“How come you know about all this stuff?”
“We came here. A lot. To ski. What you’re about to see is Schatzi’s favorite getaway after the boat. Like I said, the gasthaus is just a front. Only about five people know this place even exists. Believe me.”
“Show me the money.”
Stoke gave her the flashlight and followed her down the long dark corridor on the right. They came to a dead-end, a small circular room with an old oak table with two chairs pulled up to it in the center of the stone floor. There was a candle standing in the center and Stoke lit it. A large leatherbound book lay on the table. Jet sat down and opened it, flipping through the gold-edged pages, running down the entries scrawled there in red ink with a ballpoint pen.
“What’s that?” Stoke asked.
“Wine registry. You have to sign out every case with this pen. These case numbers here in the margin are the key.” Jet was adding and subtracting a series of numbers in the palm of her hand. Stoke noticed she was writing down only the last digit of the last seven entries.
“Key to what?”
“I’ll show you,” she said and closed the book. She stood up and said, “Help me shove this table out of the way.”
They moved the table to one side. There was a loose stone in the floor where the table had stood. Jet pulled a small penknife from her pocket as she knelt to the floor. She inserted the tip of the blade in the crack on one side of the stone and pried it up. Stoke aimed the flashlight at the square hole revealed in the floor. There was a black steel panel with a digital readout window and a keypad. Jet looked at the numbers written on her palm and they appeared on the readout as she entered all seven. She pressed another button and the numbers began to flash.
“They change the code every week,” Jet said. “It’s a good system.”
“Flawless,” Stoke said as the wall of bottles started to rattle and shake, “Obviously.”
Then the whole floor-to-ceiling wall of wine began to sink into the floor. Behind it was a stainless-steel wall. Set into the steel wall was a burnished bronze elevator door.
“I get it. He keeps the really, really good wine on another floor, am I right?” Stoke said.
“Pretty good,” Jet said, looking up at him and smiling.
They stood quietly and watched the last shelf of priceless wine disappear into the floor. Despite his own worries, and Hawke’s misgivings about Jet, he knew now he’d never have gotten this far without her.
“Okay,” Jet said. “We’re almost in.”
She placed her right hand flat against a matte black panel to the right of the doors. A bar of red light passed under her hand as the bio-metric scanner read her palm. Instantly, a small light above the panel began flashing green. Stoke could hear a faint rumble and knew an elevator car was descending behind the steel doors. It took the cab a long time to get down to their level.
Stoke suddenly saw the whole thing.
“This elevator shaft goes up inside the mountain right behind the guesthouse, doesn’t it?” he said. Jet nodded.
“Welcome to the Schloss Reichenbach,” Jet said as the doors slid silently open. “One of the most secure and exquisite private residences in the Alps.”
“Cool,” Stoke said.
They rode up in silence. The interior walls of the elevator were lined with highly polished brass. Stoke looked up. There was a strange light fixture in the ceiling, a bronze eagle with spread wings holding an illuminated glass globe in its claws. It took ten minutes to get to the top of the mountain. When the cab stopped the doors slid open he and Jet stepped out into the most awesome space he’d ever seen.
“Glorious, isn’t it?” Jet said, studying his face.
“I can’t talk,” Stoke said.
Stoke simply stood there, taking it all in. They must have been at six or seven thousand feet. One whole wall opposite them was a massive stretch of curving glass. Beyond, a series of moonlit snow-capped mountains marched off into the distance under a black and starry sky. A massive chandelier hung from the peak of the soaring ceiling above them. Jet touched the button that illuminated it.
There was very little furniture in the room. No rugs or carpet on the floors, just vast areas of polished wood in various intricate inlaid designs. A few low leather chairs were arranged around a great open-hearth stone fireplace to Stoke’s left. Above the carved mantel hung a large oil portrait. Two men on horseback in the snow, high up in these mountains. Even from a distance, Stoke recognized one of the two men as von Draxis. He was wearing some kind of funky uniform. Very heroic-type painting.
“Who’s the other guy?” he asked Jet, moving toward the fireplace to get a better look.
“That’s Luca Bonaparte,” she said. “Schatzi’s best friend.”
“Bonaparte, huh? So that’s him. I should have guessed by the way he’s got his hand stuck inside his overcoat. Well, I’ll be darned. Wow. What’s that neat outfit Schatzi’s wearing?”
“Alpenkorps. The uniform of the German Alpine Corps. World War II vintage. He has quite a collection of military uniforms at Tempelhof.”
“There’s that word again. What’s Tempelhof? You mean the airport?”
“The old aerodrome at Berlin. Designed by Albert Speer and built around 1937. A huge crescent building about five kilometers long. After Hitler conquered the world it was going to be the continent of Germania’s main airport. A few years ago, the city of Berlin was going to tear it down but Schatzi bought it out from under their noses. It now houses all of the von Draxis corporate offices and shipbuilding and aircraft design studios.”
“Is that right? Germania. That’s what he planned to call the world, huh? I never knew that.”
A single crescent-shaped table with one chair stood facing the great window. On its highly polished surface stood only a black and white photograph in a large silver frame and the model of an old three-masted sailing ship. The hull was some kind of black stone and the sails were all made of ivory so thin you could see starlight right through them.
“So this is his desk?” Stoke said, approaching a semicircular table of walnut with carved eagles for legs. Behind the desk and the curving glass wall, the top of the world unfolded and rolled out below.
“Yes. Sit in the chair.”
“You don’t think he’d mind?”
“I’m sure he would. Go ahead.”
Stoke did as she said. Sitting here, it was hard not to feel like the man who owned the world. It was a very uncomfortable sensation.
“Who’s that in the silver frame? Daddy?”
“Kaiser Wilhelm.”
“You don’t say. My, my, my. Isn’t that something?” Stoke placed both of his hands palm-down on the desk and spread his fingers, quiet for a few seconds, just thinking about the whole thing. After a few long moments he looked up at her and said, “Tell me, Jet. What exactly does your boyfriend do for a living?”
“He’s a shipbuilder. The most successful and powerful in Germany. His family has been in the business for four centuries. The Krupp family built the guns. The von Draxis dynasty built the ships that carried the guns across the sea. The family shipyard in Wilhelmshaven is where they built the Graf Spee.”
“Right. Germany’s ultimate pocket battleship. The Brits cornered her down in Uruguay, right? It took three Royal Navy ships to sink her.”
“The Brits didn’t sink her, Stokely. Hitler ordered her scuttled in the Montevideo harbor. To prevent the British from learning the secrets of von Draxis’s construction and Krupp’s experimental weapons systems. The Graf Spee was designed and built by Schatzi’s grandfather, Konrad, for the Kriegsmarine. Launched in 1937.”
“Kriegsmarine, huh? Does our little Schatzi still build boats for the German navy?”
“Not so much now.”
“German navy hasn’t got the big-bucks budgets it used to have. So, what kind of boats does he build these days?”