The Samurai Inheritance

VII

The suburb of Dahlem is in the west of Berlin and one of the most affluent areas of the city. It lies near the Grunewald, the great playground of forests and lakes that draws Berliners in their tens of thousands each summer to swim and picnic. According to Herr Direktor Muller, the Ethnological Museum was in the centre of town close to the Free University of Berlin.

It took Max half an hour to reach the museum and he dropped Jamie off outside the gates of a modernist cube of a building set back from the road. The first thing that struck the Englishman was the enormous banners draped across the upper storey above the entrance. In turn they represented Africa, America, Oceania, Asia and Europe, and each continent was identified by the staring eyes, prominent nose and grinning mouth of a stylized head. For a moment he stood transfixed. Was this an omen? Could it really be that easy?

He carried the mood of optimism with him as he walked up the concrete stairs to the hallway where he’d arranged to meet the museum’s curator.

‘Herr Saintclair?’

‘Yes.’ He turned, pleasantly surprised to discover he was being addressed by a tall, slim figure wearing a powder-blue sweater and tight-fitting designer jeans that showed off her long legs to advantage. He guessed she was around his age — perhaps in her mid-thirties — and she had hair the colour and sheen of a raven’s plumage cut in a short bob. Chestnut eyes studied him appraisingly and there was an amused half-smile on her fine-boned features. The moment he set eyes on her he knew the first thing he said would make him sound like an idiot. Naturally, he obliged. ‘I’m here to see the curator, Herr Fischer.’

‘Perhaps you’ll put up with me instead?’ She offered her right hand and when he took it her grip was firm and dry. ‘I’m Herr Fischer’s deputy, Magda Ross. Dr Magda Ross.’ She spoke in a flat, precise English that in Jamie’s experience was peculiar to people who travelled widely, but with a slight accent that told him it was her native tongue. For some reason the perfume she wore took him back to a beach on the Norfolk coast and a night he’d long forgotten. The emphasis she placed on the word doctor made it a challenge, or possibly a warning, and he smiled.

‘You find something amusing?’ she asked.

‘Not at all,’ he lied. ‘I’m just surprised and pleased to find a fellow Brit here. My German is good, but it’s always easier to talk about a complex subject in one’s own language, don’t you think?’

She didn’t answer directly, but set off briskly in the direction of a door on the far side of the hall. ‘The Herr Direktor said you are interested in information about our Melanesian collection?’

‘If the island of Bougainville is in Melanesia, that is correct.’

She looked at him over her shoulder. ‘I don’t believe it’s moved recently.’

Jamie reflected that a conversation with Dr Magda Ross was like being a knife-thrower’s assistant: you felt relatively safe until the next missile was launched.

They walked in silence through a series of long, wooden-floored corridors and wide rooms filled with glass cases. Eventually, a lift carried them to a larger chamber on the first floor, which was dominated by a series of full-size huts or houses with walls and roofs made of woven grass or leaves. At the far end a big outrigger canoe was displayed on a stand and glass cases around the walls held fearsome masks, tools and weapons.

Jamie studied the exhibits but could see no sign of his target. ‘The artefacts I’m interested in would have come to the museum from the Neues around a hundred and thirty years ago. Is it possible some of them would still be here, either on display or in storage?’

Magda Ross reached out to stroke an intricately carved hollowed log that appeared to be some kind of drum. ‘You have to understand that we lost a high percentage of our early collections during the war. It would depend on what the artefacts were and their constituent materials.’

Jamie reeled off the list Direktor Muller had given him: ‘Four skulls of varying antiquity and one shrunken head of a warrior chieftain.’

She frowned and walked to one of the cases. ‘This has been in our collection for over a hundred years.’ She pointed to what looked like an axe, with a stone blade and a polished wood handle. ‘It is originally from the Mount Takuan region of Bougainville Island.’ Some memory made her smile for the first time and the thought occurred to Jamie that she’d been nervous about meeting him. ‘I visited Bougainville about ten years ago when I was studying for my doctorate. It’s one of the most fascinating places in the world for an anthropologist, I …’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘Forgive me, I’m getting carried away. I’m not here to give you a lecture …’

‘Not at all.’ Jamie smiled back. ‘I’m interested in anything about the area. As you’ve probably noticed, my knowledge is a bit thin.’

‘When it comes to Melanesia, I’m what they call a geek,’ she confessed with a grin. ‘Anyway, to get back to the subject, the spears may still be on show, but I doubt the pots would have survived. These days, for reasons of sensitivity, we would never display objects like the skulls or the head. If you’ll come with me, I’ll see if we have any record of them.’

They walked side by side to a small open-plan office with views over the museum entrance. Magda waved Jamie to a chair and sat at a computer on what was obviously her personal desk. ‘If you’ll bear with me for a few moments …’

Jamie watched as her long fingers fluttered expertly over the keyboard. ‘I’m surprised your records survived if the bombing did so much damage to the museum,’ he said.

‘Fortunately they were stored somewhere they had a chance of surviving.’ She looked up and their eyes met almost by accident. Jamie had to fight off the sensation of being sucked into the centre of a whirlpool. A little voice in his head shouted a warning and he concentrated so hard on Fiona’s face he almost missed Magda Ross’s next words. She frowned at the incomprehension on his face. ‘I said that in those days we would have had to go to the other side of the city to access them. Now I just type a few letters and wait.’ A printer at the rear of the office began to chatter and she rose to collect the sheets as they emerged from the machine. She split them into two bundles and Jamie accepted one.

As he scanned the contents, he realised it was a list of annual audits mentioning the objects sold by Adolfus Ribbe to the Neues Museum in 1885. Each was identified by a catalogue number and marked with a (d) for display, (s) for storage or (l), which meant out on loan. His eyes automatically went to the year 1946 and disappointment hit him like a sucker punch when he saw that though the four skulls were listed, the shrunken head had disappeared along with the fish spears, the bowls and the model canoe.

‘It looks as if it went up in smoke at the end of the war.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, it seems I’ve been wasting your time.’

‘You were seeking something specific?’ Did her eyes betray something more than casual interest?

‘My client is keen to see the shrunken head repatriated if it still exists, but …’ He tailed off with a shrug. ‘I have a photograph if that helps?’ From his inside pocket he produced a brown envelope with the picture Keith Devlin had supplied him.

She took it and removed the picture. ‘Yes,’ she squinted as if she was trying to extract every pixel of information from the sepia print, ‘I recognize the technique and the style. Typical of similar artefacts from the island from around the mid-nineteenth century. The skull has been removed and the features preserved and padded out with organic material.’

She handed back the print and looked over the printout again, lips pursed in concentration. Eventually, she gave a nod of understanding. ‘Yes, it disappears, but I think you’ve reached the wrong conclusion. See …’ She twisted so he could read the sheet and drew her finger across a series of dates. ‘The head was never in the museum during the war. The last time it appears is in November nineteen thirty-six, but by the time of the next audit,’ she gave a shrug, ‘it’s gone.’

Jamie’s heart took a lurch and he studied his own sheet more closely. ‘So it could have disappeared any time over the next year?’

‘No.’ Magda shook her head. ‘Two or three months. The next audit is in January of the following year.’

‘Isn’t that unusual? After all, an audit of a museum is a massive undertaking.’

She gave him a look that hinted he was straying into dangerous territory. ‘Not so unusual if you consider the times, Mr Saintclair.’

‘You mean the Nazis, of course.’

She nodded. ‘Obviously those were difficult days for everyone in Berlin.’

It took him a moment to work out the real message in the carefully chosen words. ‘So basically anything with a taint of Jewishness had to be disposed of or destroyed.’

‘That’s correct, or …’ For the first time Magda Ross looked less than confident and Jamie raised an eyebrow, half certain what was coming. ‘… or certain artefacts might have been of interest to, er, certain members of the regime.’

‘Items linked with the occult, you mean,’ he persisted.

‘Yes,’ she said carefully. ‘So you understand the significance of what I am saying?’

‘That if the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, believed the shrunken head of a South Sea savage and probable cannibal could aid his search for the homeland of the Vril, he wouldn’t have hesitated to have it, shall we say, borrowed for his collection.’

Now it was her turn to raise a perfectly curved eyebrow. ‘You’re very well informed, Mr Saintclair.’

The statement contained an unspoken question, but one that would take much too long to answer. ‘Is there any way of finding out where it went?’

She went back to her computer, frowning as she typed. She shook her head. ‘There is no record of its disposal. I’m sorry; it is as if it just vanished.’

Jamie hid his disappointment. He stood up and handed over a dog-eared business card — he really must get some new ones now that he was in funds. ‘If you do happen to come across any more information, please give me a call.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Saintclair.’ Magda accepted the card and they shook hands again. ‘I’m genuinely sorry I wasn’t able to help you.’

As Jamie made his way to the lift, the scent of Magda Ross’s perfume in his nostrils, he released a long breath. Very occasionally in life your path crossed with someone who could have a fundamental effect on your future. Unfortunately, it was usually the wrong time and the wrong person. He tried to focus on Fiona’s face and be thankful he’d just dodged a bullet.

Magda Ross watched from the office window as her visitor walked towards a black Mercedes limousine that stood idling by the museum’s main gate. When it drove off she lifted the phone and dialled the international number that had been in her head since Jamie Saintclair announced the real target of his search.

An hour later, Jamie attempted to shrug off the melancholy the museum visit had inspired by spending the rest of the afternoon browsing art galleries and dealerships along Auguststrasse. Partly, it was disappointment that he’d reached a dead end in the search for the Bougainville head so quickly, but it went deeper than that. For some indefinable reason that had its roots with Adam and Eve, Magda Ross exerted a kind of magnetic influence on him. The thought of calling Fiona temporarily raised his spirits, but he worked out that if it was early evening in Berlin it must be the middle of the night in Sydney.

As dusk approached he wandered back to the hotel by a circuitous route. When he entered the lobby it was filled with after-work drinkers and people gawping at the giant fish bowl. He decided against eating in the restaurant and went straight to his suite. Inside, he shut the curtains in the lounge and went to do the same in the bedroom — and froze. It wasn’t anything he could see, not yet, but an indefinable something had changed. The maids had cleaned the room while he was having breakfast, so it should have been exactly as he’d left it, but …

Since embarking on his alternative career in art recovery he’d developed certain habits designed to give him peace of mind in a new world littered with moral contradictions and shadowy, sometimes dangerous characters. Not security, as such. Nothing could stop someone putting a bullet in your head, or even a knife in your back if they were determined enough. Not security, but something to give him an edge. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d mention even to his best friend, because it made him look paranoid, but it had worked in the past and it worked now. For instance: the shoes he’d left that looked as if they’d been carelessly abandoned had been at an exact angle to each other, and placed just so to triangulate with the power point. Now they didn’t. The book on the bedside table with the business card marking the page and the pen perfectly touching the edge of the cover. The pen was still in place, but whoever had moved the book had been so absorbed in getting the pen right, that he’d been careless with the business card.

Someone had searched his room.