Scott Mariani - The Mozart Conspiracy

‘You hide first,’ Clara said. ‘Let’s see if Maxy remembers the game.’

Leigh ran around the corner of a woodshed and squatted down behind an ornamental shrub. She heard Clara finish counting to ten and saying, ‘Max, go find Leigh! Find Leigh!’ Max instantly responded and came bounding over to her. He licked her face and she patted his big head.

Over the sweet, harmonious sound of the nuns’ singing came the steady thud of helicopter blades. Leigh looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun. There were two of them, high over the convent. They seemed to be moving slowly, hovering. ‘Someone must have got into trouble in the mountains,’ she said. But as the choppers grew nearer, the thump of their rotors filling the air, she could see they didn’t look like mountain rescue aircraft. They were black, unmarked. What did they want?

Clara followed her gaze for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders. ‘Anyway, now it’s my turn to hide. You hold Maxy by his collar and count to twenty.’

The child ran off. Leigh was still watching the two black helicopters as she counted. Eight, nine, ten, eleven … They were circling, descending, drowning out the nuns’ choir.

They were coming awfully close.

Leigh shivered. She didn’t like it. Fourteen, fifteen , sixteen…

Enough. She stopped counting. ‘Clara!’ she called out. ‘Come back!’

Clara didn’t hear, and kept running. The dog was pulling hard against Leigh’s grip, yearning to be set free. The helicopters were now only a hundred feet off the ground and the sound was deafening. They vanished from view behind the convent roofs. They were landing.

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Leigh let go of Max’s collar, and the big dog streaked across the snow towards where Clara had just disappeared round the side of one of the buildings.

Clara ran on, counting as she went. Any minute now, Maxy was going to come galloping after her. She glanced over her shoulder to see if he was there.

And gasped as she collided with something hard. She fell backwards into the snow.

A tall man she’d never seen before was looking down at her. His eyes were cold, and he wasn’t smiling.

Vienna

Black clouds scudded across the sky, and the wind was icy. Ben bought a copy of Die Presse from a newspaper stand. It was nearly midday but he wasn’t hungry. He was leaning against a wall reading it on the corner of Bankgasse and Löwelstrasse opposite the towering façade of the Burgtheater when he spotted Kinski’s car pull out of the traffic. The cop barely slowed to pick him up. Ben got in and the big car powered away.

‘Might want this back.’ Ben tossed the police ID onto Kinski’s lap.

‘You bastard. I’ve been looking for that everywhere.’

‘Did you get the stuff?’ Ben asked.

Kinski nodded. ‘Back seat. Little blue bag.’

Ben turned round to grab it. He saw the black Audi Quattro through the rear window, three cars back. ‘Someone’s tailing us,’ he said.

‘You’re good. It’s OK. They’re my guys.’

‘How much do they know?’

‘No more than they need to know, if that,’ Kinski said.

Ben nodded. He grabbed the small flight bag off the back seat, turned back round and unzipped it on his lap. There were five identical oblong card boxes, six inches long and four wide. They had FEDERALemblazoned in bold letters across the top and .45 ACP 230 Gr. FMJ CENTERFIRE PISTOL CARTRIDGESprinted on the side. He opened one of the boxes. Inside it was a red plastic tray with fifty half-inch round holes, ten rows of five, a gleaming cartridge in each one. Fifty rounds a box, two hundred and fifty rounds. He was pleased. ‘All untraceable?’

‘Come on, what do you take me for?’ Kinski said.

‘You’ll tell me what I owe you?’

‘Forget it. I don’t need your money. Did your train ride pay off?’

Ben reached into his haversack and took out the empty Para-Ordnance. He thumbed the magazine release. The mag dropped out. He locked open the action of the pistol and laid it on his lap. ‘It certainly did.’

‘You found out something?’ Kinski asked.

‘I know everything.’ Ben quickly ran through what Christa had told him.

Kinski listened hard. His coarse features were puckered in concentration as he pushed the 4 × 4 through the aggressive Vienna traffic. ‘But why was Oliver so interested in getting inside the house?’

‘I’m coming to that,’ Ben said. ‘Christa’s place is a cyber-café. After I spoke to her I went online. I did more research. I cross-referenced everything. It all checks out. I found out a lot. Remember I asked you about Adler?’

Kinski nodded.

‘Adler is the key,’ Ben said. ‘It wasn’t a code. It was a name. Von Adler. Count von Adler.’

‘I’ve heard that name.’

‘What about the name Kroll?’

Kinski shook his head.

‘Same family,’ Ben said. ‘Here’s what I found out. Viktor Kroll was head of the Austrian secret police from 1788 to 1796. He was awarded land and title for services to the Empire by Josef II. He became Count von Adler and was given a palatial house and estate near Vienna.’

‘The same house?’

‘The same house. It’s been in the family ever since. The current Count von Adler is the great-great-great grandson. That’s as far as the historical record goes. But the house and title weren’t the only things that got handed down.’

‘I’m not getting it.’

‘This is the bit the history books don’t mention,’ Ben said, ‘because the letter that Richard Llewellyn discovered never made it into the historical record. Von Adler was The Eagle mentioned in the letter. We know from Arno that he was also Grand Master of the Order of Ra. A big part of those services to the Empire was the Order’s dirty work in helping to wipe out the Masons. He used his estate as his base.’

‘So?’

‘So they’re still there, Markus. Oliver found them.’

Kinski chewed it over for a moment. ‘Oliver knew?’

‘He was halfway to the truth,’ Ben said. ‘He knew about the historical connection with his Mozart research. Who knows what he thought he’d find in the house? Perhaps he thought he was opening up a hidden chapter of history. He had no idea what he was really walking into. He witnessed the execution by pure chance.’

‘This would explain why Meyer died the same night,’ Kinski said.

Ben nodded. ‘He was the hired pianist for the night, so his name was on the list. As soon as Oliver was out of there, they were already searching for the address of Meyer’s student digs. They got to him within minutes. But they’d have realized immediately that he wasn’t the same guy. With a gun to his head, he must have blabbed Oliver’s name pretty fast. They probably told him he was buying his life if he talked.’

Kinski scowled. ‘But the fuckers killed him anyway, just to keep him quiet. Then they went after Oliver.’

‘Faster than that,’ Ben said. ‘They’re not short of people. There would have been a team on its way for Oliver even while Meyer was still breathing.’

Kinski frowned. ‘Wait. How did they-’

‘Know where to find him? Police computer. They’ve got the right connections, remember? Oliver was a foreign visitor. He would have needed his passport to check into the boarding house. There couldn’t have been too many Oliver Llewellyns in the area. They picked him like an apple.’

Kinski grunted.

‘He just had time to burn the video-clip to CD and post it to the only person he could trust,’ Ben said. ‘Then they caught up with him. They took him out to the lake. Probably made him walk out onto the ice and then let loose with the nine-mil to crack it up around him. He never had a chance.’ He took a fat, shiny.45 Federal round from one of the cartridge boxes and used his thumb to press it into the magazine. It snicked into place.