Стив Берри - The Kaiser's Web--A Novel

He and Cassiopeia had been dropped off in Bavaria near a waiting car. Danny had left with the chopper. Cassiopeia was driving as they threaded a path through the Alpine foothills southeast of Munich. Clearly, if the information in the pages was authentic, its author was someone deep on the inside. Incredibly, that person may have talked with Martin Bormann in 1955. Other meetings were noted in 1957, 1959, 1962, and 1964. Each one was described in detail, with personal observations of the encounters.

He glanced up. “If this stuff is true, Bormann survived long after the war. Amazing.”

Outside, beyond the car windows, saw-toothed mountains sprinkled with snow framed the tarred road. He thought of a book he’d found in Milan a few months back, a first edition, leather bound, from the 19th century. And what Rousseau said of the Alps. Never a plain, however beautiful it may be. I want rushing streams, rocks, firs, dark forests, mountains, paths which lead steeply up and down and fearful ravine beside my way.

He agreed. The majesty was beyond dispute.

They motored through villages quiet in the late afternoon.

A few miles north of one hamlet, to the east, through trees blooming with late-spring leaves, a lake nestled in the embrace of mighty hills. Gray rock loomed skyward, rising perpendicular above the placid water. Snow continued to whiten the folds of the loftier peaks. Yet it was the water that drew his attention. A rich indigo stain on an otherwise stark landscape, so blue it appeared to bottom out as deep as the heights that surrounded it. He was immediately reminded of a Norwegian fjord, where similar water lay imprisoned at the foot of precipitous heights.

The lake stretched for about a mile, and Cassiopeia, following the directions Danny had provided, paralleled its oblong shore, finally veering from the highway onto a dirt path. The lane led to a concrete dock stretching out into surely frigid water. She parked and he caught sight of a house on the farthest shore. Too small for a palace, too grand for a retreat. Walls of granite and pebbledash. It was three stories with an octagonal cupola rising from its center. It sat on the crest of an incline, dense stands of pine and spruce beyond, verdant grass before, mountains blocking off all access except by water. In the afternoon sun the walls shone like a candle in a darkened room, the inky waters of the lake indistinguishable from the tree shadows beyond. The entire scene was a picture postcard Baedeker would have reveled in recommending. Danny had told them that Chancellor Eisenhuth owned the estate.

A family inheritance.

The silence was broken by the call of a distant cuckoo.

They walked to the dock and a small sloop tied at the end. Two armed security men waited for them. A few minutes later they were speeding across the lake.

He was bothered.

The information being peddled was that Theodor Pohl might be the son of Martin Bormann. Why was everyone taking this so seriously?

Easy.

Because they wanted to believe.

He heard again what Danny had said about Marie Eisenhuth. Brilliant. Competent. A determined woman who’d weathered many a political storm. Twenty years ago a series of financial scandals had toppled most of her party’s leadership, throwing the hierarchy into chaos. She rose from the pack and eventually assumed control, ruling Germany as chancellor for the past sixteen years. Only Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel had matched that longevity. A Bavarian, born and bred into the famed Herzog family, with ties back to the Wittelsbachs. An Oberbayer: an Upper Bavarian with a deep Catholic tradition. Her father had been an industrialist during the war, tried at Nuremberg but acquitted. Afterward his company, Herzog Concern, helped rebuild Germany, part of a forgiveness the West offered to many Germans in light of the more pressing threat of communism. Albert Herzog’s industrial complex had been needed to resurrect West Germany’s tattered economy. Forget about former slave labor and human rights violations. The war was over, the West required its champions, and the rewards were clearly bountiful, he thought as he stared again at the magnificent manor across the lake.

But he, too, was wondering.

Why were the current chancellor of Germany and the former president of the United States taking all of this so seriously?

CHAPTER TEN

Cassiopeia was impressed with the schlöss , admiring how another wealthy woman, through inheritance, had managed to express her good fortune. Like her own French château, this German estate had been lovingly restored and decorated in a style that reflected a long heritage.

They were ushered into a salon lined from ceiling to floor with elaborate oak bookcases. A colorful carpet protected a plank floor, and the pale-red velvet upholstery of the chairs and sofa complemented an unusual shade of light blue on the walls. Oil paintings, blackened by time, depicted hardened men of past centuries.

Marie Eisenhuth rose from the sofa.

She was an elderly woman—seventy-five was what Danny had said—short and slender, her silver hair trimmed in a no-nonsense bob. She wore a black woolen suit and studied them with a gaze that signaled strength and confidence. Danny had explained that there was a folksy manner about her people liked.

And he should know.

That had been his trademark, too.

Nothing superficial or manufactured, though. Just an honesty, which seemed undisputed. Enough that she’d managed to survive four hotly fought German elections and acquire the loving nickname of Oma.

“I greatly appreciate you both coming,” she said in German-accented English. “Danny and I have known each other quite some time and I trust his judgment. He says you are both excellent at what you do and can be depended upon.”

They both shook her hand and sat.

Their hostess pointed. “He also said that President Fox was not, as he described, on your Christmas card list.”

Cotton smiled. “That would be a diplomatic way to put it.”

“He’s no friend of mine, either,” the older woman said. “For some inexplicable reason, he ordered my phone calls monitored.”

Which had been big news.

A few months back a whistleblower had revealed that the NSA had spied on Eisenhuth’s and other world leaders’ cell phone calls. Why? It had not been explained. But the White House had not denied the claim, either. It seemed a clear breach of trust. Allies should have no cause to spy on one another.

“I simply do not trust him,” the chancellor said.

“I am curious, though, why not use your own intelligence service for all this?” Cotton asked. “Why would you need us?”

“Let us say that my relationship with the Bundesnachrichtendienst is … strained, at best. Nonexistent, at worst. The BND disagrees with a great many of my policies, and sometimes they do their best to undermine them. We also have reason to believe that they may have been complicit with Washington in spying on me. So I choose not to involve them. This situation requires the utmost secrecy.”

Cassiopeia got that part, but, “They do all work for you.”

“That seems to mean less and less anymore. People have their own agendas now. I prefer to keep this matter close, which is why I was grateful for Danny’s assistance. Have you read what he provided?”

“On the way over,” Cotton said.

“And is it ingrained now in that eidetic memory of yours?”

Cotton smiled. “It’s there. A gift from my mother’s side of the family.”

“A precious one, too. I must confess that, at first, I thought this whole thing was a joke, a fraud, that there was an opportunist, nothing more, trying to be important. But now I am not so sure, given the murder of the woman in Partenkirchen.”