Douglas Preston: Cold Vengeance

She stepped back, glanced around at the surrounding buildings. Nobody had seen or heard her; nobody was taking any notice. She looked up at the structure before her. It remained dark and silent as the grave.

She returned her attention to the window. Wary of a motion sensor, she aimed a flashlight through it, but could see very little save filing cabinets and stacks of books. The lead tape was a rudimentary alarm system, and she suspected that whatever existed in the interior — if anything — might be as lame. Using a dental mirror, she was able to direct the flashlight beam into all corners of the room, and spotted nothing resembling a motion detector, infrared or laser trip alarms.

She stuck her arm in and waved it around, ready to run at the first sign of a red light coming on somewhere in the darkness.

Nothing.

Okay, then. She turned around, stuck her feet through the hole, carefully worked her way in, dropped to the floor, then pulled her knapsack in behind her.

Again she waited in the dark, motionless, looking for any blinking lights, any indication of a security system. All was quiet.

She pulled a chair from one corner and placed it below the window, in case she needed to make a quick escape. Then she glanced around. There was just enough moonlight to make out the contents of the room: as she had noticed from outside, it seemed to be primarily a storage area, full of metal cabinets, yellowing paper files, and piles of books.

She moved toward the first pile of books and lifted the grimy plastic cover. It exposed a stack of old, identical, buckram-bound hardcovers, each one sporting a large black swastika in a white circle, surrounded by a field of red.

The book was Mein Kampf , and the author was Adolf Hitler.

NAZIS. CORRIE LOWERED THE PLASTIC SHEET, taking care not to rustle it. A chill traveled down her spine. She couldn’t seem to move. Everything Betterton had told her now began falling into place. The building had been around since World War II; the neighborhood had been a German enclave; that killer the reporter talked about had had a German accent. And now, this.

These weren’t drug smugglers. These were Nazis — and they must have been operating in this house since World War II. Even after Germany surrendered, even after the Nuremberg Trials, even after the Soviet occupation of East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall, they’d been operating. It seemed incredible, unbelievable. All the original Nazis would be dead by now — wouldn’t they? Who were these people? And what in God’s name were they still doing after all these years?

If Pendergast didn’t know about this, and she suspected he didn’t, it was imperative for her to learn more.

She moved with great caution now, her heart beating hard. Although she had seen no sign of activity, no sign of anyone coming or going, there still might be people in the house. She couldn’t be certain.

In the corner sat a table with some electronic equipment, also covered by grimy plastic. She raised one corner, slowly, silently, to find herself staring at a collection of vintage radio equipment. Next, she turned her attention to the filing cabinets, examining the labels. They were in German and she didn’t know the language. She chose one at random, found it locked, and took out her tools. In a minute she had picked the simple lock and eased open the drawer. Nothing. The drawer was empty. But based on the lines of dust coating the upper edges of the drawer, it looked like it had until recently been full.

Several other drawers confirmed the same thing. Whatever papers that had been kept there were gone — although not long gone.

Taking out her flashlight and shining it briefly around, she spied doors in each of the far walls. One of them had to lead upstairs. She moved toward the closest, grasped its knob, and pulled it open with infinite care, keeping the squeak from the rusty hinges to an absolute minimum.

Her light revealed a room, tiled in white on the floor, ceiling, and all four walls. A naked steel chair was bolted in the middle, and under the chair was a drain. Steel cuffs dangled from the arms and legs of the chair. In the corner a hose was coiled up, detached from a rusty faucet.

She retreated, feeling faintly sick, and moved to the door on the other side of the basement room. This one led to a narrow staircase.

At the top of the landing was another closed door. Corrie listened for a long time, then grasped the doorknob and eased it open a quarter of an inch. A quick examination with the dental mirror showed a dusty, disused kitchen. She pushed the door wide and looked around the kitchen, then passed quietly through to a dining room, and then into an ornate sitting room beyond. It was decorated in a heavy, encrusted Bavarian hunting-lodge style: antlers mounted on paneled walls, massive carved furniture, landscapes in heavy frames, racks of antique rifles and carbines. A shaggy boar’s head with gleaming yellow tusks and fierce glass eyes dominated the mantelpiece. She quickly scanned the bookcases and searched a few cabinets. The documents and books were all in German.

She moved into the hall. Here she stood, barely breathing, listening intently. All remained silent. At last she climbed the stairs, one at a time, pausing on each tread to listen. At the second-floor landing she waited again, examining the closed doors, and then opened one at random. It disclosed a room almost devoid of furniture beyond a skeletal bed frame, a table, a chair, and a bookshelf. A broken window looked onto the back garden, shards of glass still littering the sill. The window was barred.

She checked the other rooms on the second floor. All were similar — all bedrooms, all stripped — except for the last room. That one turned out to be a dust-choked photographic workshop and darkroom, and in addition contained several printing presses and primitive-looking photocopying machines. Racks of copper printing plates of all sizes lined one wall, many engraved with elaborate and official-looking patterns and seals. It appeared to have been an old document-counterfeiting operation.

Back in the hall, she climbed the stairs to the third floor. She found herself in a large attic that had been divided into two rooms. The first — the room in which she now stood — was very strange. The floor was covered by thick, Persian-looking rugs. Dozens of candles, large and fat, sat in ornate freestanding holders, pools of melted wax hanging stalactite-like from their bases. On the walls were black tapestries covered with bizarre yellow-and gold-colored symbols, some sewn on, others fashioned from thick felt: hexagrams, astronomical symbols, lidless eyes, interlocking triangles, five- and six-pointed stars. At the base of one such tapestry was emblazoned a single word: ARARITA. In one corner of the room, a series of three marble steps led up to what looked like an altar.

This was just too creepy, and she backed away. One last room, and then she’d get the hell out.

Shivering, she moved through a low doorway into the attic’s second room. It was full of bookshelves and had once been a library, or perhaps a research room. But now all the bookshelves were empty, the walls barren save for a single, moth-eaten Nazi flag hanging limply against the far wall.

In the middle of the room stood a large industrial paper shredder of new manufacture, plugged into the wall and looking ludicrously out of place in what was otherwise a midcentury time capsule. On one side of it stood a dozen tottering stacks of paper, and on the other a series of black garbage bags full of the shredded result. A closet door stood open in the far wall.

She thought of the empty filing cabinets downstairs, the vacant bedrooms. Whatever had gone down here was now quickly becoming history: the place showed every indication of being methodically stripped of its incriminating contents.