“So, that’s it? He tries to kill me and you write it off as nothing?”
“My goodness, no.” His father mocked his son’s genuine concern. “He’s a rich and powerful man, and like all rich and powerful men, he is completely devoid of morals.” There was an inherent implication of his disapproval of Aliana’s father in his statement. “I should think, now that the virus has been destroyed, that he would cease to have any further dealings with you, alive or dead.”
“So, it doesn’t bother you that he’s made several attempts to kill me in the past month?”
“No, not really. Should it?” His father said, looking at him curiously.
“Yes, of course it should!” Sam answered, adamantly.
“Why? I thought that it was more revealing of your carelessness to involve a man like Blake Simmonds in a treasure hunt for something that was so valuable.”
“You gave me his details!”
“Yes, but I had no idea at that time just how valuable your treasure was.” It was as much contrition as he’d ever heard his father offer.
Blake Simmonds rested his head into the soft leather of his Lear Jet.
He sat alone, and had told his pilot and crew to leave him that way for the duration of his flight, home across the Atlantic.
After so many years, it was finally over.
He then opened a $50,000 bottle of whiskey dated 1939.
It had taken some serious effort to track the stuff down, and once he’d acquired it, Blake had stored it in anticipation of this very day. He poured himself a glass and then added ice cold whiskey rocks.
From inside the secret safe at the end of the room, he withdrew his father’s military badge.
It was a brass double rune emblem of the German Schutzstaffel, followed by the number 3, denoting the wearer as SS party member number 3.
In terms of seniority, this placed his father only just below Emil Maurice, the founder of the SS, who was member number 2, and Adolf Hitler, who was, of course, SS member number 1.
Blake Simmonds examined the precious historical artifact as his mind considered the life of its original owner.
As a senior SS officer, placed in charge of the capture of Fritz Robentrop by the Fuhrer himself, August Frank had mistakenly allowed Fritz to escape, in the expectation of catching his partners in crime, and consequently then having more to show for his efforts. In retrospect, he soon came to realize that he lost something far more valuable — the virus.
Frank placed all of the blame for that fiasco on Walter Wolfgang. Then, when it became apparent that no matter how ruthless the SS had become, Germany’s people would not rise up strongly enough to beat back the Allied invaders and Hitler was going to lose, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
By the end of the war, Frank had reached the highest echelons of Nazi seniority. He used his power and position to take charge of a large stockpile of German gold, before escaping Germany as a refugee and moving to London. As an old graduate of Eton, he had many rich friends in the British aristocracy. He purchased a large estate and set himself up as a rich gentleman, always with the intention of one day returning to Germany and finding the lost Magdalena and the virus she carried. He was determined to one day rectify his mistake by acquiring the virus, and making Germany the supreme leader of the world, just as Hitler had tried and failed to do.
His need to make amends to his beloved Fuhrer became an obsession, one that only he could accomplish with the enormous wealth that he had taken with him as he fled.
As the years passed, and he realized that all the money in the world could not help him. He married and had a son, who Frank raised as a British gentleman. By the time the Berlin wall came down, Frank was an old man in his nineties, but he nevertheless believed that his son could one day achieve his dream. He was disappointed to discover that Walter Wolfgang was now dead, but motivated by the knowledge that Walter's son, John Wolfgang, had become a world leader in the field of microbiology, and desperate for the money required to set up his pharmaceutical business.
It was an easy deal to make. He would have to help John Wolfgang find the Magdalena, and then figure out what to do with the virus.
The hardest part, was to convince his only son that it was the right thing to do.
Blake Simmonds then took a long drink of the whiskey,
“Here’s to you dad — the man who inadvertently lost the war for Germany, but saved mankind.”
Chapter Thirty One
Sam Reilly opened the doors to the elevator.
Aliana had left earlier, while Sam remained behind to have his annual twenty-minute catch up chat with his dad.
His father owned the top ten floors of the building. The highest two and the roof were part of his grand residence, while the other eight floors were places Sam had never seen, nor had he ever bothered to wonder for what purpose his father used them.
Today, the elevator stopped at the 76th floor.
Four levels below his father’s residence.
The doors opened, and a tall woman with tidy, short cropped, dark red hair walked in. She was slim, and the hardened bony features of her face betrayed the arrogant confidence of someone accustomed to power, and none of the signs of age which often afflicted other women in their early forties.
Sam watched her enter and felt his heart beat just slightly faster, as his hands turned clammy.
The doors closed but the elevator did not resume its downward movement.
“Madam Secretary,” Sam Reilly smiled, unsure of how genuinely happy he was to see the U.S. Secretary of Defense again. “You could have saved me a lot of trouble if you’d shared your interest in the Magdalena with me from the start.”
It was as much of a reproof as even he was willing to give the leader of the world’s most powerful Armed Forces, her position second only to that of the U.S. President, America’s Commander in Chief.
“Sam Reilly,” she said, her voice was quiet but nonetheless scolding in its tone. “You have cost your own government a fortune, not to mention the loss of the single most dangerous bioweapon in history. Do you realize how long we have been manipulating John Wolfgang to both find the Magdalena and catch Abdulla?”
Sam opened his mouth and started to answer…
“I’m not finished yet, Reilly,” she continued, “It wasn’t until the very end that we were even convinced that we had any control over the man, and we never did learn the identity of his original financial backer, and, we could only imagine what that person’s interest in all this was. So, what do you have to say for yourself, Reilly?”
“You should have let me in on the game from the beginning, “ma’am.”
“Reilly, you impudent fool! We weren’t convinced you hadn’t gone rogue, especially when our surveillance showed you fraternizing with Wolfgang’s daughter. How could you have been so stupid? Haven’t you ever seen a pretty girl before?”
Sam kept his mouth shut this time.
“I want you to know, I expressed an interest in having you taken out from the onset, Reilly…” Her voice betrayed not one iota of an apology, and she continued to say, “but the Commander in Chief vetoed the idea, advising that your unique attributes made you useful and although it appeared that your loyalties may have been misplaced, perhaps through your bungled efforts, our surveillance might be successful in finally obtaining the identity of the person who was really controlling our puppet, John Wolfgang, from the beginning. I’m not sure whether or not the President really believed any of that, but if we inadvertently managed to kill James Reilly’s only son… well, we can only imagine how that might affect your father’s future presidential contributions, I’m sure.”