Fick dich selber, du Arschloch.
He let the pencil hed palmed from Drabecks pocket in the parking lot drop down his sleeve and into his right hand. He swept his arm up back-handed across Peggys front, plunging the sharpened point of the pencil into Stefans right eye and deep into the frontal portion of his brain, killing him instantly. A single shriek died half-stillborn in Stefans throat. Fluid from the burst eyeball drained down his cheek.
Leaving the pencil in place, Holliday dropped his hand into the dead mans lap, prying the big automatic from his nerveless fingers. He thumbed down the safety, and, twisting his body while leaning over Peggy, covering her, he fired repeatedly into the rear of the front seat.
Upholstery exploded and the bullets took the security guard in the groin and belly, the concussions from each shot filling the interior of the car with a sound like raging thunder. The man twisted and jerked, screaming as he flopped back against the dashboard. Lifting the heavy pistol above the back of the seat, Holliday fired twice more, hitting the security guard in the throat and face. There was a humpty-dumpty instant as the mans head burst open, spraying the front seat and the windshield with blood, brains, and bone chips. Kellerman swerved, tires squealing as the car almost went off the road. Holliday jammed the muzzle of the pistol under Kellermans collar.
Pull over, he ordered. Now.
Silently, Kellerman did as he was told, guiding the big car onto the gravel shoulder. The inside of the car smelled like blood and gunpowder. Holliday worked his jaw back and forth; his ears were ringing. Adrenaline was rushing through his system, and his stomach was roiling. Most other times and places he would have been sick. He swallowed bile.
Unlock the doors, he ordered. Reach for some kind of weapon and I wont even think about it. Kellerman nodded, his head barely moving. He reached down and touched a button on his door. There was a dull clicking sound. Holliday glanced out the window. Dark woods on either side. They were in the middle of a forest.
You okay, Peg? Holliday asked.
Yeah, she answered, her voice choked. Stefans body was sagging against her like a sleeping lover.
Open the door and push out the body, ordered Holliday.
I dont want to touch him.
Just do it, we dont have much time.
Okay.
She leaned over the dead man and tugged the door open. Pushing and straining, she toppled him outward. The corpse flopped half out of the car, legs and feet still inside. Peggy kicked and struggled, finally managing to get the rest of the body out. Holliday looked out through the blood-sprayed windshield. Still no traffic.
Get the guy out of the front seat, he said to Peggy.
Aw, come on!
Do it, Peg!
She climbed out of the car, stepped over Stefans body and opened the front passenger-side door. Gri macing, she grabbed the nearly headless body by the arm and hauled it out of the car.
Now what? Peggy called from the side of the road.
Get the gun out of his holster. Theres a little lever with an S on it on the left-hand side. Push it down. Aim it at Kellerman. If he does anything that makes you nervous, squeeze the trigger and keep on squeezing until you dont feel nervous anymore.
Okay, she answered. She crouched down over the guards body and retrieved his weapon, taking off the safety and aiming the pistol back into the car.
Holliday turned his attention back to Kellerman.
Im getting out of the car and so are you. Make any kind of stupid move and I will kill you, understand?
Yes.
Do it. Slowly.
The two men climbed out of the car. The open air smelled like pine needles. A breeze sighed through the trees. The moon was rising. The forest looked like something from a fairy tale.
Walk around the front of the car and stand on the shoulder, ordered Holliday. Kellerman did as he was told. So far he had barely spoken. Less than five minutes had passed since the tables had abruptly turned. Holliday followed Kellerman around the big car, the .45 aimed squarely at the small of the mans back. Kellerman glanced down at the crumpled bodies of his security guards.
Stefan has a two-year-old son. Hans was about to be married.
Spare the sentiment, said Holliday. It doesnt suit you.
I will kill you for this, pledged Kellerman.
So what? Holliday said. You were going to kill us anyway. He turned to Peggy. Search him. Weapons and cell phones.
Do I have to?
Yes. Give me the gun. She handed him the weapon. He popped out the magazine and put both pistol and magazine into the pocket of his jacket. Peggy searched Kellerman. She came up with a Deutsche Telekom iPhone and a palm-sized Beretta Tomcat .32-caliber automatic. Holliday put both into his other pocket.
He turned back to Kellerman. Roll your friends into the ditch.
The German gave Holliday a long appraising look but said nothing. He dragged the bodies to the edge of the ditch that ran beside the shoulder of the road and pushed them over.
And now? Kellerman asked sourly.
And now we go, said Holliday. When the next Autobahnpolizei patrol comes by you can explain how your two dead employees got that way.
Peggy stepped forward, looked into the front seat at the mess, and then got into the back. Keeping the big automatic trained on Kellerman, Holliday got behind the wheel and switched on the ignition.
I think Im going to be sick, said Peggy weakly. Please get me out of here.
Holliday spun the wheel, making a U-turn and heading them back toward Friedrichshafen. He stepped down on the gas. In the rearview mirror the tall figure of Axel Kellerman receded and then was swallowed up by the darkness.
We lost the pictures, said Holliday.
No, we didnt, said Peggy from the backseat. She poked her hand into the back pocket of her jeans. She pulled out a slim piece of plastic a little bigger than a piece of Juicy Fruit gum and held it up for Holliday to see. The word Sony was imprinted on the side.
Whats that? Holliday asked.
A flash memory stick, she answered. I downloaded the pictures while we were still in Kellermans Batcave. Weve got them all. Like I said, Doc, welcome to the digital age.
16
How are you doing? Holliday asked. It was shortly after the lunch-hour rush, and they were sitting in an outdoor café just off the Piazza del Gesů Nuovo in the coastal city of Naples, Italy. Peggy was drinking from a green bottle of ice-cold Nastro Azzuro, and Holliday was on his second cappuccino. The crusty remains of an excellent margherita pizza lay between them on a serving platter. It was hot, bright sunlight shining down out of a brilliant blue sky. Traffic roared loudly around the square. Two days had passed since their gruesome adventure in Friedrichshafen.
How am I? Peggy said. Im still trying to figure out how we got from there to here.
By train. Holliday smiled.
I didnt mean that, she said.
I know, he said quietly. He glanced out across the piazza. In the center of the slightly tilted cobble-stone square loomed the soaring, ornate, rococo Guglia dellImmacolata obelisk, erected by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century to commemorate the Immaculate Conception and to consecrate their new basilica, after which the piazza was named.
The piazza was the historic center of the old city by the sea, but its importance had faded long ago, and now, instead of praying priests and monks from holy orders, the streets were lined with bars and clubs and by-the-slice pizza shops, the sidewalks thronged with tourists, the roadway jammed with trucks and cars and rushing scooters, their sewing machine engines whining like enraged mosquitoes as they threaded their way dangerously in and out of the rushing traffic that circled endlessly around the enormous spire. It was a long way from the lonely roadside in the Bavarian Alps.
After
leaving Kellerman in the darkness, theyd driven back toward the Schloss, retrieving their rental from where theyd parked it on the far side of the bluff that held the castle ruins. There they abandoned the Mercedes with Drabecks body in the trunk.
Holliday drove them into Friedrichshafen, just managing to catch the 10:40 ferry, the last one of the day. They reached the Swiss side of the lake forty-five minutes later and arrived in Zurich two hours after that. Peggy found a twenty-four hour Internet café where they accessed the memory stick and printed out the diary photographs in ninety-four double-page entries.
They checked the sheets one by one, looking for a familiar word or name. They found what they were looking for in the entry for Monday, September 27, 1943: the word Naples and a nameAmedeo Maiuri, the Italian archaeologist whod originally discovered the sword during his excavations in Pompeii, a few miles south of the city in the shadow of Vesuvius, the towering volcano that loomed over the Neapolitan landscape.
It was enough for Holliday. They boarded the morning high-speed train to Milan, and then took the slower overnight train to Florence, once the home of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and, much later, Salvatore Fer ragamo, shoemaker to the stars. In Florence they took the requisite pages from Lutz Kellermans wartime diary to the people at the local Berlitz office and had them translated. Translations done, they continued on to Naples.
Peggy nursed her beer and stared blankly out at the whirling traffic and the chattering crowds on the sidewalks. Her time in Friedrichshafen had taken its toll. She looked worn, tired, and depressed. Holliday wasnt surprised; he wasnt faring much better. Since the beginning of their pell-mell escapade hed seen five men die and had been directly responsible for the violent deaths of three of them. Whether they deserved it or not was irrelevant; hed been the one whod snuffed out their lives. Their blood was on his hands, and the responsibility for that weighed heavily on him.
Do you want to quit? Holliday said.
Peggy turned to him, startled. What?
Do you want to quit? he repeated. We can stop right now, you know. Get on a plane and be back home in time for breakfast tomorrow.
She frowned and took a little sip of beer. She put the bottle down, picking at the paper label with her thumbnail.
Im not like you, said Peggy finally. Im not a soldier. I see bad things in a viewfinder, not for real.
Believe me, kiddo, I dont feel any different than you do, responded Holliday.
I want the bad stuff to be over, she said. Is it?
Holliday shrugged.
Theres an old saying that dates back to the Bourbon kingsVedi Napoli e poi muori. See Naples and die. He paused and shrugged again. Bad stuff begets bad stuff, battles breed more battles, and one war leads to the next. Theres no guarantee that its all going to be clear sailing from here on out.
What about Kellerman?
What about him? Holliday replied.
Is he going to quit now?
He knows whats in his fathers diary. Hes connected. It wouldnt be hard for him to track us down. Holliday shook his head. No, he wont quit.
Then neither should we.
They drove the bright red Fiat 500 rental inland from the Bay of Naples, skirting the brooding base of a sleeping Mount Vesuvius then headed into the rolling countryside beyond. All around them were neat vineyards and stands of walnut trees, hazelnut trees, apricots, and centuries-old groves of olives. The entire area was supposedly controlled by the Camorra, a homegrown Neapolitan version of the Mafia, but there was no sign of it here.
It was hard to imagine such a pastoral and beautiful landscape as a war zone, but on the ninth of September, 1943, the Allies landed on the beaches of Salerno, fifty miles south, and by the middle of the month they were pressing inland and up the coast to Naples while the German Army under Albert Kesselring slowly withdrew to the north.
According to his diary, on September 28 Lutz Kellerman, leading a small company of crack soldiers from the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, arrived in the town of Nola, approximately thirty kilometers northeast of Naples. They were equipped with a number of half-track armored personnel carriers mounted with heavy machine guns, some Kettenrad tracked motorcycles, half a dozen Panzer IV tanks, and a Kübelwagen command car for Kellerman. Their official mission was to harass the enemy wherever possible, gather intelligence and forage for supplies, sending out three man brandschatzen pillage and burn patrols into the countryside. Kellerman, however, had his own agenda.
Having met with Amedeo Maiuri at a private rendezvous at the archaeologists villa in the suburbs of Naples two days before, Kellerman left the bulk of his men to secure and pacify the town while he and a handpicked platoon of men went to the place Maiuri had discussed with him at their meeting.
The location in question was a large, seventeenth-century Palladian palazzo on a hilltop just outside the tiny village of San Paolo Bel Sito a mile or so to the south. The Villa Montesano, as it was called, had a long and illustrious heritage going back to the Cistercian Order of the Knights of Calatrava, who were closely allied with their Cistercian brothers, the Templars.
The villa, built more like an abbey than a private home, had been passed down through a number of families over the centuries and was now owned by Signora Luisa Santamaria Nicolini, widow of Henry Contieri, whose uncle Nicola had been Archbishop of Gaeta. The ties with the Church and the Templars were clear, but more importantly, the entire Naples Archives were now being stored for safekeeping in the villa; 866 cases in all, containing more than thirty thousand precious volumes and fifty thousand parchment documents dating back to the twelfth century and the time of the Crusades.
According to Amedeo Maiuri, among those documents were the Angevin Templar Archive and a volume once possessed by the famous Templar navigator Roger de Flor, the near-mythical seaman knight who was said to have somehow spirited the Templar treasure out of the Holy Land and hidden it for safekeeping.
Maiuri had once seen the book and read the Latin inscription on its cover that said the words within the volume could only be understood by the man who owned the True Sword of Pelerin. The book was a copy of De laudibus novae militiae, the letter written by Bernard of Clairvaux to Hugues de Payens, first Grand Master of the Templars and Prior of Jerusalem.
Once again, according to the diary, Lutz Kellerman had gone to the villa, met with Signora Nicolini, the owner, and also with the resident director of the displaced Archives, a man named Antonio Capograssi. On being questioned by Kellerman, even under the threat of burning the villa and the contents of the Archives, neither the woman nor Capograssi admitted anything.
Capograssi insisted that no such book was in the Archives, and to prove it he showed the entire inventory to Kellerman. There was no mention of Roger de Flor or any copy of De laudibus novae militiae. Not satisfied, Kellerman began to pry open crates, helped by his men, including a young Rudy Drabeck.
After several hours they had found absolutely nothing. In the diary Kellerman mentioned that while they tore open crates they could hear the sounds of artillery in the distance. Allied artillery, coming up and inland from Salerno, on the way to Rome and eventually, as the SS general confided to his diary, to certain victory. Italy had fallen, the Reich would soon follow; it was only a matter of time. Finally, frustrated with the sound of artillery growing with every passing hour, he gave the order to his men: Alles einaschernBurn it all.
Which is exactly what they proceeded to do. The members of his platoon piled paper, straw, and gunpowder in the four corners of each room, and then set it alight. Within minutes the Archives was enveloped in flames. In less than an hour the entire villa was an inferno. By the following morning the Villa Montesano was a smoking ruin, never to be occupied again, and Lutz Kellerman was gone.
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