The man's head wrenched back as he stopped firing.
His body flew away from the railing.
Legs teetered, off balance.
A cry, quick and startled, strangled into silence as the gunman collapsed to the floor.
Malone lowered his weapon.
The top of the man's skull was gone.
He approached the railing.
Below, on one side of Christl Falk stood a tall, thin man with a rifle pointed upward. On the other side was an elderly woman who said to him, "We appreciate the distraction, Herr Malone."
"It wasn't necessary to shoot him."
The old woman motioned and the other man lowered his rifle.
"I thought it was," she said.
TWENTY-SIX
MALONE DESCENDED TO GROUND LEVEL. THE OTHER MAN AND older woman still stood with Christl Falk.
"This is Ulrich Henn," Christl said. "He works for our family."
"And what does he do?"
"He looks after this castle," the old woman said. "He's the head chamberlain."
"And who are you?" he asked.
Her eyebrows raised in apparent amusement and she threw him a smile with the teeth of a jack-o'-lantern. She was unnaturally gaunt, almost birdlike in appearance, with burnished gray-gold hair. Forked veins lined her spindly arms and liver spots dotted her wrists.
"I am Isabel Oberhauser."
Though welcome seemed on her lips, the eyes were more uncertain.
"Am I supposed to be impressed?"
"I am the matriarch of this family."
He pointed at Ulrich Henn. "You and your employee just killed a man."
"Who entered my house illegally with a weapon, trying to kill you and my daughter."
"And you just happened to have a rifle handy, along with a person who can blow the top of a man's head off from fifty feet away in a dimly lit hall."
"Ulrich is an excellent shot."
Henn said nothing. He apparently knew his place.
"I didn't know they were here," Christl said. "I was under the impression Mother was away. But when I saw her and Ulrich enter the hall, I motioned for him to stand ready while I drew the gunman's attention."
"Stupid move."
"It seemed to work."
And it also told him something about this woman. Facing down guns took guts. But he couldn't decide if she was smart, brave, or an idiot. "I don't know too many academicians who'd do what you did." He faced the older Oberhauser. "We needed that gunman alive. He knew my name."
"I noticed that, too."
"I need answers, not more puzzles, and what you did complicated an already screwed-up situation."
"Show him," Isabel said to her daughter. "Afterward, Herr Malone, you and I can talk privately."
He followed Christl back to the main foyer, then upstairs into one of the bedchambers where, in a far corner, a colossal tile stove bearing the date 1651 stretched to the ceiling.
"This was my father's and grandfather's room."
She entered an alcove where a decorative bench jutted below a mullioned window.
"My ancestors, who originally built Reichshoffen in the thirteenth century, were fanatical about being trapped. So every room possessed at least two exits-this one no exception. In fact, it was afforded the utmost in security for the time."
She applied pressure to one of the mortar joints and a wall section opened, revealing a spiral staircase that wound down in a counterclockwise direction. When she flicked a switch a series of low-voltage lamps illuminated the darkness.
He followed her inside. At the bottom of the staircase she flicked another switch.
He noticed the air. Dry, warm, climate-controlled. The floor was gray slate framed by thin lines of black grout. The coarse stone walls, plastered and also painted gray, bore evidence that they had been hacked from bedrock centuries ago.
The chamber cut a twisting path, one room dissolving into another, forming a backdrop for some unusual objects. There were German flags, Nazi banners, even a replica of an SS altar, fully prepared for the child-naming ceremonies he knew were common in the 1930s. Countless figurines, a toy soldier set laid out on a colorful map of early-twentieth-century Europe, Nazi helmets, swords, daggers, uniforms, caps, windcheater jackets, pistols, rifles, gorgets, bandoliers, rings, jewelry, gauntlets, and photographs.
"This is what my grandfather spent his time, after the war, accumulating."
"It's like a Nazi museum."
"Hitler's discrediting profoundly hurt him. He served the bastard well, but never could understand that he meant nothing to the Socialists. For six years, up until the war ended, he tried every way he could to gain back favor. Until he lost his mind utterly in the 1950s, he collected all this."
"That doesn't explain why the family kept it."
"My father respected his father. But we rarely come down here."
She led him to a glass-topped case. Inside, she pointed to a silver ring with ss runes depicted in a way he'd never seen before. Cursive, almost italicized. "They're in the true Germanic form, as on ancient Norse shields. Fitting, because these rings were only worn by the Ahnenerbe." She drew his attention to another item in the case. "The badge with the Odel rune and short-armed swastika was also only for the Ahnenerbe. Grandfather designed them. The stickpin is quite special-a representation of the sacred Irminsul, or Life Tree of the Saxons. It supposedly stood atop the Rocks of the Sun at Detmold and was destroyed by Charlemagne himself, which started the long wars between Saxons and Franks."
"You speak of these relics almost with reverence."
"I do?" She sounded perplexed.
"As if they mean something to you."
She shrugged. "They're simply reminders of the past. My grandfather started the Ahnenerbe for purely cultural reasons, but it evolved into something altogether different. Its Institute for Military Scientific Research conducted unthinkable experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Vacuum chambers, hypothermia, blood coagulation testing. Horrible things. Its Applied Nature Studies created a Jewish bone collection from men and women whom they murdered, then macerated. Eventually several of the Ahnenerbe were hanged for war crimes. Many more went to prison. It became an abomination."
He watched her carefully.
"None of which my grandfather participated in," she said, reading his thoughts. "All of that happened after he was fired and publicly shamed." She paused. "Long after he sentenced himself to this place and the abbey, where he toiled alone."
Hanging beside the Ahnenerbe banner was a tapestry that depicted the same Life Tree from the stickpin. Writing at the bottom caught his attention. NO PEOPLE LIVE LONGER THAN THE DOCUMENTATION OF THEIR CULTURE.
She saw his interest. "My grandfather believed that statement."
"And do you?"
She nodded. "I do."
He still did not understand why the Oberhauser family had preserved this collection in a climate-controlled room, with not a speck of dust anywhere. But he could understand one of her stated reasons. He respected his father, too. Though the man had been absent for much of Malone's childhood, he remembered the times they'd spent together throwing a baseball, swimming, or doing chores around the house. He'd remained angry for years after his father died at being denied what his friends, with both parents, took for granted. His mother never let him forget his father but, as he grew older, he came to realize that her memory might have been jaded. Being a navy wife was tough duty-just as being a Magellan Billet wife had eventually proven too much for his ex.
Christl led the way through the exhibits. Each turn revealed more of Hermann Oberhauser's passion. She stopped at another gaily painted wooden cabinet, similar to the one at the abbey. Inside one of its drawers she removed a single page encased within a heavy plastic sheath.