Maps of Hell

Forty-Three

“You can use this office, Detective Chief Superintendent.”

Karen Oaten glanced around the spacious room and nodded to the female agent.

“I’ll be outside if you need anything.”

“Thanks.” Karen put her briefcase down on the desk. Despite the early hour, there were plenty of people already at work in the J. Edgar Hoover building. Someone had stacked mail on the desk.

Sitting down, she went through the letters. Some of it dated from before her kidnap and concerned the Burdett case. She discarded that. There were also messages from back then, including some from senators and representatives with interests in international crime and policing. Turning to the computer, she saw a sheet of paper telling her how to log on and access her personal e-mail. She did so and was immediately alert.

The first message was from the director of the FBI. He congratulated her on her courage during the kidnapping and invited her to a celebration of her release that afternoon at four o’clock. He couldn’t be certain, but there was a good chance that the justice secretary would attend-she had followed Karen’s ordeal with great interest and wished to welcome her back in person, depending, of course, on her schedule.

Karen sat back, a smile on her lips. That was excellent, even more than she had hoped for. She had only to wait until the afternoon. Then she could guarantee that the news programs would have a hot story to report. But, more important, the movement would be fully under way and nothing would ever be the same again.

“She isn’t armed,” Larry Thomson said, his eyes blue and chill in the soft lights of the cruiser’s surprisingly large living space.

I looked at Gwen. She seemed to be having trouble keeping control of herself, her hands twitching and her eyes wide.

“She’s got nails,” I said.

“Indeed she has.” Thomson sat down and waved to me to do the same. “My little tigress.” He gave her a tight smile.

I decided to go on the offensive. I needed to get the self-styled Fuhrer talking.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to call you Rothmann.”

“Oh, please-do use my first name.”

I wasn’t going to do his bidding. “Why the change to Thomson?”

He looked at me curiously. “I thought you had everything worked out, Mr. Wells.”

“Obviously not.”

“You see, Irma and I died in 1972.”

“Really? So I killed a ghost last night, did I? A vampire? Yeah, that makes sense. You Nazis share plenty of characteristics with the undead.”

“There’s no need to be crude,” Thomson said, taking a cigarette from a silver case and lighting it. “I’m telling you about my personal history. Are you interested or not?”

I shrugged. He had me there. I needed as much detail as I could get if I was ever to clear myself-assuming I survived this tete-a-tete.

“We went over a cliff in my sports car.”

“Except you substituted the bodies. Who were they? Some unfortunate college kids?”

He smiled emptily. “Jews.”

A wave of nausea washed over me. I took a deep breath. “What was the point of the scam? Was your family background becoming an embarrassment?”

He frowned. “Let’s say that the American establishment was less keen to have links to the Third Reich in the seventies, even though we were second generation.”

“So you reinvented yourselves.”

“Exactly. It’s the American way. Of course, we kept on doing what we were good at. My sister-” he broke off and eyed me with a worrying lack of emotion “-Irma is…” He broke off and pursed his lips. “Irma was a brilliant chemist, as well as a world-class neuroscientist. She developed many drugs and processes that have become world beaters.”

“Including the ones that messed with my memory?”

“Yes-though, it would seem, not enough.”

“And you provided the business expertise that turned Woodbridge Holdings into a successful multinational company.” I gave him a harsh glare, trying to provoke him. “That camp in Maine was just a test bed for Irma’s drugs. And a place for your little Nazi army to grow like fungus in the forest.”

Rothmann nodded impassively. “Irma didn’t just work with drugs, though. She was also involved with some remarkable machines.”

I had a flash of the complex mechanical lid that had lowered over me-the martial music, the uniforms, images from what I now realized was Nazi Germany.

What was it they had called the process?

“Coffining,” I said. “What a pretty name.”

“Because the subjects died and became ours,” Rothmann said, his eyes narrowing. “In most cases.”

“You brainwashed me.”

“Not just you,” he said dismissively. “There are many who came through with substantially better results.” He angled his head toward the young woman opposite. “Including Gwen.”

I looked at her. She seemed confused, her eyes darting between him and me.

“You bastard,” I said. “You turned her into a killer. You made her and her brother carry out the occult killings, didn’t you?”

He looked at me and shook his head slowly. “That is where you show your ignorance.” His cell phone rang. “Yes, the comrade is expected,” he said, after listening intently. “Very well. Send her over.”

I wondered who this could be. Another from the Rothmann parade of twin zombies? I heard light steps on the pier outside and a knock on the door.

“Come!” ordered the Fuhrer.

The door slid open and a figure wearing a black rain jacket stepped inside. There was a hood over the head and I couldn’t make out the face in the dim light of the cabin.

“Show yourself,” Rothmann said. There was a tightness in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

I felt my stomach somersault before the features came into view. Could it be that my ex-lover Sara Robbins, the Soul Collector, was behind the killings after all? Could she have inveigled her way into Rothmann’s confidence? I didn’t have the slightest doubt that she could have.

The hood was pulled back and I felt my gut clench. I’d seen the angular features before. I’d been bound to a wheelchair, surrounded by naked, chanting people-and, up at the front, there had been a pair of prancing figures. One had a hyena’s head and the other the stony face of the most depraved gargoyle. The latter was on display now.

“How dare you?” Rothmann said, spittle flying from his mouth. “Take that mask off immediately!”

A hand was raised slowly to the repulsive features-I had a vision of the naked woman, the one I’d feared was Karen, being tied to the upturned cross and then butchered. Then I saw that the person before me was a young woman, red hair pulled back from an attractive face. She dropped the mask to the floor with disgust.

“I know you,” I said, as my memory kicked in. “You were at Joe Greenbaum’s place with Clem Simmons.”

The woman nodded. “That’s right. I’m medical examiner for the MPDC, actually-Marion Gilbert’s the name. And you’re Matt Wells, the so-called occult killer, aren’t you? I’ve seen your photograph.”

Rothmann was looking at her curiously. “It’s good to see you, Doctor. But I’m rather busy at the moment. Could you perhaps wait? There is very comfortable accommodation that way.” He pointed toward the bow of the Isolde. “Please take the mask with you. I will need you to explain what you’re doing with it. The original is dedicated to the unholy ritual. No copies should ever have been made.”

“I made it out of misplaced love.” The doctor laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “I’m not going anywhere, my Fuhrer.” She spoke the title as if it burned her tongue. There was a blur of movement, after which I saw she was holding a vicious-looking skewer in each hand.

Rothmann looked astonished. “You!” he gasped. “You’re the occult killer? But…but you were one of our earliest subjects, you were trusted with-”

“Stand still, girl!” Marion Gilbert said, pointing one of her weapons at Gwen. “Move backward and sit on the sofa.” She glanced at me and Rothmann. “All of you!”

We complied. I tried to move my thigh away from the Fuhrer’s, but he wasn’t giving me any room.

“What is this?” he demanded. “You are to show respect to me at all times!’

Marion Gilbert stepped closer. “I’m afraid those times are gone. If you speak again, I’ll put one of these skewers through your tongue.”

Rothmann opened his mouth, but sensibly he made no sound.

Since I hadn’t yet been threatened, I decided to act as interlocutor. “Help me out here, Doctor,” I said. “You were one of the Rothmanns’ guinea pigs?”

She nodded. “There were twenty of us.” Then she sighed and words that she had been holding back for far too long were finally spoken.

“We were all at the top of the class in high school. One of the boys and I wanted to study medicine. The rest were going to be businessmen, soldiers, scientists-a range of professions. And we all had a similar racial background-we were white and of German, Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian stock.” She pointed at Rothmann. “This…this man and his vile sister set up a fund, and tempted our parents with scholarships and grants for our studies. The only condition was that we had to spend half of each vacation on what they called research projects. We thought that meant we’d be doing research, but it turned out we were the subjects.” She glared at Rothmann. “Guinea pigs is right. We were as expendable as animals. Sixteen of the group were terminated before a year passed.”

“Were terminated?” Gwen said.

Marion Gilbert’s expression softened. “You’re one of us, too, aren’t you? I can tell by your eyes. I can also see that your conditioning is in full effect.” She smiled sharply. “Try anything and the Fuhrer dies in agony.”

Gwen sat back, but her nails were digging into her thighs.

“Were terminated?” I repeated.

The doctor looked at me blankly for a few moments-I got the impression she was struggling to keep focus.

“The people who couldn’t take the conditioning were…killed… If they were twins, which many of us were, the stronger sibling was ordered to execute the weaker.”

Jesus. Then I remembered the woman who had cut the man’s throat in front of cameras in the camp. Had they been twins, too?

Gwen leaned forward. “It’s not like that now,” she said, looking at Rothmann earnestly. “I was with my twin, Randy, till…” She broke off and gave me a fierce stare. “Until this man shot him last night.” She turned back to her Fuhrer. “Before he killed Professor Irma.”

Rothmann’s eyes locked with mine. Although there was little trace of emotion, I could see that he intended to make me pay the full price for what I’d done to his twin sister.

“You killed the bitch, Matt Wells?” Marion Gilbert asked, her face suffusing with joy. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard since…” She stopped speaking and peered at the skewers in her hands. “Since Malcolm made the Yale chess team.” She took a quick step toward the sofa and buried a skewer to its hilt in Rothmann’s thigh, keeping the other pointed at Gwen. “But that still wasn’t enough for you. Malcolm…Malcolm.” Her voice cracked. “Your sister shot him in the heart.”

Rothmann was biting his lip, but he didn’t have the nerve to speak.

“I couldn’t do it myself.” Marion’s eyes were damp. “So she made me watch.”

I gave her a bit of time. I suspected the conditioning had stopped her grieving for her lost twin until now. I felt a strange empathy for the woman, multiple murderer though she was. I had been struggling enough with what had been done to my brain, but she had obviously been through much worse.

“You’ve been trying to nail them, haven’t you?” I said when she got her breathing under control. “The murders and the drawings-”

That surprised her. “You know about the drawings?”

I nodded. “I’ve been in contact with the detectives.”

Marion Gilbert looked confused. “But you’re a suspect.”

“Not for everyone. That was the FBI’s line, but one of this scumbag’s people was messing with the evidence. Dana Maltravers-do you know her?”

The doctor was staring at Rothmann, as if daring him to speak. His face was twisted in pain, his hands clutching the wound, but he kept silent.

“No,” she said. “We don’t know the identities of the others who have been through the camp. We receive individual assignments and orders.”

“And what were yours recently?”

“To keep them informed of the investigations.” She gave a strangled laugh. “The investigations into the murders I myself committed.” The doctor suddenly looked very tired. She leaned against the walnut-paneled bulkhead, the skewer quivering in her hand. “I…couldn’t help myself. Things that happened at the camp started to come back to me…mock executions…sexual abuse. The others turned on us when we refused to commit incest, they beat us terribly…and then I remembered…I remembered Malcolm’s death…”

“And you decided to hit back.”

She nodded. “The Antichurch…they kept taking us to the rituals, the sacrifices…it’s only in the last day or so that I’ve understood how horrible that side of the process was. They made us believe that Lucifer was rising, that he would reward his faithful servants. So I…I couldn’t stop myself choosing people who were apostates, who had chosen the wrong occult path…”

I thought about her victims. “But Loki the singer was a satanist.”

“An unworthy one,” the doctor said, avoiding my gaze. “He wasn’t serious about the faith. It was all a facade. He only cared about drugs and sex.”

“So you killed Monsieur Hexie, Professor Singer and Crystal Vileda because the Antichurch didn’t approve of their fields-voodoo, the kabbalah, tarot?”

Marion Gilbert still wouldn’t look at me. “Yes,” she replied, then shivered. “I know about the tarot myself-the Vileda woman was a fraud.”

“Hardly a reason to kill her,” I said, unwilling to let her off the hook.

The doctor’s eyes were fixed on Rothmann. “The fact that they were members of proscribed racial groups was also relevant.”

I looked round at the Fuhrer. “Proscribed racial groups? You assholes have such a thing about African-Americans, Jews and Hispanics.” I turned to Marion Gilbert. “Let him talk, will you? I want to see how sick he really is.”

She frowned at me and then nodded.

“They are all subhuman,” Rothmann said, his face still wracked with pain. “Fit only for slave labor or execution.”

“Jesus,” I said. It was the people who had set up the North American Nazi Revival and the Antichurch who were subhuman. But how guilty were the kids they’d turned into monsters? Were they responsible for their crimes?

I looked back at Marion Gilbert. “So, even though you were trying to avenge your brother’s murder, you still chose victims your Fuhrer would approve of?”

She gave me an agonized look. “You have to understand…I’ve been fighting myself…my mind’s been in turmoil for weeks now…it’s like there’s a sharp-toothed worm, biting and gnawing…I haven’t been sleeping…I’ve been two people fighting for control of one body…”

“Sounds like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” I said.

She stared at me. “What?”

I repeated the name of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous doppelganger.

“That’s right,” the doctor said, blinking rapidly. “That’s…that’s what I called myself.”

“Jekyll?”

She shook her head. “Hyde. Marlon Hyde. The name just came to me. I must have read the book, but I don’t remember… I rented a room and gloried in the killings there… Oh, God…”

“Pathetic,” Rothmann said. “It seems you are even weaker than your brother.”

She took a step toward him, but I raised a hand.

“The maps,” I said. “Those drawings you left on the bodies. I know what they mean-the camp at Auschwitz.”

“Oh, how clever you are,” Rothmann said sardonically. “I knew as soon as I saw the first one. How could I forget the huts where the subhumans were contained?”

“It didn’t help you identify the killer, though,” I replied, giving him a scornful smile in return. I looked at the doctor. “Why didn’t you just leave evidence pointing directly to the Rothmanns?”

Her eyes dropped. “Because…because I couldn’t. Something inside my head stopped me. The process…coffining…” She looked at Rothmann. “I think I even hoped…hoped that you would realize who was behind the killings and stop me…stop me before I did irreparable damage to the movement.” She let out a brief scream of frustration, then turned to me. “How did you know the drawings were of Auschwitz, Matt Wells?”

“I…I’m not sure,” I replied feebly. My own brain hadn’t exactly been functioning normally in recent days. I had a flash of the machine that had been lowered over me in the camp-and the blaring music, the pounding of army boots, the barking voice…

I turned to Rothmann. “What the fuck did you put in my head?”

“How should I know? You escaped before the process was complete. Besides, what happens in each case depends on the subject’s own mind. Coffining is led by the individual’s unique mental structure.” He gave an icy smile. “Perhaps, deep down, you are attracted to the Reich’s methods.”

I wasn’t going to let him distract me. I looked back at Marion Gilbert. “Did you do the drawings of Auschwitz because you approved of what went on there, or because you realized it was the Nazis’ biggest disgrace?”

She stared at me. “I don’t know…I really don’t. I was only able to do partial drawings, anyway… they just came from deep within me…”

There were pinpoints of red on Rothmann’s cheeks. “Auschwitz was no disgrace. My father did wonderful work there.”

“Research on twins, no doubt,” I said.

“Of course. That was Dr. Mengele’s main interest and my father was his right-hand man. Following their research, my sister found that twins made excellent research subjects. We were able to monitor each sibling’s progress during the conditioning process by reference to the other. The unusual complex understanding between most twins-not necessarily identical ones-was highly beneficial in structuring their minds to our purposes.”

“Do you know if he ever experimented on you and Irma?” I asked, feeling a strong impulse to hurt the fucker. “Who knows? Perhaps all this is your father’s doing, not yours or your twin’s at all. Perhaps Irma and you were coffined yourselves, back in Auschwitz.”

“Don’t speak about my sister,” he said, his body rigid. “She was a genius.”

“Really?” I said, looking at Gwen. She seemed to be apprehensive and confused. I wondered how deep her conditioning really was. “What about the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant? What did two fine Nazi rationalists need with a backwoods cult?”

Marion Gilbert lifted up the mask with the end of the skewer and tossed it onto the Fuhrer’s lap. He gave her a supercilious look.

“We understood early on that Americans needed religion, even a perverted one like that. The history of the country shows that. The founding fathers thought they were creating the perfect state for mankind to develop to its full potential.” Rothmann gave a scathing laugh. “Unfortunately, they failed to take account of mankind’s need for spiritual comfort. If the original state had been atheist, it would have achieved much more. Think of the civil-rights movement and those ridiculous Negro preachers.”

“You’d just have mown them down, I suppose?” I said.

“Certainly not. There is always a need for research material, even from the base races. Besides, this is not a liberal country. How many people are, to use your words, mown down by the police each year? How many blacks and Hispanics are incarcerated, and rightly so? The subhumans need a firm hand.”

I managed not to hit him, somehow. “So you let people wearing gargoyle and hyena masks, the latter with a hard-on, into your pantheon?”

He gave me a cold stare. “Whatever was effective.”

Marion Gilbert pointed the skewer at the mask. “He didn’t just let them into the rituals. He was the man in the hyena mask and his sister wore that one. People like them do not lead normal lives in any way.” She shook her head. “They think the process blanks everything out, but I remember, after the sacrifice of a young woman, I saw them-incest was no taboo for them…”

Rothmann looked completely unperturbed, glancing at Gwen and holding her gaze for a few moments. My suspicions of incest had been correct, but that only opened a new door into the abyss.

“Dana Maltravers,” I said, catching Rothmann’s eye. “Are you her father?”

He shook his head. “The research that Dr. Mengele and my father carried out in the camp, and that my father continued after the war, suggested that genetic defects were a danger. No, Dana is not my daughter. With Irma, I always wore a condom.”

“What happened to her father, then?” I asked.

Rothmann glared at me. “Are you sure you can handle the answer?”

I held his gaze. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

He laughed. “Wrong. Irma did. He was one of the first sacrifices when we reinstituted the Antichurch.”

I took a deep breath and forced myself to move on. “What about the blinding of the victims after death? Was that really necessary?”

He raised his shoulders. “The original Antichurch did that. Besides, our father lost his sight toward the end of his life-heavy smoking had damaged his eyes. My sister and I felt that was the kind of commemoration he would have relished.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said callously. “That didn’t put Irma and you off smoking though, did it?”

Rothmann looked at me evenly. I hadn’t laid a finger on him.

“What about Karen and me?”

He frowned. “Surely you have worked out why we abducted your lover. Her investigation into a certain London investment banker was becoming a problem.”

“Gavin Burdett of Routh, Ltd.”

“I know you saw him recently in Washington.” He smiled. “Let’s just say he is no longer of any significance.”

“What? You killed him, too?”

Rothmann shrugged. “He was expendable, and besides, his personal needs were becoming an embarrassment.”

“But Karen’s free now.”

“Like you, she escaped,” he said, giving me a tight smile. “So there’s nothing to worry about.”

“You better not have harmed her or our child,” I said, raising a fist over his bloodstained thigh. He ignored it and kept looking straight ahead.

“I’ll tell you something I don’t understand,” I continued. “Why did the Star Reporter pay so much attention to the occult murders? You suspected one of your own people was the killer, but your own rag was full of the story every day.”

Rothmann gave me a look that suggested I was mentally deficient. “Woodbridge Holdings owns numerous newspapers. Do you imagine we would censor such a major story from all of them? Murders mean major earnings for papers like the Star. Besides, we knew the investigations were going nowhere.”

“You had your niece on the spot. Shame about Dana’s career.”

“She successfully framed you and bought us time. Besides, we have plenty more like her. But you, you should have kept quiet after we took your partner,” Rothmann went on. “We had no specific interest in you.”

“I love Karen. She’s carrying our son.”

He blinked slowly. “That was what Lister said would be your weakness.”

A cold finger ran up my spine. “Lister?”

“You didn’t think he was just a pawn, did you?

“Gordy Lister is involved in all our plans. He masterminded the kidnappings, both Karen Oaten’s and your own.”

We really had blown it when we let Lister go, but I couldn’t do anything about that now. “What about Joe Greenbaum?”

“He had long been a thorn in the sides of companies such as ours.”

“Lister set the bomb?”

He looked at Gwen again. “No, he did not.”

I let my head drop. The sick fuck. “You used her?”

“Yes, we did. And her brother. They have turned out to be excellent operatives. The Jew Greenbaum’s work has been atomized for good.”

I felt the blood boil in my veins. The bastard was wrong there, but I wasn’t going to tell him about the data stick yet. I wanted to get off the boat alive and it might be a useful bargaining tool.

I looked at Marion Gilbert. “The double weapons for each victim referred to you and your bother?”

“And to the…the Fuhrer and the professor, and power of two. They were an inspiration to me for a long time…but not…not anymore.” She stepped closer and I realized she had reached the end of her tether-her eyes were wild and her hands were shaking. She raised the skewer high.

“No!” Rothmann screamed. “Barbarossa! Barbarossa!”

This time, the instant I heard the name, I felt my knees give way. My mind filled with clashing images and sounds, but beneath them I felt a strong will that I could no longer resist. I knew it was foreign to me, I knew it was evil, but I was completely in thrall to it. The clamor ceased and I opened my eyes, ready to defend the man who had spoken the word.

Gwen had advanced on Marion Gilbert, who was bleeding from her right hand. Marion slashed at the younger woman. That was when I realized Gwen was holding a combat knife very similar to the one I had acquired during my escape from the camp.

“Now, my Fuhrer?” she asked, her eyes bright.

Rothmann saw that I had moved closer to them. “So, Wells… Are you ready to do your duty?”

I was looking down on myself, as if I were a spirit floating free. I had no control over the self that was in my body.

“Yes, my Fuhrer,” I heard myself say.

“It seems the process advanced further into your brain than we thought.”

The disembodied part of me was trying to understand what was going on.

“You see, Marion?” Rothmann was saying. “Things have changed since your time. We are now able to master even the most difficult subjects without prolonged treatment. Sometimes it just takes several repetitions of the trigger to prompt a response.”

The doctor took another swipe at Gwen, but the younger woman easily avoided the weak blow.

“You…you don’t control him,” she gasped. “He got out of the camp, he’s been working with the police…”

Rothmann laughed hoarsely, his face white as he clutched his wounded thigh. “If I tell him to attack you, he will do so.”

Marion Gilbert looked at me and I saw that she was wavering.

I sensed that my eyes had gone as blank as Gwen’s.

“Wells!” the Fuhrer yelled.

I watched as my body immediately tensed.

“Give him the knife!”

Gwen looked at the Fuhrer dubiously.

“Go ahead!” he roared.

I took the blade from her and weighed it in my hand. It felt comfortable there.

“Stop it,” Marion Gilbert said, her voice faint. “I can’t…I can’t take anymore.”

Rothmann gave her a triumphant look. “Gut her, Wells,” he ordered.

Watching in horror, I saw my body take up a combat stance, knees bent and arms in front of the chest. I tried to take control, but I had no access to the part of my being that was wielding the knife. But my victim was too quick for me.

Marion Gilbert was against the bulkhead, holding the remaining skewer vertically. The steel shaft was closer to her body than it had been. “I hope all your plans come to nothing,” she said in a low voice. Then she took a deep breath and pressed the point against her throat. With a desperate wail, she shoved the skewer upward to its hilt. A few seconds later, she crashed lifeless to the floor.

I felt my separate self slip back into my body and the knife drop from my hand. “Did you…did you make her do that?” I stammered feeling more like myself again.

He grunted in pain. “No, I’m afraid I didn’t. Unlike you, she didn’t respond to the default trigger word. She was beyond direction… It would seem she may even have regained contact with her conscience.”

I felt a surge of anger. “Fuck you.”

Rothmann looked up at me, and then smiled. I turned and saw that Gwen had picked up the combat knife. “You know, Wells, I think your reliability is questionable. At the current advanced state of our operation, that is inappropriate.” He ran his tongue across his lips. “Kill him, my dear.”

I’d been waiting for that. “Gwen, do you know that your father is dead?” I looked over my shoulder and saw that the knife had stopped a few inches from my back.

“What?” Her voice was suddenly that of a child.

“I suppose Gordy Lister made sure you didn’t see the papers.”

“No newspapers or TV are allowed without authorization,” she said emptily.

“Don’t listen to him,” Rothmann said, his voice was wavering.

“It happened here, didn’t it?” I said. I was going out on a limb, but the fact that Richard Bonhoff’s body had been dumped in the river was suggestive. “On board the Isolde.”

“No,” Rothmann said, “of course it didn’t.” But the fear on his face gave him away as a liar.

Gwen stepped up to my side. “Why?” she asked, her eyes damp. “He loved us. You should have let us contact him. We could easily have reassured him.” She leaned forward. “Why?”

“Stop!” Rothmann ordered, edging along the sofa. “Put down the knife!”

“Why?” Gwen moaned again. “He loved us…” Then she pushed past me and grabbed her Fuhrer’s collar. “If the river was good enough for Daddy, it’s good enough for you,” she said, then dragged him forward with surprising strength. When he was clear of the furniture, she put the knife to his throat and hauled him to the cabin door. “Don’t get in the way,” she said to me, over her shoulder.

I kept my distance, and then followed them out into the pale morning light.

Gwen forced Rothmann along the side of the boat till they were both standing at the bow.

“Barbarossa!” he screamed, then another word I struggled to make out-it sounded like “Gerty.” After that, he fell to his knees and screamed for help like any normal person.

I looked to my right. The guards at the gate had heard. Their boots thundered across the deck as they approached. I leaned over the side, reached for the package I’d taped under the pier and ripped it away. I tugged the mooring rope at the stern free.

“Cast off,” I yelled to Gwen. “Now!”

“Shoot the bitch!” Rothmann roared, before she clubbed him to the deck with the haft of the knife.

Shots rang out from the pier. I had the Glock unwrapped by the time the men were ten yards away. I fired at their legs and they crashed down. I leaped off the boat and ran toward them, kicking their weapons into the water and then covering them with my weapon.

“Gwen!” I shouted. “Can you start the engine?” I turned and saw that the Isolde had already drifted several yards away from the pier. I heard a movement and smashed my boot into the face of the gorilla who had fancied his chances. “Start the engine, Gwen!”

But she stayed at the bow, the combat knife at Rothmann’s throat. Looking closer, I saw blood on her chest-a lot of blood. At least one of the rounds fired by the guards had hit her.

I thought about trying to jump on board, but the boat was already too far away.

All I could do was cover Gwen’s escape. After all that had been done to her and her twin brother, and their father, it was the least I could do.

There was a curtain of mist on the reach that led toward the Potomac, so the Isolde was soon hard to make out. I wasn’t sure if I imagined it, or if one of the figures at the bow had gone overboard.