The Blood Lance (39 page)
'He served in the SAS for six years,' Ethan added.
'The people he served with told my investigators he was a loner. They also said he was very good at what he did, but of course the SAS doesn't take any other kind. After he left the service, under some kind of suspicious circumstances as I understand it, he went off radar for about three years - no jobs, no travel, no contacts with his old friends. That usually means some kind of criminal activity. . . or living on the streets. The next time his passport surfaces he's travelling in Africa and South America and working for a security firm that's contracted with some of the big oil companies.'
'A mercenary?' Ethan asked.
'They call it security, but in some of those places a person with the right credentials can earn six hundred to a thousand
dollars a day. That went on for a couple of years and then he began travelling in the Balkans - back when it was the last place on earth a reasonable person would want to go. At about the same time Robert Kenyon was there. Since Carlisle had served under Robert Kenyon's command during the Falklands War, my guess is they were operating together, but just what they were doing is anybody's guess.'
'Robert was buying paintings and antique furniture,' Kate told him.
Malloy smiled. 'Robert was more than likely with British intelligence. We know his maternal grandfather was an MI6 operative after the War and was actually the one responsible for organising the Knights of the Holy Lance as a cover for a number of activities that he launched behind the Iron Curtain. Lord Kenyon might have been buying and selling antiques in the Balkan countries, but I promise you this, that wasn't all he was doing.'
Kate looked at him without responding.
'For years no one in Europe wanted to get involved in the Balkans,' Malloy told her. 'Not officially at least, so people were sent in undercover. The paladins sent humanitarian aid into the region - which can be an excellent cover for people involved in covert activities.'
'You think Carlisle is in hiding because of something that happened in the Balkans?' Ethan asked.
'That could be the case, but the really dangerous people are all dead or locked away. I'm more inclined to think he's in league with Chernoff as some sort of partner in assassination. He may also be supplying mercenaries and weapons to different places. At least, that is how he profiles.'
'Maybe Carlisle wasn't working for Kenyon,' Ethan said. 'Maybe he was working for the other side.'
'That would explain the low profile, but not his association with the paladins.'
'Carlisle sounds like a man we ought to talk to,' Kate said.
'I had three viable choices other than Giancarlo or Luca
Bartoli when we started looking at this thing last year: Jack Farrell, Hugo Ohlendorf, and David Carlisle. There were a lot of reasons to go to Farrell, but obviously Carlisle is the only choice left. So if we can find him, by all means we'll talk to him!'
Ethan looked at Kate. 'Giancarlo might know where he is. It wouldn't hurt to ask him, would it?'
'He might be willing to tell Carlisle how to find us. . .'
Malloy smiled and shook his head. 'After what happened in Hamburg, I'm not sure that's such a good idea.'
'So what do we do?' Ethan asked.
'Mend,' Malloy told him. 'Wait. Look at some fresh information from Chernoff's computer that's coming in tomorrow. If she was partnering with Carlisle the information ought to be there. If it comes fast enough, we might even find the guy before he goes to ground. But for now, unless you want to talk to Giancarlo or Luca about their involvement in Robert's death, that is where it stands.'
'They're out of the question,' Kate answered.
'You want to know what happened,' Malloy answered, 'and they have the information. . .'
'They're family, T. K.'
'That's where most violence occurs.'
'It's not an option.'
Malloy looked at Ethan for support, but in this he had no ally. 'Then we'll find David Carlisle,' he said.
Zürich, Switzerland
Malloy called Gwen on the hotel phone when he got back to his room. It was late in the evening in New York, but Gwen answered like she had been waiting for his call. Nothing was certain yet, he said, but he thought he might be coming home in a few days. He was running out of leads. Gwen told him she missed him terribly. He said he missed her as well and realised just how lonely he was as he said it.
Home
had a nice sound to it.
He started getting ready for bed after his call but decided he wasn't really ready to go to sleep. His nights and days had got turned upside down. Cracking open his purloined Hart Brothers Scotch, he sat down and began going through the files on Hugo Ohlendorf that he had taken from Dale's computer.
Dale Perry of course had found Ohlendorf through his contact with a Hamburg hoodlum on the rise. From those meetings Dale knew Ohlendorf was involved in
something
, but he didn't know what it was or the extent of Ohlendorf's involvement. Accordingly, Dale had made a comprehensive study of the man over a period of several months. He had listed every organisation to which Ohlendorf belonged, including the Knights of the Holy Lance, and his involvement as the representative of Johannes Diekmann and the three Berlin socialites who had helped to found the Order in the summer of 1961. Despite nearly a thousand hours spent on the investigation Dale had unearthed very little Malloy did not already have.
The Order of the Knights of the Holy Lance had taken shape under the direction of Sir William Savage, an Englishman living in West Berlin in the early years of the Cold War. Sir William had been a VP in a major construction company, but as records now indicated he was in reality part of British Intelligence. As soon as West Berlin came under siege Sir William persuaded one of his key operatives, a German aristocrat and a former SS officer named Johannes Diekmann, to help establish a resistance organisation. . . if the unthinkable occurred. Diekmann had suggested they recruit a number of socially prominent individuals in the city who would dedicate themselves to raising consciousness in the West about the importance of keeping West Berlin free. Using these individuals to conduct a public relations campaign, Diekmann and Savage had then gone quietly about recruiting individuals capable of crossing into East Germany and establishing covert operations amongst the disaffected and quasi criminal classes.
As tensions had eased over the years, Sir William's operations reached farther into the Communist-run countries of the East Bloc. Whilst the operations were undoubtedly funded by British Intelligence at the beginning, Sir William and his fellow paladins had taken pains to create a financial base through corporate contributions that were in fact only partially legitimate. By the 1980s the paladins had established a complex and a rather cosy relationship with a number of the major criminal factions in Europe.
With nine paladins sitting on the council, each with one vote, the Order had been seemingly independent of Sir William from the very beginning. In fact, Savage had appointed friends and family to the council, starting with his daughters' husbands, the fathers of Jack Farrell and Robert Kenyon, and two Italian businessmen with whom he had a long and intimate relationship, Giancarlo Bartoli and Giancarlo's father.
By the time of German reunification Lord Robert Kenyon was representing Sir William's interests on the board. Following Sir William's death, Robert Kenyon had assumed his grandfather's seat with the full authority of a paladin. By the time Luca and Jack Farrell became paladins, the world had changed. The threat of Communism had faded, and the paladins responded by changing the mission of the Order of the Knights of the Holy Lance. What had not changed, at least until the death of Robert Kenyon, was the control of the paladins. Sir William's faction of five had trumped Johannes Diekmann's four votes - effectively guiding the Order in all things great and small. This meant that until 1997 the paladins sanctioned no activity that was not at least marginally in the interests of the Crown.
The dynamic had changed when the next two paladins joined the Council. David Carlisle and Christine Foulkes had no allegiance to either faction. That gave them the power to forge temporary alliances with either Ohlendorf or Bartoli. It
was tempting to imagine that Kenyon's death was connected to
some kind of internal discord within the paladins, but Malloy had found no evidence of it. The paladins seemed to have a direct interest in large sections of the black market economy throughout Europe. That was indisputable. Whether or not there was discord amongst the leadership, he could not say.
This much he had worked through. First, Hugo Ohlendorf had access to, if not control of, a great deal of criminal talent. These were individuals willing to commit murder in league with one of the most notorious assassins in Europe. David Carlisle, with his mercenary and perhaps political contacts in various countries, was undoubtedly capable of dealing in weapons, drugs, and mercenary soldiers. Jack Farrell, like his father before him, had worked with Giancarlo Bartoli in a number of ventures on both sides of the Atlantic - sometimes legitimately and sometimes otherwise.
Finally, there was Christine Foulkes. She was an oddity. A one-time celebrity party girl, Foulkes had joined the Council of Paladins and virtually withdrawn from public scrutiny. Like Carlisle, one found file photos in the annual reports, one read about her activities on behalf of the Order, but no one else encountered her. That meant the paladins were lying about her activities, or she was travelling under assumed identities. David Carlisle might use multiple identities to travel, but Malloy could not see why Foulkes would take that kind of risk.
After skimming Dale Perry's summaries, Malloy ran file searches on Christine Foulkes, David Carlisle, Giancarlo and Luca Bartoli, as well as the inactive paladins whom Ohlendorf had represented: Johannes Diekmann, Sarah von Wittsberg, Lady Margarite Schoals, and Dame Ann Marie Wolff. The result was a gold mine of information, but like any gold mine, most of it was rock and mud. At five, almost ready to close down, he came across a series of surveillance photos of David Carlisle. When the photographs were taken, Carlisle had been meeting Hugo Ohlendorf in Paris in 2005.
As these were relatively current and showed a somewhat different face from the file photographs of David Carlisle that
the paladins published each year, Malloy copied them to a memory stick, along with a number of general files about the paladins. He thought Ethan would have most of this, but it did not hurt to be thorough. He hoped to have something more substantial after picking up the summaries Jane was sending him the following morning.
In the meantime, he closed down his computer and tried to get a few hours of sleep.
Spring 1936.
After his trip to Wewelsburg Rahn promised himself he would not see the Bachmans, at least for a while. He was certainly too angry with Bachman to spend an evening as if nothing were wrong! But when Saturday came round, he showed up at their door. He had a picture book for Sarah, wildflowers again for Elise, and a bottle of good Riesling wine for Bachman. He took the kisses of the girl and her mother - all that he really had in the world - and settled down to drink and talk. Nothing at all was different between them.
As he was leaving, Elise said to him whilst they kissed goodnight, 'Dieter tells me you might be having problems with Himmler. . .' She looked worried. He had not seen worry in her eyes before and understood suddenly that his dismissal of Himmler's absurd idea might create serious problems for Bachman, and by extension for Elise.
He shook his head and tried not to show the tension he suddenly felt. 'Not at all,' he said. 'I was simply confused about something Dieter told me.'
'You must be careful, Otto. Himmler is fickle with his affection. Keep him happy and the world is yours.'
'So perhaps I should find him his Holy Grail!'
'Keep him hopeful, as Dieter suggests, and he will feed you honours and acclaim. Ignore him and—'
Bachman walked toward them. 'What are these whispers?'
'We are plotting to kill Hitler!' Rahn answered, but he forgot to smile as he said it.
Bachman blanched at the joke, but then he laughed. 'And I thought it was something I should be worried about!'
Rahn found Bachman at his office late the following week. 'I have been thinking about what you said. I want you to arrange a meeting for us with Himmler - whatever time is good for the two of you.'
'You are not going to do something foolish, I hope?'
'On the contrary, I have a proposal for the both of you.'
Bachman looked relieved. 'That is wonderful news, Otto!'
'Will he fund an expedition, do you think?'
'If you think there is some chance of success he will!'
'Are you interested in joining me?'
'Only say the word, and I am there!'
The meeting came the following evening in Himmler's office. Himmler had put in another long day and seemed only to want to get home to his family. 'What can I do for you?' he asked. His smile flickered politely and died.
