74
Oberkampf Neighbourhood, Paris
0500 hours
Dolf Reinhardt ran the carbon steel blade across his head, carefully shaving the blond stubble from his scalp.
It was important that he look his best today. For today he aimed to impress. He didn’t know what was planned to occur later this morning; he wasn’t privy to the closed-door meetings at the Seven Research Foundation. But he knew something momentous was in the works. He’d eavesdropped on enough conversations to ascertain that it had to do with the Third Reich. Perhaps Herr Doktor had plans to launch a new National Socialist Party to oust the immigrants from Germany. Whatever it was, Dolf instinctively knew that he would soon be able to prove his worth.
He stepped closer to the cracked mirror above the bathroom sink, making one last pass with the cut-throat blade. Tilting his head from side to side, he inspected his handiwork. Unable to detect any stubble, he rinsed the blade clean. He then swabbed his head with a soapy cloth, washing away the residue from his peppermint-scented shaving oil. Removing the bath towel knotted at his waist, he used it to dry his head.
‘Scheisse,’ he muttered angrily, accidentally bashing his swollen nose.
Flinging the damp towel into the corner, he strode naked out of the bathroom.
He’d not realized until yesterday that his mother had been the one holding him back all these years. Because of her, he was like a horse tethered to a post. A thoroughbred stallion full of sturm und drang. Not the pliant plough horse that everyone made him out to be.
‘Go home and see to your mother, Dolf.’
Herr Doktor Uhlemann, knowing that Dolf’s primary responsibility was to his aged mother, had been unwilling to promote him. Instead he’d kept him hobbled these last eight years behind the wheel of the Mercedes Benz. He didn’t hold it against Herr Doktor. His vision clear, Dolf now understood. He’d finally figured out that Herr Doktor Uhlemann had been unwilling to give him additional responsibility, fearing his professional duties would always come in a distant second.
Today, Herr Doktor would learn that he could always depend on Dolf.
Opening the wardrobe, he removed a velvet-covered box from the top shelf. He pried the lid open, the hinge softly creaking. Inside, nestled on a bed of white satin, was a gleaming disc on a green grosgrain ribbon. His European Junior Boxing gold medal. Dolf slipped his shaved head through the ribbon, adjusting the medal so that it rested squarely in the middle of his chest. It proved that he was a champion. That he could hold his own in any ring.
In a hurry, he hastily donned the clean clothes that he’d laid out on the bed. Before slipping into his black suit jacket, he brushed it with a piece of tape to remove any stray pieces of lint.
Finished dressing, he left his bedroom and made his way down the dimly lit hall to his mother’s room. Opening the door, he smiled broadly as he stepped across the threshold. The bedside lamp illuminated the room in a golden glow. Dolf always left the light turned on at night, worried that his mother might be afraid of the dark.
‘Guten morgen, mutter !’
The cheerful greeting met with a slack-jawed stare. Dolf took the blank stare in his stride as he walked over to the metal hospital bed and gave his mother a kiss on the cheek. Before putting her to bed, he’d changed the sheets and tidied the room in preparation. He wanted everything to be perfect.
With a tender hand, he smoothed her bunched nightdress so that it modestly draped her withered body. He then unpinned the coiled braids at the top of his mother’s head and arranged one thick grey braid on each side of her face. There was a time, when Dolf had been a very small boy, that his mother had been vibrant of body and mind. But those days were long gone.
Humming softly, he secured her wrists and ankles to the metal bed railing with leather straps. Noticing that her toenails needed to be clipped, he glanced at his wristwatch. Scheisse. Too late now. There wasn’t enough time to hunt for the nail clippers.
Refusing to get riled over the small blunder, he walked across to the bureau and opened the top drawer, removing a green plastic medicine bottle. Reaching under a folded towel, he also retrieved an ornately carved oak bread plate. As he did, Dolf glanced at the framed photograph hanging on the wall of his six-year-old mother offering the Führer a slice of freshly baked schwarzbrot. He’d always been immensely proud of the fact that he was named after the Führer. Proud of his family’s close connection to that great and good man who had been a saviour to Germany.
Pleased that he’d remembered the plate, Dolf carried it over to the bed and set it on top of his mother’s chest. In the centre of the oak plate was a carved Sonnenrad Hakenkreutz. A German sun wheel. Although he couldn’t be certain, he thought he saw a glimmer of recognition in his mother’s faded blue eyes.
As he did each morning before he left for work, Dolf gently inserted a sleeping pill between her lips, holding up her head so she could swallow it without gagging. Then he inserted another. And another … until the bottle was completely empty.
‘ “Cattle die, kinsmen die. The self must also die; I know one thing which never dies: the reputation of each dead man,”’ he quietly recited. It was his mother’s favourite line from the Hávamál, the collection of old Norse poems. ‘Do not fear, mutter. You will always be “the Führer’s little handmaid”.’
He stuffed the green plastic bottle in his pocket before turning out the light. Now there were no more encumbrances to hold him back.
Today, Adolf Reinhardt was finally a free man.
75
Grande Arche, Paris
0528 hours
‘You seem oddly calm for a man who might soon be the guest of honour at his own funeral,’ Cædmon remarked as he and McGuire made their way on foot across the deserted esplanade in front of the Grande Arche. At that somnolent hour, the skyscrapers of La Defense business district had an otherworldly aspect. A forest of steel and glass silhouetted against a slate-grey sky.
‘Got over my fear of death years ago.’ The commando carefully adjusted the canvas rucksack slung across his chest. Inside his Go Bag were six homemade pipe bombs packed in wadded cotton fabric. ‘Being a soldier, I know how I’ll die. I just don’t know the when of it. Only Bob Almighty knows that.’
‘And, how may I ask –’
‘Hail of bullets, buddy boy. Hail of bullets.’
Taken aback by McGuire’s exuberance, and that he considered his violent demise a fait accompli, Cædmon said quietly, ‘You shall be missed when you’re gone.’
‘Gee, didn’t know you cared that much.’
‘I was thinking of Kate.’
The other man’s expression instantly sobered. ‘Yeah, I can’t seem to get her off my mind. I hope to hell she’s all right.’
As do I.
While they were going into the breach armed with six pipe bombs and one Ruger P89 semi-automatic pistol, a pitiful arsenal by any standard, Kate was utterly defenceless.
Unnerved by the eerie silence, Cædmon looked over his left shoulder. The pedestrian esplanade, a concrete meadow in the midst of the steel forest, afforded him an unobstructed view to the east of the Arc de Triomphe L’Étoile. Though he couldn’t see beyond the famous monument, he knew that it was exactly seven kilometres in distance from the first arch on the Axe Historique, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, to the Grande Arche. Seven. One of the most sacred of all numbers, it symbolized the totality of the Universe, the Heavens conjoined to the Earth. Astral energy fused to telluric energy. How ironic that Ivo Uhlemann’s despicable group was named ‘The Seven’.