The Isis Covenant

XIII

The scent of blood filled Paul Dornberger’s nostrils as he studied the bank details downloaded from the computer of the English Hartmans. He remembered the old man’s desperate dance as he fought the loop of steel that slowly compressed, then carved through, the flesh of his throat. A shame the woman was already dead and not able to appreciate her husband’s demise. But that was the pity of it; someone always had to die first. He frowned at the memory of the blood-spattered walls. Had such violence been strictly necessary? Could it be that he was going mad? He realized it was the second time in a week that he’d asked himself the question and fought an unfamiliar feeling of nausea. Gradually he recovered and forced himself to concentrate on the job at hand.

The documents recorded monthly payments of just over a thousand pounds from a company with an address in St Helier, Jersey. Substantial enough to make a small difference to a retired couple living in London, but not large enough to attract the attention of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Perhaps, the kind of payments a man with a substantial fortune might bestow on distant relatives he had never met? Of course, it could be a pension payment from some employment Dornberger wasn’t aware of, but the Hartmans had been most meticulous in maintaining their financial records and he could find no other reference to it. Jersey was the key. The Channel Islands didn’t just provide a convenient low-tax haven for people with large amounts of liquidity who wanted to keep it that way. They were home to small, discreet law offices, which, for a price, were prepared to provide accommodation addresses for shadow companies formed to disguise their owners’ true purpose. He stood up and went to the window overlooking the park. It was dark now, but he knew someone would be out there watching the building. Just as Kenny or one of his colleagues would be in the observatory on the roof of the complex scanning the surrounding area with night-vision goggles to complement the high-tech, infrared and heat-seeking cameras that automatically scrutinized the surrounding area. For a moment he felt the pressure building in his head. Time was running out like sand slipping through his fingers, yet he had never felt closer to Berndt Hartmann. Twenty years of his life had been spent hunting down the minutest traces left by that name. He had sought him in Germany and Spain, in the United States and South America, but inevitably the trail, never more than a faint, ghostly aura, had gone cold. A hundred times, he had screamed inwardly at his father to give up the quest, but always the old man had driven him on. It was only in the past year, as Max Dornberger’s body and mind began to fail him, that his ravings had finally revealed the reason for his obsession.

He picked up the phone and dialled a familiar number.

‘I have a job for you.’ He read off the address in Jersey. ‘I want to know everything about the company. Who’s behind it, who’s behind them, where the money comes from. Everything. Yes, I know what it could cost. Has cost ever been an issue in the past?’

He replaced the phone and considered what else he could do.

His whole life had been moulded for this. Every lesson in the cellar, every beating, every Latin verb and Greek subjunctive, the languages that sat so comfortably in his head. The sterile, disciplined years at university when so many temptations had taunted and tormented him. Hartmann and the Crown, always Hartmann and the Crown. It must be fourteen years since his father had noticed that some other force was following a similar trail. At first, it had only been the tiniest of hints: an obscure ancient text accessed twice in a single year, a break-in at a museum that was of interest to the Dornbergers. Slowly, it became clear that the target was the Crown of Isis. That was when the hunt began to discover who was taking such an interest and why. The who had eventually become apparent. Even after all these years, the why still had to be answered. Why was a Russian billionaire called Oleg Samsonov spending a small fortune to trace a mythical artefact he couldn’t be certain even existed? To discover the answer, his father had devised the plan for the long, patient operation to infiltrate Paul Dornberger into the Samsonov organization. First the menial job in a company two steps distant from the Russian — an office boy, but an office boy with talent and energy who soon became noticed. When a colleague became swamped with work what was more natural than that Paul, the cheerful workaholic, should offer his help? How about if he took over the Maxwell account? That brought new contacts who noticed that good old Paul was always willing to do more than he was asked. Hey, did you know that good old Paul can speak Russian? And just at the time when we’re doing more and more work for the Russians. He’s young, he’s enthusiastic and he’s talented. We’ve got to have this chap. Patience and more patience. Eventually a brush with the outer rings of planet Samsonov. The meeting. The timely intervention. A few hundred thousand saved, his fluent Russian displayed. It was pin money, but it was the kind of thing Samsonov’s people noticed. He’d felt their light fingers fumbling about in his life. The odd looks from neighbours of the flat he’d rented. What was it? Your Mr Dornberger’s up for an award, Mrs B, can’t say what it is, but before Her Maj can hand these things out we have to know if there are any little peculiarities in his life. Of course, we’ll have to ask you to sign this. Not seen the Official Secrets Act before, have we? And at work, those little signs that Paul Dornberger was on the way up. The nod from the director who’d never acknowledged him before. The unlikely smile from the MD’s witch of a secretary. Once inside the Samsonov empire’s headquarters, it had been remarkably easy. Oleg Samsonov was a man who took an interest in his staff and he had soon noticed the pleasant young man with the inquiring mind and a talent for discretion, a combination that, in his experience, was unusual. All it had taken then was more patience.

As Samsonov’s personal assistant he had an overview of his employer’s activities given to few other men. The keystone was the billionaire’s investment company, which gave him control of many dozens of businesses across Europe and Russia. But business was only part of it. Like many of his kind, Samsonov knew little of art, but didn’t let that stand in the way of acquiring a substantial collection of the world’s great works and many others that either took his fancy or were expensive enough to warrant his respect. His acquisitions were made through a network of dealers, mostly respectable, but some not. His taste, if it could be called taste, was towards simplicity and beauty. He distrusted most modern art, because it had yet to find its true value, but, though he disliked Picasso, he also recognized his investment potential and owned several of his works. Many of them were on show in the apartments, but Paul suspected that the most valuable, and quite possibly a number of rarities whose origins didn’t stand up to legal scrutiny, hung in the panic room, where Oleg could admire them without being disturbed by lesser mortals.

It had been almost two years before Paul felt secure enough to begin the hunt for evidence that Samsonov retained his interest in the mythical Crown of Isis. The hints had been there. Instructions to dealers to carry out discreet enquiries into private collections of Egyptian artefacts. A payment to a Swiss bank account which, to Paul’s certain knowledge, belonged to a Berlin-based specialist in the art of breaching museum security. Researchers employed to carry out searches through the archives of particular museums, many of which Paul recognized from his own efforts. The question was: had they reaped any reward for their labours? The answer to that lay in Oleg Samsonov’s personal files and hidden behind an encrypted security wall that Paul Dornberger hadn’t dared attempt to breach. Fortunately, there was another way. Calculating that the researchers and dealers were unlikely to have been told of the significance of their target, he simply used his authority to contact each of them in turn to ask for an update on their position. The message? No progress. He couldn’t be a hundred per cent certain that the Berlin break-in artist had been unsuccessful, but the fact that the agreed, up-front payment had not been followed by a bonus, led him to believe that was the case.

He had asked his father why they put so much effort into shadowing Samsonov when they already had the Crown. The question had earned him a dangerous stare that had reminded him of the hours in the cellar.

‘Fool! In seeking the Crown, the Russian seeks the Eye, because without the Eye the Crown is nothing but a golden trinket. No man, not even a man as rich as Samsonov, would expend hundreds of thousands of pounds to possess such a thing. Somehow, he has learned of the true nature of the Crown of Isis’s power. As he gets closer to the Crown he will inevitably come across Hartmann’s trail. With his resources he will track down the thief much more quickly than we would ever be able to and where he leads you will follow.’

He had nodded and moved to go, but his father was not finished. ‘Paul.’ The voice was tired and looking back to that day he could recognize the first weariness of the old man’s decline. ‘There is another reason. When Samsonov finds Hartmann’s trail, it is inevitable he will also find my own. If that happens there may come a time when you have to deal with our Russian friend. Do you understand?’