I don't understand," Petra said. "Why not stay in your own home? This is no place to live."
"The bunker is my health insurance." The old man cocked a canny eye her way. "Do you have any idea what would happen to me if I went back to my house? They'd spirit me away in the night, and that's the last anyone would ever see of me."
"Who would do that to you?" Bourne said.
Pelz seemed to consider his answer, as if he needed to remember the text of a book he'd read in high school. "I told you I was a Nazi hunter, a damn fine one, too. In those days I lived like a king-or, if I'm honest, a duke. Anyway, that's before I got cocky and made my mistake. I decided to go after the Black Legion, and that one intemperate decision was my downfall. Because of them I lost everything, even the trust of the Americans, who at that time needed those damn people more than they needed me.
"The Black Legion kicked me into the gutter like a piece of garbage or a mangy dog. From there it was only a short crawl down here into the bowels of the earth."
"It's the Black Legion I came here to talk to you about," Bourne said. "I'm a hunter, too. The Black Legion isn't a Nazi organization anymore. They've turned into a Muslim terrorist network."
Old Pelz rubbed his grizzled jaw. "I'd say I'm surprised, but I'm not. Those bastards knew how to play all the cards in all the hands-the Germans, the Brits, and, most importantly, the Americans. They toyed with all of 'em after the war. Every Western intelligence service was throwing money at them. The thought of having built-in spies behind the Iron Curtain had them all salivating.
"It didn't take the bastards long to figure out it was the Americans who had the upper hand. Why? 'Cause they had all the money and, unlike the Brits, weren't being tight-fisted with it." He cackled. "But that's the American way, isn't it?"
Not waiting for an answer to a question that was self-evident, he plowed on. "So the Black Legion took up with the American intelligence machine. First off, it wasn't difficult to convince the Yanks that they'd never been Nazis, that their only goal was to fight Stalin. And that was true, as far as it went, but after the war they had other goals in mind. They're Muslims, after all; they never felt comfortable in Western society. They wanted to build for the future, and like a lot of other insurgents they created their power base with American dollars."
He squinted up at Bourne. "You're American, poor bastard. None of these modern-day terrorist networks would've existed without your country's backing. Fucking ironic, that is."
For a time he lapsed into muttering, broke into a song whose lyrics were so melancholy tears welled up in his rheumy eyes.
"Herr Pelz," Bourne said, trying to get the old man to focus. "You were talking about the Black Legion."
"Call me Virgil," Pelz said, nodding as he came out of his fugue state. "That's right, my Christian name is Virgil, and for you, American, I will hold my lamp high enough to throw light on those bastards who ruined my life. Why not? I'm at a stage in my life when I should tell someone, and it might as well be you."
They're in the back," Bev said to Drew Davis. "Both of them." A woman in her midfifties with a thick frame and a quick wit, she was The Glass Slipper's girl wrangler, as she wryly called herself-part disciplinarian, part den mother.
"The main interest is in the general," Davis said, "isn't that right, Kiki?"
Kiki nodded. She was closely flanked by Soraya and Deron, and all of them were clustered in Davis's cramped office up a short flight of stairs from the main room. The pounding of the bass and drums thumped against the walls like the fists of angry giants. The room had the appearance of an attic or a garret, windowless, its walls like a time machine, plastered with photos of Drew Davis with Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, four different American presidents, a host of Hollywood stars, and various UN dignitaries and ambassadors from virtually every country in Africa. There was also a series of informal snapshots of him with his arm around a younger Kiki in the Masai Mara, totally unself-conscious, looking like a queen-in-training.