Isselhorst smiled. ‘Very observant. Smart as well as beautiful. Come. I introduce you to Oscar. Very big, but very lovable, as you will soon discover.’
Narov had watched Isselhorst take the dog – a large and powerful German Shepherd – with him on his runs. While she was an unapologetic lover of animals, that wasn’t why she’d asked to meet his dog. She needed to do so in the company of his master so that Oscar would see her as a friend.
They passed a large oil painting that Narov figured had to be a Matisse. No doubt stolen from its original Jewish owners during the war years, and now hanging on the wall of an ultra-wealthy German lawyer. So much of the Nazis’ ill-gotten loot had never been returned, largely thanks to men like Isselhorst.
She paused before it. It showed a naked woman draped across a yellow-and-green-striped sofa, legs dangling provocatively over one arm. The woman had a strip of light, chiffon-like material laid across her lap, obscuring her feminine parts.
‘Beautiful. Captivating,’ she remarked. ‘Do I recognise the artist?’
Isselhorst hesitated for just an instant. ‘Matisse, actually,’ he boasted, an arrogant curl to his lip. ‘Woman in an Armchair, 1923.’
Narov feigned amazement. ‘An original Matisse? Wow. Just what kind of lawyer are you?’
Isselhorst flashed a glittering, perfect smile. ‘A very talented one. And some of my clients choose to pay me in kind.’
They moved towards the kitchen, where Narov was introduced to a decidedly sleepy-looking Oscar. She had a magical way with animals. Always had done. She and the German Shepherd quickly bonded, but Isselhorst soon pulled her away, steering her towards the bedroom and Hitler’s bed; impatient to get the real agenda for tonight started… the one he believed they were here for.
Just as they were about to enter, Narov paused, her head tilted towards the lounge. ‘The schnapps. Come on! Just one more.’
She could tell that Isselhorst – a man not used to being denied – was growing impatient. But at the same time he appeared to thrill to his guest’s apparently wild ways.
He smiled. ‘And why not? One for the road, as you say…’
Isselhorst believed Narov to be an American. That was what she’d told him, and indeed these days she mostly was. Recently, she’d taken US citizenship, but she’d been born British and had spent her youth in Russia, for her family was originally Russian.
That part she had kept from him. The Russians and the Nazis had never been the best of friends.
He poured two fresh shots. As he handed Narov hers, she feigned drunken clumsiness, the glass slipping through her fingers. It hit the floor with a sharp crack, shattering into tiny pieces, the schnapps spattering across the marble.
For the briefest of instants, Narov saw a look of anger, bordering on rage, flit across Isselhorst’s features. He killed it just as quickly, but still, she’d glimpsed the man behind the mask. He was just as she’d imagined him: bereft of morals, a beast bloated with money and power, and above all a control freak.
But he covered well. ‘Not to worry.’ He shrugged. ‘I have a housekeeper. Frau Helliger. She will clear it up in the morning.’
He turned for the bottle and a replacement glass, and as he did so, he had his hands full and was slightly off balance.
Before he had fully turned back again, bringing Narov into his field of vision, she struck like a coiled snake, driving forwards and upwards with her right hand in a smooth but devastating strike, hammering the fleshy part of her palm directly into the underside of Isselhorst’s jaw.
She’d practised the move a thousand times, when she’d served with the Russian Spetsnaz – their special forces. The blow was delivered with all her power and pent-up hatred, and she felt the teeth of Isselhorst’s lower jaw being driven upwards, ripping into his upper mouth savagely.
He staggered backwards, spitting blood. Moments later, the schnapps bottle and replacement glass had joined the debris scattered across the living room floor. That blow would have felled most men, but somehow he was still on his feet.
Narov didn’t hesitate. She unleashed an open-palmed strike with her right hand, delivering the knockout blow into exactly the desired spot on the side of his neck, three inches beneath his left ear, just where the carotid artery pumped blood to the brain.
Time seemed to hang in the air before Isselhorst’s eyes rolled into his head, his knees buckled and he collapsed onto the floor.
Narov glanced down at him breathlessly. He was out cold, a trickle of blood issuing from his mouth and mixing with the pool of schnapps.
She took a few seconds to calm herself before embarking upon the next stage of her plan.
6
Will Jaeger couldn’t deny that he was enjoying himself.
When his ninety-five-year-old great-uncle had first suggested the trip, Jaeger had been doubtful. But he had to admit that he needed the break, and where better to come than the place where it had all started.
The Hotel Zum Turken in Berchtesgaden was about as close as one could get these days to Hitler’s Berghof, the mountain lair from which he had ruled Nazi Germany. The hotel had stood cheek-by-jowl with the Berghof, being commandeered by Nazi officials during the war. In fact the two had been joined by a network of tunnels burrowed beneath the mountain, but while the Berghof had been destroyed by Allied air raids, the hotel had largely survived.
These days, powerful anti-Nazi sentiments pervaded the area. Andrea Munsch, the hotel’s owner, epitomised such feelings. When Jaeger had telephoned enquiring whether they might book rooms, she had warned him that the hotel was probably not going to be to their liking. For a moment he’d worried that the Zum Turken had been turned into some kind of a shrine to the twisted ideology of Nazism, but Andrea had quickly disabused him of that misapprehension.
In 1933, Martin Bormann – known then as ‘Hitler’s banker’ – had seized the Hotel Zum Turken, and its long-time owners – Andrea’s parents – had been kicked out by his jackbooted thugs. At the end of the war, they had returned to discover a bare and looted shell. They had decided to rebuild the hotel, but to keep it in the state it had been at war’s end as a memorial to those who had died at Hitler’s hand. Consequently there were few mod cons, certainly no Wi-Fi or internet, and the only sound system in the place was an old gramophone. Hence Andrea’s warning.
That morning, she had taken Jaeger and Uncle Joe into the tunnels, via the Zum Turken’s basement. From there they’d wound ever deeper into the bowels of the mountain, descending concrete steps and iron ladders bolted to walls, and stepping through puddles of yellowing water that lingered in the airless damp.
So extensive was the subterranean network that the Bavarian government was still excavating it, to create a permanent exhibit to the dark excesses of the Nazi regime.
At one point, Andrea had paused to allow Uncle Joe to catch his breath, and she’d used the time to relate a story. She spoke impeccable English, and was clearly passionate about keeping such wartime memories alive.
She waved a hand around the tunnel. ‘When Bormann seized the hotel, none of this existed. Over time it became the headquarters of the SS, and a key means of maintaining control. As a result, unspeakable things happened here. Perhaps you can feel it in the air? Many visitors say they can. A sense of lingering evil.’
Jaeger pondered this for a moment. He realised that he’d felt unsettled as soon as they’d entered the tunnels, a feeling that only grew the deeper they delved.
‘My parents witnessed one of the earliest horrors,’ Andrea continued. ‘Bormann seized the home of a local man for himself. The man was deeply distressed, so he waited for Hitler’s convoy to wend its way down from the Berghof, then placed himself in front of Hitler’s car where it slowed at a bend and spoke to him personally, begging that his family be allowed to keep their home.