The house in Portland, Maine, was relatively new, an expensive designer aerie set on a cliff overlooking a wild coastline. Xavier studied the waves surging in against dark rocks. Despite the extensive plantings there was clear evidence that there had been a large house here before. When he had rung the local council the previous day, his findings had been verified. This had originally been the site of the old Webster mansion, which had been built in the nineteen hundreds. It had burned to the ground in 1954, the same year his father had disappeared.
At the time the mansion had burned down the owner had been listed as Charles Everett Richmond. Richmond, a reclusive millionaire, had perished in the fire, and the house had passed to his daughter, Elizabeth, who had sold it soon after. The property had changed hands just once more, when Tripp had bought it.
Xavier’s spine tingled as he studied the lay of the land, and his conviction that he had found the location of Reichmann’s house—and the site of his father’s murder—grew. According to the original plans of the Webster mansion, which he had viewed in the local historical society’s archives earlier that afternoon, there had been a cellar beneath the house that had linked with a series of natural caves. He hadn’t found anything resembling a cellar entrance in the house that presently occupied the site, which meant the entrance had to be somewhere in the gardens.
Fifteen minutes later, one of Xavier’s agents, Tony, jimmied open the lock of a garden shed. Xavier stepped inside and immediately noted the unmistakable outline of a trapdoor.
Flicking on the flashlight he’d brought with him, he lifted the trapdoor, tested the first step of the ladder, then descended into the cavity and waited for Tony to join him.
The cellar was cavernous and empty. Breath pluming on the stale, cold air, Xavier conducted a circuit of the room, ducked beneath a beam and found a second door. Within minutes, Tony had broken the locks and Xavier stepped inside.
The beam of the flashlight caromed off thick stone walls, and caught on the glint of a cap badge and the dull gleam of boots. For an electrifying moment, childhood fear and illusion fused, imbuing the sagging uniforms of Himmler’s Schutzstaffel with horrifying life.
Emotion grabbed at Xavier, sharper and more intense than he’d expected as he trained the beam on the faded collection of uniforms and studied the evidence that his father had found. Evidence he had waited decades—and traveled thousands of miles—to find.
Within minutes the cellar and the connecting caves had been searched. Apart from the uniforms, a dusty table and a squat safe, circa 1920s, its door still hanging open, every room and cavity was empty.
There was evidence from the scrapes on the floor that heavy objects had been stored here. There was nothing to indicate that those objects had been the crates transported on the Nordika, although logic dictated that they must have been. It was inconceivable that Reichmann would have relinquished control of the wealth. After Reichmann’s death, Helene would have had to secure the treasure and establish control of the cabal. The artifacts and gold bullion would have been transported to another location within days.
The safe was a different matter. It weighed a ton. Lifting it out would have required a great deal of effort for no discernible gain. Back in the fifties it was the kind of safe that had been routinely owned by thousands of businesses. The only aberration had been that Helene had left the uniforms behind.
The risk that the moldering clothing represented had been small. Colenso had owned the property and if anyone but Xavier had found the uniforms, they would have been no more than a curiosity. The mistake revealed arrogance and Helene’s belief in her own invincibility, distinct flaws in an otherwise clinical approach. At a guess, she had enjoyed the knowledge that Reichmann and the officers under his command still lived on, if only in the hidden, tattered remnants of their uniforms.
Footsteps echoed. Light flickered as Tony ducked under the beam and paused in the doorway. “We’ve completed the search of the grounds. Sorry, no sign of a graveyard.”
The faint hope that his father’s body had been buried somewhere on the property was extinguished. “That’s it, then.” It was far more likely that Helene would have disposed of Stefan’s body in a way that guaranteed he wouldn’t be found. It was even possible she had dumped his body at sea, although that would have been difficult to organize without involving someone local in the process.
Tony trained his flashlight on the uniforms, his expression registering his distaste. “Why don’t you check out the local cemeteries and parish registers. If Stefan died in the fire at the same time as Reichmann, it’s possible his body was found before Helene could dispose of it. If that was the case, when the postmortem was finished she might have had the influence to destroy the paperwork, but she would have been forced to bury his body. Even if she managed to remove his papers and substitute a false name, the date of death would be the same as Reichmann’s.”
Xavier stared at the sagging uniforms and felt the first lightening of his mood since he had climbed down into this crypt. Sometimes his thinking was too serpentine. He looked for complications where there were none, which was why Tony was so valuable. He was blunt, efficient and, best of all, he had no time for European fatalism.
The grave, when Xavier found it five days later, was marked only by a bleached wooden cross on which the lettering had long since faded. Emotion swelled in his chest. More than eighteen cemeteries and sets of parish registers had been searched, but finally, twenty miles north of Portland in the village of Freeport, he had found Stefan le Clerc, and incontrovertible proof that his father hadn’t died alone. He had taken Reichmann with him.
Fierce satisfaction filled him, not because Reichmann—or Richmond as the incised lettering on his headstone in Portland had proclaimed—had been killed, but because his father had succeeded in his quest. He had found Reichmann, and he had stopped him.
For Stefan’s name to be recorded by the parish meant that his identification had been recovered by the police before Helene could destroy it and, as Tony had surmised, she had been forced to bury him. Helene had subsequently destroyed the coroner’s reports and police records, blocking any investigation into his disappearance through those channels. For the parish records to have survived meant she either hadn’t been able to access them, or she had decided it was unlikely anyone would go to such extreme lengths to find his father.
Long minutes passed as he stared at the lichen-encrusted cross, at the grassy dip in the ground, and when the emptiness of loss couldn’t be contained, he walked into the church. He paused in the dim coolness of the aisle, then took a pew and stared at the brilliant hues of a stained-glass window, at the gentle face and the iron resolve of a man who had given everything and finally found peace.