C. M. PALOV
The Templar’s Quest
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
PART I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
PART II
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
PART III
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
PART IV
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Acknowledgements
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE TEMPLAR’S QUEST
Born in Washington DC, C. M. Palov graduated from George Mason University with a degree in art history. The author’s résumé includes working as a museum guide, teaching English in Seoul, Korea and managing a bookshop. Twin interests in art and arcana inspired the author to write esoteric thrillers. C. M. Palov currently lives in West Virginia.
Paris, France
28 June, 1940
Death is the great equalizer, Friedrich Uhlemann silently mused.
As evidenced by the thousands of bones sandwiched between thick slabs of pitted limestone. Indeed, the catacombs of Paris morbidly flaunted the spirit of ‘ liberté, egalité, fraternité’, with no discernible difference between sinner and saint, prince and pauper, making him think that the French virtues of liberty, equality and brotherhood were only possible in the hereafter. One desiccated bone the same as the next.
Friedrich glanced at the bank of hollowed-out skulls. God alone knew the precise number of residents in the underground necropolis. And only God had known about the gold medallion hidden in these catacombs, safeguarded for centuries by an ossified Templar Knight.
Until the medallion had been uncovered by Friedrich and the six members of his academic team. ‘The Seven’ as some in the Ahnenerbe dismissively referred to them. Founded in 1935 by Heinrich Himmler, the Ahnenerbe was the academic research division for the Nazi SS.
Well aware that the Ahnenerbe did not cultivate or encourage creative vision, Friedrich and his six colleagues took the ridicule in their stride. The fact that they were the only interdisciplinary team in the Ahnenerbe was extraordinary. Even more extraordinary, they counted among their number three Germans, two Italians, a French atheist and a Sunni Muslim from Damascus. Although given the glacial expressions of the dignitaries who were now touring the dimly lit catacombs, the Seven had not yet proven their extraordinary worth.
Tempted to run a finger under his stiff neck collar, Friedrich refrained. They’d been issued new field-grey uniforms for the occasion, and the boiled wool was chafing his skin. In the background, somewhere in the shadows, he heard the steady plop plop plop of dripping water. Belatedly he realized that his heart beat in time with that incessant drip.
A stout fellow in the tour group raised steepled hands to his mouth and noisily blew a warm breath; the ambient air was at least thirty degrees cooler than the above-ground temperature.
Another member of the party, an Iron Cross medal prominently affixed to his uniform jacket, shuddered. ‘My God, this place is macabre.’ No doubt he referred to the twinkling candles inserted into disembodied skulls. This was Friedrich’s doing, though even he agreed that it created a ghoulish effect.
Just then, a lone man broke away from the group and approached the limestone niche where the medallion had been placed. Polished Prussian boots gleamed in the candlelight. As the uniformed man neared, Friedrich took a deep breath, filling his lungs with musty air.
The man stopped in front of the niche, no more than an arm’s length from where Friedrich stood. At that close range, he could see that the other man had pale blue eyes. An unexpected surprise. While his visage was famous the world over, in all honesty, the photographs did not do him justice.
Long moments passed as the blue-eyed man gazed at the gold medallion.
Did he comprehend the importance of the symbols? Their connection to the movement of the great star Sirius? Or that they revealed an ancient and powerful technology?
‘Have you translated the medallion?’
Nodding his head, Friedrich read aloud the engraved inscription. He didn’t bother to mention that the inscription contained a combination of the Occitan language and medieval Latin, suspecting the blue-eyed man didn’t care about the medallion’s linguistic provenance.
‘And you’re certain that this inscription refers to the sacred relic?’
Again, Friedrich nodded, assuming he referred to the Lapis Exillis. ‘We’ve ascertained that the inscription is encrypted and that the encoded message discloses the whereabouts of the sacred relic. Although –’ he hesitated, fearful of the other man’s reaction – ‘we have not yet decoded the message.’
Hearing that, the blue-eyed man glowered. Which, in turn, caused Friedrich’s stomach muscles to painfully cramp.
Like a hapless Christian in the Roman Colosseum, he nervously awaited his fate.
Thumbs up or thumbs down?
‘Find the relic,’ the blue-eyed man ordered brusquely. ‘Its ancient power will decide the destiny of the Reich.’
Friedrich released a pent-up breath. Yes! The blue-eyed man understood!
Unable to contain his euphoria, Friedrich clicked his boot heels while he ardently raised and extended his right hand.
‘Heil, mein Führer!’
PART I
‘Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith’ – Proverbs 15:16
1
Operation Ghost Warrior, Al-Qanawat, Syria
Present Day, 0342 hours
‘What the … ?’
Stunned by what he’d just discovered hidden inside the thirteenth-century chapel, Master Sergeant Finn McGuire reached for the Maglite secured to the front of his battle cammies. Shining the flashlight, he examined the gold medallion nestled inside a velvet-lined box. It looked like something that might have been worn by an Arabian sultan. Or maybe an iced-out rapper. Unbelievably ornate, it was engraved with images of a sun, a moon and a big-ass star.
Finn carefully lifted the medallion out of the box. Three inches in diameter and attached to a heavy chain made of interlocking gold pieces, he estimated its weight at two pounds. Two very valuable pounds, gold trading at a thousand dollars an ounce.
Momentarily seduced, he tuned out the voice in his head urging him to put the medallion back in the box. Make like he never saw the damned thing and just continue with the mission.
Finn and his Delta Force troopers had infiltrated the Syrian village of Al-Qanawat to retrieve ten vials of contraband smallpox virus before they could be transported out of the country and weaponized. Having searched the chapel for the smallpox cache and come up empty-handed, it suddenly occurred to Finn that more than purloined bio-weapons were sold on the black market.
The thought triggered an uneasy feeling in the pit of his belly. General Robert Cavanaugh had personally classified the SpecOps as ‘sensitive’. Loosely translated, that meant the mission was off the books.
Jesus H.
What did Cavanaugh think Finn’s Delta squad was, his own private gang of tomb raiders? It didn’t take a jeweller at Tiffany’s to know the medallion was worth a small fortune. Seventeen years ago, when he first joined the US Army, he’d taken an oath to defend his country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Commandeering biological weapons fell into that category. Stealing gold trinkets to pad a fat-cat general’s bank account did not.
Angered that he’d been played for a fool, Finn glanced at the black Pathfinder watch strapped to his left wrist. 0343. Two minutes to go before the scheduled helo pick-up. Certain there weren’t any bio-weapons on the premises, he ripped open a Velcro flap and deposited the medallion in his cargo pocket.
Suddenly hearing a muffled footfall, Finn spun on his booted heel. In one smooth, practised motion, he reached for the HK Mark 23 pistol strapped to his right thigh. Ensnared in the beam of his flashlight was a robed Syrian carrying – of all things – a jewelled scimitar. While the other man’s choice of weaponry was odd, the curved blade looked like it could easily cleave Finn in two.
Knowing a gunshot would awaken the somnolent village, Finn shoved the semi-automatic into his holster. He then lowered the flashlight beam from the other man’s face, aiming it, instead, over his heart. The Syrian’s eyes narrowed with suspicion as Finn reached for the sheath secured at the back of his waist.
A second later his fifteen-inch Bowie knife was airborne.
A second after that, the Syrian went down like a felled maple on a Berkshires’ mountainside.
About to retrieve the ivory-handled Bowie knife, Finn stopped in mid-motion, hearing the familiar rat-a-tat-tat of automatic weapons fire. Instead, he whipped the Mark 23 out of his holster.
‘We’ve got unfriendlies approaching from the west,’ a disembodied voice announced in his earbud.
‘Call in the team,’ Finn ordered, speaking into the radio mouthpiece attached to the side of his helmet. ‘We need to get to the landing zone on the double-quick.’
Leaving the knife embedded in the Syrian, Finn beat a hasty retreat from the chapel. No sooner did he exit the building than he came under intense fire, the Mark 23 blown clean from his hand.
‘Crap!’ he bellowed, rage and pain coursing through him in equal measure.
The five Delta troopers who made up Finn’s squad – Deuce, Lou-Lou, Dixie, Johnny K and PJ – emerged from the shadows, automatic weapons blazing. Ghost warriors materializing out of thin air. A hundred metres away, the helo touched down in a cloud of dust. Insurgents neutralized, Finn and his men headed for the LZ at a fast trot.
A few moments later, safe onboard the bird, Finn sank to his haunches.
‘Hey, boss, some Syrian sure had it out for – Shit!’ Johnny K suddenly yelled. ‘What happened to your hand? Medic!’
Feeling faint, Finn leaned his head against the hull. As the medic hovered over him, he belatedly realized there was blood everywhere. His hand. His pant legs. The floor of the helo. All of it spurting from the bloody mess that used to be his right index finger. ‘Used to be’ because Finn could see that half of his finger had been blown off, the severed digit gushing blood like a wildcat oil rig.
Jesus H! His trigger finger.
Angrily, he banged his head against the side of the helo.
While they’d let him stay in the army, Finn McGuire knew that he could kiss his Delta Force career goodbye.
And all because of some damned gold medallion.
2
The Pentagon
4 months later
‘Master Sergeant Finnegan J. McGuire?’
Hand curled around a styrofoam cup, Finn peered over his shoulder. Seeing two strangers with ‘Pentagon Visitor’ badges pinned to the front of their jackets, he reached for the coffee jug. A few seconds later, steaming cup in hand, he turned to face the pair. ‘Yeah, I’m McGuire. Who’s asking?’
In tandem, the pair snapped open matching black leather wallets as they each thrust an arm in his direction. ‘CID. I’m Warrant Officer Dennis Stackhouse and this is my partner, Special Agent Elizabeth Tonelli.’
The Criminal Investigation Division of the US Army … what did they want with him?
It was well known in the army ranks that CID investigators were a law unto themselves. In that way, they were a lot like the Delta Force. They didn’t have to wear a military uniform, maintain a regulation haircut or follow the normal chain of command. They were cop and soldier rolled into one.
‘Late yesterday evening, sometime between ten and eleven p.m., two murders were committed at Fort Bragg,’ the Warrant Officer announced in a brusque, businesslike tone. ‘We need to know your whereabouts during the time in question.’
Knowing the unspoken implication was that he had been somewhere yesterday that he wasn’t supposed to be, Finn said, ‘I spent last night at home. Alone, I might add. While sitting at home all by my lonesome, I ate leftover Kung Pao Chicken, caught the last half of The Dirty Dozen on a cable station, then turned in for the night.’
Even as he spoke, Finn had the uneasy feeling that this was one of those ‘damned if he did/damned if he didn’t’ scenarios.
Special Agent Tonelli opened her mouth to speak.
‘And before you ask, no, I do not have an alibi,’ Finn volunteered. ‘I also don’t know anything about any murders. I haven’t been to Fort Bragg in a couple of months.’ Fort Bragg was home base to the Delta Force. Three months ago he’d cleared out of the Fayetteville apartment that he’d rented off base. He hadn’t been back since.
Barely repressing a snicker, Finn gestured to the office bay adjacent to the break room. ‘As you can see, I’m now working a desk job at the Pentagon.’
A mind-numbing desk job that was somehow connected to ‘intelligence gathering’ but had everything to do with spending eight hours a day staring at satellite photos. It was as far removed from combat duty as a soldier could get. Not a day passed that Finn didn’t wish someone would take aim and put him out of his misery.
‘I hope that answers all your questions. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.’ He headed towards his cubbyhole of an office.
‘Actually, we have a few more questions for you,’ the Warrant Officer said to his backside, the twosome trailing behind him.
Finn snatched a chair from an unoccupied desk and rolled it into his office. With his free hand he motioned Agent Tonelli to seat herself on the chair. Finn sat himself behind his metal desk. As though it were a game of musical chairs, the Warrant Officer was left standing.
Agent Tonelli pointedly glanced at his right hand. ‘How’s your, um, finger doing?’
‘Beats me … I left it somewhere in the Middle East.’
‘I apologize. That didn’t come out the way I intended. What I meant to ask is how is your recovery coming along?’
Pegging her for the ‘good cop’, Finn shrugged. ‘I can’t complain.’
What was the point? The army surgeon at Ramstein Airbase had had to amputate the mangled flesh of his right index finger, cutting it just below the second knuckle. Finn didn’t know if it was on account of the original injury or the subsequent surgery, but he’d suffered nerve damage to the digitorum tendon, the connective tissue that flexed and extended the finger. Even though the digit healed faster than expected, the amputation ended his days as a Delta Force ‘shooter’. While he could still fire a weapon, able to pull the trigger with his middle finger, he no longer had the speed and proficiency required of a Special Forces combat soldier.
‘I don’t know about the two of you, but I’ve got work to do,’ Finn said brusquely. ‘So, what do you say we get this interrogation over and done with?’
‘Fine,’ Warrant Officer Stackhouse replied. ‘As we already stated, last night two Delta troopers stationed at Fort Bragg were found murdered.’
His spine instantly straightened. ‘You didn’t tell me that the victims were Delta troopers.’
‘In fact, the two murdered troopers, Corporal Lamar Dixon and Corporal John Kelleher, were former comrades of yours.’
Finn felt like he’d just been sucker-punched, his gut cramping painfully. The two men had not just been comrades, they’d been friends.
Dixie and Johnny K. Dead. Both of them. Christ.
Finn looked the Warrant Officer straight in the eye. ‘And you actually think that I drove down to Fort Bragg yesterday when I got off duty and killed Dixie and Johnny K?’
Openly smirking, Warrant Officer Stackhouse opened a leather portfolio that he’d carried in with him. From it he removed two 8 x 10 crime scene photos, placing them on top of the desk. ‘These should jar your memory.’
Finn carefully examined the photos. What he saw sickened him. Other than the fact that one photo was of a black man and the other a Caucasian, the photos were nearly identical: The two men were naked and secured to O-bolts screwed into the floor, a strap of duct tape over their mouths, both bodies covered in blood. Someone didn’t just murder Dixie and Johnny K; someone butchered them.
‘Both of the victims were ritualistically tortured,’ Stackhouse continued. ‘Oh, and did I mention … the killer used your Bowie knife to commit the murders.’
Finn slapped the photos on to the desk. ‘That’s flat-out impossible.’
The Warrant Officer opened his portfolio and removed a third photo. Gleefully smiling, he dangled the glossy photo to-and-fro in front of Finn’s face. ‘Look familiar?’
Clearly annoyed with her partner’s antics, Agent Tonelli snatched the photo from him and handed it to Finn. ‘The knife hilt is made of fossilized ivory and etched in scrimshaw. Nowadays scrimshaw is a little practised art, but two hundred years ago, Boston whalers used scrimshaw to –’
‘I know what scrimshaw is,’ Finn interrupted, staring at the photo in complete disbelief.
‘As you can see, the Gaelic phrase Fé Mhóid Bheith Saor is etched into the ivory,’ she continued. Reaching across his desk, she pointed out the detail with her finger. ‘We looked it up on the Internet: It means “Sworn to be free”. Beneath the inscription are the initials FJM.’
‘And don’t deny that it’s your knife,’ Stackhouse cautioned. ‘We’ve got proof to the contrary.’
‘Look, I don’t know how this happened, but –’ Finn stopped in mid-sentence. The knife in the photo, the same Bowie knife that was used to kill Dixie and Johnny K, was the same Bowie knife he had used four months ago to take out a Syrian combatant on that fubar mission to retrieve the gold medallion. Had it not been for that damned pendant, his trigger finger would still be attached to his right hand.
But he’d left that knife in Al-Qanawat, embedded in the Syrian’s chest.
How did it end up at Fort Bragg?
‘You were about to say something, Sergeant?’
Finn shook his head. Simply put, there was nothing to say. Somehow, someone had managed to take out the last two members of his old Delta squad. Three months ago, Deuce, Lou-Lou and PJ had had their helo blown out of the Iraqi sky by a couple of insurgents.
That meant he was the only member of the Delta squad still drawing breath.
Reaching across the desk, Agent Elizabeth Tonelli took the photo from him. ‘Losing your trigger finger, that had to have been a bitter pill to swallow. Moreover, it must have made you incredibly angry. Angry men have a propensity for violence. Combine that with your specialized training and … well, you get my drift.’
Loud and clear. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. The ever-popular default motive for murder.
Agent Tonelli’s sidekick slipped on a pair of reading glasses and re-opened his leather portfolio. Wearing a studious expression, the Warrant Officer examined a sheet of paper. Several seconds passed before he peered over the top of his metal frames. ‘We did a little background check on you, Sergeant. Hope you don’t mind.’
Ah, shit. Here it comes. The McGuire family laundry. Dirty sheets flapping in a gusty headwind.
‘Seems that your brother Mychal has made quite a name for himself as a top lieutenant in Boston’s Irish mob. According to our dossier, he spent six years in the Federal penitentiary in Lewisburg on an arms trafficking charge.’ One side of the Warrant Officer’s mouth twisted in a nasty sneer. ‘Bet you couldn’t be prouder.’
Finn made no comment. Every security clearance he’d ever been issued had been held up while the Department of Defense verified that Finn no longer had contact with his brother Mickey. Or any other member of the McGuire clan for that matter.
‘Finnegan and Mychal McGuire. Blood brothers. No. Wait.’ The bastard made a big to-do of glancing back at the dossier. ‘Twin brothers. Meaning that the two of you were cut from the very same bolt.’
‘Let’s get something straight – I’m not my brother’s keeper,’ Finn grated between clenched teeth. As he spoke, he noticed the pop-up box that had suddenly appeared on his computer monitor, alerting him to an incoming email. While the sender’s name, FJ-58, meant nothing to him, the subject line caught his eye, the words ‘UNJUSTLY ACCUSED’ all in caps.
Casually moving his right hand to the mouse, he clicked on the email icon. As he read the missive, he schooled his features into a blank expression.
What price freedom? Unless you wish to ponder the answer from the inside of a military prison, you will immediately leave the building and proceed to the reception at the French Embassy in Washington. Wait by the courtyard doors. You will receive further instructions. If you fail to arrive by 5.00 p.m., irrefutable DNA evidence linking you to the murders in question will be provided to the proper authorities. If you speak of this matter to anyone, they will be targeted for execution.
Finn clicked the delete button, the email instantly disappearing from the computer screen. Leave the building? Were they insane? He was on the verge of being arrested for murder. Not to mention the ‘building’ in question was the freaking Pentagon.
He stared at the blank computer screen. He didn’t know anyone who worked at the French Embassy. Hell, he’d never even been to the French Embassy. But he suspected that someone at the embassy had ordered the hits on Dixie and Johnny K. That same somebody planted his Bowie knife at the murder scene. And they also knew when he’d be questioned by CID. Which meant that the enemy had eyes and ears inside the US military command.
And wasn’t that a scary thought?
‘Sergeant McGuire,’ a voice suddenly boomed from the telephone intercom system. ‘You were supposed to get me a copy of those updates ASAP. Where the hell are they?’
Finn knew the voice all too well. It was his commanding officer, Colonel Benjamin Duckworth, a spit-and-polish career officer who ran the Satellite Analysis Group, SAG, like it was his own private fiefdom.
Hitting the mute button, he glanced apologetically at the two CID agents. ‘Sorry about that. I was supposed to get these satellite photos to the Colonel ten minutes ago. There’s a commander in Kandahar who’s currently on standby. He’s waiting to get this intel downloaded before he sends out his security detail,’ Finn told them, purposefully playing the ‘patriot’ card. ‘Colonel Duckworth’s office is just down the hall. It won’t take but a second for me to deliver the file.’
The Warrant Officer’s eyes narrowed as he glanced at the innocuous manila folder that Finn now held in his right hand. ‘Can’t you have someone else deliver the file?’
‘Actually, I can’t,’ Finn lied. ‘There’s no one in the office with a high enough security clearance to open this file, let alone carry it down the hall to the Colonel.’
‘All right,’ the other man groused irritably. ‘But make it snappy.’
Oh, I intend to.
3
Manila folder in hand, Finn walked down the corridor to the Colonel’s office.
A quick glance over his shoulder proved what he already knew – the two CID agents were watching his every move.
‘What took so long?’ Colonel Duckworth bellowed as Finn stepped into his office. ‘And who are those two suits?’
Finn knew that Duckworth didn’t want the file so much as he wanted to know who had trespassed, unauthorized, into his domain.
‘They’re a couple of CID agents,’ he replied. ‘An incident happened down at Fort Bragg and they’re checking on some background information.’ He held the manila folder aloft as he strode over to the door on the other side of the Colonel’s office. ‘I need to make a quick copy for my files.’
When the Colonel nodded his consent, Finn opened the door and stepped into the administration bay. He’d cut a break. Not a big one, but enough to get him out of the SAG office suite before the two agents caught on to the ruse.
Quickly passing the copy machines, collators and a line of cubicles, he figured he had sixty, maybe seventy-five seconds before the alarm was sounded.
Exiting the admin bay, he hung a right and briskly strode down the hall towards an office wing currently under renovation, the area shrouded in clear plastic sheets. He wedged past a fifteen-foot stretch of linked trolleys piled high with office furniture and cardboard boxes.
Free and clear of the ‘moving van’, he threw open a door that led to a newly painted stairwell, ‘WET PAINT’ signs still tacked to the railing. A few seconds later, he emerged in the basement of the E-ring, the outermost ring of the Pentagon.
And that’s when he took off at a fast trot, the manila folder still grasped in his hand. To the casual bystander, he looked like a man running late for a meeting.
As he charged past the Pentagon printing office, Finn tuned out the near-deafening roar of the printing presses that churned out documents, reports and manuals 24/7. At the end of the long hall, he sidestepped a forklift loaded with boxes of printed binders before entering another stairwell. Taking the steps three at a time, he climbed one flight, emerging on the first floor of the River Entrance wing of the Pentagon.
Five storeys high with five concentric rings and ten radial corridors, the Pentagon was a maze. A fact he intended to use to his advantage. Given that his Dodge Ram truck was parked in the South Lot, using that exit was not an option. He figured that’d be the first place they’d look for him. The second place would be the subway and bus exit. That’s why he intended to take the road less travelled and leave the building via the River Entrance. All of the bigwigs – the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs – had their offices located in that wing of the Pentagon. Not only was it the farthest removed from the SAG office, he figured it was the last place CID would look for him.
Slowing his pace, he caught sight of a burly staff sergeant leaving his rabbit warren. Finn quickly sized him up. Six foot four. Two hundred and twenty pounds of ripped muscle . A perfect match. Finn stepped into his empty office, lifting the sergeant’s uniform jacket and beret from the hook on the back of the door. As he continued down the corridor, he donned the green service jacket and stuffed the beret under his arm. CID would be searching for a coatless NonCom. Wearing a jacket wouldn’t save him, but it might buy him a few seconds.
As he approached the security checkpoint located at the River Entrance, he glanced at his Pathfinder watch. 1615. If he didn’t show up at the French Embassy in the next forty-five minutes, he would never find out who killed Dixie and Johnny K.
Suddenly catching sight of his military photo emblazoned on the guard station computer screen, Finn jammed the beret on his head. He then piggybacked on to a group of uniformed military personnel, shouldering his way into the middle of the pack.
Ten seconds later, Finn exited the Pentagon. Removing a pair of sunglasses from the jacket’s breast pocket, he slipped them on.
The easy part was done. Now he had to get to the French Embassy.
He scanned the small parking lot on the other side of the covered concourse. Given that it was broad daylight, hotwiring a parked car was out of the question.
As he continued to search the lot, a Toyota Camry pulled up to the kerb. A man in a rumpled khaki suit emerged from the passenger door. Slamming the car door shut, the suit scurried up the steps towards the entrance. Finn glanced through the windscreen. Scrawny build. Stick-straight black hair. Almond-shaped eyes and freckled cheeks. The woman behind the wheel was a civilian contractor who worked in one of the cubicles down the hall from SAG.
What was her name?
Kathy? Karen?
Hell, her name didn’t matter.
Needing an escape vehicle, Finn opened the passenger door and climbed inside the Toyota.
4
Barely stifling a scream, Kate Bauer recoiled from the large, unsmiling soldier who’d unceremoniously got into her Camry.
‘I need your help,’ the man announced abruptly, the request as unexpected as his sudden appearance.
Kate sat mute, her tongue tied in the proverbial knot.
It wasn’t until the uninvited passenger reached up and removed his sunglasses that she belatedly realized she knew the man, although not very well – she and Sergeant McGuire were no more than passing acquaintances. If that. According to the rumour mill, he’d spent ten years on the vaunted Delta Force as a highly trained commando. Everyone in the office bay, herself included, gave him a wide berth when they passed him in the hallway.
‘Sergeant McGuire, you scared the living daylights out of me,’ she said tersely, annoyance trumping fear.
Unperturbed, he glanced at the commando-style watch strapped to his left wrist. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that my Dodge Ram is a dead dog and I’ve been waiting forty minutes for the tow truck.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that you’re having vehicle problems. But that doesn’t explain why –’
‘I was kinda hoping you could give me a lift into town,’ he interjected, a beseeching look in his eyes. ‘I need to be at the French Embassy no later than five p.m. You are on your way home, aren’t you?’
‘Um, yes … I just dropped off my boss. We had an off-site briefing at Bolling Air Force Base.’ A private contractor, she worked for the Defense Department as a subject matter expert, her field of expertise cultural anthropology. She’d recently created an ethnic database that would be used by military personnel stationed abroad. While it didn’t involve interaction with Sergeant McGuire, they did work in the same office suite.
Deciding there was no reason not to give the sergeant a ride, particularly since she lived a mile or so from the French Embassy, Kate pulled the Camry into the narrow lane. With a quick glance in the side-view mirror, she merged into the fast-moving rush-hour traffic.
‘I appreciate the lift. Believe me, you pulled up in the nick of time.’
‘Happy to assist.’ She notched up the air conditioner, hoping to dispel the thick, muggy air. Washington in August was not for the weak-kneed. Even the towering oaks that lined either side of the G W Parkway had a limp noodle look about them.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed her passenger rubbing a mutilated right hand over his jaw. With his dark-brown hair cut military short, blade of a nose, and thin, well-shaped lips, Sergeant McGuire’s Irish roots were clearly evident. Kate recalled the first time she had laid eyes on Sergeant McGuire. Grim. Intimidating. Scary-looking. Initial impressions that had not diminished in the passing weeks.
However, at the moment, he didn’t appear all that scary. Maybe it was woman’s intuition, but Kate sensed that something was deeply troubling him.
‘Are you all right, Sergeant?’
A glimmer of surprise flashed across his face.
‘I’m fine.’ He attempted, but didn’t quite muster, a light-hearted grin.
‘You just seem … I don’t know –’ she shrugged, regretting that she’d asked the question in the first place – ‘a bit upset.’
‘Nope. Never felt better.’
‘My mistake. I apologize.’ Embarrassed, she made a big to-do of looking over her shoulder as she veered on to the Georgetown ramp.
Again, chalk it up to intuition, but not for one instant did she believe the sergeant’s disclaimer. She knew the face of sorrow. Had stared at it in the bathroom mirror every morning for the last two years. Even now, people still tiptoed around Sammy’s death, afraid of churning up the painful memories.
And it had been painful, as if someone had gutted her with a very sharp fillet knife.
The pain, however, came later. In the days immediately following her infant son’s death, she’d been too numb to feel anything, having gone through the funeral in an almost catatonic state. To this day, she still couldn’t recall a single detail from the ceremony. Only afterwards did she realize that the dazed fog had been a survival mechanism.
All too soon, that numbness gave way to an unbearable heartache.
At the time, she didn’t think she could contain, let alone exorcise, the pain. The best she could do was manage the grief – at least during the daylight hours – by binging on work. Gorging herself on an inhuman schedule. The constant white noise of office computers, printers, beepers and one-sided telephone conversations forced her to concentrate on the job at hand. The intense focus helped to keep the grief at bay.
In recent months, the pain had diminished somewhat. At least enough that she’d begun to think about resuming a ‘normal’ life. Whatever that meant.
Ten minutes into the mostly silent drive, Kate pulled up to the entrance of the French Embassy, tri-coloured flags waving jauntily in the humid breeze. A smartly dressed group walked past, the guard waving them through the open gate. Although Sergeant McGuire hadn’t volunteered any specifics, she assumed he’d been invited to an embassy party.
‘I see a space a little further down the street. How good are you at parallel parking?’
She shot her passenger a questioning glance. ‘Why do I need to park?’
‘I thought you might want to come in and, you know, mingle.’
‘You want me to go with you to the party?’
‘Yeah. You on board?’
Taken aback by the invitation, Kate stared at the uniformed man seated beside her. Under no circumstance would she describe him as handsome. Although she wouldn’t go so far as to say that he was un-handsome. Rugged-looking best summed him up. And it had been nearly two years since the divorce.
Unfortunately …
‘I’m afraid that I have to decline the, um, gracious invitation. As you can plainly see, Sergeant McGuire, I’m really not dressed for an embassy soiree.’ Kate lamely gestured to her navy-blue linen skirt. Paired with a sleeveless cream-coloured blouse, it was the sort of nondescript office fare that rarely garnered a second glance from the opposite sex.
‘Hey, I think you look great. By the way, my first name is Finn.’ The sergeant stared expectantly at her.
‘Oh, right … and I’m Kate.’
‘Kate. I was damned close.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Nothing. Listen, this is just my way of saying “Thank you”. And, I promise, no strings attached. Come on. I bet there’s free booze and a long buffet table. What do you say, Kate? You look like you’ve had a helluva day.’
While that was true, she barely knew Sergeant McGuire. A few weeks ago at an office birthday party, she’d accidentally bumped into him and spilled coffee on his uniform. She’d offered an awkward, bumbling apology. He, in turn, gruffly refused to let her pay for the dry cleaning. In the whole of that sixty-second exchange, there’d been no sparks. Not even a dim flicker.
Which might explain why she was tempted to accept Finn McGuire’s offer. It was a ‘no strings’ opportunity to do something other than eat carryout and watch a DVD. ‘No strings’ was about all she could handle emotionally.
Giving the invitation serious consideration, Kate glanced at Finn’s left hand. He wasn’t wearing a wedding band. More importantly, there was no telltale tan line. Two years ago she swore that she’d never do to another woman what had been done to her.
Finn gave her a coaxing smile, managing to look almost handsome.
Okay, so what if he’s not my type. A glass of wine and a little banter with a living, breathing member of the opposite sex might do her some good.
Mind made up, Kate steered the car towards the vacant parking space.
5
He was a bastard. No doubt about it.
But if the situation turned dicey, Finn figured he’d need the Camry to escape the premises. That’s why he’d cajoled Kate into coming inside. And why he then lifted the key ring out of the leather bag hanging from her shoulder.
Having gone on red alert the moment they stepped inside the joint, he again scanned the well-heeled crowd.
‘The smoked salmon canapé with caviar is to die for. You have to try one,’ Kate said, wiping a crumb from her upper lip.
Not nearly so impressed, Finn glanced at the buffet table; a twenty-foot-long floral and candle-strewn extravaganza with enough food to feed an entire platoon. Although no red-blooded soldier of his acquaintance would willingly eat the crap that the French were serving at their fancy chow line.
‘Thanks, but I’m more of a pigs-in-a-blanket kind of guy.’
Kate gave a good-natured chuckle. ‘I’m afraid to ask.’ As she spoke, a distinguished-looking African man dressed in a flowing yellow and brown agbado strolled between them, causing a brief separation.
‘Jeez, we should have brought our own UN interpreter.’
‘I’ll have you know that I can say “Hello” in twenty different languages,’ Kate informed him, a challenging cant to her chin. ‘Although I’ll spare you the litany.’
‘Appreciate that.’ Lightly placing his hand on the small of her back, Finn guided Kate through the crowded reception hall. With two hundred or so jibber-jabbering attendees, it was the perfect place for an assassin to lurk. No wonder FJ-58 stipulated the embassy party.
‘The opulent fête champêtre and sumptuous joie de vivre put me in mind of a Watteau painting.’
‘Sorry. Not registering. You lost me at French fries.’ Flagging down a penguin-suited waiter, Finn snatched two glasses of champagne from a silver tray. ‘Here you go. What’s a party without a lil’ bubbly?’ Forcing his lips into a semblance of a smile, he handed Kate one of the glasses.
‘What I was trying to say is that I feel out of my element.’
‘I hear ya.’ A few feet away, Finn observed two female guests bend and sway as they gave each other a well-practised air kiss.
‘You know, Sergeant, er – I mean, Finn –’ Kate took a measured sip of her champagne – ‘I don’t know anything about you. However, if I had to make an educated guess, I’d say that you hail from the Boston area.’
‘Guilty as charged. I’m a Southie born and bred. The lady clearly knows her accents.’ Mimicking his date, he took an obligatory swallow. Christ. Talk about French pansy piss.
‘Given that you sound like Mark Wahlberg in The Departed, it wasn’t so difficult. Good movie, by the way, although a bit on the violent side. It’s all about all these Boston gangsters who –’
‘Yeah, I saw it,’ he lied.
‘I grew up in Pasadena … in case you were wondering.’
He wasn’t.
‘Right. Pasadena. Rose Bowl parade.’ He surreptitiously searched the tight clusters of champagne-swilling partygoers. Come on, asshole. Come to daddy.
‘Don’t they teach children to speak in full sentences in South Boston?’
‘Nope. Can’t recall that Sister Michael Patrick ever used a complete sentence. “Stand.” “Sit.” “Pray.” “Open your books.” ’
Clearly amused, Kate laughed, champagne sloshing over the side of her glass. ‘Which are complete sentences, albeit commands.’
Knowing it was time to cut her loose, Finn cleared his throat. ‘Listen. Kate. I just caught sight of someone I know and I, um, need to talk shop for a few minutes. Would you mind if I –’
‘Not to worry. I’m a big girl. Besides, the dessert table awaits me.’ A good sport, she waved him on his way.
‘Shouldn’t be gone too long,’ he said, the lies fast mounting.
Spying a double set of French doors that led to an outside courtyard, Finn headed in that direction. According to the email he’d received, he was to wait there until he received further instructions.
As he stood at the open doorway, Finn knew that he made an easy sniper target, although he figured that whoever lured him to the embassy wouldn’t try to kill him until after they’d interrogated him. That was, after all, the point of the exercise. If they’d wanted him dead, he’d already be six feet under. Just like Dixie and Johnny K.
He still couldn’t believe his two buddies had been murdered. No, correction: tortured and then murdered.
Once, in a drunken stupor, Lamar Dixon confessed that he liked the Dixie Chicks. Despite being one of the biggest, baddest, blackest men you’d ever want to meet, the inebriated admission instantly earned him a new nickname. When the team tried to stick John Kelleher with the handle ‘Baby Huey’ – on account of his shaved head and ruddy cheeks – the trooper went on a rampage and actually opened a bottle of Killian’s Irish Red with his teeth. Thereafter he was known as Johnny K.
Corporals Dixon and Kelleher were not just personal friends, they were valiant soldiers. Dixie had joined the army two days after 9/11; Johnny K signed up soon thereafter. Both men were true patriots who put their lives on the line numerous times to protect and defend their country. They did not deserve to die like animals led to slaughter.
I swear that I will get you guys the justice you deserve. Or die trying.
Finn glanced at his watch. 1700.
‘Right on time,’ he muttered under his breath as a tall, dark-haired man broke away from the crowd. FJ-58. Coming round the mountain.
‘Monsieur McGuire, I am pleased that you managed to elude the two CID agents,’ FJ-58 said by way of greeting, the words spoken with a cultivated French accent. ‘But, then, we knew you would successfully escape your would-be captors. No doubt, it was child’s play for a man with your training.’ The Frenchman extended his right hand. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Minister of Cultural Affairs, Fabius Jutier.’
Finn glared at the proffered hand, refusing to take it.
‘How about we cut the crap and get down to business,’ he growled, not in the mood for phony pleasantries.
‘Ah, you Americans … such a colourful way with the language. Perhaps we should take this conversation to my office.’
‘Lead the way.’
6
‘May I offer you a cigar, Monsieur McGuire?’
Seated in a sleek white leather chair situated in front of Fabius Jutier’s desk, Finn tersely shook his head. The Frenchman clearly thought that he was the one in control of this lil’ shindig. They were, after all, on his turf – an ultra-modern office that gleamed with lots of shiny metal and shimmering glass. What the French dude didn’t know was that Finn intended to yank the bright red carpet right out from under his leather-shod feet.
Jutier extended the inlaid walnut cigar box a few inches closer. ‘Go ahead. It’s perfectly legal. We French are not bound by the same trade restrictions with Cuba as you Americans.’
Again, Finn shook his head, determined to keep his cool.
‘D’accord.’ The Frenchman strolled to the humidor on the other side of the office. ‘I imagine you’ve had a difficult time adjusting to your new job at the Pentagon,’ he remarked casually as he placed the cigar box in the cedar-lined humidor. ‘A pity, what happened to you in Al-Qanawat.’
‘It’s obvious you flipped someone in the command loop. There’s no other way you could know about the Al-Qanawat mission in Syria. It was strictly black ops. Mind telling me who the turncoat is?’
‘Was.’ Robusto in hand, Jutier walked to the sideboard where there was a miniature guillotine set on a black marble plinth. ‘Given that General Cavanaugh died in a car accident yesterday morning, the question should be framed in the past tense.’
Finn sat up straighter in his chair, surprised the treachery went so high up the chain of command. General Robert ‘Battling Bob’ Cavanaugh had been a top planner at JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. He was also the same general who had put the Al-Qanawat mission into play.
‘Dead men can’t talk. Making me think the General’s accident wasn’t so accidental.’
‘Alas, the General did not keep up his end of our bargain.’ Smiling, Jutier slid his Cuban into the miniature guillotine and, staring directly at Finn’s missing finger, let the blade drop.
A bolt of pain shot through Finn’s phantom finger.
‘Trust me when I say I derived no pleasure from the General’s death,’ the Frenchman glibly continued as he next removed a wooden match from an ebony container. ‘However, we offered him a great sum of money and he failed to deliver as promised.’
‘How about Dixie and Johnny K? Did you enjoy slicing them from stem to sternum?’
With a crisp snap of the wrist, Jutier struck the match against the side of the ebony container. In no apparent hurry to answer the question put to him, he held the match to the foot of the cigar, his cheeks moving like a bellows as he unhurriedly lit it. Finn assumed the theatrics were for his benefit and wondered if he should give the French jackal a round of applause.
Jutier blew a puff of smoke, filling the office with the tobacco’s pungent scent. ‘I am not the bloodthirsty fiend that you make me out to be. If you must know, I did not approve of how that particular matter was handled. But we took a vote and a majority of the Seven decided otherwise.’
‘The Seven? What’s that, some sort of crime syndicate?’
‘Most certainly not. That implies we are little more than brigands and thieves.’ He set his cigar on the rim of a huge sterling-silver ashtray.
‘I was thinking more along the lines of murderers and thieves.’
‘Again, you have jumped to an erroneous conclusion.’ Jutier poured a healthy measure of fifty-year-old single malt whiskey into a cut-crystal tumbler and handed the glass to Finn. ‘Given your last name, I assume that Irish whiskey is your drink of choice. If you like, I can have some ice sent up. Although personally I prefer my whiskey neat. It allows the underlying flavours of oak and peat to come through.’
Finn set the tumbler on the edge of the desk. ‘I told you once already to cut the crap. I’m not here for the chitchat.’
‘Very well.’ Strolling over to his desk, Jutier reseated himself. ‘The Seven is prepared to offer a most generous compensation package in exchange for the Montségur Medallion.’
The Montségur Medallion! Was this fucker actually saying that Dixie and Johnny K were killed because of that gold pendant that he’d found in Syria?
His gut tightened, every muscle in his body quivering with a barely repressed rage. Jutier’s cronies used Dixie and Johnny K like cannon fodder. No, worse than that. Like something you’d tie up in a plastic bag and dump into the garbage.
Four months ago, during the Al-Qanawat mission, he’d taken the gold medallion to prevent some higher-up from using it to pad his retirement account. Royally pissed off, when he returned from Syria, he held on to it. In fact, during the mission debrief, Finn did something he’d never done before – he lied his ass off, claiming he didn’t find anything inside the Al-Qanawat chapel.
For four months now, he’d been waiting for someone to dispute the claim so he could expose the rat bastard. Not only did the fraudulent mission put US military personnel needlessly into harm’s way, but it had been funded with US tax dollars. He’d just never figured they’d resort to cold-blooded murder to get what they wanted.
‘The Montségur Medallion?’ One side of Finn’s mouth turned down at the corner as he shook his head. ‘Never heard of it.’
‘Do not play me for the fool, monsieur. I speak of the thirteenth-century gold pendant that you recovered in Al-Qanawat.’
‘What makes you think that I have it?’
‘Because you are the only man on the Delta team who could have it.’
‘Like I said –’ folding his arms over his chest, Finn leaned back in his chair – ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Jutier slapped the palm of his left hand against the glass table top. ‘Do not lie to me, monsieur!’ A blue vein throbbed at his temple. ‘Before his death, General Cavanaugh was kind enough to provide us with a copy of the Al-Qanawat mission debrief. You were the only Delta trooper who entered the chapel where the Montségur Medallion was kept.’
‘And so you naturally assume that I have your freakin’ medallion.’
‘Mais, oui,’ he replied, lifting his shoulder in a Gallic shrug. ‘In addition to the one million dollars that will be deposited into an offshore account, we will provide DNA evidence to prove your innocence. Not only will you be a free man, you will also be a very rich one.’
Even with the price of gold being sky high, the medallion couldn’t be worth that much. Which meant it had some value other than a purely monetary one.
Just what the hell did I step into?
‘You knew before you killed Dixie and Johnny K that you’d be offering me this deal, didn’t you?’ Finn shoved aside the untouched whiskey and leaned towards the desk. ‘That’s why you set me up for both their murders. With my back to the wall, you figured I’d be in no position to turn you down.’
‘We even went to the trouble and expense of recovering your knife from Al-Qanawat. A clever plan, n’est-ce pas?’
‘How about I take that plan and shove it up your skinny French ass!’ Lurching to his feet, Finn strode behind the desk. Very deliberately, he placed his right hand on the back of Jutier’s chair, imprisoning the Frenchman. ‘I didn’t come here for a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. And I didn’t show up to get my share of the blood money. I came here for one reason: to get the name of the bastard who killed Dixie and Johnny K.’
‘I am not at liberty to say.’
Finn took a moment to ruminate on that. He already knew that Minister Fabius Jutier wasn’t the killer. Men like Jutier never got their hands bloodied. They hired men like Finn – i.e. ex-commandos – to do their dirty work.
Finn leaned in close. Their faces separated by only a few inches, he could see the faint meandering of blood vessels splotched across the other man’s cheekbones. ‘Unless you want things to turn real ugly, real quick, you’re going to give me that name.’
‘Do not threaten me, monsieur.’
‘Okay, fine.’ Finn hauled Jutier out of the chair and bent him backwards over the glass-topped desk. ‘Consider what I just said as a statement of intent.’ He wrapped his hands around the Frenchman’s neck, forcefully pressing his thumbs into Jutier’s windpipe.
Eyes bulging, Jutier tried, unsuccessfully, to pull Finn’s hands away from his neck.
‘Please … let me go,’ he gasped, his face starting to turn blue.
‘I’m going to ask you again … who killed Dixie and Johnny K?’ Knowing a show of mercy would get him nowhere, Finn tightened his hold. Strangulation wasn’t an exact science, but he figured Jutier had another thirty seconds of life left in him. He also figured the Frenchman would surrender before those thirty seconds lapsed.
As if on cue, Jutier began to frantically beat his hands against Finn’s forearms. He eased his hold just enough for the other man to speak.
‘The Dark Angel,’ Jutier sputtered, his chest heaving as he noisily drew in a deep breath. ‘The … Dark Angel … killed them.’
The Dark Angel? If there was an assassin operating under that name, Finn had never heard of him.
Granting a reprieve, Finn removed his hands from the Frenchman’s throat. ‘Next question: where can I find this Dark Angel?’
Gracelessly rolling on to his stomach, Jutier pushed himself upright. With a pained look on his face, he clutched the left side of his jacket. ‘I’m having severe chest pains. In the lacquer box –’ he jutted his chin at the cherry-red box on top of his desk – ‘I keep my glyceryl trinitrate. Please permit me to –’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Finn lifted the lid on the box, inspecting for hidden weapons. Not seeing anything suspicious, he shoved the box in Jutier’s direction.
‘Thank you, monsieur.’ The Frenchman rummaged through the plastic prescription bottles before making his selection. He popped a capsule into his mouth, his hands shaking visibly.
‘Okay, now that you’ve had your pharm candy, tell me where I can find the Dark Angel.’
‘I’ve said too much already.’
Without warning, the Frenchman began to violently convulse. A second later, Finn caught the faint but distinct smell of almonds.
Potassium cyanide.
‘Crap!’
Knowing he had to act fast, Finn roughly flipped Jutier over and wrapped his arms around him from behind. He then yanked violently upward to induce vomiting.
The Frenchman went limp as Finn lost the battle.
Furious that he’d been bested, Finn plunked the dead bastard into the black leather swivel chair. He searched methodically through Jutier’s coat pockets and removed an engraved lighter, a set of keys and a gold Mont Blanc pen.
Hearing the hinges on the office door creak, Finn peered over his shoulder.
Jesus H! What was she doing here?
Face as pale as February snow, Kate Bauer stood in the doorway. Clearly stunned, she stared at the dead man sprawled in the chair … then shot Finn an accusing glare.
‘My God … you killed him!’
7
‘I know how bad this must look, but it’s not what it seems,’ Finn McGuire said as he closed the office door.
‘Don’t come near me!’
‘Keep your voice down, will ya? I’m not going to hurt you.’
Refusing to trust a cold-blooded killer, Kate darted over to the sideboard and grabbed the first weapon she saw – an ornate letter opener.
‘If you take one step in my direction, I will not hesitate to use this!’ she exclaimed, grasping the letter opener like a dagger.
Instead of heeding the warning, Finn lunged in her direction, parrying her reflexive thrust with his left forearm. In a dizzyingly fast move, he gripped her right thumb and twisted. Like magic, the letter opener instantly slipped through Kate’s fingers and bounced off the red carpet.
‘You bastard!’ Refusing to surrender, she used her nails like talons, slashing at his face with her free hand.
With a muttered expletive, Finn grabbed both her wrists and twirled her clockwise. With her arms now crossed over her breasts, he pinned her to his chest, the buttons of his uniform jacket pressing into her backside.
‘Calm down!’
Instead of complying, she kicked him in the shins. He retaliated by lifting her several inches off the ground.
‘If you promise not to do anything harebrained, I’ll let go of you.’
Her heart painfully thumping in her chest cavity, Kate nodded.
‘Good girl.’ Finn lowered her, her feet once again making contact with the floor. ‘Sorry for being so rough.’
Tottering unsteadily on her heels, Kate turned round to face the uniformed Goliath. ‘What were you planning to do after you killed him? Rejoin me in the reception hall, drink a little champagne, then call it a night?’
‘I’m only going to say this one time … I didn’t kill him.’
‘I’ve got two eyes. I can see what happened here.’
Finn McGuire’s jaw tightened. ‘Assuming you haven’t lost your sense of smell, you can verify for yourself that I didn’t kill anyone.’ Seeing her quizzical frown, he elaborated. ‘Walk over to the desk and take a whiff. You should be able to smell almonds. Although it wasn’t almonds that killed him; it was a fatal dose of cyanide which emits the telltale scent of almonds.’
Wondering if he might actually be telling the truth, Kate walked over and peered at the dead man sprawled in the leather chair. With a frothy ribbon of spittle lodged at the corner of his open mouth, he bore little resemblance to the elegantly attired man she’d seen earlier in the reception hall.
‘Well, what do you smell?’
‘Almonds.’ Shuddering, she stepped away from the desk. ‘But that doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here or why this man committed suicide.’
‘You wanna know what happened? Fine. Last night, two Delta troopers were brutally murdered and I’m next in line for execution,’ Finn said matter-of-factly. ‘Fabius Jutier was the mastermind behind the murders. As to why he killed himself … I have no idea.’
The explanation stunned her. ‘Have you alerted the authorities?’
Rather than answer, Finn walked over to the computer work station on the other side of the office. Wordlessly, he picked up a notebook computer and tucked it under his arm.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Spoils of war.’
His answer was so coolly detached, it made Kate wonder what war she’d stumbled into.
‘I am not going to stand idly by and watch you pilfer from a – Now what are you doing?’ she demanded to know as he began to unbutton Jutier’s shirt.
‘It’s called a costume change. This army uniform is like having an “Arrest Me” sign pinned to my back. I’ll be less conspicuous in Jutier’s black suit.’
‘Meaning you have no intention of contacting the authorities.’ She turned her head as he started to disrobe. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of bronzed skin and a quick glimpse of a bunched bicep.
‘Whoa!’ Finn exclaimed. ‘The bastard’s got some ink. Check out the tat on his left pec.’
Kate glanced in Finn’s direction. Confirming that he was decent, she walked over to the desk. A moment later, her breath caught in her throat. Transfixed, she stared at the strange tattoo centred above the Frenchman’s heart.
‘I think those are Norse runes and – my God!’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘I’ve seen this sun-wheel design before! Unless I’m mistaken, it has something to do with Nazis and the occult.’
‘Well, do me a favour and take a photo of it, will ya?’ Still in the process of getting dressed, Finn handed his cell phone to her. ‘The tat is too weird not to be significant.’
Kate snapped the shot.
‘According to a documentary that I saw on TV last year, many of the high-ranking members of the Third Reich practised occult rituals. Not only that, but they were obsessed with the magical power of runes. Given the tattoo, I think it’s safe to assume that Fabius Jutier was involved in an esoteric Nazi –’
‘Later,’ he interjected, snatching the cell phone and depositing it in his coat pocket. ‘Right now, we need to get the hell out of here.’
Kate shook her head adamantly. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’
‘If you don’t come with me, they’ll kill you.’
‘I don’t believe –’
‘You have to believe.’ He cupped her cheek, the gesture curiously paternal. ‘I’m sorry, Kate. I never intended to involve you in any of this. You weren’t supposed to have walked through that door.’
‘But I did.’ Afraid of what might happen if she was left behind, she reluctantly acquiesced. ‘All right, I’ll go with you.’
Shoving his rolled-up uniform and Jutier’s laptop under his arm, Finn walked over and opened the office door.
‘The elevator is to the left,’ she informed him.
‘We’re taking the stairs. You never know who’ll greet you with a loaded gun when the elevator door slides open.’
8
Passing a trash receptacle, Finn nonchalantly shoved the wadded bundle into it. Uniform disposed of, he said, ‘Scrunch down a few inches.’
Kate’s eyes opened wide. ‘What?’
‘Just like this.’ Bending his knees, Finn instantly reduced his height to six feet. ‘If we each shave a couple of inches, we stand a better chance of slinking out of here undetected.’
Like fishes and loaves, the crowd inside the ballroom had doubled during their absence. Navigating their way through the throng was slow going at best. Worried that he might lose Kate amidst all the schmoozing and networking, Finn took hold of her right hand. In his other hand was the pilfered notebook computer. It was probably a long shot, but he was hoping there might be something on the laptop that could help him track down Dixie and Johnny K’s murderer.
‘In case you haven’t noticed, there are guards posted at all the exits,’ Kate hissed out of the side of her mouth.
‘Who are probably wearing bullet-proof vests under their dark-coloured jackets and have a loaded SIG Sauer in the shoulder holster.’
‘Oh, God.’ Her delicate features morphed into a panic-stricken expression.
‘Stay calm. Don’t give ’em a reason to notice you in the crowd.’
While they’d managed to return to the reception hall without incident, Finn didn’t know how much longer their luck would hold. Despite the little meet-and-greet with Jutier, he still had no idea why the gold pendant was so valuable. The rat bastards in the Seven had proved that they’d stop at nothing to retrieve the Montségur Medallion.
The damned thing must have once belonged to some dead king. Why else would it be worth so much money?
Whatever the reason, the Seven had been willing to give him one million dollars for it. A paltry sum compared to the worth of two patriotic soldiers. Simply put, some things couldn’t be measured in dollars and cents. Like valour and honour. And retribution. And as God was his witness, he’d personally make sure that the Dark Angel paid dearly for killing Dixie and Johnny K.
Still baffled by the Frenchman’s suicide, Finn had no idea why Jutier had chomped down on the cyanide capsule. It was like he’d been programmed to kill himself rather than be taken alive. Which suggested that he had something to hide. Something he feared might be revealed during a gruelling interrogation.
Finn spared Kate a quick sideways glance. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask: how did you wind up at Jutier’s office?’
‘When I saw you leave the reception hall, I found out your companion’s name from an embassy employee. I then came across a directory in the main lobby. Using that, I managed to locate the Office of Cultural Affairs.’
‘You’re resourceful, I’ll give you that.’ Tugging on her hand, Finn pulled her towards a swinging door from which a steady stream of waiters went to and fro. On the other side of that swinging door there was a kitchen.
‘Just follow my lead,’ he said, pushing the door with his shoulder.
‘I assume you’ve devised an exit strategy.’
Finn shook his head. ‘Nope. I’m winging this all the way.’
‘You do realize there’s an eight-foot electric fence around the entire embassy compound and armed guards manning the front gate?’
‘I never said getting out of here would be easy.’
On the other side of the swinging door, the kitchen was a veritable mob scene, with white-coated, white-capped staff scurrying pell-mell. Finn quickly surveyed the cavernous stainless-steel kitchen – there wasn’t a red EXIT sign in sight. Undeterred, he pulled Kate down the central aisle. On his right flank, Finn spied a mustachioed man wearing a pleated chef’s cap determinedly bearing down on them. While he wasn’t wearing a badge, the guy had ‘kitchen cop’ written all over him.
‘Do you happen to know the French word for vomit?’ he hissed out of the corner of his mouth.
‘Um, vomir … at least, I think that’s the word.’
‘Got it. Now hunch over and try to look nauseous.’
‘What?’
‘Just do it,’ he ordered, putting an arm around her back as he loudly boomed, ‘Vomir! Vomir! ’
Moses couldn’t have done a better job parting the Red Sea, the kitchen staff hurriedly clearing the deck.
So far, so good.
‘Now, how about giving me the French word for exit.’
Actually managing to look green around the gills, Kate looked up and croaked, ‘Sortie.’
‘Sortie! Sortie! ’ he next hollered.
The mustachioed man rushed over and, in a flurry of unintelligible French, grabbed Kate’s other arm, urging them to move at an even faster clip towards a set of double doors at the rear of the kitchen. Obviously he didn’t want to mop up after a sick woman.
Their French escort shoved the doors wide open – just before he shoved Finn and Kate across the threshold and on to a concrete loading dock. The door slammed shut behind them.
Coming out from a climate-controlled environment, the humid night air hit both of them like a slap in the face.
Kate peered from side to side. ‘Okay, now what?’
‘I’m working on it.’ Taking hold of her elbow, Finn ushered his companion down the flight of concrete steps that led to an asphalt parking area.
‘I suggest that we walk around to the front gate. That is, after all, how we arrived at the embassy.’
Finn shook his head, putting the kibosh on her suggestion. ‘We can’t risk it. For all we know, Jutier’s body has already been discovered. That makes the embassy a crime scene and everyone inside the embassy a potential suspect. Trust me, no one will be allowed to exit through the front gate until they’ve been cleared by the police.’
A crease appeared between Kate’s brows. ‘Bringing me right back to my original question … now what?’
He gestured to the three purple and gold catering trucks parked a few feet from the loading dock. ‘Assuming one of these bad boys has a key in the ignition, we’re going for a ride in a big purple truck.’
Kate baulked, coming to a complete standstill. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that we steal a catering truck?’
‘I prefer the word “borrow”.’
‘Beg, borrow or steal, it’s all the same thing – we would be taking a vehicle that doesn’t belong to us. And what about my car? We just can’t leave it parked all night on Reservoir Road.’
‘Sure we can. We’ll pick up your Toyota first thing in the morning.’
Like most of the guests at the party, they’d had to park outside the embassy complex on the public street adjacent to the front gate.
Tuning out the barrage of dire scenarios that Kate proceeded to enumerate, Finn slid open the driver’s-side door of the first truck. He leaned his upper body inside and peered at the dashboard.
No keys.
He slammed the door shut and jogged over to the next truck.
Catching sight of a silver key protruding from the ignition, he offered up a thankful prayer. ‘Okay, this one’s got a key. Hurry up and jump in.’
‘I really don’t think we should –’
‘Just do it!’ Regretting the harsh tone, he backtracked. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be out of here in a jiff.’
Her face scrunched in a leery frown, Kate scrambled into the passenger seat. Finn handed her the notebook computer for safekeeping. He then started the engine, flipped on the headlights and maneouvered the vehicle on to the nearby delivery access road that led to the entrance of the embassy compound.
Two hundred metres from the front gate, he glanced in the wing mirror. A dark-coloured Mercedes Benz SUV was riding their tail. When the vehicle gunned its engine menacingly, Finn knew it wasn’t an impatient party guest. He figured it was either embassy security or an SUV full of gun-toting, tattooed Frenchmen.
‘What’s wrong?’ Kate asked anxiously.
There being no time to reply – and besides, Finn knew she wouldn’t much care for the answer – he pushed the accelerator to the floor.
At the main gate a uniformed guard motioned furiously for them to stop.
‘Slow down!’ Kate screamed. ‘There’s a guard up ahead!’
Finn tuned her out.
Seeing the uniformed guard pull a pistol from his holster and go into a crouched shooter’s stance, Finn flipped on his high beams. Blinded by the glaring light, the armed guard dropped his weapon and dived to safety seconds before the catering truck crashed through the gate.
The ensuing scream from his co-pilot nearly pierced Finn’s eardrum.
‘Oh, my God! Have you lost your mind?’
‘Hold on!’ he yelled, yanking on the steering wheel, the catering truck going up on two wheels as they made the left-hand turn on to Reservoir Road.
In the back of the truck, pots and pans clanged together loudly.
Although they’d managed to exit the embassy compound, a quick glance in the mirror verified what Finn already suspected – the Mercedes was still dogging them. An easy enough feat since the truck’s top speed was only fifty m.p.h. – a speed he wouldn’t be able to maintain much longer. Up ahead were the congested streets of Georgetown.
‘What’s the first one-way cross street?’ he hollered at Kate. Since she lived in the area, he hoped she might know.
One hand braced on the passenger door, the other clutching the notebook computer to her chest, she shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe thirty-fourth street.’
‘One-way going in which direction?’
‘Um, south … I think.’
Finn eyeballed the passing street signs. 37th … 36th … 35th …
34th Street.
About to risk everything on a ‘maybe’ and an ‘I think’, Finn made a sharp left-hand turn – putting the truck on a one-way street heading in the wrong direction. Overshooting the turn, the truck jumped the curve, careening through a neatly clipped hedge. Again, Finn yanked on the steering wheel, the truck wildly fishtailing from side to side.
As they mowed through the hedge, he heard Kate scream at the top of her lungs. ‘Finn! Watch out for the –’
Fire hydrant.
Knowing it was a done deal, Finn threw out his right arm, pinning Kate to the passenger seat as the catering truck ploughed into the hydrant.
9
Sixth Arrondissement, Paris, France
The opening gambit had been played, a pawn sacrificed.
More resigned than shocked to learn that Fabius Jutier had died by his own hand, Ivo Uhlemann hung up the telephone. The latest turn of events could only mean one of two things – either Sergeant McGuire had got too close to the truth or Fabius feared that he might capitulate if the situation turned violent.
Dare il gambetto.
A Spanish priest in the sixteenth century coined the phrase to refer to an opening chess move. Roughly translated, it meant ‘putting a leg forward to trip someone’. However, the American had proved himself surprisingly nimble, managing to sidestep their trap.
But to what end?
Lost in thought, Ivo walked over and closed the green velvet drapes; at night, Paris, annoyingly, became the city of headlights. That done, he seated himself at his desk, the Rococo furniture at odds with the modern lines of the laptop computer and wireless printer. The old and the new. The perennial clash as each battled the other for supremacy.
Ready to commence his weekly game of chess, Ivo signed on to the computer site using the tongue-in-cheek moniker ‘German Knight’. His opponent, ‘Java King’, was already online. They played each Tuesday at twelve a.m., insomniacs, the both of them. Since there was nothing that he could personally do about the situation in Washington, other than issue new orders, he saw no reason to cancel the weekly bout.
Playing white, Ivo moved his pawn to E4. The French Opening. A fitting tribute to his friend and colleague, Fabius Jutier.
The Cultural Minister had been trained – they had all been trained – to swallow a cyanide tablet rather than surrender to the enemy. No different to what many SS officers had been forced to do at the close of the Second World War, the Reich in flames, the Allied army on a bloodthirsty manhunt.
Indeed, a brave man must always be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good.
Ivo glanced at the computer screen. It had taken but a few moments for Java King to position his pawn at E6; the first move of what he hoped would prove a ferocious battle. Play. Counter-play. Attack. The weekly match kept his 76-year-old brain sharp; a weak mind was endemic to the lacklustre horde. His father, the noted physicist Friedrich Uhlemann, had been convinced that the mass of men, possessed of middling intelligence, required a guiding hand. Only then could such men meaningfully contribute to society.
As with all of the Seven’s founding members, Friedrich had been a brilliant scholar. Created in 1940 by the superintendent of the Schutzstaffel, Heinrich Himmler, the unit was envisioned as a seven-man think tank. Its members culled from the best universities in Göttingen, Vienna and Paris, the Seven bridged the divide between the humanities and the sciences. During the 1940s, interdisciplinary research had been a radical concept. In fact, the Ahnenerbe, the academic branch of the SS, had been subdivided into fifty different sections, each focused on a single narrow field of study.
With a click of the computer mouse, Ivo positioned his knight at C3, the diagonal now open.
As he waited for Java King to make the next move, he opened another tab on the computer, pleased to see that the two dossiers he’d ordered had been forwarded. He gave the photograph of Katsumi Rosamund Bauer a cursory glance before scanning the particulars of her life.
Hmm, a most interesting background.
Thirty-nine years of age, Katsumi Bauer had a doctorate in cultural anthropology and, until two years ago, had been a professor at Johns Hopkins University. According to the genealogy chart that a family member had obligingly posted online, the Bauer family emigrated to the American Colonies in 1710, part of a large contingent of Palatine German farmers who settled in New York. Her maternal line, which included several generations of samurai, arrived in California in the early twentieth century. Aiko, her mother, was a curator at the Pacific Asia Museum; father Alfred taught astrophysics at CalTech. As he read that, Ivo chuckled. How ironic.
He pulled up the second dossier.
‘Hmm, it would seem that our commando hails from a less stellar background,’ he murmured, again chuckling, amused by the pun. The parents, Patrick and Fiona McGuire, moved to Boston in 1972 from Northern Ireland. Typical of working-class Irish Catholics, the mother had been a homemaker, the father a day labourer until his untimely death in 1988. Perhaps it was bred into them. Whatever the reason, the Irish had a long history of being a subjugated people, always serving one master or another.
Ivo quickly skimmed the next few paragraphs, eyes opening wide on reading that McGuire’s twin brother, Mychal, was a member of Boston’s notorious Irish mob.
Seventy years ago, the McGuire brothers would have been a prize catch; German researchers were particularly interested in studying twins. To advance the burgeoning field of eugenics, all test subjects were thoroughly photographed. Tissue biopsies were then performed. If male, semen samples were forcibly collected; if female, gynaecological exams were conducted. Once the tests were completed, the subjects were euthanized with a single injection of chloroform to the heart, the collected data used to winnow out society’s undesirables.
As he finished reading the dossiers, Ivo clicked on the second computer tab. At a glance, he could see that his opponent had just moved his bishop to B4.
Well played, Java King. The move threatened Ivo’s white knight. While his Tuesday-night opponent tended to be passive, overly concerned with losing a major piece, Ivo played a more brazen match.
Again, he wondered at the American’s game, unable to determine if the commando was being passive or dangerously bold. What did Finn McGuire hope to gain in refusing the Seven’s generous monetary offer? And the woman, Katsumi Bauer – what role did she play in this recent turn of events?
Given her proud heritage and impressive education, Ivo suspected that he would have enjoyed the pleasure of her company.
A pity that Katsumi Bauer was not long for this world.
10
The serpent, the Cursed One, fouled the earth.
An orgy of blood, Paradise lost.
Kill the firstborn then burn in hell.
The serpent, the Cursed One, all covered in –
‘Pathetic.’
The assassin known as the Dark Angel disabled the iPhone in mid-song, bored with the shrieking vocals and discordant rhythm of the Black Metal music. Nothing but a pack of alienated young white men, their primal screams evoking a violent fantasy world.
So much better to live the fantasy.
Hitching a leather-clad hip against the wrought-iron railing, the assassin scrutinized the little green brick house on the other side of the walkway. The cream-coloured shutters looked newly painted, the brass door knocker was shaped like a pineapple, and the window boxes on the first floor brimmed with pink pansies. Too trite for words. Overlooking a placid stretch of canal, the row of brightly painted residences was more reminiscent of Amsterdam than Washington.
Oh, to be in Amsterdam on a hot, muggy night. With the lurid fluorescent lights and writhing bodies behind plate-glass windows. A red-light district second to none. A true outpost of the erotic frontier. Raw, raunchy and real. What’s your pleasure, bébé?
Annoyed to suddenly hear a tinny buzz, the assassin glanced down. It only took a few seconds for the intrepid mosquito to land on a patch of bare skin, oblivious to its fate. Unaware that the hand of God was two feet away, ready to strike.
How long should I let it live?
‘Hmm … I think that’s long enough.’
Intrigued by the sight of smeared blood and smashed wings, the assassin softly cackled. Do give my regards to Fabius Jutier. Who, no doubt, went to his grave snivelling and sobbing, the Frenchman having been an effeminate weakling.
Not like the two Delta Force commandoes. Fine specimens, the both of them. Real men, as the Americans are fond of saying. All bunched muscles, tightened sinews, eyes burning bright with hatred. Fighting against the restraints with every ounce of power in their big, muscular bodies. Right to the bittersweet end.
Such a shame that stolen pleasures never last long enough.
‘But the night is still young.’
Smiling in anticipation, the assassin glanced at the address scrawled on a crumpled sheet of paper, verifying the house number.
Time to get to work.
11
‘Shit! ’ Finn hollered as the front end of the catering truck smashed into the fire hydrant.
Folding his left arm over his face, he slammed against the steering wheel with a bruising intensity.
Beside him, Kate faired no better, the force of the collision propelling her against his outstretched right arm. Flung forward, a split-second later they boomeranged backward. Like a pair of crash dummies. Except they didn’t have any airbags to cushion the impact.
His spine jangling, Finn turned towards Kate. ‘You okay?’
‘It’s raining,’ she murmured, a dazed look on her face. Then, an instant later, more lucid, she said, ‘No, it’s not raining. It’s the hydrant.’
On the other side of the windscreen a fountain of water gushed skyward.
‘The water main must have burst.’
Finn peered into the wing mirror; they’d had a lucky break. The Mercedes had overshot the turn. The bad guys would have to drive to the next block, turn left and come back around.
Meaning that he and Kate had thirty, maybe forty seconds to get the hell out of there.
‘We’ve got to bolt on the double quick. Those goons will be coming round the corner any second.’ As he spoke, Finn searched the truck cab for a plastic bag. Finding one, he dumped the contents – a half-eaten sandwich and a half-drunk bottle of Coke – and handed the empty sack to Kate. ‘Put the notebook computer inside that. We need to keep it dry.’
Blasted by spewing water when he exited the truck, Finn slogged around the back end and swung the passenger door wide open. Ignoring his co-pilot’s panic-stricken expression, he grabbed the plastic-covered computer off her lap and stuffed it into the waistband of his trousers. That done, he cinched a hand around Kate’s upper arm and yanked her out of the truck. She swayed unsteadily on her high-heel shoes, water trickling down her face.
Finn quickly sized up his teetering companion. Five foot five, 115 pounds. Piece of cake.
Knowing she wouldn’t like what he was about to do, Finn decided to forego getting a signed permission slip. In a big-ass hurry, he shoved his left arm between Kate’s legs, wrapped his right hand around her upper arm, and unceremoniously hefted her on to his shoulder. Turning towards the nearest house, he ran across the soggy front yard. There was no car in the driveway and he figured the happy homeowners were out for the night. Good.
No sooner did he make it to the driveway than Finn heard the roar of a powerful engine at the other end of the block.
The unfriendlies in the Mercedes.
Had to be.
Not planning to stick around long enough to find out, he sprinted down the driveway. A wooden privacy fence enclosed the back yard. Finn stopped at the gate and reached for the latch. If they could just get through the gate before –
Yes!
He noiselessly shut the gate. Peering through the wooden fence slats, he saw a black Mercedes G500 SUV pull up next to the demolished truck.
‘Finn, what’s hap–’
‘Shhh!’
Two men with drawn weapons jumped out of the Mercedes.
Time to hustle.
Pivoting on his heel, Finn headed towards the back fence, sidestepping a kid’s swing. He opened the rear gate and quickly made his way into the alley. Kate started to squirm. Not ready to unload his cargo, he put a hand on her wiggling ass. She instantly stilled.
Passenger subdued, he took off at a fast clip. The alley reeked of urine, rotting garbage and an unidentified dead something. It was a muggy night and the stench hung thickly in the air. As Finn continued down the alley, he heard the rumble of thunder. On the far horizon, like a broken neon sign, streaks of white lightning flickered on and off.
Please, God, no rain, he silently prayed. We’re wet enough as it is.
Figuring they had enough of a lead, he came to a halt and set his passenger on her feet.
‘How far away is Wisconsin Avenue?’ he asked without preamble.
‘Umm –’ She glanced about. ‘I’m guessing it’s about a block and a half from here.’ As she spoke, her lips trembled. ‘We don’t stand a chance, do we?’
Hearing the terrified hitch in Kate’s voice, Finn mentally kicked himself. This was his mess, not hers. ‘If you want to get out of this alive, we need to get a move on it. Capiche?’
She managed a shaky nod.
Thatta girl. Wisconsin Avenue on any given night was party town central, one of those streets where the beer flowed and the denizens flocked in drunken droves. The perfect place to fade into the crowd. He set a quick pace, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. As they neared the cross street, Finn heard the distinctive roar of a German-made V-8 engine.
Kate heard it as well. ‘Oh, no!’
‘Quick! Get behind that dumpster!’ he hissed, placing a hand on Kate’s shoulder as he shoved her towards a large metal receptacle. Right on her six, Finn crouched as close to Kate as humanly possible, wrapping his arms and legs around her backside. Attempting to make his six-foot-four frame as small as possible.
Twenty feet away, the Mercedes slowed, coming to a complete stop at the entrance of the alleyway. Finn heard the soft whhrr of an automatic window being lowered.
In front of him, Kate shook violently.
Tightening his arms around her torso, Finn silently urged her to keep calm. To stay motionless. His every sense directed towards the idling Mercedes, he listened to the steady purr of the vehicle’s powerful engine.
Long seconds passed before the SUV continued down the street.
Doing a fair imitation of a deflated inner tube, Kate slumped against him. If not for the fact that he still had his arms wrapped around her, she would’ve toppled over.
‘Come on. We need to get clear of the alley before the bad guys make the return trip.’
Grabbing Kate by the upper arm, Finn hauled her upright. Neither spoke as they rushed to the street corner.
A few moments later, they reached Wisconsin Avenue, the pavements teeming with pedestrians. Finn steered Kate towards a rowdy bunch of males, many of whom had Greek letters emblazoned on their T-shirts. Shouldering his way into the middle of the pack, he hoped the frat boys were too drunk to wonder how or why a soaking wet middle-aged couple had suddenly appeared in their midst.
Kate clutched her bag to her breasts, clearly unnerved by the crude language and loud-mouth jostling.
‘Don’t worry,’ Finn whispered in her ear, his nose bumping against her cheek. ‘These guys are harmless.’ The real danger was the congested traffic on Wisconsin Avenue. The bastards in the Mercedes had only to lower a tinted window, take aim and fire. Target eliminated. Since the Seven had proved that they’d stop at nothing to retrieve the Montségur Medallion, Finn figured their henchmen would first take out Kate. Him, they’d keep alive. At least until they had their damned gold pendant.
Without warning, Finn yanked Kate away from the frat boys. ‘Time to cross the street,’ he said, jutting his chin at the nearby crossing.
To his surprise, Kate vehemently shook her head. ‘The quickest route to my townhouse is down Wisconsin Avenue to the canal. It’s only six blocks away.’
‘Maybe so, but I’m starting to get a hinky feeling about all this.’
Like we’re walking right into a trap.
12
‘Quite frankly, I don’t care how you feel. I need to go home.’
Determined to escape the terror of the last few minutes – Those men in the Mercedes wanted to apprehend them. Or worse! – Kate continued down Wisconsin Avenue. Ignoring Finn’s muttered expletive, she limped gracelessly, hobbled by her four-inch-high heels. Breathe deeply. Mind over matter. This, too, shall pass.
Finn manacled her elbow in a powerful, one-handed grip. ‘I don’t think you comprehend the seriousness of our situation. The unfriendlies are still on the prowl.’ In commando mode, he constantly surveyed the environs, his gaze ricocheting from person to street to passing vehicle.
‘These being the same unfriendlies who incited the aforementioned hinkiness.’
‘Can the sarcasm, will ya? The guys in the Mercedes have not called it quits. They are gunnin’ for us.’
Taking exception to his rough tone, Kate pulled her elbow free from his grasp. ‘Just because I gave you a ride earlier, it doesn’t mean that I’m along for the ride. I’m through playing GI Jane.’
‘News flash, Baby Jane: this isn’t a game.’
‘As I am well aware.’
The deeply etched lines on his face relaxed marginally. ‘Okay. Just so we’re on the same page.’ Not breaking stride, Finn shrugged out of his ruined Savile Row jacket and draped it over her shoulders. ‘Here. You need this more than I do. You’re shaking like a leaf.’
The usual effect of terror, I believe. Although, for some inexplicable reason, she was as frightened of Finn McGuire as she was of the thugs in the Mercedes. Totally unpredictable, he’d transformed from Mr Nice Guy into a battle-ready war fighter with an intimidating take-no-prisoners mentality.
At the corner of Blues Alley, Kate gestured to the narrow passage tucked between a tight hedge of red-brick buildings. ‘The alleyway is the quickest route to the canal towpath,’ she informed him, sidestepping the queue of music aficionados waiting to get inside the famous jazz supper club.
Scowling, Finn scrutinized each and every patron. ‘How far are we from your pad?’
‘My house is two blocks away.’
While she routinely used Blues Alley as a short-cut and had trained herself to ignore the scurrying rats and occasional homeless huddle, Finn, his head methodically swivelling from side to side, scanned each and every shadow. Presumably making instantaneous threat assessments.
A few minutes later, they approached the towpath. Kate picked up the pace. Like a wooden lock on the historic canal, the floodgate of relief slowly creaked open inside her. Almost there.
‘I’m the green brick house at the end of the row.’
‘There’s no paved street in front of these houses,’ Finn muttered. ‘Where the hell do you park?’
‘There’s a public garage on Wisconsin Avenue.’
Craning his neck, he peered back in that direction. ‘But that’s two blocks from here.’
Kate made no comment; she lived in one of the city’s most charming neighbourhoods and considered the two blocks a paltry price to pay. Situated a few feet from the C&O Canal, the row of diminutive nineteenth-century townhouses was a far cry from the residence she’d shared with her ex-husband, a six-bedroom palatial mini-mansion in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
While modest, it was her sanctuary.
Immediately following her son’s death and subsequent divorce, she moved into a drab, nondescript high-rise apartment building on Connecticut Avenue. Where, on several occasions, blindsided by grief, she barely got through her front door before she collapsed in the hallway, amidst the corrugated towers of unpacked cardboard boxes. One night she actually stayed there, curled on the parquet floor, until dawn.
The recent move to the little terraced house was her attempt to get on with her life; to move past the heartache of having lost a child. And having been betrayed by the man she once loved.
So far, she’d not had a whole lot of success ‘moving on’. Truth be told, there was a decided sameness to her days. Every Monday and Thursday she went to Safeway for groceries. On Fridays she did her banking. And every Saturday she went to Georgetown Video to check out the new arrivals. Lately, she’d found herself fantasizing about leading a different sort of life.
Given what she’d just been through, sitting with a bowl of buttered popcorn on her lumpy sofa suddenly had a whole new appeal.
When they reached the black wrought-iron railing at her front steps, Kate quickly turned to Finn and said, ‘Thank you for escorting –’
‘I need to perform a security check of the premises,’ he rudely interjected, bulldozing right over her prepared speech.
‘Under no circumstances are you coming inside my house.’ That was an intrusion she couldn’t tolerate, the thought of him roaming inside her house, her sanctuary, more than she could bear. ‘This, Sergeant McGuire, is where we part company and go our separate ways.’
For several drawn-out seconds, he stared intently at her. Caught in a silent battle of wills, Kate held her ground. No easy feat given the ferocity of Finn McGuire’s brown-eyed stare.
To her surprise, Finn blinked. An instant later, he shook his head, surrendering the field.
‘Look. Kate. I’m sorry.’ The mea culpa was issued in short, choppy sentences. His signature speech pattern. ‘I never meant to involve you in this mess.’
‘Apology accepted,’ she mumbled, too weary to hold a grudge. She was moments from retreating inside her house and slamming the door on this horrible night. Dead bolt and chain latch a given.
Extending a hand towards her face, Finn brushed the pad of his thumb against her lips. ‘You got a clot of dried blood in the corner of your mouth.’
‘Somewhere between the crash and the foot race, I must have bitten my lip,’ she said when Finn showed her the blood on his thumb. ‘I was scared as a ninny. Although I’m not exactly sure what a ninny is. I only know that when the Mercedes drove past the alley, I thought –’ Kate self-consciously broke off in mid-babble, unnerved by the intimacy of his touch.
Earlier, at the Pentagon, when he had unexpectedly hopped into her Toyota, Kate had been convinced that there wasn’t a hint of a spark between them. Now she wasn’t so sure. Granted, it’d been a long time since she’d been with a man, but she definitely felt something when Finn touched her lip.
‘Make sure you disinfect that cut with some rubbing alcohol.’
‘Yes, I … I will.’ She unzipped her handbag and rummaged for her keys. ‘That’s strange. I can’t seem to find my –’ She glanced up, surprised to see her key ring dangling from Finn’s middle finger.
‘I lifted them from your bag when we first arrived at the embassy.’
The confession, uttered without a trace of recrimination, stunned her. From the onset, he’d been using her.
‘You mean that you stole them from me.’ She snatched the key ring off his finger. Sexual spark be damned. ‘Goodnight, Sergeant.’
‘See you around, Kate.’
She gave him a tight parting smile before ascending the front steps. About to insert the key in the door lock, Kate belatedly realized that she still had Finn’s suit jacket draped around her shoulders.
So much for a graceful exit.
‘Finn! Wait!’ She dashed down the steps, hurrying to catch up with him. ‘I forgot to give you –’
A blinding flash of light accompanied by a sonic boom! was the only warning Kate had before being violently hurled several feet into the air, lifted off her feet by a powerful explosion.
In a peripheral blur, she glimpsed a huge fireball shoot heavenward, emanating from her house. The destructive force of the blast thrust a length of wrought iron over the towpath and pelted the canal with brick chunks and shards of glass. And heaved wooden trim at nearby trees.
Who? Why? My God, how?
Kate gasped. It took her breath away. No – breath knocked out of her. She’d seen it. Heard it. And painfully felt it. But still couldn’t believe it. A gas main blew. Or perhaps an unventilated propane tank exploded. Something plausible, albeit shocking, just occurred. It couldn’t have been something so improbable, so horrific, as a detonated bomb. But even as she tried to rationalize what had happened, coloured lights began to swirl nightmarishly and fuse in front of her eyes, only to expand into a dark void.
In that instant, she lost all sense of gravity. Suddenly weightless.
Oh, no … I think I’m dead.
13
Sixth Arrondissement, Paris, France
Ivo Uhlemann gleefully took his opponent’s queen.
The field his, the battle won, he logged off the computer. Pushing the gilded Louis XV salon chair away from the desk, he rose to his feet. The sudden motion cost him, a bolt of pain bursting free and radiating to the back of his spine. Shuddering, Ivo placed a stabilizing hand on top of the desk, fighting the urge to gasp, well aware that a large intake of air would only intensify the agony.
Long moments passed, the pain finally ebbing to a tolerable level.
Ivo glanced at his right hand, palm still pressed against the smooth inlaid cherry desktop. Noticing the raised blue veins and splotchy, tissue-paper-like skin, he frowned. If only the body kept pace with the mind. Yet another battle he had to wage.
Chaos, destruction and death, the sum of each man’s journey through life. Ivo first experienced the brutal trinity at a tender age. Even now, all these years later, he could still vividly recall that night in 1943 when British RAF pilots rained deadly bombs on Berlin’s sleeping neighbourhoods. An act of callous savagery, thousands were immolated alive, with Ivo’s own grandparents among the victims. But to the Allies utter disbelief, Berliners rose up from the ashes, Phoenix-like, the firebird heroically transformed into a Reichsadler, the proud eagle of the Reich.
Seized with patriotic fervour, his own spirit burnished in the flames, Ivo straight away joined the Hitler-Jugend. Eleven years and three days of age, he proudly wore the black shorts, long-sleeved brown shirt and peaked cap. And though he couldn’t fully grasp the meaning of the slogan ‘Blood and Honour’, he nonetheless shouted it with great ferocity at war rallies. Assigned to an anti-aircraft crew, he was trained to use a flak gun. Bursting with pride, his mother Berthe showered him with adoring kisses. His father, stationed at the SS Headquarters in Wewelsburg, sent letters commending Ivo for his unparalleled bravery.
That bravery was put to a gruelling test seventeen months later when Ivo was issued a steel helmet, a Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon and a bolt-action rifle with one hundred rounds of ammunition. Marching in perfect unison, heel to toe as they’d been trained, Ivo and his regiment of Hitler-Jugend were ordered to take up a position on the Pichelsdorf Bridge. Part of the last German defence, the ‘boy brigade’ was to halt the Russian advance and prevent the enemy from entering Berlin.
For two gore-filled days, they held their ground. Of the five thousand boys sent to the bridge, only five hundred remained standing at the end of those horrific forty-eight hours. Just as the jubilant Red horde stormed across the bridge, Ivo was severely wounded in a mortar blast.
When he finally regained consciousness in an American field hospital, the Führer was dead, Germany a conquered nation. Bandaged from head to foot, immobilized in a traction device, Ivo was filled with shame.
If I’d only fought harder. Fired more bullets. Killed more Russians.
Six months would pass before he was discharged from the military hospital with a wooden cane, a Hershey’s chocolate bar and a silver Reichspfennig coin. Oskar Baader, a grey-haired, bespectacled man who’d been his father’s colleague in the physics department at Göttingen University, met him at the hospital gate. On the train ride to Göttingen, the professor informed Ivo that his mother had been killed during the Russian attack on Berlin and that his father, who’d risen within the SS to the rank of Oberführer, was a wanted fugitive. The shock more than he could bear, Ivo burst into tears.
As the months passed, Ivo settled into his new life in Göttingen with the elderly Baader couple, marching drills and combat practice replaced with violin lessons and science tutorials. Eventually the sorrow faded. In its stead was a wide-eyed curiosity as encoded letters from his father – postmarked from such far-flung places as Lisbon, Genoa and Cairo – began to arrive at the flat.
With each encoded letter, more and more of an incredible tale began to unfold. According to the missives, his father had been assigned to a highly-classified research project under the auspices of the Ahnenerbe. The project, which involved an ancient relic known as the Lapis Exillis, had been sanctioned by the Führer himself. Even more amazing, although the war had ended and the surviving members of the Ahnenerbe were either on the run or facing a military tribunal in Nuremberg, Friedrich Uhlemann still actively sought the relic. His father claimed that this relic contained unique properties that could be used to harness a heretofore untapped energy.
Hearing the ormolu clock on the mantel chime the new hour, Ivo turned his head. One o’clock. He assumed the Dark Angel had detonated the plastic explosive. With Katsumi Bauer removed from the equation, the American commando could be lured back to the bargaining table. Every man had his price. Too much was at stake. Encrypted clues to the whereabouts of the Lapis Exillis were engraved on the Montségur Medallion.
They had only five days to find it.
Five days until the Heliacal Rising of Sirius when the great star would appear on the eastern horizon just before sunrise. Five days until that powerful energy burst that could change the course of history.
Would change it, provided they located the Lapis Exillis.
Ivo again glanced at the clock, silently damning the reminder that each minute, each hour, each day lost could not be regained.
Only five days.
A trained physicist, Friedrich Uhlemann had gone to his grave convinced that the ancient technology contained within the Lapis Exilis could have saved the Reich from total annihilation.
Ivo, also a trained physicist, knew that it wasn’t too late. If found, the Lapis Exilis could still save the Reich.
14
‘Here. This should help.’ Finn offered Kate a chipped Redskins mug filled with hot coffee and a slug of Jameson’s whiskey. ‘You’re damned lucky to have landed in that barberry bush.’
Tersely shaking her head, Kate refused the pick-me-up. Instead, she continued to sit on the sofa with her arms wrapped around her chest, hands coiled around her elbows. Since the blast, the woman hadn’t uttered a single word. They’d just entered the second hour of radio silence.
‘Drink it, Kate. The booze will do you good. I don’t want you fainting on me again.’ He butted the mug against her chest, forcing her to accept the spiked coffee.
Her expression blank, Kate stared straight ahead as she obediently took a sip.
She must have had a sheltering angel standing sentry at the front door. Because, somehow, against all odds, she’d managed to survive the blast relatively unscathed. Scratches, bruises, minor abrasions and a swollen right knee; the kind of injuries that always hurt worse the morning after.
Immediately after the explosion, he’d thrown Kate over his shoulder and hauled ass to Wisconsin Avenue. Needing to find a hidey-hole on the double-quick, he’d flagged down a pizza delivery guy and paid him a hundred bucks to drive them to a houseboat docked at the Gangplank Marina. While he didn’t personally know Major James Bukowski, the owner of the houseboat, he’d once overheard the cocky officer bragging about his waterfront digs. Since Bukowski was currently deployed in Afghanistan, the trespass had been child’s play. He’d even told the neighbour that ‘Jimbo’ gave him the key.
For the time being, they were safe.
Still nameless, still faceless, the enemy possessed the stealth of a well-trained Delta unit. If it wasn’t for the freaking suit jacket, Kate would have been killed in the explosion.
‘If you speak of this matter to anyone, they will be targeted for execution.’
Warning issued. Action taken. Clearly these rat bastards did not make idle threats.
Pricked by a guilty conscience, Finn turned away from Kate and walked over to the window. Pulling the drawn curtain aside, he watched silently as drops of rain plopped against the varnished deck before congealing into plump translucent beads. Scanning the marina, his gaze ricocheted between the dark waters of the Washington Channel and the wood-planked dock.
He let the curtain fall back into place.
‘Listen, Kate, I need to know …’ Finn hesitated, trying to think of a tactful way to phrase the question. Realizing there wasn’t one, he got right to it. ‘Is there anyone – a parent, a sibling, a close friend – that these murdering thugs can go after next?’
The question hung silently between them, Kate, no doubt, wrapping her dazed mind around this new, unforeseen danger.
‘My parents are vacationing in Japan,’ she said at last. ‘I have no siblings. And I’m not altogether certain, but I believe that my ex-husband is conducting field research in Papua New Guinea. As for friends, well, let’s just say that I’ve been something of a loner these last two years. After the divorce, Jeffrey retained custody of our social circle.’
Finn breathed a sigh of relief. One less headache.
‘I just want you to know, Kate, that I’m truly sorry. I never meant to put you in harm’s way.’
‘I would prefer, Sergeant, that you not insult me with a phony apology. All along you’ve been using me. And now, because of you, all of my worldly possessions have been reduced to this.’ Kate held her handbag aloft. Somehow, miraculously, she’d managed to keep it slung across her chest during the explosion.
About to inform her that with a death sentence hanging over her head, being homeless was the least of her worries, Finn thought better of it. Instead, he seated himself next to her on the sofa.
‘You might find this hard to believe, but I know what you’re going through,’ he said without preamble, heartfelt confessions not his strong suit. ‘No matter what, you’ve got to stay strong. Like a sapling. Bend. Don’t break. Got it?’
The pep talk met with a derisive snort. ‘Please spare me the sappy sentiments. I want you to tell me, right now, why someone tried to kill me. For God’s sake! All I did was give you a ride to the embassy.’
‘My guess? They think that I took you into my confidence.’
‘About what?’
‘Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to –’
‘Cut the crap, Finn! Either you tell me what’s going on or I will pick up the phone and call the police.’
While Kate’s fury was completely justified, Finn debated how much he should, or could, reveal. The mission in Al-Qanawat had been black ops and –
Ah, fuck it.
Whether she knew or didn’t know, Jutier’s henchmen would still be gunning for her. Better that she face the enemy with eyes wide open.
‘You might find this hard to believe, but the men who set the explosive device at your house are after a thirteenth-century relic. And they’ll stop at nothing to get it.’
Her expression said it all – Kate Bauer thought that he was a lying sack of shit. ‘Hard to believe? Try flat-out impossible. And even if I did believe you, which I don’t, what does that have to do with you? Or me, for that matter.’
‘See, it’s like this –’ Leaning forward, Finn braced his elbows on top of his thighs. ‘Four months ago, I led a black ops mission into Al-Qanawat, Syria. The mission was straightforward: grab contraband vials of smallpox and get out of Dodge with no one the wiser. But when we arrived at the coordinates, there was no contraband smallpox. There wasn’t even a terrorist cell. There was just some relic hidden inside a chapel.’
Hearing that, her eyes narrowed suspiciously; the woman was a hard sell. ‘You need to be more specific. For starters, what did this relic look like?’
‘It was a gold disk about yea big –’ he curved both his hands to give her an idea as to its size. ‘At the time I was royally pissed that my team was being used; that we were sent into Al-Qanawat for the sole purpose of stealing a damned relic so a fat cat general could pad his retirement account. I’m a trained warrior, not Indiana Jones.’
‘And what does the mission in Syria have to do with Fabius Jutier?’
‘According to Jutier, he is – or was – a member of a group called the Seven. The group paid General Robert Cavanaugh to retrieve the Montségur Medallion for them. When Cavanaugh failed to deliver as promised, they arranged for him to have a fatal car accident.’
Kate made a T with her hands, signalling a time-out. ‘Back up a moment. What’s the Montségur Medallion?’
‘That’s the name of the Al-Qanawat relic. And the Seven is convinced that I have this Montségur Medallion. That’s why they had an assassin called the Dark Angel murder two Delta troopers from my old outfit and make it look like I killed ’em. Earlier today, a couple of CID agents showed up at the Pentagon and accused me of doing just that.’
Closing his eyes, Finn massaged his sockets with his thumb and middle finger, envisioning the glossy 8 x 10 crime scene photos that the two CID agents had shown to him. He didn’t particularly want those images floating around inside his head. It made him think about the horror, the sheer agony, that his two friends endured before the final coup de grâce.
He opened his eyes. Then shook his head to clear the gory images from his mind’s eye.
To his surprise, Kate placed her hand on his forearm. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to your comrades.’
‘Yeah, me too. I loved them both like brothers,’ he told her, man enough to own up to his feelings. Still grappling with the brutal slaying, he was grateful for the condolence.
Removing her hand, Kate said, ‘I’m confused … why did the Seven frame you for murder?’
‘They framed me for murder to force my hand. To get me to turn over the relic to them. According to the dead French dude, they’ve got DNA evidence that will prove my innocence. And to sweeten the deal, Jutier offered me a sign-up bonus of one million dollars.’
‘But why, after offering you all that money, would Fabius Jutier turn around and kill himself?’
Finn shrugged. ‘I have no friggin’ idea.’
Snatching a plaid throw blanket from the arm of the sofa, Kate wrapped it around her shoulders. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Finn, it’s an outrageous story. And, quite frankly, I’m having a hard time believing that these murders took place because some group erroneously thinks you have a gold relic in your –’
‘I never said that I didn’t have the Montségur Medallion.’ As he spoke, Finn undid the top three buttons on his shirt. Slipping a finger under the ribbed collar of his undershirt, he pulled out the heavy-ass chain and medallion.
Eyes opening wide, Kate slumped against the sofa. ‘Oh, my God.’
15
‘I suspect this is quite valuable,’ Kate remarked, still stunned that Finn had been hiding the Montségur Medallion on his person.
‘Worth a decent chunk, given the price of gold.’ Holding the pendant by its heavy chain, Finn slowly swung it back and forth.
‘That’s not what I meant.’ Kate blinked several times in rapid succession, breaking free of the relic’s hypnotic allure. ‘The value of the metal, in and of itself, wouldn’t account for the Seven’s deadly fanaticism. An educated guess? These engraved images that decorate the medallion are what they’re really after.’
One side of Finn’s mouth turned down dismissively. ‘Bunch of old symbols. Big whup.’
A trained cultural anthropologist, Kate knew that symbols were an encoding system employed by all cultures. Depicted literally in art and expressed figuratively in myth, symbols communicated man’s relationship to the world around him.
‘May I?’ She held out her hand. Finn obliged the request, passing the medallion to her.
One did not have to be a trained cultural anthropologist to know that there was a hidden meaning contained within the ‘old symbols’, as Finn had dismissively referred to them.
‘Because an X divides the medallion into four different quadrants, I’m not sure if the symbols are meant to be read separately or as in integrated whole. What I do know is that these are symbols used in almost every culture of the world. The sun, as the eye of the world, symbolizes enlightenment. The moon refers to the dark side of nature.’
‘Or the passage of time.’ When she glanced at Finn, he shrugged. ‘You know, moon tides and lunar calendars.’
‘Or the passage of time,’ Kate iterated, his observation very much on the mark. ‘Stars usually designate the presence of some divinity.’
‘Like the crown of stars on top of the Virgin Mary’s head.’
She nodded, that being as good an example as any. ‘As for the four strangely shaped “A”s, I haven’t a clue. Perhaps they’re a reference to the Four Ages of man or the four classical elements of air, water, earth and fire. Regardless, all of these symbols are prosaic to an extreme. As you said, big whup. Which leads me to the medallion’s flipside –’ she turned the pendant over and showed him the three lines of engraved text. ‘I suspect that this inscription is what the Seven deems valuable.’
Finn’s head jerked. ‘The rat bastards killed my two buddies because of that?’
‘Possibly,’ she hedged.
‘Okay, what the hell does it say?’
‘I have no idea. However, I’m fairly certain that the last line is written in medieval Latin. I don’t recognize the language used for the first two lines. Clearly, the message was crafted to withstand the ages.’ She tapped the relic with her index finger for emphasis.
‘No kidding. Someone would have to melt this sucker to erase the inscription. So how is it that you know so much about symbols?’
‘My, um, PhD is in cultural anthropology.’
His brows noticeably lifted. ‘You’re a bona fide doctor? Are you shitting me?’
‘ “Yes” to the first question, “no” to the second. However, I rarely use the title.’ Hard-earned though those three letters were, when she left the world of academia two years ago and ventured beyond the ivory tower, she discovered that her title was off-putting. ‘I’m curious – why did you keep the medallion? Were you planning to sell it on the black market?’ she asked, purposefully changing the subject.
Leaning against the tufted sofa, Finn crossed his arms over his chest. ‘You don’t think very highly of me, do you, Doc? Actually, I kept it so no one else could sell the damned thing on the black market. My Delta team was sent into a very dangerous situation under false pretences. Put into harm’s way to retrieve a gold trinket so some higher-up could have a nice payday. I held on to the medallion hoping it would force the crooked bastards out of the woodwork so they could be prosecuted.’ Grim-faced, his chin dipped to his chest. But not before Kate glimpsed the stark grief that glimmered in his eyes. ‘I just never thought they’d kill my buddies to get the damned medallion.’
All in all, an unexpected confession. One that bespoke a noble intent. A virtue Kate didn’t necessarily associate with the foul-mouthed commando sitting across from her.
‘All right, now what?’ She carefully set the golden relic on the coffee table.
‘Now I track down the assassin who executed Dixie and Johnny K.’
‘Have you considered relinquishing the medallion to the Seven in order to clear –’
‘Don’t even go there,’ Finn interjected, rudely cutting her off in mid-sentence. ‘This medallion is the only leverage I have. As long as it’s in my possession, I’ve got a chance of getting Dixie and Johnny K the justice they deserve. Just so you know, they were the bravest of the brave. The guys who went in under the cover of night to take out a dangerous threat so that you and everybody else in this country can sleep safely at night. They didn’t deserve to die the way they did. Which is why I will find the sadistic shit who tortured them to death and I will make him pay.’
The vehemence in his voice sent a chill down Kate’s spine. ‘An eye for eye? Is that what you mean?’
Hearing that, Finn snorted derisively. ‘I’ve killed enough men in the line of duty to know you don’t gain a whole lot of satisfaction from pulling the trigger. I’m talking about hauling the Dark Angel into a court of law so that he can be tried and sentenced. More than anything else, I want him to be publicly held to account for slaying two American heroes.’
‘What if you can’t find him?’ she countered, thinking it might prove a difficult, if not impossible, challenge. ‘Other than his cryptic nom de guerre, you don’t know anything about the killer.’
Getting up from the sofa, Finn snatched her coffee mug and walked over to the kitchenette that was located a few feet away. ‘Actually, I do know one other thing about the killer,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘The fact that Jutier went to such lengths to protect his identity makes me think that the Dark Angel is one of ’em.’
‘You mean a member of the Seven rather than a paid assassin?’ When he nodded, Kate followed up by saying, ‘Fabius Jutier’s tattoo may provide a clue. Do you mind if I have a look at the digital photograph?’
Finn unhooked the cell phone from his waistband and scrolled through the log. Walking back to the sofa, he handed her the device. ‘Any idea what it means?’
Trying to ignore the fact that she was staring at a photo of a corpse, she examined the disturbing tattoo. ‘While I’m not a rune expert, I know that in the ancient Norse poems, runes were considered a magical talisman, capable of bringing the dead back to life. And during the Third Reich, there were a number of occult groups that used runes in their rituals. That said, the runes suggest that Fabius Jutier was involved in some type of esoteric Nazism.’
‘I take it that’s different from the goose-stepping variety?’
‘Different in that esoteric Nazism was, and still is, a pseudo-religious belief. While my knowledge of the Nazi movement is rudimentary, I do know that during the nineteen thirties and forties, esoteric Nazis were obsessed with finding sacred objects d’art such as the relics of the Bible, medieval icons and Egyptian artefacts. It’s well documented that they sent archaeology teams all over Europe and the Middle East.’
‘Yeah, I saw the movie,’ Finn deadpanned. ‘But instead of the Ark of the Covenant, our bad guys are looking for the Montségur Medallion.’
‘So it would seem.’
Finn headed towards the dinette table situated on the other side of the living room. ‘I’m gonna try to hack into Frenchie’s computer. There might be something on it that I can use to track down the Seven.’
‘Um, count me out,’ she demurred.
Kate set the cell phone on the coffee table next to the medallion. The sudden motion cost her, the pain radiating up her spine and across her shoulders. Somewhat gingerly, she rose to her feet, only to teeter precariously to one side. Feeling like a shipwrecked woman washed ashore, she kicked off her shoes and limped over to the window.
Although she knew it was a pointless exercise, she pulled the dun-brown drapery to one side, needing to verify that the world still turned on its figurative axis. In the distance, the white spire of the Washington Monument gleamed theatrically, lit from below with giant floodlights. Directly across the river was the Pentagon.
God, what I wouldn’t give to put back the clock. Since Finn McGuire had unexpectedly got into her car at the Pentagon, her life had become a surreal blur of events. Elegant embassy party. Dead man with bizarre tattoo. High-speed chase. Armed assailants. And the capstone, a bomb blast that destroyed her home.
And wasn’t that a bitter irony?
After her infant son died, she lost the will to live, feeling as though someone had driven a railroad spike through her heart, pinning her to the tracks. Except the train never came to take her out of her misery. And then, one morning, she woke up and for the first time in nearly two years she could hear the birds chirping outside the window. Could feel the sun on her face. Could taste the sweetness of sugar in her coffee. Small everyday moments that most people take for granted. The fact that she experienced an instant’s joy in them made her realize that she wanted to live. To make that clichéd fresh start.
And just when she’d decided to return to the land of the living, some group called the Seven decided that they wanted her dead.
Thank God she’d had the foresight to create a digital photo album with all of Sammy’s pictures, the CD in her safe deposit box at the bank. She could bear losing the contents of her house, but not that. Those were the only memories that truly counted.
And I can only savour those cherished memories if I stay alive.
Pensively staring out of the window, Kate could feel the onslaught of emotion about to rear its ugly head. So many ugly heads. So many crashing fears and colliding thoughts. Keep running. Don’t stop. If you do, they will hunt you down and kill you.
After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were forcibly rounded up and interned in ‘War Relocation Camps’. Refusing to be separated from her husband, Kate’s grandmother accompanied her husband Yoshiro Tanaka when he was loaded on to the train bound for the Manzanar Camp. She was the only Caucasian in the internment facility other than the military police who guarded the compound. Like so many thousands of loyal Americans of Japanese descent, in the blink of an eye her grandparents lost their home, their livelihood and their community. She’d often wondered how they survived the shock of having their lives pulled out from under them. Now she knew.
You just put one foot in front of the other and keep on trudging.
Ready to trudge forward, Kate let the curtain fall back into place. Peering over her shoulder, she stared contemplatively at the man seated at the table.
Finn McGuire was the last person she ever thought she’d turn to for help. The fact that she had to turn to anyone made her acutely uncomfortable. After her husband’s hideous betrayal, trust didn’t come easy to her, although she sensed that Sergeant McGuire was loyal to a fault when it came to his brothers-in-arms.
Even though I don’t know him, I can trust him to keep me alive.
That might be the only thing that she could trust him with. So be it. She needed a bodyguard, not a lifetime companion. And though nervous about spending an extended amount of time with a man she barely knew, the other option – going it alone – would be a death sentence.
16
‘So, how are we coming along with computer hacking?’
‘I was able to get on to Jutier’s desktop, but I can’t access any of his personal files without a password,’ Finn muttered, surprised by Kate’s sudden interest.
‘Mind if I have a look?’
‘Help yourself. Although I didn’t peg you for the type who approved of computer hacking.’ Particularly given the stink she raised when he snatched the laptop from Jutier’s office.
Sitting down at a dinette chair, Kate swivelled the computer in her direction. ‘Since you’re locked out of Jutier’s files, it’s technically not hacking. I just want to take a quick peek at his desktop. You know. Curiosity. The cat.’ As soon as she said it, she winced. ‘How weird is that? We’ve been in each other’s company for only a few hours and I’m already starting to sound like you.’
‘Just as long as you don’t start looking like me.’
‘God forbid.’ As she said it, Kate’s gaze dropped to his right hand. An instant later, evidently realizing what she’d done, she glanced away.
‘Luckily, the Syrian who pulled the trigger was a lousy shot. All he got was my finger,’ Finn told her, trying to put a nonchalant spin on a potentially awkward moment.
‘Does it ever hurt?’ she asked.
Usually those kind of questions pissed the shit out of him, but for some reason he found Kate’s earnest expression oddly endearing.
‘Nah, it doesn’t hurt,’ he lied. ‘Although I can forecast when it’s going to rain.’ Because that’s when it hurt like a mother.
From time to time, Finn still caught himself about to scratch his nose, rub an eye or press a keypad with his absentee index finger. As much as he wished the amputation hadn’t happened, he tried to look on the bright side – he could still flip someone the bird. And, hell, it wasn’t like he’d had his Johnson blown off. Luckily for him, that appendage worked just fine. Sometimes a little too fine.
He shot Kate an appraising glance.
High cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, silky black hair and a wide nose gave her a slightly Asian look. Kinda exotic, actually. Which made the freckles that dotted those high cheekbones totally unexpected. Same with the eye colour; not quite grey, not quite blue. More like a muddy mix of the two.
As he continued to stare at the woman seated next to him, Finn wondered what would have happened if they’d gone on a ‘regular date’. To the movies. Followed by a bite to eat. At that new Thai restaurant over in Rosslyn. Afterwards, they would have strolled along the canal before he took her home. It would have been a given that he’d kiss her goodnight at the front door. And, if the vibe was right, she might have invited him inside for a cup of coffee. If the vibe was really right, the coffee would’ve been served the next morning. As perfect as a date can get.
Nice daydream. Except they’d had a different kind of date. Not to mention that it was hard to kiss a lady at the front door when she no longer had a front door. Or even a house, for that matter.
Jesus! She must think I’m a real bastard.
For some reason, that thought bothered him.
‘Don’t call retreat just yet,’ Kate suddenly announced, tapping a fingertip against the laptop screen. ‘Here’s Jutier’s Day Planner. Hopefully, we won’t need a password to open it.’
‘I can’t imagine the French dude would have been stupid enough to schedule Dixie and Johnny K’s murder, but yeah, go ahead, let’s have a look-see.’
Kate’s fingers deftly moved across the keyboard.
‘I’m in.’ She opened the calendar for the month of August. ‘There’s tonight’s reception. Tomorrow morning, August third, he has a ten o’clock manicure scheduled. Later in the day, he’s playing a round of golf at the Congressional Country Club.’
‘I didn’t know Frenchmen could play golf,’ Finn snickered. ‘And the thought that he was going to have his nails done ahead of time is more than this beer-swigging soldier can handle. Pass me the Freedom Fries on the double-quick.’
Ignoring him, Kate continued to read aloud from the calendar. ‘The day after that, he’s booked on Air France Flight 039. And, the following day, August fifth at eleven o’clock, he’s scheduled to attend –’ Kate grinned excitedly – ‘ “une réunion du sept ”.’
‘English would be nice.’
‘A meeting of the Seven,’ she translated, still grinning from ear to ear.
‘Paydirt! Yeah, boy.’ Although he didn’t grin, Finn came damned close. ‘Where’s the meeting being held?’
Kate moved the cursor over the calendar date and clicked. ‘The detail screen is blank.’
‘No problem. Let’s go out on the Internet and get the route information for Air France Flight 039.’
Minimizing the calendar, Kate quickly accessed the Air France webpage. ‘It’s a nonstop between Washington and Paris.’
‘And Paris is a big, freaking city.’ Shit. A roadblock. He got up and walked over to the kitchen, the bottle of Jameson’s starting to look real good.
‘I just found the Seven.’
‘What?’ Finn spun on his heel, wondering if he’d heard correctly. ‘What do you mean, you just found the Seven?’
‘I mean that I went to an online search engine and I typed the words “Paris”, “Seven” and “Fabius Jutier”. The Seven Research Foundation is a private endowment and Fabius Jutier is listed as one of the board members. A man by the name of Ivo Uhlemann is listed as the Director. Here. See for yourself.’
Bracing one hand on the back of Kate’s chair and the other on the table, Finn leaned over her shoulder. Only to back away a split-second later. ‘It’s in French. As in no par-lay-voo.’
‘According to their site, the Seven Research Foundation is a private institute that awards research grants to qualified scholars in the fields of astronomy, physics, geology, electrical engineering, linguistics, history and archaeology.’ She peered at him, brows drawn together in a quizzical frown. ‘That’s a rather unusual mix, don’t you think? Particularly for a group that may be linked to esoteric Nazis.’
‘Maybe the foundation is just a front. And what were you expecting? For them to put a bunch of Nazi symbols on the home page?’
Jesus. The Nazis. When he was a kid, their upstairs neighbour used to tell stories about the day his army unit liberated the Dachau concentration camp and how the black vultures were circling around stacked corpses left outside to rot. Old man Garrett sure knew how to scare the shit out of a six-year-old.
‘According to the contact page, the Seven Research Foundation is headquartered in the Grande Arche office building just west of Paris,’ Kate remarked.
‘Then it’s a do-able.’
Greyish-blue eyes opened wide. ‘You’re actually going to Paris?’
‘You got a better plan?’ Not waiting for her reply, he said, ‘Something tells me that I want to have a little meet-and-greet with this Ivo Uhlemann dude. Best way to catch a lion is to track him to his lair.’
‘And then what?’
Backing away from the table, Finn said, ‘I’ll figure that out once I get to Paris.’
‘Then you better book two seats. I’m going with you.’
17
Paris, France
Alas, Paris is the key, Ivo Uhlemann ruminated. A key that fitted a unique lock designed centuries ago by the Knights Templar.
Not Berlin, or even Vienna, but Paris.
As his chauffer-driven Mercedes Benz cruised through the eighth arrondissement, the city lights passed in a blurred collage. Peering out of the window, Ivo contemplated the night sky, the cosmic sphere that taunted so many physicists.
And was so intimately conjoined to Paris and the Lapis Exillis.
Because Paris was the key, it had been spared from destruction in 1940. At the time, many feared the German Luftwaffe would reduce the city to rubble. But the Führer never gave the order. Not because he had a sentimental attachment to Baroque architecture or possessed a magnanimous heart. The order wasn’t given because the Seven had briefed Adolf Hitler several months prior to the invasion of France. In that extraordinary meeting, they’d shown the Führer why das Groß Versuch, the Great Experiment, had to take place in Paris.
‘For better or for worse,’ Ivo muttered as he set his gaze on the Grande Arche, the massive white marble hypercube visible at the western terminus of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
‘It’s a warm night. Would you like me to turn on the air conditioner, Herr Doktor?’
Lost in thought, Ivo glanced at his driver. As usual, he thought the ridiculous chauffeur’s cap accentuated Dolf Reinhardt’s cauliflower ears and misshapen skull, the unsightly keepsakes of an ex-boxer who’d lost more bouts than he’d won. Like so many men of middling intelligence, Dolf had been forced to use his body to earn his keep. Although to his chauffeur’s credit, he was loyal to a fault.
‘I am comfortable. Thank you, Dolf.’
Having been apprised that Katsumi Bauer survived the explosion, Ivo now feared that they were dealing with a cunning enemy. Moreover, he worried that the American commando had somehow discovered that the Montségur Medallion contained a treasure map. One that had been devised nearly eight hundred years ago by a group of religious heretics known as the Cathars.
On the verge of total annihilation, the Pope having called a bloodthirsty crusade against them, the beleaguered Cathars sought the aid of the only Catholics who’d not turned against them, the Knights Templar. In exchange for their military support, the Cathars offered to give the Templars their most prized possession, the Lapis Exillis. Rightly concerned that the Templars might not hold up their end of the bargain, the Cathars crafted a magnificent gold medallion. Engraved on one side of the medallion was an encrypted map that indicated where the Lapis Exillis had been hidden. The Templars would not be given the encryption key until their battle-ready knights arrived at Montségur. Tragically, the besieged Cathar stronghold fell to papal forces before the military contingent arrived. To the Templars’ great dismay, for without the encryption key, they could not decipher the ingeniously devised map.
Although that didn’t stop them from spending the next sixty years searching for the Lapis Exillis. In 1307, their search came to an abrupt end when the French king, Philippe le Bel, issued a general arrest warrant for the Knights Templar, the entire order accused of committing religious heresy. To ensure that the covetous king didn’t acquire the Montségur Medallion, the Templars hid it in the catacombs beneath their Paris preceptory.
Which is where the Seven discovered the medallion in the summer of 1940. Five years later, in the wake of the Reich’s defeat, Friedrich Uhlemann managed to safely smuggle it out of Germany. Like the Templars before him, he spent years searching, in vain, for the Lapis Exillis.
In the hours before his death, Friedrich composed one last letter, imploring Ivo to continue the search for the Lapis Exillis. Considering it an honour, Ivo gladly accepted the passed torch.
In the hopes that, one day, he could shine a bright light upon a new Reich.
‘Gott in Himmel,’ his chauffeur angrily muttered. ‘Do these people never sleep?’
Ivo wondered the same thing as he caught sight of a gypsy woman standing on the street corner, a passel of grubby-faced children huddled at her feet. A repulsive display, he thought, annoyed when the sloe-eyed slattern dared to raise her right hand, palm up, in his direction. The beggar’s age-old appeal for alms.
‘Give me some of your hard-earned money because I am too stupid and lazy to earn my own keep.’
An inbred race of conniving ingrates, the gypsies, or the Romani as they indignantly preferred; they were only skilled at one thing, sucking on society’s teat. And they’d done so since their ragtag horde first emigrated to Europe from the Indian subcontinent during the Middle Ages. In all that time, they’d produced nothing of lasting value. No art. No science. No literature. No music worthy of the name. They merely reproduced. Fathers sleeping with daughters. Brothers sleeping with sisters. Uncles sleeping with anyone they could find. Utterly disgusting. Indeed, the marvel of the human brain was completely wasted on them. A spinal column alone would have sufficed.
Too busy rounding up Jews, the Reich’s high command greatly erred when they didn’t eradicate the Romani. Yes, many gypsies were killed, but like rodents, they spent the post-war years reproducing at a frantic pace. Six decades later, they littered the streets of every major city in Europe. Like so much trash.
Trash that would be picked up and put into a garbage bin once they located the Lapis Exillis.
But first they had to find the medallion. And we only have five days to do so.
Since his father had been afraid to ship the Montségur Medallion to Germany, lest it be confiscated by an inquisitive customs inspector, his last letter contained a drawing, front and back, of the pendant. Disastrously, by the time the missive arrived in Göttingen, the ink had smudged, the symbols and inscription illegible.
Although stymied by the setback, the seed of an idea began to germinate: what if the other members of the Seven had sent their children letters? Perhaps there were others, like Ivo, who wanted to continue their fathers’ research, but didn’t know how to find the Lapis Exillis. Or, more importantly, what to do with the ancient relic should they manage to locate it.
Inspired, Ivo spent several months tracking down the second generation.
As fate would have it, those children, now grown adults, had also received letters from fathers who’d eluded arrest by stealing away to Buenos Aires, Cairo, New York. Contained within those dispatches was the cumulative research of the original Seven. Thrilled at the prospect of continuing the great work begun by their fathers, the second generation vowed to find the Lapis Exillis. To honour their fathers, they unanimously decided to call themselves ‘The Seven Research Foundation’.
Naturally, the first order of business was to find the Montségur Medallion, Ivo’s father making no mention in his last missive of its whereabouts. Since that letter had a Damascus postmark, they surmised that the medallion was in Syria. It took them more than twenty-five years to locate it, finally tracking the medallion to the remote village of Al-Qanawat. Not wishing to garner unwanted attention, they contracted a third party to retrieve the medallion.
A costly blunder. One that must be rectified as soon as possible.
Without the Montségur Medallion, they could not find the Lapis Exillis, the requisite component to perform das Groß Versuch. Once the Great Experiment was successfully executed, they would be able to awaken the sleeping soul of the Aryan people.
Then they could begin again. Bolder. Stronger. More resolute.
Just as their fathers had envisioned.
18
‘Sorry, Kate. You can’t come with me to Paris.’
‘Since it’s not safe for me to stay in Washington, what am I supposed to do?’ Kate retorted, quick to bat the objection right back at Finn. ‘I need you to protect me. There’s no place in the city where I can hide. They know my name and address. No doubt, they’ve mined all my personal data off of a computer database. My place of employment and my –’
‘This is strictly a one-man operation,’ Finn said over the top of her. ‘And just so you know, the matter is not open for debate.’ Ultimatum issued, he walked over to the coffee table to retrieve his belongings.
Kate trailed after him. ‘But I have an expertise that you’ll need once you get to Paris.’
‘Oh, really?’ It was all he could do not to roll his eyes. ‘Is this where you tell me that you took karate lessons at the local Y?’
‘No. This is where I tell you that I speak passably good French. When I was an undergraduate in college, I had a three-month summer internship at the Musée de l’Homme.’
‘Good for you.’ Finn stuffed his cell phone into his pocket. ‘But I was planning to buy one of those electronic translators.’ He didn’t enjoy being a hard ass, but he needed to end this discussion here and now. If he was going to get out of Washington without putting CID on the scent, he’d have to call in some old debts. Get the ball rolling. He already knew that if he went to an ATM or used a credit card, he’d be signing his death warrant.
Apocalypse now.
However, like any trained commando, he had a contingency plan. His involved a well-stocked storage locker in Arlington, Virginia. Cash. Guns. KA-BAR knife. Night-vision goggles. Everything he needed to take out the enemy.
‘Okay, here’s my second offer,’ Kate said with a surprising measure of boldness. ‘Not only does my friend Cædmon Aisquith live in Paris, but he’s a walking encyclopedia when it comes to symbols and their meanings. If you want to decipher the tattoo and medallion, Cædmon is your man.’
Hearing that, his gaze narrowed suspiciously. ‘I thought you were the symbol expert.’
‘My field of expertise is the peoples and culture of Central Asia. Cædmon is a medieval scholar with a graduate degree from Oxford.’
‘Loosely translated? He’s one of those nut jobs who plays the lute at the Renaissance Festival.’ This time, Finn did roll his eyes.
‘I’ll have you know that Cædmon is a serious scholar.’
‘I don’t need a scholar. All I need is a loaded weapon and a clear shot.’
‘Did I mention that he owns a bookstore on the Left Bank?’ Knowing full well that she hadn’t, Kate kept pounding at a very dead horse. ‘He has a zillion reference books at his fingertips.’
‘And I’ve got Google at mine.’
‘You said it yourself –’ snatching the medallion off the coffee table, Kate hefted it in the air – ‘this is your leverage with the Seven. So it might be a good idea to know what this means. As Cædmon is fond of saying, “Knowledge is power”.’
‘This is my fight, not yours. And it sure as hell ain’t Lute Boy’s battle.’
‘Where do you get off claiming this isn’t my fight? A few hours ago the Seven arranged to have me killed. Why? Because I chauffeured you to the embassy. And I only did that because you conned me into giving you a lift. You knew full well how dangerous these people are, yet that didn’t stop you from dragging me into the viper’s nest.’ Having just laid the mother of all guilt trips on him, Kate, arms belligerently crossed over her chest, stared him down.
‘Do I feel bad about what happened? Hell, yeah. But it doesn’t change my mind.’
‘Let me be blunt, Sergeant. Because you did drag me into this mess, I now require your protection. I’m scared to death. And, trust me, I didn’t like saying that any more than you liked hearing it.’
Finn opened his mouth to lob the next salvo. Only to clamp it shut an instant later. Arguing with Kate Bauer was a lot like arguing with a computerized voicemail system. You could talk yourself blue in the face, but it wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference.
He rubbed a hand over his jaw. Taking her to Paris would be a major pain in the ass. Hell, they’d be flying directly into the eye of the shit storm. But what choice did he have? She’d been targeted for execution. And he’d always been good at juggling more than one ball. So, yeah, he figured that he could protect her and hunt down the Dark Angel.
‘You’ve got me pinned in a corner. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?’ There was no mistaking the flicker of hope in those grey-blue eyes.
Finn nodded tersely, already regretting his decision. ‘You might know a lot about symbols, Doctor Bauer, but when it comes to dealing with unfriendlies, you don’t know your left from your right. My mission is to apprehend the Dark Angel and get my buddies the justice they deserve. And I don’t want anything to distract me from that. Which is why you will obey all of my orders. Without question. Understood?’
She nodded eagerly. ‘Understood. When do we leave?’
‘As soon as we can pack it up. And, Kate –’ he paused, making sure he had her full, undivided attention – ‘once we leave this houseboat, the only safe day will be the day just passed.’
PART II
‘I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired’ – Richard Wagner
19
Paris, France
4 August, 0848 hours
‘Before we blow this joint, I need to lay down some ground rules. First of all, we’re not on a French wine-tasting tour. This is a search and destroy mission. Period. The end. That said, you will stay close to me at all times; you will obey every order given to you; and you will not question my authority. Am I making myself clear?’
Topsails slack, Kate nodded silently. In that instant, it occurred to her, yet again, that Fate was not merely capricious, but threw a mean sucker punch.
She hitched the knapsack strap a bit higher on her shoulder and lengthened her stride. Several minutes ago they had disembarked from the high-speed Eurostar, Finn now in a ‘big-ass hurry to put the mission op into play’. A one-man assault on the City of Love.
At this hour of the morning, the cavernous Gare du Nord train station brimmed with hundreds of travellers rushing pell-mell in every direction. Overhead, the departure board loudly click-clacked, yellow letters and numbers flipping past at a dizzying speed, like a slot machine run amuck. Kate averted her gaze, the rolling tabs inciting a nauseous churn. To add to the chaos, a strident female voice incessantly announced the arrivals and departures on the PA system.
Finn inclined his head in her direction. Although his lips moved, the ensuing remark was completely drowned out.
‘You’ll have to repeat that,’ she told him, cupping a hand to her ear.
Coming to a halt, Finn leaned towards her, his cheek brushing against hers. ‘Just outside the station, I see a line of cabs.’
Taken aback by the combination of warm breath, warm body and prickly stubble, Kate recoiled, hit with an unexpected jolt of sexual awareness. Something that had been happening with an unnerving frequency over the last few days. When they’d shared an office suite at the Pentagon, she’d been intimidated by Finn’s sheer physicality, the man taller, broader, more muscular than most. Now, for some inexplicable reason, she found herself strangely attracted to those very qualities.
Baffled by her reaction, particularly since Finn McGuire wasn’t her type, Kate wondered if she might be suffering from a variant form of Stockholm Syndrome. Like a hostage with her captor, was she attracted to Finn because she was so completely dependent on him to keep her safe?
‘Hey, soldier, you okay?’ A concerned look on his face, Finn gently squeezed her hand.
Even though Kate knew it was his way of bolstering the troops, it caused another spasm in the base of her spine. Wordlessly, she stared at him. At that close range, she could see each individual whisker that covered his lower face, the five o’clock shadow making him appear dangerously sexy.
‘I’m fine,’ she lied, fearing the frantic, non-stop pace was finally starting to catch up with her. ‘Would it be possible to grab a cup of coffee? There’s a café over by the –’
‘Later,’ Finn interjected, letting go of her hand. ‘We need to hit the road.’
She suppressed a groan. For the last two days, they’d been pounding the pavement. Hard.
Travelling under the radar, they’d left the houseboat in Washington and headed straight to a storage facility in Arlington, Virginia. Much to her surprise, Finn maintained a rental unit well-stocked with guns, ammo, a metal box full of cash and a Harley Davidson ‘Fat Boy’. Offering no explanation as to why a sane person would go to such extreme lengths, he’d packed what he called a ‘Go Bag’ – a heavy-duty canvas satchel with a leather strap reinforced with a stainless steel cable. He wore the Go Bag bandolier-style across his chest, having yet to take it off.
Leaving the storage unit, they’d travelled to Annapolis, Maryland, Kate clinging to Finn’s waist, terrified she might jettison off the back-end of the twin-cam motorcycle. Again, giving no explanation for his actions, Finn stopped at a public photo booth where they each had their picture taken. From there, they went to a 24-hour FedEx office, the photos placed in an overnight envelope. The next stop was the Wal-Mart superstore. New clothing and a few basic toiletries were purchased, Finn insisting that she stick with neutral colours. ‘The object is to blend into the scenery.’ Hoping a roadside hotel would be the final port-of-call, she was bewildered when they instead headed to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
Which is when the trip took a very strange and surreal turn.
Met at one of the gates by a uniformed airman named Barry DeSoto, an ‘old buddy’ who owed Finn an outstanding gambling debt, they were surreptitiously ushered on to a C-5 plane that was in the process of being loaded. Destination: Mildenhall Royal Air Force Base in England. Happy to discharge the three-thousand-dollar debt, Airman DeSoto arranged for her and Finn to stow away in the hull of the plane, wedged between stacked wooden crates and oversized metal containers.
No sooner did they touch down on English soil than another ‘old buddy’ met them on the tarmac. Finn gave the man a wad of cash and, in return, was handed two forged Dutch passports, a his and a hers, emblazoned with the photos that had been taken on the other side of the Atlantic. Newly dubbed ‘Fons’ and ‘Katja’, they’d crossed the Channel on the Eurostar.
Still mentally adjusting to the fact that she was actually in Paris, Kate followed Finn through the sliding glass doors as they exited the train station. Per his earlier instructions, she stayed directly on ‘his six’ as he headed towards the cab stand.
A few moments later, seated in the back of an idling taxi, Kate told the hirsute driver, ‘Amenez-nous à rue de la Bûcherie, s’il vous plaît.’
‘D’accord,’ the cabbie replied with a nod as he manoeuvred the Mercedes Benz cab out of the queue.
It had been decided ahead of time that their first stop would be L’Equinoxe, the bookstore owned and operated by her friend Cædmon Aisquith.
‘Any idea what time the bookstore opens?’ Finn slid his dark sunglasses to the top of his head. Given their proximity, Kate could see the crow’s feet radiating from the corners of his brown eyes. Obviously, the man had never heard of sun block. Although she had to admit that he wore his wrinkles well.
‘I’m not certain. Most shops in Paris open for business at ten o’clock. Although it’s my understanding that Cædmon maintains a flat in the back of the bookstore.’
‘Wanna call what’s-his-name and give him a head’s up?’
‘Um, I don’t think that’s necessary.’ It’d been sixteen years since she’d last spoken to Cædmon. A fact that she’d purposefully refrained from mentioning to Finn. Several months ago, she’d bumped into an old Oxford chum who’d informed her that Cædmon currently owned the bookshop in Paris. Until that accidental meeting, she’d had no idea what had happened to ‘what’s-his-name’ after he left Oxford.
Finn glanced at his commando watch. Altimeter. Barometer. Thermometer. Digital compass. The timepiece had more features than some cars.
‘It’s a few minutes shy of oh-nine-hundred,’ he informed her. ‘Your buddy Engelbert Humperdinck ought to be up and at ’em by now.’
‘How many times do I have to tell you? His name is Cædmon Aisquith.’
‘Whatever.’
On the verge of informing her travelling companion that she despised that dismissive expression, she instead gazed out of the window. It’d been nearly two decades since she’d last been in Paris, fabled city of wine, art, gargoyles and some of the best darned ice cream she’d ever eaten. Although she seriously doubted that a trip to the Berthillon ice-cream shop was on Finn McGuire’s itinerary.
As their taxi made its way along the heavily trafficked Quai de la Tournelle, Finn craned his neck to peer out of the side window. His first sign of interest in the passing scenery.
‘Is it just me? Or do those flying buttresses make the old dame look like a carcass that’s been picked clean by the buzzards?’
‘Are you always so irreverent?’ Kate retorted, wondering if there was anything that Finn McGuire deemed sacred.
‘I don’t laugh at funerals, if that’s what you’re asking.’
It wasn’t.
‘I asked the question because you seem immune to the beauty of Paris,’ she clarified. ‘Most people are rendered awestruck at seeing Notre-Dame for the very first time.’
Clearly not one of those people, Finn shrugged. ‘I boogie to my own tune. So why Japan?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ She shook her head, wondering if something had got lost in translation.
‘You mentioned that your folks had taken a trip to Japan.’
‘I mentioned that two days ago. You’re only now getting around to asking the follow-up question?’
The retort elicited another shrug. ‘What can I say? Been busy.’
‘To answer your belated question, my parents are participating in the annual Shikoku Hachijuhakkasho.’
‘What the hell is –’
‘It’s a Japanese pilgrimage,’ she interjected, beating him to the punch. ‘It’s a two-month-long walking tour of eighty-eight different Shingon Buddhist temples. When I was a kid, we used to go every summer.’
His big shoulders noticeably shook, the man barely able to contain his mirth. ‘So let me make sure I got this straight: you fly in an airplane more than five thousand miles so you can walk for sixty days. And I thought we had it bad at Catholic Teen Retreat.’ Finn’s umber-brown eyes twinkled merrily.
‘I never said I enjoyed it. In fact, every summer I pleaded with my folks to go to Disneyland.’ But she always ended up on Shikoku Island, attired in white cotton garments and a straw sedge hat, the traditional garb of a Shikoku pilgrim.
‘I take it your folks are Japanese?’
‘My mother is half-Japanese.’ The product of an interracial marriage at a time in America’s history when the Japanese were persona non grata.
‘So, you’re – what? – a Buddhist?’
‘I used to be a Buddhist.’
Disinclined to answer any more ‘follow-up’ questions, Kate swung her knapsack on to her lap and busied herself with rummaging through its contents. As she did so, she quietly counted her breaths, focusing on each inhalation and exhalation. Right concentration. Refusing to let her mind wander to that horrific night when her Buddhist beliefs regarding ‘acceptance’ were utterly and irrevocably shattered, when she learned firsthand that there are some things that the heart can never accept.
‘Hey, Kate. You okay?’ Reaching across the seat, Finn lightly grasped her by the wrist. ‘You look like you just chugged a glass of sour milk.’
‘I’m fine.’ Although it sounded like her voice, it was as if someone else was speaking the words for her.
‘Well, you don’t look fine.’
The cabbie peered over his shoulder. ‘C’est rue de la Bûcherie. Quelle est l’addresse?’
Grateful for the diversion, Kate said, ‘Je ne sais pas. Arrêtez-vous ici.’ Turning towards Finn, she translated the exchange. ‘Since I don’t know the exact street address, I told him to let us out here.’
Fare paid, they got out of the taxi. Peering over the top of her blue-tinted granny glasses, she could see that the Left Bank neighbourhood was a medieval warren of tiny one-way streets.
Finn glanced up from the Paris street map that he’d earlier purchased at the train station. ‘The rules for survival in the city are no different than those for the jungle, or the mountains, or the desert. Blend in with the environment. And no sudden moves. If you see a cop, hear a cop, or smell a cop, act natural. Don’t give ’em a reason to question you.’
Her breath caught in her throat. ‘Wh-why would the police want to question us?’ she stammered. ‘Do you think the authorities have tracked us to Paris?’
‘No, I don’t think that. But it’s always good to be cautious, right?’
About to nod her head, she caught herself in mid-motion, uncertain if a nod constituted a ‘sudden move’.
They’d gone approximately one block when Kate spotted a brightly painted shop sign with the name ‘L’Equinoxe’ in gold lettering. Beneath that was an image of the Fool, the first card in the Tarot deck. The age-old symbol for infinite possibilities.
‘There’s Cædmon’s bookstore, just a few doors down.’
Several moments later, standing at the entryway, Kate frowned. A small white placard with the word ‘Fermé’ hung crookedly on the other side of the glass door. Behind that, a green curtain had been drawn, preventing her from seeing inside the shop. Turning the door knob, she verified that the shop was, indeed, closed.
‘Do you wanna come back when the bookstore opens?’
Unsure, she glanced at her Seiko watch: 9.26. Local time.
‘Actually, I think it’s best if we seize the bull –’ she banged on the wooden door frame with a balled fist – ‘by the proverbial horns.’
Several moments passed. Again, Kate banged on the door. A bit more forcibly this time.
‘The bookshop is closed!’ a distinctly English voice boomed from the other side of the locked door.
‘It’s important that we speak with you,’ Kate said through the glass.
‘Je m’en fou! La librairie est fermé! Casse-toi maintenant! ’
Worriedly biting her lower lip, she glanced at Finn. ‘He insists that the shop is closed.’ She didn’t bother to translate the profane preface and postscript that bracketed the announcement.
‘Are you sure that’s even Engelbert standing on the other side of the door?’
‘Oh, yes, I’m sure.’ She’d recognize that well-articulated voice anywhere. Refusing to call retreat, Kate again rapped on the pane. ‘Cædmon, please open the door. It’s important that I speak with you.’
The entreaty worked, the deadbolt lock was released and the shop door swung open. A man, nearly as tall as Finn, with shoulder-length red hair, filled the entryway. Not only was his stained shirt completely unbuttoned, the tails limply hanging against a pair of corduroy trousers, but his feet were bare.
‘Kate? Is that you?’
‘Hello, Cædmon.’ She pasted a cordial smile on to her lips. A vision of grace under pressure.
Blood-shot blue eyes narrowed. ‘You have some bloody nerve, showing up on my doorstep.’
20
‘May we please come inside, Cædmon?’
Mockingly sweeping his arm aside, the red-headed Brit gestured for Finn and Kate to enter the bookshop. ‘By all means. Mi casa, su casa.’
As he stepped across the threshold, Finn sized up their ‘host’, instantly pegging the guy for a prick of the first order. Cædmon Aisquith. Hell, he could barely say it, let alone spell it. Standing approximately six foot three, Aisquith had the lean, rangy build of a long-distance runner. And the ashen, hollow-eyed look of an insomniac. That or the English dude was coming off one helluva bender.
Finn removed his Oakley sunglasses and hooked them on the collar of his T-shirt. Perusing the joint, he wondered how Aisquith made a living. Granted, he didn’t know a lot about the book trade, but common sense told him that a dark, unkempt shop wasn’t the kind of place that attracted a clientele. Who the hell liked the smell of mildew? Not only were the floor-to-ceiling bookcases covered in a visible layer of dust, there were unwieldy stacks of books haphazardly arranged on the floor, just waiting for an unsuspecting customer to plough into. To quote his great-uncle Seamus, the place was ‘a slipshod shipwreck’.
Kate cleared her throat. Probably because, like Finn, she’d just swallowed a mouthful of dust motes. ‘Gosh … it’s been a long time. No doubt you’re surprised to see me.’
Aisquith folded his arms over his chest. ‘Baffled to say the least. In your lettre de rupture you succinctly stated that you never wanted to see me again.’
‘I sent that letter sixteen years ago,’ Kate retorted, an exasperated edge to her voice. ‘In hindsight, conveying those sentiments in a letter was terribly unfair to you. However, I was young and inexperienced.’
‘A poor excuse, given the nature of our relationship.’
Standing ringside, Finn quickly gathered that Kate had once shacked up with the dishevelled bookstore owner, and the prick was still royally pissed off that she’d given him the shaft. You go, girl.
‘And including those lines of poetry from Yeats was unconscionable,’ the prick continued. ‘ “In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned; Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned.” ’
Finn sidled a few steps closer to Kate, a show of moral support. ‘I don’t know. Sounds like a classy “Dear John” letter to me.’
‘And who might you be?’
‘The name’s Finn McGuire. I’m Kate’s new BFF.’ He didn’t bother extending his hand.
The Brit gave him the once-over. ‘A diminutive of Finnegan, I take it?’
Sorely tempted to tell Aisquith where he could shove it after he took it, Finn belligerently tilted his chin. ‘What can I say? My mother had a wicked dark humour.’
‘She must have, to have named you after a dead character in a James Joyce novel. But that’s the Irish for you.’
‘Irish-American,’ he corrected.
‘Mmmm … indeed.’
What the fuck did that mean?
‘So, to what do I owe this unexpected visit?’
Kate hesitated, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. ‘I, um, need your help, Cædmon. I’ve just made a long, arduous journey and –’ Eyes bloodshot, cheeks flushed, she stared pleadingly at her old swain. By anyone’s standard, she looked plenty pitiful. ‘Please, Cædmon. I didn’t know where else to go.’
Hearing that, the red-headed Brit instantly dropped the sarcastic attitude. Like he’d just had a deathbed conversion, he placed a solicitous hand on Kate’s shoulder. ‘Of course. Anything. Christ, I’m such a bastard. Arrow to the heart. Wounded to the quick. All that.’
And Kate complained about him not speaking in full sentences. This Aisquith guy had it down to an art form.
‘I’m sorry. I probably should have called ahead or sent an email, but we’ve been on the run. Figuratively speaking, of course.’ A red splotch instantly materialized on each freckled cheek. Two guilty bull’s eyes.
Removing his hand from Kate’s shoulder, Aisquith waved away the botched apology. ‘Doesn’t matter. For you, the door is always open.’ As he spoke, he glanced down at his unbuttoned shirt. ‘Forgive me. I’ve been under the weather.’ He fumbled with one of the middle buttons. ‘A touch of la grippe, as it were.’ Calling it quits after just the one button, he clapped his hands together. ‘Right. I’ll get us some refreshments. A glass of sherry perhaps?’ No sooner did he make the offer than Aisquith noticed the clock hanging on the adjacent wall. ‘Oh, bloody hell! It’s still morning.’
‘Would it be too much to ask for a cup of tea? I’m in dire need of a pick-me-up.’ Visibly sagging, Kate lowered her knapsack to the floor.
‘No doubt I have a canister somewhere. Please make yourselves comfortable.’ Aisquith gestured distractedly to the two leather wingback chairs shoe-horned between a pair of towering bookcases. Hospitality dispensed, he ambled towards an open door in the back of the shop, disappearing from sight.
With a weary sigh, Kate seated herself in the nearest chair. A wilted flower in a dusty pot.
‘I don’t know how to break it to you, Katie, but your pal looks like one of those guys who lives under the bridge in a cardboard box.’
‘You heard him, he just got over a bout of the flu.’ Though quick to come to the Brit’s defence, her brow furrowed. Like she wasn’t entirely convinced of what she’d just said. ‘While he may not look his best, I’m certain that Cædmon can help us to decipher Jutier’s tattoo as well as the symbols on the Montségur –’
‘Don’t breathe a word about the medallion,’ he interjected, cutting her off at the pass. Although Kate thought that if they deciphered the symbols on the medallion they’d gain some valuable insight, which would help him track down the Dark Angel, he wasn’t entirely convinced. ‘I can’t put my finger on it, but I’ve got a hinky feeling about your ex-boyfriend.’
‘Don’t be so paranoid. Cædmon is utterly harmless. For goodness’ sake, he owns a bookstore.’
‘Speaking of which –’ Craning his neck, Finn glanced at several of the hand-printed tags affixed to the front of the shelves. ‘Let’s see, we got The Illuminati, The Knights Templar and something called The Merovingian Bloodline.’ He turned towards a second bookcase. ‘Ooh, here’s a good section: Extraterrestrials, Alien Abductions and, not to be excluded, The Faery People.’ Smirking, he glanced at his companion. ‘We’re talking conspiracy theorist of the first magnitude. What do you wanna bet Aisquith wears an aluminium foil shower cap?’
Kate shot him a chiding frown.
Point made, Finn walked over to the front door and pulled back the curtain that hung at the glass. Standing stock still, he perused the street in front of the bookstore. Little more than a single lane, the jumble of old-fashioned shops looked like something out of another time period.
While he had no proof, he had a gut feeling that Dixie and Johnny K’s murderer was here in Paris. Somewhere. And I aim to find him.
‘So long as the authorities don’t get a hold of my ass,’ Finn muttered under his breath, able to hear a police siren bleating in the near distance. Between the flight crew at Dover and the airmen at Mildenhall, too many people knew that he’d left the US in a very unusual manner. Some people would do anything for a buck. And that included ratting out ‘a buddy’.
We can’t blow this joint fast enough.
Finn let the curtain fall back into place. Turning on his heel, he walked back to the niche.
‘A cup of tea. A little chitchat. Then we’re getting the hell out of here,’ he said to Kate in a lowered voice. ‘And don’t volunteer anything. Just follow my lead, okay?’
‘Whatever,’ she retorted testily, beginning to look and sound like a cranky kid on a long trip.
She wasn’t the only cranky one. From the get-go, Finn had been opposed to bringing Kate Bauer to Paris. She was a distraction, plain and simple. But he knew that if he’d left her in DC, she’d likely wind up dead.
For better or worse, sickness and in health, she’d become a 115-pound anchor around his neck.
21
Musée de la Vie Romantique, Paris
Ivo Uhlemann slowly ascended the stone steps, his circumspect gait that of a white-haired septuagenarian. Physical debility a character flaw in a man of any age, he refused to use a cane. And he would rather put a bullet through his own skull than be pushed about in a wheelchair, his infirmities on public display.
Pausing at the top of the stone steps, he savoured the delicate scent of the pink roses that clung to the wrought-iron railing. The Museum of the Romantic Life boasted a magnificent garden and charming courtyard. Housed in the former residence of Ary Scheffer, a nineteenth-century artist, the mansion in its heyday had hosted the likes of Chopin, Dickens and Delacroix. He was there on that warm August morning to view the museum’s new exhibition of drawings and watercolours from ‘The Golden Age of the German Romantic Artists’.
No sooner did Ivo step through the museum’s entryway than a pixie of a man rushed forward.
‘Bonjour, Monsieur le Docteur!’ Grasping Ivo by the shoulder, the museum curator warmly greeted him with the salutary cheek kiss. ‘Such a pleasure! As always!’
Ivo suffered the faire le bise with a tight-lipped smile. It’d taken years of practice to train himself not to flinch at the overly familiar French greeting.
Taking a backward step, politely distancing himself from the other man, he said, ‘I am greatly looking forward to viewing the new exhibition.’
‘The French poet Nerval rightly claimed that Germany’s Romantic artists were “a mother to us all”,’ the curator effused. With an ingratiating smile, he proffered a slim pamphlet. ‘For your edification, I have prepared a pamphlet that contains the pertinent details for each work. It is my sincere hope that you enjoy the exhibition, Monsieur le Docteur.’
Ivo took the flyer. A generous donor, he’d earned the privilege of privately viewing the exhibition before the museum opened later that morning to the general public. Eager to see the show, he entered the adjacent hall.
Approaching the first framed piece of artwork, enthusiasm fizzled into disappointment at seeing a pen-and-ink drawing of a Gothic cathedral.
Bah! Religion. The great destroyer of all that is good and heroic.
Indeed, he’d often contended that one of the Führer’s mistakes was not outlawing the Christian churches in Germany. A global pestilence, Christianity appealed only to those who were too craven to forge their own destiny. Although, to be fair, Christianity was no less abhorrent than the occultism that infected the Reich’s high command, the two being the flipside of the same tarnished coin.
His father, in his letters, had bitterly complained about the farcical ‘rituals’ that took place at Wewelsburg Castle, the official headquarters of the SS. According to his father’s firsthand accounts, incense was burned, Tarot cards were read, Sufi Muslim rites were enacted and astrological charts were carefully scrutinized. A travesty, all of it. One that deeply disturbed the original members of the Seven. Scholars and scientists, they secretly eschewed the patently absurd beliefs of the German high command.
To a man, the original Seven contended that occultism and Christianity were the twin cancers that destroyed the Reich from within.
Searching for a specific piece of art, Ivo impatiently made his way into the next room.
Ah, there it was. The Schneegruben Massif Seen From the Hainbergshöh.
A watercolour by Caspar David Friedrich, the most famous of the German Romantic artists, it was a stunning landscape that depicted a flat plain rimmed with plush clumps of shrub and bordered by towering mountains in the distance. Rendered with a poetic sensitivity, the work didn’t rely on the false promise of Christian iconography.
‘Such a sublime pleasure,’ he whispered, the watercolour an unabashed celebration of the Fatherland.
Not surprisingly, it put Ivo in mind of the countryside in the Weserbergland where he spent the autumn of 1944 with boys from the Hitler-Jugend harvesting sugar beets. As part of the Blood and Soil programme, each year millions of children were sent to Germany’s rural hinterlands to toil on large farms. Since the vast majority of the country’s able-bodied adult males were away fighting, the Hitler Youth’s labour was essential to the war effort.
The Blood and Soil programme not only cultivated the virtues of rural living, but sought to preserve Germany’s farming communities from the deadening onslaught of industrialization. Unlike factory work, there was meaning and purpose to working the land. It engendered a sense of self-sufficiency that enabled one to resist the empty lure of materialism. More importantly, the programme recognized that the Germanic spirit was created by the pure blood that they collectively shared as a nation. And as a People. Blood is what nurtured love of the Fatherland. What better way to express that love than tending to the land?
Lost in the memories of that long-ago autumn, Ivo recalled how, in the evenings, after the boys had eaten their thick peasant sandwiches smeared with zuckerrüben sirup, they practised their military drills while they recited proverbs from the Hávámal, the famous poem in the Old Norse Edda. To this day, he could still recite the stanzas that recounted how Wotan, the great Proto-Germanic god, sacrificed himself by thrusting a spear into his own side as he ‘hung on a windy tree nine long nights’. Unlike the effeminate Christian saviour, Wotan was a heroic god who refused to wait passively for his enemies to nail him to a cross. Instead, Wotan decided for himself the hour of his death.
Suddenly hearing a heavy footfall, Ivo peered over his shoulder, annoyed that his driver, Dolf Reinhardt, had entered the salon. The tailored black suit with its matching chauffeur’s cap did little to disguise the man’s massive build and brutish features. In the crook of his right arm, Dolf awkwardly clutched a miniature Schnauzer.
‘Herr Doktor, forgive me for interrupting,’ he said with a diffident nod. ‘But there’s been a new development.’
Ivo listened intently to the update.
Delighted to hear that McGuire was in Paris, one side of his mouth curved in a half-smile. ‘Just as we thought … David has come to slay Goliath.’
Little did the commando know that this Philistine warrior was insuperable.
Two days ago, to the Seven’s astonished relief, they had learned that Finnegan McGuire had stolen Fabius Jutier’s laptop computer from the French Embassy. An ill-considered stratagem as the embedded GPS microchip had enabled them to track the American’s every move.
If they could get their hands on the Montségur Medallion in the next few hours, they would still have three days to decipher the map and find the Lapis Exillis. It could be done.
It had to be done.
‘I require the services of the Dark Angel.’ Still smiling, Ivo smoothed a withered hand over the Schnauzer’s salt-and-pepper beard. ‘Wolfgang seems anxious. A walk in the Tuileries will do us both good.’
22
Shirt buttoned, shoes donned and red hair pulled into a ponytail, Aisquith entered the book nook carrying a silver tray.
Finn assumed the make-over was for Kate’s benefit, not his.
‘The alchemist Paracelsus claimed that lemon balm tea was the elixir of life. Although given that he only lived to the age of forty-eight, I wouldn’t put much stock in the great alchemist’s lofty claim,’ the Brit said as he deposited the tray on an ornately carved Chinese tea table. Like everything else in the joint, it was covered in a dusty veneer.
Making herself at home, Kate tucked a leg under her hip. ‘I once read that Paracelsus was the first to discover that goiters were caused by toxic levels of lead in the drinking water. A remarkable discovery for the early sixteenth century,’ she added, clearly enthralled by the obscure topic.
Their host handed each of them a dainty cup and saucer.
Having no friggin’ idea who Paracelsus was, Finn raised the cup to his nose and took a wary sniff. Unable to detect anything other than a faint lemony scent, he took a tentative sip.
‘I hope the scones aren’t too stale,’ the other man said as he extended a chipped plate in Kate’s direction.
‘Yummy. Cherry scones are my favourite. And I don’t care if they are stale.’
Smiling, Aisquith peered over his shoulder at Finn. ‘I vividly recall the first time that I set eyes on our fair Kate at Oxford. She was sitting in a medieval oriel reading Spinoza, backlit by the morning sun streaming through three-hundred-year-old glass.’
Stunned by the jaw-dropper, Finn shot Kate a questioning glance. ‘You went to Oxford?’
‘I was a, um, Rhodes Scholar,’ she demurred. As though embarrassed by the admission, she smiled nervously.
A Rhodes Scholar? Hell, he knew she was smart. He just didn’t know she was that smart. For some crazy-ass reason, it upped her appeal another notch. That he was even remotely attracted to Kate Bauer bothered the hell out of him. He was on a mission. He did not need a distraction. But there it was, all curled up in a wingback chair, nibbling on a cherry scone. The fact that he was attracted to Kate made him dislike Aisquith even more. Once upon a time, the two of them had had an intimate relationship. Something he only got to dream about.
Cup, saucer and scone in hand, Aisquith planted his ass in the vacant wingback. ‘So, how may I be of assistance?’
‘Actually, Kate and I are, um –’ In need of a quick lie, Finn glanced around the dusty shop. Inspired, he said ‘– collaborating on a book.’
One red brow noticeably lifted.
‘Yes! That’s right!’ Kate exclaimed, exuberantly latching on to the lie. ‘And during the course of our research we discovered some interesting symbols that we hoped you might be able to decipher.’
‘Indeed?’ The brow lowered as blood-shot eyes narrowed suspiciously. While he looked like a skewered shit kebob, the Brit didn’t miss a beat.
Stepping over to the tea table, Finn snagged a cherry scone off the plate. ‘According to my writing partner, you’re the go-to guy when it comes to symbols and myths. A real Oxford don.’
‘Ghosts of genius past,’ Aisquith mumbled as he took a sip of his tea. ‘And what, may I ask, is the topic of this joint literary effort?’
‘Like Kate said, we’re still in the research phase,’ Finn hedged. As he spoke, he shoved a hand into his left trouser pocket, retrieving his phone. Out of habit he always kept his cash and cell phone on the left side, freeing his right hand to reach for a weapon. Or to be used as a weapon if need be. ‘This is a digital photo of a tattoo. Don’t ask the name of the tattoo model; we never did get a positive ID.’ He passed his cell phone to Aisquith.
‘Mmmm … interesting. This tattoo is a Nazi design rooted in the esoteric,’ Aisquith intoned, setting the cell phone on top of the Chinese table. ‘While I get the odd request for books on esoteric Nazism, I refuse to stock them. Matter of principle. My grandfather was one of the prosecuting attorneys at Nuremberg.’
Finn spared a quick glance at his ‘writing partner’. Back in DC, Kate had made the same claim about the tattoo, thinking it might have something to do with the esoteric. He thought now what he did then – big crock of shit.
‘The horrific particulars of Nazi history are familiar enough,’ Aisquith continued. ‘In the aftermath of the First World War, the National Socialist Party rose to power, an embittered firebrand by the name of Adolf Hitler at the helm. The mustachioed Führer envisioned a new world order ruled by the Aryan master race. His egomaniacal ambitions led to the invasion of Europe; his demonization of the Jews led to the terrors of the Holocaust.’ As he spoke, Aisquith reached for the teapot and freshened Kate’s cup. ‘When all was said and done, the death toll stood at sixty million. But there is another chapter to the story, one frequently absent from the history books. And that pertains to the little-known fact that a good many of the Nazi top command were adherents of the occult.’
Hearing the word ‘occult’, Finn barely repressed a snicker. Time to roll out the aluminium foil.
‘Several years ago, I saw a documentary that claimed Hitler used a Foucault pendulum suspended over large maps to assist with military planning.’ Kate raised the delicate teacup to her lips and took a ladylike sip.
‘No surprise there. Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Hess, they all had an obsession with the occult. Although none in the top echelon was as deeply devoted to the arcane mysteries as Heinrich Himmler.’ Holding the teapot aloft, Aisquith inclined his head in Finn’s direction.
Unimpressed with Paracelsus’s secret elixir, Finn shook his head, declining the refill. ‘You’re talking about the bespectacled dude who headed up the SS, right?’
One side of Aisquith’s mouth quirked upward in a blatant sneer. ‘Yes, that dude.’ Put-down issued, he turned his attention back to Kate, the sneer instantly reworking itself into a congenial smile. ‘The SS, as you undoubtedly know, was an elite organization within the Nazi hierarchy responsible for the internal security of the entire regime.’
‘And what the hell does any of this have to do with the tattoo?’ Finn snarled, wishing the Brit would stay on point.
‘As these symbols so vividly illustrate, Nazism is far more than a political doctrine.’ Aisquith picked up the cell phone from the table. ‘This symbol that dominates the centre of the design is unique to German occult beliefs. Known as the Schwarze Sonne, or Black Sun, it’s a sun wheel comprised of zigzag sig-runes. While it harkens to the star Sirius, it’s a mysterious orb often described in the esoteric literature as a prima materia mass.’
‘How utterly fascinating.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Glad we got that settled,’ Finn muttered under his breath. ‘What about the skull? Nothing mystical about that bad boy.’
‘On the contrary,’ Aisquith retorted. ‘The German totenkoph, or Death Head as it’s more familiarly called in English, connotes the willingness to lay down one’s life to defend one’s comrade. The totenkoph insignia always adorned the uniforms of the Schutzstaffel.’
‘Just so I don’t feel like I wandered into a German language class, can we stick with the mother tongue?’
‘As you like,’ the other man replied, oblivious to the fact that he was annoying as hell.
‘So this tattoo has something to do with the SS. Is that right?’ Kate enquired.
‘The Ahnenerbe, to be precise; both the Death Head and the Black Sun emblem are significant to that organization. I suspect that this tattoo may have originally designated membership. That said, the individual in the digital photograph is obviously a twenty-first-century Nazi devotee.’ Aisquith turned his head, pointedly looking in Finn direction. ‘A personal acquaintance of yours?’
Finn’s back straightened, his hands involuntarily clenching into fists. About to ask the Brit if he wanted to take it outside, Kate beat him to the punch.
‘What’s the Ahnenerbe?’ she asked. Brows drawn together, her gaze dropped to Finn’s balled fists.
Recognizing that grey-blue gaze as a silent entreaty, Finn uncurled his hands.
‘All in all, the Ahnenerbe is a rather fascinating group,’ Aisquith replied. ‘After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Himmler subdivided the SS into numerous sections. The Ahnenerbe was the academic and scientific branch of the SS. What we today would refer to as a think tank. Unfortunately, the Ahnenerbe’s vast archive disappeared in the waning days of the war. Whether destroyed or hidden is anyone’s guess.’
‘And how does the Black Sun relate to the Ahnenerbe?’ Kate next asked, on the fast track to becoming the teacher’s pet.
‘Bearing in mind that the Ahnenerbe was the scientific corps of the SS, its members believed that an invisible universal force known as Vril could be created using the astral energy from the Black Sun.’ Leaning towards Kate, making like a man about to impart a big secret, Aisquith continued in a lowered voice, ‘During the last years of the war, Nazi scientists in the Ahnenerbe were desperately trying to generate the Vril force in order to weaponize it.’
‘And what? Make an invisible ray gun?’ Finn snorted derisively. ‘Gimme a break! This just proves what I already knew about the Nazis: You can fool some of the people all of the time and those are the morons you want to actively recruit.’
‘While I find Nazism a repugnant doctrine, no one can accuse their scientists of being anything less than brilliant,’ Aisquith asserted, quick to defend himself. ‘German physicists were convinced that if they could generate the Vril force, they could use it as an alternative energy source to power their war machine, the Germans fast running out of oil. Desperate, Nazi physicists were actively developing a technology to use the Vril force to power flying saucers and –’
‘Hate to interrupt the lecture, but we’ve got a late-morning appointment on the other side of town,’ Finn interjected, worried that if they stayed much longer, Aisquith would pull out his aluminium foil space suit.
‘Oh, so sorry,’ the other man mumbled disappointedly. ‘Perhaps we can continue the conversation later in the day.’
‘That’s a wonderful –’
‘Unfortunately, we got a full schedule,’ Finn said over the top of Kate, effectively drowning her out.
‘Mmmm … a pity that.’ The Brit shoved a hand into his trouser pocket. Removing a chrome-plated key, he handed it wordlessly to Finn.
‘Let me guess? Key to the city.’
‘A motor scooter that’s parked in the back alley,’ Aisquith informed him. ‘I couldn’t help but notice that you arrived on foot.’
Beaming, Kate walked over and, going up on her tiptoes, kissed him on his unshaven cheek. ‘Thank you, Cædmon. That’s very generous.’
‘Yes, well, shame that you couldn’t stay longer. I hadn’t even got to the Nordic runes that rim the periphery of the tattoo.’
Finn pocketed the scooter key. ‘Another time.’ Place. And century.
23
‘ “I hope the skahns aren’t too stale,” ’ Finn mimicked in an exaggerated English accent as they made their way to the alley behind the bookstore. ‘Jesus, talk about a pompous ass.’
‘Your rudeness knows no bounds,’ Kate shot back, clearly miffed. ‘Where do you get off saying those kind of things? You don’t even know Cædmon.’
‘Trust me. That guy was an open book. Yeah, pun intended. And who was being rude?’ Finn raised an imaginary teacup to his lips, pinky finger crooked. ‘One lump or two, Lord Percy?’
‘You are such a Neanderthal!’
Just to prove Kate wrong, he cupped a gentlemanly hand around her elbow, ushering her down a dim alley. The sunless passageway was strewn with empty crates and bits of broken glass, not a soul in sight. Unless you counted the scrawny tabby who hissed its displeasure at the intrusion.
‘My old Oxford pal, Professor Higgins, is a serious scholar. Isn’t that what you told me back in DC?’
‘Cædmon Aisquith is a highly educated man who –’
‘Happens to be a wingnut. And if he’s not a wingnut, then the guy is a hardcore, straight-shooting alki.’ With his free hand, Finn hefted an imaginary liquor bottle to his lips. ‘Glug, glug, glug. Bottoms up.’
‘Because a man opens the front door with an unbuttoned shirt and mussed hair, you automatically jump to a preposterous conclusion.’
‘All I know, it’s hard to play the lute when you’re on the juice. What do you wanna bet that last night Engelbert was three sheets, two pillowslips and a big blanket to the wind?’
‘And in case you didn’t notice, Cædmon has a brilliant mind. Certainly puts you to shame,’ Kate muttered under her breath as she shrugged off his hand.
‘I don’t need to be an Einstein. All I need is a loaded weapon and –’
‘A clear shot. I know. I’ve heard that line before.’
‘Excuse me for being redundant.’ Suddenly, without warning, Finn yanked Kate over to a nearby stone wall. ‘Shh,’ he ordered in a lowered voice, reiterating the command with a finger to the lip.
Hit with a creepy feeling – like maybe they were being followed – he cocked his head to one side and listened, trying to pick out the sound that didn’t belong. A footfall. An in-drawn breath. A gun being cocked.
On high alert, he silently counted to ten. Reaching ‘ten’, he relaxed slightly.
‘You said that the authorities didn’t follow us to Paris,’ Kate whispered, wide-eyed.
I only said that so you wouldn’t be scared.
Finn pushed out a deep breath. ‘All right, I think the coast is clear. Let’s roll.’
Seeing a rusty blue Vespa that looked like it’d seen better days, Finn headed in that direction, Kate following in his wake.
‘So what’s on the agenda?’
He shoved a hand into his pocket and removed the key. ‘According to Fabius Jutier’s calendar, tomorrow morning the Seven will be meeting at their headquarters at the Grande Arche. I intend to crash the party. All of this shit about mystical energy and mad scientists weaponizing Vril is a waste of my valuable time. I already know that I’m dealing with a bunch of fanatics. And, like any fanatic cult, the Seven probably has some crazy-ass agenda.’
‘My point exactly.’
Standing beside the Vespa, they stood toe-to-toe, like two fighters at the opening bell. Decked out in a white cotton T-shirt, generic running shoes and khaki pants cropped at mid-calf, Kate more closely resembled a suburban soccer mom than a badass contender.
‘Knowing the Seven’s crazy-ass agenda isn’t going to help me find the Dark Angel.’
‘What if the Seven Research Foundation is a modern-day Ahnenerbe?’
At that close range, literally inches apart, Finn could smell Kate’s ‘perfume’ – an uninspiring mix of Combat Bath and lemon balm tea – which, for some strange reason, he found oddly appealing.
He shrugged. ‘I’d say big whup. I came to Paris to find the murdering scumbag who killed my two buddies. For Christ’s sake, Kate! The guy was talking about flying saucers.’
‘Not only was Cædmon a gracious host, he did us a very big favour,’ Kate retorted with surprising force. ‘There aren’t many people who would drop everything and give us their full, undivided attention. But instead of being appreciative, the entire time we were at L’Equinoxe you behaved like a –’
‘Neanderthal. I know. I’ve heard that line before. But don’t give me an ass-chewing just because I wouldn’t cross over to the dork side with you and Red Rover.’ Admittedly pissed off, Finn held his ground. ‘I don’t think you get it, Kate. I did not cross the Atlantic in the hull of a supply plane so we could attend a tea party with your old buddy Aisquith. Back in Washington, I promised that I would protect you from harm. Provided you don’t distract me from my mission. As far as I’m concerned, the Montségur Medallion is nothing more than a bargaining chip that I can trade for the Dark Angel.’
‘So that you can clear your name.’
‘No. So that I can get Corporals Dixon and Kelleher justice in a court of law.’ Needing to make sure that she understood just how serious he was about doing that, he let her have it with both barrels. ‘Those two guys selflessly did the dirty work that nobody else wants to do but has to be done to keep this freaking world safe from monsters, despots and terrorists. And they did their job not for glory or an attaboy pat on the back. They did it because they loved their country. So I’m going to make sure that they didn’t die in vain.’
ТЕЛЕГРАМКанал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками
Книжный Вестник
Бот для удобного поиска книг (если не нашлось на сайте)
Поиск книг
Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах
Любовные романы
О психологии, саморазвитии и личностном росте
Саморазвитие
Детективы и триллеры, все новинки
Детективы
Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки
Фантастика
Отборные классические книги
Классика
ВКОНТАКТЕБиблиотека с любовными романами, которая наверняка придётся по вкусу женской части аудитории
Любовные романы
Библиотека с фантастикой и фэнтези, а также смежных жанров
Фантастика
Самые популярные книги в формате фб2
Топ фб2
книги