The Charlemagne Pursuit

FIFTY-TWO

MALONE INVESTIGATED OSSAU'S FOUR INNS AND CONCLUDED THAT L'Arlequin would be the correct choice-all mountain austerity on the outside but elegant on the inside, decorated for Christmas with aromatic pine, a carved nativity scene, and mistletoe over the doors. The proprietor pointed out the guest book-which, he explained, contained the names of all of the famous Pyrenean explorers, along with many nineteenth-and twentieth-century notables. Its restaurant served a wonderful monkfish casserole diced with ham, so he'd enjoyed an early lunch and lingered for over an hour, waiting, finally savoring a log-shaped cake made of chocolate and chestnuts. When his watch read eleven AM he decided that he may have chosen wrong.

He learned from the waiter that St. Lestelle closed for the winter, and opened only from May to August to accommodate visitors who flocked to the area to enjoy the summer highlands. Not much there, the man said, mostly ruins. Some restoration work occurred each year, financed by the local historical society and encouraged by the Catholic diocese. Other than that, the site remained quiet.

He decided a visit was in order. Night would come quickly, certainly by five, so he needed to take advantage of what daylight remained.

He left the inn armed, three rounds left in the gun. He estimated that the temperature was in the low twenties. No ice, but lots of dry snow that crunched like cereal beneath his boots. He was glad he'd bought the boots earlier in Aachen, knowing that he was headed into some rough terrain. A new sweater beneath his jacket kept his chest extra warm. Tight leather gloves sheathed his hands.

He was ready.

For what?

He wasn't sure.

STEPHANIE WAITED FOR HERBERT ROWLAND TO ANSWER HER question about what had happened in 1971.

"I don't owe those bastards a thing," Rowland muttered. "I kept my oath. Never said a word. But they still came to kill me."

"We need to know why," she said.

Rowland inhaled oxygen. "It was the damnedest thing. Ramsey came to the base, picked me and Sayers, and said we were going to Antarctica. We were all special ops, used to weird things, but this was the strangest. That's a long way from home." He savored another breath. "We flew to Argentina, climbed aboard Holden, and stayed to ourselves. We were told to sonar-search for a pinger, but we never heard a thing until we finally went ashore. That's when Ramsey donned his gear and dove into the water. He came back about fifty minutes later."

"What did you find?" Rowland asked, helping Ramsey from the frozen sea, his grip tight on one shoulder of the dry suit, lifting man and equipment onto the ice.

Nick Sayers tugged on the other shoulder. "Anything there?"

Ramsey slipped off his faceplate and hood. "Cold as a Siberian ditch digger's fanny down there. Even with this suit. Hell of a dive, though."

"You were down nearly an hour. Any depth problems?" Rowland asked.

Ramsey shook his head. "I stayed above thirty feet the whole time." He pointed off to the right. "The ocean juts a long way up there, straight to the mountain."

Ramsey removed his underwater gloves and Sayer handed him a dry pair. Bare skin could not stay exposed more than a minute in this environment. "I need to get this suit off and my clothes back on."

"Anything there?" Sayers asked again.

"Some damn clear water. Place is full of color, like a coral reef."

Rowland realized they were being ignored, but he also noticed a sealed retrieval bag clipped at Ramsey's waist. The bag had been empty fifty minutes ago. Now it held something.

"What's in there?" he asked.

"He didn't answer me," Rowland whispered. "And he wouldn't let me or Sayers touch the bag."

"What happened after that?" she asked.

"We left. Ramsey was in charge. We made some more radiation checks, found nothing, then Ramsey ordered Holden to head north. He never said a word about what he saw on that dive."

"I don't get it," Davis said. "How are you a threat?"

The older man licked his lips. "Probably because of what happened on the way back."

Rowland and Sayers were taking a chance. Ramsey was topside with Commander Alexander, playing cards with some of the other officers. So they'd finally decided to see what their compatriot had found on the dive. Neither of them liked being kept in the dark.

"You sure you know the combination?" Sayers asked.

"The quartermaster told me. Ramsey's been throwing his weight around and this ain't his ship, so he was more than happy to help me out."

A small safe lay on the deck beside Ramsey's rack. Whatever he'd brought up with him after the dive had rested inside for the past three days while they'd left the Antarctic Circle and found the South Atlantic Ocean.

"Keep an eye on the door," he told Sayers. He knelt and tried the combination he'd been provided.

Three clicks confirmed that the numbers worked.

He opened the safe and spotted the retrieval bag. He slid it out and felt its rectangular contours, eight by ten or so, maybe an inch thick. He unzipped the top, slid out the contents, and immediately recognized a ship's logbook. On the first page, scrawled in blue ink with a heavy hand, was written MISSION STARTING OCTOBER 17, 1971, ENDING____________________ . The second date would have been added after the sub docked back in port. But he realized that the captain who'd made those entries would never get that chance.

Sayers came close. "What is it?"

The compartment door swung open.

Ramsey stepped inside. "I thought you two would try something like this."

"Stick it up your ass," Rowland said. "We're all at the same grade. You're not our superior."

A smile curled on Ramsey's black lips. "Actually, I am here. But maybe it's better you went ahead and saw. Now you realize what's at stake."

"You're damn right," Sayers said to him. "We volunteered, just like you, and we want the rewards, just like you."

"Believe it or not," Ramsey said, "I was going to tell you before we docked. There are things to be done and I can't do them alone."

Stephanie wanted to know, "Why was it so important?"

Davis seemed to understand. "It's obvious."

"Not to me."

"The logbook," Rowland said, "came from NR-1A."

MALONE CLIMBED THE ROCKY PATH, LITTLE MORE THAN A THIN shelf that zigzagged every hundred feet up the wooded slope. On one side, wrought-iron stations of the cross spanned out in a solemn procession, on the other the vista below steadily grew into a panorama. Sunshine bathed the precipitous valley, and he noticed, in the distance, deep jagged gorges. Bells far away announced midday.

He was headed for one of the cirques, circles of high precipices set into mountainous pockets, accessible only by foot, common in the Pyrenees. Beech trees sustained the slopes, stunted and twisted, their bare snowy branches interlaced in misshapen knots. He kept watch on the uneven path but noticed no footprints, which meant little given the wind and swirling snow.

A final semicircular sweep and the monastery's entrance, perched on the cirque, rose ahead. He paused for a breath and enjoyed another wide-flung view. Snow, refrigerated by cold gusts of wind, swirled in the distance.

Tall masonry walls stretched left and right. If what he'd read was to be believed, those stones had borne witness to Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, Franks, and the crusaders of the Albigensian wars. Many bat stevetles had been fought for this vantage point. Silence seemed a physical presence, which gave the place a solemn mood. Its history probably lay buried with the dead, the true record of its glory etched neither in stone nor in parchment.

Brightness of God.

More fiction? Or fact?

He walked the remaining fifty feet, approached an iron gate, and spotted a padlocked chain.

Great.

No way to scale the walls.

He reached out and gripped the gate. Cold seeped though his gloves. What now? Scour the perimeter and see if there was an opening? Seemed like the only course. He was tired, and he knew this stage of exhaustion well-the mind easily became lost in a maze of possibilities, every solution meeting a dead end.

He shook the gate in frustration.

The iron chain slithered to the ground.