great gemstone known as the Eye of Isis
.’
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
.’
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
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