The Blood Lance (24 page)

For almost a week after Bachman's departure nothing changed. After breakfast, Elise took a walk. In the heat of the afternoon she liked to read. She usually had drinks with some of the German tourists before dinner. At dinner she always sat with one or two couples, listening inevitably to stories about Hitler or his circle. After dinner she liked to turn on the radio for a while and then read a book. With Bachman gone, planning God knew what in Germany, she felt unsettled. One evening she stepped outside to breathe the cool air before she gave over to another sleepless night and saw Rahn coming toward her from the road. He carried quite a bit of equipment, including climbing ropes and picks, a lantern, and a rucksack. 'Have you been climbing?' she asked.

He shook his head and looked back toward the darkness. 'There was a chasm inside the Lombrives I have always wanted to look at, and I finally worked up the nerve to do it.'

'And did you find anything?' she asked.

'A great many bones,' he told her with a smile. Then after a moment of consideration, he asked, 'Is everything all right?'

'Why wouldn't it be?'

'I mean in Germany. I hear that Hindenburg refuses Hitler any role in the government.'

'I don't care about Hitler!'
Or my husband
, she thought.

He hesitated, wanting to speak, but the bright confidence she had seen in his smile the year before had been stamped out. 'I only meant that Dieter seemed upset when he left.'

'What is his mood to you?'

'I
was thinking about Germany. The way things
are. . . one worries!'

'If you want to know the worst of it, it is seeing
you
running a hotel!' And with that she turned to go inside, retreating to the safety of her room.

Much later there was a knock at her door.
His
knock. She knew it was him and called through the door, 'Go away!' Bachman's spies were everywhere. He must have known that as well but he stood beyond the closed door without moving. Finally, he knocked again. She went to open the door. Rather than speak to her he stared at her night dress which, she realised, had turned transparent in the pale backlight of her bedroom lamp. She crossed her arms across her breasts and watched his eyes sweep down across her belly. She turned and went for a robe, feeling naked suddenly. He stepped into her room and shut the door whilst she wrapped herself in her robe. 'What do you want?' she asked. The shard of fear in her voice surprised her.

Rahn's eyes softened, his shoulders sagged. 'I wanted to tell you I have stopped writing.'

'You. . . stopped? When?'

'Last year. Since I met you, actually.' He shook his head sorrowfully. 'There wasn't much point continuing. What I had put on paper sounded like someone else had written it. I was writing for the approval of my professors - old and formal and stuffy!'

'You write beautifully, Otto.'

'A book cannot be written as one composes a letter.'

'Why not?'

'It just isn't done!'

'You can do anything you like. Why not write a long, beautiful letter about
your
Cathars! They
are
yours, you know! No one loves them as you do! Don't write for your professors.
Their
professors are the same withered old men who laughed at Schliemann's Troy until they saw the gold he brought out of its ruins! Write for people who can still fall in love! Write about your troubadour knights and the ladies they loved. Make them breathe with life as you used to do when you would tell me their stories!'
'I can't write anymore,' he muttered, 'but this. . .' He gestured miserably at the room, but he meant the hotel, '. . .this is killing me! I am not a businessman, Elise.'

'Tell Dieter you want out!'

'I can't! He thinks. . . he thinks it is a great success - which it isn't - and I have my name on a ten year lease. . .' He stared into the awful middle distance of overworked worries. 'I hate doing this more than anything I have ever done, and I have had every kind of job!'

'But you will close in the winter, and you can afford to stay here, can't you? That will give you time to write! You'll be alone, with no one to disturb you!'

His head dropped. He looked like a man who had been told he has only a few months to live. 'I suppose you know Maurice Magre has published another book.'

'Dieter said something about it. So what?'

'Have you seen it?' She shook her head. 'It is about Buddhist influence on the Cathars. Pure rubbish, of course, like all the rest he does. . .'

'You need to write
your
book!'

He shook his head. 'It will change nothing. They were Buddhists. The Frenchman has spoken! Will anyone care what I have to say?'

'Don't
say
anything. You are a
troubadour
! You must sing the story! And if you sing, the rest of us will forget our cares for a few hours and dream about that other time and all the love affairs that were so incredibly overpowering they needed neither touch nor kiss!'

'But I want people to know what happened! The Vatican's crusade was a
crime
, Elise!'

'It was a crime seven hundred years ago, Otto. Now it is only a story. Write about the people. . . and the land. That is what you love. I think of the first letter you wrote to me when I got back to Berlin.

He smiled. 'Do you remember it?'

'Do you?'

'I tried to describe the sky to you - because I knew how dreary Berlin winters can be, how one breathes differently in a city. I wanted you to think about the sun and the colour that is so much a part of this landscape.'

'It was the loveliest thing I have ever read. You could start a book with such words. Let's be honest with ourselves, Otto. I am some fantasy to you.'

'No!'

'I am! This place is what you love. You must love it when you write and then your language will be anything but stuffy. Write exactly as you did last winter in your letters and you will stand alone on Montségur forever!'

'You are not a fantasy, Elise. You are the woman I was born to love. I cannot stop dreaming about you even when I want nothing to do with you! And seeing you. . . all I want to do is take you in my arms. It is as if you have cast some spell over me!'

'I think you had better go.'

A smile flickered, the old confidence resurrecting momentarily. 'Before I do I want to see you.'

'You
have
seen me. Go! Tomorrow you can show me where some Cathar priest was murdered or where a certain knight did not kiss the woman he loved.'

'Take off your robe. Drop your gown. Let me look at you, even if you will never let me touch you. I have loved you for a year. I deserve that much!'

'You know I can't do that. I am a—'

He reached to undo the robe and stopped her speech. It was as if he flicked a switch. Once he had loosened it, he pushed it from her shoulders. It fell in a crush at her naked feet. Now he touched one of the thin straps of her gown, lifting it from her shoulder delicately. 'It is the easiest thing in the world,' he told her. 'Why
can't
you do it?'

Elise wanted to say, because she chose not to do it, but when she tried to speak her throat locked up.

The strap fell off her shoulder. Then he nudged the second
one free. Her hand pressed against her gown, holding it close to her heart.

'No,' he whispered. His voice was thick with desire. 'Don't do that. Show me what I will never have. Show me this once, and I will leave you forever.'

She began to cry.

Taking her into his arms, he said he was sorry. He was terrible. He was a monster. A perfect monster!

That was not why she was crying, she said. She was crying, she said, because this moment would change everything, because they were both perfect monsters.

Altstadt, Hamburg

Saturday-Sunday March 8-9, 2008.

'They're coming.' Chernoff's voice was cool, but Carlisle knew she was excited. 'Malloy is riding with two people - one of them a woman. The agents are following them.'

Carlisle stepped to the window and looked at the dark streets. 'What about Ohlendorf?'

'If they still have him we should be able to find him afterwards.'

Kate pulled the nose of the car against a wall at the edge of the BP lot. Randal pulled his SUV in beside her. Dale Perry had parked his Land Rover across the street and walked over to join them as they got out of their vehicles. Dale was wearing a vest and carrying a machine pistol under a long coat as well as his holstered government issue Glock.

'Everybody here American?' Jim Randal asked. It was probably a joke, but it came out like a bark.

'Close enough for government work,' Malloy told him, his eyes cutting to Kate. He made the introductions casually. He gave the first names of the two agents and Dale. Kate and Ethan he called Girl and Boy. After the handshakes, Malloy asked Dale, 'Did you find out which apartment they're in?'

'There are five people inside the building, all apparently in bed for the night.' Malloy checked his watch. It was almost one o'clock.

'Where are the rest of the renters?'

'People stay in places like this Monday-through-Thursday, T. K. They all have real homes somewhere else. Anyway, of the five people inside, only two are in the same apartment - a man and a woman.'

'Farrell and Chernoff?'

'Looks that way. They're on the east side of the building, one storey up. The apartment across the hall from them is empty. You've got two more people on the fourth floor, separate apartments, and one on the top floor. Most of these buildings don't have elevators. So if we can hold the stairwell, we should be able to isolate the couple.'

'What about a lookout?' Malloy asked. He was thinking a lookout could alert Chernoff and call in as many as five more guns from somewhere beyond the perimeter.

'That's where we get some bad news. You've got quite a few apartment buildings facing the entryway and you've got fairly decent lighting. So going in and coming out, you're exposed to a crossfire.'

'Anyway into the building from the back?' Ethan asked.

'That's the best way, if you can manage to get up to the second floor. The ground floor is closed off - no doors or windows - but after that you've got balconies that give you easy access to all the apartments. The street is close, but it's quiet this time of night and mostly in shadows.'

Malloy looked at Kate. 'Your call.'

'We can go in through one of the balconies at the back. If we get Farrell we can leave by the front door and have a car waiting at the kerb. If we have to bail out - we leave the way we came and ride out with the other car.'

'Someone needs to watch the rope to the balcony,' Ethan added. 'That's our line of retreat.'

'I'll take the rope,' Dale told them. He pointed to the FBI
agents. 'You guys decide between you how you want to deploy in the cars.'

'I want to be the first to shake Jack Farrell's hand,' Jim Randal said. 'So I'll take the front.'

Josh Sutter looked like he wished he had called for the front, but he didn't argue. He was a team player.

They got the equipment they needed from the bags in the Toyota's backseat and then locked the extra gear in the boot of the car. Sutter and Randal, armed with a couple of machine pistols Dale loaned them, took a long look at Ethan's handheld navigation system and then drove off to their posts. If either of them saw anything coming, they were to call Dale's cell phone. Dale would contact Malloy.

Dale and Malloy walked in along one street. Ethan and Kate took another.

'What's the story on this Brit, T. K.?' Dale asked.

'No story.'

'One of yours or is she on loan?'

'Girl and Boy belong to Jane. At least that's the impression I got, but I didn't ask. All I know is they're not fresh off the Farm. They've been bouncing around over here for a few years.'

'If they're any good I probably would have heard about them.'

'You're probably right. Unless they're
really
good.'

Dale laughed. 'That would be the kind Jane would recruit.'

'That's what I'm thinking.'

They met under the balcony of the empty flat. Kate, Ethan and Malloy pulled their night vision goggles into place and strapped their AKS-74s over their shoulders - the first round already jacked into the chamber. They turned on their headsets and then Ethan tossed a rubber-coated grappling hook up to the balcony.

Kate went up the rope first. She used a quick hand-overhand and covered the ten metre climb within a couple of seconds. Ethan followed with the same ease, making the climb look embarrassingly simple.