Hart sat back in bewilderment. ‘When have I ever said that?’
‘You don’t need to say it. All I have to do is look at your face when we talk about children and my whole future is spread out in front of me like a roadmap. You’re never going to forgive me for aborting our child, are you? It’s always going to be there between us.’
Hart closed his eyes. ‘It’s not a matter for forgiveness. But you should have asked me. Allowed me the chance to sway you.’
‘There. I told you. We’re no further forward.’
Hart stood up. His chair crashed onto the floor dramatically, though he hadn’t intended for it to do so. ‘Right. That’s it. I’m not hanging around here for another week, whilst you resent me and imagine I’m trying to ground you. I’m leaving for Germany now. We can’t go on like this – hot and cold, cold and hot. You’re not going to change and neither am I. We either accept that and agree to a compromise, or we’re finished. You go your way and I go mine.’
‘But –’
‘Listen to me, Amira. I’ve no intention of curtailing your career. Or telling you what you ought to be doing. Or turning you into a hausfrau. I’ve never done that and I never will. I’m not your father and I’m not your mother and I dearly wish you’d stop projecting them onto me. My only concern at the moment is to find the people who killed Colel Cimi, my father and Santiago, and make them pay for it. If that brings you a prizewinning story, all well and good. If it doesn’t, I’m sorry, but I’m still going to do it. If your crypto-arsehole friends cut up rough about getting me my passport, they can hand me over to the police and have done with it.’
Hart began shovelling his clothes directly from the coffee table into his holdall.
‘John, you can’t allow emotion to sway you in this.’ Amira was as close to tears as she was ever likely to come. ‘You’re not nearly ready yet. The LB are dangerous. Far more dangerous than you suspect. Your cover needs to be perfect.’
‘What can be more dangerous than premeditated murder? I saw my father nailed to a wall and speared. I saw Santiago degutted. And Colel Cimi floating face down in a lake with a broken neck. I’m fresh from my own botched execution and a repeat bout of malaria. And still I can’t speak German. Look at me.’ Hart raised his hands into the air and let them fall. ‘I’m about as ready as I’m ever likely to be.’
THIRTY-ONE
Hart took the overnight Stena Hollandica Superferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland, leaving Harwich at 23.15 and arriving in Holland at 07.45 the next morning. He used the same logic he had used coming over from France two weeks previously – namely that foot passengers were less likely to be booze or cigarette smugglers and therefore more likely to be waved through passport control without their identity papers being scanned.
This time he wasn’t so lucky. British customs officers were monitoring all passports heading for the continent. Hart stood in the queue wondering whether he should pull out and head back to London. But then he noticed the CCTV cameras. The film would be checked. Someone would be watching. Passengers leaving the line would be routinely photographed and their faces held on record. And he’d already bought the original ticket using his von Hartelius alias. The fact that he’d paid cash for it was irrelevant. He had still been forced to give the name exactly as it was written on his passport. When he didn’t turn up for the trip, his name and photograph would be flagged up. He might as well send customs a letter denouncing himself.
He handed over his passport and watched as it was placed on the scanner. He tried to unclench his jaw. He could already envision the gaggle of customs officers rounding the corner to confront him. Should he run? But the place was crawling with uniforms. Maybe Amira could make a story out of it yet? Inept photojournalist caught on first leg of revenge journey. Fake passport tripped him up. Crypto-anarchists must have seeded it with fatal flaw, declares felon.
‘Next, please.’
Hart took the passport and continued towards the ferry. He was through. The relief of the moment was immediately overtaken by the realization that he was committed now. On his way. Bloody well launched.
He sat on the deck of the ferry and tried to gather his thoughts together. He’d left Amira on a terminally bad note. He’d refused her offer of a pay-as-you-go phone on the pretext that he didn’t want anything that could incriminate him when he eventually made contact with the LB. He’d also refused her offer to allow him back into her bedroom. He’d aggravated the refusal by implying that her proposal might be principally motivated by her desire to stay with the story, rather than any belated desire for him.
If he’d had the sense to accept the phone he might have called her up and apologized. Instead he sat on the boat and watched the sun set over the remnants of their relationship. Then he went to sleep in a chair rather than in a cabin, as that way he would at least get some warning if the authorities decided to come for him during the night.
Next morning he took the train via Amsterdam to Munich. He had cleared out all his accounts, including the full extent of his overdraft allowance, before posting his credit and debit cards back to himself at his mother’s address. He had a little under two thousand euros in cash. Hardly enough to sponsor a major campaign against the LB, but enough to last for a couple of weeks if he spent the money frugally. He’d had a rough moment at the bank wondering if the police had closed down his accounts, but then he remembered that Scotland Yard did not even know for certain that he was back in the country. His paper trail only led as far as Paris. And maybe the relationship between the UK and Guatemala didn’t stretch to monitoring people’s bank accounts? That took manpower – something the British police were notoriously short of. Maybe he should turn to identity theft and thievery when he eventually ran out of cash? It wasn’t as bad as being a murderer, after all. And he seemed to be getting rather good at it.
After the seven-hour trip from Amsterdam he switched to a local train from Munich to Tegernsee. Tiredness nearly persuaded him to give up and get himself a stopgap hotel, but he was so near to his goal that he felt it would be counter-productive to bottle out at this stage. He walked the five minutes from the station to the lakeside Ducal Brewery at Schloss Tegernsee. He drank a litre of beer and ate a plate of local white sausage with rye bread and sweet mustard, followed by some Kaiserschmarrn pancakes with powdered sugar, rum-soaked raisins and a plum compote, which he’d seen other people eat and fancied the look of. His German, he discovered, wasn’t remotely up to translating the menu.
After his meal, he took the ferry across the lake to Bad Wiessee, where he knew Effi Rache lived. He sat with the wind in his hair and stared at the mountains all around him. The lake, with him at its centre, was held within the bowl of the mountains as if in a pair of outstretched hands. He had never been to Bavaria before, and yet he felt a curious sense of homecoming as he looked about himself. Almost as if he were expected.
He walked up from the ferry terminus at Bad Wiessee towards the Freihausweg. He asked an elderly local woman in halting German where the Haus Walküre was, and she pointed up a narrow road backed on one side by a pine forest, and on the other by lush hay meadows.
He walked for ten more minutes until he crossed a small bridge over a trout stream. He stood for a while, unable to tear his eyes from the shadows of the fish beneath the bridge. Then he walked through a span of overhanging trees. On the left, straddling the hillside, were a number of houses with wooden terraces, sloping roofs and ornately carved balconies. One of them had Hotel Alpenruh painted in discreet lettering on its terrace wall. Two hundred yards below the hotel, Haus Walküre was set back from the road and held within its own great meadow, dotted with brown and white Pinzgauer cattle. The farmhouse was constructed in the old Bavarian style, with the house directly attached to the main barn into which the cattle would be shunted via a ramp, their residual warmth heating and insulating the house during the long winter.
Effi Rache’s house was on three levels, its balconies festooned with hanging baskets
full of flowers. Each window was framed by green shutters, whilst the window surrounds boasted intricately painted decorative borders. The main frontage of the house was also painted, this time with religious iconography – Jesus carrying a scroll, angels with musical instruments, and assorted saints. The upper balcony area was decorated with non-religious themes – men in lederhosen and leather breeches chopping wood, whilst milkmaids in dirndl dresses brought them refreshments. A blue and white Bavarian pennant hung from a flagpole in front of the house.
Hart continued up the hill until he came to a stone staircase leading to a slope, and then on to another staircase that would take him to the Hotel Alpenruh’s terrace café. He turned and looked once again at Haus Walküre. It was perfect. Immaculate. Even the Pinzgauer cattle looked as though they had been currycombed and then given a buffing with a straw wisp for good measure. How could a place of such exquisite beauty possibly house such evil?
He walked onto the hotel’s empty terrace, hesitated for a moment, and then made his way through an open door marked ‘office’. An elderly woman, nearer ninety than eighty, sat behind the desk. She was writing by hand in a ledger. Hart thought he could smell coffee and spices and salami and vanilla and possibly plum cake wafting towards him from the kitchen area behind her. For a moment he wondered if he hadn’t stepped through a time gap into the 1950s.
‘Good afternoon, Gnädige Frau. Forgive my poor German. But might I have a single room with a balcony and a view? Facing the front if possible? So that I can overlook the lake?’
The old lady burst out laughing. She regained control after a few seconds and replied to Hart’s question in heavily accented English. ‘I’m sorry for laughing at you, young man. But nobody has called me Gnädige Frau for over thirty years now. And your grammar is truly shocking. What primer have you been using?’
The old lady’s good humour was infectious. It was impossible to take offence at anything she said. Hart was relieved to be able to continue in English. ‘Ah. You have me there. I bought it at a second-hand bookshop and didn’t think to check the date.’
‘Well, the use of Gnädige marks a welcome return to formal politeness. Please continue using it.’ She put on a pair of reading glasses and lowered her head over her schedule. ‘Yes, you are in luck. We have a room. And it has a balcony. And a view of the lake. In fact, we have many rooms. Since the closure of the main Bad Wiessee spa, we seem to have nothing but rooms, and no one to put in them. No one wants spas any more. They want adventure holidays, and kayaking, and bungee jumping. This is to be our final season. And you, Mr…’ She took off her reading glasses and hesitated, looking at him more closely.
‘Johannes von Hartelius.’ Hart handed her his passport.
The old woman sat back in her chair, her arms gripping the sides. She ignored the passport. Her startled eyes, milky with cataracts, never left Hart’s face. ‘And you, Baron Sanct Quirin, are our only guest.’
THIRTY-TWO
‘Why did you call me Baron Sanct Quirin, Frau Erlichmann?’ Hart was seated across from the old lady at one of the dining-room tables. An elderly waitress in a Bavarian pinafore dress had just served them coffee.
‘Because that is who you are.’
‘May I ask how you can possibly know this? You did not even glance at my passport. And the barony you speak of doesn’t appear there.’
Frau Erlichmann bowed her head. ‘At first I did not know it for certain. My eyes are bad, you see. And you spoke execrably poor German. But then I saw you. This happens sometimes. It is like a curtain lifting. Soon the surgeons will operate, then I shall see properly again. Or so they tell me.’ She laughed.
‘So you thought you recognized me?’
‘Thought? Doubt doesn’t come into it, young man. You are the image…’ She hesitated. ‘The double, I should say, of your grandfather. Not your father. Your grandfather. Sometimes I forget how very old I am. In my head I am still a young woman.’
‘You knew him? My grandfather?’
‘Knew him? Certainly not. It was more what you would call a schoolgirl crush. I was ten years old, and already serving table at my parents’ hotel. Your grandfather was a dashing young officer in the Reichswehr. An aristocrat. A “celebrity” you would probably call him now. He came here many times with your grandmother for coffee. She was very glamorous. She looked like the actress Brigitte Helm. I hated her and wished she would die, so he might notice me and we could get married. I would spy on them and their friends from below the counter. I was so small the guests couldn’t see me. But I could see them. I can’t tell you how many times I imagined sprinkling a little rat poison over the baroness’s zwetschgenkuchen. But then, of course, you would not be here. So I am grateful I did not do it. How very brutal little girls can be when they are in love. No?’ Frau Erlichmann laughed.
‘So they lived here? In the neighbourhood?’
‘But surely you know this? This is why you have come back?’
‘Know what?’
Frau Erlichmann watched Hart closely. It was clear that she suspected he might be trying to make fun of her after her embarrassing admission. ‘For your grandfather’s castle. After the war the Americans took it over for a military barracks. They have been there ever since. In two years they are leaving. I assume you are here to arrange for its transfer back into your family?’
Hart leant forward, his coffee cup poised halfway between his lips and the table. ‘Where is this castle?’
Frau Erlichmann stared at Hart as if he had taken leave of his senses. She shook her head as though she was dealing with a simpleton. ‘Behind us. Through the forest. About two kilometres due west. But how can you not know the location of your own castle?’
‘Ah,’ said Hart. ‘That is a very long story…’
THIRTY-THREE
‘But the Raches are filth. You must have nothing whatsoever to do with them. You know the expression “the apple never falls far from the tree”? Well, this applies to them. The father was bad. The grandfather was worse. The daughter is worst of all.’
‘I’ve heard the expression, yes. But I must ignore it. For the time being at least. I can’t tell you why.’
‘Then you are a fool.’
‘You sound as if you have a personal grievance against the Raches.’
‘You could call it personal. Heinrich Rache denounced my parents to the Gestapo in 1942. I know this for a fact. But I cannot prove it, because the records have mysteriously disappeared. Such things happened after the war. The Americans did what they wanted. If somebody helped them, they helped him. And Heinrich Rache helped them a lot. So his records were erased.’
‘What happened to your parents?’
‘They were ordered in front of a Sondergericht court. They were condemned as “enemies of the Reich”. They were sent to Dachau concentration camp, which is just outside Munich. They were immediately separated. My father committed suicide in 1943 after he heard that my mother had died in the women’s camp of malnutrition. I suspect that it wasn’t malnutrition that killed her, but a broken heart. My parents were very close. Separation would have been an abomination to them both.’
‘What were they accused of?’
‘My mother had been heard changing the Hitler salute from “Heil Hitler” to “zwei liter” – meaning “two litres”. This was considered un-German. When my father was confronted with this fact, and asked if he took responsibility for his wife’s actions, he gave the court a piece of his mind. The result was foreordained. The real reason behind the denunciation was that Rache wanted to buy some land my father owned, and my father refused to sell it to him. The Raches of this world aren’t used to taking no for an answer.’
‘I am very sorry. What happened to you?’
‘I was nineteen years old when my parents were taken. I was given a choice. I could either enrol in the German Red Cross or accompany my parents to the camp. My father persuaded me to enrol in the German Red Cross. It is a decision I regret to this day.’
&nbs
p; ‘What happened to this house?’
‘It was turned into a girls’ school. The land, of course, went to Rache. After the war, when the Americans found out what had happened to my parents, it was returned to me. For that much, at least, I am grateful to the Amis.’
‘And you?’
‘I served first in Norway, then later in Czechoslovakia. My girlfriend Trudl and I ran away when the Russians entered the country. We were afraid of being raped. We walked all the way home. It took us three months.’
‘Did you know that your parents were dead?’
‘I knew. The Third Reich was very efficient in such matters. A letter was sent to me where I was serving saying that my parents had passed away whilst imprisoned by the state, and that all their assets had been confiscated.’ Frau Erlichmann glanced towards the window. ‘So you see, Baron, I sit here in my parents’ house, and I look out across that meadow, and I see the granddaughter of the man who was responsible for my parents’ ruin and death trying to bring back the very same regime that destroyed them. Only this time she is doing it by stealth. Preaching moderation with one hand, fomenting civil unrest with the other. And I can do nothing about it. Absolutely nothing.’
Hart leant across the table between them. He grasped Frau Erlichmann’s hand and squeezed it. ‘But I can. If you will help me.’
THIRTY-FOUR
Effi Rache sat between her two girlfriends at the Gasthof zur Hirschtal and tried not to look at the man dining alone at the window table ten feet away from her. But each time she looked away, her attention was drawn back to him again. There was something familiar about him. Some distant memory associated with the way he looked.
‘Do you know who he is?’ she whispered to her friend, Margrit Hanauer. ‘I’ve seen him before. I know it. Is he an actor?’
The Templar Prophecy Page 14
