The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

  He was going to steal into Katerina’s flat, and if she was alone, apologise. And if not? He had no idea. But the sport of rugby was full of unexpected dramas and split-second decisions. So was court. So many times he’d had to change his brief on the fly and in front of the judge. Focus was required.

  Focus and a weapon, perhaps? All he had was his umbrella, and he closed his eyes momentarily at the ridiculous thought that surfed through his mind that he was not going to lose another one and would have to carry it with him!

  32

  She put the ice down so she could breathe out her despair. ‘Do you still have your family?’

  ‘Yes. I loathe my wife. She was a convenience – made me look good, holding the hands of my twin children as we stumbled into Britain as helpless, needy folk.’

  ‘Twins?’

  His sinister smile crept back across his face. She could read what was coming before he said it, so she was prepared. ‘Just like your pretty little sisters. Beautiful girls, they are. Not at all like their ugly mother. Blonde and blue-eyed. Perfect.’

  ‘Except you’re their father. Hardly perfect,’ she remarked and watched his smile widen. ‘How old are they?’

  ‘Mid-twenties. They’re like English roses except there’s only German blood running through their veins. I’ve taught them the language in secret. People are still touchy, you know.’ He laughed horribly and then began a tirade of coughing.

  ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  ‘It will take me,’ he admitted. ‘But not yet, not before I’ve secured the girls’ future.’

  ‘With my Pearls, do you mean?’

  ‘Those included.’

  ‘I watched you steal them, you know.’ She explained.

  He put down the blade to clap again, knowing full well the layout of her family’s garden. ‘Oh, Katka, if only I’d known. Up a tree, then, wounded by a bullet? Amazing!’

  ‘I didn’t think I could hate you any more on that night but you surprised me. Of course, I don’t care about the Pearls.’

  ‘No?’

  Tingles crept through her body, sparkling at the crown of her head like a halo of disbelief as much as relief because, impossibly, she glimpsed the figure of a man peeping from around the bedroom door with his finger to his lips.

  Ruda Mayek followed her line of sight and looked around but the intruder had already stepped back silently. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, astonished by her calm at the surprise of seeing the shiny white knight she needed in her life right now. Impossibly, here he was, and she was almost sick with relief that she’d opened that bedroom window on arriving in her stuffy flat. ‘I felt a bolt of pain through my face. It made me nauseous.’

  He turned back to look at her, then twisted his head again to check … just in case … but there was nothing behind him. Now she must not look, not even once, past Rudy’s shoulder. It was going to take all her courage, all her willpower not to give him away.

  She picked up the ice again. ‘I don’t know why I’m bothering.’

  ‘Because we both want you to die beautiful,’ he said. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘I was telling you that I really couldn’t care any less than I do about the Pearls. You can have them.’

  ‘I already do.’

  ‘Unless Edward finds my parents’ original wills, of course, Rudy. You do know they exist, don’t you?’ she goaded him. She sensed a shadow in the bedroom doorway but she wouldn’t look.

  Don’t step on the creak, she pleaded. And come forward slowly. A snail’s pace – she would keep Rudy talking.

  Her mismatched stare was fixed on the man she hated. Suddenly it seemed she might have something extra to live for; her plan was crumbling around her but Rudy didn’t know that. He was frowning at her.

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I am not. But we shall see … or rather, you shall, when the police come knocking at your family’s door. The girls are going to get quite a shock to find out that their father is a war criminal.’

  ‘I’m not falling for it, Katka.’

  She shrugged again. ‘I really don’t care how you feel about it, but I hope Edward finds what he’s hunting for. He will know later today from his colleagues in Switzerland … and I suspect so will you. You see, my father’s best friend was a lawyer; perhaps you never knew this, but do you recall him speaking of a man called Körbel?’ She watched with intense pleasure as Rudy’s face twitched, blanching. He couldn’t hide that he recalled the name and the man’s profession. ‘Well, before he died at the hands of the Nazis, his friend sent my parents’ wills to his firm’s branch offices, I gather. So it’s just a matter of time. You’d better tell the girls to get packed if you plan to go on the run again.’

  Although she forbade herself to look at him, Katerina was aware that her potential rescuer was now halfway between the bedroom and the chair where Rudy sat. He was on the rug. No creak. She was counting on her torturer’s poor hearing letting him down but she couldn’t rely entirely on that. She needed to keep him engaged and distracted so the rest of the distance could be travelled on tiptoe without discovery.

  ‘Rudy, I told you I did have something important to say to you.’

  ‘What is it?’ He was testy now, rummaging through thoughts of what she’d just revealed. Without her knight she would probably only have a few more moments of life.

  Katerina began the story she had wanted to tell Ruda Mayek for over twenty years. ‘You used to boast to me about the son you wanted. How you would teach him to fish and to hunt. How you would raise him in your own way.’

  Rudy sighed. ‘You have a good memory.’

  ‘Do you regret not having a son?’

  ‘I don’t regret my daughters, if that’s what you’re asking. They’re —’

  ‘That’s not what I’m asking,’ she said, enjoying cutting across his words.

  He blinked. She waited, forcing him to respond.

  ‘It is true that I regret not having a son. I will admit only to you, Katka, that I was deeply disappointed when both my children turned out to be girls. I was angry with their mother. If she weren’t needed for feeding the children, I think I would have done her some violence.’

  She nodded. ‘I’m convinced you would have too because you have no respect for anyone, Rudy, especially women. So I pity your daughters, no matter how much you claim you love them. They probably love you and it is fortunate they do not know that what they have for a father is the devil.’ His face set like concrete drying out. He was no longer amused, no longer prepared to play along. But Katerina continued. Edward surely had only a couple more stealthy steps to make, although she had no idea of his plan. She wouldn’t look at him, would not give Ruda Mayek even the slimmest chance of dodging his fate. ‘I don’t wish them pain and that’s the truth, but I don’t care a whit about them or you, so if they have to suffer in this discovery, so be it.’

  He sat forward, pointing one of his blunted fingers at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘They will never find out about you because I have hunted you down, Katka. You are the last remaining person, I believe, who can identify me.’

  ‘Are you sure? Are you also sure that you’re not the one being hunted, Rudy?’

  He sneered, and in one fluid movement Edward was finally close enough to smash down the handle of his umbrella across the man’s wrist and on the weapon that sat idly menacing her in Mayek’s palm. In an equally fast action he lifted the brolly and smacked it now across Mayek’s face. The double shock of a potentially broken wrist and a definitely broken nose shifted the power in the room and Katerina leapt towards the stiletto blade, which had been sent skittering across the floor. Mayek tried to struggle to his feet, out of instinct, it seemed, because he was unsteady, disoriented, and Katerina watched in amazement as Edward punched Mayek with all his force. Her captor’s eyes bulged with surprise and rage at her for barely a heartbeat before he dropped like a boulder
from an avalanche, collapsing onto her couch.

  Edward was flicking his hand around and grimacing at the pain. ‘That’s what we call a king hit in rugby circles,’ he said. ‘Bloody hell, it hurts to deliver it, though.’

  Katerina crouched on the floor with the stiletto, ice scattered around her. Curiously, with all of the terror surrounding this scene, she gave a mirthless laugh, stretched taut by her nervousness. ‘I thought you wielded that umbrella with great dexterity.’

  He pointed a finger. ‘Don’t jest. What were you thinking?’

  Before she could answer there was an explosive sound of timber being broken as her flat door was smashed in and Daniel ran in, wide-eyed and dishevelled.

  ‘He’s here!’ Daniel exclaimed.

  Katerina knew he would have hated such an obvious response to the scene but it was true even Daniel couldn’t control his shock in this moment.

  ‘He’s out cold,’ Edward assured him, moving to help Katerina to her feet. ‘And she’s hurt.’

  She lifted a trembling hand to her face, amazed she hadn’t fully noticed the pain until now and dropped it again, determined not to seek sympathy. ‘I’ll live, thanks to you.’ A look passed between them that spoke of intimacy and she knew he understood they would discuss everything later. She turned to Daniel. ‘This is him, the man you’ve hunted.’

  Daniel hadn’t shifted his gaze from the slumped Czech but he took the stiletto from her before moving to the window and giving a signal. He was back at Katerina’s side in a blink. ‘I’m so sorry for failing you. We didn’t know he was already inside.’

  She shook her head as his gaze searched her forgiving expression. ‘It never occurred to me and I lied to all of you. I brought this on myself. But you’re here now … both of you.’ She pressed a hand to Daniel’s cheek to impress upon him her gratitude.

  She thought she felt him shiver beneath her touch – a leaf’s tremor – and experienced a surge of sorrow for this broken man. She shared grief with him. Yes, they were like dried and fallen autumn leaves, tumbling over each other in the wind: helpless but driven by a force bigger than they. Except she had been lucky. Her leaf had recently become caught, trapped on something solid and immovable in Edward, while Daniel must roll on, at the mercy of his sadness.

  He covered her hand with his and took the opportunity to lean his head into her caress. It was a poignant pause in an otherwise ugly scene and she felt they would always be connected through their sorrow and the prisoner that was slumped opposite. Katerina kissed his other cheek gently. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered at her tender forgiveness. He let her go and the bond was broken. His expression told her he knew he would never touch her like that again or be kissed in that careful yet intimate way either. ‘Keep ice against your face. Edward, are you all right?’

  ‘Tore my bloody pants on the fence I had to climb over,’ he replied with dismay at the flap of gaberdine revealing a knobbled knee.

  She knew he clowned deliberately to make her smile and she did and so did Daniel. It lifted some of the dread.

  ‘You did well, Edward. Let me deal with him.’

  They watched Daniel fetch duct tape and rope out of a bag to bind the unconscious Mayek’s ankles and wrists. He was taping Mayek first over the sleeves of his pullover, presumably so that the rope would not leave marks. Men arrived. She recognised both now; one of them was the annoying chatty one from the teashop. She found herself privately marvelling that they had obviously been circling her movements around London since she and Daniel had first arrived; there may have even been more of their colleagues conscripted to guard her. They nodded in her direction, both with fleeting expressions of guilt because they could see she had been wounded. But the debt was hers. They had all likely saved her life more than once during these past days, maybe weeks, and she had been none the wiser of Daniel and his team’s care.

  Daniel picked up the discarded stiletto, which he put away in the same bag and now withdrew a syringe, fully loaded.

  Katerina’s hopes were dashed; she was not going to be given her chance to say what she needed to impress upon Mayek. Her thoughts collided, torn between relief at him not having his way with her again but dread that she would continue to carry the burden of grief. If she could just have a couple of minutes, she just knew her life would be shaped differently …

  ‘Daniel?’

  He shook his head at her as their prisoner began to stir and made a sudden sound like a growl; an animal cornered.

  ‘Don’t even twitch, Mayek!’ Daniel warned and in his voice was a tone she’d not heard before. It was pitched softer than most men’s, yes, but gone was the pleasant note, the patient note, even the affectionate one she knew he possessed. It was all threat now. It frightened her that he could be capable of sudden violence and yet so calm. ‘You’re trussed like the beast you are.’

  Despite the warning, Mayek roared and struggled against his bonds. For his trouble, he instantly had duct tape plastered across his mean mouth. So instead mean eyes bulged over the top of the dull grey seal. Within his rage, trying to hide but not entirely able to disguise itself, was fear. She was sure she’d spotted it because she knew the feeling all too well. There it was; she saw it again reflected in those angry windows when his dead-eyed stare glanced her way, unintelligible words being hurled at all of them.

  While Edward moved to her side, Daniel stepped back to join his colleagues, all of them dressed similarly in monotone. They would blend easily into the City of London. She even had time now to imagine umbrellas and briefcases and no doubt long overcoats that were probably cast off in her small hallway. No one would pick them as anything but office workers.

  ‘Daniel, let me introduce our prisoner to everyone,’ she said, and it was not a question.

  The spy gestured for her to go ahead. ‘In English, please, for the ease of my colleagues,’ Daniel suggested. He glanced at Edward too.

  ‘Don’t worry, I refuse to speak German for his benefit.’ She kicked an ice cube aside and cut her gaze to Mayek, who still stared at her alone; he’d stopped struggling and had become quiet. ‘Rudy, standing next to me is Edward Summerbee, the solicitor who is representing you, via that other third party, to the British Museum. It was his umbrella that I hope has broken your wrist and misshapen your nose. I do hope you’re in a lot of pain from both injuries.’ She smiled and hoped it appeared cruel. ‘Perhaps more importantly on this occasion, I’d like to introduce Mr Daniel Horowitz, whom you don’t know but might recognise from being by my side in Paris and more recently in London. I’m sure you can guess from his name much of what you need to know about him.’

  She watched the small eyes regarding Daniel in a vicious gaze.

  ‘Mr Horowitz has been looking for you since 1948, but he knew about you four years earlier. You should know you’ve been in his thoughts for every day of those many years.’ She paused, frowning as though gathering her thoughts, although she knew precisely how to strike the next blow. ‘Oh, Rudy, forgive me, I failed to mention at the outset that he’s Mossad,’ she added conversationally. She couldn’t remember a moment more satisfying than this one when she heard the click of Rudy’s breath becoming trapped in his throat. His breath had become her prisoner now. It would know no freedom while she spoke.

  She sensed most of what she said now would become irrelevant to him, of course, for the mere mention of Mossad had said everything and would have struck the deepest of chills. She understood he would be contemplating his death … his thoughts no doubt reaching to his daughters. She couldn’t fathom her own cruelty as she continued, but then this was Ruda Mayek, and he deserved all the emotional pain she could inflict. Her tone remained cordial, almost friendly, as she continued.

  ‘He’s a committed Nazi hunter, Rudy, and as you are one of that twisted ideology’s most faithful followers, he is particularly thrilled that you are nonetheless stupid enough to come out from wherever you’ve been hiding. It must be your illnesses that have clouded your decision-making becaus
e while I have always hoped your arrogance would be your downfall, I never thought idiocy was one of your qualities and didn’t think to rely on it.’ She smiled. ‘Anyway,’ she added brightly, barely feeling the regular bolts of pain at her cheek, ‘it’s pertinent that this is personal for Mr Horowitz. He’s not just Mossad tracking one of the most cowardly of war criminals, but he is a bereaved fiancé of a woman you took private pleasure in torturing, abusing and slaughtering.’

  She held up a slender hand, shaking her head briefly, dismissively, like a tutor admonishing a naive student. ‘No, please. It’s no use protesting. There’s proof. And, Rudy, he plans to take his revenge not just for the woman he loved but on behalf of all the women I loved that I watched you murder, and for the deaths of all the women and men of Europe that have your vile fingerprint on them. We don’t need to be specific. You are a mass murderer and a war criminal who does not deserve life or the love of a family. Again, I pity your daughters, but they really are better off without the devil in their lives.’

  At this Rudy began to struggle again. There was a moment – a heartbeat – when Katerina believed he might just break free of his bonds and lurch at her, but the tape held and Ruda Mayek was not the strong man he’d once been. Life’s ravages had reduced him and she could see he didn’t have the strength in his legs to launch himself again off the spongy sofa.

  ‘Mayek?’ It was Daniel. ‘Be quiet. And pay attention.’

  Rudy stilled.

  ‘I refuse to discuss with you the woman to whom Katerina refers. Her name no longer need be associated with yours from here on. Moving on, I am giving you a choice. Generous, eh? We can deliver you to Israel. Our courts there will be pleased to put you on trial for your mass crimes.’ He put a finger to his lips to hush the new protest that began to rage with nonsensical words behind the tape. ‘Do not think about the logistics. That’s my problem. Rest assured we can get you out of the country and into Israel with just a few phone calls and help from friends.’ He sighed. ‘Alternatively, we can deliver you to hell – which is where you’re going anyway, even if you do take the scenic route via Israel.’