When
the line between crime and justice blurs...
After being hunted
by the Chavez drug cartel, former FBI agent Taylor Jones is thrust into
a new identity courtesy of the Witness Security Program. Now she's
almost enjoying her quiet new life with a nice, normal guy.
Until her next
door neighbor turns up dead, and a stray bullet barely misses her.
Her trust in her
protectors shattered, Taylor strikes out on her own to find out why
someone powerful enough to circumvent WITSEC wants her dead. She
discovers a chilling connection between the South American cocaine
trade, terrorism and a secretive cabal that began with the fall of Nazi
Germany...and whose influence reaches all the way to the White House.
But even more
frightening, her nice normal guy is at the center of it all.
Portland, Maine
12th
October, 1984
The powerful beam of a
flashlight probed the darkness, skimming over breaking waves as they
sluiced between dark fingers of rock. Hunching against an icy Southerly
and counting steps as she picked her way through a treacherous labyrinth
of tidal pools, a lean, angular woman swung the beam inland. Light
pinpointed the most prominent feature on the exposed piece of coastline,
a gnarled, embattled birch that marked the beginning of a steep path.
Breath pluming on the
chill air, she followed the track that led to the rotted remains of a
mansion that had once commanded the promontory, and which had burned
down almost thirty years ago to the day.
Memories crowded with
each step, flickering one after the other, isolated and stilted like the
wartime newsreels she’d watched as a child. The wind gusted,
razor-edged with sleet, but the steady rhythm of the climb and the
purpose that had pulled her away from a warm chandelier lit room and an
ambassadorial reception, to this—a mausoleum of the dead, for the
dead--kept the autumn cold at bay.
Thirty years ago, the
man who had hunted her, the Jewish banker turned Nazi hunter, Stefan le
Clerc, had almost succeeded. He had tracked her and her father and the
Schutzstaffel, the SS officer who had been tasked with caring for
them, through a series of international business transactions. Somehow
le Clerc, a former banker, had broken though the layers of paper
companies that should have protected them and found their physical
address.
Dengler had shot him,
but not fatally. In the ensuing struggle, le Clerc had turned the
tables on Dengler, wounding him, then he had shot her father at point
blank range. She had had no doubt le Clerc would have killed her if she
hadn’t barricaded both Dengler and le Clerc into the ancient store room
where they were grappled together, and set it ablaze.
The fire had been
terrifying, but it had served its purpose. The two men and her father’s
body had been consumed within minutes. In the smoking aftermath any
evidence of gunshot wounds the skeletal remains might have yielded had
been wiped out by a substantial cash payment to the Chief of Police.
The weeks following her father’s death had been difficult, but money had
smoothed the way and, at eighteen years of age, she had been old enough
to conclude all of the legal requirements and make arrangements to
secure herself.
Ice stung her cheeks
as she paused by a small sturdy shed and dug a set of keys out of the
pocket of her coat. A gust flattened stiffened oilskin against her body
and whipped blonde strands, now streaked with gray, across her cheeks,
reminding her of a moment even further in the past.
1944.
She had been boarding the Nordika.
She shoved the key in
the lock, her fingers stiff with cold. She had been...seven-years-old?
Eight?
She didn’t know why
that moment had stuck with her. After years of heady victory then
horror, it hadn’t been significant. The wind had been howling off the
Baltic, right up the cold alley that Lubeck was in the dead of winter,
and it had been freezing. Aside from the lights illuminating the deck
of the Nordika, and the dock—in direct contravention of the blackout
regulations--it had been pitch black. After hours spent crouching in
the back of a truck, sandwiched cheek-by-jowl with the other children,
the lights and the frantic activity had been a welcome distraction, but
hardly riveting.
And yet, she had
remembered that moment vividly. A crate had been suspended above the
ship’s hold as she’d walked up the gangplank, the swastika stenciled on
its side garishly spotlighted, the crane almost buckling under the
weight as the crate swayed in the wind. The captain had turned to watch
her, his eyes blank, and for a moment she had felt the power her father
had wielded. The power of life and death.
Slipping the shed key
back into her pocket, she stepped inside out of the wind, pulled the
door closed behind her and engaged the interior locks. She played the
beam of the flashlight over the dusty interior of the shed then reached
down and pulled up the hatch door that had once been the entrance to the
mansion’s storm cellar. Flashlight trained below, she descended to the
bottom of the ladder, crossed a cavernous, empty area, ducked beneath a
beam and unlocked a second door.
Here the walls were
irregular, chiseled from the limestone that formed a natural series of
caves; some that led down almost to the sea. The beam of the flashlight
swept the room. It was a dank and cold museum, filled with echoes of a
past that would never be resurrected and a plethora of unexpected
antiquities; some that took even her breath away.
A dowry to smooth
their way in the new world and ensure their survival.
Moldering uniforms
hung against one wall. For a moment, in the flickering shadows, they
took on movement and animation, as if the SS officers they had once
belonged to had sprung to life. Her father, Oberst Reichmann.
Hauptmann Ernst, Oberleutnant Dengler, Leutnants Webber, Lindeberg,
Konrad, Dietrich and Hammel.
It was a terrible
treasure house but, despite the fact that by right of her genetic
heritage she had become the custodian, she wasn’t locked in the past;
the future was much too interesting.
Provided they were
never discovered.
She’d studied the news
reports over the years as one after the other of their kind had been
cornered and killed, or imprisoned in various countries, but she was too
disciplined to let emotion or bitterness take hold. She was nothing, if
not her father’s daughter.
Crouching down, she
unlocked a safe. Her fingers, still stiff with cold, slid over the
mottled leather binding of a book. Relocking the safe, she set the book
down on a dusty table and turned fragile pages until she found the
entries she needed. Names, birth dates,
genetic lineage, blood types; and the numbers the institute had tattooed
into their backs.
The older entries,
written in an elegant copperplate hand, had faded with time. The more
recent additions, the false names, IRS numbers and addresses, were
starkly legible.
The documentation of
the link they all was an unconscionable risk and a protective
mechanism. They were all ex-Nazis and illegal aliens; the surviving
Schutzstaffel were gazetted war criminals. Collectively, they were all
thieves. They had stolen the spoils of war from a dozen nations to
cushion a new life, and murdered to secure it.
Every one of them was
vulnerable to discovery. The agreed penalty for exposing a member of
the group, or compromising the group as a whole, by necessity, was
death.
She turned to the last
section of the book, and the half dozen names noted there, and added a
seventh: Johannes Webber, now known as George Hartley. It was an
execution list.
Slipping a plastic bag
from the pocket of her coat, she wrapped and sealed the book, which was
no longer safe in this location, and carried it with her when she left.
She would make arrangements in the morning to relocate the rest of the
items, and destroy those that couldn’t be moved.
Cold anger flowed
through her as she locked the door of the shed and started down the
steep path, hampered by the powerful wind and driving sleet. She hadn’t
used the book for almost a decade. But then, as now, the need to use it
had been triggered by a betrayal. Webber, the old fool, had talked.
After all these years,
the Nordika had been located.
14 October, 1984,
Cancun.
She stepped into the
foyer of a popular resort hotel, took a seat and waited. Seconds later,
she was joined by a narrow-faced Colombian. Her Spanish was halting and
a little rusty, but her lack of fluency scarcely mattered. Mendez spoke
English and he already knew what she wanted.
The conversation
concluded she got to her feet and left, leaving an envelope on the
seat. She didn’t turn to check that the man had picked up the
envelope. He was there for the money: a very large sum of money.
Twenty-five percent now, seventy-five percent when the job was done.
She had found that if she paid fifty percent up front, the hitter
invariably took the money and ran. With the majority of the money on
hold, greed guaranteed completion.
