communist takeover,’ she said, her voice becoming more confident with each word. ‘It makes sense because Polish Americans
make up the largest ethnic group of Slavic origin in the United States and at the last count there were at least ten million of them. The foundation sponsored exchanges between arts groups, sporting organizations, Polish-language classes, and that sort of thing. Its offices were in a rather prestigious area of Washington, not far from Langley. At one point there were rumours it was a CIA front, but that’s never been proved. The fact that the Ministry of Public Security allowed it to operate and the Polish government actively encouraged its activities is evidence the authorities there certainly believed it was clean. The reason for those suspicions may be the accounts, which are a little murky and involve a number of offshore banks, but again nothing illegal has ever been proved.’ She frowned. ‘For that reason we have no insight into the incomings and outgoings in and around the summer of nineteen eighty-seven when Mr Porter was doing business with them.’

‘Who was behind it?’ Jamie asked.

Charlotte consulted her notes. ‘The trustees have included a number of eminent Polish Americans and expatriates. Businessmen, scientists, professors of the arts and philanthropists …’

‘Any war heroes?’

‘We’re having their backgrounds checked,’ she assured him. ‘There are no public records of the meetings, but we have uncovered one thing that might be of interest. At some point in nineteen eighty-seven three of the six directors either resigned or retired.’

‘Doesn’t prove anything,’ Gault growled.

‘No, it doesn’t, but the timing is interesting, don’t you think?’ She looked to Jamie for support, but he was frowning at the piece of paper in front of him.

‘An organization like this would normally have a patron or a founder?’

She checked her notes again. ‘Sorry, I should have thought of that. Give me five minutes.’

When she’d left the room Steele turned to Jamie. ‘What do you think?’

‘Charlotte’s right, the timing of the board changes is interesting, but it doesn’t really take us anywhere. Maybe we could have someone interview them to find out why they quit? Say some magazine is thinking of doing an article on the foundation’s good work. Maybe the fact that the Bialystok Foundation is so secretive is a clue in itself. An organization like that would normally be much more transparent – trumpeting their good works to the world.’

‘Unless those good works included stealing Polish castles?’

‘Exactly,’ Jamie said.

‘Then—’

Charlotte swept back into the room before Steele could answer. ‘The current patron of the organization is Lukasz Pisarek, a fifty-four-year-old Professor of Eastern European Studies at Harvard University.’

Jamie shook his head. ‘Too young.’

‘He took over eight years ago from the previous
patron, Mr Harold Webster, an industrialist of Reno, Nevada.’

Adam Steele banged his fist on the table in frustration. ‘This is getting us nowhere. We’re running out of time.’

Jamie stared at him. This was the first time he’d heard of a timescale. ‘I …’ Something Charlotte said flicked a switch in his head. ‘Wait a minute. What did you say?’

‘Harold Webster, an industrialist?’

‘No, the other part.’

‘Reno, Nevada.’

Steele frowned as Jamie went to the table and emptied Rolf Lauterbacher’s medals onto the polished surface. The art dealer studied the postmark on the empty envelope. ‘What do you know.’ He smiled. ‘Whoever was corresponding with our Nazi friend was doing it from Reno, Nevada.’

Adam Steele’s face split into a shark-toothed grin and he turned to Charlotte. ‘I think you should book flights to the States.’

When the others had left to make their preparations, Adam Steele flicked through the pages of the newspaper. The item, on the International page, was so small, only a single paragraph not even worthy of a headline, that he almost missed it.

Corfu, Greece. Police are investigating the death of an English ex-patriot and his nurse at a villa
on the island. Marmaduke Porter, 54, and Spiros Dimopoulou, 19, are believed to have fallen from the balcony of the house near Paleokastritsa on the island’s west coast.

He wondered for a moment whether to tell them, but decided not. He didn’t want Jamie Saintclair side-tracked at this stage of the operation. Otherwise, his only reaction was curiosity. Whoever was responsible had saved him a great deal of trouble.

‘We’re here.’ Gault’s voice woke Jamie from a nervy, jet-lagged slumber where he’d been dreaming of being chased by enormous knives with a life of their own. He hoped it wasn’t a portent for the next few hours. Fortunately, when he forced his eyes open he was greeted by a breathtaking Sierra Nevada vista of snow-draped mountain and steel-blue lake, the slopes below carpeted by a dense covering of pines and the glittering waters stretching into the distance. But while his eyes feasted on the scene, his mind struggled to catch up. He remembered that Charlotte had stayed in New York, putting together some kind of exit strategy in the event they actually did find anything they needed to get out of the United States without the authorities knowing about it. Then he and Gault had flown west to Reno.

‘Where exactly is here?’

‘Lake Tahoe. We’re about an hour out of Reno. Incline Village is on the bay in front of us, but the
place we’re looking for is somewhere in the hills off Highway Thirty-eight.’ He nodded to the left, where a road hugged the Nevada shore. ‘But given that the lake is more than twenty miles long and our man doesn’t encourage visitors, I could do with another pair of eyes.’

Jamie picked up the file Adam Steele had put together on Harold Webster. For such a successful businessman Webster had kept a surprisingly low profile even before the age of the TV star entrepreneurs like Donald Trump, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. He’d made his first fortune manufacturing electrical batteries after the war, where he’d served as a flight engineer in the US Eighth Air Force, then identified the potential of television before any of his rivals. But the real money had come when he’d branched out into computers at just the right time. The few pictures of him had all been taken in the fifties and he’d disappeared from public view entirely after the death of his son and successor in less than clear circumstances about a decade earlier. Since then he’d lived as a recluse on his ranch in the mountains. What linked an American multi-millionaire with a dismantled Polish castle? Jamie still wasn’t sure of the what, but he was certain the link existed. Harold ‘Hal’ Webster had been the original patron of the Bialystok Foundation long before it had attracted its respectable veneer of distinguished Polish board members. The foundation was Hal’s baby. And the envelope containing the late Rolf Lauterbacher’s medals and addressed to the former SS man had a Reno, Nevada, postmark. Coincidence?
Maybe, but as an old friend had told him, there was no such thing as a coincidence when you had a dead body at your feet.

Equally interesting was the fact that Hal Webster hadn’t answered any of Adam Steele’s enquiries. All right, a recluse was hardly going to welcome a request for a meeting, but you’d think he’d be curious enough to ask what it was about, especially when it was accompanied by the offer of a substantial donation to his pet foundation. In Jamie’s experience, historical artefacts and rich men went together like the proverbial apple pie and ice cream. Excalibur was nearby. As Adam Steele would say, he could feel it in his bones.

And that was why Mr Hal Webster was about to get a surprise visit: if they ever found the ranch.

They took the winding road down through the village past substantial mansions and condos hidden amongst the trees. When they reached an intersection by the lake, Gault turned the big SUV on to Tahoe Boulevard and followed the shoreline at the foot of towering mountain peaks that seemed to hang over them like a gigantic Sword of Damocles.

‘Gold Rush country,’ Jamie said to Gault as they passed the rusting skeleton of some kind of heavy equipment. ‘Fortunes made and lost in a day.’ The former SBS man only grunted. ‘You don’t like me much do you, Mr Gault?’

‘It’s not a question of liking. You’re an amateur. Amateurs get people killed.’

Sarah Grant’s face appeared in Jamie’s head and he went very still. Just for a moment he wondered if Gault was mocking him about her death. Someone had killed Sarah, and he had spent the days since David’s concentration-enhancing phone call on the Corfu balcony trying to work out who. The most likely explanation was that she’d been murdered by the lone Al-Qaida assassin who’d escaped from the forest, but there was another possibility. Gault had been AWOL at the Wolf’s Lair for the whole shooting match. What if the SBS man had been lying? What if, instead of running the other way, he’d followed them? He’d no doubt Gault had access to weapons. It would have given him ample time to put three bullets in Sarah Grant and then get back to the crash site at the same time as Jamie. Then there were the hints that Charlotte had dropped before they flew to Corfu.
Maybe there was more than luck to Gault’s great escape
. ‘Remind me where you got to while I was so busy being an amateur at the Wolf’s Lair?’ he said.

Gault stared at his companion as if he’d sensed the change in atmosphere. ‘Now don’t get me wrong, your lordship. You didn’t do too badly. How many was it? Three? Four? And all with a Second World War pop gun. Proper little Rambo we are.’ His voice turned sly. ‘Maybe if you’d dumped your little squeeze Charlotte a bit sooner, we wouldn’t have needed help from your Russki mates. Still, it must have taken some doing. All those trigger-happy ragheads after your blood and you managed to outfight them.’

Jamie turned to him. ‘Everybody needs a little luck, Mr Gault. Even you.’

‘Why are you getting so worked up all of a sudden?’ Gault felt the cold eyes on him and his fingers fumbled for the radio, filling the car with the sound of a wailing country-and-western crooner. ‘We can’t be far away now.’

‘I lost a friend back there and I wondered if you had anything to do with it.’

‘Hermann?’ Gault looked at him as if he’d gone crazy. ‘Hermann wasn’t a friend, he was a Kraut hustler. Hermann, a friend.’ He chuckled. Jamie sank back in his seat. If Gault had anything to do with Sarah Grant’s murder he was hiding it very well. He closed his eyes as the SBS man darted another puzzled glance at him. ‘What you need is a good night’s sleep, your lordship. Now where is this fucking place?’

‘You mus’ be thinkin’ of Thunderbird Lodge – fancy place by the shore just along apiece,’ the young man running the coffee booth in a roadside picnic area suggested. Jamie said no, he was certain the Webster ranch lay in the mountains between Carson City and Lake Tahoe. The boy’s brow puckered beneath his dark-blue Reno Aces baseball cap. ‘Hell,’ he laughed.

‘You must mean that outfit way out by Marlette Lake. Nobody goes there, on account of there’s no road.’ Jamie exchanged a pained glance with Gault and the young man caught the look. ‘Ain’t no road, but thar’s
what you might call a trail takes you so far before it’ll tear the axles out of your truck, then you hitch on your pack and keep climbing till you can’t climb no more. Once you hit the top of that old hill, you see the lake laid out below you, maybe a mile wide and three long. On the far shore you’ll see a jetty, maybe with a Twin Beaver tied up there.’ He grinned. ‘That’s the sensible folk’s way of visiting. The ranch house is somewhere in the trees beyond. Man, that fella likes his privacy; I hope you guys got an invite. Not too popular with the folks round here, though. This here’s an eco-management area. No development, period. My daddy told me that about twenty odd years ago these here trucks just started rolling up the old sluice way and they started building. Didn’t even use one local pair of hands. Whadya’ think of that?’