The Isis Covenant

XXXIX

Paul Dornberger stared out of the hospital window and pondered his next move. The Zurich raid might have been a disaster, but the face he had seen behind the machine gun at the Cessna’s window created a last opportunity to make up the lost ground.

He had underestimated Jamie Saintclair. Like a will-o’-the-wisp, the art dealer somehow flitted in and out of the action with irritating ease and damaging consequences. How had he tracked down Berndt Hartmann so quickly? Dornberger shook his head. That didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that with Hartmann gone and the diamond still missing, only Saintclair could provide him with his next step on the road to reuniting the Eye with the Crown.

News of the air crash had filtered through while he was still in Zurich. A burned-out Cessna float plane. No known survivors. At first he was certain he had lost everything. Only slowly did it emerge that the crashed plane contained a single body. Discreet enquiries revealed the victim as one Berndt Hartmann, retired security consultant. That meant Saintclair had somehow escaped. The question was, where would he turn up next? It had been five days and there was no sign of him either at the Bond Street office or the Kensington flat, both of which were being watched by Dornberger’s men.

He looked down at the old man on the bed. Max Dornberger’s skin was the colour and texture of old parchment and the flickering eyes sunk deep in circles of bruising. The shrunken figure breathed in short, gasping bursts like an engine about to cut out. Even the best doctors Oleg Samsonov’s money could buy had given up on him. Three days. Could he hang on until then? Dornberger’s eyes automatically moved to the safe. Was it possible? If a suitable candidate could be found and the ceremony properly reenacted, would it buy him time? No. It was a measure of his desperation that he should even think of it. His father had been emphatic. Without the Eye, the Crown was nothing but a golden trinket. The ritual would only be effective if it was carried out under the right conditions on the first day of the sickle moon. Only then would Max Dornberger be restored. Did he truly believe that? He had to believe it, because if he did not, his whole life had been for nothing. All that pain and death. He had suffered every agony and every humiliation for this. The old man groaned and Dornberger’s entire being seemed to collapse in on itself as he was consumed by a terrible emptiness. Once life fled the frail, decaying vessel on the bed, what was left for him? Three days. He must find Saintclair. Every instinct told him that the art dealer was close to the solution. And once he had Saintclair in his power that solution would be his.

Back in the office at the Samsonov complex all he could do was harness his frustration and go through the motions of carrying out his day-to-day work. The billionaire had left to meet a group of Japanese industrialists and Paul, who only had a smattering of the language, had been replaced for the day by an interpreter. He had done everything he could. If Saintclair used one of his credit cards or made a call on his mobile phone he would be alerted. If he appeared either at the house or at the office Paul Dornberger would know within minutes. He even had people checking out London’s countless hotels on the off chance that the art dealer had booked a room under his own name. All he could do now was wait. But waiting didn’t come easy.

He walked along the corridor to the security room. Gerard was sitting back in his chair, almost horizontal, his eyes half closed but never leaving the monitors in front of him. Kenny sat beside him and they chatted quietly, probably about the hitting power and other merits of automatic weapons, which seemed to be their sole topic of conversation. They looked completely relaxed, but Dornberger knew that was an illusion. A shadow warrior knew instinctively when to conserve his energy. It came just as naturally as the instinct that would turn these men into whirlwinds of death at the first sign of a threat to their client. The Australian looked up and grinned. ‘Hey, Paul. The old man given you a half day?’

Paul smiled back, donning the mask that had protected him all his life. ‘Even my world has to take a rest some time. Everything set for the German trip?’

It was only conversation, but Paul saw the instant change as Kenny’s mind turned to business. ‘Sure, Paul. Scout car, decoy, client’s car and chase car on the way to the airport. Straight through to the plane. Four men waiting on the tarmac at the other side and the same system on the way to the meet. Wha’dyathink? No problems?’

‘No problems. They tell me the nightlife’s great in Berlin.’

They both laughed. The chances of any of them getting beyond fifty yards of Oleg Samsonov’s side during the visit were non-existent, almost as non-existent as the chances of Oleg going to a nightclub.

‘Can I get you guys a coffee?’ Kenny shook his head and Gerard didn’t even acknowledge the suggestion. ‘I’ll ask the others.’ As he walked past Gerard’s monitor, he could see an armed figure standing by the outer gate. It wasn’t Vince, who lay on his bunk in the security quarters reading some kind of Japanese manga comic, while the two other men played cards at a small table. All three looked up with the bored watchfulness that was endemic to their kind when they were out of the firing line.

‘Coffee?’ he asked.

‘Thanks for the offer, but no.’ Vince smiled. The others shook their heads silently and concentrated on their cards. Paul went through to the small kitchen and prepared himself a cup of the instant he preferred. On the left of the door was a board with rows of hooks that held the keys for Samsonov’s fleet of cars, but Dornberger’s mind went over what he had just witnessed. The angles and the distances.

He stayed with the guards for a few minutes, drinking his coffee and engaging Vince in desultory conversation about the fortunes of the Forty Niners, which he knew the Californian took an interest in. It was something he did most days and they were as relaxed in his presence as tight-wound men like these ever would be.

When he returned to his desk, he picked up an invoice he’d been keeping for over a week. He had little to do with the day — to-day running of the household. Irina, who in her heart of hearts was a traditional borscht-stirring, gossiping Russian housewife, insisted that it was her way of staying in contact with reality in her gold-plated world. The timing was important. He was careful never to be alone with her and he knew she would be just completing her daily two-hour session with the secretary who helped with the various charities she involved herself in. The household staff worked strictly defined hours and kept to their quarters in the grounds when they weren’t on duty to ensure privacy for the Samsonov family. He trotted upstairs to the huge open-plan living area.

Irina was sitting at a desk beside a tall bearded man studying a document. The man explained something and tried desperately to avoid any semblance of physical contact. It was always this way with occasional visitors. Oleg Samsonov’s power didn’t just make outsiders wary, it induced fear, and Dornberger’s knowledge of the darker elements of the Russian’s business interests convinced him that fear was well justified. Eventually the bearded man stood up, and Irina Samsonov rose with a formal smile. ‘Thank you, Mr Rudge. Next week at the same time?’

Rudge bowed as if she was a duchess and backed away. Paul Dornberger gave a quiet cough. Irina looked round and smiled when she recognized him. Belatedly she realized she was wearing her spectacles and removed them with a single smooth movement and without a change of expression. In many ways she was as vain as her husband and just as formidable.

‘Paul, this is a surprise; what can I do for you?’

He handed her the invoice. ‘The bill for the party we gave for the African delegation?’

‘Yes, it’s dated last week, but it must have got stuck in the post. I need your signature to pay this one because of the amount, which you’ll see is above the authorized figure.’

She pursed her lips, gave a rueful smile and signed the back of the paper. ‘They do like their gifts. Crystal eggs in the style of Fabergé and every one with a Cartier watch and a set of Ferrari keys. Sometimes, when I’m hosting, I feel like Marie Antoinette.’

He thanked her and turned to leave, but she called him back.

‘I promised I would show you Oleg’s latest acquisition.’ She waved him across towards the panic room. ‘Now, we must follow security instructions.’ She smiled to show there was no offence intended. ‘So I must ask you to turn away while I open the gallery.’

The gallery? It was an odd reference and one that showed the conflicting attitudes of Oleg Samsonov and his wife to the house they shared. For Oleg it was a fortress; an ultra-secure headquarters from which he could rule his vast worldwide empire with the added attraction that it was in the centre of a cosmopolitan, cultured city. A city where the inhabitants tended not to work out their differences with rocket launchers or car bombs, and where a man with money and influence was guaranteed access at the highest levels. Irina, on the other hand, had never shared her husband’s insecurity as he gathered his wealth and attempted to consolidate it with hungry jackals barking at him from every side. She understood and sympathized with the dreams that sometimes made him call out in the night, but she could never think of her home as a bomb-proof citadel. She knew that their wealth made them targets, and welcomed the protection it afforded, particularly to little Dimi, but there were no images in her subconscious of machine-gun-carrying hordes of Kazakhs or Chechens swarming across the security wall to avenge a hundred intended and unintended slights. So the barriers were an irritant and the guards a necessary, but unwanted, intrusion into her life, and the panic room became the gallery. And within the house she could trust who she chose. Even Oleg had agreed that Paul was safe.

‘You can turn now.’ She said it with a complacent smile that sought, no, demanded, his appreciation. And he gave it.

‘Incredible.’ He stepped forward, but she touched his arm and shook her head.

‘It’s protected so that an alarm sounds and the whole building goes into lockdown if someone other than a family member enters. You must only look.’

‘Of course.’ He smiled. For a moment he forgot everything as he basked in the golden aura of true genius, an aura that had at its centre a triple sunburst of yellow flowers. The application was almost crude, the brushstrokes confident in their own certainty. A rough vase in glazed green, against a jade background and set upon a mottled wooden surface. Yet the eye barely registered the surroundings, it was the sunflowers that drew it like the flash of an oriole’s wing. From deep within their hiding place they seemed to fill the entire room with their glow.

‘This is the only one of the series not in a museum,’ Irina explained. ‘Oleg intends to display it on special occasions, but for the moment it is his personal prize.’

‘Then I am doubly honoured.’ He found he could barely breathe. ‘He must have wanted it very much.’

‘Yes, and my Oleg is not deterred by refusal.’ She laughed lightly and he knew she was remembering when Samsonov had pursued her around the globe showering her with gifts until she had agreed to abandon her American football star boyfriend. ‘Even for him this was an expensive purchase.’

He stepped back to allow her to close the door. The painting stood on an easel in the centre of the room, but his eye was caught by an unusual shape against the far wall close to the door that must lead to the stairs connecting the three floors of the safe haven. She saw his look, and shook her head at her husband’s mania for security. Who would put a safe inside a safe room? ‘Even I must not look there.’ She smiled. ‘A family heirloom. Perhaps it is the crown of the Tsars?’

He laughed obediently, but he’d seen everything he needed to see.

Suddenly her face lit the room in the same way the sunflowers had earlier.

‘Mummy.’ A dark flash flew past Dornberger as Dmitri launched himself into his mother’s arms.

‘Dimi.’ His mother picked him up and whirled him around. ‘Foof!’ she said. ‘You are getting too big for this. Time you had a little brother or sister, huh?’

‘Me. Me. Me,’ Dmitri laughed. ‘Me. Me. Me.’

Paul Dornberger kept the mask in place as he stepped back to watch the perfectly natural interaction between mother and son. Inside, he felt as if he was being sucked into a whirlpool. Something she had said … What was it that had scored the inside of his brain like a red-hot blade? His mind spun as he tried to find something of his own childhood. A mother. A moment of pleasure. He could remember neither. The cold shock of the truth froze the smile on his face. He had been robbed of all this. And what else? It was there, buried deep; a moment of warmth that he had to find if he was to maintain his sanity. He made a grab for it, but it was like a freshly caught fish slipping through his hands. A fleeting moment of contact and then gone. Panic gripped him and he saw concern on Irina Samsonov’s face.

‘Paul, are you unwell?’

Somehow he pulled himself together and shook his head, but his shirt was soaked with sweat and his whole body felt as if it was a bundle of flickering nerve ends.

‘You are very pale. You look like death, poor man. Come, have a seat here.’ She abandoned Dmitri and drew him across to a kudu leather couch. ‘Stay with Paul, Dimi. Look after him.’

Dornberger went rigid as the boy sat at his side and put his slim arms around him, so he could feel their warmth. The panic grew. It was not supposed to be like this. Dmitri looked up at him with wide, worried eyes and Dornberger could only stare back dumbly until Irina returned to the room with a damp cloth. She placed it across his forehead and put her hand to his cheek, tutting as she felt the heat of it. The cloth moved to his face, dabbing gently and cooling the fire that burned his skin. An unexpected liquid feeling flooded through him and he could have cried out with the desperate need for human contact. This was what a family must feel like. Without thinking, he reached for her hand and took it.

Irina went rigid. ‘Paul, please!’ The outrage in her voice shocked him and his fingers reflexively tightened. ‘Paul!’ She pulled herself free and stood up, taking the boy with her and leaving Dornberger alone on the couch, blinking in bemusement. What had he done? He was appalled at his own weakness. He had allowed the mask to slip and now twenty years of effort and investment was threatening to disintegrate. If he lost his job it would take years to rebuild the network he had created within the Samsonov organization. His first instinct, the instinct he had been bred for, was to wipe away any trace of his failure. He stood up and saw the alarm in Irina’s eyes as the height and muscularity that had made her feel safe now appeared so threatening and full of menace. But Irina Samsonov was the daughter of Cossacks; her high cheeks flared with colour and her eyes flashed with suppressed fury. When she opened her mouth he knew she was going to fire him on the spot. He moved before she could speak.

‘I apologize for my lapse,’ he said humbly, bowing his head. ‘You are right; I have been unwell for some time. My father … when he is gone there will be no one.’

He waited and knew she was searching him for the lie like some steppe shaman; a queen deciding on the fate of her subject. He recognized the moment of decision in the relaxation of her body.

‘We will say no more of this for now, Paul. You must take the rest of the day off and we will speak of it again when my husband returns.’

Paul turned away, but not before he had seen the flash of concern in the eyes of the little boy hiding behind his mother’s denim-clad legs.

His whole world spun as he returned to the office suite. It could only be minutes since he had climbed these stairs, but it might as well have been a lifetime. It didn’t seem possible. All these years he had played this game and now, in a single moment of stupidity, he had jeopardized everything.

He realized he’d left his mobile phone on his desk, and when he walked into the office it was buzzing urgently. When he picked it up his hands were shaking.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘He’s back.’