"Eagles? . . . 'You won't stop the eagles. Not this time.' Could he have meant the Luftwaffe? The Wehrmacht?"
"Not likely." Tennyson looked down at the pages in front of him. He tapped his finger at something he had written down. "Here. 'Your Wolfsschanze.' Your Wolfsschanze.... Meaning ours, not theirs."
"What are you talking about?" said Kessler. "We are Wolfsschanze; the men of Wolfsschanze are Sonnenkind er!"
Tennyson ignored the interruption. "Von Stauffen berg, Olbricht, Von Falkenhausen, and Höpner. Rommel called them 'the true eagles of Germany.' They were the insurrectionists, the Führer's would-be assassins. All were shot; Rommel, ordered to take his own life. Those are the eagles he referred to. Their Wolfsschanze, not ours."
"Where does it lead us? For God's sake, Johann, I'm exhausted. I can't go on!"
Tennyson had covered a dozen pages of paper; now he shuffled them, underlining words, circling phrases. "You may have said enough," he replied. "It's here ... in this section. He used the words 'butchers and clowns,' and then, 'you won't stop the eagles.'. . . Only seconds later, Holcroft told him that the account would be tied up for years, that there were conditions . . .'the money frozen, sent back into the ground.' The man repeated the phrase 'back into the ground,' saying it was the flaw. But then he added that there would be 'no scorched earth.' 'Scorched earth.' 'There will be no ... scorched earth.'"
The blond man's upper body tensed. He leaned back in the chair, his sculptured face twisted in concentration, his cold eyes staring rigidly at the words on the paper. "It couldn't be ... after all these years. Operation Barbaros-sa! The 'scorched earth' of Barbarossa! Oh, my God, the Nachrichtendienst. It's the Nachrichtendienst!"
"What are you talking about?" Kessler said. " 'Bar-barossa' was Hitler's first invasion north, a magnificent victory."
"He called it a victory. The Prussians called it a disaster. A hollow victory, written in blood. Whole divisions unprepared, decimated. . . . 'We took the land,' the generals said. 'We took the worthless, scorched earth of Barbarossa.' Out of it came the Nachrichtendienst"
"What was it?"
"An intelligence unit Rarefied, exclusively Junker, a corps of aristocrats. Later, there were those who thought it was a Gehlen operation, designed to sow distrust between the Russians and the West. But it wasn't; it was solely its own. It loathed Hitler; it scorned the Schutzstaf fel — 'SS garbage' was the term it used; it hated the commanders of the Luftwaffe. All were called 'butchers and clowns.' It was above the war, above the party. It was only for Germany. Their Germany."
"Say what you mean, Johann!" shouted Kessler.
"The Nachrichtendienst survives. It's the intruder. It wants to destroy Geneva. It will stop at nothing to abort the Fourth Reich before it's born."
27
Noel waited on the bridge, watching the lights of Paris flicker like clusters of tiny candles. He had reached Hel den at Gallimard; she had agreed to meet him after work on the Pont Neuf. He had tried to persuade her to drive to the hotel in Argenteuil, but she had declined his offer.
"You promised me days, weeks, if I wished," he said.
"I promised us both, my darling, and we'll have them. But not Argenteuil. I'll explain when I see you."
It was barely five-fifteen; the winter night descended on Paris quickly, and the chill of the river wind penetrated him. He pulled up the collar of his secondhand overcoat to ward off the cold. He looked at his watch again; its hands had not moved. How could they have? No more than ten seconds had elapsed.
He felt like a young man waiting for a girl he had met at a country club in the summer moonlight, and he smiled to himself, feeling awkward and embarrassed, not wanting to acknowledge his anxiety. He was not in the moonlight on some warm summer's night. He was on a bridge in Paris, and the air was cold, and he was dressed in a secondhand overcoat, and in his pocket was a gun.
He saw her walking onto the bridge. She was wearing the black raincoat, her blond hah: encased by a dark-red scarf that framed her face. Her pace was steady, neither rapid nor casual; she was a lone woman going home from her place of work. Except for her striking features — only hinted at in the distance — she was like thousands of other women in Paris, heading home in the early evening.
She saw him. He started walking toward her, but she held up her hand, a signal for him to remain where he was. He paid no attention, wanting to reach her quickly, his arms held out. She walked into them and they embraced, and he felt warm in the comfort of being with
her again. She pulled her head back and looked at him, then pretended to be firm, but her eyes smiled.
"You must never run on a bridge," she said. "A man running across a bridge stands out. One strolls over the water; one doesn't race."
"I missed you. I don't give a damn."
"You must learn to. How was Berlin?"
He put his arm around her shoulder and they started toward the quai Saint-Bernard, and the Left Bank. "I've got a lot to tell you, some good, some not so good. But if learning something is progress, I think we've taken a couple of giant steps. Have you heard from your brother?"
"Yes. This afternoon. He called an hour after you did. His plans have changed; he can be in Paris tomorrow."
"That's the best news you could give me. At least, I think it is. I'll let you know tomorrow." They walked off the bridge and turned left along the riverbank. "Did you miss me?"
"Noel, you're mad. You left yesterday afternoon. I barely had time to get home, bathe, have a very-much-needed night's sleep, and get to work."
"You went home? To your apartment?"
"No, I — " She stopped and looked up at him, smiling. "Very good, Noel Holcroft, new recruit. Interrogate casually."
"I don't feel casual."
"You promised not to ask that question."
"Not specifically. I asked you if you were married, or living with someone — to which I got a negative to the first and a very oblique answer to the second — but I never actually promised not to try and find out where you live."
"You implied it, my darling. One day I'll tell you, and you'll see how foolish you are."
"Tell me now. I'm in love. I want to know where my woman lives."
The smile disappeared from her lips. Then it returned, and she glanced up at him again. "You're like a little boy practicing a new word. You don't know me well enough to love me; I told you that."
"I forgot. You like women."
They're among my best friends."
"But you wouldn't want to marry one."
"I don't want to marry anyone."
"Good. It's less complicated. Just move in with me for the next ten years, exercisable options on both sides."
"You say such nice things."
They stopped at an intersection. He turned Helden to him, both his hands on her arms. "I say them because I mean them."
"I believe you," she said, looking at him curiously, her eyes part questioning, part fearful.
He saw the fear; it bothered him, and so he smiled. "Love me a little?"
She could not bring the smile to her lips. "I think I love you more than a little. You're a problem I didn't want. I'm not sure I can handle it."
"That's even better." He laughed and took her hand to cross the street "It's nice to know you don't have all the answers."
"Did you believe I did?"
"I thought you thought so."
"I don't."
"I know."
The restaurant was half filled with diners. Helden asked for a table in the rear, out of sight of the entrance. The proprietor nodded. It was apparent that he could not quite fathom why this belle femme would come into his establishment with such a poorly dressed companion. In his eyes was the comment: things were not going well for the girls of Paris these days. Nights.
"He doesn't approve of me," said Holcroft.
"There's hope for you, though. You grew in his estimation when you specified expensive whiskey. He grinned; didn't you see?"
"He was l
ooking at my jacket. It came from a somewhat better rack than the overcoat."
Helden laughed. "That overcoat's purpose was not high fashion. Did you use it in Berlin?"
"I used it. I wore it when I picked up a whore. Are you jealous?"
"Not of anyone accepting an offer from you dressed like that."
"She was a vision of loveliness."
"You're lucky. She was probably an ODESSA agent
and you've come down with a social disease, as planned. See a doctor before you see me again."
Noel took her hand. There was no humor in his voice when he spoke. "The ODESSA'S no concern of ours. Neither is the Rache. That's one — or two — of the things I learned in Berlin. It's doubtful either of them knows anything about Geneva."
Helden was stunned. "But what about Beaumont? You said he was ODESSA, that he followed you to Rio."
"I think he is ODESSA, and he did follow me, but not because of Geneva. He's tied in with Graff. Somehow he found out I was looking for Johann von Tiebolt; that was why he followed me. Not Geneva. I'll know more when I speak to your brother tomorrow. Anyway, Beau mont'll be out of the picture in a few days. Kessler's taking care of it. He said he'd make a call to someone in the Bonn government."
"It's that simple?"
"It's not that difficult. Any hint of ODESSA, especially in the military, is enough to start a battery of inquiries. Beaumont'll be pulled in."
"If it's not the ODESSA, or the Rache, who is it?"
"That's part of what I've got to tell you. I had to get rid of the mackinaw and the cap."
"Oh?" Helden was confused by the non sequitur.
He told her why, playing down the violence in the dark alleyway. Then he described the conversation with Kessler, realizing as he came to the end that he could not omit the murder of the unknown man in the leather jacket He would tell her brother about it tomorrow; to withhold it from Helden now would serve no purpose. When he had finished, she shuddered, pressing her fingers into the palm of her hand.
"How horrible. Did Kessler have any idea who he was, where he came from?"
"Not really. We went over everything he said a half-dozen times, trying to figure it out, but there wasn't that much. In Kessler's opinion he was part of a neo-Nazi group — descendants of the party, Kessler called them. A splinter faction that has no use for the ODESSA."
"How would they know about the account in Geneva?"
"I asked Kessler that. He said that the sort of manipulations required to get that money out of Ger-
many couldn't have been kept as quiet as we think; that someone somewhere could have learned about it."
"But Geneva is based on secrecy. Without it, it would collapse."
"Then it's a question of degree. When is a secret a secret? What separates confidential information from highly classified data? A handful of people found out about Geneva and want to stop us from getting the money and using it the way it's supposed to be used. They want it for themselves, so they're not going to expose it."
"But if they've learned that much, they know they can't get it."
"Not necessarily."
"Then they should be told!"
"I said as much to the man in the alley. I didn't convince him. Even if I had, it wouldn't make any difference now."
"But don't you see? Someone has to reach these people — whoever they are — and convince them they gain nothing by stopping you and my brother and Erich Kessler."
Holcroft drank. "I'm not sure we should do that. Kessler said something that bothered me when I heard it, and it bothers me now. He said that we — the 'we,' I guess, meaning all of us who haven't studied the subject that closely — never understood the hard-core Nazi. From the Nazi's point of view, it wasn't simply a question of how he could benefit; it was just as important to him that others do not benefit Kessler called it the 'essential de-structiveness.'"
Helden's frown returned. "So if they're told, they'll go after you. They'll kill the three of you, because without you, there's no Geneva."
"Not for another generation. That's motive enough. The money goes back into the vaults for another thirty years."
Helden brought her hand to her mouth. "Wait a minute; there's something terribly wrong. They've tried to kill you. You. From the beginning ... you."
Holcroft shook his head. "We can't be certain — "
"Not certain?" broke in Helden. "My God, what more do you want? You showed me your jacket. There was the strychnine on that plane, the shots La Rio. What more do you want?"
"I want to know who was really behind those things. That's why I have to talk to your brother."
"What can Johann tell you?"
"Whom he killed in Rio." Helden started to object; he took her hand again. "Let me explain. I think we're in the middle — I'm in the middle — of two fights, neither having anything to do with the other. Whatever happened to your brother in Rio has nothing to do with Geneva. That's where I made my mistake. I tied everything into Geneva. It's not; it's separate."
"I tried to tell you that," said Helden.
"I was slow. But then, no one's ever fired a gun at me, or tried to poison me, or shoved a knife in my stomach. Those kinds of things play hell with your thinking process. At least they do mine."
"Johann is a man of many interests, Noel," she said. "He can be very charming, very personable, but he can also be reticent. It's part of him. He's lived a strange life. Sometimes I think of him as a gadfly. He darts quickly from one place to another, one interest to another, always brilliantly, always leaving his mark, but not always wishing that mark to be recognized."
" 'He's here, he's there, he's everywhere,'" interrupted Holcroft. "You're describing some sort of Scarlet Pimpernel."
"Exactly. Johann may not tell you what happened in Rio."
"He has to. I have to know."
"Since it has nothing to do with Geneva, he may disagree."
"Then I'll try to convince him. We have to find out how vulnerable he is."
"Let's say he is vulnerable. What happens then?"
"He'd be disqualified from taking part in Geneva. We know he killed someone. You heard a man — a wealthy, influential man, you thought — say he wanted to see your brother hanged for murder. I know he tangled with Graff, and that means the ODESSA. He ran for his life. He took you and your sister with him, but he ran for his life. He's mixed up in a lot of complications; people are after him, and it's not unreasonable to think he could be blackmailed. That could shake Geneva; it could corrupt it."
"Do the bankers have to be told?" asked Helden.
Noel touched her cheek, forcing her to look at him. "I'd have to tell them. We're talking about seven hundred and eighty million dollars; about three men who did something remarkable. It was their gesture to history; I really believe that. If your brother puts it in jeopardy, or causes it to be misused, then maybe it's better that those millions get locked up for the next generation. But it doesn't have to be that way. According to the rules, you're the one who'd be the Von Tiebolt executrix."
Helden gazed at him. "I can't accept that, Noel. It must be Johann. Not only is he more qualified to be a part of Geneva; he deserves it I can't take that from him."
"And I can't give it to him. Not if he can hurt the covenant. Let's talk about it after I see him."
She studied his face; he felt awkward. She took his hand from her cheek and held it "You're a moral man, aren't you?"
"Not necessarily. Just angry. I'm sick of corruption in the rarefied circles of finance. There's been an awful lot of it in my country."
" 'Rarefied circles of finance'?"
"It's a phrase my father used in his letter to me."
"That's odd," said Helden.
"What is?"
"You've always called him Clausen, or Heinrich Clausen. Formal, rather distant."
Holcroft nodded, acknowledging the truth of her remark. "It's funny, because I really don't know any more about him now than I did before. But he's been described to me.
The way he looked, the way he talked, how people listened to him and were affected by him."
"Then you do know more about him."
"Not actually. Only impressions. A child's impressions, at that. But in a small way I think I've found him."
"When did your parents tell you about him?"
"Not my parents, not my ... stepfather. Just Althene. It was a couple of weeks after my twenty-fifth birthday. I was working then, a certified professional."
"Professional?" "I'm an architect, remember? I've almost forgotten."
"Your mother waited until you were twenty-five before she told you?"
"She was right. I don't think I could have handled it when I was younger. Good Lord. Noel Holcroft, Ameri-
can boy. Hot dogs and french fries, Shea Stadium and the Mets, the Garden and the Knicks; and college and friends whose fathers were soldiers in the big war, each one winning it in his own way. That fellow's told his real father was one of those heel-clicking sadists in the war movies, Christ, that kid would flip out."
"Why did she tell you at all, then?"
"On the remote chance that I'd find out for myself one day, and she didn't want that. She didn't think it would happen. She and Dick had covered the traces right down to a birth certificate which said I was their son. But there was another birth certificate. In Berlin. 'Clausen, male child. Mother — Althene. Father — Heinrich.' And there were people who knew she'd left him, left Germany. She wanted me to be prepared if it ever surfaced, if anyone for any reason ever remembered and tried to use the information. Prepared, incidentally, to deny it. To say there'd been another child — never mentioned in the house — who had died in infancy in England." "Which means there was another certificate. A death certificate."
"Yes. Properly recorded somewhere in London." Helden leaned back against the booth. "You and we are not so different after all. Our lives are full of false papers. What a luxury it must be not to live that way."
"Papers don't mean much to me. I've never hired anyone because of them, and I've never fired anyone because someone else brought them to me." Noel finished his drink. "I ask the questions myself. And I'm going to ask your brother some very tough ones. I hope to God he has the answers I want to hear."
The Holcroft Covenant Page 35
