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

Good choice.

Particularly now with a man who may have killed Eisenhuth’s investigator, a Chilean deputy minister, and two carabineros nearby.

She glanced at her watch: 3:35 P.M.

Their car remained parked in front of the café. Her gaze raked the street searching for Cotton. There were a number of people milling about. He’d said an hour, and the time for them to meet was rapidly approaching. She could not allow Engle to see either of them.

She had to intercept Cotton.

But he was nowhere to be seen.

She noticed a banner pulled across one of the storefronts that advertised, in English, a race that was to occur in a few days’ time to the top of a nearby mountain. A cherry festival was likewise announced from another placard. Beyond the low-slung buildings spread a plain where green kopjes broke in the distance. She spied farms among the trees with shiny, revolving waterwheels. Change the fauna and the topography and the locale wasn’t a lot different from southern Germany or the Chilean lake district. Both were cool, green spots among mountains where Aryans seemed to congregate.

She risked another look.

The café was still quiet.

She could not cross the street—Engle’s view out the restaurant’s main window would be unobstructed. Though they’d never met he surely knew their faces, as they did his.

He might be their best lead to finding whatever there was to find. They needed to be the pursuer, not the pursued.

Another glance at her watch.

Cotton appeared from around one of the street corners.

Heading straight for the café.

Engle enjoyed his lunch of a hollowed-out half loaf of white bread filled with curried chicken, beans, and rice. A bit spicy, but tasty and definitely filling. He washed everything down with a thin lager that was quite bland, but ice cold and refreshing. Food was a pleasure he truly enjoyed. Luckily, his employer was generous and allowed him to spend what was necessary to accomplish his tasks in comfort. He thought he could easily have a weight problem if he did not adhere religiously to an exercise regimen. His hectic lifestyle also aided his metabolism. The past few months had been particularly intense. Pohl had warned him that there would be much to do. Two years of planning had gone into the decision to run for chancellor. Now the election was less than sixty days away. Unfortunately, little had developed as he and Pohl envisioned, and to restart the endeavor would require every one of those sixty days. Luckily, the financial revelations could, in and of themselves, work. But in their two conversations since yesterday, Pohl had seemed concerned.

“Just make sure there is nothing in Africa to cause us problems,” was his simple instruction. “That old woman tried to send Malone and Vitt there for a reason.”

He assumed they would also now resort to the same sort of tactics used in the past. Political blackmail, bribery, intimidation, and the hint of violence—enough to keep the opposition off guard, but not enough to lose control. Pohl’s steady political rise had been aided by a careful mixture of all those elements, and the result was a cadre of clerks, ministers, reporters, and politicians who owed him, in one way or another. Maybe those debts would be enough, by themselves, to catapult Pohl into the chancellorship?

He could only hope, since his efforts had borne no fruit.

He stood from the table and tossed down a few rands, then headed for the door.

No need to worry about any of that at the moment.

Time to go to work.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

LÖWENBERG

2:40 P.M.

Pohl rose from the rococo chair, his gaze locked on the Belgian tapestry that draped the far wall. He liked the scene. It depicted the start of an autumn hunting expedition complete with eager dogs, dense forest, and noblemen full of anticipation. It was a gift from one of his Rhineland associates, a housewarming present from someone who could afford the price 17th-century tapestries commanded. He liked men of money. They exuded a confidence peculiar to those accustomed to having their way.

In a few hours his campaign was going high tech with an elaborate internet event. An online town hall where he would interact with the participants, chatting and responding to their questions.

He liked the idea.

No need to travel from town to town.

Far better to talk to the whole nation at one time.

He’d asked earlier not to be disturbed, at least for another hour, and knew that his chief steward, the man who ran Löwenberg, would make sure he was afforded privacy. He stepped from the chair toward a leather-topped table that dominated one corner of the oblong room and grabbed an apple from a pewter bowl. His groves produced them by the bushel every year.

A colossal tile stove bearing the date of 1651 reached nearly to a ceiling held aloft by crossbeams fashioned by hand. His bed was enormous, supported by stout mahogany legs. Angels, homely with bulging cheeks and wings sprouting from their ears, adorned the four posts. He’d liked their attentiveness from the first time he spotted them in a Frankfurt antiques store.

He crossed the bedchamber and entered an alcove that once, six hundred years ago, had served as a bathroom. There’d been a stone toilet carved into the outer wall with an opening that allowed whatever was deposited to free fall to a collection container three stories below. Primitive surely, but he assumed the methodology was infinitely better than squatting over a hole dug in the earth. The toilet was gone, as was the hole in the curtain wall. A decorative bench now jutted below a mullioned window that offered a stunning view of the forested valley beyond.

One other anachronism, though, remained from ancient times.

The noblemen who originally built the castle in the 15th century were nearly fanatical in their fear of being trapped by an invader. So every nook and cranny possessed at least two ways in and out. The bedchamber behind him was no exception. In fact, it was afforded the utmost in security for the time.

A secret escape.

He approached one of the inner stone walls and applied the right amount of pressure to one of the mortar joints. A section revolved, revealing a spiral staircase that wound down in a steep counterclockwise direction.

He flicked a switch affixed inside, and a series of low-voltage lamps illuminated the path below.

He entered and shoved the panel closed.

The stairs were narrow, the descent nearly vertical. He’d discovered the stairway prior to his purchase of the estate and its presence, along with spacious rooms carved out of the ground below, had sealed the deal. Back then there had been one other way into the subterranean chamber at ground level, but he’d recently closed that path. Now only the staircase provided an entrance.

At the bottom he flicked another switch, and a series of decorative pewter fixtures dissolved the darkness. The air was climate controlled, and an industrial humidifier made sure no moisture left a lasting impression. The floor was polished slate framed by thin lines of black grout.

He fished a knife from his pocket and started to carve the apple. The blade itself was special. A gift from his father. He’d carried it since childhood, delighting in periodically sharpening the edge, oiling its surface, tending to it like a jeweler with his tools. He walked in the silence and slipped a moist chunk of apple into his mouth.

This was where he came when he needed to think.

A lot was about to happen.

He’d planned for so long.

It was imperative he remembered all of his lessons, especially concerning the Third Reich.

There’d been precision in planning there, too, which might have borne fruit save for reckless greed and inexplicable stupidity. Why was it, he’d often wondered, that no fanatic governed long? The answer was easy. Either unacknowledged excesses or inherent weaknesses hampered good judgment. Both flaws were consistently fatal, and no despot ever recognized their deficiencies. The democratic process, for all its chaos, forced leaders to face their own mistakes. There was public debate. Attention. Spectacle.