‘Would it be too much to ask for a cup of tea? I’m in dire need of a pick-me-up.’ Visibly sagging, Kate lowered her knapsack to the floor.
‘No doubt I have a canister somewhere. Please make yourselves comfortable.’ Aisquith gestured distractedly to the two leather wingback chairs shoe-horned between a pair of towering bookcases. Hospitality dispensed, he ambled towards an open door in the back of the shop, disappearing from sight.
With a weary sigh, Kate seated herself in the nearest chair. A wilted flower in a dusty pot.
‘I don’t know how to break it to you, Katie, but your pal looks like one of those guys who lives under the bridge in a cardboard box.’
‘You heard him, he just got over a bout of the flu.’ Though quick to come to the Brit’s defence, her brow furrowed. Like she wasn’t entirely convinced of what she’d just said. ‘While he may not look his best, I’m certain that Cædmon can help us to decipher Jutier’s tattoo as well as the symbols on the Montségur –’
‘Don’t breathe a word about the medallion,’ he interjected, cutting her off at the pass. Although Kate thought that if they deciphered the symbols on the medallion they’d gain some valuable insight, which would help him track down the Dark Angel, he wasn’t entirely convinced. ‘I can’t put my finger on it, but I’ve got a hinky feeling about your ex-boyfriend.’
‘Don’t be so paranoid. Cædmon is utterly harmless. For goodness’ sake, he owns a bookstore.’
‘Speaking of which –’ Craning his neck, Finn glanced at several of the hand-printed tags affixed to the front of the shelves. ‘Let’s see, we got The Illuminati, The Knights Templar and something called The Merovingian Bloodline.’ He turned towards a second bookcase. ‘Ooh, here’s a good section: Extraterrestrials, Alien Abductions and, not to be excluded, The Faery People.’ Smirking, he glanced at his companion. ‘We’re talking conspiracy theorist of the first magnitude. What do you wanna bet Aisquith wears an aluminium foil shower cap?’
Kate shot him a chiding frown.
Point made, Finn walked over to the front door and pulled back the curtain that hung at the glass. Standing stock still, he perused the street in front of the bookstore. Little more than a single lane, the jumble of old-fashioned shops looked like something out of another time period.
While he had no proof, he had a gut feeling that Dixie and Johnny K’s murderer was here in Paris. Somewhere. And I aim to find him.
‘So long as the authorities don’t get a hold of my ass,’ Finn muttered under his breath, able to hear a police siren bleating in the near distance. Between the flight crew at Dover and the airmen at Mildenhall, too many people knew that he’d left the US in a very unusual manner. Some people would do anything for a buck. And that included ratting out ‘a buddy’.
We can’t blow this joint fast enough.
Finn let the curtain fall back into place. Turning on his heel, he walked back to the niche.
‘A cup of tea. A little chitchat. Then we’re getting the hell out of here,’ he said to Kate in a lowered voice. ‘And don’t volunteer anything. Just follow my lead, okay?’
‘Whatever,’ she retorted testily, beginning to look and sound like a cranky kid on a long trip.
She wasn’t the only cranky one. From the get-go, Finn had been opposed to bringing Kate Bauer to Paris. She was a distraction, plain and simple. But he knew that if he’d left her in DC, she’d likely wind up dead.
For better or worse, sickness and in health, she’d become a 115-pound anchor around his neck.
21
Musée de la Vie Romantique, Paris
Ivo Uhlemann slowly ascended the stone steps, his circumspect gait that of a white-haired septuagenarian. Physical debility a character flaw in a man of any age, he refused to use a cane. And he would rather put a bullet through his own skull than be pushed about in a wheelchair, his infirmities on public display.
Pausing at the top of the stone steps, he savoured the delicate scent of the pink roses that clung to the wrought-iron railing. The Museum of the Romantic Life boasted a magnificent garden and charming courtyard. Housed in the former residence of Ary Scheffer, a nineteenth-century artist, the mansion in its heyday had hosted the likes of Chopin, Dickens and Delacroix. He was there on that warm August morning to view the museum’s new exhibition of drawings and watercolours from ‘The Golden Age of the German Romantic Artists’.
No sooner did Ivo step through the museum’s entryway than a pixie of a man rushed forward.
‘Bonjour, Monsieur le Docteur!’ Grasping Ivo by the shoulder, the museum curator warmly greeted him with the salutary cheek kiss. ‘Such a pleasure! As always!’
Ivo suffered the faire le bise with a tight-lipped smile. It’d taken years of practice to train himself not to flinch at the overly familiar French greeting.
Taking a backward step, politely distancing himself from the other man, he said, ‘I am greatly looking forward to viewing the new exhibition.’
‘The French poet Nerval rightly claimed that Germany’s Romantic artists were “a mother to us all”,’ the curator effused. With an ingratiating smile, he proffered a slim pamphlet. ‘For your edification, I have prepared a pamphlet that contains the pertinent details for each work. It is my sincere hope that you enjoy the exhibition, Monsieur le Docteur.’
Ivo took the flyer. A generous donor, he’d earned the privilege of privately viewing the exhibition before the museum opened later that morning to the general public. Eager to see the show, he entered the adjacent hall.
Approaching the first framed piece of artwork, enthusiasm fizzled into disappointment at seeing a pen-and-ink drawing of a Gothic cathedral.
Bah! Religion. The great destroyer of all that is good and heroic.
Indeed, he’d often contended that one of the Führer’s mistakes was not outlawing the Christian churches in Germany. A global pestilence, Christianity appealed only to those who were too craven to forge their own destiny. Although, to be fair, Christianity was no less abhorrent than the occultism that infected the Reich’s high command, the two being the flipside of the same tarnished coin.
His father, in his letters, had bitterly complained about the farcical ‘rituals’ that took place at Wewelsburg Castle, the official headquarters of the SS. According to his father’s firsthand accounts, incense was burned, Tarot cards were read, Sufi Muslim rites were enacted and astrological charts were carefully scrutinized. A travesty, all of it. One that deeply disturbed the original members of the Seven. Scholars and scientists, they secretly eschewed the patently absurd beliefs of the German high command.
To a man, the original Seven contended that occultism and Christianity were the twin cancers that destroyed the Reich from within.
Searching for a specific piece of art, Ivo impatiently made his way into the next room.
Ah, there it was. The Schneegruben Massif Seen From the Hainbergshöh.
A watercolour by Caspar David Friedrich, the most famous of the German Romantic artists, it was a stunning landscape that depicted a flat plain rimmed with plush clumps of shrub and bordered by towering mountains in the distance. Rendered with a poetic sensitivity, the work didn’t rely on the false promise of Christian iconography.
‘Such a sublime pleasure,’ he whispered, the watercolour an unabashed celebration of the Fatherland.
Not surprisingly, it put Ivo in mind of the countryside in the Weserbergland where he spent the autumn of 1944 with boys from the Hitler-Jugend harvesting sugar beets. As part of the Blood and Soil programme, each year millions of children were sent to Germany’s rural hinterlands to toil on large farms. Since the vast majority of the country’s able-bodied adult males were away fighting, the Hitler Youth’s labour was essential to the war effort.