And Rominy almost fainted.
Her hair was coiffed, her teeth were perfect, her makeup carefully applied, and her look a generation younger. But holding the gun was Delphina Clarkson, Rominy’s backwoods neighbor from the Cascade Mountains.
49
Wewelsburg, Germany
October 2, Present Day
H immler built it as a hall for the dead of the SS elite,” Clarkson said, letting the beam bounce around the chamber for a moment. “What the pedestals were designed for isn’t entirely clear. Statues? Urns? The twelve comes of course from the twelve signs of the zodiac, so we decorate accordingly when we meet.”
“Nazis decorate?” Sam asked.
“She isn’t a Nazi, she’s my neighbor. Aren’t you?” But why was Delphina dressed up and talking with a German accent? Why was she here ?
“And you’re supposed to be dead, Rominy. Aren’t you?” Her smile was sly.
“You look different.” She sounded one step behind again, naive and dimwitted, which was precisely what she didn’t want to be.
“No, Rominy, it was Mrs. Clarkson who looked different. I usually look exactly like this.”
The perfection of the disguise, the Tar Heel accent, the language, the age… was stupefying. Was anyone who they said they were?
“The castle entrance is closed for construction,” Sam said.
“It is closed for us,” Clarkson corrected. “Remodeling is a cover. This is a special time, and we wanted a special place, with special privacy, with special uninvited guests. We watched you approach.”
“Who’s ‘us’?” Sam asked.
She motioned with the wicked-looking weapon. “Upstairs.”
It was an order. They passed through an interior doorway with a gate of iron bars and ascended to the room above the crypt. This was circular, too, with twelve pillars and twelve arches at its periphery, and a round medieval-style chandelier overhead with twelve bulbs. The lights weren’t lit, and the only dim illumination came from a couple of desk lamps sitting on the floor against the walls. Whoever was here did not seem anxious to advertise their presence to the village outside. On the marble floor beneath the chandelier was another design that played off the wheeling swastika. Rominy had a jolt of recognition.
“It’s the sun wheel you saw on my shoulder,” said a voice from the shadows. And out stepped Jake Barrow, or the man who’d claimed to be Jake. He was dressed in a black business suit with white shirt and silk tie of maroon, like a politician or CEO. The tie’s subtle pattern was runic lightning bolts. Jake’s left wrist glinted with an expensive gold watch. And his right held an automatic pistol, black and deadly, its dark mouth aimed waist high. There were, Rominy decided, entirely too many guns in the world.
“Thought we’d catch you in storm trooper drag, Barrow,” Sam said.
“And I thought you might try to improve on slacker-slob apparel should you ever make it to Europe, but apparently not,” Jake responded. “The clean chin is a start, however. Trying to impress Rominy, Sam?”
“Just airport security.”
“We of The Fellowship don’t wear the clothes of three generations ago. National Socialism is about ideas, not uniforms.”
“Yeah, genocide. Conquest. Looting. Book burning. And attempted murder of a woman you claimed you loved.”
“Not murder, but simply a delay so we had time to prepare things. I’d no doubt the nuns would get you out sooner or later, no doubt that you’d follow me here. I deliberately aimed for your mobile phone so you’d survive to help deliver her. I deliberately gave Rominy clues. So welcome, we’ve been impatiently expecting you, and now the final act in our little play can finally begin.”
“Play?” Rominy asked.
“Surely Ursula Kalb’s performance as an American hick deserves an Academy Award.” Jake gestured toward the woman she thought of as Delphina.
“So it was all a charade? The skinhead, too?”
“Fashionably bald.” And the man Rominy had seen at the cabin window, the one who’d killed the poor hounds, emerged from behind another pillar. His Mohawk stripe was gone and he was completely shaven. “Otto Nietzel, at your service.” He, too, had a suit and narrow black tie, but his feet were armored with high-top black military boots. Tie or no tie, he still looked like a thug. “I’m real, not a charade.”
“You butchered those dogs?”
“Put them to use. You fled with Jakob as intended.”
She looked from one to another. “My car explosion was your doing?” she finally asked Jake.
“I’m afraid so. More effective than an opening line in a single’s bar.”
“Was anything real?”
“As I said in Tibet, you, to start. I’m glad your hand appears to be healing. The mystery was real. We couldn’t get access to the safety deposit box short of robbery, which would bring in the FBI. We didn’t know if there was anything useful in it but had to look. We knew nothing about the mine or satchel. The physics we discussed on the plane is real. Your ingenuity was real, and your body was real.”
“Is your scar real? Flipping your bike?”
He fingered his chin. “A Jew fought back.”
She shuddered. She’d had sex with this manipulative monster.
“Ursula did use the hounds to track us and rescue us at the Eldorado mine,” he went on, “after I sent a signal from an EPIRB rescue beacon I’d hidden in my pack. The toughs at the airport were an American bodyguard for me, should you panic and run for a cop. The inheritance was a stroke of luck. You’ve contributed to a noble cause.”
“Is there a real Delphina Clarkson?”
“There was. She has, alas, passed away.”
“You murdered her?”
“We solved a problem. She was… recalcitrant.”
“Oh, my God.” Rominy felt sick. The poor woman would never have been harmed if Rominy hadn’t drawn these lunatics into her life. It just got worse and worse.
“I’m not real,” Jake said amiably. “I’m not a reporter, not an American, and not very fond of wine. My German name is Jakob.”
“At least your English is impressive,” Sam said sourly.
“I studied at Columbia and Yale. Laughably liberal, decadently idealistic.”
“Obviously you flunked.”
At that Frau Kalb rammed the muzzle of her M3 assault rifle into the guide’s kidneys. Sam gasped and fell to his knees.
Otto grinned at the blow.
Rominy’s heart was hammering. Please don’t be a hero, Sam.
He struggled to talk. “Brave move, Ursula, just like your mass-murdering master. Uncle Adolf never won a battle when he couldn’t land a sucker punch.”
Otto’s expression darkened and he strode quickly across the room’s circle, the steel at the tip of his boots ringing on the marble. “You want to fight, American?” He grabbed Mackenzie’s ears and brought up his knee, slamming it into Sam’s face. Blood spurted. Sam fell sideways and Nietzel kicked viciously, a hard boot to the groin. The victim curled like a slug that’s been salted. The Nazi kicked him again, in the side. Sam went white.
“Enough.” It was Jake, or Jakob. “You’ll have opportunity to play with him later, Otto.”
The skinhead spat and stepped back.
Rominy was trembling. She hated violence and these people were bullies, killers, and liars. And now she had some answers, at least, to who they were and what they’d done. Which meant they were planning to kill her, too,
