Death and Deception

by Seeley James

  “Where they stage the Stone is one thing,” I said. “I want Mr. Baldy. We have to find his command post.”

  “Why?” Jenny’s voice shook with worry. “You’re not going to kill him.”

  “If the situation comes up—”

  “You’re not on a battlefield here. It would be wrong. And, the Germans won’t give you a pass, Jacob. If we find him, we bring him in alive.”

  Jenny and I had two different views about killing people. I’d killed quite a few men while in uniform, and a few more in self-defense. Jenny had killed one man. A naval officer raped her, got off on a technicality, and came back for a second round. During the struggle, she stuck a pistol in his eye and pulled the trigger. She went to jail for manslaughter before getting a pardon. She only saw the downside of killing a guy. I only saw the upside. Hidalgo’s next of kin would give me a medal. This was one area where the yangs outweighed the yins. Or whatever.

  But she had a point: the Germans aren’t keen on murder. They’d gone to great lengths to atone for their national complicity in the Holocaust. Despite having one of the highest gun-ownership rates, Germany ranks near the bottom of the world’s nations in homicides per capita due to strict licensing requirements. They would drag any self-defense story I might offer through a lot of psych evals. And those usually brought up Mercury and his divine guidance. German officials might not take kindly to alternate religious theories. They’d done well after Luther and pretty much left it at that.

  But Jenny’s comment did cause me to recalibrate what I intended to do with Mr. Baldy. I decided I would kill him outright and not tell Jenny. Problem solved.

  “Promise me you’ll bring him to justice,” she said after reading my mind.

  “If the situation allows, I’ll bring him in.”

  Jenny looked at Danny for support.

  “The Knights are protected around the world,” Danny said. “If you have the chance, kill him.”

  CHAPTER 43

  What should’ve been a pleasant stroll through Alpine villages to hunt down Mr. Baldy became an opportunity to improve my listening skills. My fiancé had new ideas forming in her head and she let them spill out of her mouth as soon as they came to her. There was something she didn’t like about Danny’s answer. She used phrases with words like immoral and illegal and wrong, plus a whole bunch of other words that mean nothing to me. Even after he explained that the Knights slipped through the justice system in every country because they had allies all over the world, she still didn’t like killing a man without a trial. It didn’t align with her understanding of the “light” of Claritas.

  Her thoughts were lost on me. As far as I was concerned, Danny had uttered his first sensible sentence since I met him.

  We walked by an alley where Ms. Sabel was deep in conversation with Peng, Rafael, and Cherry. Miguel caught my eye and gave me a nod that said: They have issues to work out. There was a little blood on the cobblestones, as if someone had run from there with a bloody nose. I kept walking.

  Miguel texted me about their encounter with Dhanpal and three Knights. We’d lost our former brother-in-arms to the dark side. What I found most interesting was the man who threatened Ms. Sabel and Miguel with a switchblade. It meant the Knights weren’t carrying firearms. Considering they’d executed people in Mexico, there had to be a good reason for them to observe local laws. The heightened security in advance of the G20 Summit would stop most people from carrying even if they were licensed. The Knights just didn’t seem like the types to worry about it. That they did now told me they were close to their goal and didn’t want anything to go wrong.

  Which meant I was running out of time.

  My eyes took in every shop and café. The houses and cars, the traffic patterns, the street alignments, the icy spots in the shade, the salted sidewalks, the muddy places where grass would grow in a few weeks. We walked the two-mile length of the town. Nothing shouted, Knights of Mithras!

  Finally, one shop did catch my eye. Outside the front door was a life-sized sculpture of a woman reading a book to a child on a sofa. Something about it struck me as out of place. Garmisch was a ski town, not Santa Fe. The artwork stood out as unusual. But I wasn’t looking for art, I was looking for Turkmen. We kept going.

  I checked in with Danny. He and the Brothers came to the same conclusion. His people were combing the hundreds of hotels and resorts. They moved on down the valley to check more hotels big and small.

  Jenny and I caught an Uber to the next town over, Untergrainau. From there, we drove toward Eibsee, a lake where the road ended. Along the way, I noticed many tracks running into the woods off the road. When I asked the driver where they went, he said they were forest service roads and campsites. We came to the Eibsee Seilbahn station, where the biggest gondolas in the region rose up the mountain. The cables swayed in a light wind and disappeared in the distance. The peak loomed high above us.

  The lift was just warming up. While it wasn’t open yet, Jenny used her German to talk our way into a ride with the work crews. The lift manager said he would allow it if the security team approved.

  A security officer waved us over and asked Jenny a series of questions. I didn’t need to speak German to know he was suspicious of our request. We willingly emptied our pockets, having wisely left all weapons at the hotel. The gondola full of workers left without us. We promised the man we would wait for the next one. While he wanded us with a metal detector, a large van dropped six important-looking security officers at the entrance. They wore different uniforms, each person from a different country.

  One man looked familiar. Plump and middle aged with a gray mustache, the man stared across the lobby at me. When I remembered him, I wanted to run. My nemesis in Paris, Major Pavard. He almost convinced the entire country I was a terrorist bent on mass murder. He managed to poison my reputation with European police departments across the continent before I managed to save a few thousand lives and redeem myself. Not the guy I wanted to run into at that moment. I was just about to tell the security man to forget it, we were leaving, when the Frenchman shouted my name.

  “Jacob! Ah, la vache!” He waved and grinned. He tapped the man next to him and said something in German that spread the smile to the whole group. They waved me over.

  “What does la vache mean?” I asked Jenny in a whisper.

  “It’s French for holy cow,” she said. “He told the other guys you’re the Hero of Paris.”

  The security guard stopped wanding us and gestured to the VIP crowd. He also had a big smile as if I were someone important.

  As we crossed the lobby, Mercury showed up in his formal toga, full-length with red trim. Do I treat you right or what, homie? See now, you be the toast of the town.

  I said, That’s Major Pavard, right? The guy who wanted me drawn and quartered?

  Mercury said, That was before the Holy Public Relations team from the Dii Consentes descended from on high and talked the President of France into giving you his biggest medal.

  I said, That was you? Not Sabel Security’s public relations team?

  Mercury grinned from ear to ear and said, They were divinely inspired, brutha. Drink it up. They love you. Now tell them all about me.

  Major Pavard stuck out a paw as if we were the oldest friends. In a thin accent, he said, “The President will be most pleased to hear you are with us.”

  He spoke English, which was a refreshing change from our last encounter when he barked accusations at me in French. His transformation was complete.

  Another familiar face stepped from Pavard’s shadow: Chief Dalsgaard from Denmark, now in charge of security for European Union officials. Dalsgaard was the one who turned back the tide of public opinion against me. I was genuinely glad to see him. The two of them shook my hand and introduced me to the group. They deferred to the German head of security, Luca Brandt.

  Then the selfies started. Everyone wanted a picture with the one-time celebrity. One day they want to throw you in jail, the next day t
hey want to show their friends that you’re besties. They were headed to the top for a pre-lockdown tour and took us with them. As soon as the phones went back in their pockets, Jenny and I were old news. When we got on the gondola, they returned to their security conversation, pointing at things, and bragging about what their teams had done.

  Considering I’ve jumped out of airplanes from forty thousand feet, killed terrorists with my bare hands, and defused bombs relying on the protection of a mythical god, I find it surprising that ski lifts give me the willies. Maybe it’s crossing above the wicked spiky rocks waiting to impale me, maybe it’s the gentle swaying that sometimes becomes rocking, or maybe it’s the tiny metal connectors that keep the immense gondola slung below thin strands of wire that makes me sick. Or maybe I’m a control freak who would rather guide my chute and live or die by my own calculations than trust my life to a beer-swilling German engineer I’ve never met.

  Jenny was quite the opposite. She looped her arms through the elbows of Luca Brandt and Chief Dalsgaard and together they started rocking the gondola from side to side. They laughed and hip-checked each other. The kind of risky behavior you’d expect from drunken teenagers. Pavard noticed me turning green and laughed. I gripped the rail next to the exit until the damn thing quit moving. I was the first one off.

  It was cold. Bitter cold. The platform was an open area sheltered by glass, yet it was still freezing. Gusts of frozen air swirled up from the cliff below and surrounded us. I had on jeans and a leather jacket over a t-shirt that read, “I’m the terrorist’s retirement plan” above a 75th Rangers logo. Pavard, Dalsgaard and their buddies glanced at me. I sucked in a deep breath, smiled, and imagined I was still in hot and humid Belize. The others zipped up their parkas and hustled inside. I stretched and admired the view, knowing they could see me through the glass. I’d rather freeze to death than let them think I had any other vulnerabilities.

  Thankfully, Jenny wasn’t into macho games. She shivered and tugged me indoors before my chattering teeth gave me away.

  Pavard met us inside and declared, loud enough for his counterparts to hear, that the security arrangements were first class. He clapped my shoulder and said, “Luckily, we will not need the heroic services of Monsieur Stearne.”

  He laughed. His pals laughed. Except Dalsgaard. The Dane didn’t speak English but instinctively knew Pavard was tempting fate.

  I considered telling them about the Knights of Mithras. The upside would be having extra eyes and ears looking for them. The downside would be explaining it to them. An ancient order of fascists with a mythic hunk of obsidian planned to make their elected leaders go crazy. They’d laugh at me all the way to the insane asylum.

  I could tell them about Mr. Baldy. Except that I hadn’t found him and couldn’t be sure the perpetrator of the Yucatán executions was here.

  I laughed and smiled and told Pavard nothing could make me rest easier than knowing he was on the job.

  Then I turned to the geology exhibit. There were no samples. Everything was written in three languages with arrows pointing to impressionist renderings of geologic events.

  Jenny and I went outside to the observation deck for another round of freezing. The German side of the mountain formed a large bowl over a mile wide with a glacier filling the center. Half a mile away, a restaurant was perched at the top of the glacier, which the clever Germans named Gletscherrestaurant. Meaning, glacier restaurant. A gondola ran to it from where we stood.

  Just above the glacier, the Schneefernerhaus had been bolted to the side of a cliff. There were no gondolas or lifts. Dalsgaard wandered outside for the view and Jenny asked him how the dignitaries planned to get there since walking would require crampons and possibly ropes. He told her they would take the cogwheel train to the restaurant, where snowcats would take them the rest of the way. He assured her security would keep them safe.

  The Austrian side was vertical from the cantilevered deck I stood on straight down several thousand feet. The mountain terrain was so steep on their side, they kept the ski runs at the bottom. A razor-sharp ridge separated the two countries and shielded the Austrians from the morning sun. A smaller cable car came up from an Austrian town called Obermoos.

  Again, Jenny dragged me inside before we both froze.

  We took the gondola to the Gletscherrestaurant and checked out Schneefernerhaus as we passed near it. The Germans had already closed off the scenic science center with armed police. Snowcats were lined up, their engine compartments taped closed for safety.

  Having been involved in the security arrangements for generals in a war zone, I couldn’t see any detail Brandt’s team had left to chance. At the same time, Mr. Baldy wasn’t the kind to come without a foolproof plan. He had an angle the top security guys hadn’t predicted.

  “How is he getting a forty-pound rock through security and up the side of a cliff?” I asked rhetorically.

  Jenny said, “You don’t like my drone-drop idea?”

  “Not if the weather holds. With air this clear, they could never land it unnoticed.”

  We checked out the restaurant and facilities. Cops roamed everywhere. They were tightening the security noose. We decided to take the cogwheel train back. We waded through a crowd of workers and police exiting the train on their way to work.

  Among the people getting off was a guy who bore a striking resemblance to Joseph Stalin, walrus moustache and all. I turned to Jenny’s ear as if telling her a secret as we passed him. He didn’t see me. But I saw the emblem on his uniform. The word Bundesnachrichtendienst circled the German black eagle. The BND, Germany’s version of the FBI. The Knights were here—and they were in deep.

  Still, even as a federal agent, he wouldn’t be allowed to bring a foreign object to the conference. Security men weren’t allowed to bring anything that wasn’t directly required for their job.

  We got on the train. A few minutes later, the doors closed, and the train cogged its way down the mountain. I stared out of the window at the rock walls of the tunnel. It went by in a blur.

  Then it came to me. Half of it, anyway.

  I turned to Jenny, “I know where the Knights are holed up. Give or take a few miles.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Captain Batyr Amanow kicked the tool chest. In his native language, he shouted, “Our mission culminates tomorrow! Everything we have worked for is now at hand. Now is not the time to rest.”

  The stone walls echoed his words. His Knights didn’t even bother to stand at attention. They trembled like frightened sheep. Their down parkas, boots, and snow pants made their bodies appear larger with smaller faces.

  “Which one of you will fill Artur’s shoes?” Amanow paced in front of their loose formation. He clapped his gloves together for warmth. “After he failed to retrieve Gu Peng, he reported for duty at the BND. Someone must take over his squad.”

  He looked at his men. They kept their eyes fixed on the hostage stations behind him. Giant wooden Xs with chains waited for their prisoners. The new man, Dhanpal, began to volunteer, then realized he would not be trusted in an important role. Which was true.

  He marched back and forth, unable to sense what was wrong with them. Normally, three or four Knights would gladly take over a prestigious operation like Artur’s. Yet they hung back, afraid to speak to him.

  His phone rang. He clicked it over to voicemail.

  Amanow had gone the extra mile to retrieve Zafar Muhadow. If he needed to conscript a volunteer, Zafar owed his life to Amanow’s benevolence. Any other leader of the Knights would’ve left him to commit suicide for having been caught. Yes, Zafar would do the job.

  His phone rang again. Artur. He took the call.

  Artur said, “Jacob Stearne just left Gletscherrestaurant on the cogwheel.” He clicked off.

  Amanow kicked the tool chest again. And again. And again. “What must I do to make Stearne go away? How could he show his face after such a humiliating defeat? Do Americans not revere the Roman creed, Aut cum scuto aut in scut
o?”

  He looked expectantly at his Knights. They knew the Latin phrase, derived from their Roman founders, either with shield or on it. Meaning a soldier returned with his shield or his corpse was carried on it. Their eyes remained fixed beyond him.

  His strange sensation of something amiss pinched his mind. He observed his men more closely. Only Mammet would look at him, and that was a furtive glance. Amanow tracked back to the young man and stared hard into Mammet’s eyes.

  “What is it?” he asked in a tightly controlled voice. “You wish to speak. Go ahead.”

  Amanow stepped back, spreading his hands wide, giving Mammet the floor.

  The others turned to their fellow Knight with expectant faces.

  “Sir,” Mammet said, “the others asked me to speak on their behalf.”

  Amanow sensed trouble. “Yes, yes, I can see that. Go ahead. Speak.”

  “We are greatly troubled by your behavior, sir. We do not understand how to follow your orders.”

  “It is simple.” Amanow spread his hands farther apart. “Do what I tell you.”

  “Yes, sir. And Didar did exactly what you told him. He picked up the Poison Stone.”

  There it was.

  It was good to get things out in the open, Amanow decided. Perhaps he should’ve addressed it earlier. At least, he now knew why the Knights hesitated. With the right assurances and precautions, he could get them back on track for the remaining thirty hours of the operation. This mission needed to be successful. Not only did the future of mankind depend on it, but his future as well. His only question was how to settle their qualms.

  “Command has many options,” he said in a confidential tone. “Some options are opportunities. Others are disasters. The difficulty lies in deciding which path to take. We make these decisions and move on. The good decisions always outweigh the lesser decisions. The Protector ordered me to verify the Poison Stone was genuine. And with good reason. Jacob Stearne is a man of many deceptions. He could have replaced it with a fake. We needed to make certain. Didar was chosen for the honor.”