"What sort of steps?"
"The window must be destroyed."
"Obviously. And Kirk?"
"They must all be dealt with — Kirk, his colleague, and anyone else they have come into contact with. Find them and kill them. We can't afford to take any more chances."
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Tom had slept badly. Although the two sofas that Dhutta had offered them for the night had been comfortable enough, his overactive mind had kept him awake into the small hours and then woken him again shortly after six. Renwick, Weissman, Lammers, Bellak… What was it that tied them all together? What did they know of the Order?
Eventually, unable to bear Archie's steady snoring any longer, he had got up, showered, and dressed in his usual jeans and a fresh open-necked shirt.
He waited until nine thirty before waking Archie with a cup of coffee that Archie accepted grudgingly, protesting about the hour. He was not a morning person, Tom knew, rarely struggling into the office before midday but then working into the small hours. For Tom, it had always been the other way around.
"What's the hurry?" Archie said reproachfully, pulling his sheets around him as he nursed the coffee cup in both hands.
"I got through to Turnbull last night and explained what we'd found out. He agreed to send Weissman's arm over by medical courier first thing. It should be here any time now."
"You got me out of bed for a courier!" Archie remonstrated.
"Don't tell me you were actually comfortable on that thing." Tom kicked the sofa and a cloud of dust danced above the seat cushion.
"Fair point," Archie conceded.
A bell rang and a few moments later Dhutta appeared, his mustache freshly waxed, his hair still glistening from the shower. In his hand was a small set of amber beads that he was fingering nervously.
"Good morning, gentlemen," he called cheerily. "I hope you both slept well. If you will excuse me, it seems I have a visitor."
"Actually, I think it's for me," Tom admitted.
"Oh?" Tom sensed a flicker of concern in Dhutta's voice.
"I needed something delivered and gave them the directions to the back door. Don't worry," he added, seeing the look on Dhutta's face. "You can trust them."
"You gave a courier company the directions to this place?" Archie laughed. "What did you tell them, second brick on the right and straight on till morning?"
"Something like that." Tom smiled. He turned back to Dhutta as the bell rang again. "I'm sorry, I should have told you yesterday, but I didn't want to disturb you any more than we already had."
Dhutta waved his apology away, although Tom could tell from the stiffness in his shoulders that he was annoyed. Unfortunate, but, given the circumstances, unavoidable.
"If you say I can trust them, Mr. Tom, then that's good enough for me. I will go and let them in."
Archie got up and yawned. He was wearing blue boxer shorts and a white T-shirt, the material as crumpled and creased as his face where he'd been sleeping on it. Tom realized that it was probably only the second time he'd ever seen Archie in anything but a suit. He looked strangely out of place without it.
The sound of voices filtered through the open doorway, one Dhutta's, the other female. Archie looked up in surprise as the voices drew nearer.
"This way, please," came Dhutta's muffled instruction.
Moments later, Dominique stepped into the room, her blond hair coiled up on her head like a fine silk rope and held in place with a silver grip. Archie snatched up his bedclothes and held them in front of him.
"Dom?" he said in surprise.
"Morning, boys!" She grinned. "Here you go, Archie — got you a little present." She tossed a carton of duty-free cigarettes to him. He instinctively reached out to catch it, letting go of the bedclothes, which fell to the floor. "Gott-cha!" she laughed.
"Very funny," Archie muttered as he stooped to gather his sheets up around him again.
"The look on your face!" Tom laughed.
"You're like a bloody pair of kids, you two," Archie said, shaking his head disapprovingly. Grabbing his suit from its hanger, he stumbled to the bathroom, struggling to keep the bedclothes around him.
"I've just made some coffee," Tom said as Archie disappeared with a final, accusing glare in their direction. "You want some?"
"Sure," she said, stripping off her thick ski jacket and tossing it over the back of one of the sofas.
"I'm guessing you don't want any, Raj?"
"No." Dhutta pulled a disapproving face before disappearing into his workshop.
"You weren't followed?"
"No," Dominique confirmed. "I doubled back a few times, just to be certain, but there was no one there."
"And Turnbull met you at the airport this morning, as agreed?"
"Yeah, although I think he was a bit surprised that I was a woman."
"That's because he doesn't know what sort of woman you really are." Tom grinned. "No problems with Customs or anything?"
"None." She smiled her thanks as he handed her a mug. "I never thought it would be so easy to transport a human body part across Europe."
"Oh yeah." Tom sat down next to her. "It's great cover. Archie and I used to do it all the time. As long as the paperwork checks out, they don't touch the box. Last thing they want is some poor kid in need of an organ transplant dying because they contaminated his new heart or kidney. What about the medals?"
"He gave me those too. Archie was right. Weissman did have a Knight's Cross."
She pulled an envelope from her pocket and handed it to Tom. He opened it and slid the medal it contained into the palm of his hand, flipping it over so he could see the reverse, before giving her a satisfied nod.
"It has the same markings as the one we got from Lam-mers's niece," Tom confirmed. "Raj," he called. "Come and have a look at this."
Dhutta reemerged from his workshop and took the medal from Tom with interest, studying it closely.
"I brought the Bellak painting, as well," Dominique added. "Thought it might be useful."
"Good thinking."
"By the way, did you notice the holes in it?"
"In the painting? Yes. What about them?"
"They struck me as odd, that's all. They're very neat. All exactly the same size. They don't look accidental."
"Why would someone have made them deliberately?" Tom frowned. "Unless they wanted to deface it."
Archie reappeared from the bathroom, his composure seemingly restored now that he had his suit on.
"I meant to ask, Mr. Tom — what is this?" Dhutta pointed at the design on the lid of the walnut box that the key had been hidden in.
"A Nazi symbol," Tom explained. "A type of swastika with twelve arms instead of four, one for each of twelve men. It's known as the Black Sun. Have you seen it before?"
"No…" Dhutta shook his head, his finger stroking the veneer. "Although the swastika has been a Hindu religious symbol for thousands of years. It can be found in architecture all over the world, from the ruins of ancient Troy to the floor of Amiens Cathedral. Rudyard Kipling even used to decorate the dust jackets of all his books with it, to bring him good luck."
"How did the Nazis come to use it?" asked Archie.
"From what I understand, Hitler considered the early Aryans of India to be the prototypical white invaders. He saw the swastika as an inviolable link to the Aryan descent of the German people," Dhutta explained. "Under the Nazis, the swastika became the Hakenkreuz or hooked cross, the symbol of the Aryan master race."