The Cup

CHAPTER 16

Nick and the others parked down the block from Bergstrom’s house, a single-story home set back from the street in an older residential area. The porch light was out. There were no lights in the windows.

"What do you think?" Nick asked.

"Doesn't look like he's home," Lamont said.

"Maybe he went to bed," Selena said.

Nick looked at his watch. "Pretty early for bed."

They got out of the car and hurried to the porch. Nick tried the handle on the door. It was locked.

"Do your thing, Ronnie."

Ronnie reached for his lock picks and bent over the lock. In seconds the door was open. They slipped inside and shut the door behind them.

They were in an entry hall. Everything was dark. Flashlights clicked on.

"What's that smell?" Selena said. "Like the toilet overflowed."

"Something's wrong here," Nick said.

He reached for his pistol, a move born of long practice. The gun that should have been there was back in Virginia.

They followed the smell to the first room off the hall. Bergstrom lay sprawled on the floor by an overturned chair. A second man lay back in a chair, his mouth open. Dead eyes stared at the ceiling. The stench of blood and feces was overwhelming.

"Whew," Lamont said.

Nick's foot knocked against a vodka bottle on the floor. It rolled away toward the wall.

Ronnie shone his light on the bodies.

"Shot. Two or three times each. Someone wanted to make sure."

Nick scratched his ear. "One of these guys must be Bergstrom."

Lamont bent down over the man on the floor and extracted a wallet.

"This one is Bergstrom."

"Okay. Keep going through their pockets and see what you can find. We'll search the house. Pull the drapes over the windows and turn on a light. Anyone sees, they won’t think anything of it."

"What are we looking for?" Ronnie asked.

"Something to give us an idea of who wanted Bergstrom dead. Anything about those artifacts or a connection to Hussein. Ten minutes, then we're gone."

They started through the house. Nick went into the kitchen. Ronnie took a bedroom. Selena went into what looked like a study. The drapes were closed. There was a desk near the wall and a large closet with louvered doors. Some of the drawers were open, others closed. Papers were scattered on the floor. It looked as if someone had been searching for something and been interrupted.

Selena felt the hair move on the back of her neck.

There's someone here!

The closet doors flew open and a dark shape lunged at her.

She didn't have time to think, but the instant of recognition that she was not alone triggered an adrenaline rush. Years of martial arts training kicked in. The attacker barreled into her.

She met the rush with a half turn and grabbed the front of his coat, pulling him past and leaning into him with her hip. Momentum sent him flying across the room. She went for him, aiming a kick at his head. He was fast, and the kick barely grazed his face. He rolled and came up on his feet with a pistol in his hand and fired.

Selena felt the round burn across her hip. She kicked the gun from his hand and kicked him again in the groin, as hard as she could. He grunted and doubled over. She spun and aimed another kick at his head. This time she didn't miss. He went down like a rock and stopped moving.

Nick ran into the room, looking charged. Ronnie and Lamont were in the hall behind him.

"What happened?" He shone his light down at the man on the floor.

"He was hiding in the closet," Selena said. "I recognize him. His name's Gabriel. He was the translator for Hussein at the refugee center."

"Forsberg is going to love this." Nick looked at Selena. "You're bleeding."

Selena looked down. The bullet had ripped through her jeans along the side of her hip. Blood stained the dark cloth. She started to come down from the adrenaline rush and the wound began throbbing.

"It's only a scratch." She fingered the tear. "Damn. I just bought these before we left."

Nick bent down and laid his fingers against Gabriel's throat. His breathing was harsh, ragged.

"He's still alive, but you put a big dent in the side of his skull."

Ronnie left the room. After a minute he came back with tape and gauze and handed them to Selena.

"Found these in the bathroom."

"Thanks."

"Need help bandaging that up?" Nick asked.

"No, I can do it. It's not serious."

"Ronnie, Lamont, keep checking the rest of the house. I'll start here."

They left the room. Selena unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them down. The bullet had just missed her hip. Two inches lower and she would have been on her way to a hospital with a smashed pelvis and a traumatic wound. As it was, it had dug a bloody groove in her side. She'd be left with another scar for her growing collection. While she improvised a bandage, Nick looked in the closet where the attacker had been hiding.

"There's a safe in here."

He called Ronnie back into the room.

Nick showed him the safe. It was a newer model, about three feet high and two wide.

"It's got a biometric lock," Ronnie said. "Let's get Bergstrom to give us a hand. He won't mind."

They went back to the living room and dragged Bergstrom's body down the hall and over to the closet. Nick took the dead man's hand and tried fingers over the scanner until the tumblers unlocked with a quiet sound.

There were two passports on the top shelf. One was Swedish, in Bergstrom's name. One was German. It had Bergstrom's picture but was in a different name. There was a thick packet of Swedish kroner, next to a Walther P-38. Nick held up the gun.

"You don't see these much, anymore."

"Good pistol. Not his service weapon," Ronnie said.

Lamont came into the room.

"Nothing I could see in the rest of the house," he said.

Selena had finished with the improvised bandage. She looked over Nick's shoulder where he knelt in front of the safe.

Selena pointed at an object in the corner of the safe. "What's that?"

Nick took out a ceramic tile about a foot long. Brilliantly colored pieces of stone formed the image of a man in a long, black robe with a full beard against a white background. He wore a square black cap. In his right hand, he held a wine cup. Three rays of light came out of it. His left hand was at his side, the index finger pointed down at the ground. A set of keys hung from a rope tied around his waist.

Below the figure were two lines written in Latin.

"Looks old," Lamont said. "Must be something Hussein smuggled in."

Nick stood and handed the tile to Selena.

"The style of mosaic looks typical for something done in the fourth or fifth century," she said.

"What does the Latin say?"

"The first line says, 'Anastasius, confessor to the Emperor Theodosius.'"

"And the second line?" Nick asked.

"That says, 'Only a just man shall find him.'"

"Find who?"

"It was probably an injunction to seek Christ." Then she said, "Oh."

"Oh?" Nick said. "Why, oh?"

"Look at the rays of light coming out of the cup. The priest is carrying the Holy Grail."

"The Grail again?"

"It can't be a coincidence, when you combine it with those scrolls. This could be a clue to what happened to the Grail. That would make it worth killing for."

Ronnie said, "ISIS must have found out about the box with the scrolls and now they're looking for it. That would explain who killed these guys."

"How would they find out?" Lamont asked.

"Someone had to tell them," Nick said. "The only people who know about the scrolls except us are Swedish. There must be another bad cop in the mix somewhere. Or someone in the government."

"Forsberg?"

"I don't think so, but I don't know. We'll keep our suspicions to ourselves for now."

Nick took a handful of papers from the safe and handed them to her.

"What do these say?"

She looked through them.

"There's a will and a property deed. Also a marriage certificate from twenty years ago. A birth certificate for a daughter, and a death certificate in the same name, dated four years later."

"What else?"

"A copy of a newspaper article about Bergstrom's wife. She was a well-known artist. Died eight years ago."

"Guy didn't have a happy life," Lamont said.

"Here's something. These are statements from a bank in Andorra." She looked at one of them. "Being a policeman must pay pretty well in Sweden."

"How much does he have?" Nick asked.

"Three hundred thousand in British pounds. This one is dated two months ago."

Lamont whistled. "Guess the antiques business is pretty good."

"Those will help," Nick said. "The money had to come from somewhere. We can follow it back. With luck, we'll ID the buyer."

He laid the bank statements out on the desk.

"Ronnie, get pictures of these. I'll send them to Stephanie and see what she turns up. Get some shots of the tile, too. We have to turn everything over to the Swedes but I don't trust them to keep us in the loop after we leave. I want a record. "

"Let them have the statements but keep the tile," Selena said.

"Why keep it?"

"It might be better if they didn't know about it."

"That your intuition speaking?"

"You just said there must be another corrupt cop or official. What if he's working with ISIS?"

"It's an idea, but I want to play it straight," Nick said. "It's evidence. They'll lock it up."

"I hope you're right," Selena said.

"If I'm not, you can say I told you so."

"I'll get some shots of the guy in the other room while I'm at it. Maybe he's in the database," Ronnie said.

Lamont said, "I found his passport when I went through his pockets. He's Italian. His name is Antonio Bellini. He had a return ticket to Milan, plenty of Italian lira in his wallet and a driver's license in the same name. He's got a fancy gold ring and a Rolex watch. What are we going to do about him?"

Nick took out his phone. "He's Forsberg's problem."

Forsberg and his team arrived twenty minutes later. Gabriel was still breathing. An ambulance carted him away. Forsberg looked down at Bergstrom's body and sighed.

"A foolish man," he said. "He was never the same after his wife died."

He turned toward Nick. "What are you doing here? I thought you were going to spend time enjoying our city. Instead I find you in the home of a murdered officer. Give me a good reason not to arrest you."

Nick was annoyed. "Give me a break. You haven't been playing straight with us. That phone Selena found at the refugee center had a call to Bergstrom on it. You should've told us about it. This was supposed to be a joint operation, remember? We gave you the chance to come clean and you didn't, so we decided to follow up."

"You accessed that phone? It was encrypted."

"It's what we do," Nick said. "Our expertise is why you invited us here in the first place."

"You didn't trust me to tell you?"

"I was right, wasn't I? Look, I understand that everything about this operation is sensitive as hell. One of your ranking police officers was involved in helping ISIS fund their terror campaign. The media will tear you apart if it gets out. There are plenty of reasons your superiors would tell you to keep it away from us."

Forsberg looked embarrassed. "For what it's worth, I was ordered to withhold the information. I argued against it. I thought it was a mistake."

"I'll take that as an apology."

"Bergstrom's partners must have decided he'd become a liability."

"That's what we think. We were wondering if anyone else was involved."

Forsberg sighed again. "If there is, we'll find them. Perhaps the man in the other room was part of it. I'll run him through Interpol."

"We're going back home tomorrow," Nick said. "Will you keep us informed as things develop?"

"I'll make it a personal priority."

On the way back to the hotel Ronnie said, "Do you think he'll keep his word?"

"He strikes me as honest," Nick said, "but it's out of his control. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting to hear from him."

Lamont looked out the window at the snow piled on the side of the road. "I'm getting sick of all this snow. When are we leaving?"

"We'll book a flight out tomorrow," Nick said.