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“The Grunwalds?”
“Yes,” Emerson said. “The Grunwalds.”
Günter made an effort to raise his head. “Am I dead yet?” he whispered.
“No,” Riley said. “I think you’re just drugged.”
“That’s good to hear. Because I feel confused. On the positive side, my leg’s not hurting. And I can smell colors.”
There was the sound of men marching down the hall, and Werner Grunwald strode into the room. He was followed by William McCabe in his dark custom-tailored suit and Hans Grunwald in his uniform. Manny Grunwald entered last, pushing a sick older man in an oxygen-equipped wheelchair. The man was dressed in a white knit shirt and navy V-neck sweater. His white hair was neatly combed. His slippers were fleece-lined. He was sucking hard on his oxygen, his skin was the color of wet concrete, and one eye was closed, but the other eye was focused on Emerson like a laser beam.
Emerson smiled at the old ma
n. “I thought you were dead. Interesting to see you’ve still got one foot out of the grave, Bertie.”
“Bertie?” Riley asked.
“Let me introduce the elder Grunwald,” Emerson said to Riley. “This is Werner’s, Manny’s, Günter’s, and Hans’s father. Recently risen from the grave. In my house he was known as Bertie.”
At the mention of his father, Günter struggled to open his eyes and see through his haze of narcotics. He turned to Emerson and whispered hoarsely. “I see dead people. They walk around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.”
“Isn’t that what that little kid said to Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense?” Riley said to Emerson.
Bertrand gave his son a disgusted look. “Günter, you incredible nincompoop. I’m not dead.”
Günter was undeterred. “That’s exactly what a dead person would say.”
Werner moved to take his place at the head of the table and pulled up short when he realized Emerson had already claimed it. He stood for a couple beats with his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed tight together while everyone else shuffled around finding a seat.
“Sit down, Werner,” Bertie said on a gruff rush of expelled oxygen. “Anywhere.”
“Can we offer you something to drink?” Manny asked Riley and Emerson.
“Water,” Emerson said.
“Water for me as well,” Riley said.
“And you, Günter,” Manny asked. “What would you like?”
“Gin. With a side of rainbows.”
“We’ll make it ice water,” Manny said, pleasantly, and nodded to an aide in a gray suit standing by the door.
“Get on with it,” Bertie said.
Riley raised her hand. “Question,” she said. “When you put the men in this room together, you run one of the biggest banks in the world, you run the Federal Reserve, you run the NSA, and you’re about to have a voice on the Supreme Court. You’re already running the country. What more do you need?”
“We need to own it,” Werner said. “Soon we’ll have everything in place and we’ll set McCabe to printing massive amounts of currency, devaluing the U.S. dollar. Then we shut off the money spigot from Blane-Grunwald and the other mega-banks will follow. It will be a complete collapse of the dollar and probably every other major global currency. Our gold will be worth a hundred times what it’s worth today.”
“In fact, if you have your way, your gold coins will be the only surviving currency in the world.” Emerson looked to Riley. “You have to admire the elegance of it. They’re not just out to steal the world’s gold. That would make them simple thieves. They want to simultaneously destroy all other forms of wealth. Essentially, they make themselves even richer by making everyone else poorer.”
Bertrand sucked another breath of oxygen. “Sometimes you have to burn the field down so new crops will grow.”
“Impressively ambitious,” Emerson said. “What do you want from us?”
Hans pressed an icon on his iPad and one of the flat-screens flickered to life. The opening page of the Mysterioso website came up, the smoky letters drifting into view and looking eerier in wide-screen high definition.
The image went to static for a moment then was replaced by a video feed. Looking like it was made on a laptop computer, the image was all fish-eyed and high contrast, but it was clearly Emerson in the turret room. There were stacks of money on the table next to him, and he addressed the camera.
