“Someone’s controlling Victor.”
“Exactly.”
“So who’s pulling his strings?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t think it’s that simple. I’d be able to find one name. I think we’re dealing with several different entities that are exceptionally adept at playing the shell game when it comes to hiding assets. I will figure it out, though. I assure you.”
“So that’s it? We wait?”
“What you have to understand is that the traditional rules don’t apply to this game. Think of yourself as a tourist in the Vegas of high finance. There may be many games in town, but the house invariably wins them all.”
“I don’t care about their games. No man is above the law. Some just have farther to fall than others.”
“Your law, huh? Last I knew, you didn’t even have a badge. That’s how they play the game, Mace. Whatever you do now, you’re on the wrong side of the law. In real-world terms, you are the bad guy now.”
54
Mason leaned his forehead against the cold glass and stared out the window. The snow had slowed incrementally, but visibility had dramatically improved. Flat white fields stretched off into eternity on either side. Other cars had joined theirs on the highway, primarily interstate tractor-trailers painted with dirt and trailing swirling slipstreams of snow from the accumulation on their roofs.
Alejandra’s breathing had grown slow and measured. He wondered how long it had been since she’d last slept, or if it was even a luxury in which she allowed herself to indulge. All he knew was that he was perfectly happy not dreaming her dreams.
“Can I ask you something?” Gunnar said.
“Of course.”
“How does one man survive multiple explosions that kill pretty much everyone else and any number of confrontations in which he’s outnumbered and outgunned?”
Mason remembered what the masked man outside of Alejandra’s trailer had said.
He dies, you die. I don’t care if you have a guardian angel or not.
And what he had heard his former partner say while he was hiding in the snowdrift, moments before he killed him.
There may … people who want you … survive this, but … number’s growing smaller by … minute. They won’t be able … protect you forever.
“My father’s not involved.”
“There are few people on the planet who wield so much influence and keep such powerful company.”
“My old man might be ambitious to a fault, but he’s not a monster. He’d never support any agenda that risks the life of a single registered voter, let alone what little family he has left.”
“I’m sure you’re right, but I’ll lay odds he’s at least on a first-name basis with the people responsible. Political currency will buy someone—even a senator’s son—only so much rope before they hang him with it.”
Mason conceded Gunnar’s point with a nod. While he was confident his father had no knowledge of what these men had planned, they undoubtedly knew who he was and recognized the amount of influence he exerted. They’d taken a huge risk by killing the vaunted J. R. Mason’s daughter-in-law. Putting his son in the ground would all but guarantee he’d find a way to unleash the wrath of God upon them.
That is, if Mason didn’t do so first.
They rode on in silence, watching the mountains slowly rise from the horizon through the waning storm as they headed west. They passed Greeley before veering north toward the town of Windsor, which had evolved from a single railroad station into a flourishing agricultural mecca around the turn of the twentieth century. The soil conditions were perfect for the cultivation of sugar beets, so when a processing and refining factory was built, people flocked from far and wide to gamble on the future—most notably among them, a large number of ethnic German immigrants from Russia.
The truck wound through an older historical district filled with turn-of-the-century Victorians and into a neighborhood with estates set back from the narrow road and surrounded by fifteen-foot wrought-iron fences. Gunnar slowed as they rounded a curve and peered past them and up the hill to the right, where a sprawling mansion sat like a crown adorned with evergreens and elm trees. Mason couldn’t help but notice the security cameras mounted along the perimeter. They weren’t the kind meant to be seen or to serve as a deterrent. Only a trained eye would recognize them, which meant that not only was there something of considerable value inside, someone was actively watching the feeds from those cameras. He was proved correct when the gates started to open even before they pulled up to them.
Alejandra sat bolt upright in the seat.
“Don’t worry,” Gunnar said. “We’ll be safe here.”
“Nice digs,” Mason said. “Who lives here?”
“A guy I’ve done some work for in the past.”
“What kind of work?”
“Pretty tricky financial stuff, mostly, but a surprising amount of historical stuff, too. Like the pictures I found for you, especially the one from Egypt. I emailed it to him to get his thoughts. He got right back to me and suggested we meet in person.”
“You think he knows something about the man with the blue eyes?”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
The heated driveway was lined with snow-blanketed shrubs that looked like marshmallows. There was a turnaround at the top, in the center of which was a fountain that had been allowed to freeze with the water running to create an enormous ice blossom. They rounded it and parked at the foot of a wide portico.
The house itself had been built in the Georgian Revival Style, with decorative cornices, rectangular windows, and doors with crown pediments and overhead fanlights and sidelights. The exterior was gray slate, which had probably been quarried from the ground beneath them. Twin chimneys framed a roofline broken by peaked dormers.
The engine ticked for several long moments before Gunnar finally killed it and opened his door.
Mason felt eyes on him the moment he stepped from the car. There was one man in the shadows to the northeast of the detached garage. Another behind a hedgerow on the southwest side of the house. A third in one of the windows on the upper story. A fourth behind him. These were well-trained men, not your run-of-the-mill hourly rent-a-cops. He never saw more than the faintest silhouette of any one of them, and had no doubt whatsoever that had their instructions been to prevent them from entering the home, they would never have gotten this close.
The front doors swung inward as they mounted the steps. A grandfatherly man greeted them with a broad smile on his face. His white hair was combed back from his forehead and formed natural points on either side. His chin and nose were both blunted and ruddy. The wrinkles on his face proved the smile wasn’t just for their benefit. He wore powder blue linen pajamas that could have come from any department store, a red-and-black flannel robe, and a pair of sheepskin slippers.
“Ah, Gunnar, my friend.” He shook Gunnar’s hand with sincere exuberance. “At last we meet in person. It is my distinct pleasure to finally have the opportunity to do so. Now please. Please do come in from the cold.”
He held the door open and gestured for them to enter. He maintained both the smile and eye contact with each of them as they passed. Mason read him as a genuine individual unaccustomed to presenting a facade for anyone, which struck him as completely at odds with the security presence. A wide hardwood staircase with ornate hand-carved banisters led upward to a landing, where narrower flights branched to either side. The display case on the landing held a dirty hand spade encased in Lucite, above which hung a large painting of fields filled with wavering grasses and grazing bison, clearly a depiction of this area before any of the houses rose from the soil. While outwardly ostentatious, there was simply something unassuming about the house, as though it had been built for the people who lived inside it rather than for those they wanted to impress.
Mason liked this man already.
“Please make yourselves at home. May I offer you tea or cocoa? I myself p
refer the dark chocolate with those tiny little marshmallows.”
“Anything warm would be great,” Mason said. “Thank you.”
“I must apologize for not offering coffee, as is the custom. I do not entertain guests so much anymore. Besides, an old man like me prefers to have his pulse quickened the old-fashioned way. Speaking of which, who is this divine creature?”
“Alejandra.”
Although she kept the scarred half of her face concealed by her hair and hood, she couldn’t hide her smile as he bowed and kissed the back of her hand.
“A beautiful name for a beautiful woman. I am enchanted, my dear. May I take your jacket?”
Mason’s jaw dropped when she allowed him to remove it from her shoulders. He draped it over his left arm and proffered his right hand to Mason.
“Johan Jakob Mahler.”
“James Mason.” The old man’s grip was remarkably firm. The skin on his palms was coarse, as though he had spent more time in the fields than in a boardroom. “We appreciate your hospitality, Mr. Mahler.”
“Please, please. There are no formalities in this home. Call me Johan. And I shall call you James. You must forgive me for supporting your father’s opponent in the last election. And all of the others before that.”
Mason smiled. It was a nice change dealing with someone who seemed so open and honest. He had to remind himself of the security force and the fact that they wouldn’t be here if Mahler didn’t know something about the man who’d killed his wife and partner.
“Gunnar told us he’s done some work for you in the past,” Mason said, prompting.
“Your friend here is an exceptional individual who provides services that never fail to exceed my expectations. And considering my business now is of a more personal persuasion, I deal only with people of high character. I would never think of denying any of them a favor when they ask.” Mahler guided them deeper into the house. They passed a large but homey kitchen, where a man in a cardigan was already preparing a tray of steaming mugs. The bulge under his left arm didn’t escape Mason’s notice. “One of the benefits of reaching my age is that you no longer have to spare a thought for what people think of you. I get to choose my attire based on what makes me feel good. An added benefit is that I’ve found people tend to let more of their real selves show when they think you’ve gone a little batty. My dear wife, Dolores—God rest her soul—would never have allowed it. I eagerly anticipate the eternity she will have to chastise me for it.”
They passed through a sunken family room with bookcases built into the walls, furniture that appeared to have been chosen for comfort over formality, and a hearth large enough to accommodate an entire pine tree, then entered a hallway adorned with portraits of children through the generations.
Mason had already identified six security cameras, two in this corridor alone.
“My grandchildren.” Mahler nodded at the wall to his right, where pictures of dark-haired children with light eyes smiled back at them with various amounts and configurations of teeth. He slid aside one of a girl who looked to be about twelve or thirteen to reveal an access panel, then tapped in a combination. A section of the wall opened, revealing a well-lighted staircase. He continued talking as he led them down. “I have six in all. Every single one of them happy and healthy. Knock on wood.”
At the bottom of the stairs was another short hallway, which terminated against a stainless-steel door with a digital keypad. Johan tapped in a seven-digit combo and the door popped inward with a hiss of escaping air.
“We keep the substructure hermetically sealed to maintain the proper pressure, temperature, and humidity necessary to preserve the documents. Do be a dear and hit that button beside the door once you’re through.” Gunnar did as he was asked and the door sealed behind them. The corridor was dark and narrow and revealed absolutely nothing. Mason heard a series of beeping sounds as Johan entered another series of numbers, then the hum of hydraulics as the final door opened before them. “They’re all original and represent a lifetime’s work for both my father and myself. Some of these artifacts are more than a hundred years old.”
A clicking sound, then the thoom-thoom-thoom of large banks of overhead lights turning on. The pale whitish blue glow gave the distinct impression of being underwater.
“Welcome to my archives,” Johan said.
He stepped aside and gestured toward a massive room that had to be the size of the entire structure above it.
Suddenly, Mason knew exactly why this house required so much security.
55
The armed man in the cardigan appeared in their midst, served mugs of cocoa from a silver tray, and disappeared again without a word. They sipped the steaming brew while Johan gave them the tour. He claimed that to truly comprehend the significance of the substructure, which filled nearly the entire hillside upon which his house had been built, they needed to understand how it had come into being.
“My father, Abraham Jakob Mahler, commissioned the construction of this sublevel in 1947,” he said. “His father and my grandfather, Jakob Ephraim Mahler, was the eldest of six children by a solid decade. His mother died during childbirth and his father sent him to Prussia to live with his maternal grandparents on their farm. These were different times, you must understand. It was just how such things were done. Years later, he was reunited with his father, his father’s new wife, and their children. Despite the differences in age, he was very fond of his new brothers and sister. Two of his brothers worked for the Reichsbank. Another served as a representative to the Bundestag, and the fourth as a chemist for Bayer, and ultimately for IG Farben. His lone sister, May, had three children with an aviation engineer. And yet he did not envy the success they had achieved. Instead, the eldest son of what had become a prominent German banking family in his absence sought his fortune in the New World. He joined the mass migration to Manitoba, and eventually found his way down the Great Plains into Colorado.”
Johan’s words reverberated inside Mason’s head as he tried to rationalize the existence of this enormous basement, which was completely at odds with the house above it. Where the upstairs was warm and bright, down here it was cold and clinical.
“He harvested sugar beets with the rest of the immigrants, his wife, Helen, and their three sons, my father, Abraham, among them. He saved every cent until he was able to buy his own land—the land upon which we now stand—and worked it, with his entire family, every single day. They built their own refinery and turned what had once been a vast swath of grassland into an empire. And then, with the help of his brothers overseas, he invested his fortune to establish the First Prairie Bank of Colorado, and seemingly overnight he became one of the twenty richest men in America. But for all his money, he couldn’t stop the inevitable.”
The main portion of the substructure was filled with computer stations and banks of servers. Detailed maps from all over the world covered the walls. It almost reminded Mason of a military command center.
“When the Nazi Party rose to power, his brothers at the Reichsbank sensed trouble brewing and transferred the family’s liquid assets into Jakob’s Prairie Bank as a precaution, but even in their worst nightmares, they could not have imagined what was to come. The Mahler family went from being one of Germany’s premier banking families to its premier Jewish banking family. His brothers and their entire families vanished, along with all of their remaining assets. His father and stepmother were taken from their home in broad daylight as their neighbors looked on. His brother-in-law sent Jakob’s sister and nieces to Poland before being beaten to death in the street. His lone brother who remained free continued his research at IG Farben clear up until he earned the right to test an experimental pesticide called Zyklon B.
“Jakob knew none of this at the time, though. From his perspective, his family had simply fallen out of contact during a period when the newspapers were filled with stories of the war in Europe. All three of his sons took up the flag and returned to the Fatherland as its liberators.
Only Abraham—my father—returned, and just in time to bury my grandfather, whose heart had been strong enough to carve a fortune from the rocky ground, but ultimately was unable to withstand the loss of his parents, five siblings, two sons, and his wife, who had succumbed to pneumonia the previous winter.”
Mason couldn’t figure out what Gunnar could have possibly done for this man. Judging by the expression on his old friend’s face, he seemed to be struggling to put the pieces together, too.
“My father was overwhelmed by all the changes in his life. His entire extended family was dead. The wife he’d left behind was a different woman and his child was now nine years old. He had more money than he could spend in ten lifetimes, a thriving enterprise he had no desire to run, and more grief than one man could be expected to bear. So he took a step back and prioritized his life. He hired a management team, sold off the less wieldy portions of his holdings, and retired from the business world to take care of what little family he had left. It was then that he commissioned the construction of this sublevel and came down here every day as if he were going to work.”
“What did he do down here?” Mason asked.
“I wondered the same thing for many years. Until my fifteenth birthday, when he finally showed me. I remember descending the stairs, which had always been off-limits, even to my mother, into a dark room that smelled of dampness and mildew. At the time, there was just a single overhead bulb. He pulled the string and illuminated walls covered with photographs and maps and newspaper clippings. He told me how it had taken him more than five years, but he’d pieced together the fates of our German relatives. He’d acquired thousands of articles and reports and obituaries and documents on the postwar European black market. He’d paid enormous sums for bills of lading and receipts of all kinds, for passenger manifests on railcars and ships and passports stamped at various borders. He’d amassed a collection of the numbers that our people had been reduced to after being stripped of their identities and herded like cattle into concentration camps. And he’d become part of a larger group that was determined to put a name to every one of those numbers.”
The Extinction Agenda Page 27
