The Charlemagne Pursuit (Cotton Malone 4)

He quickly spied the surroundings and saw a quadrangular-shaped room adorned with colonnades that rose on four sides, long galleries above and beneath. At the far end, illuminated by weak incandescent fixtures, hung the symbol of the former German Empire-a black, red, and gold banner emblazoned with an eagle. The black yaw of a stone fireplace, large enough for several people to stand inside, opened beneath it.

"Split up," she said. "You go up."

Before he could object, she rushed ahead into the darkness.

He spotted a staircase that led up to the second-floor gallery and moved lightly toward the first step. Blackness numbed his eyes. Niches were everywhere, dark voids where, he worried, more ill-disposed retainers could lie in wait.

He crept up the stairs and entered the upper gallery, embracing the darkness, hovering a couple of yards away from the balustrade. A shadow entered the hall below, backlit by light slanting in from the corridor beyond. Eighteen chairs lined a massive dining table. Their gilded backs stood rigid, like soldiers in a line, except for two, which Christl had apparently crawled beneath since she was nowhere to be seen.

A laugh permeated the stillness. "You're dead, Malone."

Fascinating. The man knew his name.

"Come and get me," he called out, knowing the hall would generate an echo and make it impossible to pinpoint his location.

He saw the man probe the darkness, surveying the arches, noticing a tiled stove in one corner, the massive table, and a brass chandelier that loomed over it all.

Malone fired below.

The bullet missed.

Footsteps rushed toward the stairway.

Malone darted ahead, turned the corner, and slowed as he found the opposite gallery. No footsteps could be heard from behind, but the gunman was definitely there.

He stared down at the table. Two chairs remained out of place. Another toppled back and crashed to the floor, sending a thud resounding through the hall.

A gunshot volley, from across the upper gallery, rained down and obliterated the tabletop. Luckily the thick wood handled the assault. Malone fired across the gallery to where the muzzle flashes had appeared. Rounds now came his way, ricocheting off stone behind him.

His eyes searched the darkness, trying to see where the assailant might be. He'd tried to divert attention by calling out, but Christl Falk, whether intentionally or not, had ruined that effort. Behind him, more black niches lined the wall. Ahead was equally bleak. He caught movement on the opposite side-a form, heading his way. He clung to the darkness, crouched and crept forward, turning left to traverse the hall's short side.

What was happening? This man had come for him.

Christl suddenly appeared below in the center of the hall, standing in the weak light.

Malone did not reveal his presence. Instead, he settled into the shadows, hugged one of the arches, and peered around its edge.

"Show yourself," Christl called out.

No reply.

Malone abandoned his position and moved faster, trying to double back behind the gunman.

"Look, I'm walking away. If you want to stop me, you know what you're going to have to do."

"Not smart," a man said.

Malone stopped at another corner. Ahead, halfway down the gallery, the attacker stood, facing away. Malone cast a quick glance downward and saw that Christl was still there.

A cold excitement steadied his nerve.

The shadow before him raised his weapon.

"Where is he?" the man asked her. But she did not reply. "Malone, show yourself or she's dead."

Malone crept forward, gun level, and said, "I'm right here."

The man's gun stayed angled downward. "I can still kill Frau Lindauer," he calmly said.

Malone caught the error but made clear, "I'll shoot you long before you can pull that trigger."

The man seemed to consider his dilemma and turned slowly toward Malone. Then his movements accelerated as he tried to swing the assault rifle around, pulling the trigger at the same time. Bullets pinged through the hall. Malone was about to fire when another retort banged off the walls.

The man's head wrenched back as he stopped firing.

His body flew away from the railing.

Legs teetered, off balance.

A cry, quick and startled, strangled into silence as the gunman collapsed to the floor.

Malone lowered his weapon.

The top of the man's skull was gone.

He approached the railing.

Below, on one side of Christl Falk stood a tall, thin man with a rifle pointed upward. On the other side was an elderly woman who said to him, "We appreciate the distraction, Herr Malone."

"It wasn't necessary to shoot him."

The old woman motioned and the other man lowered his rifle.

"I thought it was," she said.

TWENTY-SIX

MALONE DESCENDED TO GROUND LEVEL. THE OTHER MAN AND older woman still stood with Christl Falk.

"This is Ulrich Henn," Christl said. "He works for our family."

"And what does he do?"

"He looks after this castle," the old woman said. "He's the head chamberlain."

"And who are you?" he asked.

Her eyebrows raised in apparent amusement and she threw him a smile with the teeth of a jack-o'-lantern. She was unnaturally gaunt, almost birdlike in appearance, with burnished gray-gold hair. Forked veins lined her spindly arms and liver spots dotted her wrists.

"I am Isabel Oberhauser."

Though welcome seemed on her lips, the eyes were more uncertain.

"Am I supposed to be impressed?"

"I am the matriarch of this family."

He pointed at Ulrich Henn. "You and your employee just killed a man."

"Who entered my house illegally with a weapon, trying to kill you and my daughter."

"And you just happened to have a rifle handy, along with a person who can blow the top of a man's head off from fifty feet away in a dimly lit hall."

"Ulrich is an excellent shot."

Henn said nothing. He apparently knew his place.

"I didn't know they were here," Christl said. "I was under the impression Mother was away. But when I saw her and Ulrich enter the hall, I motioned for him to stand ready while I drew the gunman's attention."

"Stupid move."

"It seemed to work."

And it also told him something about this woman. Facing down guns took guts. But he couldn't decide if she was smart, brave, or an idiot. "I don't know too many academicians who'd do what you did." He faced the older Oberhauser. "We needed that gunman alive. He knew my name."

"I noticed that, too."

"I need answers, not more puzzles, and what you did complicated an already screwed-up situation."

"Show him," Isabel said to her daughter. "Afterward, Herr Malone, you and I can talk privately."

He followed Christl back to the main foyer, then upstairs into one of the bedchambers where, in a far corner, a colossal tile stove bearing the date 1651 stretched to the ceiling.

"This was my father's and grandfather's room."

She entered an alcove where a decorative bench jutted below a mullioned window.

"My ancestors, who originally built Reichshoffen in the thirteenth century, were fanatical about being trapped. So every room possessed at least two exits-this one no exception. In fact, it was afforded the utmost in security for the time."

She applied pressure to one of the mortar joints and a wall section opened, revealing a spiral staircase that wound down in a counterclockwise direction. When she flicked a switch a series of low-voltage lamps illuminated the darkness.

He followed her inside. At the bottom of the staircase she flicked another switch.

He noticed the air. Dry, warm, climate-controlled.

The floor was gray slate framed by thin lines of black grout. The coarse stone walls, plastered and also painted gray, bore evidence that they had been hacked from bedrock centuries ago.

The chamber cut a twisting path, one room dissolving into another, forming a backdrop for some unusual objects. There were German flags, Nazi banners, even a replica of an SS altar, fully prepared for the child-naming ceremonies he knew were common in the 1930s. Countless figurines, a toy soldier set laid out on a colorful map of early-twentieth-century Europe, Nazi helmets, swords, daggers, uniforms, caps, windcheater jackets, pistols, rifles, gorgets, bandoliers, rings, jewelry, gauntlets, and photographs.

"This is what my grandfather spent his time, after the war, accumulating."

"It's like a Nazi museum."

"Hitler's discrediting profoundly hurt him. He served the bastard well, but never could understand that he meant nothing to the Socialists. For six years, up until the war ended, he tried every way he could to gain back favor. Until he lost his mind utterly in the 1950s, he collected all this."

"That doesn't explain why the family kept it."

"My father respected his father. But we rarely come down here."

She led him to a glass-topped case. Inside, she pointed to a silver ring with ss runes depicted in a way he'd never seen before. Cursive, almost italicized. "They're in the true Germanic form, as on ancient Norse shields. Fitting, because these rings were only worn by the Ahnenerbe." She drew his attention to another item in the case. "The badge with the Odel rune and short-armed swastika was also only for the Ahnenerbe. Grandfather designed them. The stickpin is quite special-a representation of the sacred Irminsul, or Life Tree of the Saxons. It supposedly stood atop the Rocks of the Sun at Detmold and was destroyed by Charlemagne himself, which started the long wars between Saxons and Franks."

"You speak of these relics almost with reverence."

"I do?" She sounded perplexed.

"As if they mean something to you."

She shrugged. "They're simply reminders of the past. My grandfather started the Ahnenerbe for purely cultural reasons, but it evolved into something altogether different. Its Institute for Military Scientific Research conducted unthinkable experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Vacuum chambers, hypothermia, blood coagulation testing. Horrible things. Its Applied Nature Studies created a Jewish bone collection from men and women whom they murdered, then macerated. Eventually several of the Ahnenerbe were hanged for war crimes. Many more went to prison. It became an abomination."