Contents ( 44)
- DAUGHTER OF GOD
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- CONTENTS
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
Seth hadn’t noticed it at first but there it was, a miniature video camera staring down at him. Feeling self-conscious, Ridgeway shed his coat Moments later, the doors to the elevator slid open and he stepped into an elegant paneled entryway with marble floors. Jacob Yost stood in front of him, holding an H&K MP5A machine pistol.
TWENTY-FOUR
Down on the Rami Strasse, a dark sedan glided through the warm night. Inside, four men peered out the windows, watching for danger. Under their expensively tailored business suits, expensively crafted holsters held deadly weapons. Death passed unnoticed when it masqueraded as wealth in a wealthy city.
“There!” said the man next to the driver. He spoke Russian. The others looked as he pointed to a building at the corner of the Rami Strasse and Zelt Weg. The driver slowed the car and pulled it to a stop at the curb just beyond the entrance to a high-rise construction site.
“Up there, on the top,” said the man next to the driver. The other men leaned against the windows of the car and craned their necks upward. They saw lights on the top floor of the building, and, next to the building, the lights and noise of laborers working to build while the weather held.
“Turn right here,” said the man next to the driver. “We’ll park the car just past the building and walk back.”
The driver nodded as he stepped on the accelerator and pulled into the thin evening traffic.
“Put that away,” Seth said as he stepped from the elevator. He was more annoyed than frightened. “I’ve had enough of people pointing guns at me.”
Yost looked at him, cold calculation flickering behind his eyes. He was a computer comparing his memory with the person standing before him. Yost nodded sharply once, then lowered the muzzle of the H&K until it was pointing at the floor.
“Good evening,” Yost said with a smile. “I’m sorry for the inconveniences, but they have frequently proven to be of lifesaving importance to my father.”
“I’m beginning to understand why,” Seth said. Yost gave him a thin, knowing smile, then turned abruptly and walked down the hall. Seth followed him, gazing as he did at the oils and watercolors on the walls. It was like passing through a very narrow but extremely well-endowed museum. As Ridgeway made his way past the procession of paintings, he recognized several of them as works described by the younger Jacob Yost the night before.
Yost had explained then that the extreme security for his father’s apartment had been necessary for more than thirty years now, partly because of the value of the paintings, but mostly because of what he had seen and learned at Alt Aussee.
After the war, Yost said, his father made his way back to Zurich from the Austrian salt mines where Hitler had hidden his stolen art. He had also learned to hate the Nazis, hate them with an intensity that only people who are confronted with absolute evil can fully understand.