‘Seretse, at the UN. From what that young guy said just before he got shot, I figured the IHA needed to know. I never imagined Seretse would be able to pull strings all the way up to the White House, though.’
‘You got better results than me, then.’
‘Why, who did you call?’
Eddie looked sheepish. ‘Macy. Only person I could think of in LA.’
‘What about Grant? Or even Marvin?’
‘You’ve got Marvin’s business card, so I didn’t have his number. And would you really want Grant having the paparazzi follow him down here?’
‘Good point. Is Macy okay?’
‘Yeah, she’s fine. A bit shaken up, but seeing someone get killed right in front of you’ll do that.’
‘I know,’ she agreed gloomily. ‘I thought I’d left this kind of thing behind me. I’d hoped I had.’
‘Maybe you should’ve let more people know you’d left the IHA. That kid might have given his conspiracy theory to someone else. What was in those papers, anyway?’
‘Something about the dig in Alexandria. I didn’t have time to see much, but he’d definitely got inside information — there was a plan of the outer tomb with specific archaeological notations on it.’ She turned to the FBI agents. ‘Where are the papers now? Some of them got burned up in the limo, and the cops took the rest from me.’
‘They’ve already been taken away for analysis,’ was Beck’s reply. ‘They’ll be brought to you in New York.’
The couple exchanged glances. ‘Okay, what’s going on?’ Eddie demanded. ‘We blow up half of Beverly Hills, and then get to walk away as if nothing’s happened? You said there was a situation — what situation?’
Beck passed a photograph from a manila folder to them. ‘Is this the man who tried to kill you, Dr Wilde?’
Nina stared at the picture. Though the printout was new and glossy, it was clearly from an old source, the image a grainy, dirt-specked monochrome.
The face on it was instantly recognisable, however. Glaring into the camera was her would-be assassin, the scar across his face clearly visible. He was younger in the photograph — she guessed it had been taken about fifteen years earlier — but it was definitely the same man. ‘Yes, it’s him.’
Eddie nodded in agreement. ‘That’s the ugly bugger, yeah. Who is he?’
‘His name is Maximilian Jaekel,’ said Beck. ‘There’s a standing arrest warrant on him from all international and US law enforcement agencies.’
‘Why?’ Nina asked. ‘What did he do?’
‘He’s a wanted war criminal,’ Petrelli told her. ‘He got into the country undetected, but when the Beverly Hills police took fingerprints from his body to check his ID, they were immediately red-flagged.’
‘So what did he want with me?’ Neither agent had an answer.
Eddie looked more closely at the photograph — not at the subject’s face, but his clothing. Only part of it was visible, the image cropped near the base of Jaekel’s neck, but the top of a dark raised collar still showed. ‘You said he’s a war criminal,’ he said slowly. ‘Which war?’ To Nina, it sounded as if he already knew the answer.
Beck hesitated before replying. ‘World War Two.’
‘What?’ said Nina, with almost a laugh of disbelief. ‘The war ended in 1945! This guy was late thirties, forty at most. Someone’s made a mistake.’
‘That’s what we thought too, at first,’ said Beck. ‘But the fingerprints are a perfect match to the ones on file, and everything else confirms it: dental records, the facial scar — even the SS blood group tattoo on his left arm. The body’s already en route to Quantico for further testing, but it looks like the results will be the same.’ His expression became more grim. ‘The man who tried to kill you today was a Nazi war criminal… and was over ninety years old.’
The flight back to New York brought Nina and Eddie into JFK airport in the early hours of the morning. A black SUV transported them and their FBI minders to the city.
Nina peered at the rising towers of Manhattan as they approached the East River. ‘I didn’t think I’d be back here so soon,’ she said. Her body was weary, but her eyes never tired of the sight. Even after all her travels, New York was still home.
‘Just hope we can get refunds for the flights we’d already booked,’ Eddie grumbled. They were taking the Queensboro Bridge to 59th Street; the United Nations complex came into view on the far bank, the glass tower of the Secretariat building alight even in the pre-dawn gloom. ‘And that we can get right back to what we were doing without any pissing about.’
There was a pointedness to his words, but she decided to ignore it. For now. ‘Is Seretse already at the UN?’ she asked Beck.
‘He’s there now, yeah,’ the agent replied. ‘He should be ready to meet you by the time we arrive.’
‘Good.’ She leaned back, rereading the file on the mysteriously youthful Maximilian Jaekel. ‘Did you look at this on the plane?’ she asked Eddie.
He nodded. ‘Nice guy, him and all his SS mates. France, Yugoslavia, Greece; they committed atrocities in all of ’em. Scumbags. Can’t believe that most of his unit managed to get away after the war.’
‘They bribed their way out of being sent to trial, apparently.’
A disgusted snort. ‘There isn’t any amount of money you could have paid me to let those Nazi bastards go. If I’d caught them, I would’ve shot ’em on the spot.’
Nina was a firm believer in the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but in this case, with the benefit of historical hindsight, she could entirely sympathise with the former soldier’s viewpoint. ‘It’s a shame someone didn’t do that at the time. It would have saved that kid’s life. Have you found out anything more about him?’ she asked Beck.
‘The victim had a US passport under the name Volker Koenig,’ said Beck, ‘but it was a fake. An extremely good fake — it held up when he arrived at JFK — but it means we don’t even know if that’s really his name. Jaekel also had a fake passport, from the same source.’
‘Koenig came to New York first?’
‘And then travelled on to LA, yeah.’
‘Looking for you,’ Eddie suggested. The idea did not make Nina any more comfortable.
‘Jaekel had been tracking him — we found texts on his phone listing the flights he’d taken,’ Petrelli noted. ‘We’re trying to identify the sender, but it looks like they came from a burner. All we know is that they originated in Italy.’
They continued across the bridge into Manhattan, then headed to the United Nations. Nina expected them to go to the Secretariat building, home to the offices of both Oswald Seretse and the International Heritage Agency, but instead they stopped outside the much lower sweeping block of the General Assembly. The two FBI agents led the way in.
‘Wow,’ said Nina as she entered, stopping in momentary disorientation. The previous day she had been in a replica of the visitors’ lobby on the other side of the continent; now she was in the real thing. ‘It’s like I never left.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ Eddie muttered.
Nina was about to ask him exactly what he meant by that when someone called her name. A tall figure in a blue suit strode towards the group. ‘Oswald!’
‘Good morning, Nina,’ said Oswald Seretse, shaking her hand. The Gambian diplomat, who in addition to his duties at the United Nations was acting as the IHA’s interim director following Nina’s resignation, was immaculately presented as always, despite signs of sleeplessness around his eyes. ‘I’m glad to see you again. Although obviously the circumstances are far from ideal.’
‘You’re not kidding,’ said Eddie. ‘Hey, Ozzy.’
Vexation and amusement fought for dominance of Seretse’s expression, the latter just winning out. ‘Good to see you too, Eddie.’ The Englishman grinned and shook his hand.