The Holcroft Covenant: A Novel

  “We both know that doesn’t have to be.”

  “You’re wrong! It’ll go back into the ground for another thirty years.”

  The unknown enemy drew himself up in the shadows. “That’s the flaw, isn’t it? You put it so well: ‘back into the ground.’ But, if I may be permitted, there’ll be no scorched earth then.”

  “No what?”

  “No scorched earth.” The man stepped backward. “We’ve talked enough. You had your chance; you have it still. You can kill me, but it will do you no good. We have the photograph. We’re beginning to understand.”

  “The photograph? In Portsmouth? You?”

  “A most respected commander in the Royal Navy. It was interesting that you should take it.”

  “For Christ’s sake! Who are you?”

  “One who fights you, son of Heinrich Clausen.”

  “I told you—”

  “I know,” said the German. “I should not say that. In point of fact, I shall say nothing further. I will turn around and walk out of this alleyway. Shoot, if you must. I am prepared. We are all prepared.”

  The man turned slowly and began walking. It was more than Noel could stand.

  “Stop!” he yelled, pursuing the German. Then grabbing his shoulder with his left hand.

  The man spun around. “We have nothing further to say.”

  “Yes, we do! We’re going to stay here all night, if we have to! You’re going to tell me who you are and where you came from and what the hell you know about Geneva and Beaumont and—”

  It was as far as he got. The man’s hand shot out, his fingers clasping Noel’s right wrist, twisting it inward and downward as his right knee hammered up into Holcroft’s groin. Noel doubled forward in agony, but he would not let go of the gun. He shoved his shoulder into the man’s midsection, trying to push him away, the pain in his testicles spreading up into his stomach and chest. The man brought his fist crashing down into the base of Holcroft’s skull, sending shock waves through his ribs and spine. But he would not relinquish the gun! The man could not have the gun! Noel gripped it as if it were the last steel clamp on a lifeboat. He lurched up, springing with what strength he had left in his legs, wrenching the automatic away from the man’s grip.

  There was an explosion; it echoed through the alley. The man’s arm fell away, and he staggered backward, grabbing his shoulder. He had been wounded, but he did not collapse. Instead, he braced himself against the wall and spoke through gasps of breath.

  “We’ll stop you. And we’ll do it our way. We’ll take Geneva!”

  With those words he propelled himself down the alley, clawing at the wall for support. Holcroft turned; there were figures clustered about the alley’s entrance on the Schönbergstrasse. He could hear police whistles and see the coruscating beams of flashlights. The Berlin police were moving in.

  He was caught.

  But he could not be caught! There was Kessler; there was Geneva. He could not be detained now!

  Helden’s words came back to him. Lie indignantly … with confidence … invent your own variations.

  Noel shoved the automatic in his pocket and started toward the Schönbergstrasse, toward the slowly approaching flashlights and the two uniformed men who held them.

  “I’m an American!” he yelled in a frightened voice. “Does anyone speak English?”

  A man from the crowd shouted, “I do! What happened?”

  “I was walking through here and someone tried to rob me! He had a gun but I didn’t know it! I shoved him and it went off.…”

  The Berliner translated quickly for the police.

  “Where did he go?” asked the man.

  “I think he’s still there. In one of the doorways. I’ve got to sit down.…”

  The Berliner touched Holcroft’s shoulder. “Come.” He began leading Noel out through the crowd toward the sidewalk.

  The police yelled into the dark alleyway. There was no response; the unknown enemy had made his escape. The uniformed men cautiously continued forward.

  “Thanks very much,” said Noel. “I’d just like to get some air, calm down, you know what I mean?”

  “Ja. A terrible experience.”

  “I think they’ve got him,” added Holcroft suddenly, looking back toward the police and the crowd.

  The Berliner turned; Noel stepped off the curb, into the street. He started walking, slowly at first, then found a break in the traffic and crossed to the sidewalk on the other side. There he turned and ran as fast as he could through the crowds, toward the Kurfürstendamm.

  He had done it, thought Holcroft, as he sat, coatless and hatless, shivering on a deserted bench within sight of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church. He had absorbed the lessons and put them to use; he had invented his own variations and eluded the trap he had set for another, but which had sprung back, ensnaring himself. Beyond this, he had immobilized the man in the black leather jacket. That man would be detained, if only to find a doctor.

  Above all, he had learned that Helden was wrong. And the dead Manfredi—who would not say the names—had been wrong. It was not members of the ODESSA, nor of the Rache, who were Geneva’s most powerful enemies. It was another group, one infinitely more knowledgeable and deadlier. An enigma that counted among its adherents men who would die calmly, with intelligence in their eyes and reasonable speech on their tongues.

  The race to Geneva was against three violent forces wanting to destroy the covenant, but one was far more ingenious than the other two. The man in the black leather jacket had spoken of the Rache and the ODESSA in terms so disparaging they could not have sprung from envy or fear. He had dismissed them as incompetent butchers and clowns of whom he wanted no part. For he was part of something else, something far superior.

  Holcroft looked at his watch. He had been sitting in the cold for nearly an hour, the ache in his groin still there, the base of his skull stiff with pain. He had stuffed the mackinaw and the black-visored cap into a refuse bin several blocks away. They would have been too easy to spot if the Berlin police had an alarm out for him.

  It was time to go now; there were no signs of the police, no signs of anyone interested in him. The cold air had done nothing for his pain, but it had helped clear his head, and until that had happened he dared not move. He could move now; he had to. It was almost nine o’clock. It was time to meet with Erich Kessler, the third key to Geneva.

  25

  The pub was now crowded, as he expected it would be, the layers of smoke thicker, the Bavarian music louder. The manager greeted him pleasantly, but his eyes betrayed his thoughts: Something had happened to this American within the last hour. Noel was embarrassed; he wondered if his face was scratched, or streaked with dirt.

  “I’d like to wash up. I had a nasty fall.”

  “Certainly. Over there, sir.” The manager pointed to the men’s room. “Professor Kessler has arrived. He’s waiting for you. I gave him your briefcase.”

  “Thanks again,” said Holcroft, turning toward the door of the washroom.

  He looked at his face in the mirror. There were no stains, no dirt, no blood. But there was something in his eyes, a look associated with pain and shock and exhaustion. And fear. That’s what the manager had seen.

  He ran the water in the basin until it was lukewarm, doused his face and combed his hair and wished he could take that look out of his eyes. Then he returned to the manager, who led him to a booth at the rear of the hall, farthest from the room’s activity. The red-checked curtain was drawn across the table.

  “Herr Professor?”

  The curtain was pulled aside, revealing a man in his mid-forties with a large girth and a full face framed by a short beard and thick brown hair combed straight back over his head. It was a gentle face, the deep-set eyes alive, tinged with anticipation, even humor.

  “Mister Holcroft?”

  “Dr. Kessler?”

  “Sit down, sit down.” Kessler made a brief attempt to rise as he held out his hand; the contact between
his stomach and the table prevented it. He laughed and looked at the pub’s manager. “Next week! Ja, Rudi? Our diets.”

  “Ach, natürlich, Professor.”

  “This is my new friend from America. Mr. Holcroft.”

  “Yes, we met earlier.”

  “Of course you did. You gave me his briefcase.” Kessler patted Noel’s attaché case, next to him on the seat “I’m drinking scotch. Join me, Mr. Holcroft?”

  “Scotch’ll be fine. Just ice.”

  The manager nodded and left. Noel settled back in the seat. Kessler exuded a kind of weary warmth; it was an expression of tolerance from an intellect constantly exposed to lesser minds but too kind to dwell on comparisons. Holcroft had known several men like that. Among them were his finest teachers. He was comfortable with Erich Kessler; it was a good way to begin.

  “Thanks so much for seeing me. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

  “Catch your breath first,” said Kessler. “Have a drink. Calm down.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve had a difficult time. It’s written all over your face.”

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “I’d say you were that distraught, Mr. Holcroft”

  “It’s Noel. Please. We should get to know each other.”

  “A pleasant prospect, I’m sure. My name is Erich. It’s a chilly night outside. Too cold to go without an overcoat. Yet you obviously arrived without one. There’s no checkroom here.”

  “I was wearing one. I had to get rid of it. I’ll explain.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I’m afraid I do. I wish I didn’t, but it’s part of my story.”

  “I see. Ah, here’s your scotch.”

  A waiter deposited the glass in front of Holcroft, then stepped back and drew the red-checked curtain across the booth.

  “As I said, it’s part of the story.” Noel drank.

  “Take your time. There’s no hurry.”

  “You said you had guests at your house.”

  “A guest. A friend of my brother’s, from München. He’s a delightful fellow, but long-winded. A trait not unknown among doctors. You’ve rescued me for the evening.”

  “Won’t your wife be upset?”

  “I’m not married. I was, but I’m afraid university life was rather confining for her.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “She’s not. She married an acrobat. Can you imagine? From the academic groves to the rarefied heights of alternating trapezes. We’re still good friends.”

  “I think it would be difficult not to be friendly with you.”

  “Oh, I’m a terror in the lecture rooms. A veritable lion.”

  “Who roars but can’t bring himself to bite,” said Noel.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing. I was remembering a conversation I had last night. With someone else.”

  “Feeling better?”

  “That’s funny.”

  “What is?”

  “That’s what I said last night.”

  “With this someone else?” Kessler smiled again. “Your face seems more relaxed.”

  “If it was any more relaxed, it’d be draped over the table.”

  “Perhaps some food?”

  “Not yet. I’d like to start; there’s a great deal to tell you, and you’re going to have a lot of questions.”

  “Then I shall listen carefully. Oh, I forgot. Your briefcase.”

  The German reached beside him and lifted the attaché case to the top of the table.

  Holcroft unlocked the case, but did not open it “There are papers in here you’ll want to study. They’re not complete, but they’ll serve as confirmation for some of the things I’m going to tell you.”

  “Confirmation? Are the things you say you must tell me so difficult to accept?”

  “They may be,” said Noel. He felt sorry for this good-natured scholar. The peaceful world he lived in was about to collapse around him. “What I’m going to say to you may interrupt your life, as it has mine. I don’t think that can be avoided. At least, I couldn’t avoid it, because I couldn’t walk away from it. Part of the reason was selfish; there’s a great deal of money involved that will come to me personally—as it will come to you. But there are other factors that are much more important than either you or me. I know that’s true, because if it weren’t, I’d have run away by now. But I won’t run. I’m going to do what I’ve been asked to do because it’s right. And because there are people I hate who want to stop me. They killed someone I loved very much. They tried to kill another.” Holcroft stopped suddenly; he had not meant to go this far. The fear and the rage were coming together. He had lost control; he was talking too much. “I’m sorry. I could be reading a lot of things into all this that don’t belong. I don’t mean to frighten you.”

  Kessler put his hand on Noel’s arm. “Frightening me isn’t a concern. You’re overwrought and exhausted, my friend. Apparently, terrible things have happened to you.”

  Holcroft drank several swallows of whiskey, trying to numb the pain in his groin and his neck. “I won’t lie. They have. But I didn’t want to start this way. It wasn’t very bright.”

  Kessler removed his hand from Noel’s arm. “Let me say something. I’ve known you less than five minutes, and I don’t think being bright is relevant. You’re obviously a highly intelligent man—a very honest one, too—and you’ve been under a great strain. Why not simply start at the beginning without worrying how it affects me?”

  “Okay.” Holcroft put his arms on the table, his hands around the glass of whiskey. “I’ll begin by asking you if you’ve ever heard the names Von Tiebolt and … Clausen.”

  Kessler stared at Noel for a moment “Yes,” he said. “They go back many years—to when I was a child—but of course I’ve heard them. Clausen and Von Tiebolt. They were friends of my father’s. I was very young, around ten or eleven. They came to our house frequently, if I recall, at the end of the war. I do remember Clausen; at least I think I do. He was a tall man and quite magnetic.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “There’s not much I can remember.”

  “Anything can. Please.”

  “Again, I’m not sure how to put it. Clausen dominated a room without making any effort to do so. When he spoke, everyone listened, yet I don’t recall his ever raising his voice. He seemed to be a kind man, concerned for others, but extremely strong willed. I thought once—and remember, these were the thoughts of a child—that he was someone who had lived with much pain.”

  A man in agony had cried out to him. “What kind of pain?”

  “I have no idea; it was only a child’s impression. You would have to have seen his eyes to understand. No matter whom he looked at, young or old, important or not, he gave that person his full concentration. I do remember that; it was not a common trait in those days. In a way, I picture Clausen more clearly than I do my own father, and certainly more than Von Tiebolt. Why are you interested in him?”

  “He was my father.”

  Kessler’s mouth opened in astonishment “You?” he whispered. “Clausen’s son?”

  Noel nodded. “My natural father, not the father I knew.”

  “Then your mother was …” Kessler stopped.

  “Althene Clausen. Did you ever hear anyone speak of her?”

  “Never by name, and never in Clausen’s presence. Ever. She was spoken of in whispers. The woman who left the great man, the American enemy who fled the fatherland with their—You! You were the child she took from him!”

  “Took with her, kept from him, is the way she puts it.”

  “She’s still alive?”

  “Very much so.”

  “It’s all so incredible.” Kessler shook his head. “After all these years, a man I remember so vividly. He was extraordinary.”

  “They were all extraordinary.”

  “Who?”

  “The three of them. Clausen, Von Tiebolt, and Kessler. Tell me, do you know
how your father died?”

  “He killed himself. It was not unusual then. When the Reich collapsed, a lot of people did. For most of them it was easier that way.”

  “For some it was the only way.”

  “Nürnberg?”

  “No, Geneva. To protect Geneva.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “You will.” Holcroft opened his attaché case, took out the pages he had clipped together, and gave them to Kessler. “There’s a bank in Geneva that has an account that can be released for specific purposes only by the consent of three people.…”

  As he had done twice before, Noel told the story of the massive theft of over thirty years ago. But with Kessler, he told it all. He did not, as he had done with Gretchen, withhold specific facts; nor did he tell the story in stages, as he had with Helden. He left out nothing.

  “… monies were intercepted from the occupied countries, from the sales of art objects and the looting of museums. Wehrmacht payrolls were rerouted, millions stolen from the Ministry of Armaments and the—I can’t remember the name, it’s in the letter—but from the industrial complex. Everything was banked in Switzerland, in Geneva, with the help of a man named Manfredi.”

  “Manfredi? I remember the name.”

  “It’s not surprising,” said Holcroft. “Although I don’t imagine he was mentioned too frequently. Where did you hear it?”

  “I don’t know. After the war, I think.”

  “From your mother?”

  “I don’t think so. She died in July of ’forty-five and was in the hospital for most of the time. From someone else… I don’t know.”

  “Where did you live, with your father and mother dead?”

  “My brother and I moved in with our uncle, my mother’s brother. It was lucky for us. He was an older man and never had much use for the Nazis. He found favor with the occupation forces. But please, go on.”

  Noel did. He detailed the conditions of competence required by the directors of La Grande Banque de Genève, which led him into the dismissal of Gretchen Beaumont. He told Kessler of the Von Tiebolts’ clouded migration to Rio, the birth of Helden, the killing of their mother, and their eventual flight from Brazil.

  “They took the name of Tennyson and have been living in England for the past five years. Johann von Tiebolt is known as John Tennyson. He’s a reporter for the Guardian. Gretchen married a man named Beaumont and Helden moved several months ago to Paris. I haven’t met the brother, but I’ve … become friends with Helden. She’s a remarkable girl.”