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said, “Cash flow and investment, that’s the trouble. We don’t have enough of either.”
    “Not anymore.” Von Berger turned to Heinz. “I’m transfering five million into the company accounts tomorrow.”
    “Dear God, Baron,” Heinz said, “I’ll guarantee you results with that kind of money.”
    And so it proved. Over the years, the company contributed more than most to the miracle that became West Germany. As they developed into one of the most important steelworks, von Berger diversified into construction, hotels, the developing post-war leisure industry.
    Soon his tentacles moved westward to the United States, his hotel interests burgeoning, and an ex-Airborne Ranger officer turned New York attorney named James Kelly proved more than useful, eventually becoming head of legal affairs for the American branch of Berger International.
    At an early stage, he sought out Colonel Strasser, as he had promised, and Strasser became an adept troubleshooter, eventually overseeing all personnel matters for Berger. Ritter had been a different case. As usual with many wartime pilots, Ritter had been unable to go without the adrenaline rush, so though Berger had kept him as a personal pilot, it was never enough, and one day in 1960, Ritter, performing at an airshow in an ME109, stalled for the last time and plunged into the ground. At the funeral, they stood together, the Baron, Schneider, Hoffer, Strasser and Kelly, who had flown over from the States.
    “Thirty-eight years old, and after all that he did,” Strasser said, “I’d say that’s young. It frankly makes me uneasy.”
    Schneider, always “Young Schneider” to them, said, “That Berlin flight was amazing. We shouldn’t even be here now.”
    “Well, we are, and the work continues,” the Baron said.
     
    As the Cold War extended, the position of the great estate of Holstein Heath became more ambivalent, but von Berger’s position as one of West Germany’s leading industrialists gave him the right international contacts needed to block anything the East German regime could do.
    The estate had developed a prosperity beyond belief, with Karl Hoffer as general manager, and young Schneider as his assistant. Von Berger poured in money and totally refurbished the castle, using the apparently inexhaustible funds from Geneva. He even had a runway constructed in the meadow, big enough for small planes to land.
    Any overt support of Nazi ideals was not part of his agenda. It would have been counterproductive anyway, but gradually over the years there was a quiet coming together of others whose names were on the lists in Hitler’s briefcase. Not the Kameradenwerk, the Action for Comrades that Hitler had mentioned, but a sort of secret brotherhood, almost like a Masonic order, with Max von Berger as a kind of godfather. Anyone with the right background, the right ideas, could turn to him and get a hearing, a handout, help. Always discreet, always reasonable, a legend to the former soldiers of the German army, there was nothing the authorities could complain of.
    The truth was that the brutal death of his wife and son had killed something inside him in a single devastating moment. He had taken his revenge, which had proved no revenge. It had, as he’d read in a poem, made of his heart a stone, left him curiously lacking in emotion.
    The years rolled on, and in 1970 that emotionally cold heart found release when, at forty-eight years of age, he formed an attachment for a young Italian woman named Maria Rossi. Attractive and clever, with a degree in accounting, she became a personal assistant, traveling the world with him, and the inevitable happened.
    Von Berger fought against his feelings for her, for it seemed a betrayal of his wife, but before he had to make any final decision, the situation resolved itself. She left him quite suddenly, leaving behind a brief apologetic letter telling him that family business had called her away to Palermo. He never heard from her