“Thirty-eight years old, and after all that he did,” Strasser said, “I’d say that’s young. It frankly makes me uneasy.”
Schneider, always “Young Schneider” to them, said, “That Berlin flight was amazing. We shouldn’t even be here now.”
“Well, we are, and the work continues,” the Baron said.
As the Cold War extended, the position of the great estate of Holstein Heath became more ambivalent, but von Berger’s position as one of West Germany’s leading industrialists gave him the right international contacts needed to block anything the East German regime could do.
The estate had developed a prosperity beyond belief, with Karl Hoffer as general manager, and young Schneider as his assistant. Von Berger poured in money and totally refurbished the castle, using the apparently inexhaustible funds from Geneva. He even had a runway constructed in the meadow, big enough for small planes to land.
Any overt support of Nazi ideals was not part of his agenda. It would have been counterproductive anyway, but gradually over the years there was a quiet coming together of others whose names were on the lists in Hitler’s briefcase. Not the Kameradenwerk, the Action for Comrades that Hitler had mentioned, but a sort of secret brotherhood, almost like a Masonic order, with Max von Berger as a kind of godfather. Anyone with the right background, the right ideas, could turn to him and get a hearing, a handout, help. Always discreet, always reasonable, a legend to the former soldiers of the German army, there was nothing the authorities could complain of.
The truth was that the brutal death of his wife and son had killed something inside him in a single devastating moment. He had taken his revenge, which had proved no revenge. It had, as he’d read in a poem, made of his heart a stone, left him curiously lacking in emotion.
The years rolled on, and in 1970 that emotionally cold heart found release when, at forty-eight years of age, he formed an attachment for a young Italian woman named Maria Rossi. Attractive and clever, with a degree in accounting, she became a personal assistant, traveling the world with him, and the inevitable happened.
Von Berger fought against his feelings for her, for it seemed a betrayal of his wife, but before he had to make any final decision, the situation resolved itself. She left him quite suddenly, leaving behind a brief apologetic letter telling him that family business had called her away to Palermo. He never heard from her again.
Time went by, and people started to die on him. First, Schneider was killed in a stupid accident on the estate when a tractor he was driving turned over, crushing him to death. Strasser went next with lung cancer, ten years later.
Von Berger went to the funeral with Hoffer. It was 1982 and he was sixty.
“The grim reaper is spacing things out, Karl, have you noticed?”
“It had occurred to me, Baron.”
Hoffer had remarried in middle life: a cousin, a widow from the village. She had died of a heart attack only a year before. He was two years older than von Berger. “So what do we do?”
“Gird our loins. I’ve been thinking of going into the arms business, and there’s always oil, especially with Russia opening up.”
“May I ask why you need to do that, Baron?” Hoffer said patiently. “You already have enormous wealth.”
“My dear Karl, more than even you could imagine. But my life lacks purpose, Karl. There is an emptiness I cannot fill. Maria Rossi made me warm for a while, and then went. This void in me – I must fill it, and work and enterprise are the only way.” He clapped Hoffer on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about me, Karl. I’ll sort it out.”
The following day, back at the Schloss, he visited the chapel, opened the secret place, and leafed through the Hitler diary. He had read it so many times that he almost knew it by heart. There had never been any occasion to use it and as he replaced it now, he wondered if there ever would be.
He sat there for a while by the mausoleum, thinking of his wife and son, then took a deep breath and stood up. So, Russian oil fields and armaments. So be it. And he went out.
By 1992, he was seventy, his holdings in Russian oil extensive because of the temporary loss of the Kuwaiti oil fields in the Gulf War and the embargos placed on Iraqi oil. The money simply poured in, and the continuing threat in the Middle East and India and Pakistan made for more and more lucrative deals in the arms business.
In both Britain and the United States, there was unease at the highest level about his various dealings, but he didn’t care. He was now head of a consortium so staggeringly wealthy that his power was immense.
In 1997, James Kelly died in New York, but later in the same year, the Baron suffered his greatest blow of all when Karl Hoffer passed away with a heart attack.
The open coffin was on display in the chapel. Sitting beside it, alone, his hands on the silver handle of the cane he needed to get around these days, he thought of their years together in the war and that last final flight from Berlin.
“So, it would appear I am the last, old friend. My hip bothers me a great deal these days. You remember our old wartime motto: To the men of the SS, nothing is impossible.” He sighed, then gathered himself together. “So back to work.”
He limped out, and the chapel door slammed behind him. It was quiet, lit only by the guttering candles. Little did he know that just around the corner, a series of events were waiting that would change his life forever.
London
The Empty Quarter
Iraq
3.
THE FOLLOWING YEAR was the first time he met Paul Rashid, the Earl of Loch Dhu. The legendary figure behind Rashid Investments, the earl had had an English mother and an Omani general for a father, and had served in the SAS during the Gulf War. The Rashid wealth was well known, as was their grip on the oil fields of Hazar, and also in the Dhofar, for Paul Rashid was Bedu and controlled the vast deserts of the Empty Quarter.
Berger International had sought oil concessions in the Dhofar, but even the Americans hadn’t been able to break the iron control of the Rashids. The Baron tried a different approach. He arranged an arms deal with Yemen, then asked Rashid Investments to broker it for him, reporting directly to him. In this way he hoped, of course, to get to meet Paul Rashid, and one day he received a message that the chairman would meet him in the Piano Bar at the Dorchester Hotel.
He arrived in the early evening as stipulated and ordered a whiskey – an Irish. He’d always favored that. He sat, hands on the handle of his cane, and noticed a supremely beautiful woman pause at the entrance. She wore a black jumpsuit, her black hair hanging to her shoulders and framing a face that could have belonged to the Queen of Sheba. And then she came down the steps and approached him.
“Baron von Berger?”
“Why, yes.” He started to rise.
“No, don’t get up.” She pulled a chair forward. “I’m Lady Kate Rashid.”
He was totally thrown. “My dear young lady, I was expecting Lord Loch Dhu.”
“But you asked for a meeting with the chairman of Rashid Investments, and that’s me. My brother prefers to stay in the shadows, so to speak.” She laughed. “Don’t look so surprised. I did manage to get an M.A. in business at Oxford. Now let’s have a glass of champagne and you can tell me how we can possibly help the great Baron Max von Berger to do something he can’t do for himself.”
She called to Guiliano, the bar manager, and ordered house champagne. “Don’t worry, it’s the best in the place, but then everything here is the best. So, Baron…”