Into the Lion's Den (89 page)

“I left him in June 2005. I tried to commit suicide to escape him. In December 2004, after his wife ordered me to be tortured, raped and stabbed. I went crazy with pain and I went with Konrad just to escape Constantin. I didn't care if he would have killed me. I realised that I was Constantin's plaything and I hated it. I was an artwork for him; not a person, no matter how many nice words he was telling me or the fine things he was buying for me. Konrad saved my life and my sanity. And I loved him for that! I agreed to be his Consort. He gave me his ring, father.”

“Oh God, do you mean the seal…?” Michel paled when he heard the news. That thwarted all plans he might have had: Lintorff had fulfilled his oath to honour his son if he was good to him. To turn him into his Consort.

Guntram was now the key to the Order's future, a councillor with more power than any other and the one who raised the next Griffin. In theory he was able to nullify any policy from the
Hochmeister
.

The Consort directed the Lintorff Foundation and all its money; a twenty percent of all the profits made by the associates. Guntram could be as powerful as Lintorff. But Guntram had no idea of what it meant to be in such position.

“Yes, the Griffin's seal. He named me his Consort, in front of the whole Order! I was never his whore! I was his lover but you and Constantin killed that! How could I look at him ever again if he was fucking with my own uncle? How am I going to look at myself in the mirror? He never ordered our family to be killed! Those were the others! Our family used him! He wanted to give me his children!”

“Guntram, it's not that way my child! I love you and only wanted to protect you! What kind of man takes a lover, just because he shares the blood of his former one? It's almost Levitical!”

“I loved him with all my soul till you destroyed it! You couldn't destroy the Order, and now go against the
Hochmeister
? Is that your revenge? To take his love away?”

“No, I want to take you with me far away from here, to somewhere we could recover the lost time! As father and son!”

“I would have loved to hear those words when I was sixteen, not now that I'm twenty-three and a man!

I'm not a child any more! I ceased to be one at seven!” The young man shouted enraged, rising from his chair.

“Guntram, stop now, this is not good for you!”

“I only wanted to spend the years I have left with him! I'm perfectly aware that I'm a walking corpse! I have an hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and two heart attacks before thirty. My death probability is of thirty percent and increases each year! I won't turn forty no matter how careful I am! I'm hooked to medications for the rest of my life, a pacemaker in the next years and finally a transplant, if they get a donor. Konrad knew it and loved me in spite of all that! Unconditionally! He didn't care if he had to wait for several days before he could touch me again! He didn't care to eat without salt or stay at home if I felt bad! He never lost his temper with me when I'm bound to depression or lose track of time painting!”

“Guntram, I swear I didn't know you loved him, but you'll get over it!”

“I'm not going to just forget him! Why did he lie to me?”

“My son, it's understandable what you're suffering. It's called Stockholm Syndrome. You were his hostage for a year and now you are in shock after seeing me again. Try to rest a bit and tomorrow we will speak again.”

“Rest? Rest? Sure, father!” Guntram smirked. “I'm not seven years old any longer! You can't send me to bed!”

“Guntram, don't get so worked up. It can't be good for you,” Lacroix said without raising his voice. “Go to your room and try to sleep. Take your pills and tomorrow you will see a doctor.”

“I was fine till you decided to storm back into my life! Being my father doesn't give you the right to ruin it!” Guntram shouted furious with him, more than what he was with Konrad.

“I'm not ruining it, you are no thinking clearly. That man you say you love, kept you hostage for a full year, in golden cage of course, had sex with your uncle, killed your cousins who were twelve, nine and seven years old, tortured and finally killed your uncle Pascal and grandfather! Three months ago, he killed your uncle Roger. He forced me to abandon you as the only way to save your life. Think on all this before you shout like a hysterical woman! I expected much more from you!”

“I refuse to be your pawn! I will not be a part of your personal vendetta against Konrad! I forgave him and loved him!”

“All right, take the first train back to Zurich or do you prefer a plane? Jump back into the bed of the man who fucked with your own uncle for seven years.”

“I can't return to Konrad and you know it well. You sullied our relationship. I will never let him touch me again! I'm disgusted beyond myself!”

“So what do you want to do? Go with the Russian? He will be delighted to have you back. In fact, his people were waiting for you around the corner.”

“I…” Guntram started to pant, feeling more and more dizzy and nauseous. He knew the symptoms and took his pills out the jacket and swallowed one. “Can I have a glass of water, please?”

“Yes, of course. Sit down,” Michel was looking very concerned and went to the refrigerator to refill the glass. When he returned, Guntram was still panting and very pale, ashen and looked extremely tired, haggard and defeated. He drank the water slowly and tried to stand up but the dizziness threw him back to the chair. Michel sat next to him and embraced his child and petted his head lovingly, exactly as he used to do when he was a child.

Guntram, only broke into tears, clutching his father dear for his life.

“Don't worry,
mon petit
, I'm here and everything will be fine again. We will go away again, this time together and let them kill each other! As you say, it's not our war! You should rest now and we will speak tomorrow again.”

Michel helped Guntram to stand up and nearly had to drag him the stairs up to his bedroom. He remained there till his son dressed in some pyjamas, went to bed and fell into a restless sleep.

a.m.” A woman in her late fifties shook Guntram gently up. He sat in the bed looking at her, feeling his soul leave his body as yesterday's crazy run had not been a nightmare. She was dressed with normal clothes, informal and a scarf around her head.

'Is she a Muslin and is that a
niqab
? Why did she call me Maurice?'

“My name is Fairuza, I'm Mr. Lacroix housekeeper in Brussels. You look exactly as the pictures he has from you. I'm glad you decided to come back to live with him. He's a very lonesome man and is always speaking about you. It's a pity you're so sick. I like that painting of yours, the one he bought last December; the pond with the frogs and toads. They look magical,” she said at full speed in French.

“My name is Guntram. Is that a
niqab
?”

“I thought you preferred to be called by your first name, not the second. It's quite bizarre. I'll call you Guntram, if you like. Do you take toasts or pancakes?”

“Pancakes,” Guntram answered quickly before she would realise that those were totally forbidden to him. 'Once won't kill me.'

“Hurry up. I have to make your room and go to the supermarket, and this is called
shayla
,” she ordered him and left the room, closing the door behind her. Grudgingly and feeling very weak—'as if I had run a marathon, well, in a way I was. We had to ran to catch the train from Munich to here', he redressed himself in his old clothes.

'Why does everybody think that I can't pack? It's always the same story. 'Get in the plane, be quiet'. I'm sick of all this.'

He took the stairs down and directed his footsteps toward the kitchen where the woman, Fairuza was cooking and boiling water. “Your father is in the garden, Go there. Now!” She said, opening the back door and showing him to an open gallery with a garden with old trees. At the end of the gallery, his father was sitting in front of a table, reading some papers.

“Good morning, Maurice. Are you feeling better?”

“Did you change my name too?” Guntram asked in disbelief.

“Maurice Lacroix, as says your new passport, still a French citizen. Your mother liked it very much and we considered it.

”

“My name is Guntram Philippe Alphonse de Lisle. I want to have that name on my gravestone.”

“It's impossible and you know the reasons. The minute you say it, you'll get Repin or Lintorff breathing on your neck. We can go to another place and start again, this time in peace.”

“In peace? Repin will turn every stone around till he finds us! You betrayed him! You're as good as a dead man walking! Well, you are one!”

“I know but it's for the best. I'm terribly sorry that your life was so hard but I had no choice. Would you have preferred your cousin's fate? She lives with her mother in a semi slum neighbourhood, works as a waitress in a low class bar and her mother cleans houses. Now and then, she gets money out of the tourists! She can hardly write!”

“I was a waiter too!”

“The place is the Brazilian Hooters, Guntram! Stop being childish! Lord, how dumb can you be? First you lived with a mobster and then with a murderer, who had no problems in kidnapping you! What is wrong with you, boy? A little bit of pink and sugar in the sentences and you buy anything?” his father roared for the first time in his life and Guntram was speechless.

“I don't expect that you understand me, papa. Why should you? You left my life when I was seven and returned when I was twenty-three. I'm not the same person and perhaps I'm dumb. I loved Constantin and Konrad in different ways. Konrad was the person who saved me from Hell and I'm grateful to him. He also lied and destroyed me in a much worse way than Constantin, but of all the people that were in my life, you were the most destructive.”

“What do you want to do then?” Michel was on the limit of his patience with his son.

“I don't know. I want to start again, this time with none of you around,” Guntram said tiredly.

“Please, my child don't go away. Give me a chance to be your father again. I know I don't have any rights to ask you this, but I always had a greater good in mind.”

Guntram remained in silence, looking at the empty dish, feeling the sorrow wash him over. “Please,” he heard his father once more, “you don't know how hard it was to face each day, praying that you were happy and safe; no parent is ever ready to lose a child. I already lost your mother, don't you go away too.”

“I said dreadful things to you, too,” Guntram whispered, ashamed of his outburst and sitting once more back in his place.

“You have every reason to hate me. I turned your life upside down, not once but twice. I was worried that you had not exploded before.” Michel sighed, knowing that his son was letting his fury go.

“Don't do that again, or at least give me a warning,” Guntram said, smiling weakly.

“I promise I won't do that again,” Michel pulled his son against his chest and hugged him, glad to feel his arms returning his embrace.

Zurich

Konrad was on the edge of his nerves. Nothing about Guntram since he had left the hotel. The only thing they could find out was that the grey Opel Corsa was rented that morning in Vienna by a man called Johannes Würst, German, in a small car rental agency, paid cash and returned the vehicle that same evening in Linz. None of his men had been able to recognise him and according to the doorman, Guntram knew him well and was only shocked to see him, but he was not the man of the photo from the agency .

'If it would have been one of the Russians, he would have run away. Furious as he was with me, he hated Repin more. He refused his help there. Must be someone from his past, someone he trusted very much. Guntram is terrified of anyone.' The pictures taken from the hotel's security camera were also useless.

Goran's men had checked all the airports and a certain Guntram de Lisle had taken a night flight from Frankfurt to Buenos Aires. It was impossible as he had Guntram's passport in his safe box, where his kitten had left it that same morning. The security recordings from the boarding gate didn't show Guntram at all, only a young boy looking similar, but not him. The ticket had been bought on internet and paid with Paypal, using a Spanish account in a small bank, opened just a week before Guntram went missing, also using a false name and address.

'Who planned this? Not Guntram, I'm sure. Is someone in tandem with Repin; someone who knew the whole story, had the proofs and used Repin as the messenger. Who? Roger died in December and he never had the resources or the patience to do this. Must be someone very close to me. Perhaps Georg or Albert, after all his son has lost his chance to become Griffin thanks to Guntram. No, not Albert, he never wanted the responsibility. Each lead we had was a dead end. Who?'

He took out of his drawer the photo taken last Christmas of Guntram and he. Konrad was almost sure that Friederich had taken it during the holidays when they were unaware. Once more he got lost in the image of him sitting and holding his lover in the garden. His kitten was smiling happy and shyly as always, and he looked like another man, proud and glad to be alive. 'I can't lose him. I just can't. I need him more than anyone else in this world.'

A frantic knocking at his door forced him to throw the portrait back in its drawer and bark a “come in!”

to the one who had dared to interrupt him at this late hour.

“Big shit and real big shit, Konrad!” Ferdinand shouted from the door advancing and sitting in front of him. “Someone in the Finance Ministry told me that the German Government got a serious offer from a group of hackers to sell a database with no less than 2,300 of our clients evading taxes! They calculate that it could be bring around €2.8 billion in evaded taxes! They're selling it for two hundred million euros!”

“The German government does not deal with criminals, Ferdinand,” Konrad said keeping his face blank.

“Did you hear me? Those are our clients! We're dead if this is filtered! The government wants to pay them to get it!”