Maps of Hell

Forty

Karen Oaten sat back in her seat in the FBI helicopter, swallowing hard as the machine took off. She had her hands over the bulge in her midriff, worried that the safety belt and the movement of the helicopter would disturb her child. Then she relaxed as the lights of the small town below faded into the night. All would be well. Her leaders had given their personal assurances.

“Everything okay?” The voice in the headphones was tinny.

“Yes, Levon.” She smiled at the occupant of the seat next to her.

“So, do you want to give me a rundown of what happened?”

Karen paused. Levon Creamer was the FBI man who had looked after her when she had arrived in Washington. He was chief of the financial-crime department, a thin, balding man in his mid-forties, whose manner was more that of an accountant than a law-enforcement agent. She was confident enough about the story that she had learned in detail, but she wasn’t sure recounting it in the helicopter would do it justice.

“I don’t really know, Levon. I came round on a roadside and started walking. I suppose I was lucky there was a policeman in that place.”

“Your captors may have put you in the neighborhood deliberately. Hey, Karen, are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

His concern touched her, though she knew he really only wanted to know the details of her kidnapping. A doctor had checked her before the helicopter arrived, so Creamer knew her medical status. Maybe he was worried about the baby.

“I’m fine,” she said. “And so’s the little one.”

“Good. You’ve had a hell of an ordeal. Tell me about it.”

“To be honest with you, I don’t remember very much. I was lying down in the Shenandoah Valley and suddenly everything went dark. Some kind of hood was over my head. I was carried to a vehicle and driven for a long time-I’d say at least four hours. I tried to talk, but a male voice told me to shut up if I wanted…if I wanted to keep my baby.” She paused for effect.

Levon Creamer waited silently for a respectable time. “Was the guy American?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t tell you what accent he had.”

“Then what?”

“Well…I’m sorry to say, I got very frightened. Eventually I…I couldn’t control my bladder any longer…they laughed when they saw what I’d done. There were two…two men.”

“The bastards.”

“Yes. Finally the vehicle stopped and I was hauled out. The hood stayed on my head until I was inside. After a time, I realized I was on my own and I took it off.” She paused again. “I actually laughed when I saw where I was. It was like a bedroom out of a Doris Day film, all frilly bedcovers and pastel wallpaper. I went to the door. Of course, it was locked and very solid. At least there was an en suite bathroom, but the door had been taken off. It didn’t take me long to spot the cameras in every corner of the bedroom and bathroom.”

“Jesus.”

“It wasn’t so bad. I held a towel in front of me when I used the toilet. If they wanted to watch me in the shower, too bad.”

The FBI man looked up from the notes he was writing on a clipboard. “Brave lady. And that was where you were all this time?”

“Yes. The windows had been boarded up, so I had to rely on my watch to tell the time of day. The date function meant I knew how many days I’d been in captivity, though, to tell you the truth, it still went into a kind of blur. There was no TV or radio, so very soon I felt totally cut off from the outside world.”

“They feed you all right?”

“I got three meals a day. It wasn’t great food, but adequate. I was even given fresh milk twice a day. They would tell me to go into the bathroom and then open the door to leave a tray. The same in reverse when I’d finished. The cutlery and dishes were always plastic and they checked that everything was returned. I know that because I kept a knife once and they realized immediately.”

“Did they ever talk to you or come inside your quarters?”

“Apart from the instructions at mealtimes, which came through a small speaker on the ceiling, no. I didn’t see anyone all the time I was there. At least there were some books to read. I’ve become a great fan of Ayn Rand, not least because she wrote very long novels.”

“You didn’t have any blackouts or times when you woke up feeling woozy?”

“You mean, did they drug me to find out what I knew? No, nothing that I’m aware of.”

Creamer smiled encouragingly. “And how’s your memory?”

“Fine.” She smiled back at him and tried to act like a normal human being. “Is Matt okay?”

The FBI man kept his eyes off her. “Um, yes, I think so. The deputy director will bring you up to speed.”

Karen nodded blankly. She’d been told before she was taken from the camp about her former lover’s involvement in the awful murders in Washington. It had been a shock that her baby’s father was a killer, but she would make sure the child never knew. Matt Wells belonged to the past-that had been made very clear to her.

“I presume all my files are secure,” she said.

“Uh, yeah, they are,” Creamer said, reestablishing eye contact. “We picked them up from your hotel the day after you disappeared. It didn’t look like anything was missing.”

“Good,” Karen said enthusiastically. “I need to get back to work first thing tomorrow morning. I presume my meetings with the Bureau and the Department of Justice will be rescheduled?”

Levon Creamer looked surprised. “We assumed you’d need time to recover.”

“Am I giving you that impression now?”

The FBI man shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

“Please make the arrangements, Levon.”

She watched as he changed to another channel and started talking animatedly. Everything was running smoothly. She was sure the meeting she most wanted would also be scheduled soon.

I sat on the sofa and took another slug of wine, trying to keep my face unreadable as my mind went into over-drive. What were my options? I could give Fraulein Rothmann and her gun-toting daughter a list of invented names, but I had the feeling they were in the loop enough to rumble that plan. Telling them about Pinker would condemn him to death, as may have already happened with Clem. Shit, what was I doing debating the issue? I needed to act right now.

I gagged on the wine, then sprayed it over the table and floor. I coughed hard and started gasping for breath, my hands on my throat. I hoped my face had gone a dark enough shade of red to convince them that I was having some kind of seizure.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I heard Irma Rothmann say. “See if you can help him, Dana. Give me the gun.”

That was progress-she had to be less proficient with firearms than the FBI agent. I kept up the act, pumping my chest up and down like a man who was at death’s door. Then I felt the daughter’s hands under my arms as she tried to turn me onto my side on the sofa. I had my eyes wide-open, but I didn’t focus on her face as she leaned over me.

“Bring some water, Mutti,” Dana Maltravers said, as she kept trying to get me into the recovery position.

This had worked out better than I’d expected. I waited till the mother’s thin form had moved away, then grabbed the younger woman’s shoulders and flipped her onto the table. By the time I made to jump on top of her, she had already rolled away on to the floor. Maltravers knew how to look after herself in a fight. The angled foot that I took on my chin emphasized that point.

“Fuck you, Wells. You just made a terminal mistake.”

Her right leg shot out and the foot hit me again, this time on my cheek. I reeled backward. As I tried to pull myself up, I caught a glimpse of Irma Rothmann.

She had her arms crossed, the pistol pointing toward the floor. It was obvious who she had her money on.

Dana Maltravers stepped onto the table and launched her foot at me again. This time, my reactions were sharper. I leaned to the side and grabbed her knee, then pulled hard. She managed to flatten her hand and deliver a decent chop to my neck as she flew past. I crumpled onto the sofa and then was just quick enough to take her by the hips and shove her over the back. There was no carpet there and I heard a satisfying thud as her head hit the floor. Her mother suddenly looked alarmed and raised the weapon. I scrambled over the sofa and landed on top of Dana Maltravers. She was still conscious but looked dazed. I twisted one of her arms behind her back and then hauled her to her feet, making sure her body was shielding mine.

“Dana!” Irma Rothmann screamed. “Let her go!”

I was fighting for breath. “Drop the gun!” I gasped. “Now!” I looked round my captive’s head.

The older woman was still pointing the pistol toward us.

“No, Mr. Wells,” she said, her eyes colder than a polar bear’s. “If my daughter must be hurt, so be it. The cause is more important than any single person.”

“Mutti!” Maltravers croaked.

“That’ll be your caring Nazi ideology, I suppose,” I said, keeping my head behind my captive’s. “Don’t you just love it, Dana?”

“Let her go!” Fraulein Rothmann screamed. “If I hit her, the bullet will go through to you, as well.”

“So what?” I said, with as much bravado as I could muster. “At least there’ll be one less Nazi in the world.”

I heard a crash at the far end of the room and risked a look. The older woman’s aim was wavering. I shoved her daughter toward her, keeping a tight grip on her. We all three clattered to the floor and I scrabbled for the gun that the impact had driven out of Irma Rothmann’s hand. I got hold of it just as a large pair of men’s shoes appeared in front of me.

“Here,” Clem Simmons said, extending the hand that wasn’t holding his service weapon-its muzzle was directed at Dana Maltravers.

I took the hand and was jerked to my feet. I turned to the two women who were sprawled in front of us.

Clem had taken quite a beating and his jacket was torn. He wiped blood from his damaged lips. “This is a surprise, Special Agent Maltravers,” he said. He glanced at the older woman. “Who’s this?”

“Her mother. Irma Rothmann, Larry Thomson’s twin sister.” That made me think. “Where’s your brother?” I asked her.

She didn’t respond. She was too busy cradling her daughter’s head and speaking to her in German. No doubt she was trying to reassure her that she wouldn’t really have sacrificed her for the cause. It didn’t look like Dana Maltravers was buying it.

“We’d better get out of here, Matt,” Clem said, looking over his shoulder. “I took out three of the fuckers, got them restrained, but there may be more of them around.”

I nodded. We secured the women’s wrists behind their backs with plastic ties and pushed them toward the door. “Did you call for backup?”

He shook his head. “We need to get this shit in order before I get my people involved.”

I nodded. That was the way I wanted it, but we were taking a chance.

In the hall by the exit, there was a small table covered with keys and cards.

“Which one operates the executive elevator?” I asked.

Irma Rothmann looked away, so I jammed the muzzle of Dana Maltravers’s gun into her belly.

“If you prefer, I can drop your daughter down the stairwell,” I said savagely, remembering what had been done to Joe Greenbaum.

The woman swallowed and then pointed to a yellow card. I inserted it and the elevator doors opened. We got in and moved downward rapidly. As we reached the entrance-hall level, Clem muscled Fraulein Rothmann in front of him. I did the same with Dana Maltravers. When the doors opened, we moved out cautiously. To my relief, there was nobody around.

“The alarm system suffered a catastrophic failure,” Clem said.

“Something to do with that screwdriver you had in your pocket?” I asked.

“Something to do with the rounds I had in my service weapon. Let’s hit the sidewalk.”

We did so, then walked up the street to the car. A passing man in a sharp suit peered at us, but was satisfied by a flash of Clem’s badge. Irma Rothmann started talking in a loud voice, but stopped when the detective squeezed her forearm hard. We made it to the car. I got in the back between the two women.

We headed for Vers and the twins. I could tell that Clem was tempted to floor the gas pedal, but he restrained himself. Gwen and Randy had been calm enough, but what would happen when they were confronted with the woman they called the professor, their Fuhrer’s ice-veined twin sister?

Peter Sebastian’s eyes were fixed on the TV screen in the corner of his office. One of his team had called from home to alert him. There were live pictures of Detective Chief Superintendent Karen Oaten of the London Metropolitan Police climbing out of a Bureau helicopter at Reagan airport, followed by Levon Creamer of Financial Crime. The news channel was making much of the fact that the woman was unharmed from her kidnap ordeal, as well as stressing that the FBI had not yet given any details of how it had ended.

Sebastian knew Creamer, but he’d never worked with him. The bastard should at least have let him know what was going on. Then again, it had never been established that the British policewoman’s disappearance was linked to that of the suspect Matt Wells. Sebastian would have to talk to Creamer, but he had the feeling that now was not the time. The sight of the deputy director meeting Ms. Oaten and escorting her to a waiting car reinforced that suspicion. He would have to wait till morning.

In the meantime, he’d decided to call Dana Maltravers and make his peace with her. She deserved to know about the Document Analysis Unit’s ideas, too. But, to his great surprise, she didn’t answer her cell phone, which rang until the messaging service cut in. It wasn’t the first time that had happened recently.

Peter Sebastian wished he hadn’t behaved so offensively to his assistant.

Forty-One

I tried to get the women to talk on the drive to the safe house, but Maltravers was semiconscious, or was pretending to be, while Irma Rothmann just stared at me vacantly. I gave up and spoke to Clem instead.

“Call Vers,” I said. “Check he’s okay.”

The detective nodded and opened his phone. “Yo, man, you alive?” There was a long silence, which didn’t do much for my nerves, then Clem laughed. “Keep some for us. Be there in ten.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “The dog! He got the twins to cook dinner. Chili.”

“My favorite,” I said, noticing that Fraulein Rothmann suddenly looked curious. “Yours, too?”

She snorted disdainfully.

Then it clicked. “Ah, it’s the twins you’re interested in. They remember you.

“By the way, what are you a professor of?”

Irma Rothmann looked reluctant to answer. “Neuroscience,” she finally said.

“Have you by any chance been working on guinea pigs in the depths of Maine?”

This time she kept quiet. I would be following that angle up later.

When we got to the house, I asked Clem to take Dana Maltravers in first and see if the twins knew her. I waited in the car for his call.

“Nope,” he said, after a couple of minutes. “No obvious signs of recognition.”

“Okay, I’m bringing in the Queen Bee.” I opened the car door and pulled Irma Rothmann out.

“What is this ridiculous game you are playing, Wells?” she demanded, as I led her toward the house.

I wanted to mess with her-maybe the twins would lose their respect if they saw her in a distressed state.

“You have no idea how much shit you’re in,” I said, my lips close to her ear. “If I find out you had anything to do with Joe Greenbaum’s death, I’m going to strangle you with my bare hands.”

Her face went even paler than it normally was, but she held her nerve. “Greenbaum?” she said, twisting her lips. “Is that a Jew name?”

“It’s a German name.” The woman was trying to rile me, too. I smiled. “Rothmann. That sounds quite Jewish, too.”

She looked away. I reckoned I’d won that round, and pressed the bell. Versace opened the door.

“So this is what a Nazi looks like,” he said, in a low voice. “Welcome to hell.”

I frowned at him.

“Sorry, Field Goal,” he said, stepping back. “My best friend at high school was a Jewboy. His grandparents were gassed by pieces of shit like her.”

I pushed the women in after him, wondering in how many states Jewboy was an acceptable term.

Pinker led us into the dining room. The table was laid with plates and cutlery and there were large bowls of chili, rice and salad. The smell was enticing, but the reaction of the twins to Irma Rothmann made me forget the food immediately. In the seconds before they saw her, they were sitting quietly at the far end of the table. The instant they took in the tall woman, their backs straightened and their expressions became ultraserious.

“No introductions necessary,” Clem said.

I was studying Gwen and Randy. They still hadn’t spoken, but I had the impression some sort of silent communication was under way. I turned to Irma Rothmann. Her expression was pinched, her eyes flicking from one twin to the other.

“You can talk to them, if you like,” I said.

For a few moments, she didn’t respond. Then she moved her bound hands upward slowly and said, “We are not in camp now.”

Gwen and Randy relaxed slightly, then looked at Dana Maltravers.

“Who’s she?” Randy asked.

Fraulein Rothmann glanced at me. “She is my daughter.”

The twins stiffened again. It struck me that they gave no sign of fear, for all the talk of the horrors they had experienced at the camp.

“Right,” I said, “it’s time for a question-and-answer session. Where can I take contestant number one?”

“Upstairs,” Versace said. “Use any of the bedrooms, but don’t you dare make a mess.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Clem.

“Better not. Let’s not leave your partner alone.” There was a strange aura about the twins and the professor.

Clem nodded, though it didn’t look like he was tuning into the vibes I was getting. I took Irma Rothmann upstairs and pushed her into the nearest bedroom.

“Can you unfasten my hands, please?” she asked.

“No chance.” I had Dana Maltravers’s gun, but I’d seen the emptiness in her mother’s eyes at Woodbridge Holdings and I wasn’t going to give her the slightest opportunity. I sat her down on the bed.

“I’m not going to talk,” she said, before I opened my mouth.

“So you say.” I took the pistol from my belt and laid it on the bed next to her.

She gave a contemptuous laugh. “You don’t frighten me. You are very far out of your depth, Matt Wells.”

I raised my shoulders. “All right. I’ll go and get Dana.”

She frowned. “What for?”

“Do you think the Gestapo had a monopoly on extreme methods of torture?” I was thinking of Joe again, and of Karen. I told myself again that she hadn’t been the woman I’d seen sacrificed; I willed myself to believe that was the case.

“She’s hurt,” Fraulein Rothmann said, more animated now. “You can’t-”

She broke off when I touched my groin. “Good-looking woman, your daughter,” I said, licking my lips ostentatiously. “I’m looking forward to giving her everything I’ve got.” I was not proud of this strategy.

“You’re disgusting,” Fraulein Rothmann said, spittle flying from her lips. “There are policemen downstairs. You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me. Have you see any warrants? This is hardly an official operation.” I got up and headed for the door.

“Stop!” she said, stretching out her bound hands. “Please! Leave Dana alone!”

“All right,” I said, going back to the bed. “But I won’t hesitate if I think you’re lying.”

She kept her eyes off me as I sat down next to her and picked up the gun.

“Where’s Karen Oaten?” I asked, my heart suddenly thundering. “I hope for your sake she’s still alive.”

“I don’t know.”

“But you do know who I’m talking about.”

“Of course.”

“I suppose you just saw the news reports of her disappearance.”

Her eyes burned into mine. “Don’t be ridiculous. She was in the camp, the same as you. I don’t know where she is now.”

I rocked back at the unexpected admission.

“Why was she there?”

“For the same reason you were. To learn the error of her ways.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I demanded-I wanted her to spell out what she and her brother were doing.

Irma Rothmann sighed. “She was getting too close to an associate of Woodbridge Holdings.”

“Gavin Burdett.”

“If you know, why do you waste time asking?”

I let that go. “Has something been done to Karen’s memory?”

“Oh, I think so,” she said, with a tight smile. “Don’t you?”

I forced myself to move on. “The occult murders. Who’s the killer?”

“What makes you imagine I know?”

It was my turn to sigh. “We know of Woodbridge Holdings’s links to the North American Nazi Revival and the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant. You decided to make examples of occult people you didn’t approve of, didn’t you?”

She gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, come now.”

“Loki was an embarrassment to your puritanical movement. He made Nazism ridiculous.”

She pursed her lips.

“And Monsieur Hexie was black, Professor Singer was a Jew and Crystal Vileda was a Hispanic. Untermenschen, all of them.”

“I cannot argue with that characterization.”

“So who killed them?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, looking away.

She wasn’t sure, but she obviously had suspicions. The murderer had to have some relation to the Rothmann twins and their activities-the pairs of murder weapons, the choice of victims, the way I’d been framed as soon as I left the camp, Woodbridge Holdings’s timber and newspaper businesses-everything was connected.

Then I thought of the diagrams that had been attached to the victims: squares and rectangles in four different arrays-what did they mean? Lights flashed before me and I heard an echo of martial music; something I’d seen when I was under the machine in the camp, something that had started as shots of fences and guard towers, a gate with German words above it, rows and rows of huts…and then was mapped from above, into a composite picture…a familiar map of hell:

“Auschwitz,” I said, my voice faint.

A smile spread across the woman’s thin lips. “Ah, the maps,” she said slowly. “You understand them… Bravo.”

I kept silent, my mind in a frenzy. Why had the killer deliberately left clues pointing to a Nazi link?

“You aren’t in complete control of the killer, are you?” I said at last.

“You’re not as clever as you think, Matt Wells. You have overlooked something much more important.”

The tone of her voice warned me that I was in danger, but I didn’t know how to react.

Before I could do anything, she screamed, “Barbarossa! The policemen! Barbarossa!”

She said the words twice before I got a hand over her mouth. As I restrained her, I felt a strange mix of emotions-shock at the virulence of her screams, but also a pressure that was being brought to bear on me and an urge, frightening in its intensity, to comply with some immutable authority.

Then the rational part of my mind kicked in. Barbarossa: it was the code name for the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union-the greatest act of aggression in human history. I realized that it was a trigger and pushed myself away from Irma Rothmann. As I crashed down the stairs, images cascaded before me-twin weapons puncturing flesh and organs; twin weapons, held by the hands of twin murderers; twins from a farm on Iowa, whose father had died trying to bring them home; twins who had now been ordered to attack.

Gavin Burdett was sitting in front of the TV in a house on the outskirts of Baltimore, his trousers and boxers round his ankles. Despite the pair of muscle-bound guards downstairs and the open door, he had been zapping between porn channels. There was a bevy of women pretending to be lesbians that almost got him going, but then he had found a spoof horror movie that featured a zombie orgy. It was one of the best climaxes he’d had in months.

After he cleaned himself up, he surfed the normal channels. A cold stiletto of fear had entered his gut when he saw Karen Oaten getting out of a helicopter. What was the bitch doing free? Larry had promised him she’d never be seen again.

Burdett got up, stretched for his cell phone and was brought down by the clothes round his ankles. He finally reached the device and called Thomson’s private number.

“What the fuck’s going on?” he screamed. “Oaten’s free.”

“Of course she is.”

“But…but you told me she was finished. What about the case against me?”

“Oh, Gavin, how can you be so selfish?”

“What do you mean? If I go down, so do you.”

Larry Thomson laughed. “That’s not exactly true, you know,” he said smoothly. “There are other eventualities.”

The connection was broken.

Gavin Burdett threw the phone down and caught sight of the men in the doorway. The one in front was carrying a length of rope with a noose at one end.

The last thing the investment banker thought of was the tarot card depicting the hanged man. He knew more than he should have of the occult world, and now he was paying the price. The hanged man meant relinquishing control, different priorities and readjustment. But, as he was only too well aware, it also pointed to a necessary sacrifice.

By the time I got to the dining-room door, the twins had already struck. Clem and Versace were both motionless on the floor; a table knife protruded from Pinker’s bloody chest. Nearer to me, Gwen was sawing frantically at the plastic ties on Dana Maltravers’s wrists and Randy was turning my way with Clem’s pistol. I had already racked the slide on the FBI woman’s weapon and I got a shot off before he did. Randy took it in the upper abdomen and crashed backward into the empty fireplace.

His sister shrieked and turned the knife on me. I brought my free hand down hard on her forearm. The knife carved an arc through the air and landed on the opposite side of the table, out of Maltravers’s reach. The agent stood up and charged at me with her head down. I was driven into the door frame, but I managed to keep a grip on the gun. The blow stunned me and I could hardly move, but something else was holding me back, a force I couldn’t resist…

“Leave him,” I heard Irma Rothmann say from the hall. “He won’t harm us now. I can drive. I cut myself free with these nail scissors-we’ll free you in the car, Dana.”

The FBI woman slammed both her elbows into my belly and then stumbled out. Gwen went with her, eyes wide. Then I threw up on to the carpet and tried to get a grip on myself as the pressure in my mind lessened.

I saw Clem Simmons’s head. It was lying in a pool of blood. I let out a roar and crawled into the hall, my vision clouded. The front door was open and I saw Clem’s car being reversed onto the street. Lying flat and trying to hold my hand steady, I fired at the car until the clip was empty.

The vehicle slewed into a bush and stayed there. Its horn was blasting repeatedly as I dragged myself up and staggered outside. Steam was rising from the bonnet and the front windscreen had shattered. My gun was empty, but I kept going-it had occurred to me that the fuel tank might explode. Then I got to the front door and looked in.

Irma Rothmann was lying back against the headrest, blood coming in gouts from a hole above her right eye. Her daughter Dana was unconscious and I hauled her out, feeling her shallow breath against my arm. She had taken a bullet in the right side of her chest. I got her clear and went back for Gwen. I found the back door on the other side of the car open-no sign of her, no blood on the seat. By the time I looked again, there was no spurting from Irma Rothmann’s entry wound. She was no longer alive, but I didn’t have it in me to care.

As I got back to the house, I heard the sound of sirens between the horn blasts. I checked Clem and found a pulse after rolling him on to his side. Versace was alive, too-just. Randy was still breathing. They would all have a chance, assuming paramedics were on the way. I picked up Versace’s gun and cell phone. There was a number in there that I’d be needing. Staying on-site was not an option.

I headed toward the back of the house. As I went through the sitting-room, I thought I was dreaming. The TV was on and there was breaking news coverage showing pictures of Karen, my Karen, stepping out of an executive jet. She was smiling and looked in good health. I felt a surge of joy, but it was short-lived. I was turning tail, leaving the cops who had been helping me in critical condition-but I couldn’t stay, even though it meant not watching Karen. Perhaps I’d never see her again, but she was well. That was all that mattered.

Meanwhile, I had to finish things with the surviving twin from Auschwitz.