The Black Sun (20 page)

“I got through to Turnbull last night and explained what we’d found out. He agreed to send Weissman’s arm over by medical courier first thing. It should be here any time now.”

170 james twining

“You got me out of bed for a courier!” Archie remonstrated.

“Don’t tell me you were actually comfortable on that thing.” Tom kicked the sofa and a cloud of dust danced above the seat cushion.

“Fair point,” Archie conceded.

A bell rang and a few moments later Dhutta appeared, his mustache freshly waxed, his hair still glistening from the shower. In his hand was a small set of amber beads that he was fingering nervously.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he called cheerily. “I hope you both slept well. If you will excuse me, it seems I have a visitor.”

“Actually, I think it’s for me,” Tom admitted.

“Oh?” Tom sensed a flicker of concern in Dhutta’s voice.

“I needed something delivered and gave them the directions to the back door. Don’t worry,” he added, seeing the look on Dhutta’s face. “You can trust them.”

“You gave a courier company the directions to this place?” Archie laughed. “What did you tell them, second brick on the right and straight on till morning?”

“Something like that.” Tom smiled. He turned back to Dhutta as the bell rang again.

“I’m sorry, I should have told you yesterday, but I didn’t want to disturb you any more than we already had.”

Dhutta waved his apology away, although Tom could tell from the stiffness in his shoulders that he was annoyed. Unfortunate, but, given the circumstances, unavoidable.

“If you say I can trust them, Mr. Tom, then that’s good enough for me. I will go and let them in.”

Archie got up and yawned. He was wearing blue boxer shorts and a white T-shirt, the material as crumpled and creased as his face where he’d been sleeping on it. Tom realized that it was probably only the second time he’d ever seen Archie in anything but a suit. He looked strangely out of place without it.

The sound of voices filtered through the open doorway, one Dhutta’s, the other female. Archie

looked

up

in

surprise

as

the

voices

drew

nearer.

the black sun 171

“This way, please,” came Dhutta’s muffled instruction.

Moments later, Dominique stepped into the room, her blond hair coiled up on her head like a fine silk rope and held in place with a silver grip. Archie snatched up his bedclothes and held them in front of him.

“Dom?” he said in surprise.

“Morning, boys!” She grinned. “Here you go, Archie— got you a little present.” She tossed a carton of duty-free cigarettes to him. He instinctively reached out to catch it, letting go of the bedclothes, which fell to the floor. “Gottcha!” she laughed.

“Very funny,” Archie muttered as he stooped to gather his sheets up around him again.

“The look on your face!” Tom laughed.

“You’re like a bloody pair of kids, you two,” Archie said, shaking his head disapprovingly. Grabbing his suit from its hanger, he stumbled to the bathroom, struggling to keep the bedclothes around him.

“I’ve just made some coffee,” Tom said as Archie disappeared with a final, accusing glare in their direction. “You want some?”

“Sure,” she said, stripping off her thick ski jacket and tossing it over the back of one of the sofas.

“I’m guessing you don’t want any, Raj?”

“No.” Dhutta pulled a disapproving face before disappearing into his workshop.

“You weren’t followed?”

“No,” Dominique confirmed. “I doubled back a few times, just to be certain, but there was no one there.”

“And Turnbull met you at the airport this morning, as agreed?”

“Yeah, although I think he was a bit surprised that I was a woman.”

“That’s because he doesn’t know what sort of woman you really are.” Tom grinned.

“No problems with Customs or anything?”

“None.” She smiled her thanks as he handed her a mug. “I never thought it would be so easy

to

transport

a

human

body

Europe.”

172 james twining

“Oh yeah.” Tom sat down next to her. “It’s great cover. Archie and I used to do it all the time. As long as the paperwork checks out, they don’t touch the box. Last thing they want is some poor kid in need of an organ transplant dying because they contaminated his new heart or kidney. What about the medals?”

“He gave me those too. Archie was right. Weissman did have a Knight’s Cross.”

She pulled an envelope from her pocket and handed it to Tom. He opened it and slid the medal it contained into the palm of his hand, flipping it over so he could see the reverse, before giving her a satisfied nod.

“It has the same markings as the one we got from Lam-mers’s niece,” Tom confirmed.

“Raj,” he called. “Come and have a look at this.”

Dhutta reemerged from his workshop and took the medal from Tom with interest, studying it closely.

“I brought the Bellak painting, as well,” Dominique added. “Thought it might be useful.”

“Good thinking.”

“By the way, did you notice the holes in it?”

“In the painting? Yes. What about them?”

“They struck me as odd, that’s all. They’re very neat. All exactly the same size. They don’t look accidental.”

“Why would someone have made them deliberately?” Tom frowned. “Unless they wanted to deface it.”

Archie reappeared from the bathroom, his composure seemingly restored now that he had his suit on.

“I meant to ask, Mr. Tom—what is this?” Dhutta pointed at the design on the lid of the walnut box that the key had been hidden in.

“A Nazi symbol,” Tom explained. “A type of swastika with twelve arms instead of four, one for each of twelve men. It’s known as the Black Sun. Have you seen it before?”

“No . . .” Dhutta shook his head, his finger stroking the veneer. “Although the swastika has been a Hindu religious symbol for thousands of years. It can be found in architecture all over the world, from the ruins of ancient Troy to the floor of Amiens Cathedral. Rudyard

Kipling

even

used

to

the black sun 173

decorate the dust jackets of all his books with it, to bring

him good luck.”

“How did the Nazis come to use it?” asked Archie.

“From what I understand, Hitler considered the early Aryans of India to be the prototypical white invaders. He saw the swastika as an inviolable link to the Aryan descent of the German people,” Dhutta explained. “Under the Nazis, the swastika became the
Hakenkreuz
or hooked cross, the symbol of the Aryan master race.”

“Does the word
swastika
mean something?” asked Tom.

“The word is derived from Sanskrit. The literal translation is ‘good to be.’ In holy texts it can mean Brahma, which is luck, or Samsara, which is rebirth.” He looked up, his voice suddenly thoughtful. “I wonder, which will it be for you, Mr. Tom?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

FINANCIAL DISTRICT, ZURICH

January 8—12:42 p.m.

Banque Völz et Cie occupied a corner lot in one of Zur-ich’s most expensive districts. It was a neoclassical affair, probably mid-1800s, although inconsistently executed, with the huge stone columns supporting the entrance portico comprising an architecturally jarring combination of Ionic and Corinthian styles.

More telling perhaps, was that while the soaring cost of real estate had compelled the owners of neighboring lots to rebuild higher and higher to maximize the yield of their land, the Völz building remained only two stories high, dwarfed by the towering structures around it. This said more about the bank’s wealth and power than the tallest skyscraper ever could.

A smartly dressed man wearing a lightweight blue flannel suit greeted Tom and Archie in the small marbled entrance vestibule. It was more reminiscent of a private house than a bank—two side tables, travertine marble resting on ebony legs engraved with gold leaf, flanked a large bronze door that Tom assumed led into the main hall. Each table supported a large iron urn.

“Guten

Morgen,

meine

Herren.”

the black sun 175

“Guten Morgen,”
Tom answered, before switching to English. “We’re here to see Herr Völz.”

The man frowned and looked them skeptically up and down, Tom especially in his faded jeans and sneakers.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

The corner of the man’s mouth twitched, as if he had just been told a mildly funny joke. “I’m sorry, but Herr Völz is a very busy man. If you leave your name and number, I will ask someone to call you.” He jerked his head toward the door to indicate that they should leave.

“We have a safety-deposit box here. We wish to inspect it immediately.”

Now the man laughed outright. “There are no boxes here. We are a bank, not a leftluggage office.”

“Tell Herr Völz that we have the key,” Tom insisted, dangling it in front of him. “And that we’re not leaving until he sees us.”

There was a pause as the man stared at the key uncertainly.

“Wait here,” he snapped eventually, walking over to the side table on the left and retrieving a black phone from behind the urn. His eyes never left them as he dialed a three-digit number.

“Herr Völz?” He turned away from them so that they couldn’t hear him, at one stage glancing at the key Tom was still holding outstretched, while talking rapidly into the phone. He nodded silently as he listened to what was being said in reply, his shoulders visibly stiffening. Replacing the handset in its cradle, he paused, and then turned to face them, an apology flickering around his lips but left unsaid.

“Herr Völz will see you immediately. This way, please.”

He threw open the bronze door and ushered them through. As Tom had suspected, this gave onto the main entrance hall, where a series of somber portraits lined the walls. Their footsteps echoing on the checkerboard marble floor, they followed the man into a small office where two secretaries were furiously typing away, their computers’ flat screens housed in mahogany and brass boxes, as if the naked display of plastic might tarnish the bank’s

patrician

image.

176 james twining

“Your coats, please.” The man’s voice had dropped to an ecclesiastical whisper. He took their coats, hanging them carefully on a cast-iron hat stand. He gestured to take Tom’s briefcase, but a firm shake of Tom’s head and an unblinking glare seemed to convince him otherwise. Then he knocked gently at the massive wooden door that loomed between the secretaries’ desks. A brass plaque indicated in swirling copperplate similar to the design on the key that this was the office of rudolf völz, direktor. There was no response from within, and Tom followed the man’s eyes to a miniature set of traffic lights positioned to the left of the door. It was on red, so they stood there patiently, the chattering of the secretaries’ nails on their keyboards echoing like gunfire until finally the light flashed to green. The man opened the door, indicated with a flip of his hand that they should go in, and then shut it behind them.

Völz’s office followed the same traditional lines as the rest of the building—soft red carpet underfoot, books lining one of the walls, an indifferent full-length portrait over the elaborate fireplace. The low winter sun streaming through the left-hand window had cut the room diagonally in two, leaving half swathed in shadow while flooding the other with a blinding light.

“What do you want?”

The voice was clipped and immediately hostile. Tom, squinting, had difficulty in making out where it was coming from. Eventually, as his eyes adjusted, he saw a dark shape hunched over the desk on the far side of the room.

“Herr Völz?” Tom walked toward the desk, while Archie hung back.

“What are you? A journalist? Some hack trying to make a career for yourself on the back of my family’s good name?” The shape stood up and ignored Tom’s outstretched hand. “Or another ambulance-chaser trying to make a living from our hard work.”

“I can assure you that I am none of those things.”

“The boxes are all gone. An ill-advised diversification strategy by my grandfather during the war that my father wisely dismantled in the 1960s with the full cooperation of the black sun 177

the Swiss Banking Commission—as you would know, if you had done your research. You have no business here.”

The man leaned forward as if to emphasize his point. This time Tom was able to see the face. Still quite young, perhaps in his early forties, Rudolf Völz had the same unflinching gaze and proud demeanor as the portraits Tom had seen out in the hall. His dark brown hair was neatly cut, with just a hint of gray. A closely cropped beard covered the line of his jaw like a strap, extending up around his mouth to frame his pinched lips. The underside of his chin and the flat of his sunken, hungry-looking cheeks were clean shaven. His glasses were frameless with clear plastic arms.

“The sixties?” Tom asked, throwing the key they’d discovered in the walnut box onto the desk. “In case you don’t recognize it, that’s your crest on the key. And, unless I’m very much mistaken, the lock that it opens is state-of-the-art.”

Völz sat back into his chair, staring at the key as it lay on the desk. “Do you have an account number?”

Tom nodded.

“Give it to me.”

Tom recited the numbers Turnbull had given him the previous night: 1256093574. Squinting, Völz removed his glasses and typed the digits into his computer, then hit Return. After a pause, he looked up with a smile.