The Black Sun

by James Twining

  “And?” Carter asked expectantly.

  “There are about twenty dealers who account for about eighty percent of the volume.”

  “I hate to sound negative, but it could take us years to link one of them back to our guy.”

  “I’ve narrowed the list down to European dealers, since that’s where Hennessy said Blondi was from. That cuts it down to seven.”

  “Still too many.”

  “That’s why I asked Salt Lake City International to supply security footage for all flights to the cities where those seven dealers are based. I figured Blondi would want to be out within forty-eight hours of picking up the Enigma machine from Malta, so it was worth taking a look through the tapes in case any of the passengers matched our sketch.”

  “When did you last get some sleep?” Carter asked.

  “It’s been a long day,” Bailey conceded.

  “And?”

  “One man. Boarded the American flight to Zurich under the name Arno Volker.”

  Bailey opened the file and pointed at a fuzzy still taken from a surveillance tape, then laid the sketch next to it. There was a definite resemblance.

  “That could be him,” said Carter. “That could be him, all right. Good work.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Bailey said proudly.

  “What’s your next move?”

  “Track down the dealer in Zurich and put him under surveillance,” Bailey said confidently. “If Blondi is working for him, the chances are he’ll surface there, given that he

  doesn’t

  know

  we’re

  on

  to

  him

  yet.”

  the black sun 141

  Carter sat back in his chair, as if weighing the merits of Bailey’s plan.

  “Okay,” he said eventually. “I want you to run with this.”

  “Sir?”

  “It’s unusual, given your inexperience, but I’m a big believer in giving responsibility to those who show they can handle it. I’m going to hook you up with an Agency buddy of mine in Zurich. Ben Cody.”

  “You want me to fly to Zurich?” Bailey couldn’t believe what he was hearing. A few minutes ago he’d thought Carter was going to ask for his badge.

  “Let’s be clear—I’m not cutting you loose out there. I just want you to observe and report back to me on anything you learn or see, you got that? Nothing happens without the green light from me.”

  “Yessir. Thank you, sir.” Bailey hoped that the slight tremor in his voice was not as obvious as it sounded to him.

  Carter leaned across the desk and shook his hand. “By the way,” he said as he turned to leave, “what did you say this dealer’s name was?”

  Bailey consulted his notes before answering. “Lasche. Wolfgang Lasche.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  HAUPTBAHNHOF, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND

  January 7—7:12 p.m.

  It was a Friday night and the station was busy. A large group of teenage snowboarders were waiting in the middle of the concourse for their train to appear on the overhead monitors. They were huddled around a boom box as if it was a campfire, the continuous thump of its bass drowning out the occasional shrill whine from the PA system. The café that Tom had chosen afforded him a good view of the platforms as commuters spilled off the trains on their way home. Settling into a chair strategically positioned under a heat lamp, he ordered a strong black coffee from the bored-looking waiter. This was as good a place as any to kill time. But no sooner had his coffee arrived than his phone rang. It was Turnbull.

  “Any news?” said Turnbull, clearly in no mood for small talk. That suited Tom just fine. Theirs was a working relationship, a transaction based around a shared need and simple convenience that would end as soon as they both had what they wanted.

  “Yeah. But none of it makes any sense.”

  Tom

  summarized

  Lasche’s

  account

  of

  the

  Order

  of

  the

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  Death’s Head and its disappearance in the dying days of the war.

  “How does that help us?” Turnbull’s response echoed the conclusion Tom himself had reached. “What’s a Nazi secret society got to do with all this?”

  “Beats me. I feel I know less now than when I started. And I still don’t see what Renwick or Kristall Blade’s angle on all this is.”

  “Didn’t Lasche come up with anything else?”

  “Not much. Just that the badge we found on Weissman’s cap was the symbol of the Order. And that some SS officers had their blood group tattooed on their inner arms. If Weiss-man had tried to disguise his so he could pass it off as a prison tattoo, it would explain why your forensics people had a problem reading some of the numbers.”

  “That ties in.” Turnbull’s tone was more positive now.

  “What about your end? Any further intel on Weissman?”

  “Well, as you can imagine, the records from back then are pretty thin. First sighting we have is in northern Germany. One of the war crimes investigators reports Weissman being picked up, half-starved, near the Polish border by a patrol looking for Nazi officials. He claimed he’d been liberated from Auschwitz and had given the Russians the slip so he could find what was left of his family. Our boys wanted to check that he didn’t match the description of anyone they were looking for. He didn’t, and the tattoo sort of clinched it for him. Eventually he was offered the choice of asylum in the U.S., Israel, or Britain. He chose us. He’d trained as a chemist before the war and got a job working for a pharmaceutical company. After that, nothing. Not even a parking ticket. He paid his taxes. Lived a quiet life. The model citizen.”

  “Did he ever travel abroad?”

  “He renewed his passport three years ago. Went to Geneva, according to his daughter’s statement, to attend some bird-watching conference. Apart from that, he stayed put.”

  “Clearly he had, or knew, something. Something Renwick and your Kristall Blade people

  wanted

  enough

  to

  kill

  him

  for.”

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  “Seems that way.” A pause. Then, “Did Connolly find anything in Austria?”

  Tom drained his coffee. “I’ll tell you in a couple of hours. I’m meeting him for dinner as

  soon

  as

  he

  gets

  in.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  RESTAURANT ZUNFTHAUS ZUR ZIMMERLEUTEN,

  NIEDERDORF, ZURICH

  January 7—9:02 p.m.

  Tom had arranged to meet Archie in a restaurant a short walk from the station in the old town. The building, originally a carpenters’ guildhall, dated back to 1336. From the outside it resembled a small castle perched on the banks of the river, complete with turret and flagpole.

  Inside, a baroque staircase led up to a baronial dining room, oak paneling covered the walls, thick stone mullions separated stained-glass windows emblazoned with various coats of arms. It was a favorite with local banking grandees and tourists alike, but at this hour it was relatively quiet.

  “Whiskey,” Archie called out as he approached the table where Tom sat waiting for him. “No ice.”

  The waiter looked to Tom in confusion.

  “Ein Whiskey,” Tom confirmed. “Ohne Eis. Danke.” Archie dropped his bag to the floor and sat down with a sigh as the waiter disappeared. “Good trip?” “Delayed, and the stewardess had a mustache. Apart from that, perfect.” Tom laughed. “And what did Lammers have to say?”

  146 james twining

  “Not much. I think the six feet of earth and the gravestone may have been muffling the sound of his voice.”

  “He’s dead?” Tom exclaimed.

  “Three years ago. House fire.”

  “Shit!” Tom shook his head ruefully. “So we’
re right back where we started.”

  “Not quite.” Archie smiled. “It turns out that his niece now lives in his old house. I showed her the photos of the paintings and she took me to see this . . .” He took Tom’s digital camera from his pocket and handed it over.

  “It’s the same castle as in the painting,” said Tom, scrolling through the images.

  “You mean it’s an exact bloody copy. Lammers donated the window in the fifties after his wife died of cancer.”

  “Meaning that he must have had access to the original.”

  “Exactly. Question is, where is it now? Assuming it survived the fire, of course.”

  Archie sniffed. “Do you mind?” He held out a box of Marlboro Reds questioningly. Tom shook his head. He lit up.

  “What I’d like to know is what was so important about the painting that he had the window made in the first place?”

  “Presuming that it wasn’t just because he liked it,” said Archie, wrinkling his nose to suggest how unlikely he thought that was.

  “What about the niece? Did she know anything?”

  “This was all news to her. You should have seen her face when I showed her the photo of Weissman and the two other men in uniform. Guess who she recognized?”

  “Uncle Manfred?”

  Archie nodded. “She didn’t take it very well. But she did give me this.” He reached into his bag and pulled out the walnut veneer box. “Said she didn’t want it in the house anymore. Open it.” Tom turned the small key in the lock and eased back the lid. “It’s an Iron Cross,” said Archie, drawing heavily on his cigarette.

  “Not quite . . .” Tom had taken the medal out of the box and was studying it intently. In his palm, the forbidding black shape pulsed malevolently under the candle’s bluish the black sun 147

  glow. He rubbed his thumb across it, feeling the raised swastika and the date, 1939, beneath it.

  “It’s a Knight’s Cross,” he said. “I’ve come across them before. Looks the same, but there’s a different finish. The ribbon clasp is much more ornate, the edge is ribbed rather than smooth, and the frame is made from silver rather than just lacquered to look like silver.”

  “So it’s a higher award?”

  “It’s one of the highest the Third Reich could give. I think only about seven thousand were ever awarded, compared to millions of Iron Crosses. They’re very rare.”

  “Meaning that either Lammers was a collector, or . . .”

  “Or it was his and he’d done something that merited special recognition.” Tom turned it over and then looked up with a frown. “That’s weird.”

  “What?”

  “These normally had an embossed date on the back—1813, from when they were first issued in the Napoleonic wars.”

  “What’s that one got? I didn’t really look.”

  “You tell me.” Tom held it out, reverse side up. It was engraved with a series of seemingly random lines and curves and circles that looked for all the world like the mindless doodling of a young child.

  “You know, there was a medal like this round the neck of that mannequin at Weissman’s house. I had to unclip it before I could get the jacket off.”

  “Worth checking out,” Tom said. “Anything else in here?” He picked up the box and shook it.

  “I don’t think so,” Archie said with a half smile. “Take a look for yourself.”

  Tom opened the box again, carefully studying its interior. Finding nothing, he put his index finger into the main compartment to measure its depth. It came up only to his second knuckle.

  “That’s strange,” he muttered, frowning.

  He pressed his finger against the side of the box. This time, it came right up to his knuckle. The inside was an inch shallower than it should have been. 148 james twining

  “There’s a false bottom,” Tom exclaimed.

  “I think so,” said Archie. “Christ knows how to open it, though. I thought you might have seen something like it before, so I didn’t muck about too much. Didn’t want to break it.”

  “It’s like one of those Russian trick boxes. Normally you have to slide one of the pieces of wood to get inside.”

  Given the lack of dents or telltale ridges in the box’s glossy, unbroken veneer, it was not immediately apparent which section might move. So Tom tried each side in turn, pressing his thumb against the wood, just above the bottom edge, and pushing it away from him.

  Nothing.

  He repeated the exercise in reverse, tugging each side toward him. Again nothing moved initially, but his persistence was finally rewarded by the bottom section of the right side moving maybe a quarter of an inch to reveal a tiny hairline crack. But there his progress stalled, for no matter how hard he pulled the lip of wood that sat raised above the front of the box, nothing would come free.

  “Try the opposite side,” Archie suggested. “Maybe there’s some sort of locking mechanism. It might have released a panel on the other side.”

  Tom tried to slide the opposite panel sideways, then down, then up. On his last attempt it moved easily, rising about two inches and exposing a small drawer with an ivory handle. His eyes wide with anticipation, Tom slid the drawer out.

  “What is it?” Archie asked, straining to see.

  Tom looked up, his eyes shining. “A key, I think.”

  The drawer, like the main compartment, was lined in red velvet. Under the restaurant’s dimmed lighting the object it contained glinted like tarnished silver. Archie reached in and grasped it, the metal fat and solid in his square fingers.

  “Funny sort of key.”

  About two inches long, the key was square rather than flat, and it had no teeth. Instead, each of its gleaming surfaces was engraved with a series of small hexagonal marks.

  “I think it’s for a digital lock. You know, like the one in that private bank in Monte Carlo.”

  the black sun 149

  “And what do you make of this . . . ?”

  The key’s sleek steel shaft was housed in an ugly triangular handle made of molded rubber. On one side of the handle was a small button, but nothing happened when Archie pressed it. The other side had been stamped with a series of interlocking calligraphic letters. Tom thought he could make out a V and a C, but it was hard to tell. “Owner’s initials? Maker’s logo? Could be anything.”

  “How are we going to find out?” Archie asked, returning the key to the secret drawer and shutting it again.

  “We’re in Zurich—how do you think I’m going to find out?” Tom asked with a smile.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Why not?”

  “Raj?” Archie sounded deeply suspicious.

  “Who else?”

  “Can we trust him?”

  “I guess there’s only one way to find out,” Tom said with a shrug.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  WIPKINGEN, ZURICH

  January 7—10:40 p.m.

  Away from the town center, the river Limmat flexes its way northwest into Zurich’s industrial zone, an uninspiring agglomeration of low-level warehouses and soaring concrete factories, black slate tiles slung over oppressive cinder grey walls, chimneys and heating vents coughing smoke.

  Tom and Archie made their way across the Wipkingen bridge, along Breitensteinstrasse and finally left down Amperestrasse, then negotiated the steep steps leading down to a poorly lit path that ran parallel to the river.

  “Are you sure it’s down here?” Archie asked, his tone suggesting that he found it highly unlikely. An embankment loomed nearly thirty feet above their heads, its brickwork obscured at ground level by decades of graffiti and flyer posting. On the opposite bank a few dull and greasy windows punctuated the blank gaze of a factory’s rear elevation like embrasures in a castle wall.

  “It was, last time I came,” Tom answered.

  “You’ve been here before? When?”

  “Three, four years ago. When we did that job in Venice, remember?”

  the black sun 151

>   “Oh yeah.” Archie chuckled. “If only they were all like that.”

  “If it hadn’t been for Raj, I’d have had to drill my way into that safe.”

  “All right, all right,” Archie conceded. “So he’s a good locksmith.”

  “He’s the best in the business and you know it.”

  “Mmm . . .” Archie shrugged noncommittally.

  Tom sighed. Six months out of the game had done little to dull Archie’s natural wariness toward almost every other living being he came across—especially when money was involved. Dhutta still owed them a couple thousand bucks for some information they had supplied him a few years before, and he had proven remarkably elusive ever since, hence Archie’s misgivings. To Archie, debtors—especially anyone in debt to him—were to be treated with the utmost caution.

  Tom stopped beside a steel door set into the embankment, its original black paint barely visible under a thick collage of posters advertising raves, DJ nights, and various other local events. Above the door was a bright yellow sign showing a lightning bolt within a black triangle.

  “You must be joking!” Archie gave an impatient laugh. “Here?”

  “You know what he’s like about personal security. This helps keep most people at a safe distance.”

  Tom ran his hand over the brickwork to the right of the door at about waist height. Eventually he found what he was looking for, a single brick that protruded a little beyond those around it. It sank slightly under his touch, then sprang back to its original position. From somewhere deep within the embankment, they heard a bell ring.

  “I want you on your best behavior, Archie. Don’t get started. Raj is jumpy enough without you stirring things up.”

  Archie growled a response that was interrupted by the hum of an invisible intercom.

  “Yes, hello?” A high-pitched, almost feminine voice.

  “Raj? It’s Tom Kirk and Archie Connolly.”

  There was a long silence, then: “What do you want?”

  “To

  talk.”

  152 james twining

  “Look, I haven’t got the money, if that’s what this is about. I can get it. Tomorrow. I can get it tomorrow. Today’s no good. I’m busy. I’ve been very, very busy. Tomorrow, okay?” Dhutta spoke quickly with a strong Indian accent, barely pausing between sentences.