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

She was trying to gauge his response for truthfulness, but their personal distance had dulled her ability to know for certain when he was deceiving her. She’d ignored him for so long—simply allowed him to have his way provided he never interfered with her feelings or emotions. Now she cursed her indifference. “You do see the ramifications here?”

“If true, it will destroy everything. You and me both. How was Brümmer informed before me? I was at headquarters all day and no one said a word.”

“The inquiries have only come to our banks. They are bound by secrecy and cannot reveal the investigation. But Erwin learned through contacts there.”

“If he knows, others do, too. Maybe even the press by now.”

That prospect was causing her gut to churn. “No inquiries have, as yet, been made to my press office.”

But it was only a matter of time.

“Marie, our companies escaped the war reparation suits. There were numerous investigations, you know that, and many corporations were implicated, but not us. How is it that now, mysteriously, we are implicated with Hitler’s money? Something must be in error here, or is this dirty politics from your opponent?”

She wanted to tell him about the information that had originally spurred her interest, and Cassiopeia Vitt and Cotton Malone who were somewhere in Chile, and how it all now seemed a trap, but thought better. He would simply say that she had no one to blame but herself and, in one respect, he was right.

After all, she’d taken the bait.

Obviously, the original premise that Theodor Pohl was the son of Martin Bormann and Eva Braun had been fiction.

Now all of it had turned around to her.

“Kurt, this is serious. Not only for the political implications, but for the moral ones. If our companies accepted money, whether knowingly or not, that is traceable to Bormann and the Third Reich, we are no better than they. Our fortune, our lives, have at least in part been built with blood. It is a stigma that we will never be able to shake.”

“I am no Nazi,” he softly declared.

“But you, and I, may have benefited from their evil.”

“That is preposterous.”

His naïveté was beyond irritating. Bad enough that she had to endure his racist overtones and German superiority, but combine those absurd propositions with political blinders and the result was the type of fool Theodor Pohl cherished as a supporter.

“I assure you, Kurt, if the allegation is true the result will be anything but preposterous. I don’t have to remind you what happened to other companies caught up in the reparation suits.”

She knew he was aware of the horrible publicity and the millions of euros spent by a dozen or so German corporations found to have profited from slave labor during the war. It made no matter that those suits were litigated fifty years after the peace. The plaintiffs’ venom had been just as potent, the results just as devastating, the effects just as awful.

“Come now, Marie, this is not about me. This is about your political future. You could not care less about the companies.”

She resented his accusation of selfishness. “No, Kurt, it is about what is right and wrong. I could not live with myself knowing that any funds came to us from the Third Reich.”

He seemed unimpressed with her convictions. “Tell me what you know of the money transfers.”

His sudden shift of subject caught her off guard.

Was the move calculated?

“Erwin says they have occurred over a sixty-year period.”

He sat back in his chair and faced her with a look she found both irritating and disconcerting. “You understand what that means?”

Of course she did. “My father might be implicated.”

Albert Herzog ran the company personally until the day he died. Though there was a management board and various advisory committees, he’d been in complete charge. Any transfers prior to his death would have most certainly been approved by him.

Disturbing thoughts swirled through her mind.

Her father’s far-right-wing philosophy. His refusal to ever speak ill of the Third Reich. His insistence that Germany was no better off postwar than prewar, and in fact—as he’d many times voiced—a divided Germany was worse than anything Hitler ever did. She’d dismissed his beliefs as those of a man who’d known a Germany unfamiliar to her. Many of his generation felt the same. Few of them were left. But as a child and into her teenage years, those men and women had dominated Germany.

“You must tread lightly here,” Kurt whispered.

“I will cover nothing up.”

“Even if it means the end of your political career and the besmirching of both your own and your father’s memory?”

There was something unsettling about Kurt’s tone. “You never told me whether you were aware of the source of those Chilean funds.”

“I believe I said that I possessed no idea of any connection to Hitler’s Bounty or Martin Bormann.”

“Which answers nothing.”

He shook his head. “Perhaps it eases your conscience to think me your enemy. Does it help you justify your rejection of our marriage, and me?”

She cautioned herself that they were in public. Her tone and demeanor must be controlled. He was good at baiting her. She needed to be better at not taking the offer. “I have rejected nothing,” she whispered. “You are the one who cannot support me.”

“I am entitled to my beliefs, as you are to yours.”

“We have progressed way beyond beliefs, Kurt. This has international implications.”

He shrugged. “Which do not concern me.”

“You’re rather enjoying the possibility of my failure, aren’t you?”

“I don’t relish any pain coming to you. But I am no Nazi, nor have Nazis financed our business. I will personally investigate this tomorrow and find out what is happening.”

But she wasn’t so sure.

There was something in his desultory tone that triggered alarm.

Being linked to Hitler, in any way, repulsed her. The thought that her father may have participated, and profited from evil, sickened her. But something else nagged at her conscience. For once she was glad that she’d come to face Kurt. To judge for herself his reaction. To watch his eyes and see his face.

And that was the problem.

He knew more than he was saying.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

FREE STATE, SOUTH AFRICA

8:20 P.M.

Cotton was impressed by the accommodations.

The lodge sat in an oak woodland overlooking a darkened plateau. The rooms were separate sandstone cottages that dotted a grassy space beneath a canopy of trees, like mushrooms in the shade. The clerk explained that inside the largest thatch-roofed rondavel, set off to one side, an excellent dinner was served until 10:00 P.M.

In the room they’d each showered away dust and fatigue. Cassiopeia lingered in the hot water longer, apparently enjoying a few minutes of peace. He used the time to connect his laptop to the wireless internet and let Danny know the situation and that he would report more tomorrow. He then changed into more of the clothes they’d bought earlier. For him that meant a pair of stone chinos and a solid button-down shirt. He noticed that Cassiopeia decided to dress for dinner, too, emerging from the shower wearing houndstooth trousers and a lightweight silk blouse, both in shades of gray and olive, the fit slim and sporty.

She stood across the room and towel-dried her long dark hair. Her gun lay on the bed, and she tossed the towel aside and checked the magazine. He’d already done the same with his weapon, which was now tucked inside his belt beneath a lightweight jacket. He passed by her, and the fragrance of the soap from her shower lingered in his nostrils longer than it should.