"Herr Lasche will see you now, Mr. Kirk. If you don't mind, Karl will search you before you go up."
Tom nodded, knowing he had little choice.
The first guard approached Tom with a black handheld scanner that he passed over his body, pausing only when it bleeped as it went over his wrist. Tom lifted his sleeve to reveal his watch, a stainless steel Rolex Prince that he wore whenever he traveled abroad. The guard insisted that he hand it over for closer inspection. Tom winced as the man grasped its fragile winder in his thick hands and roughly turned it a few times to check that it worked. Satisfied, he returned it to Tom and escorted him to the elevator.
Tom stepped inside but, rather than follow him, the guard simply leaned in, waved a card across a white panel, and then stepped back. Tom's last sight before the doors closed and the elevator started up, was of the three men standing in the lobby staring at him, arms folded with menacing intent.
The door opened into a large room where the decor left Lasche's interests in little doubt. Three windows ran along the left-hand wall, but their shutters were closed, narrow fingers of light seeping through the slats. In between, ornate arrangements of antique swords, pistols, and rifles radiated like steel flowers, the polished metal glinting fiercely.
Looking up, Tom saw that the ceiling had been removed, allowing the room to extend right up into the attic space. Overhead, naked joists were exposed like the ribs of a wrecked ship. And from each joist a regimental flag had been suspended, the once bright colors now sun-bleached and battle-worn, even bloodstained in a few places. Along the right-hand wall, brass helmets were displayed in glass cases, their polished domes adorned with a mixture of eagle feathers, bear fur, and horsehair. Beneath them, a second tier of cabinets was crammed with artifacts — guns, bullets, medals, cap badges, ceremonial daggers, bayonets. Even the desk had been assembled from an uncompromising slab of black granite supported by four huge brass shell casings.
But Tom's attention was immediately grabbed by a massive bronze cannon that sat parallel to the desk on two thick oak plinths. He stepped closer to study the strange characters that encircled its girth. In the room's dimmed light, the cannon's tarnished hulk glowed with a dark menace that was at once terrifying and utterly compelling. He found himself unable to resist stroking its smooth flanks, the metal tight and warm like a racehorse who had just come off the track.
"Beautiful, isn't she?"
The sound of Lasche's voice made Tom jump. A door had opened to the right of the desk to admit a man in a wheelchair, closely followed by what appeared to be a male nurse, his white coat worn open over a shiny gray suit, his blond hair clipped short. He was eyeing Tom sourly, gripping the brown bag in one hand.
Lasche himself was almost bald, the few remaining wispy hairs scraped back across his scalp, which was pink and covered with liver spots. The skin hung off his face like an oversized glove and seemed thin and papery, the red capillaries beneath the surface lending a faint thread of color to his unhealthy yellow sheen. His gray, misty eyes peered at Tom through thick steel-framed glasses. Tom thought he detected a few crumbs from an interrupted snack on his lapel.
"It's a sister to the cannons the British melted down in order to provide the metal for the Victoria Cross," Lasche continued in a German accent that seemed almost comically thick, although frail and weak compared to the robust whirring of the wheelchair's electric motor as he drew near. Strapped to the undercarriage and back of the wheelchair were a variety of gas bottles and small black boxes from which ran wires and tubes that disappeared into the front of his pajamas and the sleeves of his brown silk dressing gown.
"I was hoping to sell this one to the British government when they ran out of metal…" He spoke haltingly, drawing breath with a deep, rasping, asthmatic rattle between sentences. "Unfortunately for me, however, their stock at the Central Ordnance Depot in Donnington remains unexhausted. It seems that British heroism has been in short supply recently."
The wheelchair jerked to a halt a few feet from Tom, and Lasche smiled at his own joke. His lips were blue and veiny, his teeth yellow and worn. An oxygen mask hung limply around his neck like a loose scarf.
"So it's Chinese?" Tom asked.
Lasche nodded laboriously. "You know your history, Mr. Kirk," he said, obviously impressed. "Most people think the metal used to make the Victoria Cross came from Russian cannons captured at the battle of Sebastopol in the Crimean War. But, yes, in fact it came from Chinese weapons. Apparently, the man sent to retrieve them confused Cyrillic with Mandarin. The sort of clerical error that is all too common in the military. Unusually, though, this one did not cost any lives. Still, I don't suppose that's why you're here…?"
"No, Herr Lasche."
"I don't normally receive visitors. But, given your reputation, I thought I would make an exception."
"My reputation?"
"I know who you are. Difficult to be in my business and not to know of you. Not to have heard of Felix, at least." Felix was the name that Tom had been given when he first got into the art-theft game. Once a shield to hide behind, it sat uneasily with him now, reminding him of a past life and a past self that he was trying to escape. "I'd heard you'd retired."
Lasche began to cough, and the nurse, who had been following the exchange with mounting concern, leapt forward and slipped the oxygen mask over his face. Slowly, the coughing subsided and he signaled at Tom to continue.
"I have retired. But I'm looking into something that I wanted your help with."
Lasche shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was muffled by the mask. "You're referring to the bag you sent up? I haven't opened it. Like you, I'm also retired."
"Please, Herr Lasche."
"Herr Lasche is unable to help," the nurse intoned protectively.
"Just take a look," Tom appealed, ignoring the nurse. "It will interest you."
Lasche's large gray eyes considered Tom for a few moments, and then he summoned the nurse forward, his raised arm shaking with the effort. The nurse handed the bag to Tom, fixing him with an accusing stare. Tom drew back the zipper and removed the jacket. The jet-black material was rough against his hands and seemed to radiate a sinister, malevolent presence.
Lasche put the wheelchair in reverse and navigated his way to the far side of his desk, then indicated that Tom should hand the jacket to him. He pulled the oxygen mask away from his face and looked up. For a second, Tom saw in his eyes the man he had once been, strong and determined and healthy, not the shriveled shell he had become.
"The light, please, Heinrich," he muttered to the nurse, who turned on the desk lamp. The lamp shade consisted of six leather panels sewn together with thick black thread and decorated with flowers, small animals, and even a large dragon. It cast a sickly yellow glow across the granite surface. Tom shuddered as it dawned on him that the "leather" was in fact human skin.
"A lone survivor from the extensive private collection of Ilse Koch, wife of the former camp commandant at Buchen-wald," Lasche said softly, noticing Tom's reaction. "I'm told she had a handbag made from the same material."
"But why keep it? It's… grotesque," said Tom, struggling for a word equal to the horror of the lamp, his eyes transfixed by it as the light revealed a spider's web of red capillaries still trapped within the skin.