ANGELIKA WATCHED THE men get into the Porsche and drive out of the park. She followed behind in a staid BMW, not bothering to pass the tourist buses in order to keep up; she would find them anyway. She had them on her tracking, and they were headed to the Hotel Edelweiss. She would meet them there.
The mountains were brute indigo hulks as she slalomed the curves in the road. Her phone released an encrypted ping. She looked down at the message.
The time was running out. The buyers were getting anxious. Worse, Portier was losing patience.
She pulled into the valet area. It was time she and Stag Maguire have one final talk.
Stag couldn’t say he was surprised to see her. Given the terrible timing of what they’d just found on that mountain, he was stunned to see her, horrified, afraid, yes. Surprised, not really. She had tricks that he just couldn’t know about.
She sat waiting for him in the bar, her red coat tossed on a chair, her blond hair like a beacon. He took note that she was drinking white wine. He himself was going to order a scotch; he sure as fuck needed one.
“Ah, Ms. Aradi,” he said, slipping into the banquette next to her.
He ordered his scotch neat, then said, “There is no GPS on me.”
“No.”
“Then how do you keep finding me?”
“The human heart is a source of electromagnetism with its own unique pattern. It can be detected if you have the right scientific instruments. Expensive technology—not many have access to it—but once we’ve captured your particular signal, we can find you, if you’re not too far away.”
“That explains the gaps.”
“It’s cutting edge and extremely costly to implement, and like everything else, not perfect. We can’t always use it. Best to have multiple technologies.” She sipped her wine. “This is your second trip to the Königssee. Something have your attention?”
“Perhaps.”
“Tomorrow this entire area will be crawling with Tarnhelm people. Have you thought of giving my friend a call?”
He wondered if she’d really been unable to track him to the mountain where the bomb lay. If he was alive, it seemed the only answer.
His scotch arrived, and he wanted to gulp it the hell down.
“There are a lot of people who want to get their hands on this thing,” he said, putting down his empty glass.
“Stag—”
He interrupted. “You haven’t told Tarnhelm you’re following me, have you?”
She didn’t answer.
“You’re going rogue.”
“I’ve always been rogue. My father was a Hungarian Catholic who married a Bosnian Muslim. Do you think this helped him in the genocide in Srebrenica? He was rounded up as Muslim and murdered.” She paused. “This taught me that stereotypes are useful when you are trying to sell something. It’s a scary thought, isn’t it? The same techniques they use to sell you Oreos can sell you on mass murder.”
“Tarnhelm’s business is deciding who to murder, and who to sell the murder to.” He motioned to the bartender for another. “Glad we got that straight. I mean, why go rogue if you’ve embraced the business model?”
“I’ve told you. This is about more than myself and Tarnhelm.”
“Yes,” he snarled. “This is about an entire section of the world going up in a mushroom cloud. Not to mention the politics and retaliation that will follow.”
“Which is why I’m trying to save my daughter.” She seemed to tamp down her emotions by fingering the hole in her sweater. She was wearing a beautiful black and white ski sweater with woven leather buttons that looked like it was out of the fifties. Of course, it was moth-eaten.
He watched her worry the little moth-hole. Her clothes were intentional. They needed kintsukoroi: golden repair. The Japanese would take a broken piece of pottery and mix the glue with gold dust. The vase or bowl would be an altogether new and beautiful object when it was fixed. But there was no golden repair on her. She was raw and abused in a strangely elegant way. It was such an honest reflection, it was hard to look away.
“I can take you to meet with someone in Berlin.” She picked up her wine glass and took a sip. “Perhaps a discussion in the right circles will change your mind.”
“Tarnhelm has the wherewithal to manufacture a ‘meeting’ in NATO or wherever they wish.”
“Yes. Yes, they do. Which is why you have to find someone to trust who can get the information into the right hands.”
“Give me one reason to trust you.”
She said nothing. She simply stared at the hand that was slung around her wine glass. Slowly she moved her hand to his and touched him.
The quiet gesture strangely aroused him. Her vulnerability moved him, and the fear he felt around her was a raw aphrodisiac.
If Tarnhelm got their hands on Heydrich’s weapon, the world was going to become a battlefield. It was now a time of war even though most didn’t know it yet, and there was one universal comfort people took in a time of war.
She wasn’t going to kill him yet. He still had information she wanted. All she was going to do was try to convince him.
Right then and there, on the cusp of Armageddon, he decided to let her try.