Spear of Destiny Page 12

  With a coffee on one side and a plate with chocolate cake on the other, he opened the laptop and got to work. He prayed that no one had yet thought of shutting down his access to the police computer, and his heart was beating fast when he keyed in his username and password. Moments later, the remote access system let him in.

  His first stop was in the files where his own arrests were listed. Slowly, he scrolled down until he came to the name he wanted. He went in, retrieved a telephone number, and came out again. After this, he opened thirty more files, selecting the names at random; if his visit was being tracked and recorded, this would help throw them off the scent.

  He took the phone from the bag, dialled the number he had just noted, and spoke briefly to someone at the other end. Ending the call, he went back to the computer.

  He had logged on to the main Interpol system numerous times in the past; he clicked his way through to the European section of the Wanted database, and put in the keywords ‘German/Austrian, Antiquities Theft/Fraud’. His screen filled rapidly with records. He sighed and started on what he knew would be the most tedious part of the task he’d set himself.

  Moving to Advanced Search, he added fresh keywords: blond, blue eyes, 1.8 to 1.9 metres, nasal/frontal scar.

  Three names and three photographs came up on the screen. He clicked on the second thumbnail, and it expanded in size to reveal the man who had attacked him and killed or kidnapped Sarah. His name was Egon Aehrenthal, and he was forty-four years old (born February 1964 in the Austrian town of Bernstein in Burgenland). His profession was given as antiquarian, with a special interest in biblical, Byzantine, and Umayyad antiquities from the Middle East. He had convictions for smuggling in Israel and Egypt, and for forgery in Lebanon, and had spent time in jail in each country.

  Ethan smiled. Like a Mountie, he had found his man. But finding him in police files was not the same as finding him in the real world. He went on reading. Long accustomed to filling in the gaps of bland police records, he began to construct a picture that might provide the leads he hoped would take him to his target and, if his hunch was right, to Sarah.

  Aehrenthal had been born Egon Armin Dietmar Hilarius Oktav Werner von Aehrenthal on the day the Austrian ski champion Egon Zimmerman had carried off a gold for the men’s downhill at the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. His jubilant father, who had watched the skier race to glory, flew that same night from one end of Austria to the other in order to be with his wife in Bernstein, bestowed Zimmerman’s Christian name on his newborn son, and prophesied a golden future for him.

  Gold would certainly have proved useful for the von Aehrenthals. Egon belonged to an aristocratic family that had risen to the nobility in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father never ceased to tell his golden-haired son that they had once been rich, and fervently expressed his belief that they would be rich again. He told Egon how they had intermarried with the Zvolen line of the perturbingly magnificent Eszterházys, the greatest family in the empire, the ne plus ultra of nobility, the embodiments of refinement and wit and elegance, who had amassed the greatest fortunes and built the most beautiful palaces. Young Egon, brought up to a life of genteel pretension and a slightly shabby existence, was a frequent visitor at Burg Bernstein, the magnificent if somewhat run-down castle at the other end of the village. The castle, now a hotel, dated in one form or another back to the ninth century. Its fame in modern times lay in the fact that the controversial desert explorer, Laszlo Almásy, had been born and brought up there. Almásy, Ethan remembered, had been the English patient in the film of the same name.

  Egon’s father had stimulated an interest in the baroque palaces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and from this beginning Egon had built himself a career as a dealer in antiquities. At some point, he had moved away from the gilded rococo grandeurs of the European baroque to the antiquities of the Jewish and Roman Middle East. Ethan made a note to check on what had led him into this new interest.

  Egon opened an office on Jerusalem’s David Street, and travelled widely through the surrounding Arab states, with regular visits back to Austria. His early travels were not well documented; but it was not long after embarking on this fresh enterprise that Aehrenthal (still in his late twenties) began to go crooked. Or perhaps that had been his intention all along. He spent three months in an Israeli prison for the illegal export of coins from the Bar Kochva Revolt era. A year later, the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Theft Prevention Unit pursued him about the purchase of items stolen from tombs in the Judaean foothills.

  Under surveillance in Israel, he travelled through the Levant as far as Anatolia, then down to Egypt and Libya, where he spent over a year. The Turkish authorities sent him to jail for six months following the break-up of a forgery ring in Antakya, the ancient Antioch. He was later deported.

  He had continued like this for several years, moving from place to place, making and losing money, locating and selling genuine artefacts, acting as a front for smuggling and forgery operations.

  Ethan made note of dates and places, looking for a pattern, something that might hint where Aehrenthal had gone. Could he have taken Sarah out of the country? he wondered. It would have been difficult, he knew, but not altogether impossible, especially for an experienced smuggler.

  At the end of the record was a notation Ethan did not recognise: RE. A brief search revealed that this was an abbreviation for the German Rechtsextremismus: Right-wing extremism. The entry indicated that Aehrenthal had had or still had connections with at least one German or Austrian political grouping of that description. When he clicked on the link, however, a message came onto the screen: Access Prohibited.

  11

  ‘Evil shall hunt the violent man to overthrow him…’

  He knew whom he was hunting, but not where. Given his international links, Aehrenthal could be almost anywhere. Sarah might be dead, dumped by the roadside after an interrogation that had given up none of the information the Austrian wanted. Or she could be with him even now, beaten, raped, kept by for a sunny day. Was it possible she did know the things Aehrenthal wanted to drag from her? She was an expert, after all. Maybe she could help him authenticate the relics. That must be what he was after, some sort of certificate of authenticity so he could sell the objects on the black market. Once he had Sarah’s name on a piece of paper, perhaps he’d go higher, find someone at the British Museum, or someone in Jerusalem. The relics could be worth millions to the right people. If he had the nerve, he might even go to the Vatican, ask for money, threaten to destroy the relics if he didn’t get what he asked.

  Sarah would have to die at some point, that was obvious. Aehrenthal couldn’t afford to have her on the loose, telling everyone what he’d done. With Ethan taking the rap for the killings, Aehrenthal could probably polish his image with a little cash and start an auction that would end up making him rich for life.

  Ethan put ‘Aehrenthal’ into Google and came up with dozens of references to Alois Lexa Graf von Aehrenthal, the ruthless Austro-Hungarian foreign minister who had presided over the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and thus helped plunge Europe into the First World War. Ethan wondered if this Count Aehrenthal had been one of Egon’s ancestors, to whom he owed his fascination with the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy and their lavish palaces.

  Narrowing the search by adding ‘Egon’, he came across random references to the antiques trade, to biblical archaeology, and to a football club in Bernstein to which he’d belonged in his teens. Oddest of all was a site for the international Air Sports Federation, which listed Egon as one of many Austrian fliers who had been awarded the Paul Tissandier Diploma for services to the sport. When had Egon learnt to fly? Did he still have a licence? Did he have access to a plane, either one he owned or one he hired?

  Ethan went on searching. If Aehrenthal did have a current licence it was most likely to be a JAA-PPL issued by the Austrian Civil Aviation Authority. He started at the Joint Aviation Authority website, then a site for the Air
craft Owners and Pilots Association of Austria. There were no member lists he could access, no licence records to check. If only…

  He sat back from the table. His coffee had gone cold, his cake was half eaten. He looked at the clock. Two hours had already passed. He couldn’t stay here much longer. If he had to leave the country, he’d have to be ready by the evening.

  For hours he’d been racking his brains. Aehrenthal had not kidnapped Sarah on a whim. For the moment, she was useful to him. He might have settled on a hotel or a rented flat to work from, some place he could invite potential buyers. Only a full-scale police manhunt had any hope of tracking him down if he was still in the UK.

  But he might just as easily have planned to get her out of the country. The question had been how. And now he thought he knew. They would dope her, bandage her face, put her in an air ambulance, and fly her somewhere. Somewhere Aehrenthal would feel comfortable working out of. A place in Austria, perhaps. Not Jerusalem: Israeli security was too tight, he’d never take her there.

  He took the mobile from his pocket and dialled directory enquiries.

  Her name was Lindita. Lindita Cobaj. She hurried into the cafe wearing a dark green anorak trimmed with rabbit fur. Her green and pink hair stood up in spikes, and her ears, lips and nose would never have allowed her through a security barrier armed with a metal detector. If he remembered rightly, she was an average of thirty-two years old, though he’d seen her down as young as twenty-five and as old as forty. She had one of those faces, one of those bodies that transcended age and pain. Neither pretty nor plain, neither skinny nor fat, neither a child nor an adult, she traversed all his preconceptions, all categories, all expectations. He had arrested her six or seven times, borne witness against her in court, grown impatient with her, grown to like and loathe her with equal vigour. She grinned broadly as she caught sight of him.

  ‘Not see you is ages, Usherwood, man. Lose some weights, eh?’

  He shrugged. She shrugged back. A half-smoked fag dangled from the corner of her mouth. Catching the eye of the barista, she took the cigarette from her lips, extinguished it, and put the unsmoked half behind her left ear.

  ‘No waste, no want.’

  Ethan grimaced. Her English hadn’t got any better.

  ‘Take a seat, Lindita.’ He invited her to sit beside him. ‘What would you like?’

  She asked for a caffè mocha with cream and a double slice of chocolate cake. He looked her over: size ten or twelve. How did she do it? He could believe she was some kind of supernatural being. In fact, he was counting on it, counting on her supernatural powers to find and rescue Sarah. And maybe, just maybe, she could explain to him why he was so intent on this, why saving Sarah had become more than a rung on the ladder back to self-preservation and professional integrity. Much more.

  The barista brought her coffee and cake, and a second coffee for Ethan. Going back to the bar, he ejected a CD and put in another. Antony and the Johnsons burst into ripe song, charged with emotion and dread, the half-human vibrato rising and plunging through lyrics as dark as treacle.

  Lindita dug her fork into the first slice of cake and popped a large tranche into her bright mouth. It disappeared and her eyes widened as her mouth moved in a slow grinding motion. Ethan waited for her to finish. Her tongue came out at last and licked her full, purple-lipsticked lips.

  ‘You not try arrest me, then?’ she asked, turning her big green eyes on him.

  ‘Have you been doing anything I should arrest you for?’

  She grinned and drank deeply from her coffee cup. Her eyes were filled with defiance and mischief.

  He explained what he wanted, the hunt and the means for his own escape.

  She played at the laptop for several minutes, then sat back and finished the cake – both slices – and the coffee.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, words he’d never heard from her lips before. ‘Now we goes my place, yes?’

  From many other women it might have sounded like an invitation to romantic intrigue. From Lindita Cobaj, it could as easily have been a threat. He didn’t hesitate. He wasn’t in a position to go against her.

  He drove her home to Barton, the dodgiest part of Gloucester, keeping a close watch in the mirror to make sure he wasn’t being trailed. He knew he’d recognise any car belonging to the local CID. Then it occurred to him that the police might not be the only ones looking for him. There were boys and young men in the street. Ethan recognised some of them, and he guessed they knew him too. He locked his car, then stood looking at it and the boys. Lindita walked over to the watchers, spoke quietly to them, and came back.

  ‘No need worry. Car very safe. More safe here than front police station.’

  Her flat – she called it apartament im, my apartment, to give it the only cachet it was ever likely to get – was in the basement of a building whose peeling walls seemed to suffer from a notifiable skin disease. She ushered him inside, like a new lover introducing her beau to the outer chambers of hell.

  Lindita was an Albanian, a Shqiptare, from Vlorë on the Adriatic coast, seventy miles from Brindisi and the Italian mainland. Like the city she hailed from, Lindita had more than one name, more than one face, more than one identity.

  She belonged to the Solejmani crime syndicate operating out of Vlorë. The Solejmanis had started life smuggling illegal migrants out of Albania to the Puglia coast, then moved into heroin, sex slavery, and illegal gambling. The people-smuggling racket took them eventually to England, where Lindita put her startling abilities as a graphic designer to work, forging documents in every imaginable language. She’d moved from London to Gloucester, where she worked her wizardry with an Apple computer and half a dozen printers that chirruped away all day long, supplying IDs for gangsters and slaves like a machine that feeds Chupa Chups lollies to greedy children.

  Along the way, she had learnt to use her computer for hacking. It had become a hobby and a source of extra income. She’d always been careful to limit her scams and to keep her tracks well covered. Once in a while, though, there’d been slips that had led to her being picked up for questioning, and more than once the questioning had led to conviction and short prison terms. Ethan had come to know her that way, and grown to admire her strength, a single woman among ruthless men.

  She led him to the kitchen, where gleaming new appliances rubbed shoulders with damp patches on the walls and windows that looked as though they hadn’t been washed in twenty years. She made strong Turkish coffee in a long-handled metal pot, poured it into two small glasses, and added a generous splash of Albanian brandy from a slim green bottle labelled Konjak Gjergj Kastrioti Skenderbeu. She put the cork back in the bottle and set it down.

  ‘Skenderbeu,’ she said. ‘Great fucking Albanian hero man. Fight many fight, kill many Turk. Is big hero for Albanian. His flag, flag to Albania.’

  She pointed to the winged eagle on the label and grinned. One of her teeth had fallen out. She took a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and lit up. Ethan recognised the brand: Priluky Osoblivi, made in the Ukraine and smuggled from Albania. She probably had cases out in the back.

  He downed the contents of his glass in one gulp. Two seconds later, he regretted it. He coughed and spluttered. Lindita took a long drag on her cigarette, blew out a plume of smoke, and knocked back her cognac without blinking.

  ‘In Albania,’ she said, ‘you would not be man. Only child cough.’

  He recovered his breath and set about explaining to her what he was trying to do in more detail. She fetched a pad and pen, and wrote down everything. He told her about Sarah, about himself, about Aehrenthal.

  ‘I think he may have taken her out of this country,’ he said. ‘Do you think that’s possible?’

  She nodded and lit another cigarette.

  ‘Maybe. Yes, maybe possible.’

  ‘But if he has taken her somewhere, can you track him?’

  She shrugged. Her mouth curved, not in a smile, not in a frown. A gesture of possibility. Ethan had
no time for possibilities.

  ‘What this worth to you, Inspector of Detectives?’ she asked. ‘You got any money?’

  They agreed a price for the hacking job, then a price for a passport. If he succeeded in tracking Sarah down, he’d have to leave the country at once.

  She used her own computer – an iMac G5 with an 18-inch screen – to search through the records of a dozen Austrian flying organisations, and each time she narrowed the search down. She had moved plenty of people across the Alps from Italy into Austria, and her German was much better than Ethan’s GCSE version. As she hunched over the table, her tobacco-stained fingers flickered across the keyboard like seagulls darting over waves. Bit by bit, the facts started coming in.

  Aehrenthal learnt to fly with Motorflug Union Wien, at their flight training centre in Vienna and at the little airfield at Bad Vöslau. He was a member of the Wiener Luftfahrer Verband club at Bad Vöslau, where he’d once kept a rare 1940 Bücker Bü 131 Jungmann. A further search revealed that he also belonged to the Punitz Flugbetrieb, a flying club operating out of a smaller airfield further south, Punitz Güssing. The only other landing site in the vicinity of Bernstein was a short grass strip at Pinkafeld. Lindita shook her head. She knew a lot about landing small planes in hidden locations. A grass strip might have been doable, but at some risk.

  Selecting Bad Vöslau as the more likely destination, she hacked into a closed-access system, the Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunications Network, through which flight plan details are sent between air traffic control units. If Aehrenthal had logged flight plans from any UK airport, they would have gone to Eurocontrol in Brussels. Confirmation would have gone to the departure airport and the details forwarded to the area control centres. This gave several portals through which the information could be found. It took ten minutes from start to finish.

  At 06.15 hours that morning, a Beechcraft King Air B200 air ambulance registered to a company in Eisenstadt, Austria, had taken off from Oxford’s Kidlington airport with a destination of Bad Vöslau. It had touched down about three hours later. It had been piloted by Egon Aehrenthal and co-piloted by someone called Dietmar Koubek. There had been a single passenger.