"What's her name?"
"Beth. I don't know any other name for her. Everyone calls her Beth. That's it."
"But, Trish, I gather he claims lineage with the von Tarn family -"
"I don't think he needs to just claim lineage. I think it's genuine. But…"
"But the Nazis are supposed to have murdered his family."
"A family that, over the years, he's come to despise."
"I see." The shock of these latest revelations was just starting to bite home.
"Max is powerful, James. Don't ever doubt that. He is a very dangerous beast."
"You wouldn't happen to know where he is now?" Bond made it sound so casual that it almost went unnoticed, but he saw Anna stir and flash a look toward Cathy.
"He could be checking in downstairs, for all I know."
Trish's hand went up to her hair for the first time since they had been in the room, fingers splayed, raking deeply into the thick soft forest. "But I don't think so. What you're really asking me is where you can go and pick him up, yes?"
Bond leaned forward. "I can offer you safety, Trish."
"Oh, please." She laughed. "You cannot offer me safety until you have him six feet under. He has an army out there."
"Trish," Flicka took over, "we can give you some safety. We can get you out of Jerusalem first thing in the morning. Once we have you in England we're certain we can keep you safe. You and the girls."
"The girls can always look after themselves, but, yes, I'd like them around for a while."
"Then you'll come with us?"
"I've nowhere else to go, and Max will know I'm here. Even Connie will have it figured out. Yes. Okay, take me to London and squirrel me away where none of Max's people can get their hands on me. What's in it for you?"
"Your safety, Trish," from Bond. "Your safety, and cooperation."
"You have my cooperation in any case. You want to know where Max is? Okay, I can tell you where I think he'll be, if he's not on the way here to take me back by force."
"Is that a possibility?"
"Always, but I don't think he has much time to come chasing me at the moment."
"So if he's not on his way here…?"
"Well, maybe not yet, but eventually he'll end up in the Caribbean."
"Playing with his toy cruise ships?"
She gave a tired smile, and the pain showed through again. "He has two main operating bases, both of them really sewn up. Seville is one. Being an inland port, it's useful. He paid a lot of people not to ask too many awkward questions, so many of his container ships pass through Seville. The other port he uses is San Juan."
"And he has that one closed up as well?"
"Pretty much. He also owns some property there. We have a suspicion that he stashes cargo away on Puerto Rico and that is where he plans to become a world hero." That "we" included the girls, for she waved her arm in their direction, and both Cathy and Anna nodded in agreement. "We think he owns warehouses, and other little bits of real estate, and he's spread money around the place as though cash is going out of fashion."
"So he runs a complex operation from two distinct bases. One in Europe, the other in the Caribbean, where he has some kind of ace up his sleeve?"
"That's about the size of it. His merchant bank launders the money, I should imagine."
"You imagine correctly. We're getting that sorted out. There's a great deal of evidence, and we're putting the financial side together now."
"He said that part could never be broken." Cathy had gone back into one of me other rooms and brought another bottle of Dom Perignon. "In Seville, I heard him say that his banks were a hundred percent foolproof."
"It would've taken until doomsday if it hadn't been for Peter Dolmech."
Anna stirred. "You said he was dead."
"He left us a little legacy. A map of the laundry, so to speak."
There was a short pause, during which Trish and the girls did not look at each other. Then Trish broke the silence. "Poor Peter. At least he did something worthwhile before he died. Max trusted him absolutely, and I would never have thought he was the spy in the camp."
"You suspected a spy?"
"No, but Max did. He was paranoid about it. Always changing procedures, and playing games to trap people. Though he never did – trap anyone, that is."
"Well, he did more than trap Dolmech, and he almost destroyed the information." He went on to describe what had happened in Seville, leaving out the most gory of the details.
Again there was a silence. A pause that went on a shade too long. Trish Nuzzi once more put a hand to her hair, then quietly said that she was sorry but she really had to lie down. "Doctor Hartman saw to it that my nose and jaw were fixed," she added as a kind of afterthought.
"So Max'll eventually end up in the Caribbean. Where else might he be?"
"He could be in Germany. Wasserburg. He's quietly restoring Tarnenwerder – the old family seat – to its former glory."
"He is?" Bond asked of nobody in particular.
"Then tomorrow we'll take you back to London and some safety?" Flicka asked.
"Yes. Yes, of course. It's all I want now: to be out of it all and in some normal kind of life."
"What time?" Cathy asked, sounding businesslike.
"We'll give you a call first thing." Bond had already decided to book seats on the first possible flight back to Heathrow. "I think there's a flight at around noon. Now, are you going to be all right tonight?"
"If we're not, we'll give you a call." Anna sounded smug and, if anything, overconfident.
"So what do you think?" Bond asked when they were back in their own suite.
"You mean the amazing sex change, the distraught Lady Tarn, or the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler?" Flicka had started to undress.
"All three, I suppose. You happy with them, Flick? Trust them?"
"The dedicated-crazy-Nazi thing shook me, but I can see it's probably true enough, and the time is ripe in Germany. There are so many dedicated Nazi organizations coming out of the woodwork now. The skinhead groups, the Neo-Nazis toughs, but that's the wrong name for them. They're not neo anything. They are Nazis plain and simple: Germany for the Germans, and then only the purebred Germans. Out with any foreigners. Even people who, up to a couple of years ago, said it could never happen twice are now having doubts. As for the rest, right up until we mentioned Dolmech, I trusted them. Then things came apart slightly."
"Could be that Lady T was having a ride around the park with Dolmech."
"The thought had crossed my mind. Either her or… No, they wouldn't have let their guard down – the girls, I mean."
"To be perfectly honest with you." Bond raised his voice as she passed through into the bathroom. "To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't trust those two with anyone – except La Nuzzi, of course. They're obviously devoted to her."
"And I'll be perfectly honest with you, my darling, I wouldn't trust any of them with you. Even with the bashed-up face, Trish was drooling, and the two terrors would have kept you busy for hours."
"I didn't notice anything unusual. I think you're exaggerating, Flicka."