JAMES TWINING
The Black Sun

DEDICATION

To my parents and my sisterThank you for everything

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.Sir Isaac Newton, Letter to Hooke, 1675

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

This novel is inspired by the incredible true story of the Hungarian Gold Train and its desperate journey across a ravaged continent in the dying days of the Second World War. When it was eventually discovered by US troops in a remote Austrian tunnel, it was found to contain several billion dollars’ worth of stolen gold, art and other treasures.

All descriptions and background information provided on works of art, artists, thefts, architecture, Nazi uniforms, rituals and objects are similarly accurate. Descriptions of the workings of the Enigma machine have been simplified.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Historical Background

Excerpt

Prologue

Part One

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Part Two

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Part Three

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Fifty-Six

Fifty-Seven

Fifty-Eight

Fifty-Nine

Sixty

Sixty-One

Sixty-Two

Sixty-Three

Sixty-Four

Sixty-Five

Sixty-Six

Sixty-Seven

Sixty-Eight

Sixty-Nine

Seventy

Seventy-One

Seventy-Two

Seventy-Three

Seventy-Four

Seventy-Five

Seventy-Six

Seventy-Seven

Seventy-Eight

Seventy-Nine

Eighty

Eighty-One

Eighty-Two

Eighty-Three

Eighty-Four

Eighty-Five

Eighty-Six

Eighty-Seven

Eighty-Eight

Eighty-Nine

Ninety

Ninety-One

Ninety-Two

Ninety-Three

Ninety-Four

Ninety-Five

Ninety-Six

Ninety-Seven

Ninety-Eight

Epilogue

Note from the Author

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Works

Copyright

About the Publisher

EXCERPT

Extract from the Völkischer Beobachter,

official journal of the Nazi party

(Edition A No. 270 of 27th September 1934)

Today the old defiant Wewelsburg Castle, situated in a historical location in the old land of the Saxons, has passed into the care of the SS of the NSDAP and is to serve, in future, as the Reich Leaders’ School of the SS.

As a result, Wewelsburg Castle, which can look back on a long and glorious role in German history, has also been assigned a place of historical importance in the Third Reich.

For it is here that the men are to be instructed in a world view and beliefs as well as to receive physical instruction, whose calling it is to assume the office of leaders in the SS, and who are to march forward as examples and leaders before the nucleus of our healthy German youth.

Extract from The Spoils of World War II by

Kenneth D. Alford

On May 16, 1945, the 3rd Infantry Division, 15th Regiment, A Company, commanded by Lieutenant Joseph A. Mercer, entered the Tauern Tunnel 60 miles south of Salzburg. To their astonishment, they discovered a partially concealed train crammed with gold and other valuables…The 1945 estimated value of the contents of the train was $206 million – which would translate into several billion dollars today.

PROLOGUE

The broad mass of a nation…will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

St Thomas’ Hospital, London

27th December – 2.59 a.m.

Ash cash.

That’s what medical students call it. Every cremation or burial release form requires a doctor’s signature, and every signature earns its donor a small fee. Death could be good business for a doctor who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.

To Dr John Bennett, however, shouldering the icy rain as he walked briskly over to the main hospital building from the ugly hulk of the accommodation block, the prospect of a few extra quid was small compensation for being paged at three a.m. Very small. As if to emphasise the hour, Big Ben, its face suspended in the air like a small moon on the other side of the river, chose that moment to chime, each heavy, deadened strike shaking Bennett a little further awake.

He stepped out of the cold into the warm blast of the heaters positioned in the entrance vestibule, the sudden change in temperature making his glasses fog. He took them off and wiped them clean on his shirt, the moisture streaking across the lens.

A red LED display glowed into life overhead as the lift made its way down to him, the declining numbers scrolling rhythmically across the panel. Eventually, there was a muffled sound of machinery as the lift slowed and the door opened. He stepped inside, noting as the lift lurched upwards that the bronzed mirrors made him look healthier than he felt.

A few moments later, he walked out on to the ward, the wet soles of his shoes faintly marking the scarlet lino. The corridor ahead of him was dark, the lights dimmed apart from the emergency exit signs that glared green above the doors at either end.

‘Doctor?’ A woman’s voice rang out through the gloom. He slipped his glasses back on to identify the approaching figure.

‘Morning, Laura,’ Bennett greeted her with a warm smile. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve killed another one of my patients?’

She shrugged helplessly.

‘I’ve had a bad week.’

‘Who was it this time?’

‘Mr Hammon.’

‘Hammon? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. He was in a pretty bad way.’

‘He was fine when I came on duty. But when I looked in…’

‘People get old,’ Bennett said gently, sensing she was upset. ‘There’s nothing you could have done.’ She smiled at him gratefully. ‘Anyway, I’d better take a look. Have you got the paperwork ready?’

‘It’s in the office.’

The windowless room was positioned about halfway down the ward, the only light coming from the glow of two surveillance monitors and the LED display of the video recorder beneath them. One monitor showed the corridor where they had just been standing, the other flicked between the patients’ rooms, pausing a few seconds in each. The rooms were identical, a single narrow bed dominating the space with a few chairs drawn up under the window and a TV set fixed high up on the facing wall. The only variation was in the quantity of flowers and get-well cards on one side of the bed and monitoring and resuscitation equipment on the other. Unsurprisingly, there seemed to be a direct correlation between the two.

Laura rummaged around on the desk for the file, the blue glow from the monitors staining her red nails purple.

‘Do you want the light on?’

‘Please,’ she replied, without looking up.

Bennett reached for the switch, when suddenly something caught his eye. The roving camera had settled momentarily in one of the patients’ rooms. Two dark figures were silhouetted against the open doorway, one slight, the other improbably tall.

‘Who’s that?’ Bennett said with a frown. The picture jumped on to the next room. ‘Quick, get it back.’

Laura switched the system to manual and scanned the rooms one by one until she found the men.

‘It’s Mr Weissman’s room,’ she said in a low, uncertain voice.

The two figures were now standing on either side of the bed looking down at the sleeping patient. Even on the monitor he looked thin and frail, his skin pinched, his cheeks hollowed by age. Various wires and tubes emerged from under the bedclothes and led to a heart-rate monitor and some sort of drip.

‘What the hell are they playing at?’ Bennett’s surprise had given way to irritation. ‘You can’t just come in here whenever you feel like it. What do people think we have visiting hours for? I’m calling security.’

As Bennett reached for the phone, the tall man on the left snatched a pillow out from under the sleeping man’s head. He awoke immediately, his eyes wide with surprise and then, as he blinked at the two men looming above him, fear. His mouth moved to speak but whatever sound he might have been trying to make was smothered as the pillow was roughly pushed down on to his face. Helpless, his arms and legs flapped limply like a goldfish that had leapt out of its bowl.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Bennett gasped, his voice now a whisper. He jammed the phone to his ear, the white plastic slippery against his sweaty skin. Hearing nothing, he tapped the hook switch a few times, before locking eyes with Laura. ‘It’s dead.’

On screen, the tall man nodded to his companion, who lifted a black bag on to the bed and reached in. The teeth of what Bennett instantly recognised as a surgical bone-saw sparkled in the light. Deftly, the figure slid back the man’s left pyjama sleeve and placed the blade on his arm, just below the elbow. The man jerked his arm but to no avail, what little strength he had left clearly ebbing away in his attacker’s strong grasp.

Bennett glanced at Laura. She was standing with her back to the door, her hand over her mouth, her eyes glued to the monitor.

‘Don’t make a sound.’ His voice was thin and choked. ‘We’ll be fine as long as they don’t know we’re here. Just stay calm.’

The saw sliced through the skin and muscle in a few easy strokes before it struck bone, the main artery gushing darkly as it was severed and the blood pressure released. In a few minutes the arm had come free, the limb expertly amputated at the elbow. The stump oozed blood. Abruptly, the struggling stopped.

Working quickly, the figure wiped the saw on the bedclothes then returned it to his bag. The arm, meticulously wrapped in a towel snatched from the foot of the bed, soon joined it. The victim’s face was still masked by the pillow, the bedclothes knotted around his legs like rope where he’d kicked out and got himself tangled up. The heart-rate monitor showed only a flat line, an alarm sounding belatedly in the empty nurses’ station down the corridor.

The two men moved away from the bed, across the room, careful not to touch anything. But as he was about to shut the door, the tall man suddenly looked up into the far corner, into the camera lens, straight into Bennett’s eyes, and smiled.

‘Oh my God,’ Bennett breathed in slow realisation. ‘They’re coming for the tapes.’

He jerked his head towards the other monitor. The thin man was walking slowly up the corridor towards them, the blade of the knife in his hand glinting like a scythe in the sun.

Laura began to scream, a low, desperate, strangled call that grew louder and louder as the image on the screen drew closer.

PART I

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burke

ONE

Pinkas Synagogue, Prague, Czech Republic

2nd January – 10.04 a.m.

The shattered glass crunched under the leather soles of Tom Kirk’s Lobb shoes like fresh snow. Instinctively, he glanced up to see where it had come from. High in the wall above him white sheeting had been taped across a window frame’s jagged carcase, the plastic bulging every so often like a sail as it trapped the biting winter wind. He lowered his gaze to the man opposite him.

‘Is that how they got in?’

‘No.’

Rabbi Spiegel shook his head, his sidelocks bumping against his cheeks. Although smartly dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, he was thin and frail and the material seemed to hang off him like loose skin. A faded black silk yarmulke covered the top of his head, firmly clipped to a fierce growth of wiry grey hair. His face was hiding behind a wide spade of a beard, his watery eyes peering through small gold-framed glasses. Eyes that burned, Tom could see now, with anger.

‘They came in through the back. Broke the lock. The window…that was just for fun.’

Tom’s face set into a grim frown. In his mid-thirties and about six feet tall, he had the lithe, sinewy physique of a squash player or a cross-country runner – supple yet strong. Clean-shaven and wearing a dark blue cashmere overcoat with a black velvet collar over a single-breasted grey woollen Huntsman suit, his short, normally scruffy brown hair had been combed into place. His coral-blue eyes were set into a handsome, angular face.

‘And then they did this?’ he asked, indicating the devastation around them. Rabbi Spiegel nodded and a single tear ran down his right cheek.

There were eighty thousand names in all – Holocaust victims from Bohemia and Moravia, each painstakingly painted on the synagogue’s walls in the 1950s with family names and capital letters picked out in blood red. It was a moving sight; an unrelenting tapestry of death recording the annihilation of a whole people.

The bright yellow graffiti that had been sprayed over the walls served only to deepen the unspoken weight of individual suffering that each name represented. On the left-hand wall, a large Star of David had been painted, obscuring the text underneath it. It was pierced by a crudely rendered dagger from which several large drops of yellow blood trickled towards the floor.

Tom walked towards it, his footsteps echoing in the synagogue’s icy stillness. Up close he could see the ghostly imprint of the names that had been concealed under the paint, fighting to remain visible lest they be forgotten. He lifted a small digital camera to his face and took a picture, a loud electronic shutter-click echoing across the room’s ashen stillness.

‘They are evil, the people who did this. Evil.’ Rabbi Spiegel’s voice came from over his left shoulder and Tom turned to see him pointing at another piece of graffiti on the opposite wall. Tom recognised it as the deceivingly optimistic motto set above the gates of all Nazi concentration camps: Arbeit macht frei – work sets you free.

‘Why have you asked me here, Rabbi?’ Tom asked gently, not wanting to appear unfeeling, but conscious that anything useful that the rabbi might have to tell him could soon be lost in the emotion of the moment.

‘I understand that you recover stolen artefacts?’

‘We try to help where we can, yes.’

‘Paintings?’

‘Amongst other things.’

Tom sensed that his voice still had an edge of uncertainty to it. Not enough for the rabbi to pick up on, perhaps, but there all the same. He wasn’t surprised. It was only just over six months since he had gone into business with Archie Connolly. The idea was simple – they helped museums, collectors, governments even, recover stolen or lost art. What made their partnership unusual was that, after turning his back on the CIA, Tom had spent ten years as a high-end art thief – the best in the business, many said. Archie had been his long-term fence and front man, finding the buyers, identifying the targets, researching the security set-up. For both of them, therefore, this new venture represented a fresh start on the right side of the law that they were still coming to terms with. Archie especially.

‘Then come upstairs. Please.’ The rabbi pointed towards a narrow staircase in the far corner of the room. ‘I have something to show you.’

The staircase emerged into a vaulted room, the pale morning light filtering in from windows set high in the white walls. Here there were no graffiti, just a series of shattered wooden display cases and a tiled floor strewn with drawings and water-colours, some torn into pieces, others screwed up into loose balls, still more covered in dirty black bootprints.

‘This was a permanent exhibition of children’s drawings from Terezin, a transit camp not far from here. Whole families were held there before being shipped east,’ the rabbi explained in a half whisper. ‘You see, there is a certain awful innocence about war when seen through the eyes of a child.’

Tom shifted his weight on to his other foot but said nothing, knowing that anything he might mumble in response would be inadequate.

Rabbi Spiegel gave a sad smile. ‘Still, we will recover from this as we have recovered from much worse before. Come,’ he said, crossing to the far wall, ‘here’s what I wanted to show you.’

A gilt frame, perhaps two feet across and a foot wide, hung empty on the wall, only whitewashed stonework visible where the painting should have been. Tom edged towards it.

‘What was there?’

‘An oil painting of this synagogue completed in the early thirties.’

‘It’s been cut out,’ Tom said thoughtfully, running his finger along the rippled canvas edge where the painting had been sliced from the frame.

‘That’s why I asked you to come,’ the rabbi said excitedly. ‘They could have left it in its frame if all they wanted to do was damage or destroy it. Do you think maybe they took it with them?’

‘I doubt it,’ Tom said with a frown. ‘The people who did this don’t strike me as art lovers.’

‘Especially not a painting by this artist,’ the rabbi agreed grudgingly.

‘Why, who was it by?’

‘A Jewish artist. Not well known, but dear to us because he lived here in Prague – until the Nazis murdered him. He was called Karel Bellak.’

‘Bellak?’ Tom drilled him with a questioning look.

‘You’ve heard of him?’ the rabbi asked, clearly surprised.

‘I’ve heard the name,’ Tom said slowly. ‘I’m just not sure where. I’ll need to speak to my colleague back in London to be sure I’m thinking of the same person. Do you have a photo of the painting?’

‘Of course.’ Rabbi Spiegel produced a photograph from his pocket and handed it to Tom. ‘We made a few copies of this one a few years ago for the insurance company. They told us the painting wasn’t worth much, but to us it was priceless.’

‘May I?’ Tom asked.

‘Keep it. Please.’

Tom slipped the photograph into his overcoat.

‘From what I remember of Bellak…’ Tom began, pausing as two Czech policemen stepped into the room and peered around at the damage.

‘Go on.’

‘Is there anywhere a little more private we can go?’

‘Why?’

Tom tilted his head towards the policemen.

‘Oh.’ The rabbi sounded disappointed. ‘Very well. Come with me.’

He led Tom back down the stairs and across the main body of the synagogue to a thick wooden door that he unbolted. It gave on to a small open space, the oppressive cinder-grey walls of the surrounding apartment blocks looming down on all sides. A few trees reached into the small window of grey sky overhead, their leafless branches creaking in the wind and occasionally scraping their skeletal fingers against the stifling walls. Ahead of them, the ground undulated in a series of unexpected mounds and dips and was peppered with dark shapes.

‘What is this place?’ Tom asked in a whisper.

‘The old Jewish cemetery,’ the rabbi answered.

It suddenly dawned on Tom that the dark shapes in front of him were in fact gravestones, thousands of them in all shapes and sizes, some leaning against others for support, some lying prostrate as if they had been sprinkled like seeds from a great height. They were jammed so close to each other that the ground, muddy and wet where the morning’s frost had melted, was barely visible between them. Tom was certain that if he were to topple one, the rest would fall like a field of overgrown dominoes.

‘For hundreds of years this was the only place the city allowed us to bury our dead. So each time it filled up we had no choice but to put down a layer of earth and start again. Some say there are eleven levels in all.’

Tom knelt down at the stone nearest to him.

A swastika had been etched on to the stone’s peeling surface. He looked up at the rabbi, who gave a resigned shrug.

‘The war may have ended long ago, but for some of us the struggle continues,’ the rabbi said, shaking his head. ‘Now, Mr Kirk, tell me – what do you know about Karel Bellak?’

TWO

National Cryptologic Museum, Fort Meade, Maryland

3rd January – 2.26 a.m.

It was a little game he played; something to pass the time on his rounds. As he came upon each exhibit he would test himself against the display’s information cards to see how much he could remember. After twenty years he was pretty much word perfect.

First there was the Myer flag system, a line-of-sight communication tool devised in the Civil War by an army doctor who went on to form the Signal Corps. The glass cases held the original flags, battle-torn and stained with age.

Satisfied, he walked on, his rubber soles squeaking rhythmically on the floor like a metronome marking time, the polished toecaps of his boots glowing with a white sheen from the dimmed overhead lights.

Al Travis had been a guard at the National Cryptologic Museum since it had first opened. He liked it there. He’d finally found a place where he felt he was part of something special, something important. After all, technically he worked for the NSA, the agency responsible for protecting Uncle Sam’s information systems and breaking the bad guys’ codes. Hell, the NSA was right in the thick of things with this whole War on Terror.

He came upon the next exhibit – the Cipher Wheel. A series of rotating wooden discs, the wheel had been used by European governments for hundreds of years to encrypt sensitive communications. According to the card, it was designed to be used with French, the international language of diplomacy until the end of the First World War.

The Cipher Wheel’s cylindrical shape nestled snugly in its display case, the wood polished by generations of anxious fingers. He paused, looked at it, and checked with the information card that he was right in believing this to be the oldest such device in the world.

And then of course there was his favourite exhibit – the big one, as he liked to say – the Enigma machine. The museum had several versions on display in two large glass-fronted cases and Travis never failed to pause when he walked past, running his eyes appreciatively over them. He found it incredible that, in ‘breaking’ the code generated by this oversized typewriter, Polish and then British mathematicians had helped win the war for the Allies in Europe. But that’s what the card said, and who was he to argue?

A sudden noise made Travis stop. He checked over his shoulder and then peered into the semi-darkness ahead of him.

‘Anyone there?’ he called out, wondering if someone had come to relieve him early. As he paused, waiting for an answer, a steel wire shaped into a noose was lowered from above him until it was hovering just over his head, glinting in the lights like a silver halo. Then, just as Travis was about to move on again, it snapped past his face, the wire tightening around his neck and pulling him three feet off the ground.

Travis’s hands leapt to his throat as he scrabbled at the wire, his legs thrashing beneath him, his throat making an inhuman gurgling noise. Two dark shapes materialised out of the shadows as he struggled and a third man dropped down noiselessly from where he had hidden himself in the roof space above the ceiling tiles.

One of the men pulled a chair over from the wall and positioned it under Travis’s flailing legs. Travis located the top of the chair with his feet and, wavering unsteadily, found that he was just about able to perch on tiptoe and relieve the choking pressure on his throat, his lungs gasping for air, blood on his collar where the noose had bitten into the soft folds of his neck.

Teetering, his mouth dry with fear, he watched as the three figures, each masked and dressed in black, approached the left-hand display cabinet. Working with well-drilled efficiency, they unscrewed the frame, levered the glass out and leant it against the wall. Then the man in the middle reached in, took out one of the Enigma machines, and placed it in his accomplice’s backpack.

Travis tried to speak, tried to ask them what the hell they thought they were doing, to point out that there was no way they were ever going to make it off the base, but all that came was a series of choked grunts and whispered moans.

The noise, though, made the men turn. One broke away from the others and approached Travis.

‘Did you say something, nigger?’

The voice was thin and mocking, the last word said slowly and deliberately. Travis shook his head, knowing that these were not people to be reasoned with, although his eyes burned with anger at the insult.

The man didn’t seem to be expecting an answer. Instead he kicked out and knocked the chair from under Travis, who plunged towards the floor, the steel wire twanging under tension and snapping his neck.

For a few seconds Travis’s feet drummed furiously, then twitched a few times, then were still.

THREE

Clerkenwell, London

3rd January – 5.02 p.m.

Tom was sitting at his desk with a copy of The Times in front of him, folded into four so that only the cryptic crossword was visible. He had a ballpoint pen in his mouth, the end chipped and split where he had chewed it, his forehead creased in concentration. Much to his frustration, he hadn’t filled in a single word yet.

The desk itself was French, circa 1890, solid mahogany carved with fruit, foliage and various mythological creatures. It had four drawers on the left and a cabinet on the right, each opened by a lion-mask handle. Caryatids and atlantes flanked the corners, supporting the overhang of the polished top.

Tom and Archie had bought the desk not for its rather obvious beauty, but because it was identical on both sides, a subtly symbolic statement of equality that had resonated with the two of them. And despite occasionally feeling like one half of some odd Dickensian legal couple, for Tom, at least, the desk had come to encapsulate his new life – a solid partnership on the right side of the law.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Yeah?’ Tom called, grateful for the interruption. He had been staring at the paper so long that the clues had started to swim across the page.

The door opened and a woman wearing jeans, a pale pink camisole and a tight black jacket walked in, her right arm looped through the open visor of a black motorcycle helmet.

‘Catch,’ she called.

Tom looked up just in time to see a tennis ball flashing towards his head. Without thinking, he shot a hand out and snatched it from the air, his fingers stinging as they closed around it.

‘How was your game?’ Tom asked with a smile as Dominique de Lecourt stripped off her jacket, hitched herself up on to the side of his desk and placed her helmet down next to her. She had a pale, oval face that had something of the cold, sculpted and remote beauty of a silent-movie star, although her blue eyes, in contrast, shone with an immediately inviting blend of impulsive energy and infectious confidence. Her right shoulder was covered with an elaborate tattoo of a rearing horse that was only partially masked by her curling mass of blonde hair. Her left arm, meanwhile, was sheathed in a glittering armour of silver bangles that clinked like a hundred tiny bells every time she moved. Just about visible, under her top, was the bump of her stomach piercing.

‘Didn’t play. Decided to go to that auction instead.’

‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist,’ Tom laughed. ‘See anything good?’

‘A pair of Louis XV porphyry and gilt-bronze two-handled vases.’ Her English was excellent, with just a hint of a Swiss-French accent.

‘Made by Ennemond-Alexandre Petitot in 1760.’ Tom nodded. ‘Yeah, I saw those in the catalogue. What did you think?’

‘I think two million is a lot to pay for a couple of nineteenth-century reproductions made for the Paris tourist market of the day. They’re worth twenty thousand at most. It’s a law suit waiting to happen.’

Tom smiled. Sometimes he found it hard to believe that Dominique was still only twenty-three. She had an instinct for a deal, coupled with a sponge-like ability to retain even the most incidental detail, that rivalled all but the most seasoned pros. Then again, Tom reminded himself, she’d had a good teacher. Until he died last year, she’d spent four years working for Tom’s father in Geneva. When Tom had relocated the antiques dealership to London, she’d readily accepted his offer to move with it and help run the business.

The antiques shop itself was a wide double-fronted space with large arched windows, vital for attracting passing trade, although most visitors to Kirk Duval Fine Art & Antiques called ahead for an appointment. At the rear were two doors and a staircase. The staircase led to the upstairs floors, the first floor currently empty, the second floor Dominique’s apartment, the top floor Tom’s. It was supposed to have been a short-term arrangement, but the weeks had turned into months. Tom hadn’t pressed the point, sensing that she would move out when the time was right for her. Besides, he valued her company and, given his pathological inability to form new friendships, that gave him his own selfish reasons for keeping her around.

The left-hand door opened on to a warehouse accessed via an old spiral staircase while the right-hand door gave on to the office. The office was not a big room, perhaps fifteen feet square, the space dominated by the partners’ desk. There was a single, large window which looked out over the warehouse below, a low bookcase running underneath it. Two comfortable armchairs were positioned on the left-hand side of the room as you went in, the brown leather faded and soft with age. Most striking, though, was the wall space behind the desk, which was taken up with Tom’s glittering collection of safe plates – an assortment of brass and iron plaques in various shapes and sizes, some dating back to the late eighteenth century, each ornately engraved with the safe manufacturer’s name and crest.

‘How are you getting on with the crossword?’ she asked with a smile, peering down at the unfilled grid in front of him. ‘Any easier?’

‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘I mean, take this: “Soldier got into cover for a spell.” Five letters.’ He shook his head. ‘I just don’t see it.’

‘Magic,’ she answered after a few seconds thought.

‘Magic,’ Tom repeated slowly. ‘Why magic?’

‘A soldier is a GI,’ she explained. ‘A cover is a Mac. Put GI into Mac to get a spell. Magic.’

She tapped her long, graceful finger playfully on the tip of Tom’s nose as if it was a wand.

‘I give up.’ Tom, defeated, threw his pen down on to the desk.

‘You just need to keep at it,’ she laughed. ‘One day it’ll all just click into place.’

‘So you keep saying.’ Frustrated, Tom changed the subject: ‘When’s Archie back?’

‘Tomorrow, I think.’ She picked at a frayed piece of cotton where her jeans were ripped across her left thigh.

‘That’s twice he’s been to the States in the last few weeks.’ Tom frowned. ‘For someone who claims to hate going abroad, he’s certainly putting himself about a bit.’

‘What’s he doing there?’

‘God knows. Sometimes he just seems to get an idea into his head and then he’s off.’

‘That reminds me – where did you put those newspapers that were on his desk?’

‘Where do you think? I threw them away along with all his other rubbish.’

‘You did what?’ she exclaimed. ‘They were mine. I’d been keeping them for a reason.’

‘Well, try the bottom left-hand drawer then,’ Tom suggested sheepishly. ‘I put a bunch of old papers in there.’

She slipped off the desk and opened the drawer.

‘Luckily for you, they’re here,’ she said with relief, pulling out a large pile of newspapers and placing them down in from of him.

‘What do you want with them anyway?’ Tom asked. ‘Are you collecting tokens or something?’

‘Do I look like I collect tokens?’ She grinned. ‘No, I wanted to show you something. Only you might not like it…’

‘What are you talking about?’ Tom frowned. ‘You can tell me anything, you know that.’

‘Even if it’s about Harry?’ she asked.

‘Harry?’ Tom sprang up.

Harry Renwick. The mere mention of his name was enough to make Tom’s heart rise into his throat. Harry Renwick had been his father’s best friend; a man Tom had known and loved since…well, since almost as long as he could remember.

That was until it transpired that dear old Uncle Harry had been living a double life. Operating under the name of Cassius, he had masterminded a ruthless art-crime syndicate that had robbed and murdered and extorted its way around the globe for decades. The betrayal still stung.

‘You told me he’d disappeared after what happened in Paris. After the –’

‘Yeah,’ Tom cut her off, not wanting to relive the details. ‘He just vanished.’

‘Well, wherever he’s gone, someone’s looking for him.’ Dominique unfolded the top newspaper, the previous day’s Herald Tribune. She turned to the Personals section and pointed at an ad she’d circled. Tom began to read the first paragraph.

‘Lions may awake any second. If this takes place alert me via existing number.’ He flashed her an amused glance. She indicated that he should read on. ‘If chimps stop their spelling test within one or so hours, reward through gift of eighty bananas.’ He laughed. ‘It’s nonsense.’

‘That’s what I thought when I first saw it, but you know how I like a challenge.’

‘Sure.’ Tom smiled. Amongst her many attributes, Dominique had an amazing aptitude for word games and other types of puzzles. Never one to be outdone, it was partly this which had driven Tom to attempt the crossword. Not that he was making much progress.

‘It only took me a few minutes. It’s a jump code.’

‘A what?’

‘A jump code. Jewish scholars have been finding them for years in the Torah. Did you know that if you take the first T in the Book of Genesis, then jump forty-nine places to the fiftieth letter, then another forty-nine places to the fiftieth letter after that, and so on, it spells a word?’

‘What?’

‘Torah. The book’s name is embedded in the text. The next three books do the same. Some say that the whole of the Old Testament is an encoded message that predicts the future.’

‘And this works in the same way?’

‘It’s a question of identifying the jump interval. In this case, it’s every eighth letter.’

‘Starting with the first letter?’

She nodded.

‘So that makes this L…’ Tom counted seven spaces, ‘then A…’ He grabbed a pen and began to write down each eighth letter: ‘Then S…then T. Last!’ he exclaimed triumphantly.

‘Last seen Copenhagen. Await next contact. I decoded it earlier.’

‘And there are others like this?’

‘After I found this, I looked back through earlier editions. There have been coded messages using the same methodology every few weeks for the last six months or so. I’ve written them out here –’

She handed Tom a piece of paper.

‘HK cold, try Tokyo,’ he read. ‘Focus search in Europe…DNA sample en route…Reported sighting in Vienna…’ He looked up at Dominique. ‘Okay, I agree that someone seems to be looking for someone or something. But there’s nothing to say it’s Harry.’

Dominique handed him a newspaper from the bottom of the pile and opened it at the Personals page.

‘This was the first and longest message.’ She pointed at a lengthy ad she’d circled in red.

‘What does it say?’

‘Ten million dollar reward. Henry Julius Renwick, aka Cassius, dead or alive. Publish interest next Tuesday.’

Tom was silent as he tried to digest this news.

‘Did anyone reply?’ he asked eventually.

‘I counted twenty-five replies in all.’

‘Twenty-five!’

‘Whoever’s behind this has got a small private army out there trying to track Harry down. The question is why.’

‘No,’ Tom reflected, ‘the question is who.’

FOUR

FBI Headquarters, Salt Lake City Division, Utah

4th January – 4.16 p.m.

Where had it all gone wrong?

When had he passed from being a high achiever to an average Joe, a stand-up guy, but one who, according to his superiors, didn’t quite have what it took to go all the way? How was it that people almost half his age were accelerating past him so fast that he barely had time to spit their dust from his mouth before they were a speck on the horizon? When had hanging on long enough to max out his pension become his only reason for getting up in the morning?

Special Agent Paul Viggiano, forty-one, slipped a bullet into each of the five empty chambers of his shiny silver AirLite Ti Model 342 .38 Smith & Wesson as each question registered in his mind.

The gun loaded, he snapped it shut and stood contemplating it for a few seconds before raising it to eye-level. Again he paused and took a deep breath.

Then, breathing out slowly, he emptied the gun into the target at the far end of the indoor shooting range as fast and as loudly as he could, each successive bang magnifying the noise of the one before it, until it seemed that the whole room was echoing in sympathy with his plight.

‘Sounds like you really needed that,’ the woman in the booth next to him said with a smile. He managed a tight grimace in response as she turned to take aim. And how was it, her intervention reminded him, that in some misplaced drive for gender equality, the Bureau was falling over itself to promote women? Women like that bitch Jennifer Browne, who’d got moved upstairs while he’d been posted here. Wherever here was.

One small oversight, that’s all it had been. One little slip in an otherwise spotless career. And here he was, drowning in mediocrity.

He shook his head and hit the button to retrieve the target from the other end of the gallery. It whirred towards him, the black silhouette ghosting through the air like a vengeful spirit, before jerking to a halt just in front of him. He examined it for holes.

To his disbelief there were none. Not a single one.

‘Nice shootin’, Tex,’ smirked the FBI armourer, sneaking a look over his shoulder. ‘Hell, you’re as liable to blow your own balls off as hit the bad guy.’

‘Screw you, McCoy.’

Viggiano’s distinctive New Jersey drawl somehow suited the Italian ancestry suggested by his thick black eyebrows and hair and permanent five o’clock shadow. His dark looks were complemented by a firm, unyielding jaw that jutted out like a car bumper, giving the impression that, if you threw something at him, it would bounce off like a rock hitting a trampoline.

The woman next to him squeezed off her shots one by one with a plodding, rhythmic monotony confirming Viggiano’s impression that she probably ironed her husband’s socks. She then carefully placed her gun down in front of her and retrieved her target. Viggiano couldn’t help but peer over.

Eleven holes. She had eleven holes in her target. How was that possible unless…unless it was her six and his five? He’d been so worked up he’d fired at the wrong target.

The woman had obviously come to the same conclusion. She looked up at him, her eyes dancing, her laughter only seconds behind. He threw his ear protectors down on the bench and stalked out of the room before she could show anyone else.

‘Oh, sir, I was kinda hopin’ I’d find you down here.’ Byron Bailey was an African American from South Central LA, a bright kid who’d made it the hard way, winning a scholarship to Caltech on the back of good grades and an evening job packing shelves in his local 7-Eleven. He had bad acne, which had left his ebony skin pitted like coral, while his nose was broad and flat and his eyes wide and eager. What struck Viggiano most, though, was his tail-wagging enthusiasm, a sickening trait that he shared with most rookies and one which only served to make Viggiano feel even older than he already did.

‘So, you found me.’ Viggiano marked his disinterest by fastidiously picking invisible pieces of lint off the lapels of his immaculately pressed suit.

‘Er, yessir.’ Bailey seemed momentarily unsettled by Viggiano’s irritable tone. ‘We got a tip-off about that heist from the NSA complex in Fort Meade. You know, the one the boys back in DC are all choked up about. It sounds like it might be for real.’

‘What are you babbling about?’ Viggiano caught his reflection in a glass door as he spoke and adjusted his tie so it was centred precisely under his chin.

‘You ever heard of the Sons of American Liberty?’

‘Who?’

‘The Sons of American Liberty.’

‘Nope.’

‘They’re a fringe group of white supremacists. Our mystery caller fingered them as the people behind the theft.’

‘Did you get a trace?’

‘No. The call was made right here in Salt Lake, but that’s all we know. Whoever he was, he had the sense to ring off before we could get a fix on his location.’

‘Any intel on the caller’s ID from the tape?’

‘Forensics are still working on it. They don’t think they’ll get much. Only thing they’re saying at the moment is that he doesn’t sound like he’s from these parts.’

‘That’s it?’ Viggiano sighed heavily. ‘Jesus, it hardly narrows it down.’

‘No, sir.’ Bailey agreed.

‘Where are these jokers based?’

‘Malta, Idaho.’

‘Malta, Idaho!’ Viggiano exclaimed in mock celebration. ‘Just when I think I’ve run out of two-bit shithole towns to visit, another one shoves its head right up my ass.’

‘If it’s any consolation, sir, Carter said that he wanted you to head up the investigation at our end.’

‘Regional Director Carter?’ A flicker of interest in Viggiano’s voice now.

‘That’s right. Apparently you dealt with a similar situation a couple of years back. He said that you were the only one available with the right level of experience for this. He suggested I help you out too, if that’s okay, sir.’

Viggiano clipped his gun back into its holster. ‘Well, for once Carter’s right,’ he said, running a hand through his hair to check that the parting was still right. ‘Saddle up, Bailey. You’re coming along for the ride. Paul Viggiano’s gonna show you a shortcut to the big time.’

FIVE

Borough Market, Southwark, London

5th January – 12.34 p.m.

The market stalls were tightly packed under the rusting cast-iron railway arches, their shelves groaning with freshly imported produce: Camemberts from Normandy as big as cartwheels, pink Guijelo hams, and bottles of olive oil from Apulia that glowed like small suns.

Shoals of eager shoppers, wrapped up against the cold, battled their way along the aisles, their movements seemingly governed by whatever enticing smell, be it fried ostrich burger or warm bread, the wind happened to bring their way. Overhead, trains screeched and scraped their way along the elevated track, an intermittent rolling thunder that grew and faded as quickly as a summer storm.

‘What are we doing here?’ Archie snapped irritably as he dodged between two pushchairs and then squeezed past a long queue in front of one of the many flower stalls.

In his mid-forties and only of average height, Archie had the stocky no-nonsense build of a bare-knuckle boxing champion, his cauliflower ears and slightly crumpled unshaven face reinforcing the image. So there was a certain incongruity about his choice of a tailored beige overcoat over an elegant dark blue pinstripe suit, and his neatly clipped hair.

It was a contradiction reinforced by an accent that Tom had never quite been able to place, although he was the first to admit that his own – a transatlantic hotchpotch of American and British pronunciation and idioms – was hardly easy to nail down. In Archie’s case, the street-speak of the market stall where he had first learnt his trade mingled with the rounded vowels and clipped Ts of a more middle-class background.

Tom suspected that Archie, ever the opportunist, had developed his own unique patois to enable him to move unchallenged between two worlds. It was a neat trick, but one that left him, like Tom, fully accepted by neither.

‘You’re meant to be coming to dinner tonight, remember? I thought I’d splash out.’

‘Oh shit.’ Archie slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘I’m sorry, mate, but I’d completely forgotten.’

‘Archie!’ Tom remonstrated. What made Archie’s unreliability especially annoying was its very predictability. ‘We spoke about it last week. You promised.’

‘I know, I know,’ Archie said sheepishly. ‘I just plain forgot and now…well, Apples has got a game round at his place tonight. Big money. Invitation only. I can’t get out of it.’

‘More like you don’t want to get out of it.’ Tom’s voice was laced with disappointment. ‘This whole gambling thing’s getting a bit out of control, isn’t it?’

‘No, it’s just a laugh.’ Archie spoke a little too emphatically, as if it wasn’t just Tom he was trying to convince.

Looking back, Tom sometimes found it hard to remember that throughout the ten years that Archie had been his fence, he had known him only as a voice at the end of a phone line. Archie had always insisted that it was safer that way. For both of them.

Tom still remembered his anger when Archie had broken his own rule the previous year, back when they were both still in the game, tracking him down to convince him to follow through on a job. And yet from that first, difficult meeting, a friendship had developed. A friendship that was still finding its way, perhaps, as they both struggled to overcome a life built around suspicion and fear, but a friendship nonetheless, and one that Tom increasingly valued.

‘Besides, I need a bit of excitement now and then,’ Archie continued. ‘The art recovery game, well, it’s not exactly got the buzz of the old days, has it?’

‘I thought you got out because you’d had enough of the old days.’

‘I did, I did,’ Archie conceded. ‘It’s just, well, you know…sometimes I miss it.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Tom mused. ‘Sometimes, I miss it too.’

‘Dom told me about those ads in the paper, by the way.’

Tom nodded grimly. ‘Seems the FBI aren’t the only people looking for Renwick.’

‘You all right with that?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be? He deserves everything that’s coming to him.’

They had left the market and were making their way down Park Street towards Archie’s car. Although the pub on the corner was busy, the crowds soon thinned out away from the main market and Tom was relieved that it was easier to make himself heard now. They walked past a succession of small warehouses, the faded names of earlier, now forgotten enterprises still just about visible under the accumulated grime.

Archie reached for his packet of cigarettes and lit one. Smoking was a relatively new vice. Tom put it down to his missing the buzz of the underworld. Archie put it down to the stress of being honest.

‘Did you find what you were after in the States?’

‘More or less,’ Archie replied. From the way his eyes flashed to the ground, Tom sensed that he didn’t really want to talk about it. ‘How was Prague? Worth following up?’

‘Maybe. You ever heard of a painter called Bellak?’

‘Bellak? Karel Bellak?’

‘That’s him.’ Tom had long since ceased to be amazed by Archie’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the art market, painting especially.

‘Yeah, course I’ve heard of him. What do you want to know?’

‘Is this one of his?’

Tom reached into his pocket and withdrew the photograph the rabbi had given him. Archie studied it for a few seconds.

‘Could be.’ He handed it back. ‘Bleak palette, heavy brushstrokes, slightly dodgy perspective. Of course, I’ve never actually seen one in the flesh. As far as I’m aware, they were all destroyed.’

‘That’s what I told the rabbi,’ Tom said. ‘That the Nazis are said to have burnt them all. I just couldn’t remember why.’

Archie took a long drag before answering.

‘Bellak was a journeyman artist. Competent, but, as you can see, no great talent. A portrait here, a landscape there, basically whatever paid that month’s bar bill. Then in 1937 an ambitious SS officer commissioned him to paint Himmler’s daughter Gudrun as a gift for his master.’

‘But wasn’t Bellak Jewish?’

‘As it turned out, yes. But by then a grateful Himmler had hung the portrait in his office on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin and even commissioned a second painting. When he discovered the truth, he had the SS officer shot and Bellak arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Then he ordered that every last one of Bellak’s works was to be tracked down and disposed of.’

‘Clearly, some survived,’ Tom said. ‘This one was stolen a few days ago.’

‘Why bother pinching that? The frame they had it in was probably worth more than the painting.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe because he was Jewish,’ Tom said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You should have seen the place.’ Tom was surprised at the anger in his voice. ‘Someone had done a real number on it. Swastikas and graffiti sprayed all over the walls. Children’s drawings from a local death camp torn to shreds, as if they were trying to make confetti.’

‘Bastards,’ Archie muttered, flicking his cigarette butt into the gutter. ‘And the painting?’

‘Sliced out of its frame and taken with them.’

‘But what would they want with it?’

‘That’s what I’ve been wondering.’

‘Unless…’

‘Unless what?’

Overhead, a train crashed its way towards London Bridge and Archie waited until the raucous clanking had subsided before answering.

‘Unless the painting was what this was all about. Unless they were trying to be clever by disguising an old-fashioned robbery as some sort of anti-Semitic attack.’

‘Exactly,’ Tom said, reassured that Archie had come to the same conclusion as him. ‘So I made some calls. And from what I can work out, it seems that over the last year or so there have been six thefts of alleged Bellak paintings from various private homes and collections across Europe.’

‘Six? I’d no idea that many had survived.’

‘Well, they’re not exactly the sort of thing anyone would bother cataloguing, are they? Even now, no one’s managed to join the dots. The cases have just stuck with the local police in each area. The insurance companies haven’t got involved because the pictures aren’t worth anything. I only found out because I knew who to ask.’

‘Someone’s going to a hell of a lot of trouble to steal a bunch of supposedly worthless paintings.’ A pause. ‘Tom? You listening?’ Archie looked up at him questioningly.

‘Don’t turn round,’ Tom said in a low voice, ‘but I think we’re being followed.’

SIX

Black Pine Mountains, nr Malta, Idaho

5th January – 5.34 a.m.

‘What’s the latest from inside the compound?’ Special Agent Paul Viggiano spoke over the background noise of technicians and ringing telephones, a trim muscular figure in his blue wind-breaker, FBI stamped in large yellow letters across his back.

Bailey, sitting at the kitchen table of the cabin they had commandeered the previous evening as their operational HQ, was the first to speak.

‘No movement, nothing. Not a single phone call. Even the generator shut down this morning. I figure it ran out of gas. No one’s come out to fix it.’

‘What about the dogs?’ Silvio Vasquez this time, the leader of the fourteen-man FBI Hostage Rescue Team that had been assigned to the investigation, sitting to Bailey’s right.

‘What?’ Viggiano frowned. ‘What the hell’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Didn’t someone say they had dogs? Have you seen them?’

‘No.’ Bailey shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘So that’s weird, right?’ Vasquez concluded. ‘A dog’s gotta take a leak.’

‘When did it last snow?’ Viggiano asked. Bailey noticed that he had found some loose matches and was arranging them into neat parallel lines as he spoke.

‘Two days ago,’ Vasquez answered.

‘And there are no footprints? You’re seriously saying no one has stepped outside that farmhouse for two days?’ Peering over, Bailey could see that he had rearranged the matches into a square.

‘Not unless they can fly,’ Bailey confirmed. ‘And that includes the dogs.’

‘I still say you boys have screwed up big time.’

It was the local sheriff’s turn to speak. A tubby man with ginger hair and a closely trimmed moustache, Sheriff Hennessy seemed to be in a permanent sweat, the perspiration beading on his pink forehead and cheeks like condensation on glass.

‘I know these people,’ he continued, the top of his clip-on tie losing itself in the fleshy folds of his neck. ‘They’re law-abiding, God-fearing folk. Patriots.’

‘So you say,’ Bailey began, feeling the resentment welling inside him. ‘But they happen to be on a federal blacklist for suspected links to the Aryan Nations and the Klan.’

Bailey saw Viggiano give a slight shake of the head, warning him to back off. ‘Now, Sheriff, it’s true we don’t know for sure that these people have done anything wrong,’ Viggiano resumed in a conciliatory tone, ‘but we do know that three days ago an exhibit was stolen from the National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland. We know that whoever took it left no physical evidence that we’ve been able to find.’

‘Apart from the security guard they strung up like a hunk of meat in cold storage,’ Bailey couldn’t help himself from adding.

‘We also know,’ Viggiano continued as if he hadn’t heard him, ‘that our Salt Lake office got a call yesterday suggesting these law-abiding patriots of yours were involved.’

‘I know all that,’ Hennessy said, dabbing his brow with a paper napkin taken from the dispenser at the side of the table. ‘But any crack-head could have made that call. It don’t prove nothing.’

‘It proves that the caller knew about the theft. With the press blackout the NSA have imposed, the only people outside of law enforcement agencies who could know about that are the people who did it. So this is a lead, Sheriff, and we’re going to follow up whether you agree with it or not.’

Hennessy slumped back into his chair, muttering under his breath. Bailey smiled, feeling somewhat the better for his capitulation.

‘So what’s the plan?’ he asked.

‘Well, I’m not sitting on my ass till these jokers run out of water and crackers,’ Viggiano declared. ‘We’re going in. Today.’

There was a murmur of approval from around the table, Hennessy excepted. ‘But I want to keep this simple,’ Viggiano continued. ‘We’ve got no reason to assume things will get ugly, so we keep the Humvees under cover and the choppers on the ground. Hopefully we won’t need them. Vasquez?’

Vasquez got to his feet and leant over the table. His face was dark and pockmarked, his lank black hair tucked under an FBI baseball cap which he wore back to front, his dark eyes glowing with excitement.

‘The Sheriff’s men have put road blocks here and here –’ he indicated two roads on the map spread out in front of them – ‘blocking all routes in and out of the compound.’ ‘I want SWAT teams here, here and here, in the trees on the high ground to cover the windows. First sign of any hostile activity once my guys are inside the compound, they put down covering fire while we fall back to the RV point here.’

‘You got it,’ said Viggiano.

‘The two HRT teams will come in from the front and the rear. Based on the blueprints, we estimate we’ll have the main building secured in about three minutes. Then it’s over to you.’

‘Good,’ said Viggiano as Vasquez sat down. ‘Now remember, when this thing goes down, I want it done by the numbers. No exceptions. There are families in there – women, kids.’ He pointed at the pile of manila folders containing photos and profiles of all the people the FBI had identified as living in the building. ‘So we knock on the door nice and easy. We ask to come inside. Any sign that this is more than a plain vanilla secure-and-search operation, we pull back. The last thing I – the Bureau can afford right now is another high-profile hostage situation. Besides, if it gets hot, the DC brass will want to handle it themselves. They always do.’

Vasquez nodded his agreement.

‘You got it.’

‘Okay then.’ Viggiano slapped the table. ‘Let’s move out. There’s a shit-load to do, and I want to hit this place after lunch.’

SEVEN

Borough Market, Southwark, London

5th January – 12.47 p.m.

‘Followed? You sure?’ Archie asked.

‘Tracksuit, bomber jacket and white trainers. Noticed him glancing over at us five minutes ago. Just saw his reflection in that van’s rear window about thirty yards back.’

‘We’re nearly at the motor. We could make a run for it.’

Tom followed Archie’s gaze to his DB9 about thirty yards down the road. It was a recent purchase and, for Archie – who had always said that the cardinal rule of being a criminal was not to attract undue attention by living beyond your means – an uncharacteristic indulgence. When he had handed over the cheque, twenty years of pent-up spending frustration had been released with one cathartic swish of his pen.

‘Oh shit!’ Archie swore. A wheel clamp glowed bright yellow against the gunmetal grey bodywork. ‘They’ve only gone and bloody clamped me.’

He quickened his pace, but Tom laid a restraining hand on his arm. Something felt wrong. Behind them a man who had followed them from the market; ahead, a street sweeper whose shoes looked a little too new; parked in front of Archie’s car, a van with its windows blacked out; and the car itself conveniently immobilised. It was textbook.

‘This isn’t right,’ he breathed.

‘I see them too,’ hissed Archie. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘Get out of here. Now!’

As Tom shouted, the rear doors of the van flew open and three men jumped to the ground. At the same time the street sweeper threw his broom away and swung a semi-automatic out from under his coat. Tom heard the heavy thud of fast-approaching feet from behind.

Before the sweeper could get a shot off, Archie peeled away to the left, while Tom darted right, down a small alleyway that emerged on to a narrow lane bordered by a wire fence. Grabbing the galvanised mesh, he hauled himself up its shuddering face, the metal clanging noisily. He was on the point of vaulting over to the other side when he felt a hand close around his left ankle.

The man who had followed them from the market had somehow managed to catch up with him and was now hanging off his leg, trying to drag him to the ground. Instead of trying to shake him off, Tom lowered himself slightly until his feet were level with the man’s head and then kicked out, freeing his foot from the man’s grasp and striking him across the chin. With a strangled gasp, the man fell to the ground.

Tom swung himself over the fence into a strip of wasteland that had been turned into a temporary car park for the market. He heard the clang of metal behind him and saw that two of the men from the van had arrived at the fence and were clambering up it.

At least they hadn’t shot him, Tom thought as he sprinted out of the car park, narrowly avoiding a car that was turning in, and headed back towards the market. If they’d wanted him dead, whoever they were, they could have taken him right there, through the fence. Clearly they had other plans.

At that moment a fork-lift truck loaded with market produce swung out of a hidden turning ahead of him. Tom jinked round it, the driver slamming on his brakes just in time to avoid hitting him.

‘Watch it, moron!’ the driver yelled, leaning on the horn to emphasise his point.

Tom ignored him, leaping over the spilled vegetable crates and then plunging back into the market. As soon as he was inside, he slowed to a walk, snaking in and out of the lines of shoppers. He knew that he would be safer in a busy place and hoped that Archie had had the good sense to come to the same conclusion. When he judged he was far enough inside, he stopped next to a wine stall and glanced back over his shoulder. His pursuers had reached the market entrance and were scanning the crowd for him. Both had their right hands tucked inside their coats where each was presumably concealing a gun.

Tom turned abruptly and slammed into a man carrying a case of red wine, knocking it out of his hands. The box landed with a crash, the bottles shattering noisily. Tom glanced back towards the entrance and saw that the men, alerted by the noise, were already fighting their way over to him.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said, pushing past.

‘Hey!’ the man shouted after him. ‘Get back here!’

But Tom didn’t stop. Dropping to his knees, he crawled under a stall, then ducked under two more until he was a couple of aisles away from the site of the collision. From the cover of a pyramid of olive oil drums, he checked the progress of the two men. They were standing by the box of shattered wine bottles, gesturing frantically. They’d lost him.

He cautiously made his way towards the north exit, attaching himself to a group of tourists who were chattering excitedly about the whole deer they’d seen strung up on one of the stalls. As they left the market, he broke away, heading for the main road and the river.

With a screech of brakes, a large black Range Rover pulled up alongside him. Tom turned on his heel but slipped, the road surface rendered treacherous by the wet cardboard boxes, lettuce leaves and plastic bags that had been generated by the morning’s trading. Before he could scramble back to his feet, the rear passenger door flew open and he caught a glimpse of who was sitting in the back seat.

Archie.

The front passenger window retracted a few inches and a pale hand appeared in the crack clutching a government identity badge.

‘Enough fun and games, Kirk. Get in.’

EIGHT

5th January – 12.56 p.m.

The driver’s square, close-shaved head emerged from a thick grey woollen polo neck. He flicked his eyes up to the mirror and then back to the road, a smile playing around the corner of his mouth as the car accelerated away.

The man in the passenger seat peered back over his shoulder and nodded at them both.

‘I’m William Turnbull.’

He extended his hand back over his shoulder towards them as he spoke, but they both ignored it, staring at him in stony silence. From what he could see of Turnbull, Tom estimated that he must weigh about eighteen stone, little of it muscle. He appeared to be quite young though, about thirty-five, give or take a few years, and was dressed in an urban camouflage of jeans and an open-necked shirt that barely contained the roll of fat around the base of his neck.

‘Sorry about…that.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of the market. ‘I guessed that you probably wouldn’t come if I just asked, so I brought some help. I didn’t quite expect you to make us –’

‘Let me guess,’ Tom interrupted angrily. ‘Somebody’s got knocked off and you think we might know something about it? Am I right? How many times have I got to tell you people, we don’t know anything and, even if we did, we wouldn’t say.’

‘This has nothing to do with any job,’ was Turnbull’s unsmiling response. ‘And I’m not the police.’

‘Special Branch, Interpol, Flying Squad, PC bloody Plod…’ Archie shrugged. ‘Whatever you want to call yourselves, the answer’s still the same. And this is harassment. We’re clean and you know it.’

‘I work for the Foreign Office.’ Turnbull flashed his identity card at them again.

‘The Foreign Office?’ Archie said incredulously. ‘Well, that’s a new one.’

‘Not really,’ said Tom quietly. ‘He’s a spook.’

Turnbull smiled.

‘We prefer “intelligence services”. In my case, Six.’

Six, Tom knew, was how insiders referred to MI6, the agency that dealt with overseas threats to British national security. It wasn’t the sort of organisation Tom wanted to get caught up in. Not again. He’d done five years in the CIA, seen how they worked, and had only just lived to regret it.

‘So what do you want?’

‘Your help,’ came the toneless reply as the car slowed to a halt at a set of lights.

Archie gave a short, dismissive laugh.

‘What sort of help?’ Tom asked quietly. Until he knew exactly what he was up against, he was forcing himself to play along.

‘As much as you want to give.’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Tom said. ‘None.’ Archie nodded his agreement. ‘Not unless you know something I don’t…’ People like Turnbull never made a move unless they had an edge, some sort of leverage. The key was to flush it out.

‘No reason.’ Turnbull smiled. ‘No threats. No phoney deals. No “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.” If you help us it will be because, by the time I’ve finished telling you what I’ve got, you’re going to want to.’

‘Come on, Tom, we don’t have to listen to this shit. They’ve got nothing on us. Let’s get out of here,’ Archie pleaded. But Tom hesitated. Something in Turnbull’s voice had piqued his curiosity, even though he knew Archie was probably right.

‘I want to hear him out.’

The lights changed to green and the car drew away again.

‘Good.’

Turnbull released his seatbelt and turned to face them. He had a flat, featureless face, his cheeks rounded and fleshy, his chin almost disappearing into his neck. His brown eyes were small and set close together, while his long hair parted in two wild cow licks in the middle of his head and fell like curtains which he had draped behind his ears.

In many ways, he looked like the most unlikely spy Tom had ever seen. The best ones always did. Certainly he had an easygoing confidence that Tom had observed in other field agents in the past, and good agents at that.

‘Have you ever heard of a group called Kristall Blade?’ Turnbull asked.

‘No,’ said Tom.

‘No reason you should have, I suppose. They’re a small band of extremists with loose ties to the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands or NPD, the most active neo-Nazi political group in Germany. They’re supposedly run by a former German Army captain called Dmitri Müller, although no one’s ever seen him to confirm it. To be honest, we don’t know a huge amount about them.’

Tom shrugged. ‘And?’

‘And from the little we do know, these aren’t your regular skinheads, cruising around the suburbs looking for immigrants to beat up. They’re a sophisticated paramilitary organisation who are still fighting a war that the rest of us think ended in 1945.’

‘Hence the name?’ It was more a statement than a question. Tom knew his history well enough to guess that Kristall Blade must have drawn their inspiration from Kristallnacht – the fateful night in late 1938 when Nazi-inspired attacks on Jewish businesses had left the streets of Germany’s cities littered with broken glass.

‘Exactly,’ Turnbull said eagerly. ‘They used to fund their activities by hiring themselves out as freelance hit men behind the Iron Curtain, but these days they’re into small-scale drug and protection rackets. They’re suspected of involvement in a range of guerrilla-style terrorist atrocities aimed primarily at Jewish communities in Germany and Austria. There are no more than ten or twenty active members, with a wider group of supporters and sympathisers perhaps a hundred strong. But that’s what makes them so dangerous. They slip under the radar of most law-enforcement agencies and are almost impossible to pin down.’

‘Like I said, I’ve never heard of them.’

Turnbull continued, undeterred. ‘Nine days ago, two men broke into St Thomas’ Hospital and murdered three people. Two of them were medical staff – witnesses, most likely. The third was an eighty-one-year-old patient by the name of Andreas Weissman. He was an Auschwitz survivor who moved here after the war.’ Tom was silent, still uncertain where this was leading and what it had to do with him. ‘They amputated Weissman’s left arm at the elbow while he was still alive. He died of a heart attack.’

‘They did what?’ Archie sat forward at this latest piece of information.

‘Cut his arm off. His left forearm.’

‘What the hell for?’ Tom this time.

‘That’s where we want your help.’ Turnbull smiled, revealing a disconcerting set of overlapping and crooked teeth.

‘My help?’ Tom frowned. ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘I thought you’d say that,’ said Turnbull, bracing himself against the window as the car turned a corner. ‘The killers stole the surveillance tapes from the ward, but one of them was caught on CCTV as they left the building.’ He produced another photo and passed it back. Tom and Archie took it in turn to examine the image, but both shook their heads.

‘No idea,’ said Archie.

‘Never seen him before,’ Tom agreed.

‘No, but we have,’ Turnbull continued. ‘Which is how we were able to make the link to Kristall Blade. He’s Dmitri’s number two, Colonel Johann Hecht. Last time we caught up with him was in Vienna about three months ago when one of our agents snapped him in a restaurant.’ He handed Tom a third photograph. ‘He’s about six foot seven and has a scar down his right cheek and across his lip, so you can’t exactly miss him.’

‘I’m still waiting for the punchline here.’ Tom’s frustration was mounting and he passed the photo to Archie without even glancing at it. ‘What’s this man got to do with me?’

‘Christ!’ Archie grabbed Tom’s arm. ‘Look at who he’s sitting opposite.’

The colour drained from Tom’s face as he recognised the man that Archie was pointing at.

‘It’s Harry,’ he stammered, the smiling, carefree face in the photo instantly sweeping away the fragile barricades he had sought to erect around that part of his life over the last six months. ‘It’s Renwick.’

NINE

Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, Denmark

5th January – 2.03 p.m.

Harry Renwick paid his admission money at the Glyptotek entrance on the corner of Tietgensgade and H.C. Andersens Boulevard and walked inside. It was still quiet at this hour, most people, he knew, preferring to visit after dark when the Tivoli turned into a light-filled oasis of over 115,000 incandescent bulbs amidst the city’s dark winter nights.

Despite the time, though, most of the rides were already open. The oldest, a large wooden roller-coaster known to locals as Bjergrutschebanen, or the Mountain Roller Coaster, roared in the distance, the screams of its few passengers evaporating into the thin winter air in clouds of warm steam.

Renwick was certainly dressed for the weather, a blue velvet trilby pulled down low over his ears, a yellow silk scarf wound several times around his neck before disappearing into the folds of his dark blue overcoat. With his chin buried in the warmth of his upturned collar, only his nose and eyes could be seen, intelligent, alert, and as cold and unfeeling as the snow that coated the trees and rooftops around him.

He paused in front of a souvenir stall, icicles dangling menacingly from the overhanging roof. As he scanned its contents he shifted his right arm in his pocket, wincing slightly. No matter how well he wrapped it up, the cold penetrated the stump where his right hand had once been and made it ache. Eventually he found what he was looking for and pointed it out to the sales assistant, handing over a hundred kroner note. Slipping his purchase into a red bag, she counted out his change and smiled as he tipped his hat in thanks.

He walked on, past the skating rink, and then the lake, the only part of Copenhagen’s original fortifications to have survived the city’s growth as it swallowed up land that, like Tivoli, had once stood outside its moat and ramparts. Reaching the Chinese pagoda, he stepped into the warmth of the Det Kinesiske Tårn restaurant housed within, stamping his feet in the entrance vestibule to shake the snow off his shoes. A welcoming cloakroom attendant relieved him of his hat and coat, revealing a charcoal-grey double-breasted suit.

In his mid-fifties, Renwick was tall and still obviously strong, his shoulders and head held high and stiff as if on parade. He had a full head of white hair, usually immaculately parted down one side, but the removal of his hat had left it sticking up in places. Nestled under a pair of thick craggy eyebrows, his large green eyes looked younger than his face, which was etched with wrinkles and sagged a little across the cheeks.

‘Table for two. In the back,’ he demanded.

‘Of course, sir. This way please.’

The maître d’hôtel steered him to a table. Renwick opted for the seat that left him with a clear view of the entrance and the windows overlooking the lake. He ordered some wine and checked his watch, a rare gold 1922 Patek Philippe chronograph that he kept in his top pocket on a thin gold chain that fixed to his buttonhole. Hecht was late, but then Renwick was early. Experience had taught him to take no chances.

He surveyed the dining room. It was the usual lunchtime crowd. Young couples, hands clasped, gazing into each other’s eyes with looks that spoke volumes. Older couples, having long since run out of words, silently gazed in opposite directions. Parents, struggling to control their children, tried desperately to keep an eye on everything at once. Little people with little lives.

Hecht arrived five minutes later, towering over the waiter who ushered him over. He was wearing lace-up boots, jeans and a cheap brown leather jacket decorated with zips and press-stud pockets that looked stiff and plastic.

‘You are late,’ Renwick admonished him as he sat down, awkwardly folding his long legs under the table. Hecht had a cruel, lumbering face, a white scar down his right cheek pulling his mouth into a permanent grin, his grey eyes bulging and moist from the cold. His dyed black hair had been plastered to his scalp with some sort of oil.

‘We watched you all the way from the main gate,’ Hecht corrected him. ‘I thought I’d give you a few minutes to get settled in. I know you like to choose the wine.’

Renwick smiled and indicated for the waiter to fill Hecht’s glass.

‘So? Did you get it?’

Renwick’s tone had been casual, but Hecht wasn’t fooled.

‘Don’t insult me. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think I had.’

‘Where is it then?’

Hecht unzipped his jacket and withdrew a short cardboard tube. Renwick snatched it from him, popped the plastic cover off one end and emptied the canvas scroll into his lap.

‘Is it the one?’

‘Patience, Johann,’ Renwick chided, although he was having difficulty disguising the excitement in his own voice.

Holding the painting out of sight below the table with his left hand, he unscrolled it across his lap and inspected its battered surface. Seeing nothing there, he flipped it over to examine the reverse. His face fell. Nothing.

‘Damn.’

‘I don’t know where else to look.’ Hecht’s voice was laced with disappointment. ‘That’s six we have taken, and none of them the right one – or so you say.’

‘What are you implying?’ Renwick snapped.

‘That perhaps if we knew what you were looking for, it would help us find the right painting.’

‘That is not our arrangement. I am paying you to steal the paintings, nothing more.’

‘Then perhaps it’s time the deal changed.’

‘What do you mean?’ Renwick asked sharply, not liking the mischievous sparkle in Hecht’s eyes.

‘That Jew you asked us to keep an eye on…’

‘What about him?’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ Renwick’s eyes widened. ‘How?’

‘We killed him.’

‘You killed…You idiot,’ Renwick spluttered. ‘You have no idea what you are meddling in. How dare you –’

‘Don’t worry,’ Hecht interrupted him with a wink. ‘We got it.’

Renwick nodded slowly, as if trying to calm himself, although in truth Hecht’s revelation was no surprise – he had known for several days now about Kristall Blade’s thoughtless attack on Weissman. If things had been different, he might even have been in a position to prevent it. No matter. For now, the important thing was for them to think they had the advantage. If they felt they were in control, it would make them complacent. And their complacency would eventually present him with the opportunity to make his move. Until then, he was happy to grant them their small victory and pretend to have been outsmarted.

‘And now I suppose you think that little bit of cleverness entitles you to a seat at the top table?’

‘This is bigger than an old painting. We can sense it. We want a share in whatever it is you are after.’

‘And what do I get in return?’

‘You get the arm and whatever it can tell you.’

There was a pause as Renwick pretended to consider Hecht’s offer. His wine glass sounded like a deadened bell as he rhythmically tapped the squat gold signet ring on his little finger against the rim.

‘Where is the arm now?’

‘Still in London. One phone call from me and it will be flown out here – or destroyed. You choose.’

Renwick shrugged.

‘Very well. Eighty–twenty split.’ He had no intention of splitting anything, but knew it would arouse suspicion if he didn’t try to negotiate.

‘Fifty–fifty.’

‘Do not push your luck, Johann,’ Renwick warned him.

‘Sixty–forty then.’

‘Seventy–thirty. That’s my final offer,’ Renwick said firmly.

‘Done.’ Hecht took out his phone. ‘Where do you want it delivered?’

‘I will go to London,’ Renwick said with a wry smile. ‘Things are already in motion there. Maybe we can use this to our advantage.’

‘You still haven’t told me what this is all about.’

Renwick shook his head.

‘I will talk to Dmitri. What I have to say, he should hear first.’

Hecht leant into the table and raised his voice ever so slightly.

‘He will only speak to you once I have verified your story. If we are to be partners, he needs more than promises.’

‘Very well,’ Renwick sighed. ‘I will tell you what you need to know, but no more. The full story will have to wait for Dmitri. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

Renwick reached into the red bag by his chair. Hecht’s hand flashed across his chest as he felt for his gun.

‘Careful, Renwick. No tricks.’

‘No tricks,’ Renwick agreed.

His hand emerged from the bag clutching a small model steam train. He placed it on the table and pushed it over to Hecht. The miniature pistons pumped merrily as it rolled over the tablecloth until it bumped into Hecht’s plate with a resonant ping and came to a stop.

‘What is this? Some sort of joke?’ Hecht’s tone was suspicious.

‘No joke.’

‘But it’s a train?’ he said dismissively.

‘Not just any train. A gold train.’

TEN

Nr Borough Market, London

5th January – 1.03 p.m.

‘What’s he got to do with this?’

Tom’s voice was at once angry and uncertain. He couldn’t talk, couldn’t even think about Harry without remembering how much of himself he had lost the day he finally uncovered the truth. It was as if half his life had been revealed as one long lie.

‘That’s what we’d like to find out.’

‘What do you know?’

‘Not as much as you,’ Turnbull snorted. ‘Given that you and dear old Uncle Harry were almost family.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Tom said bitterly. ‘The Harry Renwick I knew was intelligent, funny, kind and caring.’ He couldn’t stop his voice from softening at the memory of Renwick in his tatty old white linen suit. Renwick who’d never forgotten his birthday, not once. His own father had never managed that. ‘The Harry Renwick I knew was my friend.’

‘You were taken in then, just like everybody else? You never suspected the truth?’ Turnbull sounded sceptical.

‘Why are you asking me if you already know the answers?’ Tom snapped. ‘I don’t want to talk about Harry Renwick.’

‘Talk to me about Cassius then,’ Turnbull pressed. ‘Tell me what you knew about him.’

Tom took a deep breath and tried to calm himself.

‘Everyone in the business knew Cassius. Knew of him, that is, because nobody had ever seen him. Or rather, not seen him and lived.’

‘He was a ruthless, murdering bastard, that’s who he was,’ said Archie. ‘His crew had a crooked finger in every crooked scam going in the art business. Thefts, forgeries, grave-robbing, smuggling – you name it. And if you didn’t play along, well…I heard he once put a man’s eyes out with a fountain pen for not authenticating a forged Pisanello drawing he was trying to shift.’

‘No one realised that all along Cassius was Uncle – was Renwick.’

‘Have you spoken to him since?’

Tom gave a short laugh.

‘Last time I saw him, he was trying to shoot me – until I severed his hand in a vault door. We’re not exactly on speaking terms any more.’

‘Yeah, I’ve read the FBI case file on what happened in Paris.’ Tom met his eye, surprised. ‘Believe it or not, we do occasionally share information with our American colleagues,’ Turnbull explained with a wry smile. ‘Especially now he’s made their Most Wanted list.’

‘And what did the file say?’

‘That, although a known thief, you co-operated with the US Government to help recover five priceless gold coins stolen from Fort Knox. And that during the course of that investigation, you helped unmask Renwick as Cassius and apprehend a rogue FBI agent.’

‘And Renwick? What did it say about him?’

‘Not much more than what you’ve just told us. That’s the problem. We’ve picked up on some rumours, but that’s it. That his syndicate has disintegrated. That he’s lost everything. That he’s on the run.’

‘From you?’

‘Us, Interpol, the Yanks – the usual suspects. But we’re not the only ones.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’ve intercepted messages from a group of people who seem to be trying to hunt Renwick down.’

‘The coded Personals ads in the Tribune?’

‘You know about those?’ Turnbull’s surprise was evident.

‘Only since yesterday. Any ideas on who’s running them?’

‘They’re sent by post. Typed. Standard HP laser printer. Different country of origin each time. Could be anyone.’

‘Well, I don’t care either way.’ Tom shrugged. ‘Whoever gets him first will be doing us all a favour. Good luck to them.’

‘Except that this isn’t just about Renwick. Despite what the media might say, not all terrorists wave a Kalashnikov in one hand and a Koran in the other. Kristall Blade is a violent, fanatical sect bent on restoring the Third Reich, whatever the cost. Up till now they’ve remained in the shadows, carrying out deadly but mainly small-scale operations within a limited geographical area. Our sources tell us that this is about to change. They are looking to fund a massive expansion of their activities, in terms of personnel, size of target and geographic reach. If Renwick’s helping them to achieve their goal, we’ll all pay the price.’

‘And what do you expect me to do about it?’

‘We’d like your help. You know Renwick better than anyone, understand him and his methods and the world he operates in. We need to find out what he’s working on with Hecht before it’s too late. I suggest you start by looking at these hospital murders.’

Tom laughed and shook his head.

‘Look, I’m sorry, but I investigate stolen art, not stolen arms. No one wants to see Renwick stopped more than I do, but I’m not getting involved. That life’s behind me.’

‘Behind us both,’ Archie chimed in, thumping the seat next to him for emphasis.

‘And how long before Renwick decides to come looking for you? How long before he decides it’s time to settle old scores?’

‘That’s my problem, not yours,’ Tom said with finality. ‘And it’s certainly not a good enough reason to do anything other than walk away from your mess without making it any worse. I don’t trust you people. Never have. Never will.’

There was a long pause, during which Turnbull stared at him stonily before turning to face the front again and letting out a long sigh.

‘Take this, then –’ Turnbull held out a piece of paper, his arm bending back over his shoulder. It had a number scrawled on it. ‘In case you change your mind.’

The car slowed to a halt and the door flashed open. Tom and Archie stepped blinking out on to the street. It took them a few seconds to realise that they were back at Archie’s car. The clamp had been removed.

‘So, what do you want to do?’ asked Archie as he beeped the car open and slipped behind the wheel.

‘Nothing, until we’ve checked him out,’ Tom said, settling back into the soft black leather passenger seat just as the engine snarled into life. ‘I want to know what he’s really after.’

ELEVEN

Greenwich, London

5th January – 1.22 p.m.

The room hadn’t changed. It only seemed a little emptier without him, as if all the energy had been sucked out of it. The faded brown curtain that he’d refused to open fully, even in the summer, remained drawn. The dark green carpet still bristled with dog hair and ash. The awful 1950s writing desk had not moved from the bay window, while on the mantelpiece the three volcanic rocks that he’d picked up from the slopes of Mount Etna when on honeymoon with her mother many years before, radiated their usual warm glow.

As she crossed the room, Elena Weissman caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and flinched. Although only forty-five, and a young forty-five at that, she knew the last week had aged her ten years. Her green eyes were puffy and red, her face flushed and tired, the lines across her forehead and around her eyes and mouth had deepened from shallow indentations to small valleys. Her black hair, usually well groomed, was a mess. For the first time since her teens she was wearing no make-up. She hated being this way.

‘Here you go, my love –’ Sarah, her best friend, came back into the room with two mugs of tea.

‘Thanks.’ Elena took a sip.

‘These all need to be boxed up, do they?’ Sarah asked, trying to sound cheerful, though her face betrayed her disgust at the state of the room.

Stacked up against the walls and fireplace and armchairs, and every other surface that would support them, were precarious towers of books and magazines – hardbacks and paperbacks and periodicals and pamphlets of various shapes and sizes and colours, some old with smooth leather spines stamped with faded gold letters, others new and bright with shiny dust jackets.

She remembered with a sad smile how the piles used to topple over, to an accompaniment of florid German curses. How her father would then try to stuff them into the overflowing bookcase that ran the length of the right-hand wall, only to admit defeat and arrange them into a fresh tower in a new location. A tower that would itself, in time, tumble to the ground as surely as if it had been built on sand.

Her grief took hold once again and she felt an arm placed around her shoulders.

‘It’s okay,’ Sarah said gently.

‘I just can’t believe he’s dead. That he’s really gone.’ Elena’s shoulders shook as she sobbed.

‘I know how hard it must be,’ came the comforting reply.

‘No one deserves to die like that. After everything he’d been through, all that suffering.’ She looked into Sarah’s eyes for support and found it.

‘The world’s gone mad,’ Sarah agreed. ‘To kill an innocent man in his bed and then…’

Her voice tailed off and Elena knew that she couldn’t bring herself to repeat what she herself had told Sarah only a few days before, although it seemed a lifetime ago now. That her father, a frail old man, had been murdered. That his body had been butchered like a piece of meat. She still couldn’t quite believe it herself.

‘It’s like a terrible nightmare,’ she murmured, more to herself than anyone.

‘Maybe we should finish this another day,’ Sarah suggested gently.

‘No.’ Elena took a deep breath and fought to bring herself under control. ‘It’s got to be done at some stage. Besides, I need to keep busy. It keeps my mind off…things.’

‘I’ll go and grab some boxes then, shall I? Why don’t you start with the bookcase?’

Sarah went off in search of boxes as Elena, clearing a space in the middle of the room, began to empty the shelves on to the floor, sorting the books as she went along. Her father’s taste had been eclectic, but the bulk of his library seemed to be devoted to his twin hobbies of ornithology and trains. There was a vast array of books on each subject, many of them in French or German, and she found herself wishing that she’d kept her languages up so that she would know what was the French for bird and the German for railway.

Together, they emptied the first set of shelves and were about halfway down the middle set when Elena noticed something strange. One of the books, a leather-bound volume with an indecipherable title in faded black letters, refused to move when she tried to grab it. At first she assumed that it must be glued there, no doubt the result of some careless accident years before. But once she had removed all the other books from the shelf, she could see that there was no sign of anything sticking it down.

She gave it a firm tug with both hands, but still it wouldn’t come free. Exasperated now, she reached round behind the book and, to her surprise, felt a thin metal rod emerging from it and disappearing into the wall. Further inspection revealed that the pages, if any had ever existed, had been replaced by a solid block of what felt like wood.

She stepped back and stared at the book pensively. After a few seconds’ hesitation, she stepped forward and with a deep breath, pressed gently against the book’s spine. The book edged forward easily as if on some sort of track and at the same time there was a click as the right-hand edge of the central bookcase shifted about half an inch. Hearing the scrape of wood, Sarah looked up from where she was kneeling on the floor.

‘Found something, dear?’

Elena didn’t reply. Grasping one of the shelves she pulled the bookcase towards her. It swung open noiselessly, skating just above the carpet, until it had folded back on itself.

‘Oh my!’ Sarah exclaimed breathlessly, struggling to her feet.

The bookcase had revealed a section of wall still covered in what looked like the original Victorian wallpaper, an ornate floral pattern painted over with thick brown varnish. In a few places the paper had fallen off, revealing the cracked and crumbling plaster beneath.

But Elena’s eyes were fixed not on the wall but on the narrow green door set into it. On the hinges glistening with oil. Recently applied oil.

TWELVE

Location unknown

5th January – 4.32 p.m.

Large damp patches had formed around his armpits and across his back as he leant forward on the long table and stared at the jet-black conference phone that lay in the middle of it, a small red light on one side flashing steadily.

‘What is it?’ The voice that floated up from the phone was calm and cold.

‘We’ve found him.’

‘Where? In Denmark, like we thought?’

‘No, not Cassius.’

‘Who, then?’

‘Him. The last one.’

A pause.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where.’

‘London. But we were too late. He’s dead.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve seen the police report.’

‘And the body? Did you see the body?’

‘No. But I’ve seen the photos taken at the autopsy and a copy of the dental records. They match.’

A long silence.

‘So,’ the voice eventually sighed, ‘it is over. He was the last.’

‘No, I’m afraid it’s just the beginning.’ As he spoke, he spun the gold signet ring on his little finger. The ring’s flat upper surface was engraved with a small grid of twelve squares, one of which had been set with a lone diamond.

‘The beginning?’ the voice laughed. ‘What are you talking about? Everything is safe now. He was the only one left who knew.’

‘He was murdered. Killed in his hospital bed.’

‘He deserved a far worse death for what he had done,’ was the unfeeling response.

‘His arm was cut off.’

‘Cut off?’ The question was spat into the room. ‘Who by?’

‘Someone who knows.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Why else would they have taken it?’

Silence.

‘I will have to call the others together.’

‘That’s not all. British Intelligence is involved.’

‘I’ll call the others. We must meet and discuss this.’

‘They’re working with someone.’

‘Who? Cassius? We’ll have caught up with him before he gets any further. He’s been sniffing around this for years. He knows nothing. The same goes for all the others who’ve tried.’

‘No, not Cassius. Tom Kirk.’

‘Charles Kirk’s son? The art thief?’

‘Yes.’

‘Following in his father’s footsteps? How touching.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Watch him. See where he goes, who he talks to.’

‘Do you think he could…?’

‘Never!’ the voice cut him off. ‘Too much time has gone by. The trail is too cold. Even for him.’

THIRTEEN

Clerkenwell, London

5th January – 8.35 p.m.

Tom had never really been one for possessions before now. There had been no need, no point even, in owning anything: until recently he had rarely spent more than two weeks in the same place. He had accepted that this was the price for always having to stay one step ahead of the law.

It was not, in truth, a price that had cost him too dear, for he had never been a natural hoarder or acquirer of belongings. He had got into the game because he loved the thrill and because he was good at it, not so he could one day enjoy a comfortable retirement sipping cocktails in the Cayman Islands. He’d have done the job for free if money hadn’t been the only way of keeping score.

He was, therefore, well aware of the significance of the few pieces he’d recently bought at auction and scattered throughout his apartment. He recognised them as a tangible sign that he had changed. That he was no longer just a packed suitcase away from skipping town at the slightest sign of trouble, a mercenary wandering wherever the winds of fortune blew him. He had a home now. Roots. Responsibilities even. To him, at least, the accumulation of ‘stuff’ was a proxy for the first stirrings of the normality he had craved for so long.

The sitting room – a huge open-plan space with cast-iron struts holding up the partially glazed roof – had been simply furnished with sleek modern furniture crafted from brushed aluminium. The polished concrete floor was covered in a vibrant patchwork of multicoloured nineteenth-century Turkish kilims, while the walls were sparsely hung with late Renaissance paintings, most of them Italian, each individually lit. Most striking was the gleaming steel thirteenth-century Mongol helmet that stood on a chest in the middle of the room, leering menacingly at anyone who stepped into its line of sight.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Dominique panted as she came through the door, hitching her embroidered skirt up with one hand and clutching her shoes in the other. ‘Went for a run and sort of forgot the time.’

‘Well, at least you’re here,’ Tom said, turning away from the stove to face her, his face glowing from the heat.

‘Oh no, Tom, he hasn’t cancelled again, has he?’ she said. ‘Let me guess. He had a card game, or greyhound racing, or he got tickets to a fight?’

‘Right first time,’ Tom said with a sigh. ‘At least he’s consistent.’

‘I can’t believe that you used to place your life in the hands of someone so unreliable,’ she said as she sat down at the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen area from the main sitting room and slipped her shoes on.

‘Yeah, well, that’s the thing. Archie never got the job wrong, not once. He might forget his own birthday, but he’d still be able to tell you the make and location of every alarm system in every museum from here to Hong Kong.’

‘You don’t think it’s all getting a bit out of control?’

Tom rinsed his hands under the tap as she finished rearranging her top.

‘He’s always been a gambler of one sort or another. It’s in his nature. Besides, in many ways this is an improvement. At least now he’s just playing for money. The stakes were much higher when we were both still in the game.’

‘If you ask me, the gambling’s all an excuse anyway,’ she said, her eyes twinkling. ‘I think he just doesn’t like your cooking.’

Tom grinned and flicked water at her.

‘Stop it,’ she laughed. ‘You’ll ruin my mascara.’

‘You never wear make-up.’

‘I thought I might jump on the bike and go to a club after dinner. Lucas and some of his friends said they would be going out. Do you want to come?’

‘No thanks.’ He shrugged. ‘Not really in the mood.’

‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

‘Me? Fine. Why do you ask?’

‘You just seem a bit down, that’s all.’

Tom hadn’t mentioned the afternoon’s detour with Turnbull. There was no reason to, and besides, he didn’t really want to relive the whole Renwick discussion again. The wounds were still too fresh. Wounds that he clearly wasn’t concealing particularly well.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘I just wondered whether it was because…well, you know, because it’s today?’

Tom gave her a blank look.

‘What’s today?’

‘You know, his birthday.’

‘Whose birthday?’

‘Your father’s, Tom.’

It took a few seconds for the words to register in Tom’s brain.

‘I’d forgotten.’ He could barely believe it himself, although part of him wondered whether, subconsciously, he’d deliberately blocked it out, like all those other things he’d blocked out from his childhood. It was easier that way. It made him feel less angry with the world.

There was a pause.

‘You know, it might help if you sometimes spoke about him with me. With anyone.’

‘And say what?’

‘I don’t know. What you felt about him. What you liked. What annoyed you. Anything other than the big hole you’re always trying to step around.’

‘You know what he did to me.’ Tom could feel the instinctive resentment building in his voice. ‘He blamed me for my mother’s death. Blamed me, as if it was my fault she let me drive the car. I was thirteen, for God’s sake. Everyone else accepted it was an accident, but not him. I got sent to America because he couldn’t bear to see me around. He abandoned me when I needed him the most.’

‘And you hated him for it.’

‘That’s not the point. The important thing is that I was prepared to try and start over. I really was. And you know what? It was working. We were just beginning to get to know each other again, to find our way back, to build something new. Then he died. I almost hate him more for that.’

A long pause.

‘You know he never forgave himself for what he did to you?’ Dominique sounded awkward and her eyes flicked to the ground.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He talked about it a lot. It never left him. I think that’s partly why he took me in. To try and make things right.’

‘Took you in? What are you talking about?’ Tom said, frowning.

‘The thing is, he never wanted to tell you, because he thought you might be jealous. And it was never like that. He was just trying to help me.’

‘Dom, what are you talking about? You’re making no sense.’

She took a deep breath before answering

‘I never knew either of my parents,’ she began, her normally confident voice strangely small and muted, her words rushed as if she was worried that, if she paused, even for a second, she wouldn’t be able to begin again. ‘All I remember is being passed from foster home to foster home as quickly as it took me to set fire to something or get into a fight. When I was seventeen I ran away. Spent a year living on the streets in Geneva. I was this close to the edge…’

Tom had always known that Dominique had a darker side. That she was a little wild. This, however, was totally unexpected.

‘But those stories about your family, about studying Fine Art, about going to finishing school in Lausanne – you made that stuff up?’

‘We all have our secrets,’ she said softly, her eyes locking with his. ‘Our own ways of blocking out the things we’re trying to forget.’

‘Did my father know?’ He picked up a knife and began to slice some vegetables distractedly.

‘I first saw him at a taxi stand one night. I think he’d just been to the cinema. A re-release of Citizen Kane or something. I never expected him to see me. Normally people would be halfway home before they’d notice their wallet was gone. But not your father. He was so quick.’

‘You stole his wallet?’ Tom hoped that his voice didn’t betray the fact that he was not so much shocked as impressed.

‘Tried to. But he caught me with my hand still inside his jacket. And the amazing thing was that, rather than call the police, he just told me to keep it.’

‘He did what?’ Tom couldn’t help smiling as he pictured the scene.

‘He told me I could keep it. But if I wanted a fresh start in life, I should bring it back to him at his shop and he would help me. I stared at that damned wallet for four days, desperately wanting to open it and take the money, but knowing that, if I did, I might lose my one chance to get out. And then on the fifth day I went to see him. Just as he’d promised, he took me in. Gave me a job working in his shop, taught me everything I know. He never asked for anything in return. I wouldn’t be here today without him.’

For a few seconds Tom was silent. Dominique’s confession certainly explained some of the contradictions in her character that he had never quite been able to put his finger on before. Less clear, was his father’s motivation in helping her, or indeed his reasons for keeping it a secret. Every time Tom thought he was beginning to understand him, a new revelation seemed to draw yet another veil between them.

‘He should have told me,’ Tom said, unconsciously gripping the knife he had been slicing the vegetables with until the tips of his fingers were white. ‘You both should.’

‘You’re probably right,’ she said. ‘But he was worried about what you might say. I think we both were. I’m only telling you now because I think that today, of all days, you should know that, all the time he was with me, he was trying to make up for not being with you. He knew that he would never be able to forgive himself for what he had done. But he always hoped that, one day, you’d understand and not hate him so much.’

There was a long silence, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator and the throb of the oven. Abruptly, Tom threw the knife down with a clatter.

‘I think we should have a drink. A toast. To him. What do you think? There’s a bottle of Grey Goose in the freezer.’

‘Good idea.’ She gave him a brave smile and swiped a finger across the corners of her eyes. Then, standing up, she crossed to the refrigerator. The door to the freezer compartment came open with a wet, smacking noise.

She gave a short sharp scream.

Tom was across the room in an instant. She pointed into the freezer, the cold air swirling inside it like fog on a wet winter’s morning. Tom could just about make out what she was pointing at.

An arm. A human arm. And it was holding a rolled-up canvas.

FOURTEEN

Black Pine Mountains, nr Malta, Idaho

5th January – 2.09 p.m.

The large H-shaped farmhouse and its rambling assortment of outbuildings nestled in a wide clearing in the middle of the forest. A single dirt track, wide enough for one car, snaked its way over three miles back to the nearest metalled road. Here and there animal tracks materialised and then faded away again, hinting at life without ever fully confirming it, the forest’s muffled silence broken only by the call of an occasional eagle, knifing through the air far overhead before vanishing into the sun.

Bailey lay in the snow, hidden amongst the trees, the crisp blue vault of the sky just about visible through their dark, oily branches. He was already cold and now he could feel the moisture seeping in through the knees of his supposedly waterproof trousers. Viggiano was lying on one side of him, a pair of binoculars glued to his face, with Sheriff Hennessy on the other.

‘How many people did you say were in there?’ asked Viggiano.

‘Twenty to twenty-five,’ Bailey replied, shifting position to relieve the stiffness in his arms. ‘Each family’s got their own bedroom in the side extensions. They all eat and hang out together in the main building.’

‘Goddamned cousin-fuckers,’ Viggiano muttered. Bailey sensed Hennessy shift uneasily beside him.

Viggiano picked up his radio.

‘Okay, Vasquez – move in.’

Two teams of seven men rose from their hiding places along Phase Line Yellow, their final position for cover and concealment, and emerged running in single file from the trees at opposite ends of the outer perimeter. Still in formation, they vaulted over the low wooden fence and passed Phase Line Green, the point of no return, rapidly moving in on the front and rear entrances to the main building. Once there, they crouched along the side-walls to the left of each door.

Using his own set of binoculars, Bailey checked the farmhouse for signs of life from inside – a shadow or a twitching curtain or a hurriedly extinguished light – but detected nothing apart from a few flakes of white paint peeling from the window frames and fluttering in the wind.

Then he ran his binoculars along the two SWAT teams in their helmets, gas masks and bulletproof vests. Against the whiteness of the snow they looked like large black beetles, the visors on their helmets winking in the afternoon sun. In addition to submachine guns and pistols, one man in each unit was also equipped with a large metal battering ram.

‘Okay,’ came Vasquez’s voice over the radio. ‘Still no sign of activity inside. Alpha team, stand by.’

A voice amplified through a bullhorn rang out.

‘This is the FBI. You are surrounded. Come out with your hands up.’

‘I said to keep it low-key, Vasquez, you macho idiot,’ Viggiano muttered under his breath.

Silence from the farmstead. Again the amplified voice blared out.

‘I repeat, this is the FBI. You have ten seconds to show yourselves.’

Still nothing. Viggiano’s radio crackled.

‘Nothing doing, sir. It’s your call.’

‘Make the breach,’ Viggiano ordered. ‘Now.’

At each entrance the man with the battering ram stepped forward and slammed it into the lock. Both doors splintered on impact and flew open. A second man then lobbed a tear-gas canister through each open doorway. A few seconds later, the canisters exploded, sending dense, choking clouds of gas billowing out of the front and rear of the building.

‘GO, GO, GO!’ yelled Vasquez as the men disappeared into the house.

From their vantage point, Bailey could hear muffled shouting and the regular pop and fizz of further tear-gas grenades being let off, but nothing else. No screams. No crying children. Certainly not a gun shot. The seconds ticked by, then turned into minutes. This was going better than any of them had expected.

The radio crackled into life.

‘Sir, this is Vasquez…There’s nobody here.’

Viggiano pulled himself up into a crouching position and grabbed the radio.

‘Say again?’

‘I said there’s nobody here. The place is empty. We searched every room, including the attic. It’s deserted and it looks like they left in a hurry. There’s half-eaten food on the table. The whole fucking place stinks.’

Bailey swapped a confused look with Viggiano and then with Hennessy, who looked genuinely concerned.

‘There must be someone there, Vasquez. I’m coming down,’ Viggiano said.

‘Negative, sir. Not until we’ve secured the whole area.’

‘I said, I’m coming down. You and your men stay put till I arrive. I want to see this for myself.’

FIFTEEN

Bloomsbury, London

5th January – 9.29 p.m.

‘Coffee?’

‘I need a drink.’ Tom went to the decanter on the side table and poured himself a large glass of cognac. He took a mouthful, swilling it around before swallowing it, and then sat down heavily in one of the armchairs and glanced around him.

This was only the second time he’d been to Archie’s place. It was a realisation that brought home to Tom how little he knew about his partner – who he was; what his passions were; where his secrets lay – although he now saw that, based on the evening’s revelations, he could say the same of Dominique. Perhaps that said more about him than either of them.

Despite this, he was able to detect in the room itself some hints of Archie’s character. Immediately apparent, for example, was his love of Art Deco, as evidenced by the Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann furniture and the selection of Marinot glassware that adorned the mantelpiece. And a collection of Edwardian gaming chips displayed in two framed cases on either side of the door betrayed his fascination with gambling.

More intriguing was the teak coffee table, which Tom immediately identified as a late nineteenth-century Chinese opium bed. The brass fittings around its edge would once have housed bamboo poles to support a silk canopy, shielding the occupant’s anonymity.

‘Sorry about your game,’ Tom said, his gaze returning to Archie as he settled into the chair opposite him.

‘Don’t worry,’ Archie dismissed the apology with a wave of his hand. ‘I was losing anyway. Is she all right?’ He tilted his head in the direction of the closed bathroom door in the hallway.

‘She’ll be fine,’ Tom said. If what he had learnt about Dominique’s past had confirmed anything, it was her ability to tough it out.

‘What the hell happened?’

Tom simply handed him the rolled-up canvas by way of reply.

‘What’s this?’

‘Take a look.’

Archie unscrolled the painting on the coffee table. He looked up in surprise.

‘It’s the Bellak from Prague.’ Tom nodded. ‘Where did you find it?’ Archie ran his hands gently over the painting’s cracked surface, his fingers brushing against the ridges in the oil paint, pausing over a series of small holes that punctured its surface.

‘It was a gift. Somebody kindly left it in my freezer.’

‘In your what?’ Archie wrinkled his forehead as if he hadn’t heard properly.

‘In my freezer. And it wasn’t the only thing they left.’

Archie shook his head.

‘I’m not sure I even want to know.’

‘There was a human arm in there, too. In fact, come to think of it, it’s still in there.’

For once, Archie was speechless, his eyes bulging in disbelief. When he did manage to get a word out, it was in a strangled, almost angry voice.

‘Turnbull.’

‘What?’

‘It’s that two-faced bastard Turnbull.’

Tom laughed.

‘Come on, Archie. You said he checked out.’

‘He did. At least according to my contact. MI6, originally on the Russian desk at GCHQ. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. Think about it. He shows up wanting our help. We refuse, and a few hours later the missing forearm miraculously shows up amongst your frozen peas. It’s a bloody set-up. I expect he’s round there now, waiting for you to get home so he can nick you.’

‘You’re assuming the arm belongs to Turnbull’s Auschwitz survivor.’

‘Too right. How many severed arms do you think there are floating around London?’

‘Not many,’ Tom conceded.

‘Well, there you are then.’

Tom stood up and moved over to the window. Below, a couple of taxis rattled past, their gleaming black roofs flickering with pale orange flames each time they passed under a streetlight. On the other side of the street, sheltering behind thick iron railings, the sombre façade of the British Museum peered through the night with patrician indifference, the granite lions flanking the main entrance standing permanent guard.

‘I’m just saying that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions,’ Tom continued. ‘Besides, there is another option…’

‘Here we go,’ Archie muttered.

‘…whoever is behind the murder of that old man is also behind the theft of the painting.’

‘You think it’s Renwick, don’t you?’

‘Why not? We know he’s working with Kristall Blade, and we know they killed that man. Given that, thanks to me, he only has one hand, he of all people probably appreciated the irony of dropping off someone else’s limb as his calling card.’

‘And the Bellak paintings?’

‘Stolen by them at his request,’ Tom said with a shrug.

‘Bellak?’ Unnoticed by either of them, Dominique had emerged from the bathroom and slipped into the room. Her earlier shock had been replaced by a calm resolve and there was something almost ethereal about her as she stood there, a slim silhouette framed by the open doorway. ‘The painter?’

Tom and Archie exchanged uncertain glances.

‘You’ve heard of him?’ Even Tom was impressed by this latest example of Dominique’s ever-expanding mental database of the art market.

‘Only by name.’

‘How come?’

‘Because your father spent the last three years of his life looking for Bellak paintings.’

‘Really?’ Tom said disbelievingly.

‘It became quite a big thing for him. He had me scanning databases and newspaper files and auction listings to see if I could find anything. I never did. By the end, I think he had almost given up.’

‘That’s where I’d heard the name before,’ Tom said, clicking his fingers in frustration at not having remembered this before. ‘Now you mention it, I think he even asked me to see if I could come up with anything.’

‘But why on earth would he want to collect them?’ Archie asked, disdainfully holding up the painting of the synagogue to prove his point.

‘He wasn’t collecting them,’ Dominique corrected him, sitting down crossed-legged on the hearth rug. ‘He was looking for one in particular – a portrait of a girl. He said it was probably in a private collection somewhere. He said that it was the key.’

‘The key to what?’ Archie asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Dominique sighed. ‘Remember what he was like with his secrets.’

‘Well, Renwick clearly does,’ Tom said bitterly. ‘That’s why he’s put this here – to show me how close he is to finding it.’

‘Which is precisely why you shouldn’t let him get to you,’ Archie said firmly. ‘He wants to get a reaction. We’ll just dump the arm and pretend none of this ever happened.’

‘Never happened?’ Dominique countered, her eyes shining defiantly. ‘You can’t just ignore something like this, Archie. They killed someone – I heard you say so. They killed someone and we might be able to do something about it.’

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Archie protested. ‘Look, I know Cassius. This is just another one of his sick games. It’s too late to help the old man that arm belonged to, but we can still help ourselves. Tom? What are you doing?’

‘Calling Turnbull,’ answered Tom, picking up the phone and extracting the slip of paper with Turnbull’s number from his wallet.

‘Didn’t you hear what I just said?’ pleaded Archie.

‘I heard what you both said, and Dominique’s right – we can’t ignore this.’

‘He’s playing with you. Let it go.’

‘I can’t let it go, Archie,’ Tom snapped, before taking a deep breath and continuing in a gentler tone. ‘If you want to stay out of this, fine. But I can’t. This involves my father. And if Renwick’s after something my father spent years looking for, then I’m not just going to stand by and watch him get it first. I’m not having him make a fool of me. Not again.’

SIXTEEN

Black Pine Mountains, nr Malta, Idaho

5th January – 2.19 p.m.

Viggiano and Bailey set off downhill through the trees as fast as they could, stumbling awkwardly as their legs disappeared into snow drifts or their feet snagged on camouflaged undergrowth. Eventually they emerged, breathless, on the far right-hand side of the compound. Leaving fresh tracks in the snow, they both clambered over the wooden fence and made their way to the front entrance, where they were met by one of Vasquez’s men, his mask and helmet discarded, his face blank.

‘This way, sir.’

He led them through an entrance hall piled high with sneakers and boots and old newspapers. Several pairs of antlers had been nailed to the wall, grimy baseball caps and odd socks hanging off them like makeshift Christmas decorations. Vasquez was waiting for them in the large kitchen. The long oak table was set for dinner, roaches scuttling across the worktops and over a joint of beef that had been left out, its sides bristling with fungus. The air was thick with flies and a heady smell that Bailey recognised only too well. The smell of rotting flesh.

Vasquez nodded towards a door.

‘We haven’t checked the basement yet.’

‘The basement?’ Viggiano frowned as he scrabbled to retrieve the plan of the compound from his jacket. He smoothed it out, borrowing tacks from an out-of-date NRA calendar to pin it to the wall. ‘Look – there is no basement.’

‘Then what do you call that?’ Vasquez threw open the door to reveal a narrow staircase leading down into the darkness below, a blast of warm, noxious air rushing up to meet them.

Guided by Vasquez’s flashlight, they negotiated the stairs. At the bottom was a narrow, unlit corridor. Vasquez lit their way with a series of green chemical flares that he cracked into life and threw to the ground at regular intervals.

Bailey felt himself beginning to sweat as they approached the end of the passage. The temperature was noticeably higher here than upstairs, the smell making his stomach turn. Vasquez signalled for them to wait as he entered a doorway. He re-emerged, grim-faced, a few seconds later.

‘I hope you guys skipped lunch.’

Viggiano and Bailey stepped inside. A massive oil-fired boiler hugged the far wall, the heat radiating off its sides. The stench was unbearable, the buzzing of the flies so loud it sounded like the revving of a small engine. The centre of the room was taken up by a large German Shepherd, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth, its brown fur matted with blood and rippling with maggots. Next to it were two blood-soaked pit bulls and a scraggy-looking mongrel whose head had been almost blown off.

‘Guess now we know why no one had seen the dogs,’ commented Vasquez drily.

He pointed his flashlight down at the floor near where they were standing. The grey concrete was peppered with brass shell casings, their shiny hides glinting like small eyes.

‘M16 casings. Couple of mags’ worth. They weren’t taking any chances.’

‘But where is everyone?’ Bailey asked. ‘Where have they gone?’

‘Sir?’ Another of Vasquez’s men appeared in the doorway behind them. ‘We got something else.’

They followed him back along the green flare-lit corridor into another, smaller room that was empty apart from a desk pushed up against one wall. Here the floor was covered not with dog carcases and shell casings but with small heaps of discarded paper. Bailey knelt to pick up a printout. It was a list of flight times to Washington DC.

He stood and made his way over to the far side of the room. Here, a large architectural drawing had been pinned to the wall, with various parts of the building circled in red. In the bottom left-hand corner was an inscription: National Cryptologic Museum – Plans; Structural Drawings; Heating/Ventilation System – 1993. He pointed it out to the others.

‘Looks like these were our guys.’

‘What’s through there?’ Viggiano pointed to a rusty metal door set into the facing wall.

Vasquez approached and shone his torch through a small glass inspection panel set into the door.

‘We got ‘em!’ he exclaimed. ‘They’re in here. This opens on to a second door which opens into another room. Jesus, they’re squashed in tight.’

‘Let me see.’ Viggiano peered in.

‘Are they still alive?’ Bailey asked.

‘Yeah. One of them has just seen me.’

He stepped back and Bailey took his turn at the window.

‘She’s waving her arms,’ he said with a frown. ‘Like she wants us to leave.’

‘Let’s get these doors open,’ Viggiano urged.

‘Are you sure?’ Bailey asked cautiously. ‘She sure doesn’t look like she wants it opened.’

‘Screw what she wants,’ Viggiano fired back.

‘Sir, I really think we should check it out first,’ Bailey insisted, sensing from the woman’s desperate expression that she was trying to warn him of something. ‘There must be a reason they’re signalling. Don’t you think we should at least make contact and see what the hell they’re doing in there?’

‘It’s pretty goddamned obvious what they’re doing in there, Bailey. Some fucker locked them in. And the sooner we get them out, the sooner we all get a hot shower. Vasquez?’

With a shrug, Vasquez unbolted the first door and pulled it open. But as he reached the door on the other side, a shout stopped him in his tracks.

‘Look!’ Bailey pointed his torch at the inspection window of the second door. It was almost entirely taken up by a scrap of white material on which a message had been hastily scrawled in what appeared to be black eyeliner.

You’ll kill us all.

‘What the hell…?’ Viggiano began, but he was interrupted as Vasquez began to cough loudly, his body doubling over with the effort.

‘Gas,’ he gasped. ‘Get out…gas.’

Bailey grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him towards the exit, his last sight the woman’s face pressed to the inspection panel, her eyes large and round and red. As he watched, she collapsed out of sight.

‘Get everyone out of here,’ Bailey shouted, shoving a convulsing Viggiano back up the stairs, into the kitchen, out through the hall and back outside. The rest of the SWAT team spilled out on to the snow ahead of them.

‘What happened?’ Sheriff Hennessy came running up as they emerged, his sweaty face creased with alarm.

‘The place has been booby-trapped,’ Bailey panted, releasing Vasquez into the care of a team of paramedics, then bending to rest his hands on his knees as he caught his breath.

‘Booby-trapped?’ Hennessy looked in bewilderment at the farmhouse entrance. ‘How?’

‘Some sort of gas. It must have been rigged to the door. They’re all still inside. They’re dying.’

‘They can’t be,’ Hennessy cried out in an anguished voice, his desperate eyes wide with fear and confusion. ‘That was never the deal.’

Bailey looked up, his exhaustion and revulsion momentarily forgotten.

‘That was never what deal, Sheriff?’

SEVENTEEN

Forensic Science Service, Lambeth, London

6th January – 3.04 a.m.

The stump was bloody and raw, with strips of muscle, nerve fibre and severed blood vessels hanging loose like wires, and the tip of the ulna peeking out from under the loose skin with a white smile.

‘Well, the wounds are certainly consistent with the manner in which the victim’s arm was removed…’ Dr Derrick O’Neal rotated the limb, examining it under a high-powered magnifying lens, the glare of the overhead halogen lamps making it appear waxy and fake, like something wrenched from a shop mannequin. ‘But the DNA tests will confirm whether it’s his. We should have the results in a few hours.’

He yawned, clearly still missing the warmth of the bed from which Turnbull had summoned him.

‘It’s remarkably well preserved. Where did you find it?’ O’Neal asked, looking up. He had a large, misshapen nose speckled with odd hairs. A thick, wiry beard covered the lower half of his face, and his small green eyes sheltered behind a large pair of black-framed glasses that he kept balanced on his forehead, only to have them slip to the bridge of his nose whenever he leant forward.

‘In someone’s freezer.’

‘That makes sense.’ He yawned again. ‘Strange thing to hang on to, though. Who did you say you worked for again?’

‘I didn’t, and it’s better you don’t know,’ Turnbull replied. ‘What can you tell me about this?’ Turnbull pointed at the loose, pale flesh of the inner arm. A livid red rectangle showed where a patch of skin had been cut out.

O’Neal’s glasses slid down his faces again as he bent for a closer look. ‘What was there?’

‘A tattoo.’

‘Strange shape. What sort of tattoo?’

‘The sort you get in a concentration camp.’

‘Oh!’ Turnbull could see that this last piece of information had finally jolted O’Neal awake.

‘I need to know what it said.’

O’Neal sucked air through his teeth.

‘Oh, that could be tricky. Very tricky. You see, it depends on the depth of the incision.’

‘In what way?’

‘The skin is made up of several layers…’ O’Neal reached for a pen and a paper to illustrate his point. ‘The epidermis, dermis and hypodermis. Typically, the ink on a tattoo is injected under the epidermis into the top layer of the dermis. It’s actually quite a delicate and skilful operation. It has to be deep enough to be permanent, but not too deep to scar the sensitive layers below.’

‘You think this was done delicately?’ Turnbull asked with a hollow laugh.

‘No,’ O’Neal conceded. ‘As far as I know, the Nazis employed two methods for tattooing. The first involved a metal plate with interchangeable needles attached to it. The plate was impressed into the flesh on the left side of the prisoners’ chests and then dye was rubbed into the wound.’

‘And the second…?’

‘The second was even more crude. The tattoo was just carved into the flesh with pen and ink.’

‘So, hardly skilful?’

‘No,’ said O’Neal. ‘Which means that it will be deeper than usual. And, over time, the ink will have penetrated the deep dermis, maybe even the lymph cells, which could also assist us with recovery. But, even so, if the people who have done this have cut right down into the hypodermis, it’s unlikely we’ll find anything.’

‘And have they?’

O’Neal examined the wound more closely.

‘We might be lucky. Whoever’s done this has used some sort of scalpel, and he’s sliced the top layer clean off.’

‘So you might be able to get something back?’

‘It’s possible, yes. If the scarring is deep enough it will show up. But it’s going to take time.’

‘Time is one thing you haven’t got, Doctor. I was told you were the best forensic dermatologist in the country. I need you to work some magic on this one. Here’s my number – call me as soon as you get something.’

PART TWO

In war, truth is the first casualty.

Aeschylus

EIGHTEEN

Greenwich, London

6th January – 3.00 p.m.

A passing storm had left the sky bruised and the pavements slick and shiny. Turnbull was waiting for them outside number 52, a handsome Victorian red-brick house identical to all the others on the terrace. Standing up, he looked even fatter than he had the previous day, a situation not helped by a cavernous dark blue overcoat whose heavy folds hung off his stomach like the awning of a Berber tent.

‘Thanks for meeting me here,’ Turnbull said, holding out his hand. This time, Tom and Archie shook it, though Archie made no attempt to disguise his reluctance. Turnbull didn’t seem to mind. ‘And for helping.’

‘We’re not helping yet,’ said Tom firmly.

‘Well, for turning in the arm, at least. You could have just got rid of it. Others would.’ Tom noted that he glanced at Archie as he said this.

‘What are we doing here?’ Archie demanded impatiently.

‘Meeting Elena Weissman. The victim’s daughter.’

Turnbull opened the gate and they made their way up the path under the watchful gaze of the bearded face that had been carved into the keystone over the front door. There was no bell, just a solid brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Turnbull gave it a loud rap, and they waited patiently until they heard the sound of approaching footsteps and saw a shadow through the rippled glass panels.

The door opened to reveal a striking woman with jet-black hair, secured in a chignon by two lacquered red chopsticks which matched her lipstick and nail varnish. Tom put her age at forty, or thereabouts. She was wearing foundation that gave her skin a bronzed, healthy glow, although it couldn’t fully disguise the dark circles under her sad green eyes that betrayed a lack of sleep. She was dressed very sharply though, a black cashmere cardigan worn over a white blouse and black silk trousers, her feet clad in what looked like a very expensive pair of Italian shoes.

‘Yes?’ She had an immediately arresting, even formidable presence, her voice strong, her manner ever so slightly superior. Tom found himself wondering what she did for a living.

‘Miss Weissman? My name is Detective Inspector Turnbull. I’m with the Metropolitan Police.’ Turnbull flashed a badge which, Tom noticed, was different from the one he had shown them yesterday. No doubt he had a drawer full of badges to choose from, depending on the situation. ‘It’s about your father…’

‘Oh?’ She looked surprised. ‘But I’ve already spoken to –’

‘These are two colleagues of mine, Mr Kirk and Mr Connolly,’ Turnbull continued, speaking over her. ‘Can we come in?’

She hesitated for a moment, then stepped aside.

‘Yes, of course.’

The house smelt of wood polish and lemon-scented floor cleaner. Faint squares on the walls showed where pictures had hung until recently, their outlines preserved where they had shielded the ageing wallpaper from London’s clogging pollution.

She showed them into what Tom assumed had once been the sitting room. It had been stripped, brass rings clinging forlornly to the curtain rail, a single naked lightbulb drooping from the yellowing ceiling. A sofa and two armchairs were covered in large white dustsheets and several cardboard boxes stood in the far left-hand corner, their lids taped down.

‘I apologise for the mess,’ she said, flicking the dustsheets on to the floor and indicating that they should sit. ‘But I’ve got to go back down to Bath. I run a property business down there, you see. I’m going to have to leave the place empty until all the legal and tax issues are sorted. I’m told it could be weeks before you even release the body.’ She flashed an accusing stare at Turnbull.

‘These matters are always very difficult,’ he said gently, settling on to the sofa beside her while Tom and Archie sat on the two armchairs opposite. ‘I understand how painful this must be, but we must balance the needs of the family with the need to find those responsible.’

‘Yes, yes of course.’ She nodded and swallowed hard.

Tom, with the benefit of a childhood spent in a country where the open display of human emotion was applauded, marvelled at her uniquely English struggle to balance grief with the need to maintain dignity and self-control in front of strangers. Just for a second, he thought she would succumb and cry, but she was clearly a proud woman and the moment passed. She looked up again, her eyes glistening and defiant.

‘What did you want to ask me?’

Turnbull took a deep breath.

‘Did your father ever talk about his time in Poland? In Auschwitz?’

She shook her head.

‘No. I tried to talk to him about it many times, to find out what happened, what it was like there. But he said that he had locked everything away in a dark corner of his mind that he couldn’t look into again. In a way, that told me all I needed to know.’

‘And the tattoo on his arm – his prisoner number – did he ever show you that?’

Again she shook her head.

‘I saw it, of course, now and again. But he seemed to be embarrassed by it and usually wore a long-sleeved shirt or pullover to cover it up. I’ve known other survivors who regarded their tattoos as a badge of suffering, something they were proud of showing, but my father wasn’t like that. He was a very private man. He lost his entire family in that place. I think he just wanted to forget.’

‘I see,’ said Turnbull. ‘Was he religious?’

She shook her head.

‘No. People tried to bring him back into the Jewish community here, but he had no time for God. The war destroyed his faith in any force for good. Mine, too, for that matter.’

‘And politics? Was he involved in any way? Jewish rights, for example?’

‘No, absolutely not. All he was ever interested in was railways and birds.’

There was a brief pause before Turnbull spoke again. ‘Miss Weissman, what I’m about to tell you may be difficult for you to hear.’

‘Oh?’

Turnbull, looking uncomfortable for the first time since Tom and Archie had met him, hesitated before speaking.

‘We have recovered your father’s arm.’ He snatched a glance at Tom as he said this.

‘Oh.’ Her reaction was one of relief, as if she’d been dreading a more traumatic revelation. ‘But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

‘Yes…Except that his tattoo, his concentration camp number, had been…removed.’

‘Removed?’ Now she did look shocked.

‘Sliced off.’

Her hand flew to her mouth in horror. Now that he was closer to her, Tom saw that her carefully painted nails were chipped and worn where she’d clearly been biting them.

‘Oh my God.’

‘However, by analysing the scar tissue and pigment discoloration in some of the deeper skin layers,’ Turnbull continued quickly, as if the technical language would help lessen the impact of what he was saying, ‘our forensic experts were able to reconstitute his camp number.’

He paused and she looked from him to Tom and Archie, then back at Turnbull.

‘And…?’

‘Are you familiar with the coding system employed at Auschwitz?’ She shook her head silently. He gave a weak smile. ‘Neither was I, until this morning. It seems Auschwitz was the only camp to tattoo its prisoners systematically. This was made necessary by the sheer size of the place. The numbering system was divided into the regular series, where simple consecutive numbers were employed, and the AU, Z, EH, A and B series, which used a combination of letters and sequential numbers. The letters indicated where the prisoners were from, or ethnic groupings. AU, for example, signified Soviet prisoners of war – the original inmates of Auschwitz. Z stood for Zigeuner, the German word for gypsies. The numbers on Jewish prisoners mostly followed the regular unlettered series, although in many cases this was preceded by a triangle, until the A and B series took over from May 1944.’

‘Why are you telling me all this?’ There was a slightly hysterical edge to her voice now. Tom sensed that this time she really was on the verge of breaking down.

‘Because the number on your father’s arm didn’t follow any of the known Auschwitz numbering series.’

‘What?’ Even her make-up couldn’t disguise how white she had gone.

‘It was a ten-digit number with no alphabetical or geometric prefix. Auschwitz numbers never rose to ten digits…’ He paused. ‘You see, Miss Weissman, it is possible that your father was never actually in a concentration camp.’

NINETEEN

3.16 p.m.

They sat there in embarrassed silence as she rocked gently in her seat, hands covering her face, shoulders shaking. Tom gently laid his hand on her arm.

‘Miss Weissman, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ she said, her voice muffled by her fingers. ‘I’ve almost been expecting something like this.’

‘What do you mean?’ Turnbull leant forward, his brow creased in curiosity.

She lowered her hands and they could see now that, far from the tears they’d been expecting, her face shone with a dark and terrifying anger. With rage.

‘There’s something I have to show you –’

She got up and led them out into the hall, her heels clip-clipping on the tiles.

‘I haven’t touched anything since I found it.’ Her voice was strangled as she paused outside the next door down. ‘I think part of me was hoping that one day I would come in and it would all just be gone as if it had never been here.’

She opened the door and led them inside. Compared to the rest of the house, it was dark and smelt of pipe smoke and dust and dogs. Boxes of books were stacked in one corner of the room, their sides compressing and collapsing under the weight. At the other end, in front of the window, stood a desk, its empty drawers half-open and forming a small wooden staircase up to its stained and scratched surface.

She walked over to the window and pulled the curtain open. A thick cloud of dust billowed out from the heavy material and danced through the beams of sunlight that were forcing their way through the filthy panes.

‘Miss Weissman…’ Turnbull began. She ignored him.

‘I found it by accident.’

As she approached the bookcase, Tom saw that it was empty apart from one book. She pushed against the book’s spine. With a click, the middle section of the bookcase edged forward slightly.

Tom sensed Archie stiffen next to him.

She tugged on the bookcase and it swung open to reveal a flaking green door set into the wall. She stepped forward and then paused, her hand on the door handle, flashing them a weak smile over her shoulder.

‘It’s funny, isn’t it? You love someone all your life. You think you know them. And then you find out it’s all been a lie.’ Her voice was flat and unfeeling. ‘You never knew them at all. And it makes you wonder about yourself. About who you really are. About whether all this –’ she waved her arm around her – ‘is just some big joke.’

Tom had to stop himself from nodding in agreement, for she had described, far more coherently than he’d ever managed, the way he’d felt when he unmasked Renwick. It wasn’t just that he’d lost a friend and a mentor that day. He’d lost a good part of himself.

The door swung open and Tom gave a start as a featureless white face suddenly loomed out of the darkness. It took a moment for him to realise that it was a mannequin in full SS dress uniform. Behind it, on the far wall of what appeared to be a small chamber, a vast swastika flag had been pinned, the excess material fanning out across the floor like a sinister bridal train. The right-hand wall, meanwhile, was lined with metal shelving that groaned under the weight of a vast collection of guns, photographs, daggers, swords, identity cards, books, badges, leaflets and armbands.

Turnbull gave a low whistle and Tom immediately wished he hadn’t. The sound seemed strangely inappropriate.

‘You never knew about this?’ Tom asked.

She shook her head.

‘He would lock himself in his office for hours. I thought he was reading. But all the time he must have been in here.’

‘It’s possible this was some sort of post-traumatic reaction,’ Tom suggested. ‘A morbid fascination brought about by what happened to him. Stress, shock…they make people do strange things.’

‘That’s what I hoped and prayed too,’ she said. ‘Until I saw this –’

She reached past them and removed a photograph from the top shelf, then took it across to the window. Tom and Turnbull followed her. As she angled it to the light, the photo revealed three young men in SS uniform standing stiffly in front of a bookcase. They looked rather serious, even a little aloof.

‘I’ve no idea who the other two are, but the man in the middle…the man in the middle is…is my father.’ Her voice was completely expressionless now.

‘Your father? But he’s wearing…’ Tom tailed off at the pained expression on her face. ‘When was this taken?’

‘In 1944, I think. There’s something else written on the back, but I can’t read it. I think it’s Cyrillic.’

‘December – that’s Russian for December,’ said Turnbull, peering over Tom’s shoulder.

‘Tom, we should take this –’ Archie’s voice came, slightly muffled, from inside the chamber. He appeared a moment later, carrying the mannequin’s jacket and peaked hat.

‘Why?’ Turnbull asked.

‘You ever seen anything like this before?’ He pointed at the circular cap badge, which appeared to show a swastika with twelve arms rather than the usual four, each shaped like an SS lightning flash. ‘I know I haven’t.’

‘You think Lasche can help?’ Tom asked.

‘If he’ll see us,’ said Archie, sounding unhopeful.

‘Who?’ Turnbull butted in.

‘Wolfgang Lasche,’ Tom explained. ‘He used to be one of the biggest dealers in military memorabilia. Uniforms, guns, swords, flags, medals, planes, even whole ships.’

‘Used to be?’

‘He’s been a semi-recluse for years. Lives on the top floor of the Drei Könige Hotel in Zurich. He trained as a lawyer originally. Eventually made a name for himself pursuing German, Swiss and even American companies for alleged involvement in war crimes.’

‘What sort of war crimes?’

‘The usual – facilitating the Holocaust; helping finance the Nazi war effort; taking advantage of slave labour to turn a profit.’

‘And he was successful?’

‘Very. He won hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation payments for Holocaust survivors. Then, rumour has it, he hit the jackpot. He uncovered a scam by one of the big Swiss banks to slowly appropriate unclaimed funds deposited by Holocaust victims and shred the evidence. It ran to tens of billions of dollars and went all the way to the top. So they bought him off. The Drei Könige Hotel belongs to the bank he investigated. He gets to live on the top floor and they pay him just to keep quiet.’

‘So his antiques dealership…?’

‘Part of the deal was that he got out of the Nazi blame game. With his contacts and backing, it was an easy switch. He’s a major collector in his own right now. Nobody knows that market better than him.’

‘And he never goes out?’

‘He’s sick. Confined to a wheelchair with twenty-four seven nursing care.’

‘And you think he might be able to identify that?’ Turnbull indicated the jacket and cap.

‘If anyone can, he can,’ said Tom.

‘I could have forgiven him, you know…’ While they had been talking, Elena Weissman had disappeared into the chamber. ‘I loved him so much. I could have forgiven him anything if he’d told me…’ she sobbed as she re-emerged.

Tom saw that she was clutching a Luger pistol in her right hand.

‘Even this,’ she continued, her strained voice rising to a hysterical scream as she raised her eyes to the heavens. ‘You could have told me.’

She lifted the gun to her mouth, the black barrel slipping between her lips, bright red lipstick smearing along it.

‘No!’ Tom leapt to knock the gun out of her hand before she could pull the trigger.

But he was too late. The back of her head exploded across the room, a fine mist of blood spraying in short bursts from the severed blood vessels as her body slumped to the floor.

TWENTY

FBI Headquarters, Salt Lake City Division, Utah

6th January – 8.17 a.m.

Paul Viggiano poured himself another cup of filter coffee from the machine. There was a tidemark in the glass jug where the coffee had evaporated since the last fresh pot had been made that morning. The remaining liquid looked dark and thick, like treacle. With scientific precision, he measured out one and a half servings of creamer, added one level teaspoon of sugar, then stirred it three times.

Satisfied with his handiwork, he turned to face Sheriff Hennessy and his attorney, Jeremiah Walton. A wiry, aggressive man with a thin face, hornbill nose and sunken cheeks, Walton seemed unable to sit still on the moulded plastic seats, forever shifting his weight from one bony buttock to the other. Bailey was sitting on the opposite side of a flimsy-looking table that had been screwed to the floor. A tape recorder was humming gently to his right. He was staring at Hennessy with a hostile intensity, his pen suspended motionlessly over a notepad.

‘Face it, Hennessy, it’s over,’ Viggiano said, trying to sound calm but struggling to contain the excitement in his voice. Less than forty-eight hours ago he’d been wondering what he was doing with his life. Now here he was running a multiple homicide investigation. Funny how someone else’s bad luck could be just the break you’ve been praying for. ‘Whatever little scam you’ve been running up there is finished now. So you might as well tell us what you know and make this a whole lot easier on yourself.’

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