However, some of Black Flame's goals had been accomplished. John Sinclair, war hero, had been disgraced, and he was totally alone in the world, hunted not only by Black Flame but also by the CIA, which would go to any lengths to make certain he was never in a position to tell about the agency's aborted plan to assassinate innocent American civilians. But then Sinclair turned the tables once again. Branded a renegade and traitor, he appeared to have embraced the labels, virtually cloaking himself in the vilification heaped upon him. In effect, disguising himself. Tearing a chapter or three out of Black Flame's manual on the use of deception and misdirection to achieve goals, he had merrily embarked on a career path that would bring him, presumably, great wealth, and the kind of power one who is feared by a great many people enjoys. Branded a criminal, he would ally himself with a small band of people who fought crime; branded evil, and going out of his way to encourage that perception, he would labor to correct injustice; if Black Flame was a hole in the world through which evil flowed, he would work to stop it up. The duel continued, on a world stage; he would use the very secrets and techniques he had stolen from Black Flame to fight against them. Viewed from this admittedly bizarre angle, it was almost as if John Sinclair, from the moment he had deserted and gone into business as a globe-trotting extortionist, con man, killer, and all-around bad-ass, had actually been engaged in a kind of. . spiritual exercise.
I was getting a headache.
"Mongo?"
I looked up at my brother, who had spoken, and found Harper and Veil looking at me as well. "What?"
"You appear to have drifted away from us. A Swiss franc for your thoughts."
"They're not worth it. This whole discussion probably isn't worth a Swiss franc. In the end, all this speculation about secret society mumbo jumbo and what John Sinclair may or may not really be up to probably isn't worth the paper it's not printed on. It's probably all irrelevant. What is relevant is that I'm the monkey wrench Neuberger dropped into some infernal machine, and I- maybe we-are going to get ground up if I can't find the Off switch pretty damn quick. I'm a target. If it's not Sinclair trying to kill me, then it's somebody else, and it doesn't much matter to me whether it's Sinclair or some bunch of loony, evil-worshipping Japanese assassins. Definitely, the man with the answers I need is John Sinclair. I don't care who's after him. I do care about the people at this table, and he may know how to get me out of the cross fire. That's relevant. So I still have to find him, and so far I can't see how anything we've discovered, or mused on, is of any use. So let's cut to the chase. Garth, what could you find out about the R. Edgar Blake that Duane Insolers referred to?"
Garth reached into his pocket and once again withdrew his notebook. He opened it, studied a page for a few moments, said, "R. Edgar Blake, when he was alive, was a very wealthy fellow. Fortune magazine ranked him number twenty-two one year. His holdings were many, diverse, worldwide. Two of the business articles I read implied that not all of those holdings were on the up-and-up. He seems to have spent a lot of money trying to keep his name out of the newspapers. He had a ton of business interests in the United States, including a pharmaceuticals plant in Texas. R.E.B. Pharmaceuticals held an exclusive patent to manufacture and distribute a drug called gluteathin, or GTN, a very potent hypnotic drug used to treat certain types of psychosis. He was also the founder of Blake College, now defunct, in New York City. He was very reclusive, and there's a strong implication in the literature that he was not a pleasant fellow."
Garth closed the notebook, looked up at me. "A little item of particular interest, brother. Blake was rumored to have had the world's largest private intelligence-gathering network, and supposedly had strong ties to government intelligence agencies around the world, communist as well as Western. The man played all points of the compass. In short, he was very powerful, shadowy, ridiculously wealthy, and an amoral, first-class son-of-a-bitch." Garth paused, raised his eyebrows slightly. "Oh, there is one other thing. Lest I forget, let me hasten to add that R. Edgar Blake was the half brother of Emmet P. Neuberger's grandfather."
"Gee, Garth," I replied evenly, determined not to give my brother the satisfaction of seeing any evidence of the jolt he had just given my nervous system, "I'm really glad you remembered that small bit of information. It certainly is an interesting item. Is that it?"
"Well, there's just a bit more. R. Edgar Blake's principal residence was a castle on the shore of Lake Geneva-which, if I correctly recall my high school geography, is not too far from where we now sit. I believe you also requested that I make a note of any 'countess' that might come to my attention in the course of my exhaustive labors. One did. Living in said castle on the shore of Lake Geneva is one Countess Jan Rawlings."
Chapter Nine
I watched the Swiss countryside roll by outside the passenger's window in the front seat as Garth drove along the highway to Geneva. Harper and Veil sat in the back; Harper dozed, while Veil kept turning in his seat to look for a pale blue Volvo, or anything else that might be following us.
"Jan Rawlings doesn't exactly have the old European ring of a countess's name to it," I said, turning toward Garth.
"You've got that right," Garth replied casually as he glanced in the rearview mirror. "As a matter of fact she's American, an ex-social worker from New York City."
"A who?"
"I know the feeling. That was my first reaction too."
"The closest living relative to one of the richest men in the world was a New York social worker?"
Garth shrugged, again glanced in the rearview mirror. "Maybe Blake didn't share the wealth. Or maybe the woman's just an eccentric. A lot of rich people are, you know. Maybe she enjoyed working for a living. The title could have been bought, or it might be wishful thinking."
"Well, she's certainly in a position now to do a lot of social working."
"Indeed. She not only inherited the castle but Blake's entire estate as well; every last holding, every penny. She's got to be one of the world's wealthiest women."
In the distance, barely visible in the hazy morning, slow-moving shapes that I thought might be helicopters had appeared on the horizon. Helicopters were anything but a rare sight in Switzerland, but for some reason the sight of them made me nervous. There had been no time to try to obtain guns, if guns were obtainable, and this lack of weapons did not exactly generate a feeling of security. I asked, "No other heirs?"
"None that the obituaries mentioned."
The helicopters disappeared into some low clouds, and I turned back toward my brother. "That seems odd, Garth. With that much money at stake, you'd think there would have been third and fourth cousins crawling out of the woodwork to contest the will and claim a piece of the action."
"All I know is what I read. The same obituary that mentioned that Blake and the elder Neuberger were half brothers said she was the sole beneficiary, and the will was uncontested at that time."
"You got anything else on her?"
"Brief articles in a couple of business magazines. It seems she's pretty reclusive herself; she doesn't give interviews. She doesn't flaunt her wealth, doesn't give or go to the usual fancy parties, and generally avoids the social scene altogether. In fact, you might almost say she lives like a social worker. Presumably, she has an army of CEOs and accountants to run her business empire, and she just kind of hangs out in her castle. Rumor has it that she gives away enormous amounts to various charities, but always anonymously."
"Jesus Christ," I said. "Another money-laundering operation?"
"Could be."