The Isis Covenant (43 page)

He stepped into the room. ‘You don’t have to do this, Paul. You have a mind of your own. I can imagine what happened to you here: what that man did to you and what he made you do. But it can stop, now. The Crown of Isis is stained in blood. But you have the power to make it clean again. End it here and you regain whatever honour your family ever had. End it here and you can be clean again.’ Was there some kind of reaction? A
hint
of hesitation? ‘We’re all brothers under the skin, Paul. End it now and you can join the brotherhood of mankind again.’ As pleas for mercy went, it was trite and hackneyed, but it was all he had. He gathered himself to commit suicide when it was rejected.

But trite or not, the words – a word – had triggered some kind of chain reaction in Paul Dornberger’s brain. For a few precious seconds he forgot the sickle moon as the many deaths he had carried out here swam through his brain. The faces appeared one after the other, dozens of them, united in their terror and their hopelessness. But one face in particular, a face that had eluded him for a quarter of a century, suddenly created a freeze-frame image that caught and stayed. A boy’s face, dull and trusting. An idiot, his father had said, as he handed Paul the knife, good for nothing but practice. His brother’s face.

With a growl, he knocked the old man’s hands away from the Crown and picked the golden treasure off the bed.

‘It is not for you, old man. It was never for you.’

With his free hand he lifted the Crown of Isis towards his own head, the diamond glittering in the artificial light. Dmitri screamed again as he felt the increasing pressure of the knife at his throat. Jamie knew he had only one chance. Somehow Danny Fisher managed to push the pistol that had been trapped beneath her towards him and he made a dive for it. He had no time to aim. As his right hand closed over the weapon’s butt
he
raised it and fired allowing instinct and experience to take over.

Dornberger had raised the Crown level with his face and there was a frozen millisecond before the bullet struck its target. The Eye of Isis shattered into a million pieces and the copper-jacketed slug continued on its course. The last thing Paul Dornberger saw was a blinding flash of light before the bullet took him directly between the eyes. Max Dornberger’s eyelids snapped open and he lurched upright on the bed with the cry of a man being dragged down into the seventh pit of hell. The shadow was already upon him, and as Jamie watched it grew ever darker. In a matter of seconds, the man who had begun life as Bodo Ritter aged fifty years and with a final shriek he fell back dead.

Jamie lay exhausted for a few moments beside Danny Fisher’s prone body before he remembered she might be bleeding to death. When he turned to help, her eyes were shining fever bright with agony and shock. A cursory examination showed she’d been hit in the fleshy part just below the angle of her right breast and shoulder. He realized with relief that it probably looked and felt worse than it was, not that she’d appreciate that for a while. He produced a handkerchief from his pocket and wadded it over the wound beneath her jacket.

A soft mewing wail reminded him that Danny wasn’t the only one who needed his help. Dmitri Samsonov sat rigid with shock in the chair where he had been a
millimetre
from death, a thin red line showing just how close he had come. Jamie helped Danny to her feet and their shoes crunched on a billion-dollar carpet of splintered fragments as he supported her across to free Dmitri. The body of Paul Dornberger lay close by, the small hole in his forehead oozing blood and his face pierced with thousands of shards of carbon crystal.

They stood over him for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts. It seemed inappropriate that Dornberger’s blood-flecked features should be relaxed and at peace; almost an insult to his victims. Jamie shuddered. Suddenly all he wanted to do was be out in the clean air. The very walls of the room oozed evil. How many people had died so this man and his father could pursue their demented fantasy? Danny sniffed and Jamie could tell that, despite her pain, she was equally moved.

She looked down at the glittering layer of shards beneath their feet and shook her head. ‘Jesus, Saintclair,’ she said wearily. ‘Didn’t anybody ever tell you diamonds are a girl’s best friend?’

Epilogue

Jamie Saintclair was lying on a tropical beach with Danny Fisher’s endlessly long, endlessly lithe body broiling to a perfect tan by his side when the buzz of his mobile phone roused him from the dream. He awoke in a cramped seat on the Paddington to Oxford train. Danny had recovered quickly from her wound and flown back to New York three weeks earlier and he was still surprised at how big a hole she had left in his life.

He checked the screen, hoping it might be a message from the New Yorker, but the caller ID said ‘Det Shreeves’, which took him a moment to turn into the Met officer who’d loaned him the protective vest that had saved his life. The message was equally cryptic: ‘Daily Mail, page 17’.

The only newspapers available on the train were the brain-numbing free tabloids that littered the seats and luggage racks, so he had to wait until he reached the station before he could buy a
Mail
from the newsstand.
He
flicked to page 17 and was wondering why Shreeves wanted him to read an article on Britain’s Booze Culture when he noticed the headline at the bottom of the page:-
E
LECTRONICS TYCOON FOUND SHOT DEAD
. The story said that the body of Howard Vanderbilt had been discovered in his tenth-floor apartment with a gun in his hand and a bullet wound in the head. It added that sources close to the investigation suggested that: ‘
prior to his death Mr Vanderbilt was being investigated over allegations of tax evasion and for suspected links to neo-Nazi groups and organized crime
.’ Jamie had a momentary vision from what seemed another lifetime of a portly figure with a pony-tail and a 9 mm automatic pointed at his heart, but he wasn’t quite sure how he should feel. He supposed it meant he could stop looking over his shoulder. No one was going to honour a contract put out by a dead man.

He threw the paper into the nearest bin and found his way to the taxi rank. Somewhere in there would be yet another story about the investigation at the Dornberger house, but he didn’t need to read it to know the details. The discovery of the underground temple and the horrors that had taken place there had created a sensation. Every day brought a new revelation about the search for bodies in the grounds or the discovery of human tissue in the waste system. DNA tests had already brought the number of Paul and Max Dornberger’s victims to at least twelve, although their identities remained a mystery. The boy intended to be
their
final victim was still in care. Overnight, Dmitri Samsonov had become the wealthiest child on the planet, and he was now the subject of a three-way tug of war between Irina’s parents, a distant cousin of Samsonov, who also happened to be a prominent member of the Russian Mafia, and President Vladimir Putin, who had generously offered to adopt his old friend Oleg’s son.

The taxi dropped him at the Ashmolean Museum. Inside, Athena was waiting exactly where she said she would be, among the artefacts in the Egyptian section. She smiled gravely when she saw him.

‘Thank you for agreeing to come to Oxford to meet me, Mr Saintclair. I apologize, but it would have been inconvenient for me to travel to London.’

‘I was a little surprised,’ he admitted, ‘until I remembered that Oxford has a long relationship with Isis.’

She laughed. ‘You mean the rowing team, of course. Isis is the ancient name for the Thames, Mr Saintclair. I’m afraid Oxford has nothing to do with The Lady, no matter how much I should wish it. My association with this city is because I have been a visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Oriental Studies for many years, and the Ashmolean is a valuable research facility.’

To cover his embarrassment, Jamie unshouldered the rucksack he’d carried from London and removed the black velvet bag it contained. Athena drew a sharp breath as he placed the bag in her hands and she felt its weight.

‘Is this …?’

He nodded and her eyes glistened. She leaned forward with a sharp movement, like a bird pecking grain, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘The Sisters of Isis will always be in your debt.’

‘There is no need. I am just glad that it is back where it belongs … and sorry that I couldn’t have done the same with the Eye.’

A sad smile touched her lips.

‘I believe you and your friend were doing The Lady’s work when you destroyed it, just as my daughter Klara was when she died trying to protect you. The Lady would not wish to be associated with something so defiled. There will be a new stone, clear and untarnished; untainted by the corruption of the old.’

Jamie covered his surprise with a smile of his own. The Eye of Isis had been beyond price. The cost of replacing it with a stone of similar quality was unthinkable, if such a thing ever came on the open market. ‘I can put you in touch with a diamond merchant in Antwerp.’

The offer was made half in jest and drew a laugh from Athena. ‘Oh, I doubt we will be buying it, Mr Saintclair. There are other ways of acquiring such things.’

He managed to suppress the image of another newspaper headline – one that said:
M
YSTERY RAID ON
C
ROWN
J
EWELS
– long enough to reach forward and shake her hand.

‘Goodbye, and thank you again, Mr Saintclair. I must find a safe place for this. And if you ever need the assistance of the Sisters of Isis again …’

‘I don’t intend to be in a position where I’ll need it,’ Jamie assured her. His future plans included a long, stress-free rest, and a sun-kissed beach. Maybe somewhere like Florida where a certain New York detective might be persuaded to join him.

With a last glance at Athena as she walked through a door marked ‘Private’ he headed for the exit. It was only when he was outside that it struck him. The doorway had been flanked by two Egyptian steles carved from black granite, each inscribed with a familiar symbol.

The Eye of Isis.

Acknowledgements

As always, I have to thank my wife Alison and children, Kara, Nikki and Gregor for their unfailing support and encouragement. Special thanks go to our friends Shirley and Kenny Allan for yet again keeping me straight on my German. Finally to Simon my editor and his fantastic team at Transworld, and to Stan, my agent at Jenny Brown in Edinburgh.

About the Author

James Douglas
is the pseudonym of a writer of popular historical adventure novels. This is the second thriller to feature art recovery expert, Jamie Saintclair, the first,
The Doomsday Testament
, is also published by Corgi.

Also by James Douglas

THE DOOMSDAY TESTAMENT

and published by Corgi Books

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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A Random House Group Company
www.transworldbooks.co.uk

THE ISIS COVENANT
A CORGI BOOK: 9780552164825
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781446487600

First publication in Great Britain
Corgi Books published 2012

Copyright © James Douglas 2012

James Douglas has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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