Blind Instinct (6 page)
Seven
A
fter trying to watch a sitcom for the better part of an hour, Sara checked the locks on the apartment and went to bed.
An hour of tossing and turning later, she turned on the bedside light and reached for a novel. Her head felt heavy, her eyes grainy. She had sleeping pills, but she was reluctant to take one. The battle to relax into sleep was in her mind and therefore controllable. Annoyed as she was at still being wide-awake when she needed to be asleep, she hated the thought of being dependent on any drug.
She stared at the lines of print, forcing herself to concentrate on the story line. Gradually, the novel worked its magic and she became hooked on the story and began to relax.
Outside the wind had picked up. Rain rattled against the windowpanes, the monotony of the sound, soothing her even more. The words began to merge, blur. Her eyes drooped, shutting out the bright, intrusive gleam of the bedside lamp.
The book slipped from her fingers as she dropped into sleep.
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France, 1943
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Cold seeped through the stone walls of the Château Vassigny as Sara Weiss stepped into the cavernous reaches of the library.
She bypassed Oberst Reichmann's desk and retrieved the set of keys hidden behind a leather-bound tome on the bookshelf.
Moving quickly, she unlocked the door to what had once been an anteroom but which, since the Germans had moved in, had been converted into a makeshift strong room. Stepping inside, she closed the door. She selected a second key and opened the small, squat safe positioned against one wall.
Ignoring the neat piles of francs and the boxes of jewelry that Reichmann and his Waffen SS had “confiscated” during their occupation of Vassigny, she removed a correspondence file, the SS
codebook and a second book, this one bound in brown leather, which she hadn't ever seen before.
The codebook itself was nondescript. Bound with board, it was about the size of a school exercise book or a journal. Some codebooks were enormous volumes, but this one fell into the medium range: comprehensive but pared down for portability and ease of use by soldiers in the field. The SS, like the other branches of the German military, also used encryption machines. But as highly efficient and notoriously hard to break as the codes transmitted by their Enigma machines were, the “clear”âthat is, the uncoded messageâwas often encoded before it was encrypted for added security, making the messages even more difficult to decipher.
Ears straining against Reichmann's return, she opened the codebook and turned pages. A bright red thread floated onto the carpet. Reichmann's additional security. The thread was always positioned between pages fifteen and sixteen.
She found the reference she wanted and committed it to memory.
One entry, no more
.
She had been steadily stealing the code, one word at a time, for the past few months, ever
since Reichmann, the head of the local Waffen SS had employed her as his personal secretary. Sometimes she didn't have access to the safe for weeks. At other times, she managed to get several words or phrases in a day. To date, she had stolen more than seventy percent of the code.
Placing the codebook on top of the correspondence file, she pushed the spectacles she wore for close work higher on the bridge of her nose and opened the second unidentified book. For long seconds what she was reading didn't make sense. Then her stomach clenched in automatic recoil and bile rose in the back of her throat. The book was a ledger, a list of the Jews Reichmann and his SS had sent to the death camps.
Her mind slid back three years, to darkness and horror and grief. Her parents, Dietrich and Janine Weiss, had been living in Paris under assumed names, running an underground paper for the French Resistance. It was safe, they had assured her. At the first hint of trouble they would leave and join her in England. Just days later they had been arrested. Shortly after, they had been transported to Ravensbruck and executed.
She flipped through pages, frowning. The documentation was highly unusual. It provided proof
of genocide, something the Germans were determined to conceal. The book shouldn't exist, and it shouldn't be
here
.
Vassigny was a small, quiet village, a producer of vegetables, milk, cheeses and wine, and a provider of accommodation for the SS. Reichmann billeted his men and ran his operation from the Château, but the prison at Clairvaux held larger concentrations of German forces, better security and an administration center. Any sensitive documentation should have been kept there.
Stomach tight, she flipped pages. Account numbers and figures leaped at her, and the reason for the book's existence became clear. It wasn't an official record. Reichmann was a former Swiss banker, and this was his own personal ledger. A secret accounting of murder and the transfers of the money he had stolen from the people he had condemned.
She stared at the neat lists of dates, names and bank accounts spanning more than two years, the dizzying amounts of money Reichmann had stolen.
Her task in Vassigny was to coordinate airdrops of supplies from Special Operations Executive in England for the local French Resistance, the
Maquis, and run the escape pipeline. The fact that the job with Reichmann had fallen into her lap, giving her access to the codebook, had been a bonus. The code breakers at Bletchley Park in England needed the information she supplied, but Reichmann's ledger represented another priority.
Her jaw tightened at the sheer numbers Reichmann had sent to the camps. The ledger was proof of genocide, and of Reichmann's unconscionable greed.
Reichmann wasn't just stealing from the Jews, he was stealing from the Reich. With access to the accounts of Jews sent to the death camps, before those accounts were declared to the Reich, he could transfer money into nominated accounts. The theft would be concealed behind a serpentine raft of paperwork, and was, no doubt, supported by the connivance of a bank. Reichmann might not be entirely suited for his SS command, but when it came to moving money, he was at the top of his game.
Her parents' names wouldn't be recorded here, because at that time Reichmann had been based in Lyon. But whether or not they were listed, it didn't matter. Her parents had given their lives to stop this kind of evil. She needed the book for themâand for every individual and family listed in it.
A name registered. Simon de Vernay.
Shock reverberated through her. She checked the ledger entry. The amount of money transferred made her mouth go dry. She didn't know any one person could have such an amount.
The de Vernays were very well-known, an old Jewish family that had settled in Angers, their principal business, the diamond trade. No diamonds, as such, were listed, but that made sense. The de Vernay's were traders, not jewelers. Their stocks of diamonds would have been concentrated in Antwerp, the main diamond-trading center and, since war had broken out, no doubt in other, safer centers offshore.
Setting the book down, she opened Reichmann's private correspondence file, which contained personal and classified materials that never crossed her desk. A telegram, received that morning, was sitting on top.
“Code leak traced to Vassigny Stop Find traitor Stop”
Her heart kicked hard, once. With fingers that shook slightly, she replaced the telegraph in the file and returned it to its correct place on the shelf, placing the ledger and the codebook on top. She locked the safe, then closed and locked
the door to the strong room and returned the key to its hiding place.
The echo of footsteps in the front hall signaled that Reichmann had returned from his meeting. She slipped out of his office, walked through to her own room and sat down behind her desk. She checked her wristwatch. Almost fifteen minutes had passed while she had been in the strong room. The risk she had taken was huge. Normally, three minutes was her maximum turnaround time, but the information she had gathered had been crucial, not only for her own survival, but for the Maquis.
Code leak traced to Vassigny Stop Find Traitor
Stop
.
There were two possibilities, perhaps a third. Her radio transmissions to SOE HQ in England could have been intercepted. The success of their sabotage program could have aroused suspicion. Or they had a traitor.
The leak, if there was one, couldn't be local. Her cover was simple. She was married to Armand de Thierry, the former occupant of the Château and the marriage, on paper at least, was real. Armand, a wealthy landowner, was seen as a valued Nazi collaborator, owing to the fact that
he owned a great deal of productive land and was able to supply the German soldiers with wine, fresh meat, vegetables and cheeses. He was also the head of the local Maquis, a small, but effective group of French Resistance fighters.
Armand was in his fifties, but the fact that he was wealthy meant his second marriage, after the death of his first wife, to a much younger woman was not considered strange.
For Sara, the cover was natural and impeccable. The fact that her mother was a Parisienne, and her father German, that she had spent her childhood in Berlin, her formative years in Paris and most of her adult life in Oxford, England, suited her uniquely for this mission.
During her time in Vassigny, she had been cared for and protected. Armand and the Resistance had gone to great lengths to integrate her into the village and their lives. The fact that she had devised the present cipher system that the Allied ground forces used to communicate with each other was the one glaring weakness in her suitability as an agent, although that risk was offset by the fact that her link with the cipher had been kept secret.
Armand and the SOE had protected her, but
her time in Vassigny was over. There were a limited number of codebooks, and only a handful of people with access to the Château. It was only a matter of time before Reichmann, or more likely, Stein, the local Gestapo officer, unmasked her. When she transmitted the code information at her next scheduled radio contact, she would make arrangements to leave.
Reichmann bypassed her office and walked directly into his. Breathing a sigh of relief, Sara walked through to his office and bade him good-night.
Returning to her desk, she stripped off her spectacles, carefully stored them in her glasses case and slipped the case into her purse. Shrugging into her thick lined coat, she wound a woolen scarf around her neck, tucking it in against the cold. Collecting her purse, she straightened and caught a glimpse of her face in the ornate gilded mirror opposite her desk. Her skin was as pale as the empty marble fireplace, but that wasn't what held her attention.
The scarf was bright red. The significance of the color drained the blood from her face.
She had forgotten about the thread in the
codebook
.
* * *Â
Sharp pain shooting up her shins jerked Sara awake. She stared blankly at the dimly lit room and the rectangular shape of a coffee table, for long seconds unable to grasp where she was.
A shudder swept through her when she identified the cozy familiarity of her sitting room. Dim light flowed from the hallwayâher bedroomâwhich meant that when she'd fallen asleep, she must have left her bedside lamp on.
Gripping the nearby arm of the couch for support, she sat down, her hands shaking as she rubbed away the pain in her shins.
The sharp clarity of the dream, the jolt of raw terror, had already faded, sliding into automatic, practiced blankness.
Pushing to her feet, she flicked on the lights and poured herself a glass of ice water from the fridge. Sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, she slowly sipped the water and waited for her pulse to even out.
There was an easy explanation for the dream. Something had happened when she had picked up the codebook. She had experienced a flash of déjà vu, which had, in turn, triggered the dream.
The purity of the logic didn't help her with the
fact that she had the dreams in the first place or that she had started sleepwalking again.
Or the certainty that her past was inextricably entwined with the now.
Eight
Grand Cayman Island, the Caribbean
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E
dward Dennison, ex-FBI agent, ex-drug cartel member, and now a dead man walking, wiped down the counter of the bar he owned. The Shack was a seedy joint on the waterfront renowned for cheap beer, mean chili and a distinct lack of any discernible comfort.
In terms of excitement, tending a bar scored low on Dennison's barometer but, after escaping Alex Lopez's last attempt on his life by a matter of seconds, Dennison was all over boring and routine.
He loved the seedy dim bar and the predictable clientele. In the months he had owned it, his customers generally fell into two categories: tanned
tourists wearing gaudy clothing and smelling of sunblock, and the regulars. The tourists, annoyed by the stink of drying fishing nets and sour beer, didn't stay long. The regularsâfishermen and plantation workers, mostlyâhung out at the bar and propped up the pool table, providing a quality that had been sadly lacking in Dennison's life for more years than he cared to countâcontinuity.
Rain or shine, the same faces appeared, the same beer was ordered and the same music on the jukebox was played. Conversations were predictable and laconic. Dennison hung on every word and loved with passion the static world he had landed in.
Just months ago, in custody in D.C., with the CIA squeezing him for information about Alex Lopez and the wealthy cabal that backed him, the future had been clear: a prison sentence, followed by a cartel hit. No matter where the CIA locked him up, or how secret they tried to keep his location, Lopez would have found him.
In a bizarre run of luck, Dennison had managed to escape custody and the hit. Weeks later, after scanning the Internet for news of his escape and the ensuing investigation, he had found, instead, his death notice.
He had sat staring at the briefly worded statement, a piece of prose that utterly eliminated all the highs and lows of his life and distilled his existence down to two dates and a deceased wife, and wondered who had killed him off, and why.
The answer had been simple. Marc Bayard, the intelligence executive running the Lopez and cabal investigations.
Bayard was sending him a message. The door was open, and he wanted him to come in out of the cold.
The terms were tempting. Dennison was officially dead, which meant the heat was off. The FBI wasn't actively hunting him. Neither were the CIA, the NSA, Interpol and whatever other agency had been hunting his ass for the past twenty-four years. It was even possible that Lopez had bought into the death scenario.
There would be incentives to sweeten the potâno doubt amnesty for his crimes and the opportunity to live on American soil under a new identity on the Witness Security Programâso long as he testified.
Another search had turned up the apparently unconnected fact that Agent Harris, one of the CIA agents who had been minding him, had been
shot and killed in the line of duty on the same day Dennison had “died.” The only conclusion he could draw, incredibly, was that the CIA agent he had left handcuffed and unconscious on the floor of the motel had been executed by Lopez's people in his stead. And Bayard, the methodical bastard, had used the situation to extend him an amnesty.
The implications had been huge. Harris had looked a little like Dennison, close enough to create uncertainty. If Lopez's hit man had been working from a photograph, or he had simply been in a hurry, it was entirely possible that he thought he had killed the right mark. If no one in Lopez's organization had found Harris's death notice and tied it to the time of the hit, it was logical to assume that Lopez really did think he was dead.
Soâ¦dead and free, for the moment. He didn't fool himself that it would last. Bayard could revoke his “death” whenever it suited his purposes. In one smooth stroke he had offered Dennison a deal, a grace period and a threat.
Life was goodâ¦but the clock was ticking.
He tossed the cloth under the bar, grabbed a broom and began sweeping sand through the cracks in the scarred hardwood floor. A cockroach
the size of a small bird scuttled from beneath a table and made a run for the nearest piece of warped skirting board.
Dennison didn't bother to make a swipe at the insect. Live and let live, that was his motto, and it was a fact that cockroaches were a part of island life. No matter how many you killed, they kept on coming.
A bit like Lopez and his limitless supply of hired guns.
When the bar was swept and the trash emptied, he walked out back where Louis Jamais, his only permanent employee, was preparing bar snacksâ a big pot of seafood gumbo, slabs of island baked bread and a rich, spicy chili that was Louis's own recipe. Picking up the latest copy of an American tabloid he subscribed to for the express purpose of keeping up with the Lopez/cabal investigations, Dennison walked outside to enjoy a few minutes respite before they opened for the lunchtime crowd. Sitting on the back step, he flipped through pages.
His gaze skimmed the lead stories without much interest, then snagged on a small special interest piece. His attention sharpened as he read. The focus of the story was an epitaph of Ben
Fischer, the brother of Todd Fischer, and a rehash of the
Nordika
tragedy, with one exception. Ben Fischer had made a trip to Costa Rica to search for his brother. He hadn't found Todd Fischer, but when he had returned to Shreveport, Louisiana, he hadn't gone home empty-handed. He had taken Todd Fischer's personal possessions with him.
Instincts honed by years of working for Alex Lopez and too many close scrapes with death sprang to life. He stepped back into the kitchen, ignoring Louis's query as he ratted around in the box where they kept old newspapers, which were useful for wrapping up food waste. He found several editions of the same tabloid, but, frustratingly, no more front pages.
“This what you're looking for?”
Louis tossed him a paper he'd been about to use to wrap up fish bones and vegetable peelings. Dennison unfolded it. The front-page coverage of the graves at Juarez jumped out at him and his pulse rate rocketed. He checked the date at the top of the page. It was several weeks before the edition he had been reading. “Thanks.”
Ignoring Louis's curiosity, he walked back outside, reread the article and studied the blurred
photograph of mourners. He didn't recognize any of them and he hadn't expected to. The CIA had vetted all coverage in order to guarantee the security of its own personnel.
The photo, or the fact that the grave had been found, didn't interest him so much as the story behind the killingsâone he had researched on and off during his years in Colombia.
Heinrich Reichmann and his fellow SS Officers, along with Reichmann's daughter, Helene, had escaped Germany in January 1944 after hijacking a ship called the
Nordika
âalong with a number of genius children who were the supposed genetic seed pool of the Third Reich. The ship had sailed from Lubek, a port on the Baltic Sea, reportedly loaded with gold bullion and art treasures.
Reichmann had been an aristocrat, a banker and an SS Officer, but his primary talent had been theft.
One of the rumorsâperhaps more than a rumorâwas that the crates of treasure had been hidden in a series of caves on the coast of Juarez.
Dennison had spent weeks searching Juarez, cruising the coast in a launch, walking the seashore and slogging through jungle, but he hadn't
found anything that remotely resembled a system of caves large enough to hide a substantial cache.
The previous year, however, the story had been given unexpected credence by the discovery of a mass grave containing both the bodies of the original crew of the
Nordika
and a naval dive team that had investigated the wreck in the eighties. For a brief time, the legend of the treasure had been resurrected, and Juarez had crawled with treasure hunters.
Dennison hadn't bothered. The gold bullion had undoubtedly been stored in Juarez, but he was willing to bet that it had been for a very short time. Reichmann had used it to buy protection from Marco Chavez, and when he had moved into the States, he had likely taken what was left of the gold with him.
While Dennison had lived at the Chavez compound, he'd had years to go through Marco's papers. He hadn't found much, just a few leads. One of them had been about the late George Hartley, one of the original SS officers who had sailed on the
Nordika
. Hartley had betrayed Marco and the cabal, providing the Navy with enough information to instigate the original investigation that had ended in the dive tragedy. If
Hartley had known where the
Nordika
was scuttled, then to Dennison it had followed that he could have known the location of the treasure.
Checking into Hartley's past had largely been a dead end, but he had pulled up one significant fact after holding a gun at Hartley's lawyer's head and forcing him to hand over a journal.
The journal had been in German. It had taken Dennison weeks to decipher it, and the process hadn't been without its frustrations. Hartley had been laying the groundwork for his memoirs. Unfortunately, aside from the relatively short interval Hartley had worn the SS uniform and then turned to organized crime, his life had been uneventful. But Dennison had turned up one interesting snippet of information.
It was known that Reichmann had stolen money, gold, art and artifacts. According to Hartley, he had also stolen diamonds.
Specifically, a large cache of polished and cut stones from the diamond-trading de Vernay family.
Dennison found the newspaper that had carried the story about Ben Fischer and reread it. It was a long shot, but Todd, Ben Fischer's brother, had been researching the Nazi cabal just
before he was killed. It was a matter of public record that one of the people he had interviewed had been George Hartley. If Ben Fischer had retrieved his brother's personal possessions from Costa Rica, it was possible that he had information that Dennison could use.
He studied the details of the epitaph, then walked into the tiny cramped office that opened off the kitchen, booted up his laptop and dialed up a search engine. Seconds later he studied the telephone pages for Shreveport. Rummaging in a drawer, he found a pen and some notepaper and wrote down the details. He had his street address.
Shutting down the laptop, he packed it into his briefcase. He folded the piece of notepaper and the newspapers he wanted on top of the computer, fastened the case, then walked back out to the kitchen and placed the keys to the bar on the kitchen counter. “I have to go away for a few days. You're in charge.”
Louis's expression was outraged. “I can't look after this place on myâ”
“Employ someone,” Dennison snapped, his mind already locked on the task ahead. “I've got unfinished business to attend to.”