Your Brother,

W. A. Mozart

‘What do you make of it?’

‘Let’s talk about it while we eat. I’m ravenous.’

The lasagne was hot, tasty and plentiful. They ate as they talked, with the letter carefully tucked away in Ben’s bag. He had the notebook open in front of him, next to his plate.

Leigh looked disappointed. ‘There’s nothing here that we didn’t already know from Professor Arno. Mozart was warning his Lodge friend about these Ra people who were out to get them. That’s it. It’s a waste of time.’

‘Adler’, Ben said through a mouthful of pasta. ‘Eagle.’

‘What about it?’

He pointed at the notebook. ‘It looks from this as though “The Eagle” is important, and connected with the Order of Ra.’

‘How, though?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Oliver’s notes mentioned eagles a lot.’

‘Might Eagle be a code for something?’

Ben nodded. ‘Could be. Eagle. Maybe a symbol.’

‘Imperial eagle?’

‘It can’t be that. Read it. The Eagle is something or someone the Emperor paid favours to.’

‘If we knew what the favours were-’

‘But we don’t.’ He scanned the letter again. ‘There’s nothing more.’

‘Basically we’re back where we started.’ Leigh sighed. ‘We’re no closer to knowing what happened to Oliver.’ She let her fork clatter down and rested her head on her hand. ‘Maybe this is all a wild-goose chase. Maybe the letter has nothing to do with any of it. And what if it really is just a fake?’

Ben shook his head. ‘I’d be inclined to agree,’ he said. ‘But there’s one thing that’s puzzling me. The room where the murder took place-do you remember the ram?’

She’d been trying to forget what she’d seen in the video-clip. ‘Ram?’

‘On the wall, up above the altar or whatever it was, there was a gold ram’s head with long horns.’

She hesitated. ‘Rams. Goats. Idols. Horns. You’re talking about devil worship now.’

‘No. Something a lot older than that. Remember I said I studied Theology?’

‘That was a surprise, Ben.’

It was a chapter of his life that he didn’t like to talk about, so he moved on quickly. ‘Ra was the sun god of the ancient Egyptians. Arno confirmed it.’

Leigh didn’t see where this was going.

‘He didn’t always go by his name,’ Ben said. ‘He was depicted in symbols too. Usually the sun, but often also as a ram. You see him in Egyptian art as the body of a man with the head of a ram, or sometimes just the head on its own.’

‘Are you sure? Why a ram?’

‘The horns. They symbolized rays of light coming from the sun. It’s an old, old symbol and it became pretty universal through the centuries. The Hebrew word karan, meaning rays, is a close match with keren, meaning horns.’

She took a moment to digest this, then nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘Something about that gold ram on Olly’s film struck me at the time,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t think what it was, but now I have an idea. You’re going to think this sounds crazy.’

‘Nothing sounds crazy to me any more, believe me.’

‘Try this on. I think the Order of Ra still exists.’

‘That does sound crazy.’

‘Yes, but think about it. What did Oliver witness? They cut the guy’s tongue out and then disembowelled him. What did Arno tell us about Lutze? The exact same thing happened to him. Coincidence? I don’t think so.’

She pulled a face. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Now remember what Arno told us before he was shot? He said, “So it is true”’

‘I remember. So what was true?’

‘He never got a chance to finish. But he was pointing at the ram’s head as he said it. I think he knew something. Don’t ask me what. But whatever suspicions he had, hearing the news of Oliver’s death must have confirmed them. He got frightened enough of the letter to want to keep it far away. You saw how well he hid it.’

Leigh thought for a while, poking at her food absently. ‘If the letter is so dangerous, why didn’t they come after Dad while he still had it?’

‘Firstly, your dad was more interested in the signature at the bottom, and its historical value,’ Ben said. ‘Oliver was the one who went deeper. Secondly, until Oliver began to investigate it and found what he found, I don’t think anyone cared about the letter at all. It only became important when it led him to them.’

‘But how could it have?’

‘I don’t know that yet,’ he replied.

She was silent for a minute. ‘Say you’re right and these people still exist. Who would they be? Where would you find them?’

He shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t find them, not easily. Remember who they were. This wasn’t just some silly cult of men with funny handshakes. They had links with the secret police. They were deep in the heart of politics, not just in Austria. Those were uncertain times. The powers of the day were so scared of a Europe-wide revolution that they’d have been very happy to encourage them. Think how big they might be now, two centuries later. Not only big, but tight into the establishment.’

‘But this is modern democratic Europe. Surely that kind of repressive organization doesn’t exist any more.’

‘I know you’re not that naïve, Leigh. The new order is built on top of the old. Nothing ever really changes.’

‘I thought Arno was the conspiracy theorist.’

‘Maybe he was right,’ Ben said.

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

He nodded, paused. ‘I haven’t told you much about things I did in the forces. I don’t talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it. But there’s a lot that happens that ordinary people don’t get to hear of. Ever. We fought whole wars that the history books will never mention. We operated far from the main battlefields, and we carried out operations that even we didn’t understand. We had no idea what we were doing. We were just given targets and orders. We destroyed places without ever knowing their names. We were pawns in a game. We were fools. Oliver knew that years ago, but I didn’t have the sense to listen to him. And the men pushing the pieces, the players who actually control things, are people you’ve never heard of. Hardly anyone knows who they are.’

‘So who are we dealing with here?’

Ben shrugged. ‘Who knows? People right inside the infrastructure, hidden behind layers and layers of fronts. People with connections. People who come after you when you show your face, use your passport or credit card, or try to talk to the police. This goes very deep. That’s why we need to tread carefully if we’re going to come out of this. And we’re going to do it my way.’

There was a long silence.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘What do we do now?’

Chapter Thirty-Five

Vienna

Late that night

Markus Kinski sat up in bed, blinking. His mobile was screaming near his ear. He planted his feet on the floor. The clock on his bedside table glowed 1.09 a.m. He snatched up the phone. Was it Clara calling him so late? How could it be? He’d been sure to take her phone away. Panic rushed through him. What was wrong?

It wasn’t Clara. The woman on the other end introduced herself as Leigh Llewellyn. He listened, waking up fast. ‘So where can I meet you?’ he asked her.

Leigh covered the phone with her hand and looked questioningly at Ben.

They’d talked about this. Her idea had been a public place in the heart of Vienna, somewhere that offered the safety of bustling crowds. It was a smart idea, but Ben wanted to put this Kinski to the test. The best way to do that was to set up an initial rendezvous that would offer a good opportunity for an ambush. Ben nodded, and she gave Kinski the reply they’d agreed on.

‘Meet me at the lake,’ she said.

Kinski didn’t need to ask which one she meant. ‘OK. When?’

‘Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock.’

Kinski was there at quarter to. The Mercedes turned off the road and crunched on the thin snow as it lurched towards the lakeside in four-wheel-drive mode. He got out, checked his watch, and walked up and down the edge of the lake for a while. Minutes passed. His breath billowed and he clapped his hands to keep them warm. In the pocket of his heavy greatcoat he had a Thermos of hot black coffee, and he slurped back three scalding cupfuls. This winter was a cold one, colder even than last year, and the lake was fully frozen over now.