A Tsar's Gold (Parker Chase Book 6) Read online

  Parker met the father’s gaze. “You realize certain people might not like having this brought up. Or appreciate hearing your disdain for Nazi beliefs.”

  Darkness clouded Father Bakker’s face. “I welcome their anger. It is a badge of honor, proof I made the correct choice. A person who supports those barbarians in any way deserves nothing less than Satan’s fury. I will not be cowed.”

  The good father had fire in his eyes and steel in his spine. Advanced age hadn’t dimmed his drive one degree. “Good man. I promise we’ll call if we find anything in Luxembourg.”

  Father Bakker’s hand disappeared into his pocket, then reappeared holding a slip of paper. “Here is my private number. Call any time, day or night. And should you find yourself in need of assistance, ask. My decades serving the church have provided me with many friends around the globe.”

  They shook hands, then said their goodbyes. Father Bakker lifted his cane and pointed to the door. “Allow me to see you out.” Bakker continued speaking in a low voice as he led the way. “The events which led you to this church may seem to be far past. In truth, they are but a moment ago. As Parker said, there are many today who would prefer that these events remain buried. Be cautious as you go.”

  Father Bakker fell silent as they entered the sanctuary. One worshipper was inside, a single man seated in a nearby pew, his head bowed and hands clasped. Only once they were close to the exit door did the priest continue. “Allow me to pass this final piece of wisdom,” Father Bakker said. “What you cannot imagine would ever occur is only a moment away. When I was young, never did I think a country would allow madmen to take power, and use a nation’s might for pure evil. It can occur, however, and it has. The only way to stop it, now as then, is for men and women like you to take action.”

  “And like you,” Jane said. “Hitler and his accomplices are long dead. You fought back when they were still alive and very much in power.”

  “I was a small piece of the much larger resistance,” Bakker said. “Though I am proud of my efforts.” They stopped outside the front door. “Those monsters may be dead, but their ideas are regrettably alive, and still hold power. Be vigilant.”

  With that final warning, Jane and Parker bid the priest goodbye and walked into the sunlight, heading for their car. Jane had her phone out and started mapping the route. “It’s two hundred kilometers to Luxembourg. You want to drive?”

  Parker grabbed the keys, handing her the copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles that Father Bakker had entrusted to them. “You research the Villa Pauly. I’ll make sure we get there.” Jane strapped herself into the passenger seat, and Parker hopped behind the wheel and motored away. As he headed southeast under a bright noonday sun, a familiar tingling ran through his body, like his nerve endings had come back to life. Nothing like taking on an unseen enemy to make you feel alive. Father Bakker faded in the rearview mirror, giving a final wave before he turned to go back inside, leaning on his cane with each step.

  May the good Lord watch over you both. Father Bakker finished his silent prayer as he entered the church. The unexpected pair of visitors had thrown him seventy years into the past, to a more black-and-white time when evil wore its intent on a shoulder, and good men fought for a more righteous world. His cane beat a familiar rhythm over the smooth church floor, though in truth his steps hadn’t felt so light in years. A forgotten zeal swirled in his veins; even his small contribution today of keeping an old promise did more for his health than any exercise or pill.

  As he neared the darkened entrance to his study, Father Bakker stumbled over a bunched rug before catching himself against the wall. Cold fear gusted through him; at his age, falls were no joke. “David, you must be more careful,” he called. His assistant, a new priest who hailed from a small village near the French border, must have left the carpet twisted after sweeping. David was a pious boy, scarcely a man. Can’t chase him out of here already. It’s only been a month.

  He switched on a hallway light to reveal it wasn’t a rug. David lay sprawled on the floor, blood oozing from his scalp, coloring his closed eyelids and trickling onto the floor. For a brief instant Bakker assumed David had fallen and split his head open. Then a harsh voice filled the hallway. When Father Bakker looked up, an unfamiliar man stood in his office door.

  “Tell me where to find them.”

  Anger flared hot in his chest. “Who are you? What man dares to defile the house of God, to kill a priest?” Only after the words spilled out did Father Bakker realize David could be dead. He dropped to his knees, cane falling away forgotten as he cradled David’s wounded head with both hands. “David, wake up. Can you hear me?”

  The looming man laughed, harsh and low. “He is not dead.” A scowl crossed the broad face, a fissure cracking across an ice shelf. “That can change.”

  Bakker put two fingers on David’s neck. A strong pulse, and regular. Father Bakker exhaled. David would live.

  “We have very little money,” Bakker said. “It is in my office. Take it and go.”

  “I am here for the painting,” the intruder rumbled with an Eastern European accent. Russian, most likely. Like the men who had killed Claus Elser and threatened Parker Chase.

  Bakker hoped his fear didn’t show. “We have many paintings. Take them all if you wish.”

  “The Caravaggio, Father. That is what I want.”

  “I do not know what you mean.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” the man said. “I listened at the door. I heard everything.” The scowl vanished, replaced with a frown. “Except where they go next. The man and woman.”

  He doesn’t know Parker’s name. Then Father Bakker realized. “You were in the sanctuary. Sitting outside.”

  “Now, tell me.” A gun came out of his pocket. A suppressor had been attached to the barrel. “You will not lie. If you do, I shoot him.” He gestured to David. Red light glinted off a ring on one of the gunman’s fingers.

  Father Bakker’s obstinance collapsed when the barrel pointed at David’s head. One look in the intruder’s eyes told him this was no empty threat; the man would kill David. “Then you will leave?”

  “With the painting.”

  Father Bakker bit his lip. Lord forgive me. “They are going to Luxembourg. To the former Gestapo headquarters in a building called the Villa Pauly.”

  The man motioned for Bakker to stand. Bakker offered a silent prayer of thanks that he had never asked Parker’s or Jane’s name.

  “Into the office.” The Russian gestured with his gun and then stood back, allowing Bakker to pass before he bent and hefted David over a shoulder in one smooth motion and carried him to Bakker’s desk chair.

  “Will you shoot me now?”

  The Russian pointed behind Bakker, to the rear wall. “Tell me what that is.” An odd request, given there was nothing there but a window. Bakker turned to look. “What do you—”

  Father Bakker never saw the blow coming as the gun barrel crashed into his skull. A flash of light washed over his vision, then blackness.

  After knocking the father unconscious with more care than he usually displayed, the Russian took out his phone. “They are going to Luxembourg.” He provided their specific destination, then rang off and removed a knife from his pocket. Less than two minutes later he walked outside with the rolled canvas under his arm. He had no idea who Caravaggio was, but if a traitorous German soldier and a priest had nearly been willing to die for it, the painting had to be valuable. Regardless, the prize he sought was far more valuable. The riches of an empire. Wealth thousands had died for – and which he would recapture, no matter the cost.

  Chapter 5

  Luxembourg

  Jane spent the first hour of the drive in silence, researching the letter, studying The Hound of the Baskervilles, and doing who knows what else. She didn’t say a thing for sixty minutes, then spoke without warning.

  “It’s not Villa Pauly.”

  Parker jammed on the brakes, nearly causing a pileup. “What?” />
  Horns blared, foreign curses were hurled at him, but Jane didn’t respond. “Am I driving to the wrong place?” he asked.

  “No. Keep going to Luxembourg.”

  He waited. She didn’t look up from her phone. He took his foot off the brake and began driving once more. Jane scribbled notes, glancing back and forth from the phone to her notebook. “To the Villa Pauly?” he pressed her. “Because you just told me it’s the wrong place.”

  “It’s the right area. Keep driving. I’ll tell you more when I’m done.”

  Parker opened his mouth, then thought better of it. People had their own ways of doing things. Maybe Jane really, really didn’t like to be bothered when she was concentrating. It was a side of her he’d never seen before. Still, it wasn’t wholly foreign. He once knew a girl whose claws came out if you bugged her at the wrong time – which was generally while she had her nose buried in a history book.

  He’d made it to the limits of Luxembourg City when she finally spoke. “Did you know Luxembourg is less than a thousand square miles in total area?”

  “I did not.”

  “Pretty amazing.” She put her phone away. “I decoded Claus’s letter to his sister. Using this book was a brilliant move. This specific edition aligns with the letters he sent. Even if someone knew his letter contained a secret code, they’d not only have to determine this is the book to decode them, they’d need this exact edition.”

  “Yes, it was a smart move. Which is good, considering who he was up against. Nazis have their picture in the dictionary next to ‘Bad guys.’”

  “Fair point,” Jane said. “Claus was playing for keeps. Which is what makes his message so interesting. He layered in another misdirection.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Father Bakker pointed us to the Villa Pauly. Which is useful while also being a problem. First, and in truth the only thing you need to consider, is we are talking about Gestapo headquarters. Security at their base of operations would be impenetrable. Claus’s sister certainly couldn’t have gone there to find whatever he was pointing her toward.”

  Parker had considered that. “Which suggests it was more of a landmark for her.”

  “Erika always told me you were smart,” Jane said. “Excellent deduction.”

  Parker appreciated that Jane didn’t look to see his reaction: there wasn’t one. He made sure of it.

  Jane continued. “Second, this second letter is as unremarkable as the first. Claus doesn’t say much of anything about what he’s doing, other than praising the Führer and telling her Germany will defeat the Allied forces soon. What’s interesting are the Bible verses at the end. Smart of him, to keep the same format to his letters. If anyone reading these kept copies, chances are they’d eventually ignore the verses, seeing they were in every letter.”

  “They’re not real verses?” Jane confirmed this to be the case. “Good, unless the person reading them was very religious. Then Claus would have been in trouble.”

  Jane shrugged. “Nobody said it wasn’t risky. Like before, the fake verses point to pages and words in Conan Doyle’s novel.”

  The feminine voice from their GPS told Parker to turn off the highway. An exit ramp led them into a business district in Luxembourg. They passed a car dealership that made him look twice. “That’s a Lamborghini dealership. Those things are six figures used.” He knew because he’d looked at buying one. Thirty seconds after checking out the car online, however, common sense had taken hold; only a certain kind of person drove the Italian sportscars. He didn’t want to be one of them.

  “Luxembourg is the second richest country on the planet and one of the world’s most notorious tax havens. I’m surprised we’ve only passed one exotic sportscar dealer,” she said mildly. “I was telling you what the hidden message is. Care to listen?” He kept quiet. “Good. Claus had Father Bakker send his sister to the Villa Pauly, which makes sense given that’s likely all Claus knew about his next posting when he left Brussels. However, you can’t just walk into Gestapo headquarters. On top of that, it’s a terrible place to hide anything you stole from your bosses.”

  Parker stopped for a red light. A lime-green Lamborghini stopped beside them. That could have been me. “Another reason is Claus seemed to know the Germans weren’t winning the war,” Parker said. “He actively tried to sabotage them from inside as best he could. So why would he think Gestapo headquarters would be around long enough for his sister to show up and find whatever he wanted her to see?”

  “Agreed. The mansion now houses several businesses. Anything in there from Claus’s time is long gone.”

  “I read about how much Germany restricts references to the Nazis that aren’t educational.”

  “That’s correct,” Jane said. “Educational means they’re warnings. One tactic Germans adopted after the war was doing whatever it takes to stomp out such horrific ideas, though lately I’ve read about far-right politicians gaining influence.”

  Parker sighed inwardly. In the short time he’d known Jane, he’d come to realize it didn’t take much to send her on a tangent about history. A trait he recognized, not only from his past, but as a reflection of himself. Meandering along the historical record often yielded lessons a person could see again and again without ever understanding. Erika had done the same thing.

  “You were telling me about Claus’s message?”

  “Yes.” She gripped a piece of notepaper as though it were made of gold. “Tell me what this means to you. Remember, there’s no punctuation, and Claus only used words that appeared in the novel. I think he did the best he could.” She cleared her throat. “Across road building pound locked room secret word Baskerville Hall.”

  Parker chewed his lip. “Across road points to whatever’s across the street from the Villa Pauly.”

  “Easy enough. The bit about a locked room is mystifying,” Jane said.

  He’d learned the best way to navigate the seemingly insurmountable was one step at a time. “Pound. What does pound have to do with anything?”

  “In context of the novel, it refers to British currency.”

  “Money, not weight. Okay. That may make sense.”

  Jane’s eyes narrowed. “How so?”

  The GPS announced the Villa Pauly was on their right. Only Parker looked left. And found the answer. “I know what Claus is saying.”

  Jane realized he wasn’t studying the former Gestapo headquarters. “What is it?”

  He pointed past her, toward a different building. One standing across the street from the old Gestapo headquarters, a nondescript three-story structure packed tightly alongside several others, each as unobtrusive as the next. The row of buildings stood well back from the street. If it weren’t for modern renovations to the first level of each, Parker might have missed it.

  “That place?” She followed his outstretched finger. “What about it?”

  “It’s a bank,” he said. “A private bank. I’ve been in places like that before.” First, he’d gone on behalf of a select few of his most well-heeled clients, men and women who had a dozen investment handlers like Parker in their service. Later, he’d visited such places as a depositor, choosing to keep certain assets offshore. “Do you remember we talked about me coming into some money not long ago?”

  “You told me a man tried to kill you and Erika. Before he could, you killed him and took his money.”

  “After things settled down, I invested most of it. The investments paid off. A portion of my earnings are now in a private bank in Europe, not unlike the one right in front of us.”

  Traffic buzzed past them as Jane frowned, chewing her lower lip. He could see the gears turning. “You think Claus left something in that bank.”

  He shrugged. “I bet this bank was around long before the Nazis came. It would have been here when Claus was inspecting stolen art for the Gestapo.”

  Her lips pursed. “Say you are correct. If Claus wanted his sister to come to this bank, to know he left an object, left something
in there, how would she retrieve it? We have no key, no combination code to unlock a vault. Even if you’re right, what does it matter?”

  “Claus gave us the key.” He let the words hang. Until Jane looked like she was going to breathe fire from her nose. “It’s in his message,” Parker said hurriedly. “Look at the end. Secret word. He tells us what we need.”

  “Baskerville Hall? You think that gets us into the bank vault?”

  “Not the vault. Claus’s deposit box.” He pulled back into traffic, driving to the next street before pulling off to park in a quiet neighborhood. “People bank in places like this for privacy. For anonymity. They pay high fees; the bankers don’t ask questions. If you can afford a deposit box and the minimum balance, these bankers take your secrets to their grave. I expect if we walk in and give them Claus’s name, we’ll be asked to provide a unique kind of key, one known only to the box owner or his designee.”

  “A password,” Jane said.

  “Yes. Banks like this cater to all kinds of people. Reclusive, eccentric, weird. As long as you have money, they’ll work with you. If Claus had connections or enough money, he could have arranged for a box to stay open in his name. Based on his message and what I know about these types of places, my guess is he left instructions that anyone who wants to access his box needs two things: his name and the password. Without both, no access.”

  “What if he died?”

  “He did,” Parker said. “Good thing he told us his password and where to use it. If he hadn’t, too bad. The bank takes possession of the box and any contents once the contract isn’t renewed.”

  Jane chewed on it, decided she liked the taste. “It’s possible.”

  They studied the row of discreet banks. Parker knew enough about private finance and those who made it happen to understand asking questions wasn’t good for your health. “Or I could be wrong,” he said. “Only one way to find out.”