The Holcroft Covenant: A Novel

  “Thank you, Mr. Tennyson. You’ll be staying fourteen days?”

  “Perhaps longer, certainly no less. I appreciate your making a suite available.”

  The clerk smiled. “We received a call from your friend, the first deputy of canton Genève. We assured him we would do everything to make your stay pleasant.”

  “I’ll inform him of my complete satisfaction.”

  “You’re most kind.”

  “Incidentally, I’m expecting to meet an old friend here during the next few days. A Mrs. Holcroft. Could you tell me when she’s expected?”

  The clerk took up a ledger and thumbed through the pages. “Did you say the name was Holcroft?”

  “Yes. Althene Holcroft. An American. You might also have a reservation for her son, Mr. N. Holcroft.”

  “I’m afraid we have no reservations in that name, sir. And I know there’s no one named Holcroft presently a guest.”

  The muscles of the blond man’s jaw tensed. “Surely an error has been made. My information is accurate. She’s expected at this hotel. Perhaps not this evening, but certainly tomorrow or the day after. Please check again. Is there a confidential listing?”

  “No, sir.”

  “If there were, I’m quite certain my friend, the first deputy, would ask you to let me see it.”

  “If there were, that wouldn’t be necessary, Mr. Tennyson. We understood fully that we are to cooperate with you in all requests.”

  “Perhaps she’s traveling incognito. She’s been known to be eccentric that way.”

  The clerk turned the ledger around. “Please, look for yourself, sir. It’s possible you’ll recognize a name.”

  Tennyson did not. It was infuriating. “This is the complete list?” he asked again.

  “Yes, sir. We are a small and, if I may say, rather exclusive hotel. Most of our guests have been here previously. I’m familiar with nearly every one of those names.”

  “Which ones aren’t you familiar with?” pressed the blond man.

  The clerk placed his finger on two. “These are the only names I don’t know,” he said. “The gentlemen from Germany, two brothers named Kessler, and a Sir William Ellis, from London. The last was made only hours ago.”

  Tennyson looked pointedly at the desk clerk. “I’m going to my rooms, but I need to ask you for an example of that cooperation the first deputy spoke of. It’s most urgent that I find out where Mrs. Holcroft is staying in Geneva. I’d appreciate your calling the various hotels, but under no circumstances should my name be mentioned.” He took out a one-hundred-franc note. “Locate her for me,” he said.

  By midnight Noel reached Châtillon-sur-Seine, where he made the phone call to an astonished Ellis in London.

  “You’ll do what?” Ellis said.

  “You heard me, Willie. I’ll pay you five hundred dollars and your expenses for one, maybe two days in Geneva. All I want you to do is take my mother back to London.”

  “I’m a dreadful nanny. And from what you’ve told me about your mother, she’s the last person in the world who needs a traveling companion.”

  “She does now. Someone was following her. I’ll tell you about it when I see you in Geneva. How about it, Willie? Will you do it?”

  “Of course. But stuff your five hundred. I’m sure your mother and I will have far more in common than we ever did. You may, however, pick up the tabs. I travel well, as you know.”

  “While we’re on the subject, travel with a little cool, will you, please? I want you to call the Hôtel d’Accord in Geneva and make a reservation for late this morning. The first plane should get you there by nine-thirty.”

  “I’ll be on my best behavior, befitting Louis Vuitton luggage. Perhaps a minor title.…”

  “Willie!”

  “I know the Swiss better than you. They adore titles; they reek of money, and money’s their mistress.”

  “I’ll phone you around ten, ten-thirty. I want to use your room until I know what’s going on.”

  “That’s extra,” said Willie Ellis. “See you in Geneva.”

  Holcroft had decided to call on Willie because there was no one else he could think of who would not ask questions. Ellis was not the outrageous fool he pretended to be. Althene could do far worse for an escort out of Switzerland.

  And she had to get out. The covenant’s enemy had killed her husband; it would kill her, too. Because Geneva was where it was going to happen. In two or three days a meeting would take place, and papers would be signed, and money would be transferred to Zurich. The covenant’s enemy would try everything to abort those negotiations. His mother could not stay in Geneva. There would be violence in Geneva; he could feel it.

  He drove south to Dijon, arriving well after midnight. The small city was asleep, and as he passed through the dark streets, he knew he needed sleep, too; tomorrow he had to be alert. More alert than he had ever been in his life. He continued driving until he was back in the countryside and stopped the rented car on the side of a road. He smoked a cigarette, then crushed it out and put his feet on the seat his head against the window, cushioned by his raincoat.

  In a few hours he’d be at the border, crossing into Switzerland with the first wave of morning traffic. Once in Switzerland … He couldn’t think anymore. The mist was closing in on him; his breathing was low and heavy. And then the face appeared, strong, angular, so unfamiliar yet so recognizable to him now.

  It was the face of Heinrich Clausen, and he was calling to him, telling him to hurry. The agony would be over soon; amends would be made.

  He slept.

  Erich Kessler watched as his younger brother, Hans, showed the airline security officer his medical bag. Since the Olympics of ’72, when the Palestinians were presumed to have flown into Munich with dismantled rifles and submachine guns, the airport’s security measures had tripled.

  It was a wasted effort, mused Erich. The Palestinians’ weapons had been brought to Munich by Wolfsschanze—their Wolfsschanze.

  Hans laughed with the airline official, sharing a joke, But, thought Erich, there would be no such jokes in Geneva, for there would be no inspection by the airlines or by customs or by anyone else. The first deputy of canton Genève would see to it. One of Munich’s most highly regarded doctors, a specialist in internal medicine, was arriving as his guest.

  Hans was all that and more, thought Erich, as his brother approached him at the gate. Hans was a medium-sized bull with enormous charm. A superb soccer player who captained his district team and later ministered to the opponents he had injured.

  It was odd, thought Erich, but Hans was far better equipped than he to be the elder son. Save for the accident of time, it would have been Hans who worked with Johann von Tiebolt, and Erich, the quiet scholar, would have been the subordinate. Once, in a moment of self-doubt, he had said as much to Johann.

  Von Tiebolt would not hear of it. A pure intellectual was demanded. A man who lived a bloodless life—someone never swayed by reasons of the heart, by intemperance. Had that not been proved by those infrequent but vital moments when he—the quiet scholar—had stood up to the Tinamou and stated his reservations? Reservations that resulted in a change of strategy?

  Yes, it was true, but it was not the essential truth. That truth was something Johann did not care to face: Hans was nearly Von Tiebolt’s equal. If they clashed, Johann might die.

  That was the opinion of the quiet, bloodless intellectual.

  “Everything proceeds,” said Hans, as they walked through the gate to the plane. “The American is as good as dead, and no laboratory will trace the cause.”

  Helden got off the train at Neuchâtel. She stood on the platform, adjusting her eyes to the shafts of sunlight that shot down from the roof of the railroad station. She knew she should mingle with the crowds that scrambled off the train, but for a moment she had to stand still and breathe the air. She had spent the past three hours in the darkness of a freight car, crouched behind crates of machinery. A door had been opened elec
tronically for precisely sixty seconds at Besançon, and she had gone inside. At exactly five minutes to noon the door was opened again; she had reached Neuchâtel unseen. Her legs ached and her head pounded, but she made it. It had cost a great deal of money.

  The air filled her lungs. She picked up her suitcase and started for the doors of the Neuchâtel station. The village of Près-du-Lac was on the west side of the lake, no more than twenty miles south. She found a taxi driver willing to make the trip.

  The ride was jarring and filled with turns, but it was like a calm, floating glide for her. She looked out the window at the rolling hills and the blue waters of the lake. The rich scenery had the effect of suspending everything. It gave her the precious moments she needed to try to understand. What had Heir Oberst meant when he wrote that he had arranged for her to be near him because he had believed she was “an arm of an enemy”? An enemy he had “waited thirty years to confront.” What enemy was that? And why had he chosen her?

  What had she done? Or not done? Was it again the terrible dilemma? Damned for what she was and damned for what she wasn’t? When in God’s name would it stop?

  Herr Oberst knew he was going to die. He had prepared her for his death as surely as if he had announced it, making sure she had the money to buy secret passage to Switzerland, to a man named Werner Gerhardt in Neuchâtel. Who was he? What was he to Klaus Falkenheim that he was to be contacted only upon the latter’s death?

  The coin of Wolfsschanze has two sides.

  The taxi driver interrupted her thoughts. “The inn’s down by the shoreline,” he said. “It’s not much of a hotel.”

  “It will do, I’m sure.”

  The room overlooked the waters of Lake Neuchâtel. It was so peaceful that Helden was tempted to sit at the window and do nothing but think about Noel, because when she thought about him, she felt … comfortable. But there was a Werner Gerhardt to find. The telephone directory of Près-du-Lac had no such listing; God knew when it was last updated. But it was not a large village; she would begin casually with the concierge. Perhaps the name was familiar to him.

  It was, but not in a way that gave her any confidence.

  “Mad Gerhardt?” said the obese man, sitting in a wicker chair behind the counter. “You bring him greetings from old friends? You should bring him instead a potion to unscramble his doddering brains. He won’t understand a thing you say.”

  “I didn’t know,” replied Helden, overwhelmed by a feeling of despair.

  “See for yourself. It is midafternoon and the day is cool, but the sun is out. He’ll no doubt be in the square, singing his little songs and feeding the pigeons. They soil his clothes and he doesn’t notice.”

  She saw him sitting on the stone ledge of the circular fountain in the village square. He was oblivious of the passersby who intermittently glanced down at him, more often in revulsion than in tolerance. His clothes were frayed, the tattered overcoat soiled with droppings, as the concierge had predicted. He was as old and as sickly as Herr Oberst, but much shorter and punier in face and body. His skin was pallid and drawn, marred by spider veins, and he wore thick steel-rimmed glasses that moved from side to side in rhythm with his trembling head. His hands shook as he reached into a paper bag, taking out bread crumbs and scattering them, attracting scores of pigeons that cooed in counterpoint to the high-pitched, singsong words that came from the old man’s lips.

  Helden felt sick. He was only a remnant of a man. He was beyond senility; no other state could produce what she saw before her on the fountain’s edge.

  The coin of Wolfsschanze has two sides. The time is near for the catastrophe to begin.… It seemed pointless to repeat the words. Still, she’d come this far, knowing only that a great man had been butchered because his warning was real.

  She approached the old man and sat beside him, aware that several people in the square looked at her as if she, too, were feebleminded. She spoke quietly, in German.

  “Herr Gerhardt? I’ve traveled a long way to see you.”

  “Such a pretty lady … a pretty, pretty lady.”

  “I come from Herr Falkenheim. Do you remember him?”

  “A falcon’s home? Falcons don’t like my pigeons. They hurt my pigeons. My friends and I don’t like them, do we, sweet feathers?” Gerhardt bent over and pursed his lips, kissing the air above the rapacious birds on the ground.

  “You’d like this man, if you remembered him,” said Helden.

  “How can I like what I don’t know? Would you like some bread? You can eat it, if you wish, but my friends might be hurt.” The old man sat up with difficulty and dropped crumbs at Helden’s feet.

  “ ‘The coin of Wolfsschanze has two sides,’ ” whispered Helden.

  And then she heard the words. There was no break in the rhythm; the quiet, high-pitched singsong was the same, but there was meaning now. “He’s dead, isn’t he?… Don’t answer me; just nod your head or shake it. You’re talking to a foolish old man who makes very little sense. Remember that.”

  Helden was too stunned to move. And by her immobility, she gave the old man his answer. He continued in his singsong cadence. “Klaus is dead. So, finally, they found him and killed him.”

  “It was the ODESSA,” she said. “The ODESSA killed him. There were swastikas everywhere.”

  “Wolfsschanze wanted us to believe that.” Gerhardt threw crumbs in the air; the pigeons fought among themselves. “Here, sweet feathers! It’s teatime for you.” He turned to Helden, his eyes distant “The ODESSA, as always, is the scapegoat. Such an obvious one.”

  “You say Wolfsschanze,” whispered Helden. “A letter was given to a man named Holcroft, threatening him. It was written thirty years ago, signed by men who called themselves the survivors of Wolfsschanze.”

  For an instant, Gerhardt’s trembling stopped. “There were no survivors of Wolfsschanze, save one! Klaus Falkenheim. Others were there, and they lived, but they were not the eagles; they were filth. And now they think their time has come.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll explain it to you, but not here. After dark, come to my house on the lake. South on the waterfront road, precisely three kilometers beyond the fork, is a path.…” He gave her the directions as though they were words written to accompany a childish tune. When he had finished, he stood up painfully, tossing the last crumbs to the birds. “I don’t think you’ll be followed,” he said with a senile smile, “but make sure of it. We have work to do, and it must be done quickly.… Here, my sweet feathers! The last of your meal, my fluttering ones.”

  37

  A small single-engine plane circled in the night sky above the fiat pasture in Chambéry. Its pilot waited for the dual line of flares to be ignited: his signal to land. On the ground was another aircraft, a seaplane with wheels encased in its pontoons, prepared for departure. It would be airborne minutes after the first plane came to the end of the primitive runway, and would carry its valuable cargo north along the eastern leg of the Rhone River, crossing the Swiss border at Versoix, and landing on Lake Geneva, twelve miles north of the city. The cargo had no name, but that did not matter to the pilots. She had paid as well as the highest-priced narcotics courier.

  Only once had she shown any emotion, and that was four minutes out of Avignon, toward Saint-Vallier, when the small plane had run into an unexpected and dangerous hailstorm.

  “The weather may be too much for this light aircraft,” the pilot said. “It would be wiser to turn back.”

  “Fly above it.”

  “We haven’t the power, and we have no idea how extensive the front is.”

  “Then go through it. I’m paying for a schedule as well as transportation. I must get to Geneva tonight.”

  “If we’re forced down on the river, we could be picked up by the patrols. We have no flight registration.”

  “If we’re forced down on the river, I’ll buy the patrols. They were bought at the border in Port-Bou; they can be bought again. Keep going.”
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  “And if we crash, madame?”

  “Don’t.”

  Below them in the darkness, the Chambéry flares were ignited successively, one row at a time. The pilot dipped his wing to the left and circled downward for his final approach. Seconds later they touched ground.

  “You’re good,” said the valuable cargo, reaching for the buckle of her seat belt. “Is my next pilot your equal?”

  “As good, madame, and with an advantage I don’t have. He knows the radar points within a tenth of an air mile in the darkness. One pays for such expertness.”

  “Gladly,” replied Althene.

  The seaplane lifted off against the night wind at exactly ten-fifty-seven. The flight across the border at Versoix would be made at very low altitude and would take very little time, no more than twenty minutes to a half hour. It was the specialist’s leg of the journey, and the specialist in the cockpit was a stocky man with a red beard and thinning red hair. He chewed a half-smoked cigar and spoke English in the harsh accent associated with Alsace-Lorraine. He said nothing for the first few minutes of the flight, but when he spoke, Althene was stunned.

  “I don’t know what the merchandise is that you carry, madame, but there is an alert for your whereabouts throughout Europe.”

  “What? Who put out this alert, and how would you know? My name hasn’t been mentioned; I was guaranteed that!”

  “An all-Europe bulletin circulated by Interpol is most descriptive. It’s rare that the international police look for a woman of—shall we say—your age and appearance. I presume your name is Holcroft.”

  “Presume nothing.” Althene gripped her seat belt, trying to control her reaction. She did not know why it startled her—the man of Har Sha’alav had said they were everywhere—but the fact that this Wolfsschanze had sufficient influence with Interpol to use its apparatus was unnerving. She had to elude not only the Nazis of Wolfs-schanze but also the network of legitimate law enforcement. It was a well-executed trap; her crimes were undeniable: traveling under a false passport, and then with none. And she could give no explanation for those crimes. To do so would link her son—the son of Heinrich Clausen—to a conspiracy so massive he’d be destroyed. That extremity had to be faced; her son might have to be sacrificed. But the irony was found in the very real possibility that Wolfsschanze itself had reached deep within the legitimate authorities.… They were everywhere. Once taken, Wolfsschanze would kill her before she could say what she knew.