Gold would certainly have proved useful for the von Aehrenthals. Egon belonged to an aristocratic family that had risen to the nobility in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father never ceased to tell his golden-haired son that they had once been rich, and fervently expressed his belief that they would be rich again. He told Egon how they had intermarried with the Zvolen line of the perturbingly magnificent Eszterházys, the greatest family in the empire, the ne plus ultra of nobility, the embodiments of refinement and wit and elegance, who had amassed the greatest fortunes and built the most beautiful palaces. Young Egon, brought up to a life of genteel pretension and a slightly shabby existence, was a frequent visitor at Burg Bernstein, the magnificent if somewhat run-down castle at the other end of the village. The castle, now a hotel, dated in one form or another back to the ninth century. Its fame in modern times lay in the fact that the controversial desert explorer, Laszlo Almásy, had been born and brought up there. Almásy, Ethan remembered, had been the English patient in the film of the same name.
Egon’s father had stimulated an interest in the baroque palaces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and from this beginning Egon had built himself a career as a dealer in antiquities. At some point, he had moved away from the gilded rococo grandeurs of the European baroque to the antiquities of the Jewish and Roman Middle East. Ethan made a note to check on what had led him into this new interest.
Egon opened an office on Jerusalem’s David Street, and travelled widely through the surrounding Arab states, with regular visits back to Austria. His early travels were not well documented; but it was not long after embarking on this fresh enterprise that Aehrenthal (still in his late twenties) began to go crooked. Or perhaps that had been his intention all along. He spent three months in an Israeli prison for the illegal export of coins from the Bar Kochva Revolt era. A year later, the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Theft Prevention Unit pursued him about the purchase of items stolen from tombs in the Judaean foothills.
Under surveillance in Israel, he travelled through the Levant as far as Anatolia, then down to Egypt and Libya, where he spent over a year. The Turkish authorities sent him to jail for six months following the break-up of a forgery ring in Antakya, the ancient Antioch. He was later deported.
He had continued like this for several years, moving from place to place, making and losing money, locating and selling genuine artefacts, acting as a front for smuggling and forgery operations.
Ethan made note of dates and places, looking for a pattern, something that might hint where Aehrenthal had gone. Could he have taken Sarah out of the country? he wondered. It would have been difficult, he knew, but not altogether impossible, especially for an experienced smuggler.
At the end of the record was a notation Ethan did not recognise: RE. A brief search revealed that this was an abbreviation for the German Rechtsextremismus: Right-wing extremism. The entry indicated that Aehrenthal had had or still had connections with at least one German or Austrian political grouping of that description. When he clicked on the link, however, a message came onto the screen: Access Prohibited.
11
‘Evil shall hunt the violent man to overthrow him…’
He knew whom he was hunting, but not where. Given his international links, Aehrenthal could be almost anywhere. Sarah might be dead, dumped by the roadside after an interrogation that had given up none of the information the Austrian wanted. Or she could be with him even now, beaten, raped, kept by for a sunny day. Was it possible she did know the things Aehrenthal wanted to drag from her? She was an expert, after all. Maybe she could help him authenticate the relics. That must be what he was after, some sort of certificate of authenticity so he could sell the objects on the black market. Once he had Sarah’s name on a piece of paper, perhaps he’d go higher, find someone at the British Museum, or someone in Jerusalem. The relics could be worth millions to the right people. If he had the nerve, he might even go to the Vatican, ask for money, threaten to destroy the relics if he didn’t get what he asked.
Sarah would have to die at some point, that was obvious. Aehrenthal couldn’t afford to have her on the loose, telling everyone what he’d done. With Ethan taking the rap for the killings, Aehrenthal could probably polish his image with a little cash and start an auction that would end up making him rich for life.
Ethan put ‘Aehrenthal’ into Google and came up with dozens of references to Alois Lexa Graf von Aehrenthal, the ruthless Austro-Hungarian foreign minister who had presided over the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and thus helped plunge Europe into the First World War. Ethan wondered if this Count Aehrenthal had been one of Egon’s ancestors, to whom he owed his fascination with the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy and their lavish palaces.
Narrowing the search by adding ‘Egon’, he came across random references to the antiques trade, to biblical archaeology, and to a football club in Bernstein to which he’d belonged in his teens. Oddest of all was a site for the international Air Sports Federation, which listed Egon as one of many Austrian fliers who had been awarded the Paul Tissandier Diploma for services to the sport. When had Egon learnt to fly? Did he still have a licence? Did he have access to a plane, either one he owned or one he hired?
Ethan went on searching. If Aehrenthal did have a current licence it was most likely to be a JAA-PPL issued by the Austrian Civil Aviation Authority. He started at the Joint Aviation Authority website, then a site for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of Austria. There were no member lists he could access, no licence records to check. If only…
He sat back from the table. His coffee had gone cold, his cake was half eaten. He looked at the clock. Two hours had already passed. He couldn’t stay here much longer. If he had to leave the country, he’d have to be ready by the evening.
For hours he’d been racking his brains. Aehrenthal had not kidnapped Sarah on a whim. For the moment, she was useful to him. He might have settled on a hotel or a rented flat to work from, some place he could invite potential buyers. Only a full-scale police manhunt had any hope of tracking him down if he was still in the UK.
But he might just as easily have planned to get her out of the country. The question had been how. And now he thought he knew. They would dope her, bandage her face, put her in an air ambulance, and fly her somewhere. Somewhere Aehrenthal would feel comfortable working out of. A place in Austria, perhaps. Not Jerusalem: Israeli security was too tight, he’d never take her there.
He took the mobile from his pocket and dialled directory enquiries.
Her name was Lindita. Lindita Cobaj. She hurried into the cafe wearing a dark green anorak trimmed with rabbit fur. Her green and pink hair stood up in spikes, and her ears, lips and nose would never have allowed her through a security barrier armed with a metal detector. If he remembered rightly, she was an average of thirty-two years old, though he’d seen her down as young as twenty-five and as old as forty. She had one of those faces, one of those bodies that transcended age and pain. Neither pretty nor plain, neither skinny nor fat, neither a child nor an adult, she traversed all his preconceptions, all categories, all expectations. He had arrested her six or seven times, borne witness against her in court, grown impatient with her, grown to like and loathe her with equal vigour. She grinned broadly as she caught sight of him.