“December—that’s Russian for December,” said Turn-bull, peering over Tom’s shoulder.
“Tom, we should take this . . .” Archie’s voice came, slightly muffled, from inside the chamber. He appeared a moment later, carrying the mannequin’s jacket and peaked hat.
“Why?” Turnbull asked.
“You ever seen anything like this before?” He pointed at the circular cap badge, which appeared to show a swastika with twelve arms rather than the usual four, each shaped like an SS lightning flash. “I know I haven’t.”
“You think Lasche can help?” Tom asked.
“If he’ll see us,” said Archie, sounding unhopeful.
“Who?” Turnbull butted in.
“Wolfgang
Lasche,”
Tom
explained.
“He
used
to
be
one
95 the black sun
of the biggest dealers in military memorabilia. Uniforms,
guns, swords, flags, medals, planes, even whole ships.”
“Used to be?”
“He’s been a semi-recluse for years. Lives on the top floor of the Hotel Drei Könige in Zurich. He trained as a lawyer originally. Eventually made a name for himself pursuing German, Swiss, and even American companies for alleged involvement in war crimes.”
“What sort of war crimes?”
“The usual—facilitating the Holocaust; helping finance the Nazi war effort; taking advantage of slave labor to turn a profit.”
“And he was successful?”
“Very. He won hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation payments for Holocaust survivors. Then, rumor has it, he hit the jackpot. He uncovered a scam by one of the big Swiss banks to slowly appropriate unclaimed funds deposited by Holocaust victims and shred the evidence. It ran to tens of billions of dollars and went all the way to the top. So they bought him off. The Hotel Drei Könige belongs to the bank he investigated. He gets to live on the top floor and they pay him just to keep quiet.”
“So his antiques dealership . . . ?”
“Part of the deal was that he got out of the Nazi blame game. With his contacts and backing, it was an easy switch. He’s a major collector in his own right now. Nobody knows that market better than him.”
“And he never goes out?”
“He’s sick. Confined to a wheelchair with twenty-four-seven nursing care.”
“And you think he might be able to identify that?” Turn-bull indicated the jacket and cap.
“If anyone can, he can,” said Tom.
“I could have forgiven him, you know . . .” While they had been talking, Elena Weissman had disappeared into the chamber. “I loved him so much. I could have forgiven him anything if he’d told me . . .” she sobbed as she reemerged. Tom saw that she was clutching a Luger pistol in her right hand. 96 james twining
“Even this,” she continued, her strained voice rising to a hysterical scream as she raised her eyes to the heavens. “You could have told me.”
She lifted the gun to her mouth, the black barrel slipping between her lips, bright red lipstick smearing along it.
“No!” Tom leapt to knock the gun out of her hand before she could pull the trigger. But he was too late. The back of her head exploded across the room, a fine mist of blood spraying in short bursts from the severed blood vessels as her body slumped to the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
FBI HEADQUARTERS, SALT LAKE CITY DIVISION, UTAH
January 6—8:17 a.m.
Paul Viggiano fetched himself another cup of filter coffee from the machine. There was a tidemark in the glass jug where the coffee had evaporated since the last fresh pot had been made that morning. The remaining liquid looked dark and thick, like molasses. With scientific precision, he poured in one and a half servings of creamer, added one level teaspoon of sugar, then stirred it three times. Satisfied with his handiwork, he turned to face Sheriff Hennessy and his attorney, Jeremiah Walton. A wiry, aggressive man with a thin face, hornbill nose, and sunken cheeks, Walton seemed unable to sit still on the molded plastic seats, forever shifting his weight from one bony buttock to the other. Bailey was sitting on the opposite side of a flimsy-looking table that had been screwed to the floor, staring at Hennessy with hostile intensity, his pen suspended motionlessly over a notepad. A tape recorder hummed gently to his right.
“Face it, Hennessy, it’s over,” Viggiano said, trying to sound calm but struggling to contain the excitement in his voice. Less than forty-eight hours ago he’d been wondering what he was doing with his life. Now here he was running a multiple homicide investigation.
Funny
how
someone
else’s
98 james twining
bad luck could be just the break you’ve been praying for. “Whatever little scam you’ve been running up there is finished now. So you might as well tell us what you know and make this a whole lot easier on yourself.”
Hennessy stared at Viggiano stonily, dabbing himself every so often with a handkerchief that his sweat had turned from pale red to deep vermilion.
“My client wants to talk about immunity,” Walton said in a high-pitched, nasal whine, pinching his right earlobe between finger and thumb as he spoke.
“Your client can go to hell,” Viggiano snapped. “I got twenty-six corpses out there.”
He waved in what he assumed to be the direction of Malta, Idaho, although in the small windowless room it was difficult to be sure. “Women. Kids. Whole families. That’s twenty-six people—dead. Immunity isn’t even in the dictionary as far as your client is concerned.” His fingers made quote marks in the air.
“You got nothing. Just one man’s word against another.” Walton glanced at Bailey. “A throwaway comment made in the heat of the moment that has been taken completely out of context. A pillar of the local community has seen his integrity questioned and his reputation dragged—”
“For an innocent man, he sure got you down here pretty damn quick,” Viggiano interrupted.
“My client has a right—”
“Hell, maybe you’re right,” said Viggiano. “Maybe we don’t have much. But we’ll find it.” He leaned across the table toward Hennessy. “You see, we’re going to go through your bank records and high school reports and college files. We’re gonna turn your life upside down and shake it real hard and have a good long look at everything that drops out. We’re gonna go through that farmhouse that you claim you’ve never been to before with a ten-man forensic team that’ll find out if you even so much as farted in its general direction in the last six months. Whatever we need, we’ll find it.”
Walton flashed a questioning glance at Hennessy, who raised his eyebrows in response and then gave a brief shrug, suggesting that they had planned for this outcome. 99 the black sun
“Very well, then,” Walton conceded, pinching his left earlobe now. “We want a deal.”
“This is the biggest homicide investigation in Idaho since the Bear River Massacre in 1863,” Bailey reminded him in a cold voice, his eyes never leaving Hennessy.
“The best deal he’ll get is avoiding the Row,” Viggiano added. “Accessory to multiple homicides before and after the fact. Criminal conspiracy. Armed robbery. Hell, by the time you get out, if you ever get out, the Jets might have won the Super Bowl again.”
“And if he cooperates?” Walton whined, licking the corners of his mouth.
“If he cooperates, we won’t push for the death sentence. And there may be the chance of parole down the line.”
“A minimum-security facility?”
“We can do that,” said Viggiano. “But we want every-thing—names, dates, locations.”
“I want this in writing.”
“You tell me what you got, then I’ll tell you if it’s enough. You know how it works.”
Hennessy glanced at Walton, who bent toward him and whispered a few words in his ear. Hennessy straightened and nodd
ed slowly. “Okay, I’ll talk.”
“Good.” Viggiano pulled a chair away from the table and sat on it back to front. “Let’s start with some names.”
“I don’t know his name,” Hennessy began. “Not his real one, at least. Everyone just called him Blondi.”
“This is the guy who you think did this?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where was he from?”
“Not sure. He approached us.”
“Who’s us?”
“The Sons of American Liberty.”
“Now, Bill,” Walton cautioned him, with a nervous twitch of his wrist, “let’s not get into details.”
“Why? I’m not ashamed,” Hennessy said defiantly, before turning back to face Viggiano. “Yeah, I was one of them. Why the hell not? It’s like I said before, they’re patriots.”
He
100 james twining
locked eyes with Bailey. “True Americans. Not a bunch of lazy, drug-dealing immigrants.”
“Oh, they’re patriots, all right,” Bailey snapped angrily, his pen digging into the notebook and blotting the paper with a rapidly growing ink spot. “They’re patriots who more or less executed a security guard up in Maryland.”
“I didn’t know anything about that,” Hennessy said sullenly.
“Where was this Blondi from?” Viggiano continued.
“Europe.”
“That’s two hundred and fifty million people,” Bailey observed drily.
“I’m telling you what I know,” Hennessy hissed. “It’s not my fault you don’t like it.”
“What did he want?” Viggiano again.
“He said that he wanted an Enigma machine. That he would pay us to get him one.”
“How much?”
“Fifty thousand. Half up front, half on delivery.”
“And you agreed?”
“Who wouldn’t? That sort of money was big news for us. Besides, it wasn’t the first time.”
“Now, Bill,” Walton cautioned.
“Blondi worked for someone else,” Hennessy continued, ignoring the warning. “We never knew who and, to be honest, we didn’t care. When he needed to get hold of some-thing, we’d get it for him. He never asked how we’d got it or where it had come from, and he always paid in full and on time.”
“Then what?” Viggiano pressed.
“He had all the plans and blueprints and everything. Three guys volunteered and they hit the museum. From what I hear, the whole thing went pretty smooth.”
“Apart from the guard they lynched.”
“I guess he got in the way.” Hennessy shrugged. “Besides, one more or one less . . . Who gives a shit?”
“One more or one less what?” Bailey was on his feet, his pen spinning to the floor. “Go on,
say
it.
One
more
or
one
the black sun 101
less nigger, is that what you mean?” He clenched his fists so hard the tips of his fingernails went white. “Say the word. I dare you.”
Hennessy smirked but seemingly had the good sense to say nothing.
“And then what happened?” Viggiano intervened again, laying a hand on Bailey’s trembling shoulder and pressing him back down into his chair. “After they got the machine?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“Yeah, let’s talk about that for a second.”
“Talk about what?”
“Talk about how come he managed to get everyone else into that room apart from you. Did you know what he was planning? Is that why you weren’t there? Did you cut a deal to help lure them there? Did you help kill them?”
“Back off, Agent Viggiano.” Walton sprang to Hennessy’s defense, his long, bony finger wagging at him angrily. “There is no way that my client knew—”
“No,” Hennessy’s vehement denial interrupted him. “I was meant to be there, but there was a snowstorm that night and I couldn’t get through.” Viggiano glanced at Bailey, who confirmed this piece of information with a reluctant nod. Three inches of snow had fallen in town, so it would easily have been double that up in the mountains. “All I knew was that it was meant to be a straight swap. The cash for the machine. The first I heard about there being a problem was when you guys showed up saying that you were going to raid the place.”
“So you’re saying it’s just dumb luck you’re the only person who’s met him who’s still alive?” Bailey’s tone was disbelieving.
“Hey, I never said I met him.”
“But you said—”
“We never met. I only ever saw him twice, and each time I was on the other side of the compound. The boys were careful to keep me away from outsiders in case word got out that
I
was
part
of
the
group.”
102 james twining
“You’re lying,” Bailey snapped.
“I’m not. These people were my friends. Some of them were just kids, for Chrissake. If I knew the son-of-a-bitch who’d done this, I’d tell you. I want you to find him.”
“And how do you suggest we do that if everyone who has met him is dead?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE CAPTAIN KIDD, WAPPING HIGH STREET, LONDON
January 6—4:42 p.m.
Tom gazed through the window, his finger tapping absentmindedly against the table’s pitted and cigarette-charred surface. Outside, the Thames slid past, slate gray and viscous from the cold.
“How are you feeling?” Archie sat down opposite him and handed him a pint of Guinness. Tom went to take a mouthful but pushed it away, untouched.
“That poor woman,” he said, shaking his head.
“I know,” Archie agreed. “Jesus, I can still see—”
“It was our fault, Archie. We should have broken it to her more gently. We should have known she might do something like that.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Archie reassured him. “We didn’t tell her anything she hadn’t guessed already from seeing that photo. We had no way of knowing she’d do that.”
“At least Turnbull dealt with the cops.”
Turnbull had told them both to leave him to handle the police, perhaps not wanting to field too many awkward questions about why he’d brought two ex-criminals to a murder victim’s house. To be honest, they’d been more than happy to accept his of-fer—anything to
escape
the
Met’s
suspicious
embrace.
104 james twining
“What do you make of him—Turnbull?”
Tom shrugged.
“Well, he clearly knows more than he’s telling us. No surprise there. Spooks love their secrets. But, given that he’s in their antiterrorist unit, it’s clearly these Kristall Blade people he’s really after. Renwick . . . that was just the bait to get us on board.”
“Do you buy his story?” Archie reached for his cigarettes and lit one.
“About Weissman?” Tom pushed the ashtray across the table as a signal to Archie to keep the smoke away from him. “I guess so. A lot of people had secrets to hide at the end of the war. About things they’d done. About things they’d seen or heard. Posing as a concentration camp survivor would have been one way to escape and start a new life.”
“Bit extreme, isn’t it?”
“Depends what or whom he was escaping from. I’d say it was even more extreme to have to live the rest of your life as a lie. To fabricate an entire family history to back up your story. And all the while concealing the truth in that little room.”
“And the tattoo?”
“Who knows? Maybe it’s just a botched attempt to fake a concentration camp serial code. Maybe there’s more to it than that. Somebody obviously thinks it was worth having. Hopefully Lasche will be able to explain some of this.”
“Oh yeah, that reminds me,” Archie said with a smile. “Hand m
e the uniform, will you?”
“What for?” asked Tom, reaching down and opening the bag at his side, hoping that no one would notice.
“I found something else in that room. Something I thought you’d want to keep Turnbull well away from.” Archie took the jacket from Tom and reached into the inside pocket. His hand emerged clutching a faded brown envelope, from which he removed a dogeared photograph. “Recognize this?”
He handed the photograph to Tom, who looked up, eyes wide with surprise.
“It’s
the
Bellak
from
Prague—the
synagogue.
How
.
.
.
?”
the black sun 105
“That’s not all,” Archie continued triumphantly. “There are two more.” He flicked the faded black-and-white photographs down on the table one on top of the other, as if he was dealing a hand of poker. “A castle somewhere . . . and look at this one—”
“It’s the portrait.” Tom breathed heavily, taking it from him. “The one my father was looking for. It must be.”
“No oil painting, was she?” Archie grinned at his own joke.
“Is anything written on the back of them?” Tom asked, turning over the photograph he was holding.
“No, I already looked. But there is this . . .” On the reverse side of the envelope someone had written a return name and address in cramped italic script, the black ink now a dark brown, the white paper yellowed and frail. “Kitzbühel, Austria.”
“Until we know exactly what Renwick wants with these paintings, let’s keep this to ourselves. It’s got nothing to do with Turnbull.”
“Too bloody right,” Archie agreed, then paused as if he had been on the point of saying something else and had thought better of it.
“What is it?” Tom inquired.
“It’s just that, the more we find out, the uglier this gets. We should leave the whole mess for Turnbull to sort out. Stay out of it.”
There was a long pause as Tom returned the items to the bag. Then he took his key ring from his pocket and placed it on the table between them.
“Do you know what that is?” he asked.
“Looks like a chess piece,” Archie said with a shrug. “A rook. Made from ivory.”
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