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

“Martin Bormann was the man who issued the order to terrorize the Danish people,” he said. “Machine guns were turned against civilians. All of the local police were sent to concentration camps. Terrorist gangs ran free throughout the country. Henrik’s father, mother, uncle, aunt, and three cousins were killed in the madness.”

“I never knew that,” she said.

“He rarely spoke about it. But he told me the story once.”

A logging truck roared by in the opposite lane. Ahead an ox-drawn cart filled the dirt shoulder, and he veered into the other lane as they passed to avoid a man wearing a large sombrero. A lake appeared ahead, its verdant banks dense with trees.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said to her.

She smiled. “Words of affirmation?”

He nodded. “Is that so bad?”

He knew she’d recently read a book. The Five Love Languages. Supposedly, everybody absorbed love in five basic ways. Quality time. Receiving gifts. Acts of service. Physical touch. Words of affirmation. There was a test in the book, which they’d both taken, to determine which one applied to them. He discovered that his love language was physical touch. Holding hands. A gentle caress. Sitting close to each other. Gestures like that spoke volumes to him. Hers was words of affirmation. Simple, straightforward comments that made someone feel appreciated.

Like I’m glad you’re here.

“I meant it,” he said.

“I didn’t realize you’d paid such close attention.”

“I don’t miss much when it comes to you.”

She smiled. “You’re getting good at it.”

“I’m a fast learner.”

“There,” she said, motioning ahead. “Turn on that side road.”

They were using his phone for navigation.

He slowed and eased onto a rocky path that wound up a short incline. After a hundred yards trees blocked the way.

He stopped the car and reached for the door handle. “Looks like we walk from here.”

He knew they were no more than a dozen miles from the Argentine border, and the chilly, thin air reminded him of the Alps. The late-afternoon sky hung clear. Thankfully, they’d dressed right with long sleeves, boots, and jackets. They walked through the woods on a defined trail. After a ten-minute hike, mostly uphill, the forest ended. Just as advertised, a hacienda stood on the precipice of a grassy cliff. Beyond, miles away, rose the blue-tinged pyramid of a volcano, its steep slopes clad with a mantle of forest.

“Quite a sight,” she said. “And so conveniently isolated.”

He agreed.

It reeked of a trap.

They headed toward the house.

Both of them reached beneath their jackets and withdrew an automatic pistol, courtesy of entering the country on a military flight blessed with diplomatic clearance.

The fields surrounding the house were overgrown with brown spindly grass and dense weeds. Barbed-wire fence had long rusted away and the remains of a rotten wooden fence, encircling what was once a corral, lay scattered. A few of the windowpanes were shattered. A wide crack snaked a path down one of the exterior walls, evidencing, he assumed, the earthquakes that sometimes rocked the region. They walked around to the rear of the building where the mountain view was even more spectacular. A brick veranda choked with grass led to a cracked open door.

“This place has been deserted a long time,” he said.

Inside was dim and cold.

They stepped through a large kitchen littered with debris and headed toward the front of the house. The rooms were sparsely furnished, everything sheathed in mildewed cloth coated with layers of dust emitting a sour musty aroma. The farthest wall contained sheets of thick plate glass that framed a stunning view of glacier-capped peaks and a broad grassy meadow. The locale on a high, windswept plateau made him think of the Berghof in the Alps.

Hitler’s mountain retreat.

Another whitewashed villa with big rooms, thick carpets, and a terrace commanding magnificent mountain views. To the eye there wasn’t much difference in the volcanoes of the Andes and the saw-toothed peaks of the Alps. Nor were the forests all that varied. Coigue, ulmo, tepa, and tineo trees were every bit as evergreen as fir and pine. Both locales telegraphed an image of distant majesty. One, he knew, Hitler used to convey to visitors that the ruler of Germany was lord of all he surveyed.

The ulmo trees outside rustled as the wind continued to molest them. He glanced down at the floor, trying to see if the dust had been disturbed, but only their footprints were outlined.

They left the parlor and stepped through a foyer, following one of the hallways toward the rear, passing more rooms dotted with sheathed furniture. Most of the wall coverings bubbled from the elements. An ornate red marble fireplace captured his attention. The paintings on the walls cast a nothingness from their cloth coverings.

At the dining room they hesitated and studied the faded wood paneling, crumbling in places from an assault by insects. Then they turned and gazed down a long corridor. A room at the end of the passageway seemed to draw them forward. He was careful to again check the floor. Dust covered the surface like frost. No footprints.

They stopped in the doorway to the room at the end of the hall. It, too, possessed a stunning view of the serrated Andes through a dingy plate-glass window.

A condor soared in the distant sky.

The furniture, as in the other rooms, was sheathed. What appeared to be a desk faced away from the view, toward the doorway. Deer antlers dotted the taupe-colored walls. Brown sheets had been draped across what appeared to be bookcases, but had partially fallen away. He saw that the black wood shelves, thick with cobwebs, were lined with old volumes. Editions on art and architecture. Philosophical works of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Greek, Roman, and German histories. Goethe. Ibsen. Librettos of Wagner’s operas. Nordic mythology. Military history.

Something nagged at his eidetic memory.

A familiarity.

On the opposite wall Cassiopeia freed one of the dust-infected sheets and revealed a wooden pole, surmounted by a metal eagle, atop a wreathed swastika. From a black-and-silver nameplate hung a tattered red silk banner framed by a black, white, and red border, the fringe worn, its tassels caked in dust. On it was a black static swastika atop a white circle, the word DEUTSCHLAND above, ERWACHE, below.

Germany. Awaken.

He read the words on the nameplate.

ADOLF HITLER.

“You don’t see that every day,” she said.

He agreed. Then his mind resolved the tug at his memory. “Those books on the shelf were some of Hitler’s favorites. I’m surprised there aren’t copies of Karl May, Hitler’s favorite writer. He wrote cowboy adventure novels, but May’s vision of our West was anything but accurate. The man never set foot in America. I have three in the shop. Collectors pay a lot for them.” He again perused the shelves. “Hitler was passionate about books. He possessed a large personal library that was crated and sent to where he stayed for extended periods. Most of those volumes ended up being captured by us when we took Bavaria.”

He reached up and withdrew one of the volumes and parted the binding.

“These aren’t Hitler’s, though. There’s no nameplate. Hitler had all his books inscribed.” He replaced the book onto the shelf. “These are something else altogether.”

He stared around the room, then out the dingy windows, watching trees rustle in a freshening breeze. Something caught his gaze in one of the corners. A glimmer in the sunlight. He walked over and bent down. Dust wrapped an object in a tight embrace. A toy soldier. Metal. An SS man in full uniform, each article of clothing painted the appropriate black, maroon, and silver. He lifted the soldier from the floor and blew away the mites.