ALDERNAY TROOST LANDED in Bali and went straight to the Regis. He flashed his badge and inquired about Maguire. No one had seen him. No, his bed had not been touched, no, he had had no room service since checking in.
No surprise. Dead end.
He called Berlin to see if anything had happened on their end. Nothing.
He wondered how it was that anyone could remain unfound in this day and age. If Tarnhelm couldn’t keep tabs on Maguire, what chance did Interpol have, with their government budgets and legal constraints?
“Do you want me to check other hotels?” Special Agent Jones offered.
“He’d be under another name.”
“Any idea where he’s going next?”
Troost let out a long, weary release of air. “Yeah. He’s going straight into the ground. We just don’t know exactly when.”
Jones just shrugged.
Rikhardsson had his own compound in Bygdoy outside of Oslo. Snow was still on the fields, ice on the walkways, but it had been all cleaned up by the time the caravan of black SUVs and limos arrived.
The door was held and the leader of the Daesh offshoot, the Black Plague, entered. In his Saville suit and keffiyeh, the caliph was the perfect mix of west and east. The custom suit, because white men rule; the keffiyeh, because God was the platform to rail from when one was grasping for power.
The men settled in Rikhardsson’s study. After libations were offered—tea for the most holy Caliph al-Samarrai—Rikhardsson got down to business.
“Our analysts believe it’s a Little Boy gun-type nuclear fission device of uranium 235 with a nitrocellulose propellant.” Rikhardsson lowered the note in his hand. “Sorry to get technical, but you went to Oxford, so I assume you understand what all this means.”
The caliph sipped his tea with proper English manners. “I understand it. Have they dimensions?” His accent was perfectly English as well.
“No dimensions. But it’s projected to be about the size of two 55-gallon steel drums. This is a non-governmental weapon that is currently unknown to any state power, ready for use, and untraceable.”
“Have you a price?”
“We estimate in the 5 billion range, but that could go up with competition.”
Caliph al-Samarrai took the news in stride. “The usual means of transfer?”
Rikhardsson nodded. “In your case, first to Bank Melli, then we will determine where we park it.”
“Lichtenstein?”
“Ah, who knows? We change with the weather and the current state of the Feds. Yesterday it was Panama, tomorrow it’s Vanuatu.”
Both men laughed.
“How quickly can we take possession?” The caliph cut to the chase.
“You won’t take possession at all. We will make a controlled drop, using our people and our security, on your chosen target. All part of the price.”
The caliph looked most displeased. “If we purchase it, we must have the authority—”
“You will not have it under any circumstances.”
“But, certainly, we would get your approval on the target, of course.”
Rikhardsson said nothing.
The caliph understood. “No deal?”
“Mr. Portier makes all the arrangements himself.”
“I think four billion is more in order then. If we cannot have control—”
“Four billion will get you in seventeenth place.”
“That many?”
“That many.” Rikhardsson raised his teacup and smiled.
I think this must be the end. I keep a placid face, but inside, I screech with terror. In one last attempt to save myself, I wrote a note on silk and put it in back of your portrait. Then I sent your portrait to the old man with the excuse of tightening the loose stretchers. If I am lucky, he will find the note and know who to contact. If not…
My God, death has been long in coming. It doesn’t seem possible to continue any longer. You have three diamonds here. A very bad sign for me. A delay has kept you from appearing, and so I wait and order coffee from my maid, and worry.
In another life, I think I could have loved you in some small way. I feel certain you would have loved me. Especially that night you talked of your boyhood. “Moses Handel” the children called you because you were musical, and, in their cruelty, they thought to place a curse on you from your rumored Jewish ancestry. Süss was by marriage only in your family but they tainted you with the Semite blood and you never forgave them. You nurse many petty grudges. You should have been Irish, not German!
In strange and little ways, we are very much alike. We both love Shubert. Wagner. Paintings by Bocklin and Monet—though Monet be most degenerate. You asked me to paint myself just like Woman with a Parasol, and even I had to smile inwardly. It was exactly the way I saw it myself. It haunts me even now. You saw things in me and I saw things in you that go beyond words and description.
Art and music are our bond.
When you order me gone, I will still take the time to explain to you how many times I wanted to kill you. How much I wanted to see your jaw slacken in death and see what little light in those lifeless eyes of yours drain away. I could have killed you while you slept, but what would serve as a satisfying momentary impulse would, in the grand scheme, go unnoticed by history. The juggernaut of the Reich is set to go forward, and it will move without you or me. The Jews will be murdered, the war will continue until Germany is nothing but rubble, men will starve and bleed, women will cry and wander the streets looking for loved ones lost forever.
And I will live to see none of it. For this one small mercy, I will be grateful.
Stag couldn’t figure out why the number of diamonds Heydrich was placing in her apartment caused her to feel such doom. Was it that she would be killed because she knew he was stealing them? Was he stashing jewels for his escape should Germany not win the war? And first and foremost, what about the weapon? Where in God’s name was it and what was in that apartment that Tarnhelm was desperate to understand?
He took out the original silk key. The map of the Königssee seemed to be clearer and clearer now that he thought he’d identified it. But there was more to this hellacious chase than diamonds. It had to be the weapon, and the answer had to be in that apartment. It lay with Heydrich and the SD and with Isolda Varrick.
He had little hope she was still alive. Obituary notices in Germany had held nothing of an Isolda Varrick. But if she disappeared before 1945, there was a good chance she simply vanished into the cloud of war, never to be found.
He looked out at the ocean, now blooming in pink and gold. There was one last entry to the diary. It would tell all. Or he would be left as stumped as Tarnhelm.