"That ties in." Turnbull's tone was more positive now.
"What about your end? Any further intel on Weissman?"
"Well, as you can imagine, the records from back then are pretty thin. First sighting we have is in northern Germany. One of the war crimes investigators reports Weissman being picked up, half-starved, near the Polish border by a patrol looking for Nazi officials. He claimed he'd been liberated from Auschwitz and had given the Russians the slip so he could find what was left of his family. Our boys wanted to check that he didn't match the description of anyone they were looking for. He didn't, and the tattoo sort of clinched it for him. Eventually he was offered the choice of asylum in the U.S., Israel, or Britain. He chose us. He'd trained as a chemist before the war and got a job working for a pharmaceutical company. After that, nothing. Not even a parking ticket. He paid his taxes. Lived a quiet life. The model citizen."
"Did he ever travel abroad?"
"He renewed his passport three years ago. Went to Geneva, according to his daughter's statement, to attend some bird-watching conference. Apart from that, he stayed put."
"Clearly he had, or knew, something. Something Ren-wick and your Kristall Blade people wanted enough to kill him for."
"Seems that way." A pause. Then, "Did Connolly find anything in Austria?"
Tom drained his coffee. "I'll tell you in a couple of hours. I'm meeting him for dinner as soon as he gets in."
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Tom had arranged to meet Archie in a restaurant a short walk from the station in the old town. The building, originally a carpenters' guildhall, dated back to 1336. From the outside it resembled a small castle perched on the banks of the river, complete with turret and flagpole.
Inside, a baroque staircase led up to a baronial dining room, oak paneling covered the walls, thick stone mullions separated stained-glass windows emblazoned with various coats of arms. It was a favorite with local banking grandees and tourists alike, but at this hour it was relatively quiet.
"Whiskey," Archie called out as he approached the table where Tom sat waiting for him. "No ice." The waiter looked to Tom in confusion. "Ein Whiskey," Tom confirmed. "Ohne Eis. Danke" Archie dropped his bag to the floor and sat down with a sigh as the waiter disappeared. "Good trip?"
"Delayed, and the stewardess had a mustache. Apart from that, perfect." Tom laughed. "And what did Lammers have to say?"
"Not much. I think the six feet of earth and the gravestone may have been muffling the sound of his voice."
"He's dead?" Tom exclaimed. "Three years ago. House fire."
"Shit!" Tom shook his head ruefully. "So we're right back where we started."
"Not quite." Archie smiled. "It turns out that his niece now lives in his old house. I showed her the photos of the paintings and she took me to see this…" He took Tom's digital camera from his pocket and handed it over.
"It's the same castle as in the painting," said Tom, scrolling through the images.
"You mean it's an exact bloody copy. Lammers donated the window in the fifties after his wife died of cancer."
"Meaning that he must have had access to the original."
"Exactly. Question is, where is it now? Assuming it survived the fire, of course." Archie sniffed. "Do you mind?" He held out a box of Marlboro Reds questioningly. Tom shook his head. He lit up.
"What I'd like to know is what was so important about the painting that he had the window made in the first place?"
"Presuming that it wasn't just because he liked it," said Archie, wrinkling his nose to suggest how unlikely he thought that was.
"What about the niece? Did she know anything?"
"This was all news to her. You should have seen her face when I showed her the photo of Weissman and the two other men in uniform. Guess who she recognized?"
"Uncle Manfred?"
Archie nodded. "She didn't take it very well. But she did give me this." He reached into his bag and pulled out the walnut veneer box. "Said she didn't want it in the house anymore. Open it." Tom turned the small key in the lock and eased back the lid. "It's an Iron Cross," said Archie, drawing heavily on his cigarette.
"Not quite…" Tom had taken the medal out of the box and was studying it intently. In his palm, the forbidding black shape pulsed malevolently under the candle's bluish glow. He rubbed his thumb across it, feeling the raised swastika and the date, 1939, beneath it.
"It's a Knight's Cross," he said. "I've come across them before. Looks the same, but there's a different finish. The ribbon clasp is much more ornate, the edge is ribbed rather than smooth, and the frame is made from silver rather than just lacquered to look like silver."
"So it's a higher award?"
"It's one of the highest the Third Reich could give. I think only about seven thousand were ever awarded, compared to millions of Iron Crosses. They're very rare."
"Meaning that either Lammers was a collector, or…"
"Or it was his and he'd done something that merited special recognition." Tom turned it over and then looked up with a frown. "That's weird."
"What?"
"These normally had an embossed date on the back — 1813, from when they were first issued in the Napoleonic wars."
"What's that one got? I didn't really look."
"You tell me." Tom held it out, reverse side up. It was engraved with a series of seemingly random lines and curves and circles that looked for all the world like the mindless doodling of a young child.
"You know, there was a medal like this round the neck of that mannequin at Weissman's house. I had to unclip it before I could get the jacket off."
"Worth checking out," Tom said. "Anything else in here?" He picked up the box and shook it.
"I don't think so," Archie said with a half smile. "Take a look for yourself."
Tom opened the box again, carefully studying its interior. Finding nothing, he put his index finger into the main compartment to measure its depth. It came up only to his second knuckle.
"That's strange," he muttered, frowning.
He pressed his finger against the side of the box. This time, it came right up to his knuckle. The inside was an inch shallower than it should have been.
"There's a false bottom," Tom exclaimed.
"I think so," said Archie. "Christ knows how to open it, though. I thought you might have seen something like it before, so I didn't muck about too much. Didn't want to break it."
"It's like one of those Russian trick boxes. Normally you have to slide one of the pieces of wood to get inside."
Given the lack of dents or telltale ridges in the box's glossy, unbroken veneer, it was not immediately apparent which section might move. So Tom tried each side in turn, pressing his thumb against the wood, just above the bottom edge, and pushing it away from him.
Nothing.
He repeated the exercise in reverse, tugging each side toward him. Again nothing moved initially, but his persistence was finally rewarded by the bottom section of the right side moving maybe a quarter of an inch to reveal a tiny hairline crack. But there his progress stalled, for no matter how hard he pulled the lip of wood that sat raised above the front of the box, nothing would come free.
"Try the opposite side," Archie suggested. "Maybe there's some sort of locking mechanism. It might have released a panel on the other side."
Tom tried to slide the opposite panel sideways, then down, then up. On his last attempt it moved easily, rising about two inches and exposing a small drawer with an ivory handle. His eyes wide with anticipation, Tom slid the drawer out.