The Holcroft Covenant

by Robert Ludlum

"This is my new friend from America. Mr. Holcroft."

  "Yes, we met earlier."

  "Of course you did. You gave me his briefcase." Kessler patted Noel's attache case, next to him on the seat. "I'm drinking scotch. Join me, Mr. Holcroft?"

  "Scotch'll be fine. Just ice."

  The manager nodded and left. Noel settled back in the seat. Kessler exuded a kind of weary warmth; it was an expression of tolerance from an intellect constantly exposed to lesser minds but too kind to dwell on comparisons. Holcroft had known several men like that. Among them were his finest teachers. He was comfortable with Erich Kessler; it was a good way to begin.

  "Thanks so much for seeing me. I've got a lot to tell you."

  "Catch your breath first," said Kessler. "Have a drink. Calm down."

  "What?"

  "You've had a difficult time. It's written all over your face."

  "It's that obvious?"

  "I'd say you were that distraught, Mr. Holcroft."

  "It's Noel. Please. We should get to know each other."

  "A pleasant prospect, I'm sure. My name is Erich. It's a chilly night outside. Too cold to go without an overcoat. Yet you obviously arrived without one. There's no checkroom here."

  "I was wearing one. I had to get rid of it I'll explain."

  "You don't have to."

  "I'm afraid I do. I wish I didn't, but it's part of my story."

  "I see. Ah, here's your scotch."

  A waiter deposited the glass in front of Holcroft, then stepped back and drew the red-checked curtain across the booth.

  "As I said, it's part of the story." Noel drank.

  "Take your time. There's no hurry."

  "You said you had guests at your house."

  "A guest A friend of my brother's, from München.

  He's a delightful fellow, but long-winded. A trait not unknown among doctors. You've rescued me for the evening."

  "Won't your wife be upset?"

  "I'm not married. I was, but I'm afraid university life was rather confining for her."

  "I'm sorry."

  "She's not. She married an acrobat. Can you imagine? From the academic groves to the rarefied heights of alternating trapezes. We're still good friends."

  "I think it would be difficult not to be friendly with you."

  "Oh, I'm a terror in the lecture rooms. A veritable Hon."

  "Who roars but can't bring himself to bite," said Noel.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Nothing. I was remembering a conversation I had last night. With someone else."

  "Feeling better?"

  "That's funny."

  "What is?"

  "That's what I said last night."

  "With this someone else?" Kessler smiled again. "Your face seems more relaxed."

  "If it was any more relaxed, it'd be draped over the table."

  "Perhaps some food?"

  "Not yet. I'd like to start; there's a great deal to tell you, and you're going to have a lot of questions."

  "Then I shall listen carefully. Oh, I forgot. Your briefcase."

  The German reached beside him and lifted the attache case to the top of the table.

  Holcroft unlocked the case, but did not open it. "There are papers in here you'll want to study. They're not complete, but they'll serve as confirmation for some of the things I'm going to tell you."

  "Confirmation? Are the things you say you must tell me so difficult to accept?"

  "They may be," said Noel. He felt sorry for this good-natured scholar. The peaceful world he lived in was about to collapse around him. "What I'm going to say to you may interrupt your life, as it has mine. I don't think

  that can be avoided. At least, I couldn't avoid it, because I couldn't walk away from it. Part of the reason was selfish; there's a great deal of money involved that will come to me personally — as it will come to you. But there are other factors that are much more important than either you or me. I know that's true, because if it weren't, I'd have run away by now. But I won't run. I'm going to do what I've been asked to do because it's right. And because there are people I hate who want to stop me. They killed someone I loved very much. They tried to kill another." Holcroft stopped suddenly; he had not meant to go this far. The fear and the rage were coming together. He had lost control; he was talking too much. "I'm sorry. I could be reading a lot of things into all this that don't belong. I don't mean to frighten you."

  Kessler put his hand on Noel's arm. "Frightening me isn't a concern. You're overwrought and exhausted, my friend. Apparently, terrible things have happened to you."

  Holcroft drank several swallows of whiskey, trying to numb the pain in his groin and his neck. "I won't lie. They have. But I didn't want to start this way. It wasn't very bright."

  Kessler removed his hand from Noel's arm. "Let me say something. I've known you less than five minutes, and I don't think being bright is relevant. You're obviously a highly intelligent man — a very honest one, too — and you've been under a great strain. Why not simply start at the beginning without worrying how it affects me?"

  "Okay." Holcroft put his arms on the table, his hands around the glass of whiskey. "I'll begin by asking you if you've ever heard the names Von Tiebolt and . . . Clausen."

  Kessler stared at Noel for a moment "Yes," he said. "They go back many years — to when I was a child — but of course I've heard them. Clausen and Von Tiebolt. They were friends of my father's. I was very young, around ten or eleven. They came to our house frequently, if I recall, at the end of the war. I do remember Clausen; at least I think I do. He was a tall man and quite magnetic."

  "Tell me about him."

  "There's not much I can remember."

  "Anything you can. Please."

  "Again, I'm not sure how to put it. Clausen dominated a room without making any effort to do so. When he spoke, everyone listened, yet I don't recall his ever raising his voice. He seemed to be a kind man, concerned for others, but extremely strong willed. I thought once — and remember, these were the thoughts of a child — that he was someone who had lived with much pain."

  A man in agony had cried out to him. "What kind of pain?"

  "I have no idea; it was only a child's impression. You would have to have seen his eyes to understand. No matter whom he looked at, young or old, important or not, he gave that person his full concentration. I do remember that; it was not a common trait in those days. In a way, I picture Clausen more clearly than I do my own father, and certainly more than Von Tiebolt. Why are you interested in him?"

  "He was my father."

  Kessler's mouth opened in astonishment. "You?" he whispered. "Clausen's son?"

  Noel nodded. "My natural father, not the father I knew."

  "Then your mother was ..." Kessler stopped.

  "Althene Clausen. Did you ever hear anyone speak of her?"

  "Never by name, and never in Clausen's presence. Ever. She was spoken of in whispers. The woman who left the great man, the American enemy who fled the fatherland with their — You! You were the child she took from him!"

  "Took with her, kept from him, is the way she puts it"

  "She's still alive?"

  "Very much so."

  "It's all so incredible." Kessler shook his head. "After all these years, a man I remember so vividly. He was extraordinary."

  "They were all extraordinary."

  "Who?"

  "The three of them. Clausen, Von Tiebolt, and Kessler. Tell me, do you know how your father died?"

  "He killed himself. It was not unusual then. When the Reich collapsed, a lot of people did. For most of them it was easier that way."

  "For some it was the only way."

  "Nürnberg?"

  "No, Geneva. To protect Geneva."

  "I don't understand you."

  "You will." Holcroft opened his attache case, took out the pages he had clipped together, and gave them to Kessler. "There's a bank in Geneva that has an account that can be released for specific purposes only by the
consent of three people-----"

  As he had done twice before, Noel told the story of the massive theft of over thirty years ago. But with Kessler, he told it all. He did not, as he had done with Gretchen, withhold specific facts; nor did he tell the story in stages, as he had with Helden. He left out nothing.

  ". . . monies were intercepted from the occupied countries, from the sales of art objects and the looting of museums. Wehrmacht payrolls were rerouted, millions stolen from the Ministry of Armaments and the — I can't remember the name, it's in the letter — but from the industrial complex. Everything was banked in Switzerland, in Geneva, with the help of a man named Manfredi."

  "Manfredi? I remember the name."

  "It's not surprising," said Holcroft. "Although I don't imagine he was mentioned too frequently. Where did you hear it?"

  "I don't know. After the war, I think."

  "From your mother?"

  "I don't think so. She died in July of 'forty-five and was in the hospital for most of the time. From someone else... I don't know."

  "Where did you live, with your father and mother dead?"

  "My brother and I moved in with our uncle, my mother's brother. It was lucky for us. He was an older man and never had much use for the Nazis. He found favor with the occupation forces. But please, go on."

  Noel did. He detailed the conditions of competence required by the directors of La Grande Banque de Genève, which led him into the dismissal of Gretchen Beaumont. He told Kessler of the Von Tiebolts' clouded migration to Rio, the birth of Helden, the killing of their mother, and their eventual flight from Brazil.

  They took the name of Tennyson and have been

  living in England for the past five years. Johann von Tie bolt is known as John Tennyson. He's a reporter for the Guardian. Gretchen married a man named Beaumont and Helden moved several months ago to Paris. I haven't met the brother, but I've . . . become friends with Helden. She's a remarkable girl."

  "Is she the 'someone else' you were with last night?"

  "Yes," replied Holcroft. "I want to tell you about her, what she's gone through, what she's going through now. She and thousands like her are part of the story."

  "I think I may know," said Kessler. "Die Verwün schte Kinder."

  "The what?"

  "The Verwünschte Kinder. Verwünschung is German for a curse. Or one damned."

  "The Children of the Damned," said Noel. "She used the expression."

  "It's a term they gave themselves. Thousands of young people — not so young now — who fled the country because they convinced themselves they couldn't live with the guilt of Nazi Germany. They rejected everything German, sought new identities, new life-styles. They're very much like those hordes of young Americans who left the United States for Canada and Sweden in protest against the Vietnam policies. These groups form subcultures, but none can really reject their roots. They are German; they are American. They migrate in packs and cling together, taking strength from the very pasts they've rejected. The proddings of guilt are a heavy burden. Can you understand?"

  "Not really," said Holcroft. "But then, I'm not built that way. I'm not going to take on a guilt that isn't mine."

  Kessler looked into Noel's eyes. "I submit you may have. You say you won't run from this covenant of yours, yet terrible things have happened to you."

  Holcroft considered the scholar's words. "There may be some truth in that, but the circumstances are different I didn't leave anything. I guess I was selected."

  "Not part of the damned," said Kessler, "but part of the chosen?"

  "Privileged, anyway."

  The scholar nodded. "There's a word for that, too. Perhaps you've heard of it. Sonnenkinder."

  "Sonnenkinder?" Noel frowned. "If I remember, it was in one of those courses I didn't exactly shine in. Anthropology, maybe."

  "Or philosophy," suggested Kessler. "It's a philosophical concept developed by Thomas J. Perry, in England in the nineteen-twenties, and before him by Bacho-fen, in Switzerland, and by his disciples in München. The theory being that the Sonnenkinder — the Children of the Sun — have been with us throughout the ages. They're the shapers of history, the most brilliant among us, rulers of epochs... the privileged."

  Holcroft nodded. "I remember now. They were ruined by that privilege of theirs. They became depraved, or something. Incestuous, I think."

  "It's only a theory," said Kessler. "We're straying again; you're an easy man to talk to. You were saying about this Von Tiebolt daughter that life is difficult for her."

  "For all of them. And more than difficult. It's crazy. They're running all the time. They have to live like fugitives."

  "They're easy prey for fanatics," agreed Erich.

  "Like the ODESSA and the Rache?"

  "Yes. Such organizations can't function efficiently within Germany itself; they're not tolerated. So they operate in other countries where disaffected expatriates such as the Verwünschkinder have gravitated. They want only to stay alive and vital, waiting for the chance to return to Germany."

  "Return?"

  Kessler held up his hand. "Please God, they never will, but they can't accept that. The Rache once wanted the Bonn government to be an arm of the Comintern, but even Moscow rejected them; they've become nothing more than terrorists. The ODESSA have always wanted to revive Nazism. They're scorned in Germany."

  "Still, they go after the children," said Noel. "Helden used the phrase 'damned for what they were, damned for what they weren't.'"

  "An apt judgment."

  "They should be stopped. Some of that money in Geneva should be used to cripple the ODESSA and the Rache."

  "I wouldn't disagree with you."

  "I'm glad to hear that," said Holcroft "Let's get back to Geneva."

  "By all means."

  Noel had covered the objectives of the covenant and defined the conditions demanded of the inheritors. It was time to concentrate on what had happened to him.

  He began with the murder on the plane, the terror in New York, the rearranged apartment, the letter from the men of Wolfsschanze, the telephone call from Peter Baldwin and the subsequent brutal killings it engendered. He spoke of the flight to Rio and a man with thick eyebrows: Anthony Beaumont, ODESSA agent. He told of the doctored records at Rio's Department of Immigration and the strange meeting with Maurice Graff. He emphasized MI Five's intrusion in London and the astonishing news that British Intelligence believed Johann von Tiebolt was the assassin they called the Tinamou.

  "The Tinamou?" broke in Kessler, stunned, his face flushed. It was his first interruption of Holcroft's narrative.

  "Yes. You know something about him?"

  "Only what I've read."

  "I gather some people think he's been responsible for dozens of assassinations."

  "And the British think it's Johann von Tiebolt?"

  "They're wrong," said Noel. "I'm certain they know it now. Something happened yesterday afternoon that proves it. You'll understand when I come to it."

  "Go on."

  He touched briefly on the evening with Gretchen, the photograph of Anthony Beaumont. He went on to Helden and Herr Oberst, then to the death of Richard Holcroft. He described the calls between himself and a detective in New York named Miles, as well as conversations with his mother.

  He told of the green Fiat that had followed them to Barbizon, and the man with the pockmarked face.

  Then came the madness of the fête d'hiver. How he had tried to trap the man in the Fiat and had himself nearly been killed.

  "I told you a few minutes ago the British were wrong about Tennyson," Noel said.

  "Tennyson? Oh, the name Von Tiebolt assumed."

  "That's right MI Five was convinced that everything

  that happened in Montereau, including the man with the pockmarked face who was following us, was the work of the Tinamou. But that man was killed; he worked for Von Tiebolt; they knew that. Helden even confirmed it."

  "And," interrupted Kessler, "the Tinamou would
not kill his own man."

  "Exactly."

  "Then the agent will tell his superiors...."

  "He can't," broke in Noel. "He was shot saving Hel den's life. But identifications will be made; the British will piece it together."

  "Will the British find the agent who died?"

  "Word will get back to them. It has to. The police were everywhere; they'll find his body."

  "Can he be traced to you?"

  "It's possible. We fought in the square; people will remember. But as Helden put it: We were followed; we didn't do the following. There's no reason why we should know anything."

  "You sound unsure."

  "Before the agent died, I decided to mention Baldwin's name to him, to see if I could learn anything. He reacted as if I'd fired a gun in front of his face. He pleaded with Helden and me to get in touch with a man named Payton-Jones. We were supposed to tell him everything that happened; tell him to find out who attacked us, who killed Von Tiebolt's man, and most important, to tell MI Five he believed it was all related to Peter Baldwin."

  "To Baldwin? He'd been with MI Six, you said?"

  "Yes. He'd gone to them some time ago with information about the survivors of Wolfsschanze."

  "Wolfsschanze?" Kessler repeated the name softly. "That was the letter Manfredi gave you in Geneva, the one written over thirty years ago."

  "That's right. The agent said we were to tell Payton-Jones to go back to Baldwin's file. To 'code Wolfsschanze.' That was the phrase he used."

  "In his phone call to you in New York, did Baldwin mention Wolfsschanze?" asked Kessler.

  "No. He said only that I should stay away from Geneva; that he knew things no one else knew. Then he went to answer the door and he never came back."

  Kessler's eyes were colder now. "So Baldwin had learned about Geneva and this Wolfsschanze's commitment to it."

  "How much he learned we don't know. It could be very little, just rumors."

  "But these rumors are enough to stop you from going to MI Five. Even the advantage of warning them that Beaumont is ODESSA could be too great a price. The British would question you and the girl at length; there are a thousand ways, and they're experts. Baldwin's name might surface and they would go back to his file. You can't take that chance."

  "I came to the same conclusion," said Holcroft, impressed.