Deadly Jewels (25 page)

Ivan frowned. “It's not really a good time,” he said.

“I get that.” Margery's voice sounded tinny out of the speaker. “But it's the only time I have, and I'd like to—well, at least see the place.”

I could feel the longing in her voice. No matter what I was going through, Margery had to be hurting, too. You don't just make up your mind to move away from your children on a whim: whatever was driving her to Doctors Without Borders had to be pretty intense.

Ivan was talking. “Aren't the kids in school?”

“It's only a few days. They're both on top of their studies, you know that, Ivan. They don't even have to stay at your house if you don't want them to, I can take them to a hotel. It's just important that—”

I cut her off. “Don't be silly, Margery. Of course you should come, and of course you all should stay here. We have a guest room.”

Ivan was looking at me like I'd suddenly started speaking Sanskrit. I made a silent palms-up gesture:
what can you do?
He cleared his throat. “We'll both be at work,” he said. “The kids have keys. Just come in and make yourself at home.”

“Really?” The relief was tangible. “I really appreciate this—Martine, thank you, thank you both.”

“It'll be good to see you, Margery,” I said. “Travel safely.”

We disconnected. Ivan was still looking at me. “I didn't say I'd decided,” I said, finally. “I just think she has a point. She needs to be able to shut her eyes and imagine where the kids are, what they're doing, where they hang out.”

“Yes,” said Ivan. “She does need all of those things.” He was trying hard not to smile.

“Oh, stop it!” I said, and threw a cushion at him.

“Why don't,” said Ivan carefully, “we go to bed?”

*   *   *

After that, it started feeling natural for Hans to spend time with Livia. Normal. They ate lunch together at the Hebrew Delicatessen; he walked her home from work several times a week; they went roller-skating and to more movies and to dinner.

It wasn't until Hans asked her to a Friday night dance that she told him. “Of course I can't, silly, it's Friday.”

“Yes,” said Hans. “I know it is Friday. That is when the dance is held, yes?”

She sighed. “I had a feeling you weren't practicing,” she said. “I just had a feeling about you. Maybe you turned away from it when your family died.” She looked sympathetic. “You know very well that Friday's Sabbath. Even though I live alone, I still keep the tradition. I have my mother's candlestick, and I light it at sundown.” She smiled. “It's such an important gesture, isn't it? Doing the same thing with other Jews all over the world? Someday”—this with a quick glance at him upward through her lashes—“someday I'll have a family, and I'll say the Sabbath prayers with them.”

They were sitting on a bench in the park, and Hans's arm was around her shoulders. He willed himself not to move it, not to betray himself. “Yes, of course,” he heard himself saying, as though from a great distance.

Livia was still talking about traditions, but Hans wasn't listening anymore. How had he not known? It was the Hebrew Delicatessen, after all, it was Jewish food, and she—Livia, the embodiment of perfection—was a Jew, too.

He felt as if he couldn't breathe.

He'd been told all his life that Jews were filthy, conniving creatures, little better than vermin. He'd believed the stories about Jewish men raping innocent young Aryan girls, about Jews defrauding good Germans, about their moral turpitude. He knew in his heart that these stories were true; they had to be.

And now this girl, this angel, this goddess, was telling him that she was a Jew. And assuming that he was one, too.

No. This couldn't be so.

Livia was still talking. “… and so of course I keep kosher as best I can, but it's not easy, in such a small space. That's why I eat at Bernie's so much.” She paused. “And how I came to meet you. One of the happiest days of my life. You never told me, Hans, how you managed to escape.”

“Escape?”

“From Holland, silly! We've heard terrible stories about what the Nazis do to Jews when they invade a country. You were so clever to get out before that happened to you, I thank God for that every day.”

“Yes,” he said, summoning breath and courage together. “Yes, it was difficult. But I decided on a new start in the New World.”

She seemed to find that funny. “You have such a positive way of looking at things, Hans,” she said, and snuggled closer to him. “That's one of the things I like so much about you. You never complain, no matter how bad things are.”

“There's no sense in complaining,” said Hans. What was he going to do now? He couldn't lose Livia, not now that he'd found her. And she had said that meeting him was one of the happiest days of her life, too! She loved him! It didn't really matter what she was: they were soul mates, that was all that mattered.

But what would Berlin say?

He didn't care. He couldn't care. As she lifted her face to his for a long kiss, Hans could feel his heart hammering wildly in his chest. He didn't even know if it was from fear—or exhilaration.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“I have an address,” said Julian the next morning.

I peered at him over my shiny plastic menu. Chez Cora is a chain of breakfast-and-lunch joints throughout Canada that specializes in—well, just about everything. Cheerful in décor and waitstaff, the chain's food is decent and plentiful. And Julian apparently loves it here. “An address for what? Or whom?”

“I think I'll have the Cora's Special,” he said.

“Your funeral,” I responded, and when the waitress arrived I asked for the fruit plate. Julian stuck to his high-cholesterol choice. “And a bowl of café au lait,” I added before she left. I was going to need more caffeine to keep up with Julian this morning: he seemed bursting with energy.

Which was a nice change.

“So what's the address?” I asked. “Or are you just playing with me?”

“I play not,” he protested, but his eyes were twinkling. “Tell me, first, what you know about Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.”

My stomach twisted. So that was where this was going. “I know about the hot-air balloon festival,” I said. “That's really about all.”

“It's a transportation hub,” said Julian. “Railroads and the Chambly Canal.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “Any other tourist tidbits you'd like to share, or are you going to tell me what this is really about?” I knew what this was really about.

Julian said, “You know what this is really about.”

“You found Aleister Brand.”

He nodded. “I found Aleister Brand. And some other guys you probably wouldn't care to meet in a deserted alleyway on a dark night.” He stopped as our
déjeuners
arrived, and waited until the server had left again. “And not all of them the people you'd think.”

“What people would I think?” I sipped at the café au lait, my hands wrapped around the bowl for comfort.

He shrugged. “Well, skinheads, young angry guys. That's the stereotype, right? Don't get me wrong, they're there, and Mr. Brand himself isn't exactly a low-key figure. But it's not just them.” He cleared his throat. “Do you know why Brand bought a place in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu?”

I shook my head. “His mother just said that he settled there when he got back from living overseas.”

“Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu,” said Julian, “is home to the Area Support Unit of the Canadian Forces. That's where they do recruitment and officer training.”

I put down the bowl and stared at him. “The
army
is involved?”

“Not as an entity. But some of them, yeah. Some of them hang with him.” He shoveled some eggs into his mouth.

“Holy hell,” I said. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

“It's nothing new. There's always been this connection between the military and nontraditional religions. The Romans and their old mystery religions, Mithras and those guys, it's what built the empire. And everything you told me, all that stuff about directing energy, about absorbing power, well, that's pretty much right up the army's alley, isn't it? Who wouldn't want to use all the weapons they can lay their hands on?”

“The people in Hitler's lodges were mostly military men,” I said slowly.

“There you go,” said Julian comfortably, crunching his toast.

“Have you talked to the local police?”

“Briefly,” he said. “They thanked me and moved on. There was an army officer shot last week, it was on the news, remember? They're still looking to solve that one. I couldn't interest them in something dating back to the Second World War.”

I sipped the coffee again. “What about the skinheads? Have the police had troubles with them in the past?”

“Not particularly,” said Julian. “Model citizens, most of them. Your Aleister guy, he writes for the local rag, ghostwrote a book last year on the history of the military academy. Neighbors like him.”

“Neighbors liked Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, too,” I said, thinking of creepy people in history. “Probably liked Jack the Ripper.”

“Let's not get carried away yet,” Julian said. I'd never seen anyone eat like that, not even Ivan. Not even
Lukas
. “Brand hasn't killed anyone.”

“That we know of,” I said darkly.

“That we know of,” he agreed. “So I thought, why not meet the guy?”

I stared at him. “You're going to go knock on his door and say, hello, we were wondering if we could get an invitation to your next satanic ritual?”

“That's what I like about you,” said Julian. “You cut straight to the chase.”

“You don't know what you're getting into, Julian,” I objected. “These people—”

He waved a hand airily. “Oh, I know a lot about them. Neo-Nazis and skinheads, racists and the Aryan Nations and all sorts of offshoots. I've been spending a lot of time getting acquainted with every racist homophobic misogynist thing that's ever crawled out from under a rock in this province.” He shook his head. “I've been taking a lot of showers, too. We've been lucky here, actually, they don't seem to like the east coast. Out west, British Columbia and Saskatchewan and Alberta, those places, they've got it bad.”

“Maybe they need space to practice in?”

He ignored my frivolity. “Don't get me wrong, Canada's got a far-right network. We're not on the level of the States yet, but we could get there. Depends on the economy: when it's bad, there's more of them, blaming it on everyone but the people who created it—ironically enough, white men.”

He picked up his cup, took a swallow of coffee, set it down again. “You know about the Ku Klux Klan, right?”

“The KKK, sure. They're here?”

He nodded. “Out west. Not so much in Montréal, though nothing would surprise me.” He smiled suddenly, vividly. “Know how they started?”

“I'm not sure I want to.”

“Sure you do. You have to wait for me to finish my coffee, anyway.”

“Tell me,” I said, resigned. Julian loved telling stories.

“Right after the American Civil War ended, the South was defeated, and—wait for it—the economy crashed. Mass violence is always about the economy, one way or another.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, small town in Tennessee, these six young bucks, just out of the Confederate army and looking for something to do. Lawyers, I think, most of them were. Bored out of their skulls. So Christmas Eve they decide to start a social club.”

“A social club? Like the Knights of Columbus?”

“More like a secret society, but with the only goal being to have fun. All the fancy northern colleges had secret societies, why shouldn't they? They'd play pranks, wreak mild havoc, and have a good time of it. One of them wanted to call the group the Merry Six.”

That was a long way from cross burning and lynching. “Sounds like Robin Hood.”

“Ah, but there wasn't anything altruistic about this group,” said Julian. “None of that taking from the rich to give to the poor. These guys were just about having fun. One of them knew a little Greek and thought they should call the group
kuklos
, which means circle, and someone else added the word clan. The name got a little massacred after a lot of bourbon, but eventually became Ku Klux Klan. All as a prank. And there you go.”

I waited while he ate some more. “What about the white robes?”

“Well, see, that's the thing: this was all meant as a
joke
. They decided first to give each other titles, the more ridiculous, the better. The Grand Cyclops. The Grand Magi. The Grand Turk. They'd attract members and call them Ghouls.”

“Hence the ghostly outfits,” I said.

He nodded. “Right on. They put sheets over themselves, with masks and pointed hats, got on their horses, and rode through town one night, screeching and generally creating mayhem. Then back to the bourbon.”

“I can see where that would be frightening, even if they didn't do anything really bad,” I said.

“Depends on your definition of bad. The American South at the time was not a nice place to be. Too much fear—and fear always stokes violence.”

“I thought the economy was what stoked violence.”

“
Any
economy. The money economy, sure. But there's also the security economy—will you be able to live out your life the way you want to? Fear of losing what you have.” He shook his head. “The Ku Klux Klan grew—there was a lot of unemployment and a lot of former soldiers, young men with anger and nothing to do. And slowly the founders' intent, to have fun and make mischief, got lost. The emancipation of slaves freaked them right out. So the organization started targeting black people and they went from threats to injury to lynching. And they grew and grew and grew. But it's ironic, isn't it, that it just started out as a boys' club?”