“I’ve been thinking about it.” Actually, he had been thinking about the Thief on the Cross and the Templars worshiping John the Baptist until just recently. “Any major hotel is going to ask for a credit card.”
“So we need to find a dump, is what you’re saying.”
“Pretty much. Sorry about that.”
“I grabbed a map at the last rest area; it’s full of advertisements. You want me to ring up a few of the motels?”
“Good idea. We can easily pass for a family traveling for the holiday. Try to find something close to the town of Phoenicia.”
Amanda did a double-take. “Phoenicia? Really? As in the Phoenicians?”
He chuckled. “I thought you might like that. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but January says the mountain written about in the Clairvaux Codex is near the town of Phoenicia.”
“I do like the Phoenician connection. I just hope we don’t have to rise up from any ashes.”
Salazar sat in his Toyota at the far end of the motel parking lot and watched Cam, Amanda and the young girl unpack his cousin’s SUV in front of the Cobblestone Motel. Someday a similar scene would unfold, with himself and Rosalita replacing Cam and Astarte. Or maybe Astarte would be with them. And also the dog.
The single row of flat-roofed efficiencies that comprised the complex ran perpendicular to the street, each with a lonely plastic chair on a cement slab next to the front door. It had not been hard to track them using a simple transponder he had tucked under the Explorer’s back seat. Bullets would be flying and he wanted to make sure they found their proper marks.
As Amanda carried the last of their bags into the motel room, Salazar started the engine, followed the river back into town and parked. Phoenicia was a small town, especially during the non-summer months when the tourists were not around. If the feds had tracked Cam and Amanda this far, they shouldn’t be hard to spot.
Downtown Phoenicia consisted of two blocks of Victorian-era buildings, many of them converted for use as inns, restaurants and shops. Most of them needed a coat of paint and a few more customers. Salazar parked on the main commercial strip, strolled into a Mexican restaurant and grabbed a table opposite the bar. He ordered a tomato juice and some quesadillas and studied the clientele: a few hunter-fisher types, a couple of families, a group of twenty-somethings home from the city for the holiday. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He paid the bill and entered an Italian restaurant next door. He sat at the counter and ordered a pastry for dessert. Same kind of crowd as the Mexican place, except for a guy about his age sitting with an older woman at a table in the corner. They didn’t talk much—the guy spent most of his time on his smartphone as he picked at some lasagna. When they did interact they did so stiffly, strangers forced to share a meal together.
Ten minutes passed and a pair of clean-cut young men in khakis and windbreakers entered the restaurant, looked around, nodded to the guy in the corner and strode over. Salazar recognized the purposeful walk, the erect posture, and the pressed pants as ex-military. Which meant they were probably FBI or something. Self-righteous, arrogant pricks, most likely. The guy with the lasagna introduced himself as Buckner. After the waitress left the group huddled over a map and what looked like a rough drawing on a yellow legal pad, Buckner doing most of the talking and apparently issuing orders.
Salazar slipped off his stool and strolled toward the back of the restaurant as if looking for a restroom. The operatives were in hunter mode—it didn’t occur to them that they themselves might be under surveillance, and they paid him no attention. He was not surprised to hear the words ‘Thorne’ and ‘pre-dawn’ as he walked by, but the words ‘heavily armed’ were unexpected. Why was Buckner lying about Cam and Amanda carrying weapons?
By the time Salazar had returned to his stool the answer had become obvious: Buckner wanted his team to treat this like a commando raid rather than a simple arrest. They didn’t want Thorne and Amanda walking out of that motel room alive.
Amanda and Cam stood over the map unfolded atop the chipped linoleum table. The motel had flooded during Hurricane Irene, and it still had a musty smell. “So this is the map January has been using,” Cam said. It was a detailed topographic map of the Catskill Mountains, showing trails and ridge lines along with roads and waterways. “You can see he marked a few places where he’s been.”
“And presumably searched,” Amanda said.
“Right.” Cam pulled out a rough drawing from the stack of papers January had given him. “But he never got a chance to search here.” Cam pointed at an X marked on the drawing. “Apparently the Clairvaux Codex references a bunch of carvings on boulders up on the mountain that serve as guideposts. January found most of the markings, right where they were supposed to be.”
“What kind of markings?”
“One group of boulders arranged in a triangle had numbers in an ancient script carved on them; if you found the exact center of the triangle, there was another boulder with a bird carved on it. The bird’s beak pointed in a certain direction, which led to the next marker. It was pretty elaborate.”
Cam sipped some water. “Anyway, January couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t find the last cache of artifacts. It finally occurred to him he was using a modern compass, while the Templars were using a 12th-century instrument. Both point to magnetic north, but magnetic north drifts back and forth around the North Pole. Back in the late 1100s it was way over in Western Canada, about as far away from the North Pole as it’s ever been. So he made some adjustments. He just never got a chance to get back here; the climb was too strenuous.” Cam pointed at the X. “This is where we need to go.”
Amanda studied the map. “Based on those ridge lines, that’s going to be a tough climb. Especially with the ground so wet.” She looked over at Astarte, propped up in bed watching a movie. “Do you think she can make it?”
“I remember hiking with my dad and uncle when I was a kid. In some ways it was easier for me because I was more flexible and lower to the ground. Plus I didn’t get tired.” He smiled. “So it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s the first one up the mountain.”
Amanda grinned. “Well, then, she and I will just have to wait for you at the top.”
Salazar’s room was two doors down from Cam and Amanda’s, between them and the street. From his window he could see the entrance to the complex, and he had positioned his car so that he could look out his window and see the lights of their motel room reflected in his side view mirror.
He assumed the guys from the restaurant received the same training he had, which meant they would storm the motel room a few hours before dawn, when people slept the most soundly. And it also meant they had someone now conducting surveillance, probably in the wooded area facing the front doors of the motel rooms, making sure Cam and Amanda didn’t leave. It would be easy enough to take the guy out, but doing so now would only arouse suspicion when the sentry failed to check in. But at some point Salazar might need to even the odds a bit.
Salazar phoned Cam’s disposable cell. As much as he fantasized about sticking a knife in Cam’s back, it would be difficult to arrange it without Amanda becoming suspicious. He had his chance in the woods, but once Amanda phoned and Cam told her they were together the moment was gone. But if Cam happened to take a stray bullet from one of the feds, well….
“I’m two doors down from you.”
“At the motel?” Cam asked.
“It’s what I do.” Cam put him on speaker and Salazar described the operatives he had spotted in the restaurant. “At least two of the guys are ex-military. Probably special ops. And the guy in charge seemed pretty trigger-happy.”
Cam exhaled. “Great. How did they track us?”
“Don’t know. But they’re here. And they’re coming after you. Probably sometime pre-dawn, based on what I heard. Unless we act first.”
“Act? What do you mean?”
“Well, I could take out one guy right now. But that would just solve part of the prob
lem. We need to hunt them before they hunt you. There’s only three of them, plus the woman. And we have the element of surprise. We could do it.”
“Take them out.” Cam’s voice had raised an octave. “As in kill?”
“First we would need to talk about my fee. A thousand a day does not include murdering federal agents.”
Amanda spoke. “Just wait a bloody minute. We haven’t committed any crimes. What if they just want to arrest us, maybe scare us into keeping quiet?”
Salazar answered. “If they just wanted to arrest you they’d call the local police and send over a cruiser.”
“What if instead we turned ourselves in to the local police?” Cam asked.
“Might work.” Salazar paused. But then there would be no bullets flying. “But you’d have to get there first. And even if you did, I doubt they’d believe your story about federal agents trying to assassinate you. They’d just hand you back over to Buckner. He’d have to be a little more creative in the way he killed you—probably some story about you trying to escape—but he’d make sure you ended up in a ditch.”
“Then what about going to the press?” Amanda asked.
Cam answered before Salazar could. “And tell them what, that federal agents are trying to assassinate us because of some ancient artifacts? I don’t think they’d listen. Besides, it’s the night before Thanksgiving, and we’re in the middle of nowhere. When you say press, you’re talking about a weekly newspaper. I don’t think CNN has a bureau in Phoenicia.”
Amanda nodded glumly.
Cam continued. “Back to your plan to go after these guys. I agree we have to do something. But I’m not ready to do the Rambo thing yet. Do you know where they’re staying?”
“A Hampton Inn back by the highway exit.”
“And you’re sure their plan is to come after us pre-dawn?”
“Yes.”
“So you think Amanda is safe until then?”
“Should be. As long as she doesn’t try to leave.”
“Okay then. I have an idea. I’m going to slip out the back window. Drive up to the gas station on the corner and meet me there in an hour.”
Georgia Johnston sat in her hotel room, mindlessly changing channels on the television. She called Hayek again, on both his hard line and cell. Straight to voice mail. And he had ignored her texts. She was beginning to think this whole thing might be a set up, with Hayek basically washing his hands of whatever Trey Buckner and his minions did so long as they made sure the artifacts and Codex remained buried. Which likely meant a couple of bodies would be buried with them. There was no direct order to kill anyone, just a generic set of instructions to complete the mission using whatever means were necessary and appropriate. Plausible deniability—Survival 101 for a Washington insider.
But that didn’t mean she had to go along with this witch hunt. Big picture, she wasn’t comfortable with erasing ancient artifacts and documents from the historical record—the Vatican had done this for centuries, and in the end half the world no longer trusted what its officials said. The truth had a way of bubbling to the surface no matter how hard humankind tried to suppress it. And even more egregious was the idea that her government was willing to rub a couple of young, innocent lives off the face of the earth with no more consideration than a driver clearing bugs off the windshield with the flick of the wiper button. Amanda and Cameron seemed like people—if the secret history they uncovered really was that explosive, no doubt they could be convinced to cooperate in how that information was eventually made public.
Somehow she needed to keep Amanda and Cam safe without arousing suspicion in Buckner. As far as she could tell Buckner didn’t question her loyalty. In fact, he barely even acknowledged her presence, especially after the two operatives arrived from New York and the three of them put their heads together over the map like boys playing with little army figurines. Their plan was to storm the motel in the middle of the night and retrieve the artifacts and documents. Georgia’s job was to wait in the Suburban, serve as look-out and coordinate communications. No doubt they would expect her to make sandwiches and clean up for them as well.
As Cam changed into dark clothing Amanda paced around the motel room, wondering how they had ended up in a cheap motor lodge in New York with a bull’s-eye on their chests. “Are you really going out there? This is mental.” Another wave of cold washed through her.
Cam pulled his shirt over his head. “It does seem crazy, and yet that bullet really did whiz by your ear, and unless Salazar is lying there really is a commando team ready to storm this motel room.”
“Seriously, Cameron, this is the kind of thing that happens in Libya or North Korea or Iran. Civilized countries don’t have hit squads.” She stopped ranting as she saw the fear in Astarte’s eyes.
“Are they really going to kill you and Mr. Thorne?” the girl asked, her knees tucked into her body as she pulled the blanket up.
Amanda sat on the bed next to her and grasped her hand. She forced herself to modulate her voice. “They may try, but Cameron has a plan, and we’re going to be just fine. I’m just angry because some people are using their heads for nothing more than a place to rest their hats.”
Astarte’s eyes pooled. “This is all my fault.”
Amanda hugged her. “No, darling, it is not. You are very brave, and very smart, and you will be a fine princess someday, but this is the fault of a bunch of grown-ups who need to have their ears boxed.”
The girl spun away, her back now to Amanda. “No. It is my fault.”
There was something in the girl’s tone that resonated with Amanda. She rested her hand on Astarte’s shoulder. “Why do you say that?”
Astarte sniffled and looked warily at Cam.
Amanda motioned to Cam. “Why don’t you finish dressing in the bathroom.” She paused as Cam complied. “Now, Astarte, you must answer me. I won’t be cross with you if you tell me the truth.”
The girl rolled over and faced Amanda, her dark blue eyes wet and sad. “When we stopped to go to the bathroom I used my phone and called Aunt Eliza. I told her what kind of car we were driving and the license plate number and where we were.”
What? So much for the promise not to be cross. “Why in the world would you have done that?”
She lifted her chin. “Mr. Thorne said he was going to prove the Book of Mormon was a lie.”
Of course. The girl had been taught the book was the story of not just the Mormons but the Mandan also. So both her religion and her culture were being attacked.
Astarte continued. “Aunt Eliza said she knew people who could stop him.” She dropped her eyes. “But I didn’t know they wanted to kill him. And you.”
Amanda nodded. The poor girl had no idea whom to trust anymore. “Yes, I can see why you did that. It was very brave of you. Just like Mulan going off to fight the Huns even though the grown-ups didn’t want her to. You indeed are a fine princess.”
The girl nodded; apparently she had reached the same conclusion herself. “So you’re not mad at me?”
“No, I’m not. But I do need you to trust me, to trust that we would never do anything to hurt you. But the people who are after us, the people your Aunt Eliza is friends with, are very bad people.” She lowered her voice. “So I need you to make a deal with me. If I can get Mr. Thorne to promise not to tell people the Book of Mormon is a lie, will you promise not to call Aunt Eliza again?”
The princess weighed the offer. “Must it be a promise on the Bible?”
Amanda put her hand in front of her face to hide her smile. “Yes. On the Bible.” She opened the drawer in the side table next to bed and pulled out a brown Gideon’s Holy Bible. “You must promise on the Bible not to call Aunt Eliza again.”
Astarte nodded. “All right then.” She rested her hand on the book, closed her eyes and recited her vow. “But how will you get Mr. Thorne to agree not to tell people the Book of Mormon is a lie?”
Amanda grinned. “Because he’s in love with me. Think about
the men in Anastasia and Mulan and Sound of Music and Little Mermaid—whenever men fall in love, they do whatever the women tell them to do.”
Astarte thought about it for a couple of seconds. “Funny, they do, don’t they?”
Cam slipped into the passenger seat of Salazar’s Toyota Camry as the mercenary finished filling the tank. The knife incident fresh in his mind, Cam didn’t offer his hand. “I never asked. Why are you here?”
Salazar shrugged. “Job wasn’t done yet. And I’m not rich enough to walk away from a thousand bucks a day.”
Cam sensed there was more to it than that but he let it slide. “How’s Venus?”
Salazar offered a rare smile. “Rosalita is wearing her out. When I left Venus was wearing a bonnet.” He handed Cam a digital camera. “These are pictures of the feds I took at the restaurant. You and Amanda should study their faces. So what’s your plan?”
“It’s based on a story an older partner told me once when I worked at a law firm. He was pretty much a sleaze-ball but he liked to share his war stories with me. Apparently a business deal went bad for one of his clients. A couple of days before the trial he found out the other side had a surprise witness—his client’s ex-girlfriend—who would destroy his guy’s case.”
“Want me to drive?” Salazar interrupted, “or just stay here?”
“Head out toward their hotel.” Cam took a deep breath. It felt good to be doing something proactive instead of just reacting as best he could. “So, anyway, the night before the trial the partner called some guys he knew. They stole the girlfriend’s car; she never made it to the courtroom. Another guy stopped short in front of the opposing lawyer’s car—nothing serious, but enough to send him to the emergency room. The other side had some young associate in the courtroom but he had no idea what he was doing, and no star witness. The moral of the story is that the person who wins the fight is the person who picks the battlefield—instead of waiting for court, he made a preemptive strike.”
Thief on the Cross: Templar Secrets in America (Templars in America Series Book 2) Page 17