the far end of the room. The guy playing, Herr Winterwald, was too old to be Irma’s husband so Stoke figured it must be her father. He was blind and wore dark glasses and a dark green felt jacket with buttons made out of bone. His white hair stuck straight out from his head as if he were permanently undergoing electrocution. The music he was now playing sounded like new-wave Nazi marching tunes, if there was any such thing.
Irma noticed Stoke staring at the guy and said, “He is a genius, no?”
“Yes,” Stoke said, “I mean, no.”
“Zo,” Irma was saying, “It will just be for the one night, ja?”
“One night,” Jet said with her best actress smile.
“Und, ein Zimmer? You will need only one room?” the frau was looking not at Jet but at Stoke when she said this. She gave him her most suggestive look. Lascivious was the word. Stoke gave her his biggest smile and held up two fingers.
“No,” Jet said, “We will need two rooms, Frau Winterwald.” Stoke could tell it was taking all of Jet’s considerable acting skills not to jump over the counter and rip this ugly toad of a woman’s head right off. You can tell when two women don’t like each other much. It’s not pretty.
“Zo, zwei Zimmer. One for Fraulein Jet, und one for Mr.—”
“Jones,” Stoke said and she wrote it down with her big fat ink pen. Real ink, Stoke noticed. These people didn’t mess around.
“Jones,” she repeated, drawing the word out as she wrote it. “Such an American name, ja?”
“I’m an American,” Stoke said, shrugging his shoulders. Jet gave him a quick wink.
“Zo, alles gut. No luggage at all?” Irma asked. She stood on tiptoes and peered over the desk as if luggage was about to magically appear. She had fishy eyes, Stoke noticed, man-eating fish eyes.
“No luggage,” Jet said.
“Still no luggage,” Stoke said, unable to stop himself.
“Und, tell me, how is Baron von Draxis, dear girl? We have not seen him much since the skiing is over,” Irma said. “Have we, Viktor?”
Viktor shook his head and kept playing his piano. It suddenly hit Stoke who he looked like. Albert Einstein. Just goes to show you that a bad haircut can make anyone look dumb.
“He is very well,” Jet said. “He and I have been traveling in the Mediterranean aboard Valkyrie. You’ve heard perhaps, Frau Winterwald, that Baron von Draxis and I are getting married in September?”
It was a very different Frau Irma Winterwald who looked up and answered that question. “Nein, my child, I had no idea! How splendid! I am delighted for you, dear girl. He is the most marvelous man! And so rich! What a catch, you lucky girl! Would you and your friend like to have lunch in the garden?”
They ate in a fenced-in garden on the sunny side of the house. Frau Irma, now a smiling, benevolent creature, brought them each a glass of cold white wine with their menus. Stoke ordered the Wiener schnitzel since it was the only thing he recognized and he thought he liked it. Jet, no surprise, ordered a green salad, and Frau Winterwald bowed and scraped her way back inside the house. You could hear Viktor banging out his neo-Nazi marching tunes even out here in the garden.
“Irma La Not So Douce,” Stoke whispered to Jet after she’d disappeared back inside.
Jet smiled. “Yes. That old bitch has always hated me. I think we’re okay, though. You did well.”
“I’m great as long as I don’t talk. You know what’s funny? They’ve got one page of food on this menu and thirty pages of wine list.”
“You should see the wine cellar,” Jet said, looking at him carefully. “Maybe tonight when they’ve gone to bed.”
“I knew there had to be a reason you brought me here,” Stoke said, smiling at her. “Other than the hospitality.”
“She reads to him after supper. They usually go to sleep at ten,” Jet said. “I’ve brought a little something to put in their tea. I’ll make sure they’re out and knock on your door sometime after midnight.”
“They don’t keep the cellar locked?”
“I know where she hides the key.”
It was sometime after two in the morning when Stoke and Jet descended into the funky-smelling gloom of the gasthaus cellar. The steps leading down from Frau Irma’s kitchen were old worn stone and slippery, and he had to hold Jet’s arm to get them down without falling. He had the little Swiss army flashlight he’d put in his knapsack and he kept it aimed at Jet’s feet so she didn’t slip.
On the wall at the bottom of the steps was an iron fixture with a candle, and Stoke found a box of matches on the shelf under it. He lit the candle and took a look around. He’d never seen so much wine in his life. The little room they were in had shelves up to the ceiling full of dusty bottles and there were corridors leading off in every direction, both walls lined with shelves full of wine.
“Schatzi’s pride and joy,” Jet said. “The largest collection of prewar Bordeaux in Germany. Come on, it’s this way.”
“How come you know about all this stuff?”
“We came here. A lot. To ski. What you’re about to see is Schatzi’s favorite getaway after the boat. Like I said, the gasthaus is just a front. Only about five people know this place even exists. Believe me.”
“Show me the money.”
Stoke gave her the flashlight and followed her down the long dark corridor on the right. They came to a dead-end, a small circular room with an old oak table with two chairs pulled up to it in the center of the stone floor. There was a candle standing in the center and Stoke lit it. A large leatherbound book lay on the table. Jet sat down and opened it, flipping through the gold-edged pages, running down the entries scrawled there in red ink with a ballpoint pen.
“What’s that?” Stoke asked.
“Wine registry. You have to sign out every case with this pen. These case numbers here in the margin are the key.” Jet was adding and subtracting a series of numbers in the palm of her hand. Stoke noticed she was writing down only the last digit of the last seven entries.
“Key to what?”
“I’ll show you,” she said and closed the book. She stood up and said, “Help me shove this table out of the way.”
They moved the table to one side. There was a loose stone in the floor where the table had stood. Jet pulled a small penknife from her pocket as she knelt to the floor. She inserted the tip of the blade in the crack on one side of the stone and pried it up. Stoke aimed the flashlight at the square hole revealed in the floor. There was a black steel panel with a digital readout window and a keypad. Jet looked at the numbers written on her palm and they appeared on the readout as she entered all seven. She pressed another button and the numbers began to flash.
“They change the code every week,” Jet said. “It’s a good system.”
“Flawless,” Stoke said as the wall of bottles started to rattle and shake, “Obviously.”
Then the whole floor-to-ceiling wall of wine began to sink into the floor. Behind it was a stainless-steel wall. Set into the steel wall was a burnished bronze elevator door.
“I get it. He keeps the really, really good wine on another floor, am I right?” Stoke said.
“Pretty good,” Jet said, looking up at him and smiling.
They stood quietly and watched the last shelf of priceless wine disappear into the floor. Despite his own worries, and Hawke’s misgivings about Jet, he knew now he’d never have gotten this far without her.
“Okay,” Jet said. “We’re almost in.”
She placed her right hand flat against a matte black panel to the right of the doors. A bar of red light passed under her hand as the bio-metric scanner read her palm. Instantly, a small light above the panel began flashing green. Stoke could hear a faint rumble and knew an elevator car was descending behind the steel doors. It took the cab a long time to get down to their level.
Stoke suddenly saw the whole thing.
“This elevator shaft goes up inside the mountain right behind the guesthouse, doesn’t it?” he said. Jet nodded.
