5. Anna’s Bargain

The Sterling Foundation tower rose against the night sky like a monument to everything Elliott Cross had come to despise. At eight o'clock precisely, he pushed through the revolving doors and stepped into the marble lobby. The reception desk was empty, the lights dimmed to a low amber glow. Only the security guard remained, a broad-shouldered man with a military bearing who regarded Elliott with expressionless eyes.

"Mr. Cross," the guard said. It was not a question. "Mr. Sterling is expecting you. Please follow me."

They took the private elevator, the one that required a key card and bypassed all intermediate floors. Elliott watched the numbers climb. Twenty. Twenty-five. Thirty. The penthouse level, which was not listed on the building's directory. The doors opened onto a corridor lined with dark wood paneling and oil paintings of landscapes Elliott did not recognize. The air smelled of leather and old money and something else, something faintly medicinal.

The guard led him to a set of double doors at the end of the corridor and pushed them open. "Mr. Sterling will be with you shortly."

Elliott stepped into a vast office. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the Lindstrom skyline, the lights of the city spread out like a glittering carpet. A massive mahogany desk dominated the room, its surface bare except for a single manila folder. Behind the desk, a fireplace crackled with a gas flame, and above it hung the same oil painting Elliott had seen in Edmund Holt's office: Victor Sterling in his middle years, silver-haired and benevolent.

The door closed behind him with a soft click. Elliott was alone.

He walked to the desk and looked at the folder. It was unlabeled, but he knew what it contained. He opened it and found a single sheet of paper, typed on letterhead from the Valdorian Social Security Administration. It was a copy of Inspector Halder's preliminary audit findings, dated that very afternoon. The findings were damning: multiple billing discrepancies, failure to maintain proper trust account records, possible commingling of client funds. The recommended sanction was immediate suspension of Elliott's license to practice before the agency, pending a full disciplinary review by the Bar Association.

The document was unsigned. A draft, then. A threat calibrated to show Elliott exactly how much power Victor Sterling wielded over his life.

"You have been quite persistent, Mr. Cross."

The voice came from behind him, low and measured, with the faintest trace of a Nordmark accent. Elliott turned. An elderly man stood in a doorway he had not noticed before, a private entrance concealed in the wood paneling. He was tall and thin, leaning on a polished black cane with a silver handle. His hair was white and sparse, combed back from a high forehead. His face was lined and pale, the skin stretched tight over prominent cheekbones. He wore a dark suit, impeccably tailored, and his eyes were the color of dishwater.

Viktor Krüger. Victor Sterling. The Butcher of Esterwald.

"Mr. Sterling," Elliott said, his voice steadier than he felt. "Or do you prefer Colonel Krüger?"

The old man smiled. It was a thin, bloodless expression, more a flexing of facial muscles than a genuine emotion. "I prefer Victor. Please, sit down."

He gestured toward a pair of leather armchairs arranged before the fireplace. Elliott did not move. Sterling shrugged, as if Elliott's defiance were a minor curiosity, and walked slowly to the chairs. He lowered himself into one with the careful deliberation of a man whose body had long since begun to betray him.

"You wished to discuss a donation," Sterling said. "Though I suspect that was merely a pretext. You have been asking questions about me. About my past. You have been speaking to archivists and bureaucrats and frightened young men who should know better than to talk to strangers. You have been quite busy."

"You've been watching me."

"Of course. I have been watching everyone who takes an interest in my affairs for the past sixty years. It is how I have survived." He gestured at the chair opposite him. "Please. I am an old man. It strains my neck to look up at you."

Elliott sat. The leather was soft and cold. The fire crackled, but it gave off little warmth.

"You threatened my daughter," Elliott said.

"A regrettable necessity. You were not responding to more subtle forms of persuasion. The audit, for instance. The ruling on your fee petition. I had hoped you would take the hint and return to your practice. You are a competent lawyer, Mr. Cross. You have a family. You have a life. Why throw it away on a ghost?"

"You're not a ghost. You're a mass murderer who faked his death and bought his freedom with stolen gold."

Sterling's expression did not change. He reached into his jacket and withdrew a silver cigarette case. He opened it, selected a cigarette, and lit it with a matching silver lighter. The smoke curled toward the ceiling, gray against the amber light.

"Mass murderer," he repeated, as if tasting the words. "Such a crude term. You sound like the prosecutors at the War Crimes Commission. They were very fond of such language. Genocide. Crimes against humanity. They wanted to hang me, you know. They had a gallows prepared and everything."

"They should have hanged you."

"Yes, they should have. But they didn't. Do you know why?"

Elliott said nothing.

"Because I was more valuable to them alive than dead. I had information. Names, locations, financial records. The Nordmark regime had looted a great deal of wealth, and I knew where it was hidden. The Valdorian government wanted that wealth. They also wanted my knowledge of Nordmark's weapons programs, its intelligence networks, its political connections. So they made me an offer: a new identity, a comfortable life, and protection from prosecution. In exchange, I gave them everything."

"Operation Silent Oak."

Sterling raised an eyebrow. "You have done your homework. Yes, Operation Silent Oak. A rather melodramatic code name, I always thought. But the bureaucrats love their code names."

"And the people you murdered? The families you destroyed? What about them?"

For the first time, something flickered in Sterling's pale eyes. It might have been anger, or it might have been something closer to amusement. "You think you are the first person to demand justice? You are not. Over the years, there have been others. Survivors. Journalists. A detective, once. Do you know what happened to them?"

"The detective disappeared. My father died of a heart attack."

"Ah, yes. Samuel Cross. A tenacious reporter. I admired his persistence, even as I found it inconvenient. He came very close to exposing me. But in the end, he was just a man, and men can be broken. Stress is a terrible thing, Mr. Cross. It weakens the heart. It clouds the judgment. It drives people to... desperate acts."

Elliott's hands clenched into fists. "You killed him. You may not have pulled a trigger, but you killed him."

"I did what was necessary to protect myself. Just as you would do what is necessary to protect your daughter. Speaking of which, how is young Lena? I understand she enjoys her art classes. Mrs. Harlow says she has real talent."

The mention of his daughter's name, spoken so casually, so intimately, made Elliott's blood run cold. "If you hurt her—"

"You will do what? Kill me? I am ninety-seven years old, Mr. Cross. I have lived longer than any reasonable person could expect. Death holds no terror for me. But you... you have decades ahead of you. A wife. A child. A career. You have so much to lose." Sterling leaned forward, his eyes glittering in the firelight. "So let me make you an offer. A real offer, not a threat. Drop this investigation. Convince Anna Klein to withdraw her testimony. In return, I will ensure that your audit is resolved favorably. I will arrange for your fee petition to be reconsidered. I will even make a substantial donation to your practice, enough to keep you solvent for years. And your daughter will continue to thrive in her art classes, completely unharmed."

"You want me to take your blood money."

"I want you to be reasonable. The past is the past. Nothing you do can bring back the dead. But you can protect the living. You can protect your family. Is that not worth more than some abstract notion of justice?"

Elliott stared at the old man. The firelight carved deep shadows into his face, making him look like a skull wrapped in parchment. His hands, resting on the handle of his cane, were spotted with age, the veins prominent and blue. The scar on his left hand, the burn scar Anna had described, was clearly visible.

"You're wrong," Elliott said quietly. "The past is not the past. It's here, in this room. It's in every brick of this building, every dollar in your foundation's accounts. It's in the nightmares of an old woman in a nursing home who has been afraid for sixty years. The past doesn't die. It waits."

Sterling's expression hardened. "A poetic sentiment. But poetry does not pay mortgages. Poetry does not protect children."

"Maybe not. But I'm not going to let you buy my silence the way you bought Anna's. I'm not going to let you threaten my family the way you threatened my father. You asked me why I'm throwing away my life on a ghost. I'll tell you why. Because my father spent the last two years of his life chasing you. And he died without finishing the job. I'm going to finish it for him."

"You have no evidence. My associates retrieved your father's file from your office last night. It has been destroyed."

"You're right. I don't have the file anymore. But I read it. Every page. And I have a very good memory." Elliott stood up. "You wanted this meeting, Mr. Sterling. You wanted to intimidate me, to offer me a way out. But all you've done is confirm everything I suspected. You're Viktor Krüger. You're the Butcher of Esterwald. And I'm going to prove it."

Sterling did not rise. He sat in his leather chair, the cigarette burning down between his fingers, and regarded Elliott with an expression that was almost curious. "You are very brave, Mr. Cross. Or very foolish. I cannot decide which."

"Maybe both."

"Bravery and foolishness often travel together. But let me give you one more piece of information, free of charge. You mentioned Anna Klein's payments. The trust fund. Did she tell you why the payments started in 1968, and not earlier?"

Elliott hesitated. "She said they were blood money. Hush money."

"Yes, but why 1968? Why not 1958, when I supposedly died? Why not 1948, immediately after the war?" Sterling stubbed out his cigarette in a crystal ashtray. "The payments began in 1968 because that is when Anna Klein first contacted me. She wrote me a letter. She had tracked me down, somehow, through the network of former officers who had also escaped prosecution. She did not threaten to expose me. She asked for money. She said she was struggling, that she could not work because of her health, that she needed help. And I provided it."

"That's a lie."

"Is it? Ask her. Ask her who initiated the arrangement. Ask her why she waited twenty years after the war to seek compensation. She was not a passive victim, Mr. Cross. She was a participant. She took my money for fifty years, and she spent it. She bought a house. She paid for medical treatments. She lived comfortably while her fellow survivors lived in poverty. What does that make her?"

Elliott felt the ground shift beneath his feet. He did not want to believe Sterling's words, but a part of him, the lawyer part, recognized the ring of truth. Anna had told him about the payments, but she had never explained how they began. She had said she was bought, that she was complicit. He had assumed she meant her silence. But what if she meant something more?

"Even if that's true," Elliott said slowly, "it doesn't change what you did. It doesn't change the massacre. It doesn't change the stolen gold. It doesn't change the fact that you've been hiding from justice for sixty years."

"No, it doesn't. But it does raise questions about your client's credibility, does it not? If this matter ever reaches a court, I will ensure that those questions are asked. I will ensure that the world knows that Anna Klein was not just a victim, but a collaborator. I will drag her reputation through the mud, and yours along with it. Is that what you want?"

Elliott walked to the door and paused with his hand on the handle. "You've had sixty years to perfect your defenses, Mr. Sterling. But every wall has a crack. Every lie has a flaw. I'm going to find yours."

"Then I wish you luck," Sterling said. "You will need it."

Elliott left the office and walked down the corridor to the elevator. The security guard was waiting, his face as impassive as before. They descended in silence, the numbers ticking down, until the doors opened onto the lobby.

The cold night air hit Elliott's face as he stepped outside. He walked to his car, his mind churning. Sterling's revelation about Anna had shaken him. Was it true? Had she initiated the payments? Had she been a willing participant in the arrangement that kept Krüger's secret safe? Or was Sterling lying, trying to drive a wedge between Elliott and his only witness?

He needed to talk to Anna. But it was nearly ten o'clock, and the nursing home would be locked down for the night. It would have to wait until morning.

He drove to his office, the only place he could think to go. The house in Draycott was empty, Maya and Lena already on their way to Corbridge. The office, at least, was familiar. He let himself in and sat at his desk, staring at the empty space where his father's file had been.

On a whim, he pulled out his phone and called Miriam Kovacs at the Herald.

"Elliott? It's late. Are you all right?"

"I met him. Sterling. Tonight. In his office."

There was a long pause. "And?"

"And he's Krüger. I'm certain of it. The scar on his hand, the way he talked, the things he knew. It's him."

"Did you get any evidence? A recording?"

Elliott cursed under his breath. He had been so focused on the confrontation that he had not thought to record the conversation. "No. Nothing admissible."

"Then you have nothing. His word against yours."

"I know. But he made a mistake, Miriam. He told me something about Anna. He said she was the one who initiated the payments. He said she asked him for money."

"Do you believe him?"

"I don't know. But I need to find out. I need to talk to her tomorrow."

Miriam was silent for a moment. "Elliott, be careful. Sterling is not going to let you keep poking around. He's already threatened your family. He's already had your office burglarized. The next step could be worse."

"I know. But I can't stop now. I'm too close."

He hung up and sat in the darkness, the city lights filtering through the dirty windows. He thought of Sterling's offer: money, security, a clean audit, a safe family. He could have it all. All he had to do was walk away.

But he could not walk away. Because beneath the fear, beneath the exhaustion and the stress and the gnawing worry about Lena, there was something else. Something that had been dormant since his father's funeral, since he had stood at the graveside and watched the casket lowered into the earth and promised himself that he would never let the world break him the way it had broken Samuel Cross.

It was anger. Cold, focused, patient anger. The kind of anger that could sustain a man through years of struggle. The kind of anger that could topple empires.

He would talk to Anna tomorrow. He would find out the truth about the payments. And then he would decide how to proceed.

But first, he needed to sleep. Even avenging angels needed rest.

He stretched out on the couch in his office, using his jacket as a blanket, and closed his eyes. Sleep came slowly, troubled by dreams of fire and snow and a pale-eyed man with a cane, smiling as the world burned around him.

When he woke, the sun was streaming through the windows, and someone was pounding on the office door.

"Mr. Cross! Mr. Cross, are you in there?"

It was David's voice, high and urgent. Elliott stumbled to the door and unlocked it. David burst in, his face pale, his phone clutched in his hand.

"I just got a call," David said, his voice shaking. "It's Mrs. Klein. She's been moved. Transferred out of Ashwick Gardens in the middle of the night. No one will tell me where she is."

"What do you mean, transferred?"

"I called the nursing home this morning to check on her, and they said she was no longer a resident. They said a family member arranged for her transfer. But Mrs. Klein has no family. She told us that herself."

Elliott's blood ran cold. "Sterling. He took her."

"But how? She's a ward of the state. Her medical care is paid for by Social Security. You can't just transfer someone without paperwork, without a court order—"

"Sterling can do whatever he wants. He has the government in his pocket." Elliott grabbed his coat. "We have to find her. If he's taken her, if he's silenced her..."

"Where do we even start?"

Elliott thought of the meeting last night. Sterling had been calm, confident, completely in control. But there had been a moment, just a flicker, when Elliott had mentioned Anna's testimony. A tightening around the eyes. A fractional pause.

He had been afraid. Not of Elliott, but of Anna. Anna was the one person who could identify him, who could testify to his crimes, who could bring the whole edifice of lies crashing down. And now she was gone.

"He's going to kill her," Elliott said. "If he hasn't already. We have to find her before it's too late."

He pulled out his phone and dialed a number he had not called in years. It rang twice, three times, four times. Then a voice answered, rough with sleep and irritation.

"Who is this?"

"Gregor Haas," Elliott said. "My name is Elliott Cross. I'm Samuel Cross's son. And I need your help."

The line went silent. Then the voice spoke again, quieter this time, more alert. "Where are you?"

"My office. The Brantford Building."

"Stay there. Don't leave. Don't call anyone else. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

The line went dead. Elliott stared at his phone, his heart pounding. David looked at him with wide eyes.

"Who is Gregor Haas?"

"Haas disappeared in 1995. His car was found on the Mael River Bridge. Everyone thought he was dead." Elliott pocketed his phone. "But my father never believed it. And apparently, he was right."