“Of course, Father,” Marco said and went out.
The next morning, the “council of war” had moved to Roper’s apartment in Regency Square. It was on the ground floor, with its own entrance and a slope to aid wheelchair users. Roper insisted on looking after himself and had had the apartment, from bathroom to kitchen, specially designed to take care of his problems.
His sitting room had been turned into a state-of-the-art computer laboratory, including some highly classified equipment, which was there mainly because it suited Charles Ferguson. Over the years since his disaster in Belfast, Roper had become a legend in the world of computers. He had broken every kind of system from Moscow to Washington and he had proved his worth to Ferguson and the Prime Minister on more than one occasion.
On that morning, Sean Dillon arrived first in his Mini Cooper, parked and pressed the doorbell. The voice box crackled and Roper said, “Who is it?”
“Sean, you idiot, let me in.”
The door swung open and he went through into the sitting room and found Roper in his wheelchair at the bank of computers. He crossed to a sideboard, found a bottle of Irish whiskey and poured one.
“Paddy? Okay, well, it’s not Bushmills, but you’re improving.”
“I’m on a pension, Dillon. The Ministry of Defence being as parsimonious as it is, I have to watch my pennies.”
“You could always sell your medals. The Military Cross would do okay, but the George Cross would make a fortune.”
“You’re always so amusing.” Roper tried a smile, always difficult with that ravaged, burned face.
“Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. Ferguson said you had found something?”
“Yes, but let’s wait for them.” The front doorbell went and he pressed the remote control. “Here they are.”
A moment later, Ferguson appeared, and with him a woman in her late thirties, with red hair, wearing an Armani trouser suit. She looked like some high-level business executive, but she was Ferguson’s assistant, Detective Superintendent Hannah Bernstein, on loan to him from Special Branch. She had an M.A. in psychology from Oxford, but she had killed more than once in the line of duty.
“Ah, Dillon,” the general said, “we can get straight on with it. What have you got for us, Major?”
“You wanted me to have a look at von Berger in general, the way he’s been able to take over Rashid? Well, I discovered something interesting. A couple of years ago, he hiked two billion into Rashid for their oil exploration in Hazar and the Empty Quarter.”
There was silence. Hannah said, “Where on earth would he get that sort of money?”
“Swiss banks. And it made me smell a rather large rat.”
It was Dillon who said, “Let me guess. We’re into Nazi gold.”
“And not only that,” said Roper. “I got this story from an Israeli intelligence source. Von Berger was in Baghdad to see Saddam on some arms deal – and he was attacked by a mob in the old city. They were going to lynch him, when Kate Rashid came on the scene with a few Bedus, pistol in hand, and saved his life.”
“I can see it now,” Dillon said.
“Not being able to sleep at two-thirty in the morning, as often happens,” Roper went on, “I decided to go back even further on von Berger. You know that story that he left Berlin in a Storch that happened to be there as a backup in case von Greim’s Arado had problems? He told American and British intelligence that it was simply opportunistic. He knew it was waiting in Goebbels’s garage and commandeered it.”
“Only you don’t buy it,” Dillon put in.
“Not for a moment. It was all too convenient. So I decided to access the Fuhrer Bunker on my computer. I worked through the Records Office, the accounts of his interrogations, then I got into the University of Berlin’s stuff on the Bunker, all the people there, those who died, those who faded away, those who rushed into the night in a mostly vain attempt to escape the Russians. Von Berger’s escape was obviously logged.”
“Where is this getting us?” Hannah asked.
“They’ve kept their records updated. Would you like to know how many people who were in the Fuhrer Bunker in 1945 are still in the land of the living now?”
Ferguson said, “Other than eighty-year-old Max von Berger?”
“Yes. How would you like Sara Hesser, an SS auxiliary, who was used by the Fuhrer as a relief secretary for his last six months in the Bunker? She was twenty-two years old in April 1945. That makes her seventy-nine now.”
“Jesus,” Dillon said.
Ferguson said, “You’re obviously leading up to something.”
“Yes, you could say that. In the final debacle, when everyone fled the Bunker, by some miracle she was one of those who got through the underground tunnels and finally reached the West. She was in the hands of British intelligence in Munich, interrogated and released. In 1945, she met a British captain called George Grant, who was serving in the army of occupation. He married her two years later.”
“And what happened?” Hannah demanded.
“She came to England. He was a lawyer. They never had children. According to her interrogation reports, she’d been gang-raped by Russian soldiers.”
“My God,” Hannah said. “And now?”
“Her husband died of cancer five years ago. She lives at twenty-three Brick Lane, that’s in Wapping by the Thames. You can extract anything from these things.” He tapped the computer. “It’s a three-storied terrace house that she and her husband owned for forty-five years. The way London property has gone these days, it’s worth nine hundred thousand.”
“I think that deserves another drink.” Dillon went to the Paddy bottle.
Ferguson said, “You’re telling us that we have a woman who was a secretary to Hitler in the last few months of the war?”
“Oh, yes. Marrying an English officer and all that, she just got lost, I suppose.”
“And she would have known von Berger, must have known him,” said Dillon.
“I should imagine so.”
Hannah said, “But what would she have to say?”
“God knows,” said Ferguson. “But I think it’s worth paying a visit, don’t you?”
The Daimler left first, with Hannah and Ferguson inside, and Dillon followed in the Mini Cooper. Newton said to Cook, “Follow them.”
“Which one?”
“We’ll see where it leads.”
He phoned Marco Rossi on his mobile. “Dillon went to Roper’s house in Regency Square, then Ferguson turned up with Bernstein. They’ve all come out again and we’re following.”
“Good, stay with it. The minute they arrive at any kind of destination, phone me.”
Brick Lane ran down to the Thames, a row of nineteenth-century houses on one side, mainly renovated. The front doors opened to the street, which was the only place to park. A church was on the other side – St. Mary’s – and a graveyard. By the river, a path ran beside a low wall, leading to a jetty at the far end that stuck out into the water, a relic of the old days when barge traffic called in on a regular basis. There was a shop at the end of the street called Patel’s, the kind that had prospered under Indian ownership, a general store.
At that time of the day, there was plenty of parking available and certainly in front of number twenty-three. The Daimler turned in and Dillon pulled in behind. Dillon was first out and went to the door. There was a bell push and beneath it a brass plate.
“George and Sara Grant,” he said, as Ferguson joined him.
Dillon pressed the bell and heard a dog barking. There was the sound of footsteps approaching, a bolt being withdrawn; the door opened on a chain. “Be quiet, Benny,” a voice said. A face peered out, worn and lined, very gray hair pulled back from it, above faded blue eyes, and when she spoke it was almost a whisper. “What is it?”
Hannah took over. “Mrs. Grant?”
