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

“Let’s go,” Vitt said from the front seat.

Bruin eased from the curb.

They were headed south, out of Munich, to the lake district and the Herzog ancestral schlöss.

“Do you think Herr Pohl took the bait?” Marie asked from the backseat.

“He has no choice,” Vitt said. “He can’t take the chance that you might act, regardless of proof. He now knows he’s vulnerable.”

The idea had been to spook Pohl with what they knew, suggest that they knew even more, and make him aware that everyone he thought dead was alive. All to worry him. Playing off his irrational fears. Forcing, perhaps, a mistake.

“The first thing he will do is go after Engle,” Bruin said. “His employee clearly lied about my demise. That he will not tolerate. It should create some chaos.”

“He’ll also want to know why Cotton and I are still around,” Vitt said. “Pohl will be angry, but he still needs Engle. Now more than ever.”

“We are collectively targets now,” Marie muttered.

“Quite correct,” Bruin said. “He has the age-old dilemma every despot faces of too many targets. He will have to choose his battles.”

They left the lights and traffic of Munich for the darkness of a two-lane highway that steadily rose into the Alpine foothills, following the security men in front.

“Has anything been heard from Herr Malone?” she asked.

“Not a word,” Vitt answered.

Marie knew that Schüb had wanted Malone to go with him to Switzerland. There was something important there, something the old man wanted to share. So the continued silence was indeed troubling.

“My father is a secretive person,” Bruin said. “I only learned the truth about his life when I was nearly thirty years old. He was trained to keep things close to himself.”

“My father was the same,” she said.

She thought about her dear papa. Born into an ancient aristocratic family of reactionary politicians, passionate in their beliefs, yet practical in application. Her mother was the daughter of a mayor, the marriage arranged. True to his Herzog heritage, her father led the anti-Polish movement that swept through Germany in the early 1930s, eventually raising money from industrialists to combat the hated Weimar Republic. As Hitler came to power her father acquired control of a publicity firm and eventually sold news and editorial space to the National Socialists at bargain rates, aiding the rise of the brownshirts from terrorists to leaders. He then started a chain of newspapers and headed the German National People’s Party that eventually aligned itself with the Nazis and helped secure the demise of the Weimar Republic. She recalled how her father had always remained proud of that accomplishment. He sired three children, two sons and a daughter. Both sons never saw the end of the war, one dying in Russia, the other in France. After peace, her father became one of the countless disappointed men who’d made Hitler what he was, but could never admit that mistake. He lost all his newspapers, but luckily his concrete plants, paper mills, and oil refinery were needed so his sins, if not forgiven, were certainly forgotten. But not by her.

It was the one division between them that never faded. Her father had been a Nazi. He believed in Hitler and never saw the error in his folly.

She saw it plainly.

“Frau Bundeskanzlerin.”

Her mind snapped back. Cassiopeia Vitt was speaking to her.

“It is imperative that we increase security around you.”

“I agree, but if Pohl plans to make a move he must not suspect that we anticipate any action. That new security should be covert.”

Her thoughts returned to her father.

There’d been a scare, about a year before the plane crash. He became quite sick and she’d been summoned to the schlöss, arriving in the early evening and rushing to his room.

“Papa.” She knelt beside the bed and took his hand.

The old man’s eyes opened and a smile came to his parched lips. Perhaps there was still life left in him.

“I waited for you,” he whispered.

“Don’t talk foolish. It is never time to give up.”

“Good. I want you to stay strong.” The words came only upon his breath, and she had to strain to understand him.

“Papa, don’t you want to live?”

His eyes glazed over with moisture, and the oily glare was disconcerting. What was he thinking?

He slowly shook his head.

“You want to die?”

“I died long ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“My world died long ago, and I with it. You are all that remains.”

She understood what he meant. Her brothers were killed in the war. Neither ever married. She was the lone Herzog survivor. She started to speak, to reassure him, but his grip on her hand relaxed and she watched as his chest fluttered.

The eyes suddenly went wide, blue dots staring off beyond her.

His mouth opened and he softly said, “Heil … Hitler.”

Her spine tingled every time she thought of her father’s vile words. She’d loved the man with all her heart, but simultaneously hated him for the worship of something so evil. Rarely had he ever uttered Hitler’s name. His thoughts remained his own yet, facing death, he felt compelled to proclaim an allegiance.

No one other than she heard those words.

Not even her mother.

Thank goodness.

After he recovered she confronted him and he brushed it off as delirium from the illness. A side effect of the pain medication.

Maybe. Maybe not.

The Herzog family was literally wiped out during the war. Nearly all of her aunts, uncles, and cousins perished. There were so few left, besides some distant relations. With no children of her own the demise of the bloodline now seemed assured.

My world. It is gone. You are all that remains.

Decades after her father whispered that declaration, her world was not much better. Her parents were dead. Kurt a stranger. The nation was all that remained. Knowing now that Theodor Pohl was indeed the offspring of a monster brought a new resolution to her cause.

She was not afraid of dying.

Only of failing.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

LUGANO, SWITZERLAND

9:30 P.M.

Cotton dialed his phone. He was in his room, on the second floor of Schüb’s villa. He’d delayed making the call, wanting to be sure, but eventually realized that was not going to be possible.

“This has gestated into something way beyond what was first involved,” he said to Danny Daniels.

“Enlighten me.”

He told him everything he knew so far, including what he’d learned in the vault a few hours earlier.

“Unbelievable,” Danny declared when he finished.

“Don’t I know.”

“Is it reliable?”

“Hell, no. But everything inside me says it’s true.”

“Any suggestions?”

“I’m going to Germany,” he said. “After that, we’ll see. Let’s take it a step at a time.”

“I’m sure you realize that there are massive security concerns here. International implications,” Danny said. “We need to contain this.”

“That’s like trying to contain a hurricane.”

“Maybe so, but at the moment only you and that old man know. And you’re the guy on the ground. So it’s your call as to what to do.”

He agreed. Still. “Mr. President—”

“I know. Next time I need a favor, don’t call you.”

He descended the stairs to the ground floor.

Schüb sat in a lofty reading room that faced the lake. Out of habit his gaze raked the shelves and he spotted a rare text of Seneca and a Virgil manuscript, both side by side with English classics on theology and law. Schüb was apparently either a discerning reader or an intense collector. The old man sat before a quiet fireplace with a marble hearth. A good-sized English mastiff napped at his feet.