'Himmler is building his Montségur, Otto. What he wants from you is the Grail.'
'I am not at all sure the Grail ever existed, except in the realm of the spirit, of course.'
'You tell the legend in your book! Esclarmonde threw it into Mt. Tabor!'
'But that is all it is - a local legend that an old man told me!'
'Himmler wants you to look for it, Otto. He will not ask you, of course. One who seeks the Grail must volunteer for such a quest - it is the Grail after all! But he will do everything in his power to assist you when you are ready to find it. You have only to ask his permission.'
'I have done with buried treasure. There are better ways to spend one's time.'
'You can have a look, can't you? I mean, all he has done for you, you can do that much for him, can't you?'
'I
have
looked, Dieter. I have been up and down the Ariège valley. I have plunged into snake pits and crevasses so deep and narrow no one has ever been there before. All I ever found were bones and cave paintings.'
'Let me tell you something about Heinrich Himmler, my friend. What he demands of his officers he gets. You cannot tell him it is impossible. In his mind nothing is impossible. If he wants you to find him the Grail of the Cathars that had better be something you want as well.'
'If he has brought me into the SS because he imagines I can find the Grail, he must be perfectly insane!'
'Take care, my friend. I will not allow you to slander one of the most important men in the Reich!'
'I only meant it's not there. He cannot
order
a miracle!'
'To refuse Himmler is the real insanity, Otto.'
'I am telling you it is a legend! Esclarmonde turned into a dove and flew off with the Grail. You laughed at the notion the first time I told you about it. Do you remember?'
'Himmler thinks there might be something to it.'
'It is a story, not a map to find buried treasure!'
Bachman was quiet for several minutes, Rahn sullen. Finally, Bachman told him, 'You must have another look, Otto. If I tell Himmler you have no interest in the Grail, I assure you this, you will find yourself quite suddenly shut out.'
'I don't understand.'
'Do you imagine Elise finds you tickets when none are to be had or that she knows so many beautiful aristocrats that she can set you up every weekend, one beauty after another? You are in favour! So long as you stand in the light Himmler provides you no man will dare resist you. The moment he sees no value in your efforts, you will find doors closing in your face.'
'He is paying me to write!'
'He was paying you to write. You are in the Order of the Skull now. Now he is paying you to do what he demands of you. And get serious about someone, whilst you are at it. You need a wife, Otto. You cannot love mine forever.'
Zürich
Malloy walked through the Bahnhof, shadowed discreetly by his guardian, and came out to the area once known as Needle Park. Inside a black Mercedes he saw a man he knew only as Max. Max was a forty-something Zürich detective with a perpetually sour expression, a haggard look, and the cool cynicism of a street-weary cop. Like Marcus, he carried a standard issue semiautomatic pistol in a shoulder holster, but his weapon of choice was a sawn-off, pump-action shotgun loaded with deer slugs. Whereas buckshot provided for an excellent margin of error, the deer slug, once pointed in the right direction, operated like a wrecking ball. Malloy had seen Max handle the gun once. After that he was always careful to treat the man politely.
'How's crime?' Malloy asked in English as he slumped into the front seat.
With a weary shrug Max told him, 'We had it on the run until you showed up.'
'I made my mess in Hamburg this trip.'
'You're not home yet, T. K.'
Malloy smiled bravely and looked out the window. No, he wasn't.
They drove to the back of The Gold Standard, one of Hasan Barzani's upscale clubs close to the banking district. 'Up the stairs before you get to the bar,' Max told him and then handed him a phone. 'Call me before you come outside again.'
Malloy found the back door unlocked but met an armed guard who seemed to be waiting for him. 'Have you got business here?' he asked.
'I'm here to see Alexa,' Malloy answered.
'Upstairs. Last door on your right.'
On the stairs Malloy had the odd sensation of being set up and kept his hand in his coat, the pocket cut way so he could keep his Uzi ready for a fight - just in case. He saw another guard at the top of the stairs but didn't speak to the man. At the last door on his right Malloy turned the handle and pushed into a tiny room fitted with a bed, a chair, a small chest of drawers, and a mirror. When he saw his old friend, Malloy said, 'They told me this was the place where I could find trouble.'
Hasan had stretched out on the bed and was reading a Russian newspaper. At the sight of Malloy, he dropped the paper and stood up, calling out cheerfully, 'Thomas! Marcus tells me every cop in Germany was chasing your ass yesterday!'
'They weren't quick enough,' Malloy told him and took the giant's bear-like embrace with a grimace of pain, his back aching. Malloy set his Uzi on the table next to Hasan's AK-47. Hasan was close to seven feet tall. He had had most of his height the first time the two had met some forty-three years ago. In those days Hasan was a rough piece of work whose sole pleasure was intimidation. Malloy had learnt a few self- defence tricks from his father, however, so when Hasan asked him for money to walk down
his
street Malloy had put the giant on his back. The move was so unexpected and so well practised that Hasan might have believed it was magic. It certainly had never happened to him before, not from a kid half his size! Rather than brood until he could get his revenge,
which would have been easy enough to do, Hasan decided instead to make a new friend.
Having no more secret moves Malloy took the offer of friendship at once and proceeded to introduce Hasan to Marcus. Hasan, whose parents were refugees from the Soviet Union, had been dubious about the straight looking upper middle class Swiss kid until Marcus taught the giant how to pick a lock. After that their friendship was sealed for life.
By the time Malloy had returned to Zürich in his early twenties, Hasan was on the fast track for a long stretch in a Swiss prison. Malloy began managing things for him and within a year had him running the club where he had formerly worked as a bouncer. Within three years, and with two very public assassinations to clear the doubts away, Hasan had grabbed control of Zürich's small but lucrative market in sex, drugs, and stolen goods.
Hasan had not forgotten that Malloy had taken him from the street to the penthouse, but both men knew he had repaid his debt many times over with intelligence reports on a number of men it did not pay to anger. And there was another matter to consider as well. It had been a long time since Malloy's friendship had been of much use to Hasan. That made Hasan an asset Malloy was certainly not inclined to overuse or even trust beyond certain limits. The trouble was Hasan Barzani was the only person Malloy knew who could give him better intelligence than Langley.
'Marcus tells me you want to talk about the Italian mafia.'
'Actually I want to know what you can tell me about Giancarlo and Luca Bartoli.'
Hasan straightened to his full height, obviously not happy to hear the names. 'What is your business with those two, Thomas?'
'I think they might have tried to kill a friend of mine, but I can't prove it yet.'
'If those two want your friend dead, he has a serious problem!'
'Or they do.'
Hasan laughed with a bark of real enthusiasm. Yes, maybe it was the other way around!
'Giancarlo's fortune has tripled in the past decade, at least the accounts we know about. I want to know the secret of his success.'
'What can I say?' Hasan answered. 'Things are good right now in Italy.'
'Is he the new head of the families?'
'I hear that sometimes from people who don't know what they're talking about. The trouble is it's nothing more than a fantasy!'
'I've seen it written down in top secret reports.'
Hasan wasn't impressed. 'Here is the thing, Thomas. There are two families fighting for control of the north. In the south... things haven't changed since Caesar. From what I can tell, Bartoli pays protection to both families and stays out of the politics.'
'This lack of involvement. . . does that have anything to do with the assassination of his first son?'
Hasan lifted his shoulders. Maybe, maybe not.
'You're telling me he's not even connected?'
Another kick of the shoulder. He wasn't saying
that
exactly. 'The old dons are fighting over towns, Thomas, when they're not killing each other for the control of villages. They are fugitives hiding in farmhouses or prisoners sitting in high security jails and having their lawyers pass their orders on to their people. Giancarlo, meanwhile, is a major player in Europe. He pays his dues and stays clear of the old life.'
'Now see, this is why I wanted to talk to
you
. I'm reading reports that Giancarlo is really the new boss of bosses.'
Hasan shook his head, becoming more loquacious as Malloy laid on the flattery. 'Europe has changed, Thomas. Fifteen-twenty years ago, things were different. Every country had its own organisation and every organisation its own particular problems. The borders are open now. You've got Germans in Spain, Spaniards in France, English in Italy. . . and Russians
everywhere!'
Malloy gave a shrug. The Russian mafia. They both knew about
that
mafia.
'The trouble with the Russians, they're not organised. They move in, take a piece of the street and hold on like pit bulls! But who are they fighting? Other immigrants! All of a sudden the people who ran things in the past are feeling the pressure. But what can they do? They can't start a fight on every street corner, and that's the only way to fight these immigrants. There is no organisation out there! It's just anarchy!'
Malloy nodded. 'The theory of
disorganised
crime.'
'Exactly! I mean if these people wanted to follow the rules, they wouldn't be criminals!'
Malloy smiled.
Hasan thought about things for a moment. 'But Old Money never goes away, Thomas. You know that. They start making alliances with the anarchists. They start specialising their services. People with contacts in South America or Africa bring drugs in, but now what? How do you take the drugs from one port into all of Europe? How do you get it to America? The pit bulls on the street corners don't know how to do this. They're running bags. The big picture. . . they don't even know the concept. It's a business like anything else. You've got a product, it doesn't matter what, women, cars, technology, counterfeit merchandise, gambling, bankruptcies scams, and-and-and! That's not even the end of it. After the product sells you have to think about the profits. You need to clean it up or you get caught with dirty money, and who wants that? And of course everyone always needs protection from the bloodthirsty politicians! So you've got two more industries coming into play.'
'So the Old Money lost control of the street corners, but they still get a piece of everything moving?'
Hasan lifted eyebrows and shoulders. What else? 'For a time,' he said, 'there was talk the Russian mafia was going to take over Europe. There's no talk like that anymore.'
'Why
not?'
'Competition! New alliances. In-fighting. Politics. The
Russian mafia is like the old Soviet Union - it's there, but it's all in pieces.'
'So where do Luca and Giancarlo Bartoli fit into the scheme of things?'
'The old man runs a bankruptcy now and then to feed the dogs, but otherwise he's out of the game, Thomas. Who needs to go to prison at his age? Luca is another matter. He likes what he does. Like you, he's getting a little older but he can't stay home and live on the dividends. He's out making his deals, putting people together, making a reputation.'
'What does he do exactly?'
'Luca? Officially, he sits on a number of corporate boards, but the truth is he leaves his father's people to run the business side. He works with a couple of different crews out of Marseilles that move art and antiques through a couple companies in London. He has a top-notch counterfeit operation in Barcelona - good passports and EU cards. He is running some semi-legitimate businesses in Amsterdam to clean money and he has some people moving things out of North Africa into the islands and from there into the France and Spain.'
'Is he contracting assassinations?'
'Nothing like that. I mean when his brother was killed - this was years ago - that was different. He hunted down the family that ordered the assassination - every last mother's son. But that was personal.'