Deadly Jewels (21 page)

“Of course there's an us,” he said. “Good Christ, Martine, this is big, but it's not bigger than us. And I think we can—”

“No specifics,” I interrupted him. “I can't put my head around specifics right now. I just need to know that this is as much about you and me as it is about Margery, or Doctors Without Borders, or even Claudia and Lukas.”

“I'm not making the same mistake twice,” Ivan said.

“All right, then.” I didn't know what else to say. “Will you be home for dinner?”

“I'll make it a point to be. Want me to cook?”

“I don't want to spend the whole night washing dishes,” I said.

“That's why we have a dishwasher.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, unconvinced. “Let's take a page from the kids' book and I'll pick up a chicken dinner at Saint Hubert. Rotisserie chicken, cole slaw, French fries…”

“Sold,” he said promptly. “With a Nuits Saint Georges.”

“But of course,” I said, and we were both laughing when we hung up. It wasn't real laughter, not yet; but it was a step in the right direction.

And then suddenly, it seemed, it was time to leave for the lookout and whatever was awaiting me there. After all that had happened, I couldn't say I was looking forward to it.

*   *   *

The next week, Bernie set the smoked-meat sandwich in front of Hans and said, without preamble, “Livia's coming in for lunch tomorrow. I'll introduce you to her, if that's still what's on your mind.”

“I have not been able to think of anything else,” Hans said frankly.

“
Nu
, I will do it. But you be careful with this girl, or you'll have me to answer to, you hear? I don't want her getting hurt. She's the real deal. She's special.”

That was the one thing that Hans already knew about her.

Livia was wearing a blue sweater the next day. She laughed when Bernie told her that Hans talked funny, “on account of him bein' from Holland.”

“It's all right,” she said. “Everyone I know talks funny in one way or another. Sit down, please?”

“Thank you.” Hans sat on the swivel seat beside her. It all seemed so inelegant for such a goddess. “Bernie speaks quite highly of you,” he said.

She laughed again. “Bernie is like an uncle to me. He thinks I'm the most amazing human being God ever put on earth. It's all very complimentary, but a little silly, don't you think?”

“No,” said Hans. “I think so, too.”

“Then you're silly, too.”

But she let him buy her lunch, and hold the door for her, and talk with her about his work. “Are you very homesick for Holland?” she asked as they emerged into the sunlight together. “You must be terribly worried about your family.”

“I have no family,” said Hans. It sounded abrupt and she looked away from him. He hadn't meant to do that, to be rude or insensitive. He didn't know how to talk to her. “There was an accident when I was young,” he said quickly. “They all died.”

She was instantly sympathetic. “Oh, no! I'm so very sorry. Is that why you came to Canada? To get away from the memories?”

It was as good a reason as any. “I like it here,” he said. “I like Montréal. Though I still don't speak any French.”

“That's all right,” she said and laughed. “Mine is terrible, too.” She stopped. “This is me, then.”

He looked at the storefront. “You—make dresses?”

“I work for someone who does. Thanks awfully for lunch, and for the walk.”

“I wonder,” said Hans, “if I can see you again. I enjoy very much talking with you.”

Livia smiled. “You can take me to the cinema on Thursday night,” she said.

He didn't think to ask why she didn't choose the weekend. It didn't matter; he would go anywhere on any day with her. He was late back to work, and didn't even mind the foreman's reprimands.

He was in love.

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Richard was coming in just as I headed out. “There is a problem?” he asked.

“Do I look that bad?”

A delicate shrug. “You look worried.”

“I am, but it's nothing to do with the office.” Well, not quite true, but I didn't have time to explain. “Richard, do me a favor. Find out what's happening with these diamonds on the political front. Is Ottawa talking to London? It would be good to know.”

He inclined his head gracefully. “Of course. Something else?”

“No. I have a meeting—probably won't be back in the office today. Can you hold down the fort?”

Another
bien sûr
. I sighed. “Richard, I'm sorry. You probably think I'm totally scattered and not pulling my weight around here these days—”

He put up a hand to stop me. “It is always,” he said gravely, “easy to work with you. You work harder than anyone I have ever known. If there are things you need to deal with, then you must go and deal with them. We will be fine.” A mischievous gleam. “Beside, while the mayor is away…”

“I wish this mouse were playing!” I said and laughed. “Thanks, Richard. I don't deserve you.”

“It is nothing,” he said, and I remembered how, last year, I'd covered for him. We took care of each other. I really was lucky in the team I'd assembled.

A brisk walk down a few streets to the garage where we kept the car. It started right away—a very good sign—and I headed out. It's easy to get to Mount Royal from anywhere in the city: just find a hill and go up it. Eventually you'll reach the “mountain”—part of a range of long-extinct volcanoes—that gave Montréal its name.

It's home to a whole lot of life. There's the park itself, the city's largest green space, where we all flock summer and winters alike. Saint Joseph's Oratory, Canada's largest church, is here, as well as two cemeteries; my mother lives in one of them, a beautiful and incredibly peaceful place. We take the kids there most Sundays they're in town.… I stopped my thought there. No reason to start stressing about more than one thing at a time.

The overlook was crowded; it nearly always is, in good weather and bad, tourists gawping at the view, Montréalers taking the walking paths that branch off from the lookout. I was early, so parked the car and got out, even though the day was clouding over. I had no idea how I would know who Gabrielle Brand was. I could only hope that she'd found me online and knew who to look for.

She had, and she did.

The woman who approached me was just past a certain age; I'd peg her in her early seventies, but a very healthy early seventies. She was dressed in the remnants of the sixties, not hers but the world's: a long print skirt with warm woolen socks and clogs under it; several layers of brightly colored sweaters and a dazzling pink scarf at her neck. “Mrs. LeDuc?”

I pushed myself off the car and held out my hand. “Martine. I'm glad to meet you, Mrs. Brand.”

“Perhaps you won't be.” But she took my hand anyway.

“So,” I said, conversationally, “your grandchildren are gone?”

She looked startled at first, then relaxed. “Their mother has come for them,” she said. “There is a path down here, and a bench. Would you care to walk?”

She clearly cared to, and so I nodded, grabbing my keys and my jacket. Up here, it was brisk, with an edge to the air indicating winter wasn't all that far off. We took the trail that led down through a thicket and at once it was as though we were alone on the mountain. As was, no doubt, her intention. “I am going to tell you some things,” she said, her eyes on the path, not even glancing at me. “I knew when Marcus told me about you, when you called, that it was time to say something. I've been waiting with it inside me for too long.”

I didn't want to prompt her; the reality was I had no idea what she was going to say, and assuming anything could get us off on the wrong foot altogether. She seemed to be waiting for some response, though, so I said, “Thank you for trusting me.”

That earned me a quick sideways glance. “Perhaps,” she said. I could hear it again, the echo of an accent in her voice, something from the east. German, Polish, Eastern European? I couldn't tell.

We walked for a moment in silence. I was scuffing the leaves that had already started falling and were crunching under my feet. Usually I found that to be delightful; today, it felt like a presage of something dark and ominous. There were clouds moving in from the south, and the wind was rising.

Gabrielle seemed to be preparing herself for something. “First I must tell you some history,” she said, and the accent was stronger now. “It is important, so that you understand what is happening now.”

She seemed to be waiting for a rejoinder, so I nodded. “I'm happy to hear whatever you have to tell me, Mrs. Brand.” But I was hearing an awful lot of history lately, I thought. Everyone seemed to have something from the past that was resurfacing.

“Mrs. Brand,” she echoed and laughed, but there was no pleasure in it. “You will hear about that, too.” She indicated a bench ahead of us. “Come, and sit, and listen.”

Here there was a break in the bushes and the view off the mountain was again spread out before us. It was dramatic and intense and, I thought, by no means accidental.

And the wind seemed to have disappeared, even though we were in a less protected area.

Gabrielle Brand was looking out, impassive, over the city below. “There is some history you must know, to start,” she said. “Back in 1912, several German occultists with radical anti-Semitic inclinations decided to form a magic lodge. They named it the Order of Teutons.” Her voice was almost conversational. Almost. “The Order of Teutons was organized along the lines of the Freemasons or the Rosicrucians, with differing degrees of initiation, different levels of belonging,
ja
? Only those people who could fully document that they were of pure Aryan ancestry were allowed to join.”

I thought, 1912? Yes, we were indeed starting at the beginning.

“Later, many of those who had belonged to the Order of Teutons joined another group called the Thule Society.” She paused. “The German Workers Party, which I know you will have heard of, was only one of many associations founded and controlled by the Thule Society, and eventually Hitler became the most prominent personality in the party as well as being very high up in the society itself.”

So that was where it had started. The link between politics and magic began inside Hitler himself.

She was still talking. “He filled key positions with his own friends from the Thule Society and the army. During the summer of 1920, upon his suggestion, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The new name was intended to equally attract nationalists and proletarians. To go along with the new name, his mass movement also required a flag with a powerful symbol. Among many designs under consideration, Hitler picked a red cloth with a white circle in the middle containing a black swastika. So the mystical and the political were closely allied from the beginning.”

I didn't want to interrupt her flow, but she seemed to be waiting for a comment. “Did people on the political side know about the mystical one?”

“Some did. Most did not.” She still hadn't looked at me. “Thule was supposedly a legendary island in the far north, similar to Atlantis. It was destroyed, but its secrets were guarded by ancient, highly intelligent beings, and the initiated could establish contact with these beings by means of mystical rituals.”

It sounded like the B movies on television on Saturday afternoons. I didn't say anything, and she continued. “The initiated would be given supernatural strength and energy. With that energy they would create a race of Aryan supermen to exterminate other, inferior races. The symbol of the Thule Society was a swastika with a dagger enclosed in laurel leaves.”

None of this sounded particularly new to me; it sounded like cards taken at random from the Nazi recipe file: eugenics, racism, genocide. Nothing particularly wholesome, but nothing that should be causing havoc in the twenty-first century, either.

“And you must understand, there were a great many intellectual—well, undercurrents, as we might call them. During Hitler's years there, Vienna was a vortex of modern thinking. Think of what was happening then, think of who was sitting in the cafés and strolling in the parks.” She glanced at me. “Freud was in practice at Berggasse. Ludwig Wittgenstein was in residence pondering avant-garde philosophy and metaphysics. Gustav Mahler had returned home to die and to name his protégé, Arnold Schönberg.” She sighed. “Under different auspices, it could have been a good time, a creative time. But that was not to be. In contrast with this creative thought there persisted the deep anti-Semitic currents that had caused Mahler to convert to Catholicism, that forced Freud eventually to flee to London, and that informed the ancient pan-German folkloric nostalgia espoused by Guido von List. Von List substituted the swastika for the cross in perversion and practiced magic. He even looked like a wizard, in a floppy cap and long white beard.”

Somewhere from close behind us, a crow cawed and I jumped. The cold was settling into me.

“Another player came onto the scene about then,” Gabrielle continued. “It was called the Luminous Lodge, and
its
objective was to explore the origins of the Aryan race and to perform exercises in concentration. Aleister Crowley was one of them.”

There was a name I'd heard: Crowley, the English occultist and magician. Satanist, also, I thought. “And Hitler was a participant?”

She nodded. “Hitler's unusual powers of suggestion become more understandable if one keeps in mind that he had access to the secret psychological techniques of these esoteric lodges. That is how in a remarkably short period of time he was able to move an obscure workers' party from the beer hall to a mass movement.”