by C. S. Graham
“That sounds really good. But why should I believe you?”
Again, that little curl of the lip. “Because, unlike you, I have nothing to gain and everything to lose by what I’m doing.”
He felt a flush of anger heat his cheeks. “You think I haven’t suffered because of this story?”
“This isn’t just a story.” She tilted her head to one side, as if the eyes behind those sunglasses were studying him and finding him somehow wanting. “I wonder: if you had a choice between saving your country and saving your story, which would you choose?”
“I don’t see why I can’t do both. The problem is, right now, I can’t do either. This story is going nowhere. I have no proof of anything, and the one potential witness to part of the story I did have is now dead.”
She drew in a hard breath that flared her delicate nostrils. “Tell me what you need. What will it take to get this out there?”
Noah cast a quick look down the length of the aisle toward the east window and lowered his voice. “You said they’re using the lost verses from the Babylonian Codex as their blueprint. I need those verses.”
“What are you willing to do to get them?”
Noah studied her beautiful, self-possessed face. Who the hell was she? Aloud, he said, “I don’t understand.”
She turned to walk slowly up the north aisle, Noah beside her, their footsteps echoing in the vast space. Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Leo Carlyle has been collecting Mesopotamian artifacts for the last fifteen years. The legitimate pieces that he buys on the open market are scattered throughout his various houses. But the illegal stuff—the antiquities he buys on the black market—are kept in his house on Coeur d’Alene Lake in Idaho. In a secret gallery that opens off the library.”
“He has the Babylonian Codex there?” Noah asked sharply. More sharply than he’d intended.
“Shh,” she cautioned, although there was no one around. “The manuscripts are kept in a special climate-controlled room off the main gallery. Just to the left of the door is a fireproof metal cabinet where he stores the digital copies of his manuscripts, along with their translations.”
Noah stared at her. “How the hell do you know all of this?”
Reaching up, she took off her sunglasses and hat and shook out her long flaxen hair. “Because I’m his wife.”
Jax found O’Reilly himself waiting at the edge of the runway, a white cloud of exhaust streaming from the rear of his sleek, dark blue Jag.
“Well, this is service,” said Jax, opening the front door for October before sliding into the backseat himself.
O’Reilly threw the Jag into gear and hit the gas. “Your girl is moving. She left the house five minutes ago in a cab. I’ve got a couple of lads on her tail. She’s headed toward St. Giles Cripplegate.”
Jax filled O’Reilly in as they battled their way through morning London traffic. They were still on A 501 when a call came through from O’Reilly’s lads: the target was nearing the Barbican.
“Why St. Giles Cripplegate?” said Jax.
“Can’t imagine.”
Ten minutes later, whipping around the corner onto Fore Street, O’Reilly swooped in close to the curb and killed the engine. A redhead with ruddy cheeks got out of the unmarked white van parked near the corner and walked toward them. O’Reilly punched down his window.
“She’s in the church,” said the agent. “About five minutes after she went in, a slim bloke in a torn tan canvas jacket and jeans went in after her. Neither one has come out.”
Jax threw open his door. “That sounds like Bosch.” He glanced back at O’Reilly, “You got a spare gun for October?”
O’Reilly pulled a Browning 9mm from the glove compartment and handed it to her. “What? You guys don’t carry your own?”
“I should probably warn you I’m a lousy shot,” she said, holding the gun awkwardly.
O’Reilly cast his eyes heavenward. “The Lord preserve us. Just be careful where you go pointing that thing, all right?” He slid out the car. “Come on. Let’s go scoop up your compatriots before the bad guys get them.”
Chapter 61
A.J. Carlyle drew a thick sealed envelope from her Prada purse. “Here. This contains the key to the Idaho house, along with a sketch of the layout and all the access codes you’ll need. I’ve also included a description of the compound’s security equipment and guard schedule. There’s a dog named Barracuda, but he shouldn’t be a problem if you come prepared. I’ve explained it all in—”
“Hang on,” said Noah, his hand tightening convulsively around the envelope. “What do you think I can do with this? I’m a journalist, not a thief!”
The pale white light from the high arched window above them streamed down across her flawless profile. “Surely you know someone—”
“No. What kind of company do you think I keep? It’s your house; why don’t you just sneak into this gallery and take the translation of the codex yourself?”
“Because the cabinet where he keeps the digital copies of his manuscripts and the translations is locked. It’s a keyed lock, not a code pad, and as far as I know Leo has the only key. I’ve given you everything you need except that. If you can find someone who—” She broke off, her eyes widening, her chest jerking on a quickly indrawn breath as she looked around wildly. “What was that? Did you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“There’s someone else here.”
“There can’t be. I was watching the place before you came. You’re probably just—”
And then Noah heard it, too. The quiet scuff of a sole against stone.
“Oh, my God,” he whispered, just as the pop-pop of a suppressed pistol shattered the silence.
He dove between the two nearest pews. But A.J. Carlyle stood oddly rigid. Glancing back, he saw an expression of vague surprise come over her features. She took one awkward step, then staggered to her knees. As if in slow motion, she pitched forward onto her face. He could see a shiny black wetness sheeting her back.
Oh God, Oh God, he prayed, scrambling along the cold marble floor on his hands and knees. He was wedged in between the seat of one pew and the back of the next. Trapped.
Then he heard another pop, and the back of the pew beside his head exploded into splinters.
“Let me do the talking,” Jax told October as they trotted across the paved square. The crumbling remnant of one of the old round barbicans from the vanished London city walls rose up incongruously beside them.
“If you don’t mind,” said O’Reilly, “this is my country, remember? I’ll handle this.” The Irishman pushed open the heavy wooden door at the base of the tower and then yelped as a spray of bullets chewed through wood and stone beside them. “Bloody hell!”
Dragging October with him, Jax dove sideways behind the ancient stone lintel. “Stay here and don’t let anyone out,” he told her, yanking his Beretta from the holster at the small of his back.
Quickly chambering a round, he glanced at O’Reilly, crouched down on the far side of the door.
Whipping out a Sig 226, O’Reilly yelled to his guys from the van. “Get around the back of the church! Now!” Then he met Jax’s gaze and nodded.
The two men exploded into the church together, Jax lunging to one side, O’Reilly to the other. A big dude in a black leather jacket creeping down the right aisle swung his Glock toward them. O’Reilly’s 9mm slugs caught the asshole square in the chest, the impact of the big bullets slamming the mercenary against the wall hard enough to leave a bloody smear as he slid down. The percussion of the blast contained within the thick stone walls was deafening.
They hunkered low behind the rear pews, their gazes sweeping the long, soaring nave. An eerie silence had fallen over the church. The cold, misty light streaming in through the clear high windows bathed the space in a white glow. The interior of the church was a study in contrasts, dark wooden ceiling and row after row of oaken pews standing out stark against the pale sandstone walls and marble floo
r.
His Beretta held at the ready, Jax crept up the side aisle, toward the altar. The air was thick with the smell of dank stone and old incense and freshly spilled blood. At the base of one of the marble columns he came upon the crumpled body of A.J. Carlyle.
From up near the chancel came the sound of a door being thrown open. A shaft of light streamed into the darkened nave.
“Shit,” swore O’Reilly, charging up.
They heard a shout, followed by a burst of gunfire, the crack of a Glock answered by the boom of a .40 caliber pistol. Then a motor gunned. They heard a squeal of tires and more shots.
“Morgan? Cooper!” shouted O’Reilly, sprinting down the aisle.
He barged through the chancelry door, Jax right behind him.
The redhead from the van was down, dark blood streaming from his leg, with his partner hunkered beside him and trying desperately to stop the flow. “It was a woman! A fucking woman with long blond hair!”
“Did you see the car? Call it in, man!” Holstering his Sig, O’Reilly yanked out his phone and went to crouch beside his fallen man. “I need two ambulances! Quick.”
Jax swiped the back of one hand across his forehead and turned back to the church.
Tobie was standing just inside the door at the base of the west tower. She had O’Reilly’s Browning held in a steady, two-handed grip, its muzzle pressed into the back of Noah Bosch’s skull.
Two hours later, Jax, October, and O’Reilly were sitting around the kitchen table of a safe house in Notting Hill.
O’Reilly said, “The dude with the Glock has been identified as Jason Cavanaugh. He flew in from Marrakech this morning.”
“Thought so. Anyone on the flight manifest with him?”
“No one who booked their ticket at the same time.” O’Reilly spread immigration photographs of six women across the table. “Recognize anyone?”
Jax scanned the faces of women old and young, fair and dark. He paused for a moment over the photo of a youngish woman with an unfashionable short dark pageboy, heavy glasses and big teeth. She looked vaguely familiar in some way. But he couldn’t place her and shook his head. “Nope.”
October said, “Does the press know about A.J. Carlyle?”
O’Reilly picked up the pictures and thrust them into a file. “All they know is that an unidentified woman was shot in an apparent robbery in St. Giles Cripplegate.”
“How’s she doing?”
“She’s in the ICU. It’s still touch and go, but we’ve decided to let it out—quietly, of course—that she’s dead. See what that turns up.”
Jax pushed to his feet. “Shall we go talk to Mr. Noah Bosch?”
Special Agent Laura Brockman stood before the bathroom mirror. From the distance came the crackling announcement of a flight boarding being repeated in one unintelligible language after the other. Working quickly, she twisted her long blond hair up around the crown of her head and eased the black wig over it. The effect was not flattering.
Smiling, she slipped in a set of prosthetic upper teeth that gave her a bad overbite, then crowned it all off with a pair of really ugly plastic framed glasses. She smiled again at her reflection in the mirror and gave the pageboy wig one last twitch.
Then she shouldered her carry-on bag and went to catch her flight to D.C.
Chapter 62
Noah perched nervously on the edge of a single bed covered in cheerful floral chintz.
The bedroom was decorated in what Julie used to call English-country-house chic: chintz balloon shade at the window, a dark Victorian dresser with a white marble top, a round bedside table covered with a cutwork scarf, a gently-aged bentwood chair. A disinterested observer coming upon the cozy nook at the top of the stairs might find it hard to believe Noah was a prisoner—unless they noticed the bars behind the chintz shade and the guard posted on the other side of the door.
He sat with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together and pressed against his lips. They’d searched him and taken his backpack and the envelope A. J. Carlyle had given him, but they hadn’t hurt him. He kept telling himself he was safe. These people had saved his life, right?
But he didn’t feel safe. He wondered if he’d ever feel safe again.
The sound of the door being unlocked brought his head up. Two of the people he’d encountered in the church—the American guy and the girl who’d threatened to shoot him in the fucking head—came in and closed the door behind them.
The guy had Noah’s backpack in his hands.
Noah straightened, but stayed where he was, his palms flattening against his thighs.
The American gave Noah a big smile that showed his teeth but did nothing to warm his cold blue eyes. “Hi there. I’m Jax Alexander.” He nodded to the woman. “This is Ensign October Guinness.” The girl went to lean against the cheerfully draped window, but the guy just stood there in a way Noah didn’t like.
The guy said, “We know you’ve been investigating the dominionists. We know you were in Davos when the Vice President died. And we know you were in Spain when Zapatero was killed.” He paused. “Being around you seems to be bad for other people’s health, Mr. Bosch.”
Noah stared at him. When he remained silent, Alexander pulled up the bentwood chair and sat directly in Noah’s line of vision.
“What we don’t know is what you were doing in Morocco.” Alexander reached into Noah’s backpack. “And where the hell did you get this?”
Noah found himself staring at the strange device given him by Michael Hawkins. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. But his voice was still a frightened croak. “Why should I trust you?”
“I’m not sure you have much of an option at this point, Mr. Bosch. How long do you think you’ll last if we put you back out on the street? You seem to be very unpopular with someone.”
Noah felt his stomach burn. For one, humiliating moment, he thought he might be sick.
Alexander exchanged glances with the woman. Unlike Alexander, she wasn’t smiling. But she still managed to look a hell of a lot nicer—even if she had nearly made him crap his pants by putting a gun to his head.
She said, “Tell us, Noah.”
Hunching forward, he let the story come tumbling out. It came in bits and pieces, with plenty of questions and backtracking before it made much sense.
Alexander said, “You expect me to believe you had no idea you were dealing with Leo Carlyle’s wife?”
Noah looked at him. “Why the hell would I lie about that at this point?”
Guinness drew from her pocket the envelope A.J. Carlyle had given him. The envelope had been opened. She said, “Why did Mrs. Carlyle give you this?”
Noah scrubbed one hand over his lower face. Christ, he needed a shave. And a bath. And clean clothes. He said, “That’s where the Babylonian Codex is. In Idaho. She gave me the layout of the house and all the access codes and stuff.”
Alexander said, “What did she think you were going to do with it?”
“She had some crazy idea I could break in and steal the digital copy of the codex.” He tried to laugh, but it sounded weird even to his own ears.
He watched as Alexander turned his head and looked up to find the woman regarding him with a fixed expression.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Alexander told her. “Don’t get any ideas.”
She smiled. “Why not? You’ve got everything you need right here. What could possibly go wrong?”
“Something can always go wrong.”
Half an hour later, Noah found himself whisked out of London to a small private airfield where a plain white Gulfstream waited. The pilot was some big, cranky Cajun who kept complaining about his “schedule” even as they were taxiing down the runway. Noah had a feeling they were taking him with them mainly because O’Reilly had said he didn’t want to have to deal with “that bloody journalist” and no one seemed to know what else to do with him. Noah tried hard to hide his elation, but he doubted he succeeded. He was alive, and he was still on his sto
ry. Maybe there would be a Pulitzer Prize in his future after all.
“So,” he said, going to sit across from his two rescuers once the jet was airborne over the Atlantic. “Turnabout is fair play, right?”
They looked at him questioningly.
Noah said, “I told you what I know. Now you tell me what you know. Right?”
“No,” said Alexander. He had spread a bar towel on top of the built-in mahogany table that ran along one side of the jet’s cabin and was in the process of cleaning his Beretta.
Noah was getting to the point of really disliking this guy. “Am I under arrest?”
The guy didn’t even look up. “No.”
“So as soon as we land, I’m free to go?”
“No.”
“But . . . you can’t just keep me against my will. That’s like, kidnapping or something.”
Alexander clicked the Beretta’s slide back into place. “Yes.”
Noah looked at the woman. “You’re in—what? The Navy?”
“Yes.”
Noah nodded toward Alexander. “Is he in the Navy, too?”
“No.”
“So who’s he with?”
“The federal government.”
Noah had been a journalist long enough to knew what that meant. Everyone he’d ever met who said they were with the “federal government” was really with the CIA. “So the good guys know about this plot, right? It’s just a matter of nailing these bastards?”
Alexander and Guinness exchanged guarded looks. Neither smiled, and Noah felt his earlier optimism begin to slip away.
“I think maybe we do need to tell him a little bit,” she said.
“You may be right.” Alexander slipped the Beretta back into its holster. “Ever shoot an assault rifle?”