As the church bells tolled, six pallbearers in black Pierre Cardin suits carried Mercedes’s casket into the church. They laid it feet toward the altar and then opened it to reveal a luminous Mercedes, frozen in time, with a rosary in her hands and flowers all around.
The tribute to Mercedes began with video clips of her childhood, followed by clips from her first documentary for French television. Several speakers read poems, and one played a vulgar song that was a favorite of hers. Then Midas rose to speak to his dearly departed.
Looking at Mercedes, he said, “You were a flower who faded too soon from this earth. But your sweet aroma will linger forever.”
Serena wanted to gag. The duet of mourner and mourned did not go down well with her. She’d never liked eulogies staged during de facto state funerals, anyway. Especially when the deceased wasn’t much of an angel or terribly sorry about it.
But what was she supposed to do? Stand up before all the bereaved, who right now were calculating their own odds of entering the pearly gates, and speak the truth, however awful, about Mercedes? Or was she supposed to bow to social convention and assure everyone in earshot that Mercedes was in heaven? Surely anybody who knew her, even her father, doubted it. She herself doubted that eulogies even belonged in church. After all, this was supposed to be a place where self-confessed sinners gathered in the holy presence of God. Not a stage for them to pat each other on the back for their illusory virtues.
What she especially didn’t like was the feeling that none of them should have been there that day. Not the French president. Not her. Not Midas. And certainly not Mercedes. She wasn’t supposed to die. None of this was supposed to have happened. But it did. Why?
Conrad. He’d happened. He had shown up at the Bilderberg party and put all the wheels in motion. He had turned her life upside down, like he always did, and it was never going to be put right until he and she were right.
It was her turn to speak.
She got up and placed a wheat sheaf on the coffin and repeated the eternal rest prayer. It was the most honest thing she could say. Not in French but in Latin, the way Mercedes likely would have wanted to tweak her proud nationalist papa, who liked to believe that Jesus was really a Gaul and not a Jew and that French was the language of angels.
Réquiem ætérnam dona ei Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat ei. Requiéscat in pace. Amen.
What Serena was saying was: “Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in peace. Amen.” She could tell that the dignitaries in the front pew didn’t understand, although they pretended they did. But several mourners in the fashion row nodded enthusiastically.
Father Letteron, wearing white and violet vestments, conducted the funeral Mass. There were flowers and candles all around. When it was over, Serena watched the shroud-draped coffin float out of the church before the hundreds of onlookers and cameras. Following behind was Father Letteron, who sang the antiphon “In Paradisum,” a prayer that the holy angels would bear the immortal soul of Mercedes Le Roche to paradise.
If that meant television ratings, then perhaps Mercedes had indeed finally found her heaven.
The show inside over, Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy once again gave their condolences to Mercedes’s father and then wordlessly marched outside to the waiting world. Midas took Papa Le Roche’s arm and guided him out of the church. The rest of the mourners exited wherever they’d be sure to be photographed by the media.
Serena stood alone in the first pew, the hypocrisy of the world around her—and her place in it—feeling like a punch to her gut. She took a deep breath and stepped into the aisle only to be blocked by a young French aide. He looked red-faced with shame.
“I beg your forgiveness, Sister Serghetti,” he said in French.
“Is there a problem?”
He hemmed and hawed. “I don’t know how to say this.”
Serena’s patience had worn thin over the course of the funeral. “Spit it out.”
“The first lady requests that you mourn a little longer in private,” the Frenchman said, barely able to form the words. “She fears there might be, eh, speculation in the press that you have, eh, upstaged her in some way with your youth and beauty.”
Holy Mother of God, she thought. But then she quickly confessed her angry, inner burst to God and forced an understanding smile to the aide. She could only imagine how many times each day this poor messenger got shot while bearing his little tidings of great vanity. And this was the church where Napoleon had mowed down royalist insurgents on the front steps.
“Quite all right,” she said. “I’ll just exit discreetly from the side.”
He made the sign of the cross and bowed his head. “Thank you.”
She did her best to make it to Benito and the car outside. She had to put Paris behind her and press on to Rhodes. But halfway out, her sadness and rage at the events of the morning began to overwhelm her, and she stopped to compose herself at the free-standing holy water stoup by the side door.
As she dipped the tips of her fingers into the marble basin and crossed herself, she could see her pale reflection in the water. Suddenly, the side door flew open, and she looked up to see a camera flash in her face.
22
BERN
SWITZERLAND
Conrad paid the cabdriver and walked up the steps toward the venerable private banking firm of Gilbert et Clie. The bank was an austere granite building in Bern’s Old Town, its presence marked only by a discreet brass plaque set in the wall.
A porter greeted Conrad as he entered the lobby with a leather weekender bag slung over his shoulder. The porter asked Conrad to state his business and then directed him to a reception area outside the private executive offices. Here, a smiling brunette in a red cashmere sweater took his Burberry raincoat. Her pale blue eyes seemed to linger in admiration of his athletic build beneath his three-piece suit. In the most exquisite French, she informed him that Monsieur Gilbert would see him in but a moment.
Conrad took a seat and surveyed the shabby but elegant reception area. The faces of several generations of Gilberts looked down from the oil paintings on the walls. For well over a century, the bank had remained in family hands, an outgrowth of their merchandising business. Why the family had sold the bank was just another one of the secrets it kept inside its vaults. It was one of only a few private banks in Bern, as most were in Geneva, and the only one with a French surname, not German. Like the other private banks, Gilbert et Clie was unincorporated and never published its balance sheets.
The mademoiselle returned and ushered Conrad into Gilbert’s office. A tall, gray-haired man, elegant in boutonniere and black suit, rose from his desk. His resemblance to the faces in the paintings was unmistakable.
“A pleasure to meet you, Monsieur von Berg,” Gilbert said in German, regarding Conrad keenly. “Please sit down and make yourself comfortable.”
“Thank you,” Conrad replied in English, dispensing with any Bavarian pretense.
An officer of the bank, a big, bald man whom Gilbert introduced as Monsieur Guillaume, stood silently by his side. He regarded Conrad warily from under his heavy eyelids.
“And how can I help you, Monsieur von Berg?” Gilbert asked.
“I’ve come to recover the contents of my grandfather’s box.”
Gilbert raised an eyebrow. “You have the key, of course?”
“No, you do,” Conrad said. “Both of them. I have the box number and combination. And that’s all that’s required of me for this type of box.”
Gilbert nodded. “You are correct. But you will forgive us for doing our best to protect the interests of our clients. You are the first person in seventy years to open”—he had to look at his computer screen—“box number 1740.”
Gilbert called in his huissier—the brunette, who answered to the name of Elise—and handed her an envelope with the number on it. “Please escort Monsieur von Berg to the vault.”
“Oui,” she replied
.
If they were letting her handle him, Conrad thought, that meant their guard was down—or they wanted him to let down his own.
Elise took him to the bank’s antique elevator. As the polished brass cage began its slow two-hundred-foot descent to the vault beneath the bank, Conrad noted the Venetian mirrors on the elevator walls and the gray leather benches on three sides. He also noted a tiny hook in the corner of the floor. “This is an unusual elevator,” he said. “It’s the original?”
“Yes,” she said. “It used to go down to an even lower level beneath the vault, where a secret tunnel to a park two blocks away would allow private clients like yourself to come and go without having to enter from the street. But the new owner filled the tunnel with concrete a few years ago.”
Conrad nodded. Okay, so at least one alternative exit had been cut off.
The doors split open to reveal the safe deposit vault. The massive circular steel door was open, and a security guard standing beside a small desk nodded as Conrad followed Elise inside the vault.
As they walked past rows of gleaming boxes, Conrad could only imagine how much wealth was locked away here. Truly, this was the vault of the man called Midas. Finally, when they had reached the very back of the last row, Elise stopped and announced, “Box 1740.”
Conrad turned to his right and saw the numbers. The box was at eye level. “That’s right.”
She took her key and inserted it into the box. “I will go first and then leave you to your box. You may take it to the private consultation room over there.” She gestured to a small closet door, and Conrad nodded. “Then you will return the box, lock it, and call for me.”
Conrad noted that she had failed to mention that if he got the combination wrong or blew the key toggle, the box’s internal chemical lining would break and destroy whatever was inside.
Conrad eyed the brass doorplate with three brass fixtures. Left to right, there were the keylock, the four brass alphabetic dials set on top of a brass circular plate, and the small rectangular number plate that read 1740.
Conrad glanced at Elise, whose eyes grew ever wider as he turned the first dial to the letter “A,” the second to the letter “R,” the third to the letter “E,” and the fourth to the letter “S.” He heard an unmistakable click inside the box. He could also hear Elise catch her breath at the simplicity of the code.
“Now it is my turn,” she said, and inserted the silver bank key into the keylock, gave it a twist, and then removed it. “I will leave you now.”
Conrad waited until she was gone before he inserted his gold key into the lock. He turned it halfway and stopped. He then scrambled the dials and turned his key the full ninety degrees into a vertical position and felt the lock open with a satisfying click.
He opened the door and slid the box out. It felt light in his arms as he walked to the private consultation room. He grew anxious as he entered, shut the door behind him, and placed the box on the table.
He stared at it for a moment, took a deep breath, and with one hand opened the lid. As he stared inside the box belonging to SS General Ludwig von Berg, the Baron of the Black Order, he felt a pit form in his stomach. Then he reached in and removed the only item inside the box.
It was an old Swiss wristwatch.
23
At that very moment, the prince of Egypt himself, Abdil Zawas, was driving to the bank along Bern’s River Aare in his armored Mercedes Pullman Level B6 bulletproof limousine.
In addition to windows made of 42mm bulletproof, shatterproof, multiple-layer reinforced glass, the vehicle sported special fuel tanks impervious to exploding upon impact from any projectiles. The remote starting system allowed Abdil to remotely detonate any explosive charges set to go off when the vehicle ignition or door locks were activated. Just the sort of vehicle a man of Abdil’s stature—and Conrad Yeats’s predicament—required these days.
Abdil was en route to pick up Yeats from the bank, just in case the American archaeologist had second thoughts about coming back for his ten million dollars. Abdil’s imagination was already afire with speculation as to what SS General Ludwig von Berg had secreted in Midas’s bank—and the expression on Midas’s face when he finally saw the contents of the box in full display aboard the new megayacht that Abdil was building to be the world’s biggest.
What a moment that will be, Abdil thought with delight as the glass partition inside the limousine lowered and his driver, Bubu, said, “Police.”
Abdil looked out his rear window to see a white Land Rover with orange stripes on the side and blue siren lights flashing. “See what he wants and don’t make a scene,” he said, and looked at his watch. He wanted to be parked outside the bank before Yeats came out.
Bubu pulled off the Aarstrasse at a riverfront park. The Land Rover parked directly in front of them. An officer stepped out in a dark raincoat and sunglasses. Abdil watched Bubu pull the registration papers from the glove compartment and lower his window.
“Yes?” asked Bubu as the officer approached the Mercedes.
The officer leaned through the open window. “The motorway pass on your windscreen is expired,” he said, and shot Bubu in the head.
Instinct instantly took hold of Abdil, and he raised the glass partition in time to stop two bullets from the assassin, who removed his sunglasses to reveal an eyepatch and a face Abdil recognized as Midas’s driver and bodyguard, Vadim. He knew the face from the fitness videos some of his girls used.
“You!” Abdil shouted into his two-way security intercom to the outside world for all to hear. “I am impregnable in here!” With a flourish, he picked up his phone and called his private emergency service.
A minute later, there was the comforting sound of a helicopter approaching, and Abdil started cursing Vadim, who had been patiently waiting outside. “Leave while you can, or the men jumping off that chopper will take your other eye for Bubu’s sake.”
Abdil heard a giant thud on the roof. The limousine lurched forward and back, then began to lift into the air. He looked out his window in time to see Vadim waving goodbye to him from the ground. Abdil started to shout as the chopper banked to the right with the entire limousine in tow, carrying him up and away.
24
Conrad frantically checked the box one more time, looking for any kind of hidden compartment or false bottom he may have missed. But there was none. There was only this damn watch.
He stared in dismay at Baron von Berg’s sole piece of personal jewelry. The dial was stamped with rolex oyster and sported an unusual outer track of black-painted Roman numbers on top and Arabic numbers on the bottom. But that was all. In a vault filled with the wealth of dead Nazis, robber barons, deposed dictators, oil sheiks, and the like, why would SS General Ludwig von Berg have gone to such great lengths simply to preserve an old watch?
It felt like a bad joke.
Not only did Conrad have to get out of here in one piece, there was no way Abdil would believe that this watch was all he’d found, much less hand him millions in cash for it.
There had to be more to this watch than sentimental value to a crazy Nazi.
Just like the name of the Roman god of war carried some meaning for Baron von Berg, so, too, did the number 1740 for the box. The same had to be true of this watch, which had its hour and minute hands stopped at midnight—or noon. That was no accident. The watch didn’t stop winding down at that exact minute. Von Berg had left it that way.
A crazy thought seized Conrad. Von Berg may have been insane, but he was a military man, too. Military men, as Conrad knew all too well from growing up with the Griffter, used military time. And 1740 hours meant 5:40 p.m.
Conrad carefully pulled out the watch’s side-turning knob and slowly adjusted the hands until the hour hand reached the number five on the dial and the minute hand reached the number eight.
When he pushed the thumb knob down again, the watch’s two-piece screw-back case fell open. A coin hit the table and rolled onto the floor.
&nbs
p; Conrad quickly snatched it up. It was an ancient Roman coin with a Caesar’s bust and an eagle on the back. It was oddly familiar; it reminded him of the Tribute Penny that Serena wore around her neck. But that medallion was one of a kind.
Or was it?
Conrad quickly inserted the coin snugly beneath the gears of the watch and replaced the back case, inside of which was stamped oyster watch co. Then he strapped the watch to his wrist, closed the box, and stepped out into the vault with his shoulder bag. Without bothering to call for Elise, he slid the box back into its slot and walked out.
The security guard by the desk was already calling upstairs by the time Conrad stepped into the old brass elevator and let the doors close. As soon as they did, he dropped to the floor and reached into his bag to remove a knife.
He cut along the hidden seams beneath the carpet and then pulled the tiny hook in the corner he had seen to reveal a lower compartment. That was where the VIPs had entered and exited in secret from the old tunnel Midas had sealed up.
Conrad had seen this type of elevator only once before—Hitler’s old Eagle’s Nest retreat atop Mount Kelstein in Bavaria. The Nazis had bored a four-hundred-foot elevator shaft in the center of the mountain. That 1938 brass elevator was also a double-decker. Hitler and his important guests rode the brass-lined upper cabin to the top while his guards and supplies for the house rode unseen in the bottom cabin.
Conrad placed an explosive puck on the floor of the upper cabin and dropped into the bottom cabin and pulled the trapdoor shut. He then pulled out his hazmat gas mask and waited in the dark with a small detonator in his hand.
The Atlantis Revelation Page 11
