Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (35 page)

Mitch nodded.

"And so those who are knights and warriors in one life may be wives or servants in another," Bea said. "We play all parts, given world enough and time. Priestess and soldier, mother and son, king and courtesan."

"So half of the people Pelley's looking for are people he now disqualifies," Mitch said. "He thinks only white men are worth talking to, so he's missing half the people he's looking for!" It was so perfectly obvious when he thought about it, ironic and completely reasonable.

"George registers to him because he's currently a white man. But he wouldn't notice me unless I bit him."

Mitch grinned. "Would you?"

"Oh yes." She smiled back. "And I bite hard."

"So I hear," Mitch said, realizing belatedly that sounded like innuendo. She must get a lot of innuendo, as attractive as she was.

Bea didn't seem to take it that way. "George won't play ball with his Silver Legion. Pelley will never get the time of day out of him again, nor any of his associates. But that's not the biggest problem right now."

"The dig?" Mitch asked.

Bea nodded. "I think Pelley is the mystery donor. Peter can't find out who gave the money, but I think it was Pelley. I think Pelley is funding the dig in hopes of finding the navel of the world, but I don’t think ultimately he's the one pulling the strings."

"Then who is?"

"Can't you guess?"

"I don't have all the pieces," Mitch said. "I don't know archaeology. I don't know the players."

"Dr. Radke was recommended to Peter by Dr. Herman Wirth," Bea said. "He's a German prehistorian who has just been appointed to a new government post, heading an organization called Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte Deutsches Ahnenerbe, or the Ahnenerbe for short. The Society for the Study of the German Ancestral Heritage. He works for Heinrich Himmler."

Mitch leaned against the rail thoughtfully. "You think the German government is pulling the strings."

"I think the Ahnenerbe is," Bea said. "I think Pelley is the conduit for the money to fund the dig. Which suggests that Pelley has found very congenial friends for his theories of racial and spiritual superiority, doesn't it?"

"And so the appearance of a German battlecruiser in Hawaii…."

"Is probably not coincidental, no," Bea said dryly. "Wouldn't you keep Pelley on a tight leash?"

"I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him," Mitch said.

"I doubt the captain of the battlecruiser — Dönitz, I think his name is — does either. I wouldn't be surprised if he's checking up on the dig, whether or not he knows anything about Pelley's other work."

Mitch started. "You think he might?"

"I have no idea if he does or not. But do you truly think it's impossible for military officers to be involved in the occult?"

Mitch had to snort. "I see your point. It's always wise to assume that your opponent has as much common sense as you do."

"Even if the entire business seems crazy." Bea leaned against the rail. "Which it does. But here we are, and last night Pelley tried to kill George."

"You think he'll try again?"

"Not George," she said. "I think George put the fear of God in him. Or at least the fear of things that go bump in the night. But he will try again with someone else, another time in another place. If he's hunting Companions he's not going to stop."

"We've got to take Pelley down," Mitch said. It settled over him in a cold certainty. It seemed impossible. But it had to be.

"That won't stop the Ahnenerbe."

"No, but it will deny them a magician," Mitch said. He took a deep breath. "We have to stop the Silver Legion. And I don't have any idea how we're going to do that."

L
ewis dreamed, and in his dream he left Alma sleeping and walked into dawn, eastward over the Pacific Ocean toward the rising sun. Waves passed beneath him, faster than the best plane he'd ever flown, the coast of California with the sun behind it. He soared into morning. Mountains unfolded beneath him, deserts and plains, running east into blinding light. Forests and mountains, cities and sea. Afternoon shadows lengthened, stretching out in front of him, evening coming as dawn came half a world away in Hawaii. The summer evening was balmy and bright as he alighted before a palace in a lake.

Its pale stone shone whitely. A hundred windows reflected light, while fountains played between courtyards and lawns. Versailles, Lewis thought. But no. Versailles wasn't in the middle of a lake. Something touched his palm and he looked down.

A white hound stood beside him, looking up at him with eyes as blue as the skies.

Lewis went down on one knee, caressing her silky ears. "My lady," he said. Her fur was soft under his hand, warm and supple, and She looked at him with pride and knowing. Whenever he'd dreamed like this before it was important. Whenever She chose to speak to him, he should listen. "What is it that you want to show me?"

The hound walked off a few paces, then stopped and looked back.

"I'll follow you," Lewis said.

And so he did, through galleries and salons full of precious gilt furniture, past children and lingering tourists and guides trying to herd them on as closing time approached, passing through velvet ropes and up staircases like a ghost, until they reached a room on the second floor. The sun was setting, and this room was in shadow, on the east side of the building with heavy drapes already drawn. A row of glass cases sat along the wall, tidy cards labeling objects displayed on black cloth.

"I don't understand," Lewis said. He was trying to. A piece of jewelry? Was this like the cursed necklace had been, iron to strangle, iron to kill? There was iron, there was steel… The more he tried to make the room clear, to read the labels, the more they wavered. His conscious mind fought for clarity, pushing the dream away.

The hound nosed at one cabinet and he looked where She stood, trying to see even as he felt himself waking, as he pushed against the gathering dusk.

A white cross gleamed against the dark background, a cross and some other things. A brooch? A decoration? A white cross, surrounded by something… No, not a cross. A five pointed star, the magician's protective pentagram...

Lewis woke. He sat up in bed, alone in the rented cottage in Hawaii, sunlight streaming in through the window. The sound of water running in the bath upstairs and the empty space beside him suggested that Alma was already up. He shook his head, trying to shake the sleep from his eyes. "I don't understand," he said aloud. His voice was loud in the empty room, all of the events of the night before rushing back. He had gone to sleep worrying about Pelley and the fetch, and Diana had tried to show him. But what did the dream mean? As usual, Lewis felt two steps behind.

It was half an hour before Lewis sat at the dining room table with a cup of coffee, still unshaved but at least dressed, while Dora and Merilee played some game that involved running around and around the table and chairs screaming. They'd already had breakfast and Stasi looked like she'd been through the wars, and Mrs. Fong took mercy on her, taking the girls into the kitchen to help shell peas for lunch. The radio was blaring a cowboy show from the living room, presumably for Douglas, who must also have already eaten given the amount of crumbs under the table and the glass half full of Ovaltine sitting on the table amid pieces of cut up newspaper. It looked like someone had taken pinking shears to the advertising sections.

"Where's Mitch?" Lewis asked blearily.

"He drove Jerry and Jimmy over to the dig," Stasi said. She frowned. "He should have been back by now."

At that moment the front door opened and a second later Mitch came in, putting the keys back in his pocket. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to worry you."

"You didn't, darling." Stasi leaned back against the sideboard, her cigarette in hand. She seemed suddenly to notice it and pulled it out of the holder, grimacing, and ground it out in the nearest ashtray. "Why would I worry about you just because someone nearly had a fatal accident last night?"

"I didn't nearly have a fatal accident, and I'm fine." Mitch poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot sitting on the end of the sideboard. "I stopped by to see how George was this morning."

"And?" Alma asked, coming in the other door, her hair wet and her face shiny.

"Bea says he's fine. He's gone to work."

"That's something," Alma said. She looked at Lewis, reading something from his expression. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know," Lewis said, and he told them the dream, about the hound and the white pentagram in the case and the palace in the lake.

Stasi took off her apron, twisting it in her hands. "Herrenchiemsee," she said.

"Gesundheit," Mitch said.

She swatted him with the apron. "The palace. It's Herrenchiemsee, in Bavaria. Built fifty years ago by Mad King Ludwig as a copy of Versailles. It's remarkably easy to burgle."

"Oh." Mitch looked impressed. "Have you?"

"Let's not delve into that too closely, shall we?" Stasi smirked. "But it's been open to the public since just after the war. It's very pretty."

Alma frowned. "Is it a museum?"

"There are some minor pieces in addition to the palace itself, but no great works of art," Stasi replied. "It has a collection related to Ludwig's family. A rather nice portrait of old Max Joseph. A lovely Meissen chandelier."

"Did you burgle a chandelier?" Mitch asked. "I can just see you stealing a huge china chandelier."

"I didn't steal the chandelier," Stasi said. "It's still there."

"What else is there?" Alma asked.

"Some uniforms and clothing. A couple of nineteenth century wedding gowns displayed on store models. Some Christening gowns and little shoes."

"Those are the kinds of things Pelley or someone else could use for correspondences," Alma said thoughtfully. "Personal items, not works of art. And we've seen him go after antiquities before."

"Were there any military decorations?" Lewis asked. He kept trying to make the picture come clear in his mind, but he had been half awake and it eluded him. But he thought he'd seen something like it before.

Stasi nodded. "A couple of cases of them. I don't think I ever looked at them closely." She gave Lewis a brilliant smile. "They're not that valuable, darling."

Mitch shook his head. "But what do we do about it, Al? If somebody is going to steal something from Herrenchiemsee, which is six thousand miles away, and use it for a correspondence, what are we supposed to do about it?" He looked at Lewis. "Why would Diana tell you? I don't think she would unless there was something you could actually do?"

"I don't know. But there must be something I'm supposed to do about it." Lewis frowned. "I don't think we've seen the last of Pelley, and after last night…."

"We can't let him do something else like last night," Alma said briskly. "George may be fine, but the next person Pelley aims at won't be."

"Can he just do this anywhere in the world if he has an item?" Lewis asked.

"I don't think so," Mitch said thoughtfully. "That would take a huge amount of energy."

"If he could, he wouldn't be here in Hawaii," Alma said. "No, he may have some correspondence that reaches George, but he needed to be in close proximity. He needed to actually hand him the business card for the fetch to home in on. He couldn't do it from California or he would have."

"That makes sense," Lewis said.

"We need to talk to Jerry about this," Alma said. "I take it he's gone out to the dig?"

"I took him to work," Mitch said. "And I think we should talk to Bea too. She knows a lot, and her Lodge could be helpful."

"Not to mention that George is the one with the correspondence Pelley was homing in on," Alma said.

Mitch sat down at the table, cupping his hands around his coffee cup. "Bea says that Pelley is hunting people who were famous soldiers in the past. And she thinks he's not the top guy. She thinks the trail leads back to the German government."

"Then they don't need to steal whatever it is," Stasi observed. "Just go get it. It's in a national museum in Bavaria. Just have someone borrow it for study or conservation or whatever."

Alma took a deep breath, and Lewis knew what she was thinking. This was impossible. How do you prevent the legitimate owners of something from using it when you're six thousand miles away and have no right to it?

"We need to have a serious conversation," Mitch said. "All of us, with Jerry here. And Bea and George. You need to hear what she has to say, Al. I can't do it justice."

Al's brows twitched. "You think we won't believe it. That it's too far out there."

Mitch didn't say anything, just looked at her steadily.

"But you do," Stasi said. She came and stood behind his chair, one hand on his shoulder.

Mitch nodded. "Yeah," he said slowly. "I do."

"Ok," Al said. "That's good enough for me. Let's get together and talk about it."

I
t was raining hard by mid-morning, a strong west wind lashing against the windows of the borrowed office, and Jerry was glad he’d had the sense to avoid the dig today. Not that he couldn’t manage if he had to, but it would be painfully hard, and exceedingly wet, and it was much more pleasant in the museum’s back rooms. At the moment, the worktable was covered with the more interesting objects they had found, laid out in clustered that approximated their relative positions in situ. It was mostly the detritus of daily life — fishhooks, bits of stone tools, shells pierced for decoration, ordinary and homely and fascinating. Their map of the site was unrolled on the smaller table, its edges weighted with a poi-masher, a giant clamshell, and a very worn stone figure, and he moved from one to the other, updating the map with the most recent finds and letting the patterns wash over him.

If this were the Mediterranean or Egypt — or the Levant — he’d be certain what he was looking at: a perfectly ordinary village, unremarkable in any way. A tantalizing glimpse of how ordinary islanders lived before the arrival of the white man, but hardly a major find. Definitely nothing that supported the idea of a Chinese discovery of Hawaii.