Revelation

28 The Archivist

'There are no lists, there is no central registry. But depending on the time and money available to you, there are several places you could start looking,' said the archivist.

'Money isn't a problem,' Findhorn said, 'time is.'

'Some people have been trying to trace survivors for sixty years.'

'We have about sixty hours. Maximum.'

The archivist's mouth showed disapproval. 'If this were a subject for jokes, I would say that is a very bad one.'

'We have to try,' Findhorn said.

'What can possibly make the quest so urgent?'

'You don't want to know.'

The archivist looked at Findhorn curiously. Then, 'Which camp was she sent to?'

'I don't know.'

She sighed. 'If you could tie down the date on which she was transported, you might find some information in Nazi archives, say the ones held by the USA in the Berlin Documentation Centre, or by the French archive in the Wehrmachtauskunftstelle, which is also held in Berlin. The Nazis liked to document everything. In fact they were quite meticulous.'

'Is there really no central point for information?'

She smiled tolerantly, to smooth the sharpness in her voice. 'What did you expect, a survivors' coffee club? If you had a few months to spare, I might have suggested that you go to Europe. You could have tried the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatiae in Amsterdam or the Centre Documentation Juive Contemporaire in Paris. There is the Weiner Library only a couple of Underground stops away from here. In the States there is the Center for Holocaust Studies in Brooklyn as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Los Angeles, and there are centres in Washington and Chicago. Or of course you could have tried to gain access to the archives of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.'

Findhorn's experience of information retrieval was search engines on the Internet, specialist librarians with a same-day response time, huge centralized databases with point-and-click access. The impossibility of the task was beginning to sink in.

The archivist was still talking. 'You will find two things in common about all these places. One, the staff are understanding and sympathetic. Two, names are jealously guarded. The pain is private to those who survived, not something for public intrusion. And as I said, there are no formal lists of survivors, only people who chose to share their memories with these places.'

'The flying time alone —' Romella started to say.

'— is the least of your worries. The procedures for gaining access to documentation are often cumbersome and time-consuming. A letter of introduction is always helpful.' The archivist leaned back in her chair and looked at them over steepled hands. 'What information exactly do you have about this Lisa Rosen?'

Romella said, 'She was a student at Leipzig University in 1933, when she was aged about twenty. She was arrested and disappeared in 1939.'

The archivist's eyebrows were raised expectantly. She fingered her gold necklace, waiting. Then she said, 'And?'

'That's it.'

She shook her head, almost amused. 'Let's try anyway.'

They were in a room stacked with filing cabinets, tapes, discs, books, papers and a computer with printer and scanner attached. She led them to a cabinet, pulled open a drawer marked R-S and began on a card catalogue.

It produced ten Lisa Rosens.

'Understand these are ten who survived, emigrated and chose to tell their stories to us. The great majority of Lisa Rosens simply did not survive. This alone tilts the odds heavily against you. Of those who did get through, most emigrated to Israel or the States, not here. And most of those who came here have kept their stories to themselves or their families, or at most shared them with small survivor groups.' She paused, looking at them with a degree of sympathy. 'Even in the unlikely event that she survived, in all probability she will never be found. And you will certainly not trace her in three days.'

'We have to,' said Findhorn.

Romella looked through the cards. 'None of them fit. Munich, Berlin, Dryans, wherever that is. Oh, here's a Leipzig, a girl who survived Theresienstadt.'

'Twelve years old at liberation,' the Archivist pointed out.

'What about Willy Rosen, her brother?'

There were nine Wilhelm Rosens. None of them fitted.

'Okay,' Findhorn said with a tone of finality. 'Thanks for your trouble.'

She took them through a room with three busy secretaries and walls covered with blown-up photographs of pyramids of hair, of human-packed cattle trucks, of skeletal creatures in striped tunics. At the exit she said, 'You could try Leipzig itself, perhaps tracing contacts through the University admissions records. 'I've known people make surprising progress with telephone directories.'

They stepped out of the door, stunned, and found themselves in a cold London morning, sixty years in the future. They made their way to a tube entrance. Businessmen were queuing to buy newspapers. Two old men at a bus stop were having a spirited argument over some football match. The street had a trattoria, a cafe, a video shop, an amusement arcade, closed at this early hour. There was an air of unreality, even triviality, about it all. Reality lurked behind the camera-protected door they had just left, in the mementos and the papers and the whispered tales on the tapes. In spite of the sunshine, the air was sharp and cold.

Romella found a telephone booth and insisted that Findhorn stay out of earshot. She spoke earnestly for a couple of minutes while Findhorn flapped his arms for warmth. Then she put down the receiver and they started to walk briskly towards Piccadilly. 'Okay. Doug wants you to phone him. He thinks he's onto something with the green Merc. I've started Stefi on the Leipzig problem. To save time I'm going straight there.'

'You go to Leipzig. I'm heading for Japan.'

They were on a pedestrian crossing. She stopped, looking at Findhorn in astonishment. 'You're mad.'

'Matsumo and I may make an alliance. He wants this thing killed.'

'You want to bet your life on that?'

A blue Mazda hooted impatiently. They moved off the road. Findhorn said, 'If you'd sunk twenty billion dollars looking for oil in the Arctic, would you want your investment undercut with a free energy machine?'

'Killing Petrosian's secret isn't in the deal,' she said angrily.

'The deal is irrelevant. I'm beginning to think that whatever Petrosian discovered could set the planet alight.'

Romella's face was grim. 'You don't know that for sure either. What right do you have to take a decision that could affect the whole planet?'

'What right do I have to pass it on? Petrosian didn't. This is contingency planning in case we have to move fast. First we need to find the secret.'

'I'd mention the fortune it could make you except that you'd start flaunting your damned principles.'

A sudden shower of freezing rain was sending Leicester Square pedestrians scurrying in all directions. They carried on, oblivious. Findhorn said, 'It's Mission Impossible, Romella, but somehow you'll have to find Petrosian within forty-eight hours if he's still alive. By that time I should be back from Kyoto and we can take it from there.'

Romella's next comment was like a blow to Findhorn's stomach. 'If you're going to kill the secret, you'll have to kill whoever is holding it.'

'I know.'

'You can't do it, right?'

Findhorn stayed silent. 'But it's okay to hand the job over to someone else.'

The silence was painful, but Romella pursued the point ruthlessly. 'You need somebody killed, Fred? The Whisky Club people can do that. You don't need to deliver yourself to Matsumo's gangsters.' Romella waved at a taxi. 'You'll end up in the Sea of Japan.'

The taxi had completed a U-turn in the busy street and was pulling up on a double yellow line. Fred said, 'He needs me as an ally.'

She shook her head. 'And once you're of no more use to him?'

'Don't think I haven't sweated over that. But what else can I do? Look, take me to that cybercafe in Staines. It's practically on the way.'

Findhorn, attuned to subtle intonations in his brother's voice, knew immediately that Doug had something to say. 'Fred? Have I got news for you! How many green Mercs were sold in Switzerland over the past eighteen months?'

'Two? Five thousand?'

'A hundred and sixty. And how many of these were 600 SL's?'

'Ten.'

'Eighteen. The cars were sold to a couple of lawyers, a rich widow, one over-the-hill actor, two restaurateurs etcetera. And one was a company car registered to a Konrad Albrecht, General Manager of a firm called Rexon Optica in Davos.'

'Davos? Isn't that —'

'It is, not far from the Temple of Celestial Truth. Rexon Optica specializes in making holographic guidance systems for a variety of NATO SAMs as well as for the Mark Three Eurofighter.'

Findhorn's silence was so long that Dougie had to ask, 'Are you there, Fred?' Then Findhorn said, 'This is desperately thin.'

'There's more. I've been using a PI firm —'

'Dougie, I'm catching a plane.'

'Okay, bottom line. Konrad Albrecht also has a ranch in Dakota where, surprise, surprise, the cult just happens to have its other main temple. He has a flat in Monaco and a holiday home in the Southern Uplands, which, surprise cubed, is where he's been staying over Christmas, complete with the company car.'

'Are you tying him in with the Temple?'

'He could even be their leader, Tati. Nobody outside the cult has seen him.'

'Doug, I have to fly. I need one more thing from you.'

'What's that?'

'A burglar. I'll call you tomorrow.'

Dougie was starting to splutter but Findhorn put the receiver down.

Findhorn's e-mail was brief and went to the Head Office, Matsumo Holdings, Chairman, for the attention of:

'I will be in London, Heathrow, in thirty minutes, and will then take the next available flight to Kyoto. I do not know which flight that is. Can I be met? Findhorn.'

They hardly exchanged a word during the taxi ride. Black and white images from the past kept flickering in and out of Findhorn's mind like old newsreels, interspersed with fantasies involving Japanese gangsters and the Sea of Japan.

Terminal Two was packed with Christmas travellers. Check-out queues straggled across the floor like big snakes. They scanned the flight departures. As if by some psychic force, the screen threw up an early afternoon flight for Osaka, courtesy of KLM. Findhorn said, 'Osaka's not too far from Kyoto. If there's a seat, that's my bus.'

Romella was looking worried. 'I just hope we meet again, Fred.'

Findhorn grinned nervously. 'That sounds like a line from a wartime romance.'

'Where will we rendezvous, in the event you survive your meeting with Matsumo?'

'Leave a message on my e-mail. But remember it will probably be read by others.'

'Be very careful, Fred.' Without warning she put her arms round his neck and kissed him voluptuously on the lips, pushing her pelvis hard up against his. Then she pushed him away and she was gone, melting into the crowds, and Findhorn stood flushed and disturbed, with his heart pounding in his chest.

At the KLM desk, a cheerful blonde Dutch woman said, 'Ah, Mr Findhorn, you were expected and there is a message for you,' and she handed over a ticket along with a typed message attached by a paper clip: 'A room has been reserved for you in the Siran Keikan, Kyoto.'

Siberia — black, vast and surreal, was overhung with mysterious curtains of red and green which had been shimmering for hour after hour in the sky above. The 747 had trundled along like a hedgehog crossing a car park, skirting the Arctic Circle on its route to Japan. Findhorn sipped his gin and tonic and looked in vain for lights thirty thousand feet below. He wondered what it was like on the ground; toyed playfully with fantasy images of a forced landing in the frozen tundra, starving passengers eyeing each other hungrily, timber wolves beyond the circle of light around dying embers; and he thought he would probably, in that situation, stand a better chance than he did now. He finished his drink, gave his legs a business-class stretch and yawned, while the big aircraft flew him at ten miles a minute towards Yoshi Matsumo and the Dark Ocean Society.

Stefi had performed a minor miracle…

There was a light drizzle as the aircraft touched down at Munich airport. Romella took a bus into the city centre. She watched schoolchildren horsing around, a young couple in brightly coloured clothes on bicycles, women with shopping bags pausing to chat. Between the sheer happy normality of it, and the lunatic world in which she had been immersed a few hours previously, she could make no connection whatsoever.

… she had picked up on an Armenian survivor called Victor…

Taking her cue from the twin-domed Frauenkirche, she walked north through the Ludwigstrasse before turning right onto the Maximilianstrasse. Light blazed from decorated department stores and the streets were busy with last-minute Christmas shoppers.

… who bad known not only Petrosian and Lisa…

She had expected high-rise flats British style, awash with graffiti and urine and, following the directions, was surprised to find herself inside a small shopping mall. She entered a lift with a young couple and a pink baby asleep in a pram, and emerged on a corridor with deep pile carpet on the floor and expensive fabric on the walls.

… but also another mutual friend from their Leipzig days…

Number five was directly opposite. There was a small peephole and a nameplate. It said Karl Sachs, and she hoped that her acting ability would be as good as her German.

… whose name was Karl Sachs, a retired Jewish doctor who now lived in Munich with his wife.

The man who opened the door was wrinkled, white haired, with a light blue cardigan and pince-nez spectacles. He gave a cautiously welcoming smile and said, 'Miss Dvorjak?'

Kansai Airport was like any other big airport except that it was also a big, rectangular island in the sea, connected to Osaka city by a long, narrow umbilical cord. There was no reception committee. With some difficulty, Findhorn found a train to Kyoto. It arrived when the timetable said it would. It was spotlessly clean, smooth and silent. The 'guards' were shapely young females who turned to smile and bow as they left each carriage. Findhorn thought about the UK railway system and returned their smiles.

The map showed the line passing through Osaka and Kyoto, but from the window there was no way to tell where one city ended and the other began: he was travelling through a megalopolis, a city made of cities. At Kyoto railway station he decided against heroism and hired a cab. He said, 'Siran Keikan,' and settled back.

In the hotel itself more shapely females bowed and shuffled and treated his cheap overnight bag like the Ark of the Covenant. He had a shower in a tiny bathroom, slipped into the hotel dressing gown and flaked out.

The representatives of the Friendship Society came for him at eight o'clock the next morning. There were two of them. They were polite, if economical with the friendship. They were young men in dark suits who either did not, or chose not to, speak English. Findhorn sat alone in the back of a big air-conditioned BMW which swept him quietly along the Shijo-Dori, past tall office blocks and expensive-looking department stores with names like Takashimaya and Fuji Daimaru, past swastika-covered shinto shrines and cyclists on pavements. Then they were out of town and onto a winding road, with trees on the right and a big expanse of water on the left.

The Friendship man turned and waved his hands at the lake. 'Biwa,' he barked.

Findhorn said okay and declined the offer of a Lucky. They passed a long, spectacular suspension bridge which looked familiar, and he remembered it as the one he had seen on the cover of Matsumo's Annual Report. Then they were into hilly, tree-covered territory, and the car was passing a middle-sized town, with wooden single-storeyed houses crowded together in narrow, cable-strung streets, and then there were flooded fields and tea bushes.

Some miles beyond the town, the car slowed and turned off up a hilly road. The driver turned into what looked like a cement works. Findhorn glimpsed the flickering blue of TV monitors through the slatted blinds of the big windows. Then the car was through the works and winding up a narrow, tarmacked path with a lawn on either side, interspersed with small manicured trees and wrestlers, holy men and geisha girls, laquered and life-sized.

The house was a simple one-storied affair. It comprised half a dozen or so simple buildings, all glass and unvarnished wood and verandas and pagoda-like roofs, linked by sheltered walkways and hump-backed bridges over still water, and surrounded by paths through lawns interspersed with miniature trees and stone lanterns. Through some tall trees Findhorn glimpsed what seemed to be a small golf course. A gardener with a long fishing net was scooping up leaves from a pond. He paid Findhorn no attention.

The car stopped and Mr Friendship opened Findhorn's door with a scowl. A middle-aged woman, in a traditional kimono and heavy-framed spectacles, was standing at the top of a flight of wooden steps. As Findhorn approached she smiled, bowed, said, 'O-agari kudasai' and, to Findhorn's embarrassment, dropped to her knees, untied his shoe laces and slipped his feet into brown slippers.

There was a large, scented atrium, almost bare of furniture apart from a couple of low chairs, some vases with flowers, and a pedestal a few feet ahead of him. The pedestal had Kanji script written down it, and it was topped with a bust of a severe-looking, bald-headed character. And in case anyone had missed the point first time round, Matsumo stared down severely in oil from the wall on the left. Findhorn was suddenly struck by the resemblance to Ming the Merciless in an old Flash Gordon movie he'd seen as a boy. In the circumstances, the comparison brought him no comfort.

The woman led the way past the pedestal to a sliding paper door, and bowed as Findhorn entered. He had hardly noticed the Friendship Society men until they closed the door behind him.

The room was furnished with little more than a low table, on which a few magazines were neatly piled. There were no chairs, but thin, square cushions and tatami mats were scattered around the floor in a geometric pattern. Delicate scents came from flowers in vases occupying the corners of the room. The walls were paper screens. One wall was taken up, floor to ceiling, by a bookcase, the opposite one by a number of unusual paintings.

Findhorn, tense and sensing danger, looked at the nearest one. It was a rectangle about four feet long, filled with what looked like half a dozen big whorls. They were light blue. Some were overlying others, partly obliterating them, while others seemed to merge, the lines at their edges running parallel. Here and there little thin fingers of lines tried to squeeze through their big brothers. As he looked, Findhorn began to make sense of the patterns, to detect a strange mixture of harmony and clashing, order and chaos. It was both peaceful and, as he looked, increasingly hypnotic.

'You are looking at the rolling waves of the sea.'

Findhorn turned, startled.

The gardener, alias Yoshi Matsumo.

Findhorn said, 'I thought I was seeing fingerprints.'

Matsumo's expression didn't change. He spoke in good Oriental English. 'How can I put this delicately? To understand the painting one needs, shall we say, a certain sensitivity, I suppose you could call it an awareness of artistic form. The painting is in the traditional style known as Nihon-ga. It is by Matazo Kayama, from Kyoto. He is a master of the style.'

Matsumo hadn't bowed, offered to shake hands, smiled or said O-agari kudasai. His words were polite; but his expression was that of a man who has just disturbed a burglar.

Matsumo continued, 'You have come a very long way, Findhorn-san. I believe you would benefit from a very long rest.'

Findhorn thought that maybe Matsumo's English wasn't perfect and that he didn't mean it the way it sounded.