They slid like this for several fast seconds, rolling in a chaotic tangle of limbs and gnashing teeth, until ahead of him he glimpsed an edge where the scree slope seemed to end abruptly, either to a further slope or perhaps a precipice. Fearing the latter, he began to grapple for purchase, trying to slow himself down. He rolled again and tried to dig the toes of his boots into the stones. He pushed himself up to further arrest his slide. It was working. One of the dogs passed him as he slowed, but he did not appear to be slowing fast enough. The edge was close, and now he could hear the scree cascading like a waterfall, crashing onto the rocks below.
He looked around, certain that he would not be able to stop himself in time. A large rock sat close to the edge, and knowing it was his only hope, he began to roll towards it, sliding fast again as he picked up speed. As he crashed into it, the pain in his chest was intense. He thought he must have broken several ribs. He cried out as he clung to the rock, watching as the dogs continued to slide towards the precipice, howling and gnashing. They whimpered as first one, and then the other slid over the edge, and moments later the dull thuds of their bodies signalled their end.
He could hardly breathe. He supposed one of his broken ribs must have punctured a lung. Slowly, he stood up, clutching his chest. The pain made him dizzy, but he knew he had to keep going. The dogs’ handlers would not be far behind. The hut was close now, the way down to it, easier—perhaps no more than a steep walk if he traversed it in stages. It would take a little longer, but with his injuries he felt it was all he could manage. If his pursuers caught up with him he knew he could no longer outrun or outclimb them.
He chose his path carefully and was soon there. Beside the hut was a narrow, rocky track where he saw an all-terrain vehicle, and with it his salvation. He practically collapsed at the hut’s door. It opened freely. On his hands and knees he looked up to see a man adding another log to the fire.
‘Bitte helfen Sie mir!’ he called, pleading for the man’s help.
As the man turned around to face him, a wry smile creasing his lips, he saw that it was the very man he had been running from. Despair sapped the last of his strength and he crashed to the floor, knowing all was lost.
Chapter One
Present day.
Pacing along a highly polished corridor at the German Heart Centre in Munich, his tan suit still creased from the flight, Jefferson Tayte glanced apprehensively at Jean, and for the umpteenth time he hoped they weren’t too late.
They had flown in from Heathrow Airport that afternoon for an appointment with a ninety-seven-year-old man called Johann Langner, and it had come as a shock to hear that he had suffered a heart attack the day before, not least because Tayte was pinning so much hope on what he believed Langner might be able to tell him.
His excitement over the meeting, and Jean Summer’s hand as she sat beside him in the window seat, had pulled Tayte through the relatively short flight, helping to overcome his fear of flying. Now his stomach was in knots for entirely different reasons.
‘And you’re sure Mr Langner still wants to see us?’ Tayte said to the grey-suited man they were following.
Tayte didn’t know his name, only that he appeared to be a chauffeur of sorts. He was tall like Tayte, but slim like Jean. He’d met them off the plane and taken their bags to the Mercedes that had been waiting for them outside the arrivals terminal, but instead of conveying them to their hotel as Tayte had expected, he’d brought them straight to the hospital. He had Tayte’s suit carrier over one arm and Jean’s backpack was slung across his shoulder.
‘Herr Langner’s instructions were quite explicit,’ the man said, with only the slightest trace of a German accent. ‘He’s sufficiently recovered and wants to see you as soon as possible.’ He slowed down as he turned to face Tayte and added, ‘While he still can.’
Tayte nodded back. He understood that at Johann Langner’s age, and in his present state of ill health, tomorrow might not be an option.
Jean almost had to jog to keep up with Tayte’s long strides. So much so that the tablet PC she’d recently bought nearly fell out of the denim jacket she was wearing over her yellow summer dress. Being a professor of history, she was no stranger to research, and since meeting up with Tayte again in London after his previous assignment, she’d spent the two weeks that followed surfing the Internet at every opportunity, having taken it upon herself to learn all she could about the man Tayte was pinning so much hope on.
‘I read in Der Spiegel,’ she said to the man they were following, ‘that a painting by Matisse has just been sold through Mr Langner’s gallery for a record sum.’
‘Yes, that’s correct,’ the man said. ‘And it was no small achievement on Herr Langner’s part. He started out with next to nothing, and it took several years to make what you would consider to be a proper living, but then both his business and his reputation began to grow. He even managed to reunite a few of the paintings that passed through his hands with their rightful owners after they had been stolen during the war.’
‘What keeps him going?’ Tayte asked. ‘And can I get some?’
The man gave a small laugh. ‘His son, Rudolf, has managed the business for some years now, but on this occasion Herr Langner handled the sale personally.’
‘Maybe the excitement proved too much for him.’