The Nostradamus File

CHAPTER SEVEN

Former gunnery sergeant Ronnie Peete, USMC, sat on the couch in Harker's office with Lamont and Stephanie. He had on one of his quieter Hawaiian shirts, a scene of white and red flowers on a light brown background. The shirt almost picked up the tint of his skin. Ronnie was Navajo, raised on the reservation in Arizona. He had a large nose and dark brown eyes. People thought of paintings and photographs of the Old West when they saw Ronnie, unless he was holding a weapon pointed at them.

Ronnie looked relaxed. Lamont looked like a piece of spring steel. His eyes were icy blue, a mark of his Ethiopian ancestry. There was a thin scar of pink tissue across his face from a shrapnel wound he'd gotten in Iraq. Sometimes young children stared wide-eyed and clung to their mothers when he walked by. It hurt his feelings, but there wasn't much he could do about it.

Harker cleared her throat. "Interpol confirmed that Bertrand was offering the Nostradamus manuscript on the black market. He put it up on a hidden website that can only be accessed by people with the right code."

She brought the page up on the big wall monitor.

"This is the announcement. It's still up. Interpol is using it as bait."

It was written in English, French, German, Russian and Chinese. They read it in silence.

A photograph of the quatrain about the cherubim was prominently featured. Selena sighed, a sound of disappointment.

Jean-Paul, she thought. What happened, to make you do this?

"So now we know how the bad guys knew about it," Nick said.

Harker continued. "Someone killed the boss of the French Mafia yesterday. His name was Sarti. He was a major player in stolen antiquities. My intuition says it's related to Bertrand's death."

Nick scratched his ear. Harker's intuition was usually dead on. "What do the French think?"

"That Bertrand's death happened during a robbery and Sarti was killed because of a power struggle within the mob. They found the body of Sarti's killer. He was wounded by Sarti's bodyguard but someone else killed him, probably to keep him quiet. Interpol doesn't much care if the bad guys kill each other and they're not pursuing it. The French are watching to see who takes Sarti's place, but that's all."

"Any ID on the shooter?"

"That's interesting. He was American, former Special Forces."

"A mercenary? What would an American be doing working for the French Mafia? They have their own shooters. That doesn't make sense." Nick paused. "Maybe someone hired Sarti to get the manuscript and it pissed them off when he didn't come through, so they got even."

"Kind of extreme," Ronnie said.

"So was killing Bertrand."

"Selena, what have you found out?" Harker asked.

"The manuscript is definitely by Nostradamus. It's not complete, but it's part of the quatrains no one has seen before. Jean-Paul would have been able to read them." She paused. "I think I know why he was killed. It ties into the letters and number he scrawled on the floor."

"E X 25."

"EX 25 is a biblical reference. Exodus, Chapter 25."

Harker was getting impatient. Her pen began its drumbeat on her desk. Nick waited. He knew what was coming.

"What does that have to do with the manuscript?"

"Chapter 25 describes God's instructions to Moses for building the Ark of the Covenant. Nostradamus knew where it was hidden."

Harker's pen stopped moving. That got her attention, Nick thought.

"Are you telling me those pages hold the key to the location of the Ark of the Covenant?"

"Nostradamus thought so. So did Jean-Paul. So far I've found one quatrain that could be about the Ark. There are three more grouped with it, but I'm not sure what they mean."

She read them out loud.

"That's it?" Harker said.

Selena nodded. "Some of it is clear. The golden cherubim fits the biblical description of the Ark. I don't know what he means by 'shake the heavens'. The Pale Rider is the first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

"Pale Rider. Clint Eastwood," Lamont said. "I saw that. Good movie."

Everyone looked at him.

"What?"

Harker sighed. "Go on, Selena."

"The Red Horseman is War. He's the second of the Four Horsemen in Revelations."

"Nostradamus was a cheerful kind of guy, wasn't he?" Lamont said.

Selena ignored him. "The land of Moab is modern day Jordan. Mount Nebo is where Moses stood when God showed him the Promised land. I don't know what the five signs are, or the shepherd. Nostradamus is saying bad things will happen if someone doesn't figure it out. Maybe that's us."

Stephanie said, "Then the Ark is on Mt. Nebo?"

Stephanie's voice was soft. She wore a dark blue skirt and blouse. Large gold hoops dangled from her ears. Her brown eyes reminded Nick of a doe. Unlike a doe, Steph had a pistol in a quick draw holster at her waist and knew how to use it. She had a quick intelligence and a genius ability with computers.

"I don't think it's still on Mount Nebo, if it ever was," Selena said.

"The Ark of the Covenant could cause serious problems in the wrong hands," Harker said. "The real article could light a fire in the Middle East. If it exists, we have to find it."

"You really think it's that important?" Lamont said.

"The Ark is part of the tradition of three major Western religions. Of course it's important. An important religious artifact could start a war. The whole Middle East is ready to explode, right now. There's the Israeli election, the problems with Syria, the rhetoric out of Iran. The discovery of the Ark could be the last straw. This has to be why people are getting murdered over that manuscript."

She tapped her pen, thinking. "If we can get an idea of where it is, I'm going to send the team after it."

"You're going to send us after the Ark of the Covenant?" Nick said. "Do I look like Harrison Ford?"

"Maybe with the right hat."

Everyone laughed.

"Do I get a bullwhip?"

"No. You get a SIG .40. I want everyone to switch over. The guns are already downstairs in the armory. I know you like your .45, Nick, but I want everyone carrying the same thing. We have to standardize."

"I'd rather keep my H-K."

"It's not open to discussion. You want the .45, take it as backup. You're the one who said it might be a good idea, remember?" She fixed him with one of her don't mess with me looks. He might have mentioned it as an idea in passing, but he didn't remember. He decided to let it pass for the moment.

"Where do you want us to begin looking?"

"Jordan. Go to Mount Nebo and see if you can find those five signs."

"I need to finish translating the manuscript before we go anywhere," Selena said.

"How long will it take?"

"I don't know. Steph and I are going to work on it when we're done here."

Harker looked at her. "You said some of the quatrains were missing."

"That's right."

"Could Bertrand have had them?"

"If he did, why not send them to me with the rest?" Selena brushed a hair from her forehead.

"You told me he was paranoid," Nick said. "He could have split the file up, sent one part to you, one to someone else. "

"Maybe it's still in his shop."

"The police have been all through the shop," Harker said. "There's nothing like that."

"Where else would he send it?" Ronnie asked Selena. "Family, someone like that? Maybe a lawyer?"

"He had a lawyer. No family, though."

Harker made a note. "What's the lawyer's name?"

"I met him, once." Selena frowned, trying to remember the name. "Durand, that's it. Jacques Durand. He's in Paris."

"Let's look him up." Harker said. She pulled a hidden keyboard out of her desk and tapped a key. The wall monitor lit. She entered Jacques Durand + Lawyer + Paris in a Google search.

The top hit was a headline. French mob lawyer found murdered.

Harker clicked on the link. It was a newspaper article from the day before. Durand had been working late when someone had killed him. His office had been ransacked. Police were investigating. Durand had defended members of L'Union Corse in the past. The article speculated on a possible link to the death of Marcel Sarti and suggested that a gang war had started.

"Someone else thinks like we do," Nick said. "This can't be a coincidence. They were looking for the manuscript."

Elizabeth said, "I wonder if the lawyer had the other part? If there is one."

Nick tugged on his left ear, where a Chinese bullet had taken off most of the earlobe. His ear was a built-in genetic warning system. It itched and burned when things were about to get dicey. They all knew it. He saw the look the others gave him.

"Just an itch," he said.

"I wish you wouldn't do that when it doesn't count," Lamont said.

"You want me to just let it itch?"

"Better than getting everybody upset."

"That's enough, Lamont." Harker picked up her pen. "Selena, where else could it be if the lawyer didn't have it?"

"Jean-Paul had a country house in Provence, in the south of France. I think there was a housekeeper who took care of it when he wasn't there."

"He could have mailed it to himself at the house," Ronnie said. "The cops wouldn't turn that up when they checked the messenger services."

Harker's intuition was setting off alarms. It rarely failed her. No one outside of the Project knew she sometimes used intuition to make major decisions. Intuition wasn't high on the list of acknowledged intelligence analysis skills. She made a decision now.

She turned to Nick and Selena. "Go to France and check out that house. See if something's there. You can go on to Jordan after that."

"The French cops are pissed at us," Nick said. "We'll never get out of the airport."

"Don't worry about that. Take your weapons. I'll clear it with the French."

Nick scratched his ear.