Deadly Jewels (35 page)

“The place amplifies the focus. It does not provide it. If you arrest Aleister, if you put him in a jail cell, if you lock him away underground, it will not matter. He will find a way.”

What I was feeling was slightly sick. “You mean he can reach out from wherever he is.”

“And that he can also be reached. Roads do not go only one way, not ever. Do you not think that there is an intelligence behind the magic?”

Julian was looking a little wild. Metaphysics clearly wasn't his cup of tea. “If he's behind bars,” he said, obviously trying to get a grip back on the practical aspects of the conversation, “then he can't set off bombs. He can't hurt innocent people. That's my priority. This is my city. I'm not letting him take it away from me.”

“It is not yours to be taken,” she said quietly. “I thought that perhaps it could be stopped. I thought that perhaps you would stop it.”

“But he
can
be stopped,” said Julian with a sort of desperate energy, a child who's just been told there's no Santa Claus. “
You
could talk to him. Make him see that it's the only way. Otherwise—it's only going to get worse from here on in.”

She was responding to Julian. “In what way will it get worse?” she asked, politely, showing the same amount of interest she might if he'd offered to show her photographs of his favorite dog. Why wasn't she feeling this more? She had to still love Aleister at some level, why wasn't she mad with concern?

“If we go and talk to him, if you talk to him and he comes with me, no one will need to get hurt. Including Aleister.” He paused. “He put a bomb in a public building. You have to understand this, madame. He's reached a whole new level of interest. The provincial police are going to get involved now. The RCMP are going to get involved now. And, believe me, those boys play rough. When we're talking a potential crime such as this one—well, they're likely to shoot first and figure out what they should have done instead later. Aleister has a better chance at survival if he lets me take him in. He's upped the ante too far here for there to be a good outcome. That's the best offer he's going to get.”

“The ante,” she murmured. “The ante? Is that how you see it? This is not one of Monsieur Petrinko's casino games,
détective-lieutenant
.”

I froze. How did she know who Ivan was? Did everybody know who Ivan was?

Gabrielle was talking; she hadn't even glanced my way when she brought Ivan's name into it. “Let me be absolutely clear. You must disabuse yourself of the notion that I can effect any change in my son's thoughts or behavior,” she said. “It has been many years since he last felt that I had anything to say to him. He believes that I have disgraced the bloodline, that I have not lived up to my heritage.”

“As Göring's daughter,” I said.

She nodded. “To Aleister, that connection is everything. I have not spoken to him in years. And then there is the futility of it all. Believe me when I tell you, all that the warehouse does for him is make it easier, faster. The diamond as well. He can do it anywhere. He will do it anywhere.”

“When?”

“I don't know!” The words burst from her and for the first time I felt she was being completely truthful, completely cooperative. “
Ich weiße nicht!
There are too many reasons to do it at one time or another. It will be soon: I've felt it coming closer. It will be soon. But I do not know when. As
Gott
is my witness, I do not know when!” She pulled her arm away from my hand and hugged herself, looking all of her seventy-odd years. “I do not know,” she repeated, more calmly, and I looked at Julian.

“I believe her.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I do, too. Which leaves us exactly nowhere.”

“Maybe not,” I said, and turned to Gabrielle. “Please don't worry about it,” I said. “We'll figure it out. You were right to give me the warning. You were right to see us today and to explain it to us. It's going to be all right. You can rest now. We'll make sure it doesn't happen.” Like talking to a child.

Julian wasn't happy, but even he realized that he wasn't going to badger information that she didn't have out of her. “If you can think of anything that might help us,” he said, standing up, buttoning his suit jacket, “then please give me a call.” He proffered a business card that, after a moment's hesitation, she took. “I don't have to stress how important—”

“No,” I cut in, “you don't. Good-bye, madame. We're sorry to have bothered you.”

She saw us to the door, the same haunted expression on her face. She didn't say anything and, after a moment, I stepped into the hallway, Julian right after me. The door closed with a definitive click behind us.

“So are you going to tell me what that was about?” he demanded as we waited for the elevator. “Nothing to see here, everyone move along? What's the story?”

“She's terrified,” I said. “And she really doesn't believe that Aleister tried to blow up City Hall.”

“Well, she wouldn't,” he said reasonably. The elevator doors opened and we stepped in. “It would be awful to face the fact that anybody you love could do anything like that.”

I shook my head. “She's facing worse than that,” I said and turned to face him. “I just finally got it in there, Julian. The bomb? It's inconsequential to her. She doesn't believe he'd do it, not because it's so dreadful, but because it's not dreadful enough.”

He reached over and pushed the stop button; the elevator juddered and then stood still. “What are you talking about?”

I took a deep breath. “Put away what
you
think and what
you
believe for a minute, and try and see it from her point of view. She believes in evil. She believes that there's something bad that's been passed down through the Göring bloodline to her son. She believes that he's able to summon a great deal of destructive power. He wants the whole Nazi régime back, everything, the racial cleansing, the camps, the experimentation.” I drew a shaky breath: after last summer, we both knew a little too much about medical experimentation. “Next to that, what's blowing up a building? So what? So a few hundred people are killed? That's
nothing
compared to what he wants to have happen. She's scared of the right things, and you're just annoying her, pushing on about the damned bomb.”

“The damned bomb is how we're going to get him,” said Julian. “We can't arrest him for trying to bring someone back from the dead. We can't stop that. We have to do it within the law.”

He was back to that recording, and I was getting fed up. “Then he'll win. He'll win because he doesn't give a toss about the law. He doesn't give a toss about anything but this.” A thought was glimmering suddenly, somewhere, and I felt Gabrielle's energy behind it. “He has to make it up to Hitler,” I said suddenly.

“Make what up? What are you talking about?”

I was feeling sick. “Göring was Hitler's chosen successor, his right-hand man, the most important man in the Reich after Hitler himself,” I said. “But they had a falling-out at the end. So Hitler was in Berlin and the Russians were surrounding him, he went down into the bunkhouse and got a telegram from Göring saying essentially that he was taking over as chancellor of the Reich. Hitler was all about loyalty and he saw that as the ultimate betrayal. He went ballistic and ordered the SS after Göring. If the Americans hadn't gotten Göring, the SS would have killed him for sure.”

“Okay, but…”

“Don't you see?” I felt impatient. “Aleister is Göring's
blood
. He wants to make up for Göring's betrayal. This is how he's doing it.” I stabbed the Down button and the elevator shook and started descending again. “And that's going to tell us when,” I said.

Julian found my wavelength with a click. “On an anniversary.”

“We just have to figure out which one.”

*   *   *

It felt, in those last weeks, that everything was moving far too quickly.

“I have to go away for a while,” Hans told Livia. It was a special night; he'd managed to get hold of some champagne. “I wish that I did not, but there is work I have to do, work away from here.”

“Where?”

He said the first place that came into his head. “Toronto.”

“Oh! For how long?” She looked like she was about to cry. He had to do it. He had to keep her safe. Kurt couldn't know that she existed.

“For a week, perhaps longer, I do not know,” Hans said.

“You are leaving me,” she said. “I knew it could not last. I knew that no one is allowed to be this happy. I knew you would find, after all, that you don't love me. You should just tell me. You don't have to go all the way to Toronto.”

“That is not true,” Hans protested. “I do have to go. And then I am going to come back.”

“You're just looking for a way to break things off. You're not going to Toronto.”

“Listen to me. I must go to Toronto,” said Hans. “But there is something I very much want to ask you before I go.”

She was crying now. “What is it?”

They were in her room, sitting next to each other on the bed. He got down on one knee, awkwardly. “I need to ask you,” he said carefully, “if, when I return, you will marry me.”

Her eyes widened. “I cannot believe you asked me that!” But she was smiling through the tears.

“You have not yet given me an answer.”

She flung her arms around him. “Yes! Yes! Of course I'll marry you!”

He rose, dusted off his knees, and sat down again next to her. “Why could you not believe I would ask? I love you, you know that I love you.”

“I thought,” she said, wiping her cheeks with her hand, “that you were making up the trip to Toronto so that you could break up with me.”

He stared. “But—”

“No, no!” Livia interrupted him. “It's all right. It really is.” She put her arms around him, leaning back as she did, onto the bed, with him on top of her. “I love you, Hans,” she murmured. And then they did not speak again for a very long time.

Kurt was waiting for him, the next morning, at the train station. “You're late.”

Hans was euphoric and trying to hide it. He couldn't see Livia; he couldn't even think of Livia, not until Kurt was safely on his way back to New York City. “I am here now,” he said. “What is it?”

“Berlin got your message,” Kurt said, opening a newspaper and keeping it in front of his mouth. “It's the moment we've been waiting for. When they move the jewels, you're to be there.”

“And steal them?” It was amazing how calm he felt.

“Of course. But replace them. Here,” and he pressed a small package into Hans's hand. “Substitute these. There's a photo in there so you'll know which ones.”

“And the real ones?”

“I'll take them.”

“And how will I know how to find you?”

Kurt smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile. “Oh, you'll know,” he said. “I'm staying with you.”

*   *   *

There was only one thing he could do, Hans decided.

Tell the truth. And—not tell the truth.

He had served the Reich, but he owed it nothing. And Canada was vast. Livia needed her people; fine. There were sure to be Jews out west.

Out west, where he would take her. With the money they'd get from the diamonds.

Maurice had come up trumps. Tuesday. In the morning. The vault's contents would be transported to the Securities and Exchange Building in a baker's truck, and brought to the vault there. “There's a leak, see, in the one at Sun-Life,” Maurice said, having gleaned that information at keyholes. “And there's papers involved. That's why they're moving it all, eh?”

“You will make sure I am there,” said Hans.

Maurice nodded. “I knew you'd ask me,” he said. “An' I got that covered, see? We'll dump the contents in the new vault, an' I've signed on for first shift guarding it. I'll get you in, all right.” He paused. “But you got to do something for me. They'll know I'm the one let you in, so you got to cut me in, so I have something, so I can get away.”

“They will not know that I was there,” said Hans.

“No? An' how you going to arrange that?”

“I am replacing them,” said Hans. “That is the point. No one is to know at all.”

“I see.” There was something in his voice, something that Hans couldn't put his finger on, but which bothered him. He didn't know what it was. “Tuesday,” he said.

“Tuesday,” Maurice affirmed.

Monday night, then, thought Hans. Monday night he'd tell her to pack. Monday night he'd tell her the truth.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY

The anniversary wasn't all that difficult to find. We stopped at the nearest Second Cup coffeehouse and I pulled my laptop from my tote bag. “Here's a timeline,” I announced.

Julian put the two cappuccinos he'd ordered on the table. “What's it say?”

I frowned. “Most of it happened in the spring,” I said. “Here, look. The first rift is here, back in the spring of 1941. Göring's head of the Luftwaffe, and Hitler blames him for not wiping out the Soviet air force.”

“Not enough,” said Julian. He had a thin mustache from the frothy milk.