Cold Vengeance (35 page)

C
HAPTER 79

New York City

C
ORRIE HAD SPENT THE FIRST PART OF THE EVENING
helping her new friend clean the place and cook a tray of lasagna—while keeping an eye on the building next door. Maggie had left at eight
PM
to work at the jazz club, and she wouldn’t be home until two in the morning.

Now it was almost midnight and Corrie was finishing her third cup of coffee in the tiny Pullman kitchen while contemplating her kit. She had read, then re-read, her tattered copy of the underground classic
MIT Guide to Lock Picking
, but she feared that the new locks on the house might be of the kind that had serrated drivers, almost impossible to pick.

And then there was that lead alarm tape she’d noticed. It meant that even if she picked the lock, opening the door would generate an alarm. Opening or breaking a window would do the same. On top of that, despite the appearance of advanced decrepitude, there might be motion detectors and laser alarms scattered throughout the place. Or maybe not. No way to know until she was inside.

… Inside? Was she really going to do this? Before, all she’d been considering was an external recon. Somehow, over the course of the evening, her plans had unconsciously changed. Why? She had made a promise to Pendergast to stay out of things—but at the same time, she had a deep, instinctual feeling that he was unaware of the full scope of the danger facing him. Did he know of what these drug dealers had done to Betterton and that Brodie couple? These were bad, bad guys.

And as for herself—she was no fool. She would do nothing whatsoever to endanger herself. The house at 428 East End Avenue gave every impression of being deserted—there were no lights on inside at all. She’d been watching the place all day: nobody had come or gone.

She was not going to step over the line of her promise to Pendergast. She wasn’t going to tangle with drug smugglers. All she would do was get her ass in the house, look around for a couple of minutes, and go. At the first sign of trouble, no matter how small, she’d get the hell out. If she found anything of value, she’d take it to that pumped-up chauffeur Proctor and he could pass it on to Pendergast.

She glanced at her watch: midnight. No point waiting any longer. She folded up the lock picks and tucked them in her knapsack, along with the other gear: a small portable drill with bit-sets for glass, wood, and masonry, a glass cutter, suction cups, a set of wires, wire strippers and tools, dental mirrors and picks, a couple of small LED lights, a stocking for her face in case there were video cameras, gloves, Mace, lock oil, rags, duct tape, and spray paint—and two cell phones, one hidden in her boot.

She felt a certain mounting excitement. This was going to be fun. Back in Medicine Creek, she’d often performed break-ins like this—and it was probably a good idea to keep her hand in, not let herself grow stale. She wondered if she was really cut out for a career in law enforcement or if she shouldn’t think about becoming a criminal instead… Then again, many people in law enforcement did have a sort of perverse attraction to criminality. Pendergast, for one.

She exited the kitchen onto the tiny back patio, which was surrounded on all sides by an eight-foot brick wall. The garden was overgrown, and several pieces of cast-iron lawn furniture were arranged around the patio. The lights of the surrounding rear windows cast enough illumination for her to see while sheltering her from prying eyes.

Selecting the darkest section of brick wall abutting 428, she placed a piece of lawn furniture against it, climbed onto it, then pulled herself over the wall and slipped into the backyard of the abandoned house. It was completely overgrown with ailanthus trees and sumac: even more perfect cover. She pulled a rickety old table over to the wall she’d just scaled, then moved ever so slowly through the overgrowth toward the back of the house. Absolutely no lights or signs of activity within.

The patio door was of metal and sported a relatively new lock. She crept forward, knelt, and opened her lock-pick set, selecting a tool. She inserted the pick and bounced it off the tumblers, rapidly establishing that this would be a very difficult lock to pick. Not for Pendergast, perhaps, but certainly for her.

Better look for an alternative.

Creeping along the back of the house, she spied some low basement windows in sunken wells along the rear wall. She knelt and shone a light into the closest one. It was filthy, almost opaque, and she reached down with a rag and began wiping it. Gradually she cleaned it well enough to see through, and saw that metal alarm tape had also been placed on this window.

Now, this was something she could work with. Taking out the cordless drill, she fitted a 0.5mm diamond tip to the end and fired it up, drilling two holes through the glass, one through the upper foil tape near the junction, and one through the lower foil tape, making sure not to sever the tape and therefore break the circuit. She stripped a copper wire and threaded it through both holes, using a fine dental pick to attach it to the foil on the inside, thus maintaining a complete circuit and, in essence, deactivating the alarm for the rest of the window.

Then, once again using the drill, she made a number of holes in the glass, outlining an opening large enough for her to slip through. Next, she scored a line on the glass with the glass cutter, connecting all the holes with one another. Affixing the suction cup, she rapped sharply on the glass; it broke neatly along the line. She removed the piece and set it aside. Although the lead foil was torn along the cut, it didn’t matter: thanks to the copper wire, the circuit remained live.

She stepped back, glanced around at the surrounding buildings. Nobody had seen or heard her; nobody was taking any notice. She looked up at the structure before her. It remained dark and silent as the grave.

She returned her attention to the window. Wary of a motion sensor, she aimed a flashlight through it, but could see very little save filing cabinets and stacks of books. The lead tape was a rudimentary alarm system, and she suspected that whatever existed in the interior—if anything—might be as lame. Using a dental mirror, she was able to direct the flashlight beam into all corners of the room, and spotted nothing resembling a motion detector, infrared or laser trip alarms.

She stuck her arm in and waved it around, ready to run at the first sign of a red light coming on somewhere in the darkness.

Nothing.

Okay, then.
She turned around, stuck her feet through the hole, carefully worked her way in, dropped to the floor, then pulled her knapsack in behind her.

Again she waited in the dark, motionless, looking for any blinking lights, any indication of a security system. All was quiet.

She pulled a chair from one corner and placed it below the window, in case she needed to make a quick escape. Then she glanced around. There was just enough moonlight to make out the contents of the room: as she had noticed from outside, it seemed to be primarily a storage area, full of metal cabinets, yellowing paper files, and piles of books.

She moved toward the first pile of books and lifted the grimy plastic cover. It exposed a stack of old, identical, buckram-bound hardcovers, each one sporting a large black swastika in a white circle, surrounded by a field of red.

The book was
Mein Kampf
, and the author was Adolf Hitler.

C
HAPTER 80

N
AZIS
.
C
ORRIE LOWERED THE PLASTIC SHEET
, taking care not to rustle it. A chill traveled down her spine. She couldn’t seem to move. Everything Betterton had told her now began falling into place. The building had been around since World War II; the neighborhood had been a German enclave; that killer the reporter talked about had had a German accent. And now, this.

These weren’t drug smugglers. These were Nazis—and they must have been operating in this house since World War II. Even after Germany surrendered, even after the Nuremberg Trials, even after the Soviet occupation of East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall, they’d been operating. It seemed incredible, unbelievable. All the original Nazis would be dead by now—wouldn’t they? Who were these people? And what in God’s name were they still doing after all these years?

If Pendergast didn’t know about this, and she suspected he didn’t, it was imperative for her to learn more.

She moved with great caution now, her heart beating hard. Although she had seen no sign of activity, no sign of anyone coming or going, there still might be people in the house. She couldn’t be certain.

In the corner sat a table with some electronic equipment, also covered by grimy plastic. She raised one corner, slowly, silently, to find herself staring at a collection of vintage radio equipment. Next, she turned her attention to the filing cabinets, examining the labels. They were in German and she didn’t know the language. She chose one at random, found it locked, and took out her tools. In a minute she had picked the simple lock and eased open the drawer. Nothing. The drawer was empty. But based on the lines of dust coating the upper edges of the drawer, it looked like it had until recently been full.

Several other drawers confirmed the same thing. Whatever papers that had been kept there were gone—although not long gone.

Taking out her flashlight and shining it briefly around, she spied doors in each of the far walls. One of them had to lead upstairs. She moved toward the closest, grasped its knob, and pulled it open with infinite care, keeping the squeak from the rusty hinges to an absolute minimum.

Her light revealed a room, tiled in white on the floor, ceiling, and all four walls. A naked steel chair was bolted in the middle, and under the chair was a drain. Steel cuffs dangled from the arms and legs of the chair. In the corner a hose was coiled up, detached from a rusty faucet.

She retreated, feeling faintly sick, and moved to the door on the other side of the basement room. This one led to a narrow staircase.

At the top of the landing was another closed door. Corrie listened for a long time, then grasped the doorknob and eased it open a quarter of an inch. A quick examination with the dental mirror showed a dusty, disused kitchen. She pushed the door wide and looked around the kitchen, then passed quietly through to a dining room, and then into an ornate sitting room beyond. It was decorated in a heavy, encrusted Bavarian hunting-lodge style: antlers mounted on paneled walls, massive carved furniture, landscapes in heavy frames, racks of antique rifles and carbines. A shaggy boar’s head with gleaming yellow tusks and fierce glass eyes dominated the mantelpiece. She quickly scanned the bookcases and searched a few cabinets. The documents and books were all in German.

She moved into the hall. Here she stood, barely breathing, listening intently. All remained silent. At last she climbed the stairs, one at a time, pausing on each tread to listen. At the second-floor landing she waited again, examining the closed doors, and then opened one at random. It disclosed a room almost devoid of furniture beyond a skeletal bed frame, a table, a chair, and a bookshelf. A broken window looked onto the back garden, shards of glass still littering the sill. The window was barred.

She checked the other rooms on the second floor. All were similar—all bedrooms, all stripped—except for the last room. That one turned out to be a dust-choked photographic workshop and darkroom, and in addition contained several printing presses and primitive-looking photocopying machines. Racks of copper printing plates of all sizes lined one wall, many engraved with elaborate and official-looking patterns and seals. It appeared to have been an old document-counterfeiting operation.

Back in the hall, she climbed the stairs to the third floor. She found herself in a large attic that had been divided into two rooms. The first—the room in which she now stood—was very strange. The floor was covered by thick, Persian-looking rugs. Dozens of candles, large and fat, sat in ornate freestanding holders, pools of melted wax hanging stalactite-like from their bases. On the walls were black tapestries covered with bizarre yellow-and gold-colored symbols, some sewn on, others fashioned from thick felt: hexagrams, astronomical symbols, lidless eyes, interlocking triangles, five- and six-pointed stars. At the base of one such tapestry was emblazoned a single word: A
RARITA
. In one corner of the room, a series of three marble steps led up to what looked like an altar.

This was just too creepy, and she backed away. One last room, and then she’d get the hell out.

Shivering, she moved through a low doorway into the attic’s second room. It was full of bookshelves and had once been a library, or perhaps a research room. But now all the bookshelves were empty, the walls barren save for a single, moth-eaten Nazi flag hanging limply against the far wall.

In the middle of the room stood a large industrial paper shredder of new manufacture, plugged into the wall and looking ludicrously out of place in what was otherwise a midcentury time capsule. On one side of it stood a dozen tottering stacks of paper, and on the other a series of black garbage bags full of the shredded result. A closet door stood open in the far wall.

She thought of the empty filing cabinets downstairs, the vacant bedrooms. Whatever had gone down here was now quickly becoming history: the place showed every indication of being methodically stripped of its incriminating contents.

She realized—with a faint tickle of fear—that if this work was ongoing, it could pick up again at any time.

These were the only documents remaining in the house. Pendergast would no doubt want to see them. Quickly and quietly, she moved over to the stacks of paper, examining them. Most dated back to World War II and were on Nazi letterhead, complete with swastikas and old-style German lettering. She cursed her inability to read German as she ploughed through the documents, being careful to maintain them in their correct order and piles, trying to root out any that might prove to be of special interest.

As she worked her way down through the stacks, shifting papers and only examining one or two out of each huge batch, she realized that the documents on the bottom were more recent than those on top. She turned from the older documents and focused on these newer ones. They were all in German and it was impossible to ascertain their significance. Nevertheless, she collected those documents that looked most important: the ones with the most stamps and seals, along with others that were stamped in large red letters:

STRENG GEHEIM

Which to her eyes looked a whole lot like a T
OP
S
ECRET
stamp.

Suddenly her eye caught a name on one of the documents: E
STERHAZY
. She recognized it immediately as the maiden name of Pendergast’s late wife, Helen. The name was sprinkled throughout the document, and as she sorted through the documents directly below, she found others with that name on it as well. She collected them all, stuffing them into her knapsack.

And then she came across a batch of documents that were not in German, but some in Spanish and—she guessed—the rest in Portuguese. She could muddle through Spanish, at least, but most of these papers seemed pretty dull: invoices, requisitions, lists of expenses and reimbursements, along with a lot of medical files in which the names of the patients were blacked out or recorded by initials only. Nevertheless she stuffed the most significant-looking ones into her knapsack, now full almost to bursting…

She heard the creak of a floorboard.

Immediately, she froze, adrenaline flooding her body. She paused, listening intently. Nothing.

Slowly, she closed her knapsack and stood up, careful to make no noise. The door was open only a crack, and a dim light filtered through. She continued listening and—after a moment—heard another creak. It was low, barely audible… like a cautious footfall.

She was trapped, in the attic, with only one narrow staircase leading down. There were no windows, no place to go. But it would be a mistake to panic; it might just be her overactive imagination. She waited in the dim light, every sense on high alert.

Another creak, this one higher and closer. No imagination: someone was definitely in the house—and they were coming up the stairs.

In her excitement over the papers, she’d forgotten to keep utterly silent. Had the person on the stairs heard her?

With exquisite care, she moved across the room to the closet standing open on the far side. She managed to get there without creaking any of the floorboards. Easing herself in, she pulled the door almost but not quite closed and then crouched down in the darkness. Her heart was beating so hard and so fast she feared the intruder might hear it.

Another stealthy creak, and then a faint groan. The door to the room was being opened. She peered out from the closet, hardly daring to breathe. After a long period of silence, a figure moved into the room.

Corrie held her breath. The man was dressed in black, wearing round smoked glasses, his face obscure. A burglar?

He walked to the center of the room, stood there, and finally removed a pistol. He turned toward the closet, raised the gun, and aimed at the closet door.

Corrie began to fumble desperately in her knapsack.

“You will come out, please,” the strongly accented voice said.

After a long moment, Corrie stood up, swung the door open.

The man smiled. He thumbed off the safety and took careful aim.

“
Auf Wiedersehen
,” he said.