“I was wondering where you were,” Ascanio said crossly.
The marquis removed his hand, and Celeste fell against Ascanio’s chest with relief.
“How many of them are there?” Sant’Angelo asked, brushing the dirt and cobwebs from his hunting jacket.
“Ten or fifteen. All SS.”
“More,” Celeste said, her eyes wide.
“What do they want?”
“Right now, they want wine.” Ascanio tucked another bottle under his arm. “I was trying to decide which bottles had already turned.”
The marquis smiled, and said, “Don’t do anything rash.”
“You mean like killing them?”
“I mean, anything that will bring the whole Third Reich crashing down on our heads.” Then he mounted the back stairs up to his rooms, where he changed into the houndstooth jacket and trousers of a country squire—a fashion he had adopted when he lived in England—before descending the grand escalier to the main hall … where confusion reigned.
SS soldiers, in pea green uniforms, were poking the muzzles of their machine guns everywhere, ordering the marquis’s staff to open every door, empty every drawer, and pull back every curtain.
In the center of the entry hall, overseeing it all, stood a man recognizable from every newsreel and newspaper in Europe: Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer, Hitler’s second-in-command and head of the dreaded Gestapo. In person, he was an even more spindly creature than he appeared in the carefully contrived news footage. He was wearing a dove gray uniform, with boots that came all the way up to his knees; the fearsome Totenkopf, or death’s head, gleamed above the black visor on his cap. He was wiping his wire-rimmed spectacles clean with a handkerchief when the marquis approached.
A soldier immediately interposed himself, but Himmler waved him away with the handkerchief.
“Herr Sant’Angelo?”
“Oui,” the marquis replied, staying sufficiently distant that any handshake could be avoided.
“You know who I am, no doubt,” he said in German, slipping his spectacles back on.
“Ich mache.” I do.
“But I doubt you know my adviser.”
A big man with a squarish head stepped forward. He was wearing a green loden coat, far too warm for the weather, decorated with the War Merit medal and the requisite Nazi armband; he carried a bulging briefcase under his arm.
“This is Professor Dieter Mainz, of the University of Heidelberg.”
Mainz bowed his head and clicked the heels of his boots.
“He has been eager, as have we all, to make your acquaintance.”
The marquis expressed surprise. “I live a quiet life, here in the country. How could I have come to anyone’s attention?”
“I will be happy to explain,” Mainz said, in a voice that sounded as if it would be more comfortable booming out in a lecture hall. “We have reason to believe—good reason, based on my own research—that your ancestor, from whom your title descends, was a man of extraordinary talents.”
“How so?” Sant’Angelo replied, knowing full well that this ancestor stood before them at that very moment.
“My investigations,” Mainz confided, “suggest that he was well versed in many of what are commonly—and unwisely—dismissed as the occult arts.”
Sant’Angelo again feigned ignorance. “I come from a long and distinguished family, but I can’t say I know much about that. Are you sure you’ve come to the right place?”
“Quite,” Mainz said. “Quite sure.”
Himmler was squinting at him closely. “Apart from your servants, do you have anyone else here at present?” he asked abruptly.
“No. I have no family.”
“No guests either?”
“No.”
“No woman?” he asked, with a tilt of his pale, anemic face. “Or man?”
Sant’Angelo took his meaning, but he didn’t deign to answer.
“Then you won’t mind,” the Reichführer went on, “if we continue our inspection.” Without waiting, he barked some orders and half a dozen of the soldiers charged up the two sides of the staircase. All of them, Sant’Angelo could not help but notice, were tall, blond, and blue-eyed. He had heard that Himmler, the architect of the Nazi breeding programs, liked to handpick his recruits.
Ironically, Sant’Angelo thought, the Reichsführer could never have met his own criteria.