The Isis Covenant (27 page)

XXX

THE INTERIOR OF
the shop consisted of a gloomy maze of enormous safes and stacks of smaller items like strongboxes, security TV systems and alarms. The only true light came from the spotlights in the front windows, which were mostly blocked by merchandise, and some source at the far end of the shop. A flashing red beam in a globe suspended from the ceiling indicated that someone was monitoring their progress, which was comforting, because it should mean that nobody was going to ambush them. Then again, that could be wishful thinking.

Gradually, they were drawn to the light, which came from what looked like a small and very basic office with a desk at its centre and an unfeasibly heavy door thrown back in welcome.

‘Please come in,’ invited a disjointed voice that was unmistakably American.

Jamie hesitated in the doorway and he almost had a
seizure
when a hand dropped on his shoulder. He turned and looked into Danny Fisher’s wild eyes. ‘
Trap!
’ she whispered. His mouth felt as if it was filled with gravel, but he shook his head.

‘You wanted to talk, so come in and talk,’ the voice persisted.

He took Danny’s hand in his and they walked side by side into the room.

‘At last.’ The tone was good-humoured, even playful. ‘Now we can proceed. Please take a seat.’

Two chairs sat behind the desk and they took their places warily. Facing them, above the open doorway, was the lens of a security camera, and Jamie knew that whoever was doing the talking was also watching them on a monitor from somewhere nearby. The voice originated from a microphone set in the corner behind them, which gave him the odd feeling of being surrounded. That feeling was compounded when the metal door of the room silently swung closed with a gentle, but very final ‘thud’. They frantically searched the room for an alternative exit, but it didn’t take a genius to work out that Danny’s prediction had been right and they were trapped.

‘Now we have a little privacy,’ the voice said.

‘Shouldn’t you be telling us not to be alarmed?’ Jamie indicated the closed door.

‘At the moment you will be admiring the interior of the XK-60 vault, our best-selling walk-in safe, complete with eight-inch Titanium-steel alloy walls, fully
encrypted
locking and guaranteed air tight. Is it a little stuffy in there?’

Jamie swallowed and felt a tightness in his chest. Just for a moment the walls seemed to be closing in. Claustrophobia had never been a problem in the past. He’d done the water-filled pipe thing on army assault courses and felt nothing more than mild discomfort. But then he’d always known that if anything happened the good guys were on hand to get him out. He’d never been stuck in an eight-foot steel box with every breath using up the available air.

Danny sat with her head back and her eyes closed and he wondered if it was despair, exasperation or the fact that she wanted to kill him for getting her into this mess. She opened one eye and confirmed the third theory. ‘Did I ever tell you that I really don’t like enclosed spaces?’

‘You should have enough oxygen for about thirty minutes, give or take,’ the voice assured her. ‘I am going to allow you ten of those minutes to consider your situation, then we’ll have our talk.’

‘We came here to talk about Hartmann.’ Jamie’s voice echoed round the chamber’s metal walls, but the only answer was a low hiss of static. Fisher pushed the desk away with a wooden screech and gave the door an ineffectual kick.

‘Okay, Sherlock, what the fuck do we do now?’

‘We wait. Maybe he’s bluffing?’

‘That’s it?’ She didn’t bother to hide her incredulity.

‘We’re not dead yet.’ He stared up at the camera, trying to figure out who was watching them and hoping he lived long enough to beat the living shit out of him.

The atmosphere inside the safe was already stuffy. Soon the sweat made their clothing stick to their bodies and the air seemed to be thicker and more difficult to breathe. Jamie knew that was only an illusion caused by his own fear, but knowing didn’t seem to help a lot. Danny had taken up a position with her back against one wall and her long legs folded in front of her.

‘We’re here because they want something, huh?’

He nodded. ‘If they wanted to kill us they could have done it in Hamburg. I don’t think this is about the SS and the past any more. It’s about now. By contacting the jovial Herr Kohler we knocked on a door and gave someone palpitations. Now they have to make up their mind whether to open it and let us step through or …’ He shrugged.

Danny uncoiled herself and got to her feet. She took his hand and drew him to a point as far from the microphone and the camera as possible. ‘So what can we tell them that will keep us alive?’ she whispered.

‘Hartmann is the key. If this is about Hartmann,’ he replied in the same vein, ‘whoever is out there is going to want to know why the past has suddenly come back to haunt them. They’ll want to know how we got here and who else knows we’re here.’

‘So we tell him about the Crown of Isis?’

‘Unless we think the Crown is the reason he’s been
hiding
all these years. If it is, the very fact we know about it could give him a reason for letting us rot in here. Ouch!’ He touched his ear where she’d bitten it.

‘I was looking for something a little more positive.’

‘The only way we can play this is one card at a time. If he doesn’t have a reason for keeping us alive, we have to give him one. Maybe that’s the Crown of Isis, maybe it’s not. The Crown is the joker in the pack, but only he knows whether it’s the high card or the low. The one thing I’m certain of is that we can’t play it too early. Am I making sense?’

‘As much as you ever do.’

Another few minutes passed and the air around them became noticeably staler.

‘I see you made good use of your time.’ Jamie searched for some emotion or evidence of compassion in the voice, but found none. ‘Twenty minutes left. Time enough for a game of twenty questions. Well, perhaps not twenty, but enough questions to give you an opportunity to convince me that you have a value. First the obvious: why did you come here?’

Jamie exchanged glances with Danny and she nodded.

‘We’re looking for information about a man called Berndt Hartmann.’

‘A good start, which confirms what I already know. May I ask what makes Hartmann so interesting?’

This time it was Danny who answered. She related
the
story of the murders in New York and London and the link back to the SS man.

‘Yes, I can see why you’d wish to confirm the connection, but not why you would want to pursue this man Hartmann, who, after all, is much more likely to be dead than alive?’

Danny’s head came up. ‘Why would you say that?’ She hadn’t mentioned the details of Hartmann’s career in
Geistjaeger 88
or the circumstances of his disappearance in Berlin. ‘Berndt Hartmann would be in his eighties now, along with many people who survived the war.’

‘Under the circumstances you’ll forgive me for insisting that it’s I who ask the questions, Detective. I repeat, why would you wish to pursue Berndt Hartmann?’ The question was followed by a long, dangerous pause, filled only with the sound of strained breathing. ‘Don’t take too long. Time – and air – is in short supply.’

‘Because … if he’s alive he should be warned.’ Danny felt as if she was walking on quicksand. ‘The name Hartmann was not the only thing that linked the murder victims to this man.’

Again, the long pause, as if the man behind the microphone wasn’t certain he wanted to know the answer. Eventually, he decided he did: ‘And this other thing is?’

‘An Egyptian symbol.’

‘Go on.’

‘One of the murder victims had the Eye of Isis carved into her forehead.’

There was a thump from the microphone: the sound it would make if it had been knocked over. When it spoke again the voice was almost accusing. ‘And what makes you think this Eye of Isis is in any way connected with the man Hartmann?’

‘I think you already know the answer to that question, sir,’ Danny said softly.

She waited for the angry rebuttal. What she didn’t expect was the drawn-out sigh they heard.

‘You should not have come here. I am truly sorry.’

The utter finality of the words froze whatever Danny was going to say on her lips. Jamie knew he only had seconds before the camera and the microphone were switched off and they were left to suffocate.

‘Tell him Max Dornberger says hello.’

XXXI

JAMIE AND DANNY
were lying on the safe floor gasping at the last of the oxygen when the door swung open to allow in a rush of cool air that was as reviving as champagne. They looked up to see three young men dressed in casual clothes and carrying automatic pistols. Two of the men were dark haired and pale skinned and appeared to be twins, but it was the third man, tall, spare and with a sandy complexion and pale blue eyes, who threw a pair of what looked like leather hoods in beside the prisoners.

‘Put these on.’

Jamie picked one up, but Danny stood her ground. ‘The last time somebody got me to wear one of these I ended up in a lot of trouble. You guarantee that won’t happen again?’

The man shrugged. ‘It’s up to you. You put on the hood and come with us or you don’t and we close the door again.’

‘When you put it that way …’

Another van and another blacked-out mystery tour. They drove for forty minutes before the vehicle eventually parked. But the journey held none of the menace of their trip with Frederick, and willing hands helped them out of their seats and across what felt like a gravel drive and into a building. When the masks were removed they were in a bright room with a view of a vegetable garden, but nothing else that would provide them with any clue to their location. Their passports and wallets had been removed during the trip. Now they were returned, which seemed reassuring. Blinking, they studied their surroundings. Set into the rear wall, which backed directly onto the hillside, was the steel door of a massive walk-in safe, which gave Jamie a shiver. Without a word the twins walked from the room and the third man took up position beside the door. A few moments later they were joined by a shrunken gnome of a man with a badly twisted neck, but cheerful, twinkling eyes and an expression of perpetual puzzlement, as if, despite his great age, each day confused him more than the last.

‘Thank you, Rolf. Send up the twins with some coffee, will ya?’ He waved Jamie and Danny to a pair of white leather chairs and took his place opposite them on a matching sofa. They stared at each other for what seemed like minutes before Danny broke the silence.

‘Berndt Hartmann, I presume.’

The old man laughed. ‘I like that. Stanley and Dr Livingstone, right? I haven’t heard that name in a long,
long
time, but sure, call me Hartmann, only make it Bernie. This is a day for memories. Bernie Hartmann. The Eye of Isis. And Max Dornberger.’

‘We’ve been looking for you for some time, Mr … Bernie. The last thing I expected to find was a fellow New Yorker.’

‘New York, Boston.’ He shrugged. ‘Fifteen years in the States makes an impression on a man—’

He was interrupted by the arrival of the twins. One of them carried a tray with a silver pot while the other served. There was something about the pale, unsmiling faces and dark hair that was unnervingly familiar. Bernie Hartmann saw Jamie’s look.

‘You ever see
The Boys from Brazil
, Mr Saintclair? Helluva film.’

Jamie had an image of Gregory Peck as Dr Josef Mengele and darted another startled look at the nearest twin. The old man laughed.

‘Just a joke, Mr Saintclair. But you English never did have much of a sense of humour. Too much stiff upper lip, huh?’

‘That depends on what we have to laugh about, Bernie. I could swear that about an hour ago you and the Children of the Damned here were hell bent on killing us. Or maybe I mistook that steel tomb for a sauna?’

Bernie Hartmann shrugged and sipped his coffee. ‘That was then. Right now I’m interested in how you came up with the name Max Dornberger. Max
Dornberger
was a good friend to Bernie Hartmann, but he’s been dead a long time.’

Jamie took his time, disguising the confusion left by the second half of that statement. ‘Simple enough, Bernie, old boy. According to a book I read, Bernie Hartmann and Max Dornberger were in Hitler’s bunker just about right to the end. It also said that you were the two men who executed Hermann Fegelein, Hitler’s brother-in-law.’

The smile never left Bernie Hartmann’s face, but his eyes hardened and humour was replaced with a look of calculation. ‘Wrong on both counts,’ he crowed, enjoying the confusion of his “guests”. ‘It’s true I was there and I helped bury Fegelein, but I didn’t fire a shot. And the man who did shoot him wasn’t Max Dornberger.’ He shook his head. ‘Bodo Ritter executed Hermann Fegelein.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Jamie’s puzzlement was clear. ‘Bodo Ritter had already left Berlin when Fegelein was killed.’

Hartmann sat back and closed his eyes. For a few moments they wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

‘Ach, maybe it’s time to tell it all.’ The gnome’s eyes opened and the twinkle had returned. ‘Somebody should know and who’s going to arrest old Bernie now, eh? But I tell it my way, and I tell it from the start.’

He began with his childhood in Hamburg before the war, the youngest of a family of seven children, runt of the litter and always in the shadows because his father
blamed
him for his mother’s death. The more he talked, the more his voice changed. The accent was still pure New York American, all drawn out syllables and Rs gone AWOL, but the cadence was taken over by the kid from Altona: sharp and rhythmic with the occasional crack of a bullwhip.

‘The old man worked ten hours a day as a blaster at the quarry, so it was Aunt Gerda who brought us up. Not that she got much thanks for it. We spent more time down the docks thieving than we ever did at school and both my sisters were on the game by the time they were sixteen.’ He shrugged. That was just the way life was back then. ‘Then one time, it must have been in ’thirty-seven around my thirteenth birthday, Aunt Gerda got ill and the old man had to take me with him to work. He taught me about stone and how it split, and about blasting caps and dynamite and how to make them work together. How much to use to get what effect. I was a natural, he said, I had good hands, steady and nimble, and I didn’t make mistakes. ’Course,’ he chortled, ‘you only got to make one mistake in the blasting game. Well, he was a Red, the old man, they were all Reds in the quarries and round the docks. They’d been fighting the Brown-shirts along the
Breitestrasse
on and off since ’thirty-one and he could see what was coming. So he started bringing his work home, in a manner of speaking; half a stick at a time and a couple of blasting caps under his hat. He thought I didn’t know where he kept it, but little Berndt wasn’t
as
dumb as he looked. Well, they came for him in ’forty. It’s the KZ at Neuengamme for you, Herr Hartmann; five years without the option, unless you’d prefer to use your skills in an infantry pioneer battalion? In the end, it didn’t make no difference. It wouldn’t, would it? A fifty-year-old man in the combat engineers. Last we heard was a postcard saying he’d made the ultimate sacrifice for Führer and Reich in a great German victory somewhere near Bryansk.’