John Gardner - Seafire

A further interesting story was turned up in interviews with two old people who were certainly members of the Tarn household during that fateful period. They claimed – but would not give a signed legal statement – that in the late 1930s the head housekeeper of Tarnenwerder was a young Austrian woman called Ilse Katz, or strictly Katzstein. Ilse, they told the investigating officers, became pregnant by Klaus von Tarn and the family kept that secret close. Belowstairs there was talk that the old Graf von Tarn had promised to have the girl looked after and would provide for the child in return for a legal document stating that Ilse's offspring would never attempt to claim the family name, or attempt to make any financial demands on the von Tarn fortune. No legal document had ever surfaced.

Ilse Katz, the story went, had given birth to a son in the summer of 1939, and a couple of days before the SS arrived to arrest the family and take over Tarnenwerder and its lands, she suddenly disappeared, together with a vast haul of von Tarn jewelry valued at millions of reichsmarks.

Both the former retainers swore the story was true, though other locals claimed that the pair were in the first stages of senility. What did appear to be certain was that the vast fortune in jewelry and other valuables disappeared – though many said that senior SS officers looted it to line their own pockets.

If the supposed Tarns who arrived in England as Jewish Austrian refugees in early 1940 were in fact the housekeeper, Ilse, and her illegitimate son, it would account for the wealth they brought with them – the same wealth that had started Max Tarn in the freight-haulage business in the early 1960s.

The rest, Bond thought as he read it, was history: Max Tarn of Tarn Freight Ltd. had branched out; invested; acquired the stock of other companies until his freight business was the largest in the United Kingdom. To Tarn Freight he had added four major magazines, and in the boom caused by the likes of Playboy and Penthouse , in the mid-sixties he had launched Tarn Man and Tarn Girl , followed by King of Hearts and King of Clubs , the latter almost a house magazine for his famous chain of Black Shield Clubs, which took off not merely in the U.K. but also in the United States and, then, almost worldwide.

The huge amounts of money engendered by these businesses financed Tarn Shipping and, later, the relatively new Tarn Cruise Lines, Inc.

Money begets money, and the business empire stretched its tentacles into almost every lucrative field, from the business of import and export through the chains of clubs and magazines, to luxury hotels. His estimated personal wealth now ran to many billions, while he owned properties in every major world city. There was even a rumor – never traced – of a private island in the Caribbean, according to some.

The knighthood had come in the mid-seventies, for services to charity organizations. Max Tarn was full of charity, it appeared, and, after all, most of the money could be run tax-free. In 1982, at the age of forty-three, he had married the twenty-six-year-old Trish Nuzzi, arguably the most sought-after model of her time. There were those who predicted the marriage could not last more than a year or so because of Max Tarn's constant traveling in search of bigger and better money-spinning ventures, but the Cassandras were proved wrong. Lady Trish blossomed, and wherever Max Tarn went, on business or pleasure. Lady Trish went with him, both of the Tarns trailing a small entourage of hairdressers, secretaries, and bodyguards.

The multitude of Tarn companies worldwide supplied company jets, and it appeared to most people – from economic editors to the man in the street – that the Tarns lived and worked as a new world-class royalty.

The final pages of the dossier dealt with the scant evidence that had sparked the recent probings. Plenty of smoke, but as yet no real fire. Enough hard evidence to warrant an investigation – which would alert Tarn – but not really enough to make arrests.

"Interesting reading?" Flicka had remained moderately silent while he had leafed through the document, and Bond snapped off the reading light, looked up, and saw they had about twenty minutes before reaching Cambridge. He returned the dossier to his briefcase and sighed.

"It appears we'll be moving in a rarefied atmosphere if we get close to Sir Max and Lady Trish." He stretched in his seat. "I'm really quite surprised that they're actually staying in a hotel like normal human beings. Reading that thing, you'd think he owned one of the colleges as his personal home."

"They are noted for parading their riches, James. Or hadn't you noticed?"

"I'm not strong on the gossip columns."

"You're not exactly weak on the financial pages, though, are you?"

"I see the names, yes. But I didn't quite realize how powerful he really was. A field marshal of industry rather than a captain. The man's like a Renaissance prince, Fredericka."

"The man is a Renaissance prince, my dear. Jealous?"

"Never fancied being one, actually. Too many courtiers waiting around to stab you in the back."

"But Max Tarn is something else. Not just a Renaissance prince, but a saint – contributions to every known charity, hospital wards, libraries, art collections named after him. The man's a king in his own right. That's why I wondered if he could be frightened enough to do a runner. People like that usually imagine they're above the law."

"There are things in his background," Bond mused. "Dirty work in his lineage. That could be a nice little lever."

"Really? Go on, James, tell me about his grubby background."

"Well, it appears that he might or might not really be connected to the old and revered Prussian family whose name he bears."

"Has he ever claimed to be?"

"Not in so many words."

"There's firm evidence?"

"No. But there's enough to make him pause for a moment. Reading between the lines, his birthright may well have been stolen on his behalf, and there's no evidence that he's actually been back to the supposed site of his inheritance, which, incidentally, is in need of the Tarn billions. The old estate is in ruins, and you'd have thought that he'd have dropped in to lay the ghosts of his past – that is, if he really believed himself to have come from old German nobility. The place, it appears, reeks with specters from long ago."

"You going to haunt him a bit, then?"

"Nothing like disturbing a few shades to put the mockers on the living." Bond smiled to himself.

A light sprinkle of rain fell as Flicka threaded the car through the Cambridge one-way system into Regent Street and to the front of the University Arms Hotel by the wide tract of parkland known to generations of students as Parker's Piece.

It was just past ten o'clock, and in front of them a Rolls Royce was being unloaded, boxed in by two sleek black Rovers.

One of the porters motioned to them to stay back, while another came running over: "If you'd just wait a moment, ma'am." He bent to speak with Flicka through her rolled-down window. "We'll be with you in a second. Checking in?"

She nodded, but her eyes were on four people alighting from the Rolls. One was a tall, slender woman, one hand lifted to a mane of black hair, her head thrown back as she laughed at something the man next to her was saying.

"Trish Nuzzi, model extraordinary, as I live and go green with envy," she muttered.

"And there's our specter," Bond breathed, taking in the equally slim, agile-looking man following Lady Trish. He had a dark, velvet-collared coat slung over his shoulders and a wide-brimmed hat set at a jaunty angle over the famous iron-gray hair. His back was ramrod straight and he looked as fit as an athlete about to take part in some strenuous Olympic sport. As the pair walked elegantly toward the hotel doors, Bond whispered, "They even look like Renaissance royalty. Lord, you can smell the money."