The Matarese Circle (53 page)

“Why not an assumed name? Why couldn’t he buy what was available under another name if he had the funds?”

“Because of the times, and they haven’t changed that much. A man does not simply enter a community with his family and proceed to assume ownership of a large estate without arousing curiosity. This Voroshin, as you’ve described him, would hardly have wanted that. He would establish a false identity very slowly, very carefully.”

“Then what do we look for?”

“A purchase made by attorneys for owners
in absentia.
Or by a trust legation from a bank for an estate investment; or by officers of a company or a limited partnership for acquisition purposes. There are any number of ways to set up concealed ownership, but eventually the calendar runs out; the owners want to move in. It’s always the pattern, whether you talk about a candy store or a conglomerate or a large estate. No legal maneuver is a match for human nature.” Kassel paused, looking at the gray cabinets. “Come. We’ll start with the month of May, 1911. If there’s anything here it may not be that difficult to find. There were no more than thirty or forty such estates in the whole of the Ruhr, perhaps ten to fifteen in the Rellinghausen-Stadtwald districts.”

Taleniekov felt the same anticipation he had experienced with Yanov Mikovsky in the archives in Leningrad. The same feeling of peeling away layers of time, looking for a clue in documents recorded with precision decades ago. But now he was awed by the seeming irrelevancies that Heinrich Kassel spotted and extracted from the thick pages of legalese. The attorney was like a child in that candy store he had referred to; a young expert whose eyes roamed over the jellybeans and the sour balls, picking out the flawed items for sale.

“Here. Learn something, my international spy. This tract of land in Bredeney, thirty-seven acres in the Baldeney valley—ideal for someone like Voroshin. It was purchased by the Staatsbank of Duisburg for the minors of the family in Remscheid. Ridiculous!”

“What’s the name?”

“It’s irrelevant. A device. We find out who moved in a year or so after,
that’s
the name we want.”

“You think it may be Voroshin. Under his new identity?”

“Don’t jump. There are others like this.” Kassel laughed. “I had no idea my predecessors were so full of legal caprice; it’s positively shocking. Look,” he said, pulling out another sheaf of papers, his eyes automatically rivited on an indented clause on the first page, “here’s another. A cousin of the Krupps is transferring ownership of property in Rellinghausen to a woman in Düsseldorf in gratitude for her many years of service. Really!”

“It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Of course not; the family would never permit it. A relative found a way to turn a handsome profit by selling to someone who did not want his peers—or his creditors—to know he had the money. Someone who controlled the woman in Düsseldorf, if she ever existed. The Krupps probably congratulated their cousin.”

And so it went. 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914 … 1915.

August 20, 1915.

The name was there. It meant nothing to Heinrich Kassel, but it did to Taleniekov. It brought to mind another document 2,000 miles away in the archives in Leningrad. The crimes of the Voroshin family, the intimate associates of Prince Andrei.

Friedrich Schotte.

“Wait a minute!” Vasili placed his hand over the pages. “Where’s this?”

“Stadtwald. There’s nothing irregular here. As a matter of fact, it’s absolutely legal, very clean.”

“Perhaps too legal, too clean. Just as the Voroshin massacre was too profuse with detail.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“What do you know of this Friedrich Schotte?”

The attorney grimaced in thought, trying to recall irrelevant history; this was not what he was looking for.
“He worked for the Krupps, I think, in a very high position. It would have had to be for him to buy this. He got in trouble after the First World War. I don’t remember the circumstances—a prison sentence or something—but I can’t see why it’s relevant.”

“I can,” said Taleniekov. “He was convicted of manipulating money out of Germany. He was killed on the first night of that prison sentence in 1919. Was the estate sold then?”

“I would think so. It would appear by the map survey to be a rather expensive property for a prison widow to maintain.”

“How can we find out?”

“Look through the year 1919. We’ll get there—”

“Let’s get there now.
Please.
”

Kassel sighed. He got up and headed for the cabinets, returning a minute later with a bulging folder. “When a brief is interrupted continuity is lost,” he muttered.

“Whatever we lose can be restored; we may gain time.”

It took nearly thirty minutes before Kassel extracted a file within a file and placed it on the table. “I’m afraid we’ve just wasted a half-hour.”

“Why?”

“The estate was purchased by the Verachten family on November 12, 1919.”

“The Verachten Works? Krupp’s competitor?”

“Not then. More so now, perhaps. The Verachtens came to Essen from Munich soon after the turn of the century, sometime around nineteen six or seven. It’s common knowledge, the Verachtens were Munichers, and they couldn’t be more respectable. You have a
V
, but no Voroshin.”

Vasili’s mind raced back over the information already known. Guillaume de Matarese had summoned the heads of once-powerful families, stripped—nearly but not entirely—of their past riches and influence. According to old Mikovsky, the Romanovs had waged a long battle against the Voroshins, labeling them the thieves of Russia, provokers of revolution.… It was clear! The
padrone
from the hills of Porto Vecchio had summoned a man—and by extension, his family—
already
in the
process
of a covert immigration, taking with them everything they could out of Russia!

“The imperial
V
, that’s what we’ve found,” said Taleniekov. “My God, what a strategy! Even to the prolonged use of truckloads of gold and silver sent out of Leningrad with the imperial
V!
” Vasili picked up the pages in front of the attorney. “You said it yourself, Heinrich. Voroshin would build a false identity very slowly, very carefully. That’s exactly what he did; he simply began five or six years before I thought he had. I’m sure if such records were kept or memories could be activated, we’d find that Herr Verachten came first to Essen alone, until he was established. A man of wealth, testing new waters for investments and a future, bringing with him a carefully constructed history from faraway Munich, money flowing through the Austrian banks. So simple, and the times were so right!”

Suddenly Kassel frowned. “His wife,” said the lawyer quietly.

“What about his wife?”

“She was not a Municher. She was Hungarian, from a wealthy family in Debrecen, it was said. Her German was never very good.”

“Translated, she was from Leningrad and a poor linguist. What was Verachten’s full name?”

“Ansel Verachten,” said the attorney, his eyes now on Taleniekov. “
Ansel.
”

“
Andrei.
” Vasili let the pages fall. “It’s incredible how the ego strives to be sublime, isn’t it? Meet Prince Andrei Voroshin.”

They strolled across the Gildenplatz, the Kaffee Hag building blazing with light, the Bosch insignia subdued but prominent below the enormous clock. It was eight in the evening now, the sky dark, the air cold. It was not a good night for walking, but Taleniekov and Kassel had spent nearly six hours in the Records of Property; the wind that blew across the square was refreshing.

“Nothing should shock a German from the Ruhr,” said
the lawyer, shaking his head. “After all, we are the Zürich of the north. But this is incredible. And I know only a
part
of the story. You won’t reconsider and tell me the rest?”

“One day I may.”

“That’s too cryptic. Say what you mean.”

“If I’m alive.” Vasili looked at Kassel. “Tell me everything you can about the Verachtens.”

“There isn’t that much. The wife died in the midthirties, I think. One son and a daughter-in-law were killed in a bombing raid during the war, I remember that. The bodies weren’t found for several days, buried under the rubble as so many were. Ansel lived to a ripe old age, somehow avoiding the war crimes penalties that caught the Krupps. He died in style, heart seizure while on horseback sometime in the fifties.”

“Who’s left?”

“Walther Verachten, his wife and their daughter; she never married, but it didn’t prevent her from enjoying connubial pleasures.”

“What do you mean?”

“She cut a bold figure, as they say, and when she was younger, had one to match her reputation. The Americans have a term that fits: she was—in some ways, still is—a ‘man-eater.’ ” The attorney paused. “Strange how things turn out. It’s Odile who really runs the companies now. Walther and his wife are in their late seventies and are rarely seen in public these days.”

“Where do they live?”

“They’re still in Stadtwald, but not at the original estate, of course. As we saw, it was one of those sold to postwar developers; it’s why I didn’t recognize it. They have a house farther out in the countryside now.”

“What about the daughter, this Odile?”

“
That
,” replied Kassal, chuckling, “depends on the lady’s whims. She keeps a penthouse on the Werden Strasse, and through those portals pass many a business adversary who wakes up the next morning too exhausted to best her at the conference table. When she’s not in the city I understand she maintains a cottage on her parents’ grounds.”

“She sounds like quite a woman.”

“In the forty-five-plus sweepstakes, few outclass her on the track.” Kassel paused again, again not finished.
“She has a flaw, however, and I’m told it’s maddening. Although she runs Verachten firmly, when things aren’t going well and swift decisions are called for, she often announces that she must confer with her father, thus postponing actions sometimes for days. At heart she’s a woman, forced by circumstances to wear a man’s hat, but the power still resides with old Walther.”

“Do you know him?”

“We’re acquaintances, that’s all.”

“What do you think of him?”

“Not much, never did. He always struck me as a rather pretentious autocrat without a great deal of talent.”

“The Verachten Works thrive, however,” said Vasili.

“I know, I know. That’s what I’m told whenever I voice that opinion. My weak rejoinder is that it might do so much better without him; and it
is
weak. If Verachten did any better, it would own Europe. So, I assume it’s a personal dislike on my part and I’m wrong.”

Not necessarily,
thought Taleniekov.
The Matarese make strange and effective arrangements. They need only the apparatus.

“I want to meet him,” said Vasili. “Alone. Have you ever been to his house?”

“Once several years ago,” replied Kassel. “The Verachten lawyers called us in on a patent problem. Odile was out of the country. I needed a Verachten signature on the affidavit of complaint—wouldn’t proceed without it, as a matter of fact—and so I called old Walther and drove out to get it. The dam broke when Odile got back to Essen. She shouted at me over the telephone, ‘My father should not have been disturbed! You will never serve Verachten again!’ Oh, she was impossible. I told her as courteously as I could that we never would have served her in the first place had
I
received the initial request.”

Taleniekov watched the attorney’s face as he spoke; the German was genuinely angry. “Why did you say that?”

“Because it’s true. I don’t like the company—companies. There is a meanness over there.” Kassel laughed at himself. “My feeling’s probably a hangover from that radical young lawyer you tried to recruit twelve years ago.”

It is the perceptive instincts of a decent man
, thought Vasili.
You sense the Matarese, yet you know nothing.

“I have a last request to make of you, my old friendly enemy,” said Taleniekov. “Two actually. The first is not to say anything to anyone about our meeting today, or what we found. The second is to describe the location of the Verachten house and whatever you can remember about it.”

The corner of a brick wall loomed into view in the glare of the headlights. Vasili pressed down on the accelerator of the rented Mercedes, his eyes glancing at the odometer, judging the distance between the start of the wall and iron gate. Five-eighths of a kilometer, nearly 1,800 feet. The tall gate was closed; it was electronically operated, electronically protected.

He came to the end of the wall; it was somewhat shorter in length than its counterpart on the other side of the gate. Beyond there was only the extension of the forest, in the middle of which had been built the Verachten compound. He depressed the pedal and looked for an opening off the road, somewhere he could conceal the Mercedes.

He found it between two trees, the shrubbery dampened down by previous snows. He angled the coupe into the natural cave of greenery, plunging in as far off the road as possible. He turned off the engine, got out, and retraced the car’s path, pulling up the shrubbery until he reached the road fifteen feet away. He stood on the shoulder and examined the camouflage; in the darkness, it was sufficient. He started back toward the Verachten wall.

If he could get over it without setting off any alarms, he knew he could reach the house. There was no way to electronically scan a forest; wires and cells were too easily tripped by animals and birds. It was the wall itself that had to be negotiated. He reached it and studied the brick in the flame of his cigarette lighter. There were no devices of any sort It was an ordinary brick wall, its very ordinariness misleading, and Vasili knew it. There was a tall oak on his right, limbs curling up above the top of the wall, but not extending over it.

He leaped, his hands clawing the bark, his knees vicing the trunk; he scaled up to the first limb, swinging his leg over it, pulling himself up into a sitting position, his back against the tree. He leaned forward and downward, his
hands balancing his body on the limb until he was prone, and studied the top of the wall in the dim light. He found what he knew had to be there.