“You wanna know how she died?” Haimon asked, looking for a way to make himself feel good.
“Not really,” Tom answered. “I’d rather know why?”
Haimon was disappointed. He didn’t hear the fear or horror he’d hoped for in his son’s voice, so he shrugged indifferently and taking a deep breath began.
“She’d been having an affair. In fact, I don’t believe you’re mine.”
“That’s a relief,” Tom returned, his face calm. He threw another piece of the chair into the stove.
“Listen up boy. Let me teach you something about women. Loyalty is a very important quality in a woman. Like a dog, she should only serve one master.”
Tom laughed out loud. His tone scornful.
“That’s not why you killed my mother, because she had an affair. You killed her because she was good. She was love, and kindness, and gentle. She reminded you of what you weren’t and that made you question your own deep, ugly self.”
Tom’s voice was unemotional as he continued.
“Every time you came near her, you saw yourself more clearly. The only thing left for you to do was to drink from her like a dark, dead thing will from something alive and good. You needed blood, death, and fear to keep you going. You feed on fear like any bully does. I’ve wanted to find you every day of my life and…”
An acidic laugh leapt from Haimon’s chest.
“What? Kill me?” Haimon mocked. “I bet you do!” he said finally. “Maybe you’re my kid after all.”
Tom became sullen, saying nothing more. Haimon’s gun, laying on the table beside him, had a way of keeping everyone in the room docile. Cara, finished with making the tea, poured it into cups and offered it to everyone. The floral smell, combined with the warmth of the mugs, was the only semblance of normalcy in the present situation.
“It’s not much longer and you’ll probably get to see her soon,” Haimon sneered, lifting his cup to drink the Darjeeling tea. The younger man didn’t bite, so he pushed it further. “Your mother was a slut and I picked her up off a bar stool. You’ve had a lot of time to turn her into a saint. She was nothing of the kind. Glad I could set you straight, boy,” Haimon hissed, his voice dripping with malice and sarcasm. Goading the young man was proving pleasurable.
Tom flung himself from his chair and ran at Haimon, who smiled. He didn’t want to kill Tom yet. He had plans for him when Max arrived. Instead, he timed the amateur's oncoming attack, and when he closed in, Haimon neatly brought the younger man to the ground.
Tom rolled into the only table in the room, knocking it over. The teacup, the gun and Annalena’s phone spilled onto the floor near the front door. Haimon came up and delivered two more well-placed blows to Tom’s stomach and chest, causing the young man to groan.
“Please! Stop this!” Annalena pleaded. “Please, leave him alone. He loved her!”
Haimon turned around slowly and the darkness in the room pulled closer around him. He smiled and stood over where Tom lay on the floor. Never taking his eyes off of Annalena, he nudged his victim’s side.
“She was a whore! Say it!” he demanded of Tom.
“No,” Tom groaned.
Haimon reeled back and kicked him again.
“She was a whore! Say it!” he yelled.
“Stop it!” Annalena cried.
“Let him up,” a strong, male voice said from the doorway.
Haimon spun around to see the silhouette of a man standing in the shadow of the front door. As it stepped only inches into the light, Haimon breathed a sigh of relief.
“It’s only you,” he said. “Glad to see your back, Max.”
Chapter 45
Wallace Estate
Cotswolds, England
“Yes, we were told of your visit,” the prim, elderly housekeeper said. “My name is Mrs. Talloway. Please follow me. I’m to take you to the library. His Lordship asked that we let him know when you arrived.”
Martha and Helen, followed by Johns and Piers, were directed down a long, well-furnished hall with full-length windows on one side. In between each were Wallace family portraits of the lords, ladies and children who’d lived in the home throughout the ages. The housekeeper stopped at two doors fitted into an archway.
Pushing one back and allowing them to pass by, she said, “I will call on you in an hour. If you would care for any refreshment, please pull the cord by the fireplace.”
Her retreat was noiseless. The four walked deeper into the room.
“Where do we start?” Piers asked.
“I usually let Helen follow her nose, first,” Martha said, sitting down on a comfy, well-padded lounge chair. “She’s a divvy, as they say. Give her about ten minutes. If it’s here, she’ll suss it out.”
Helen floated off into the dark recesses of the library while Martha motioned for the other two to take a seat. Attempting to follow Helen, Piers started off after her, but Martha put the kibosh on it.
“No! Stay here, Piers. You’ll distract her.”
Piers halted mid-stride and gave Martha a semi-affronted look. For his trouble, he received a knowing one in return.
“She’ll be just fine back there without you whispering sweet, mushy stuff in her ear.”
Johns, chuckling, came up behind Martha and bent down to kiss the top of her head.
“Leave him alone, Red. He’s had a rough time of it.”
For a while, they chatted about the flight from Switzerland and what the Heinrich Gott’s show was like. Martha threw out that Heinrich asked Helen to go to Cannes with him which got a fun, satisfying reaction from Piers.
“Oh cool your jets, big guy,” she said. “Helen blew lots of cold air at him and he went away.”
Some rustling noises at the back of the room attracted their attention away from Martha playing with Piers like a cat will a mouse. From the far corner, down a particularly long row of shelves came a gasp.
“Oh, my God!” Helen cried.
Piers turned and walked quickly into the labyrinth of shelves.
Lifting herself from the chair, her manner easy going, Martha brushed off invisible dust from her backside and walked slowly towards the gasp.
“Come on, sweetie,” she said to Johns. “I think Helen’s treed something.”
“Treed something?” Johns asked.
“Yeah, you know like a hound will tree a coon.”
They exchanged puzzled expressions. Johns perhaps because he wasn’t sure what it meant to ‘tree’ an animal he’d never seen before, and Martha, because she regularly forgot the British didn’t speak in American colloquialisms.
“A raccoon, you know? Cute little bandit eyes and likes to wash its food in water? Oh forget it. Come on,” she said heading into the gloom of the corner.
It wasn’t necessary, however, to seek Helen. She came walking from the shadows with Piers in tow, holding a simple looking volume about the same size of an ordinary artist’s notebook.
“Is that it?” Martha asked dubiously.
The leather, mottled with age and handling, was unadorned in any way. All four people, standing in a circle around the book in Helen’s hands, wondered at how something so modest was in reality so priceless.
“I feel sort of faint,” Helen said, giddy with disbelief. “This is too much.”
Taking it to a table, she laid it in a book cradle gently.
“Let me show you something.”
Helen reached over, and with a delicate touch, she turned to the first page. The leather of the cover, stiff from being left untouched or unopened for more than a century, creaked at the invasion. Being asked to give up its secrets, the notebook had to awaken to a new world, so it did. There, in a fluid, strong style, Leonardo’s handwriting scrolled across the page, completely indecipherable to their modern eyes.
“He preferred to write backwards,” Helen offered as an explanation, “and of course in Italian.”
However, an exquisite drawing, needing no translation, sat in the page’s firmament of the u
pper right corner. It was of a human ear, and the Renaissance master had sketched it with gentle delicacy, even taking the time to add tiny cross hatching lines to give the tiny masterpiece depth and dimension.
The four viewers in their rapt moment of beholding such a wonder had forgotten to breathe. In unison, almost to the person, they all sighed, looked up at each other, and then laughed.
“I feel like crying,” Martha said softly. “We can’t imagine what it has been through. So much, so many people, fragile and yet resilient. If you hadn’t searched for it, Helen, it may have been lost forever.”
“We searched for it,” Helen countered. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but an armored truck waiting outside to take it to a secure vault somewhere would make me feel much better.”
“Why don’t we pull the bell cord and talk with the housekeeper? She’ll know if there is a secure safe,” Johns said.
As he walked away to the fireplace and pulled the silk cord firmly, Helen, with her eyes on the cradled volume, said, “To touch and behold something universal to our collective human soul is always humbling and, at the same time, full of wonder. I wish there was a way to have this moment forever.”
A flash went off, startling her and forcing her attention upward. Martha with a cheerful, dimpled grin and a cell phone poised for another photo moment, said, “Say cheese.”
The next few pics weren’t exactly contest winners either. One of a flabbergasted Helen with her mouth hanging a bit too loose. Another of her switching into hot-tempered-enforcer-of-decorous-behavior with her finger pointing pedantically at the camera.
“Are you insane?” Helen finally gurgled. “We’ve talked about this before!”
Martha looked nonplussed.
“What? You just said you wanted to save this moment. I’ll share the photo-”
But she didn’t get a chance to finish, because Helen roared in with, “Don’t! Don’t share that picture with ANYONE! This is not a ‘social me’ moment!”
Martha froze in mid tap of her phone screen and slowly lowered it.
“Share with YOU! I was going to send it to you, Helen. Okay! Relax! I’m putting the phone away.”
With exaggerated movements, Martha returned the phone to her pocket.
“It’s all good. I won’t take anymore pictures.”
Helen kept her steely stare riveted on Martha.
“Or share them with anyone,” Martha conceded, but Helen pursed her lips tighter.
“Okay! I’ll never, ever share them. Man! You’re really hung-up!” Martha huffed and shuffled over to where Johns was talking with the arrived housekeeper, Mrs. Talloway.
“Yes, there is a safe,” she was saying. “We will store it there. I expect Lord Wallace will want to talk with Mrs. Ryes.”
“She will be calling him in a little bit,” Martha said. “We’ll make arrangements for an armored truck to be here first thing in the morning to take the notebook to a secure spot.”
“Martha,” Johns said turning to her. “I’ll get in touch with the local police chief and ask if they can arrange extra security on the house tonight.”
“Good idea. Thank you, Merriam.”
The housekeeper nodded, and all four of them followed her to where the safe was located in the pantry. Once unlocked and opened, beautiful silver goblets, tureens, flatware and tea services revealed themselves upon the shelves. With gleaming, polished surfaces, the finely crafted metal creatures seemed to swell with pride at the human’s admiration. But as the housekeeper laid the brown and worn notebook down beside them, it felt as if the more lustrous natives recoiled at the new arrival’s internment within the confines of their sanctum.
“I think it will be quite safe here,” Mrs. Talloway said. “I’ve been the keeper of these household keys for over twenty-five years, and we’ve not had a problem once.”
Johns smiled graciously and said, “That is a fine record, but to make sure you’re safe, I’ve put a call into your local constabulary and they’re sending some men over to keep a watch on things.”
Mrs. Talloway shrugged and bustled off at the sound of a ringing telephone.
“I’m exhausted,” Martha said with a sigh, “but if we’re going to fly to Stuttgart tonight, we’d better get started.”
“I promise you’ll find the jet to be comfortable,” Pier said.
“Hmmm,” Martha said putting her arm around Helen’s shoulders, “I think we need some shut eye. How about you, buddy? Some of us are a little tense,” she said, indicating with her eyes who she’d meant.
“Uh huh. You’re right, I need some sleep,” Helen said good-naturedly. “I could sleep standing up.”
Chapter 46
Stuttgart, Germany
The flight over to Germany had been short. As soon as they arrived in Stuttgart at around one o’clock in the morning, they’d gone to a hotel and put Helen and Martha in a room to get some well deserved sleep. Johns and Piers went to meet with the Landeskriminalamt, or State Police, in Tübingen.
A plan was organized. By having Helen call the criminals with her cell phone and using triangulation technology, the police would be able to locate where they were holding Annalena. The SWAT team would be sent in to handle the entire operation.
Eight o’clock the next morning was the start time for the plan to begin, and as Helen and Martha waited with Johns and Piers in the police station, it had been made painfully clear that this operation had potentially dangerous consequences. Johns, with a cup of strong coffee in his hands, watched the clock tick closer to seven-thirty.
Two SWAT officers, armed with HK G36 assault guns walked over to where their group sat. Both Helen and Martha swallowed hard. There was an intensely chilling quality at being so near to such lethal machines.
“Good morning, Detective Chief Inspector Johns,” one of the two men said. “My name is Commander Pulver. We will be asking Mrs. Ryes to make her phone call in a half hour. As you know, we ask that both the women and the man stay here with our liaison officer. If you would like to join our operation, you must stay in the van.”
“May Helen and I go too?” Martha asked.
Built like a solid rock wall and standing over six feet tall, the imposing and professional SWAT leader gave Martha a curt, “Nein! You will stay here. You are not to leave this building. Is that understood?”
Martha froze and, cowed completely at the command, nodded like a six year old who had been told by a formidable adult to sit down and not to speak until spoken to. Johns fought a smile and instead reached over and laid his hand on her arm tenderly. The SWAT commander continued.
“If you would all please step back to our control room, we will begin.”
No one dared to resist. All four trooped along behind the tank-of-a-human and sat down in the seats provided for them. With Helen’s phone being inspected and readied for the call, they watched the hustle and bustle going on around them.
Helen leaned over towards Martha and whispered, “I nearly jumped out of my skin when he barked, ‘Nein,’ at you.”
Martha wet her lips and whispered back.
“I’m telling you what, Helen. When he snapped at me, it reminded me of Mrs. Dennis in fourth grade. She was a giant of a woman, and if we got out of line, she would pick up our entire desk until we were eye level with her and growl the words, ‘Be quiet.’ Used to scare me to death. Made a believer out of me, and so did he.”
Helen chuckled and accidentally snorted which made Martha burst out with a laugh, causing a few of the stoic Germans to flash puzzled looks in their direction.
“Get a grip girls,” Johns said. “It looks like we’re ready to begin.”
Commander Pulver strode over to them, handing Helen the phone.
“You will make the call now.”
With a few rapid nods of acquiescence, Helen took the phone and dialed Annalena’s number. Everyone, not monitoring some computer screen, watched and listened as the device rang over and over again. Finally, her voice came on the lin
e.
“Annalena?” Helen breathed into the phone, but soon it was clear that it was only her message.
“That will be enough, Mrs. Ryes. You may end the call. We have the coordinates,” Pulver said. “Stay here and continue to call the number. If you get through, tell them you have the manuscript and will be delivering it in two hours. Ask for their location. It will help us.”
Turning to Johns, he asked, “Are you coming?”
“Yes, I’m coming,” he replied. “I’ll be back. Helen, keep an eye on Red. Make sure she says out of trouble.”
The armed men wearing black from head to foot, left the room. Johns kissed Martha on the forehead and was gone.
“He better come back,” she said with a crack in her voice.
“He will,” Helen said gently. “He will.”
Chapter 47
Babenhausen, Germany
“Just trying to fill up the hours,” Haimon said with a wry smile, as he nudged Tom one last time. Max bent down and picked up the cell phone and the gun from the floor where it had fallen when the table was overturned. He walked over and stood among the shadows where it was hard to read his face.
His brother’s movements and lack of a verbal response put Haimon’s instincts on guard, switching them immediately from predatory to defensive. There was a new energy about Max, or was it chemistry? As Haimon’s mind quickly calculated the difference, he realized, it was due to chemistry.
The full force of two sudden truths hit him at once—Tom wasn’t his child. He was Max’s. And the only gun in the room was now in the wrong hands. A horrible mistake on any psychopathic killer’s part.
Annalena’s phone rang.
“Answer the phone!” Haimon commanded Max.
“Step away from the kid,” Max said so softly that Haimon heard his own heart pound to each syllable his brother spoke.
“You mean, your kid,” he almost whispered back. The phone continued to trill.
“Mine. I was never sure. He was too young to tell all those years ago. Now, I see he looks like me. He’s mine and I don’t want him dead.”
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