When Gwen saw the suitcase set out she said, 'You're leaving me for another woman?'
'I'm too old to start over, Gwen. I just need to chase one for a few days.'
Gwen stepped off the elevator and gave him a wry smile. 'The romance just never stops with you, Thomas.'
'I caught some work overseas. I left you a note. Sorry for the rush but—'
'Where overseas?'
'I'll start in Hamburg and see where it takes me.'
'The Runaway Billionaire?'
Gwen didn't watch the news or read anything other than the arts, food and travel pages in the paper. She claimed it was the only way to stay sane. 'You know about this guy?' he asked.
'Wake up, honey. Jack Farrell is big.'
Malloy suppressed a groan and tried to downplay his assignment. 'State Department has loaned me to the FBI for a few days. They want me to see if I can track the credit cards they found back to the source.'
'They've got all that!'
Caught in his lie Malloy rumbled on, 'Well, good. Then it won't take too long. As soon as I find out where he stashed the half-billion I'll be back. They haven't found his money yet, have they?' He cast a reproachful look at the darkened TV.
'No sign of the money or Jack, but they got his DNA and the DNA of an unidentified female companion -
not
the secretary. She's still in Barcelona. I'm telling you, this guy is something with the ladies. Are you really going to get in the middle of this?'
Gwen was excited. Malloy tried to look bored. 'In the middle of the money, if I can get a handle on it.'
Her eyes widened as a thought struck her. 'You're not going to be in any danger are you?'
Malloy laughed and shook his head. 'The guy is an embezzler, Gwen. I doubt he has ever touched a gun in anger. Besides, I'm not going to be doing anything other than sitting behind a desk and talking to bankers.' A tired smile, 'Same old same old.'
'I think it's exciting anyway. I mean this guy is
primetime!'
'They want me on the next plane to Hamburg, Gwen. I've got to go.'
'No time for a proper goodbye for my crime fighting forensic accountant?'
Malloy looked at his watch, 'They get real touchy if you're not there two hours early.'
'You want the airline mad at you. . . or your wife?'
Summer 1931.
'I invited a young man to meet us for drinks in the lobby bar. I hope you don't mind.'
Dieter Bachman spoke to his wife from the bathroom through the half-opened door, but her husband's offhanded manner excited her curiosity. 'What sort of young man?'
'His name is Otto Rahn.'
'A German?' Elise was vaguely disappointed. She had come to France for new experiences. Bachman, on the other hand, could find a fellow German in Mongolia.
'German or Austrian is my guess, but to tell you the truth I'm not sure. His French was so good I could not place the accent. Magre introduced us.'
Maurice Magre was a novelist of modest reputation they had met on the previous day through a fellow German's introductions. Magre played the celebrity to cadge drinks from the tourists. 'And how does Magre know him?' she asked.
'I didn't ask. All I know is that Magre told me after he had gone that Herr Rahn is a treasure hunter.' Elise was not impressed. Adventurers were as common in the Languedoc as aspiring writers in Paris, all of them looking for Cathar gold and a free drink.
Elise picked up an apricot-coloured dress and held it beneath her chin as she turned to face the foggy hotel room mirror. She was not sure about it. The colour seemed to accentuate her tan. She actually liked the effect with her black hair and dark
brown eyes, but Bachman had begun to complain that she was soon going to be mistaken for an African. If he had his way her skin would be as pale as snow, her hair white-blonde, her eyes crystal blue. She had asked him once why he had proposed if he did not care for her colour. Her colour was fine, he told her, but if she must know he proposed because he had fallen in love! She had not bothered responding to that. Their marriage had been about money and family. Whatever love there might have been had long ago turned into a comfort friendship.
She tossed the dress aside. Too many wrinkles, anyway. 'And why did
Monsieur
Magre think we would like to get to know this young man? I hope it wasn't because he's German. We can see all the Germans we want when we're back in Berlin.'
'I thought we might enjoy getting to know him, actually.' Elise cast a speculative glance at her husband. He was still standing before the bathroom mirror, razor in hand. Bachman was a tall man with slightly hunched shoulders and a bit of a paunch. He had a round common face with thick cheeks and dark eyes. He had favoured a moustache since she had known him, but had decided to cut it recently, thinking he looked younger without it. His hair was already thinning and touched with grey, but the moustache had to go! She had been kind enough to lie and tell him he looked much younger without it. What had instigated the removal was a remark by a Swiss woman a few days ago in Sète. She had mistaken them for father and daughter. They had all laughed self-consciously at the mistake. Bachman asked if his wife really looked so young, but Elise had not been the source of the woman's confusion. Bachman was thirty-eight, a decade older than she, but he looked like a man pushing fifty. What was worse, he acted it as well.
'Tell me,' Elise said. 'Have you properly enquired into Herr Rahn's political sympathies?'
Bachman managed a smile as he came into the room. He was holding a towel in both hands. He knew Elise was teasing him, which he hated desperately, but he tried not to show his
frustration. In Berlin Bachman endured no one who did not share his opinion with respect to political matters. In France, for the sake of a bit of sun, he was more liberal.
'From what Magre tells me Herr Rahn is not at all political. Too young really to know anything about the War, I suppose, and from what little he managed to say about himself, I take it he has been working in Switzerland the past couple of years.'
'Well then. . . drinks with a youthful adventurer who has absolutely no opinion about anything? It sounds as if you have planned a delightful evening for us, darling!'
Otto Rahn
looked
the part of a treasure hunter, Elise thought when she saw him from across the room. He was as tall as her husband, easily over six feet in height, but unlike Bachman he was lean and muscular and deeply tanned. Exactly as a man ought to look who had spent the summer out-of-doors scrambling amongst the foothills of the Pyrenees. He had a long, square face and combed his dark blond hair straight back, using oil to keep it in place. The style was common enough, but the effect on Herr Rahn was more pleasing than on most men. It accented his chiseled brow and high cheekbones. She tried to imagine him as a movie star who had come to France to play the role of an adventurer and thought the image perfect.
When he saw Bachman, Herr Rahn left the bar and walked toward them with an animal grace that stirred something in Elise she had imagined long dead. This was no actor playing a part. He climbed rocks and plunged into caves, and he did it the livelong day! His smile and confidence, which had not a wit of subservience or awe for Bachman or his money, simply left her undone. Otto Rahn was, she decided, an incredibly handsome young man!
Bachman sometimes brought men of a certain type to meet her. They were artists of one kind or another, all penniless and very eager to please a wealthy patron. She had always imagined he was showing off his conquests, at least the ones he
hoped to make, but of course she could not be sure. The issue wasn't something one discussed in a polite marriage, and theirs, if nothing else, had always been polite. If that was Bachman's plan on this occasion - with an excuse to send her back to Sète whilst he stayed on a few days more trying to seduce a treasure hunter - he had gravely miscalculated. Herr Rahn liked women. She could see it the moment he looked at her. After only a few minutes together, she was sure of it. He included her in their conversation, and in doing so he would happen to glance at her hands with thoughtful appreciation, then her shoulders. The next time he was looking at her hair. Once, as she left the table, she saw his reflection in a mirror and realised he was studying her manner of walk! It was not overt by any means. He was certainly not uncouth about it. It was appreciative and gentlemanly. Not
exactly
flirtation, her husband was sitting before them after all, but very close to it.
'So you are in Carcassonne for a few days more, I hope?' Rahn asked. Elise imagined he was asking her, but Bachman answered for them.
'Leaving tomorrow, actually. We have a place in Sète we are renting. We have it for the summer, so I expect we had better get back to it and get our money's worth.'
Was there disappointment in his eyes? Elise wanted to think so, but then she reminded herself that Herr Rahn might only be making conversation. Perhaps she was no different than Bachman, seeing what she wanted in a handsome stranger's glances.
'Of course you're welcome to come see us there, if you like,' Bachman added. 'We have plenty of room, and the Mediterranean is especially beautiful there.'
'That is very generous of you. . .' A glance at Elise. No, not just making conversation. He was thinking, in that quick appraisal of her, about his chances if he travelled to Sète for a visit. There were men who only pursued married women. She had friends who had encountered them and had been tempted or at least they had admitted to that much. Some husbands presumably turned a blind eye to it. Was Herr Rahn imagining that was the game here?
She looked at Bachman. He was sometimes hovering and protective about her when a man was obviously interested, but not this evening. Herr Rahn excited him too much to let something like jealousy diminish his enthusiasm.
Politics did not come up until the second round of drinks. Bachman mentioned that they lived in Berlin but had taken to spending the summers away from the city because of the troubles.'
'Is it really so bad?' Rahn asked him with genuine concern.
'Have you been to Berlin in the past few years, Herr Rahn?' Bachman asked.
'It has been a few years, I'm afraid, though I went to university there. I have always loved the city. I hate to see it torn to pieces.'
'You and every other good German! And all because of the Communists! They are determined to ruin everything!'
Bachman hated the Communists only slightly more than the present government. A dozen years ago he had been an aristocrat. Stripped of his title by parliamentary decree in 1919, he had wanted to pretend it was no great matter, but the wound ran deep, and when he found others like him mixing with the Nazis, he joined up. With a fortune at his disposal, he had of course been well received by the party's inner circle, and that was all it took for him to become a passionate supporter of the cause. Elise had seen very pleasant evenings such as this plunge into a violent argument for the sake of an ill-advised remark either against the Nazis or for the Communists. Bachman would accept indecision, even reticence - people needed to be persuaded - but when he found resistance the fight was on. As he had introduced the topic for no better reason than to evaluate Herr Rahn, Elise held her breath.
The topic appeared to make Herr Rahn uncomfortable. He was probably himself a Communist! The worn down heels of his shoes and frayed collar certainly indicated he was poor enough to be one. And why not? Everyone had a political opinion these days, the more radical the better. A middle course had certainly not solved anything! 'Well, of course,' Herr Rahn interposed, 'something has to change. Everyone believes that except the crooks in power, but until it does I don't care to get in the middle of it.'
'Germany finds itself at a crossroads,' Bachman told him. 'Those who stand off to the side now will no doubt be left behind once things take a new direction! For a young man such as you are that is something to consider very seriously.'
Before Bachman could work himself up to a full choleric fit, Elise touched her husband's arm. 'We'll have enough politics back in Berlin, dear,' she said. 'I want to hear about all the Cathar gold Herr Rahn has found.'
'I wasn't aware I was looking for any,' Rahn answered. He gave them both a bemused smile, curious no doubt as to the source of the confusion.
Elise looked at Bachman as she said to Rahn, 'I'm sorry. I was under the impression you were. . .'
Suddenly it came to Rahn. 'Is that what Magre told you?' he asked Bachman. 'That I'm a treasure hunter?' Bachman tipped his head. Such had been his understanding. Rahn seemed astonished and maybe a bit irritated, but after a moment he laughed. He had apparently had some dealings with the Frenchman.
'So what
are
you doing down here?' Elise asked.
'I'm researching a book I intend to write about the Albigensian Crusade of the thirteenth century.'
'Really?' Elise exclaimed. Things began to make sense to her. That he was writing a book explained his natural eloquence and the confidence he wore like a crown. He was an educated man, as she might have guessed! Still, he seemed a bit young for something so. . . well, so utterly stuffy.