by Rachel Lee
Gunfire echoed in the tiny room.
38
Querbach, Germany
H ans Neufel listened to the crack of gunfire below him. French reconnaissance units had crossed the Kinzig and were infiltrating the villages of Neumühl and Auenheim, hunter-killer teams moving house to house in search of German observation points and sniper positions. Through his infrared sight, he could watch the battle in the darkness, glowing forms moving in threes from doorway to doorway like ghosts on the prowl.
But these ghosts were far more deadly than any apparition. In this kind of fight, quarter was neither sought nor given, for the moments one might use to invite surrender would be the same moments one’s enemy would use to locate, sight and squeeze a trigger. Nor was there time to distinguish between soldiers and civilians who had remained behind in their homes. To move was to kill or to be killed, and already there were fading forms visible in streets or through windows, images turning paler as bodies cooled in the crisp nighttime air.
“What’s happening, Sergeant?”
It was Schiffer, his voice rising in pitch. This was not the army that young Schiffer had had in mind when he had signed his enlistment papers. It was not the army Neufel had had in mind, either. But it was his world now.
“War, Schiffer. War is happening.”
Strasbourg, France
Steve heard the distant pop-pop-pop of gunfire. It came not only from the east, across the Rhine, but nearer and from the south. The soldiers attacking Vasquez’s house were taking fire.
He and Miguel picked up their pace as they moved through the darkened woods, ignoring the stinging cuts of branches snapping across their faces. Miguel, like the two Arabs flanking them, moved with the silence of a cat, his hands comfortable on the grips of his assault carbines, his eyes sweeping the darkness as if he were an owl. But Steve was not a trained soldier, and he heard his every footfall as if it were the crashing of a clumsy giant.
He whispered a silent “Our Father” as they jogged, repeating the verses again and again, letting them lull his mind into something approaching calm, his body responding to the rhythm with the smooth stride he had once used in his daily jogs in Savannah.
A lifetime ago.
Our Father, who art in Heaven. Left foot, right foot. Hallowed be Thy name. Left foot, right foot.
The time seemed to pass in slow motion, and he found himself wondering how long it had been since Miguel had all but pushed him out of the helicopter. He took inventory of his body, his lungs still comfortable, his legs not yet tingling with the exertion. Surely, his inventory said, they had not yet been running for even five minutes. Yet it seemed as if they had been in these woods forever.
The trees thinned, no longer the nearly random placement of the hand of God, now spaced in the geometric lines of the hand of man. That made the running easier, but Steve knew it also made detection more likely.
No sooner had the thought entered his head than he felt Miguel’s hand grasp his back, pulling him to a stop. Steve held his breath, listening, as one of the Arab men slipped a few yards farther into the darkness. Moments later, a muted oof crept through the night air, followed by an almost silent, gurgling hiss. Steve’s feet detected the vibration of a body crumbling to the ground just before the Arab reappeared, his knife glistening black.
A man lay dying, Steve thought, still hearing the fading gurgle of the victim trying to draw precious breath through a throat laid open by a knife he had never seen. Every fiber in Steve’s being ached with the need to go to the stricken man, to give him the last rites, to grant him absolution, to care for a stricken soul. But Miguel’s grip on the back of his shirt left no doubt that that would not be possible. At this moment Steve was a soldier and not a priest.
The thought crushed his heart like lead.
Minutes that felt like hours later, they were at the west edge of the park, looking across the street at the Tour de l’Européens. The sculpture at its entrance, of a couple in a heart-shaped embrace of peace, seemed wholly at odds with the war that now threatened Europe. A war that could only be stopped by exposing the madman at its heart.
And that man was protected by the codex, an awful power he had already used to deadly effect.
This thought kept Steve moving. Yes, a man lay behind them in the woods, eyes fading into an eternal gaze, his soul now committed to the mercies of a God he might or might not have believed to exist. But if Steve and his colleagues did not press on and retrieve the codex, more would die. Countless more.
Steve watched as Miguel and the two Arabs worked the bolts on their weapons, preparing to kill or die in a quest that, if legend were to be believed, was born in the power of the gods and the evil of men. Steve wasn’t sure if the pyramids were indeed the gifts of the gods, but he had no doubt as to the evil of men.
“Ready,” Miguel whispered to the two Arabs.
“Ready,” they whispered back.
Steve felt his weight shift onto the balls of his feet, muscles twitching like those of a cat preparing to pounce. And that, he thought, was what he had become on this night. A predator, in the company of predators.
Lead me not into temptation, he whispered as they set off across the street. And deliver me from evil.
General Jules Soult watched the men sprint across the street. He had been awakened by the rumbling thump-thump of the helicopters over the city. Had the Germans dared to launch an airmobile assault? But as he had shaken himself into full awareness, he realized he could hear only one or perhaps two aircraft, far too small a force for a full-scale attack. That meant they were coming for him.
They were in for a surprise, he thought, as he turned from the window and walked to the wall safe. He twisted the dial quickly, feeling the solid, satisfying thunk as he turned the handle and the case-hardened steel bolts released.
Soult reached inside and picked up the soft leather pouch that held the ruby pyramid. He had spent many hours alone in his office, pondering its secrets as he gazed into its crystalline red depths. While he was no mathematician, he had studied calculus at university, and with the help of academic Web sites, he had begun to plumb the knowledge that danced within this small pyramid. He had not learned all its secrets, not by any stretch of the imagination. But he had learned enough to end the life of Karl Vögel.
Just as he would end the lives of the men who were, even now, coming to kill him. Men who had no idea of the power Jules Soult could wield…men who were preparing to kill a mere mortal and not a god. For that was what the pyramid made him, he knew. And a vengeful god, at that.
Who had sent these assassins? Who had dared to challenge him?
The question answered itself almost as quickly as it arose, for only one group would believe it had the power to threaten him. The bastards in Frankfurt. The men with their hands on the throat of the world, choking it for every percent they could squeeze out, never having the courage to seize power openly, instead seeking to control and harness those who did.
He knew they were furious that he had threatened the use of nuclear weapons. Well, let them quail at this new weapon he possessed.
Soult lighted a candle and held the pyramid in front of it, reminding himself of the mathematical sentences that expressed the deepest truths of the universe. Truths that only he knew.
Truths that he would use to kill.
Oh yes, he would kill these assassins. And then he would go to Frankfurt and kill them all.
Hector Vasquez struggled to keep his feet beneath him as two men walked him down the stairs and out into the street. Or at least he assumed that was where he was being taken, for after the burst of gunfire in his apartment, a heavy hood had been pulled over his face and tightened at his throat. He could breathe, but the man holding the drawstring of the hood left no doubt that breath and life could be snatched away in the twist of a wrist.
The last thing he had seen was his bodyguards, assigned by Monsieur Soult, standing in the doorway. But his guards had not been preparing to protect
Vasquez from the men who had crashed through his windows and interrupted his late dinner. No, his guards’ pistols had been pointed squarely at him.
Vasquez had no difficulty imagining the orders that Soult had given. Protect Vasquez if possible. And if not, kill him.
In that instant before one of the attackers had cut the bodyguards down with a three-round burst, Vasquez had seen the truth he had avoided these past months. For Jules Soult, loyalty was a one-way enterprise. And Vasquez was nothing but a tool to be used and then destroyed.
The hands gripping his arms tightened as he heard the rumble of helicopter rotors swell. Yes, they were out in the street now. And judging by the way the roar grew with every step, he was being steered toward the aircraft.
These men had not come to kill him. They had come to capture him. And they would interrogate him, of that he had not the slightest doubt. Moreover, they seemed to know their business, which meant the interrogation, when it did happen, would be brutal and effective.
Except that Vasquez had no intention of resisting their questions. No, that fire had been extinguished in the instant he had looked into his bodyguards’ eyes. He would tell his captors everything. Not to save his own life—he had no doubt that it was forfeit no matter what—but simply because Jules Soult had become a monster.
But not an omnipotent monster.
And Vasquez knew more than enough to push that monster out of the darkness and into the cold light of the day for all to see, for all to know in its true form.
The rotor wash tore at his clothes as they neared the helicopter, and then Vasquez felt himself hoisted inside, wincing as he was thrust into a seat, pinning his bound hands behind him.
“Doc team is still working,” a man’s voice said.
“Tell them to hurry,” a woman replied.
They were speaking English, with plainly American accents, except for the woman. Yes, Vasquez thought. It would be the Americans. Once Soult had issued the threat of nuclear weapons, he had touched a lighted cigarette to the tail of the python that encircled the world. The python had responded immediately, and with crushing force.
“You are American,” Vasquez said.
“Shut up,” the woman said. Then, a moment later, “Viper is in the bag.”
“I demand to know who you are.”
“I said shut up.”
“But surely you want to know what I know,” Vasquez said. “That is why you are here, yes?”
“We’ll get to that,” she said. It was the voice of someone who was not reluctant to issue orders. And it was the voice of someone who expected obedience. “But not here, and not now.”
There was a tension in her voice, as well. American soldiers were in France. Certainly they had no invitation to be here. She wanted to get out of here, he thought, and quickly. Which gave him the leverage he needed.
“Your men are searching my flat,” he said. “I can save them time.”
There was a pause before she spoke. “I’m listening.”
“First remove the hood,” he said. “It is difficult to breathe. And I wish to look into the eyes of my captor.”
“No way,” she said.
“Very well,” he said. “But the information you want is not information your men have the time to discover for themselves.”
Seize the initiative. He had been taught that from his first days in the army. It was especially important if you were captured. Keep the enemy reacting to you, rather than reacting to them. Whatever opportunities might arise, they could only arise for the man who was alert, aware and in control of himself.
Vasquez needed an opportunity. Just a sliver.
Then he would escape. And he would do what he should have done months ago.
He would kill Jules Soult with his own hands.
He felt the drawstring loosen in the instant before the hood was yanked off his face. He looked into the eyes of his captor, eyes hard and cold like glaciers he had seen in the Alps. He did not doubt this woman’s ability to kill.
“All right,” she said. “Talk.”
“My hard drive is reformatted weekly,” he said. “You will want the flash memory sticks I use for backup.”
“Where are they?”
“Tell your men to look on the bookshelf. The bound edition of Don Quixote.”
“Don Quixote,” she said to the other man in the helicopter, who relayed the information over the radio. She turned to Vasquez. “You like hopeless causes?”
“There are no hopeless causes,” Vasquez said. “There are only people without hope.”
39
Strasbourg, Germany
T he keycard was, as promised, barely hidden beneath a layer of soil at the base of a tree. The individual pass code that matched the card was written on Steve’s palm in waterproof ink that had not smudged despite his sweat. As he retrieved the pass code, Miguel and the two Arabs swept silently onto the two guards at this private side entrance, felling both with swift and silent butt strokes from their assault rifles. Moments later Steve slid the keycard through the reader and punched in the pass code.
They were in.
Third floor, the source had said. Steve thought back to the confusion at the briefing in Rome. The third floor would be the third above ground level. The stairwell was ten meters to their left, as promised, and they took only a moment to gather themselves, communicating in silent looks, before moving up the stairs as if they were four fingers of the same hand.
Steve wondered why men could rarely harness this same sense of oneness toward good ends. Men would sacrifice their own interests, even their own lives, welding themselves together with bonds that far surpassed ordinary life, toward the purpose of killing one another. But when it came to creating beauty and life and love, too often men were left to act alone, their every act weighed against self-interest and simple inertia.
If men were as good at creating heaven on earth as they were at creating hell, it would be a very different world. But, Steve thought, that was not the way of the human species. It was into that weakness that God had planted the grace of His Son. And even that grace all too often seemed to fail.
Perhaps the next twelve hours would be different.
They paused at the third-floor landing, and Steve found he already had the pouch of white powder in his hand. He must have withdrawn it from his pocket while his mind was wandering on the nature of humanity. He could not let that happen again. There would be time to ponder the deep issues of life later—or maybe there would not. But if he did not stay focused on the task at hand in these next minutes, there surely would not.
He took a pinch of the glistening powder in the palm of his hand, wet the tip of his finger with his tongue and touched his skin to the mfkzt. The manna that had sustained the children of Israel in the desert would now sustain the children of Ishmael. One by one, he touched a dab of the powder onto each man’s tongue, before finally placing a dab on his own. He saw surprise in the Arabs’ eyes as the fatigue of their exertions faded, their minds and bodies refreshed.
They opened the door and moved down the hallway with supernatural silence and grace, as if the manna had given them wings, turning ordinary men into avenging angels.
Steve found that thought comforting as they paused for the briefest of instants outside Soult’s office.
Avenging angels come to seize from a madman the power of the gods.
“Found them,” the voice crackled over the radio. “I count six flash memory cards.”
Renate turned to Vasquez. “Six?”
“Yes,” the Spaniard said.
If he was lying, he was a very good liar. She keyed her microphone. “That’s what we want. Get out now.”
“Roger,” the leader of the doc team replied.
“They are encrypted,” Vasquez said. “It is very, very good encryption. The American NSA could break it, of course, but not for several months. I think you do not have that much time, yes?”
Vasquez was trying to play her. Renate studied h
im, trying to determine if this man was friend or foe. If he could be turned into an asset, he could be very useful. But, having seen her, he could also be very dangerous.
“Madame,” he said, “Monsieur Soult would have me dead at this moment rather than permit me to be captured. As your friend will attest, my own bodyguards were prepared to kill me only a few minutes ago.”
Renate looked at Major Conrad, who nodded.
“I have no loyalty to a man who has none to me,” Vasquez continued. “And especially not to a madman who sees nothing but his own ambition, his entitlement to be the sole ruler of a new European empire. Everything you need to prove a case against him is on those memory cards in far greater detail than I could remember in questioning. I can give you the encryption keys.”
“And in return?” she asked.
“Let me kill the monster,” Vasquez said. “My people made him. We should also be the ones to unmake him.”
“Simply killing Soult will not be enough,” Renate said. “The French would assume that he was killed by German agents. It would only inflame the situation.”
“And for that you have the evidence on the memory cards,” he said. “Surely you had some plan to put forth that evidence to the world? Surely that is why you came here for me?”
Renate nodded. “Yes, we do.”
“Then you simply proceed as you had planned,” he said. “Your agents found the memory cards in my flat. I had been careless and written the encryption keys in my journal, and thus you were able to read the evidence so quickly. But as for me, I was not at home. These things happen, yes?”
Renate considered the proposal for a moment. Through the door of the helicopter, she saw the doc team emerge and begin to run down the street. Once they were on board, the pilot would take off. If she wanted to use Vasquez, she must decide now.
“And what happens to you after?” she asked.
“I make a public resignation,” Vasquez said. “I am ashamed of Monsieur Soult and had no idea he was using my security men as agents provocateur in his insane scheme to take over Europe. Still, I cannot continue in my post, not knowing which and how many of my men were—perhaps still are—loyal to Monsieur Soult’s vision. With great regret, I must leave the cleaning of the house to my successor. It is a story people can be allowed to believe.”