The Nostradamus File

CHAPTER TWO

The new Project headquarters sat on eighty acres of prime countryside in the County of Fairfax, Virginia, within easy commuting distance of the Capitol.

A twelve foot chain link fence all around the property served to keep animals and the curious away. The real security was automated and invisible. The main building looked like a private home. It was vaguely colonial in style, with a columned front porch, white siding and a sloping green shingle roof. False wooden shutters painted green accented the windows.

A wide, paved driveway ran from the entry gate and guard station to the house. Across from the house was a low concrete building with overhead doors. It was empty, a space waiting for a purpose. The drive ended in a cement helipad marked with a wide, yellow circle. Washington and the White House were minutes away by helicopter.

During the Cold War the property had been a Nike missile site, with three 5000 square foot underground magazines of hardened concrete and steel. Two of the magazines had been covered over and landscaped, the only clue to their existence a series of low ventilation pipes rising from the garden and lawn. The house sat over the third.

The previous owner had converted the magazine directly below the house into an emergency second home. It came with a kitchen, bath, bedrooms, swimming pool and independent power supply. The living area served as an operations center. A second magazine housed the Project's Cray computers and communication gear. The third contained a workout room, an armory, and a pistol range. Access to the lower levels was from inside the house, down a spiral staircase. A tool shed in the flower garden outside concealed an emergency exit from below.

Selena and Nick had come straight from the airport. Selena was behind the wheel of her burgundy-colored Mercedes. Nick eyed the house as they drove in. After the old headquarters had been destroyed, Harker had found a more secure location.

"I'm still not used to this," he said. "When Harker said we needed to go underground, I didn't think she meant it literally."

"You have to admit it's great camouflage. Lamont really likes the pool. So do I." Lamont Cameron was part of the team, recruited after he'd left the Navy Seals.

She parked in front of the house. They went up the steps onto the porch. A camera over the entrance tracked them. There was a biometric reader and facial recognition scanner by the door. Selena placed her thumb against the reader and leaned in to the scanner. The door opened with an oiled whisper of retracting bolts.

Director Elizabeth Harker's new office was in the back, on the ground floor. Elizabeth was at her desk, facing out through a wall of French windows onto a wide flower garden. The windows looked like regular windows, but even a fifty caliber round would have trouble getting through them. Elizabeth had decided the risk was worth it. In the old building, she'd been without a window for years.

Harker was a small woman. She was dressed in her usual outfit of black suit and crisp white blouse. She had milk white skin and emerald earrings that picked up the color of her eyes. Her hair was deep black with streaks of gray and white. There was a dimpled scar above her left eye, where an assassin's bullet had failed to kill her.

Nick thought she was the most competent woman he'd ever known. Her looks and small size deceived people who didn't know her into thinking she could be manipulated. It didn't take long for them to find out they were mistaken. Elizabeth Harker was nobody's pawn.

A large, flat screen monitor took up most of one wall in the office. A leather couch and three chairs were arranged near the desk. On Harker's desktop were the Nostradamus file, a pen and pad, and a picture of her father in a silver frame. The picture had replaced a photograph of the Twin Towers on 911, lost with everything else on the day the old headquarters was destroyed.

Elizabeth drew strength from the picture of her father. He'd had a practical way of getting to the heart of any problem with a quote or a quiet conversation. The Judge had died years before, but she still thought of his advice at times when she needed to make a critical decision.

She looked up as Nick and Selena came in. "The French are unhappy," she said. Harker never wasted words

They sat down on the couch.

"Hello to you too," Nick said. "What's their problem?"

"You mean aside from the fact that you put two of their nationals in a hospital and disappeared?"

"I thought it was best if we got out of the country."

"Fortunately for you, the two who attacked you were on Interpol's wanted list. What got the French upset was finding out Bertrand sent a package to your hotel the afternoon he was killed. They want to know what it was."

Elizabeth picked up her new pen. Her silver pen had been lost with everything else in the old office. She'd replaced it with a Mont Blanc, black with the trademark snowcap on the end. She began tapping it on the hard wooden surface of the desk.

"It seems that Selena's friend had some questionable contacts."

"What kind of contacts?" Selena asked.

"There's an underground black market trade in Europe for rare books. Interpol was keeping an eye on Bertrand."

"I don't believe Jean-Paul was dealing in the black market," Selena said. "He was an honest man. His books had provenance. All his contacts were legitimate."

"Not all of them. The police looked through his phone records. He got a call from someone connected to the Union Corse the morning of the day he was killed."

"What's the Union Corse?" Nick asked.

"The French Mafia. They're based in Corsica and Marseille. Big in the narcotics trade, art theft, prostitution, money laundering. The men who went after you were gangsters, members of the mob. It can't be a coincidence."

"You think the Union Corse killed Jean-Paul?"

"Yes. I told the French I'd talk to you. I didn't tell them we had this." She tapped the Nostradamus file with her finger. "Have you figured out what Bertrand meant by what he wrote on the floor?"

Selena brushed a hair from her forehead with the back of her hand. "No. It makes no sense to me."

Harker pushed the file folder across the desk. "I want you to translate this. We might learn something."

"I can translate it, but I can't guarantee I'll understand it. Not with Nostradamus."

"Work with Stephanie. Use the computers to speed things up."

Stephanie Willits was Harker's deputy and the Project's resident computer guru. One of the old Nike magazines contained a bank of Crays with enough computing power to rival Langley.

Harker set her pen down and looked at Selena. "You handled that attack in Paris. Are you fit to go back in the field?"

Selena had been badly wounded the year before. A bullet had clipped her spine and almost killed her. For a while, it looked like she'd be in a wheelchair for life. She hadn't been in the field since then.

Selena took a breath. She'd known this day would come.

"I still have to be careful, but yes, I can go back."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

Harker nodded. "Good. For now, just work on the translation."

"I'd like to take the file home with me. I can get most of it figured out before I need to work with Stephanie."

"All right. Nick, you stick close to Selena, in case someone decides to make another try at the manuscript. Consider yourself a high priced bodyguard."

He smirked at Selena and stroked an imaginary moustache. "I will guard your body," he said in a deep voice.

"Jerk," she said.