The Samurai Inheritance (12 page)

He kept his speed to a gentle jog as he crossed the paved plaza at the centre of the park, knowing that the driver of the car was already facing a dilemma. If he followed on foot he’d stick out like a rose on a dungheap. If he followed in the car he risked losing Jamie down a one-way street or on one of the narrow alleyways that Berlin was provided with in such abundance. What happened next would be revealing. If Jamie’s pursuer was an employee of a major security organization he’d be able to call up further resources: more cars, perhaps another jogger. If he was on his own? Well, that told its own story. Once through the park he crossed a wide road, still keeping a steady pace. The car reappeared at the periphery of his vision and he turned right towards the Spree, giving his watcher a chance to get as close as he liked. Just as he reached the bridge he darted left down a set of concrete stairs that brought him to the riverside path. Now the driver of the car, if he was alone, as Jamie hoped, didn’t have any choice in the matter, as the screech of brakes a few moments later confirmed. The smile turned to a grin and he picked up the pace just a little. It looked like being a good day.

When he returned from his run, Jamie breakfasted at the hotel, studying street maps of central Tokyo on his laptop. Then he set out to enjoy the sights of Berlin. He’d arranged a late checkout and Max picked him up at just before three. As they drove out to the address Magda had given him, Jamie noticed the limo driver’s eyes on him in the rear-view mirror.

‘How’s your day been, Max?’

‘Pretty busy, Herr Saintclair – early start.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘Maybe I’m not as young as I used to be, huh?’

‘You should try to get a little more exercise. A man your age can’t afford to take any chances.’ He noticed the eyes narrow in a pained grimace and he sat back with a feeling of contentment: after his hours of jogging first thing, he’d managed to fit in a flurry of museum visiting and a trip to the top of the Fernsehturm TV tower using the stairs – all 926 of them. The tower had been a late addition to the sightseeing schedule. He hoped Devlin had paid Max well for spying on him.

Magda Ross emerged from her apartment block dressed in loose-fitting trousers and a long black coat. Her wheeled suitcase was of modest proportions and confirmed Jamie’s opinion of her: confident, organized and self-reliant. He suspected she’d always have a bag ready with a toothbrush, a passport and a spare change of clothes. His own packing preference tended to be more the ‘Oh Christ I’m late, throw in the first things to hand and then find the passport’s out of date’ variety. He got out of the limousine to greet her with a kiss on the cheek as Max took her luggage and put it in the trunk of the big Mercedes S-Class.

She looked over the car with approval before she slipped into the rear seats. ‘You certainly travel in style, Jamie Saintclair,’ she said with a smile. ‘If I’d known I would have put my rates up.’

‘This is Max,’ he introduced the driver. ‘He may not look it, but he’s a keep-fit fanatic.’

Max muttered something under his breath and put the car in gear, but he acknowledged Magda’s ‘Hello Max’ with what passed for a smile.

‘So, Tokyo.’ Her eyes gleamed. ‘What happens when we get there?’

‘Well, if my plan comes to fruition, we visit Major Yoshitaki’s relatives, you identify the head, my client wires a substantial cheque and we spend the rest of our visit wandering around and eating the finest sushi on the planet.’

‘Be serious for once, Jamie.’

‘All right. If I’m honest, there are a few flaws in my plan.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as: a) we have no idea whether Yoshitaki ever had the head; b) if he did, we have no idea whether he passed it on to his family on his death, and c) if they do have it, we have no idea if the family will part with this precious, if rather unsavoury, heirloom even for the kind of cash my client is prepared to pay. The Japanese have an odd sense of honour, just ask anyone who was their prisoner during the war. There are a few more potential flies in the ointment, but those—’

He broke off as the phone chirped in his inside pocket. He studied the number and his first thought was that Keith Devlin didn’t get much sleep: it had to be past midnight in Sydney. ‘Saintclair.’

‘I hope you’re not on the plane, old son,’ Devlin’s gravelly tones were unmistakable, ‘because there’s been a change of plan.’

‘We’re just on the way to the airport. I—’

‘Just tell the driver to turn round and get you to Schönefeld …’

‘Hold on.’ Jamie relayed the instruction to Max, and the driver nodded. Magda Ross witnessed the exchange with a look of alarm. ‘Okay, give me the details.’

‘There’s a flight to Moscow leaving in under an hour,’ Devlin continued, ‘but the security people won’t close the gate till you get there. Someone will be waiting at the Aeroflot baggage desk with your tickets.’ Jamie almost lost the phone as Max performed a tyre-squealing U-turn at the next intersection. ‘The Russkis don’t run to First Class, but there’ll be something to wet your whistle when you get on board.’

‘So the mission …?’

‘That’s right, top secret, direct from Stalin to Hitler on Christmas Eve nineteen thirty-six. We don’t have the details yet, but we’re working on it. One of my blokes will have a file waiting for you when you get to Sheremetyevo. I’ll let you know if I hear any more before your scheduled take-off time. Happy hunting, old son.’

The phone went dead and Jamie took it away from his ear and studied it as if it was some strange artefact from the future.

‘Is there a problem?’ Magda’s voice mirrored his own bemusement.

He turned to her with a wry smile. ‘I’m afraid sushi’s off the menu. I hope you like
borscht
.’

XIV

A serious, bespectacled young Englishman from the Devlin Foundation introduced himself as Daniel and eased their way through customs at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. Once they’d collected their baggage and been shown to the customary black limousine he handed Jamie a slim file.

‘It’s not much, I’m afraid,’ he apologized, poking his head through the gap in the front seats from his place beside the driver, a fit-looking older man with a tan that suggested he spent as much time under a sun lamp as he did behind the wheel. ‘We weren’t given a great deal of warning and, truth be told, our Russian friends are still a bit coy about their relationship with the Nazis before the Second World War. At the same time they were flexing their muscles against each other in Spain, Stalin and Hitler conducted what was more or less a mutual admiration society, which doesn’t sit very well with the mythology of the Great Patriotic War. They’d prefer not to talk about the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact or the deal to partition Poland.’

He paused in his briefing and Jamie skimmed through the contents of the file while Magda fidgeted impatiently beside him. When he had all the details fixed in his mind, Jamie nodded for Daniel to continue.

‘You also have to understand that this was at a time of enormous suspicion and fear. Even though Stalin’s Great Purge had just got started and would only have been the subject of whispers, the men selected for what on the surface was a hugely important mission would have been well aware of the danger. The slightest hint of mistrust and it would be the gulags at best or more likely a bullet in the back of the neck in the basement of the Lubyanka. Any official reports would have been very guarded,’ he ended apologetically.

‘The mission consisted of two diplomats and a couple of low-ranking clerks who are likely to have been NKVD minders,’ Jamie read aloud for Magda’s benefit. ‘They flew from Moscow to Berlin by way of Konigsberg in December nineteen thirty-six after a personal briefing from Stalin, and held talks over a two-week period.’ He grunted in surprise. ‘It says here they met Hitler and von Ribbentrop in the Reich Chancellery. No official record of that meeting survives.’

‘That’s correct,’ Daniel confirmed. ‘The Moscow versions were probably destroyed around the time of Stalin’s death in nineteen fifty-three, possibly the Berlin ones, too, if they didn’t burn in ’forty-five.’

‘But who were these men?’ Magda demanded impatiently. ‘And what happened to them when they came back. Surely they must be long dead now?’ She saw the look that passed between Jamie and Daniel and her dark eyes widened a little. ‘Surely?’

‘Gennady Berzarin,’ Jamie continued, ‘first secretary in the Department of Foreign Affairs under Maxim Litvinov, headed the mission, accompanied by his second secretary, twenty-five-year-old Dimitri Kaganovich. Berzarin survived the war, but died in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in nineteen eighty. Kaganovich,’ he tried and failed to suppress a grin, ‘according to this, is still alive.’

The hotel, as with all things associated with Keith Devlin, was impressive – a broad, glass-fronted palace in the shape of the bridge of an ocean liner – and Magda was duly impressed. As she studied the sumptuous lobby, Daniel whispered to Jamie. ‘This is probably the best hotel in Moscow, the one Mr Devlin usually stays in. We’ve booked you into his suite. It should be very convenient for you.’ Jamie studied the owlish face for any hint of innuendo, but found no trace. Evidently, the young executive didn’t think much of his chances with Magda Ross. On a certain level, Jamie found that downright insulting.

A concierge took their luggage and Daniel escorted them to the check-in desk. When they’d completed the formalities, Magda thanked the young man with a smile. ‘I hadn’t expected this kind of luxury. When I’m on a research trip the choice is usually between a cockroach-infested hostel and a damp tent. The tent is normally much more comfortable, and decidedly cleaner.’

Daniel watched them as far as the lifts before he headed back to the car. ‘Was that okay, Mr Stewart?’ he asked tentatively as he took his seat beside the driver.

‘You did great, son,’ Doug Stewart assured him. ‘From now on we’ll leave it to our usual people. Make sure they report direct to me,’ he yawned, ‘but not for a couple of hours. I’m getting on a bit for this globetrotting lark. I’m off for a quick bit of shut-eye.’

The presidential suite at the Lotte Hotel seemed to stretch for miles in every direction and made Jamie’s rooms in Berlin look like a mountain shack. The concierge ushered them into the palatial living room with a view across the western Moscow skyline. He offered to have their cases unpacked and their clothes stored away, but they declined.

‘I’m not sure I would like them comparing my poor rags with those of the kind of royalty who normally use this place.’ Magda smiled after the Russian had given them the obligatory tour, including the suite’s private bar and kitchen, marble bathroom fit for the Queen of Sheba, and explained the intricacies of the digital control panel: ‘with one switch you can work the lights, air conditioning, heating, curtains, TV and audio. It will give you today’s weather forecast and whatever tourist information you need, oh,’ he said almost as an afterthought as he reached the door, ‘and you can use it to set the alarm clock.’

Jamie returned Magda’s smile. ‘I suspect, like hotel staff the world over, they’ve seen just about everything there is to see, unless you have something very exotic in there?’

Magda’s ‘room’ turned out to be a self-contained suite of its own, but she vowed to use the facilities in the palatial main suite instead of, as she put it, ‘slumming’.

‘I’ll make a coffee,’ Jamie offered, and set off for the kitchen.

‘Don’t we have someone to do that for us?’ she demanded, and they both burst out laughing.

When he returned, Magda walked to the window with her coffee and stared out. Jamie saw a troubled look cross her face.

‘Is something wrong?’

Her lips formed a sad half smile. ‘My dad spent years living in big houses and mixing with rich people, but he was always a socialist at heart. I thought I took after him, but there’s something seductive about sitting here in all this luxury, set apart from the
ordinary
people down there living their
ordinary
lives. Of course, it is only an illusion, a dream, like Cinderella in the story. When the clock strikes midnight I’ll be sitting on a pumpkin, the concierge will turn into an old farm horse and I won’t even have a glass slipper to show for it.’ She slipped away from the window and sat beside him, so close her eyes seemed to swallow him up. ‘But what about you, Jamie?’

The question and her proximity unsettled him. His first instinct was to hide behind a flippant, throwaway reply, but he decided she deserved better.

‘When this is all over I’ll go back to my partner and her daughter and we’ll spend an idyllic couple of weeks on my client’s private island. Then I’ll give up being a knight in shining armour for good and turn into a boring art dealer again.’

He thought he saw a shadow cross the dark eyes, but it was gone before he could decide what it was. ‘Your client must be someone very special?’

Again, there was more to the question than the words implied, and Jamie gave it some thought before he replied. Till now, as far as Magda Ross had been concerned, the client was just ‘the client’, but it had always seemed a rather pointless subterfuge. Anyone who really wanted to know who Jamie was working for only had to get a look at the flight and hotel bills. That trail would presumably take them directly to Devlin Metal Resources, the Devlin Foundation, or one or other of their many spin-offs. Magda was on the team, she deserved to know who was paying her wages.

‘He’s probably someone you’ve never heard of,’ he said eventually. ‘An Australian mine owner by the name of Keith Devlin?’ She shook her head. ‘He has interests all over the world, including the Solomons, but his negotiations have run into trouble because of some stolen documents and the intransigence of the local chief. The Bougainville head is the price of the chief’s cooperation. I suspect it’s worth a very substantial amount to Mr Devlin, given the money he’s paid out so far to fund the search for it.’

‘First Class all the way and no expense spared for the intrepid Jamie Saintclair, and his ever-so-fortunate assistant?’

‘That’s the way it looks.’

‘So what happens tomorrow?’