The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection
Page 17
Besides, sleep had not been that kind to her. Nightmares of bombs and planes falling from the sky had plagued her throughout the night and left a sickness in her belly.
Balling the threadbare pillow up to stretch out a crimp in her neck, Rebecca couldn’t recall how she had even gotten into bed. It wasn’t so much that she could not remember the night’s events. It was that she just didn’t care.
After landing in Budapest, Rebecca would have been just as happy to have checked into the Airport Hilton, but Lochum had taken the helm of their midnight escape, having them switch cabs several times before forcing them to walk blocks upon blocks to this crappy hotel.
How she missed the days when the professor insisted on five-star accommodations. A room at the Hilton would never smell like stale cigarettes and casual sex. No, the Castle Hill Hilton would have crisp sheets, along with a view of the Fisherman’s Bastion.
Larger-than-life statues of dragons and mighty warriors would have been the view outside her window instead of soot and grime. Even though she could only make out a vague outline of the distant hill, Rebecca could easily call up Buda’s Castle District in her mind. The ancient community had always been her favorite. Sure, there were castle spires reaching for the heavens, declaring this the seat of power in the region, but she quickly recalled the fishermen who harvested this river long before kings erected their impressive castles.
Tired of constant raids that ravaged their families, ancient fishermen built the Bastion to protect their lives and livelihood. The fortress would be considered impressive in its size and craftsmanship even if royalty had erected it, but the massive complex had been constructed block by block by simple fishermen. Those men had carried stone from as far away as five hundred miles to protect their families.
She could only imagine how difficult it must have been to build the lengthy stone ramparts over the precariously uneven terrain. The walls undulated over the steep hillside in an almost serpentine manner. The ramparts’ length was punctuated by regularly situated watchtowers that jutted high into the sky, providing an unparalleled view of the Danube River. Rebecca could see why tourists had dubbed it the Great Wall of Hungary.
But her favorite had always been the heart of the Bastion. The structure was grand in scale, but the stained glass windows that twinkled even on an overcast day captured her imagination. Love of their town, love of their families, and love of their craft could be felt in each and every pane.
The two-towered Bastion was almost storybook in its perfection, as though someone had taken Disneyland and plopped it down in the middle of Buda. Only this Bastion could never be mistaken for a set piece. Real battles had been fought there. Those huge statues across the street from the Hilton commemorated men who had defended their land against barbarian invaders.
To truly appreciate their artistry, you would need an entire day just to wander the Bastion’s grounds, studying the statues and the incredibly detailed reliefs carved into their base. Each was unique, telling a tale of the city’s history. Whether relaying a king’s coronation or a queen’s funeral march, the reliefs were a visual history of this most ancient of cities. So many tourists flocked to England and France for a taste of history, but Budapest was history.
Unlike other bustling European metropolises, somehow this city straddled both the East and the West, the past and the present. It had known the harsh rule of the Khans, the Ottoman Empire, the Nazis, and Stalin, yet somehow Budapest persisted, maintaining its unique flavor and identity through the war and devastation.
However, if you tired of Buda’s violent past, you need only go around the corner to St. Matthias Church, as she had on so many occasions. As the oldest Catholic church in the region, it had some of the most magnificent murals in all of Europe. How many weeks had she spent within the church’s walls? The five-story bell tower. The hand-painted mosaic tiles.
Rebecca sighed and pulled the thin sheets tighter around her chin. All of this she could have seen from the Hilton, but no, they were shacked up at the Mez Zsir Szalloda. Loosely translated—The Honey Drippings Hotel.
The overnight attendant certainly hadn’t raised an eyebrow at the May-December couple. The cash that changed hands guaranteed their anonymity.
Rebecca vaguely remembered objecting to the bedding arrangement, but Lochum had ignored her. Which was probably for the better, since she couldn’t imagine having spent last night in a room all by herself. A terrible chasm had formed within her chest, and Rebecca feared if she were left alone with her sorrow she might fall into it.
“Perhaps you might consider rejoining civilization, at least before your coffee gets cold?” Lochum asked from across the room.
Her throat ached from sobbing and the last thing she wanted to do was join the world. The lumpy mattress and smelly linens were fine with her.
But her old professor was persistent. She could hear footsteps as he crossed the room. The clink of a coffee cup on the nightstand sounded far too loud. How many of those little liquor bottles had she gulped down during the flight? After learning of the London plane’s demise, Lochum had kept her plastic cup full of alcohol.
“Your sergeant would not wish you to languish like this.”
Rebecca squeezed her eyes shut against the words. She had tried so hard not to think about Brandt. And what did Lochum know? Maybe the sergeant would want her to grieve him and grieve him hard.
The professor jerked the blanket from her shoulder. “I would think you were in the mind for revenge, dear girl.”
She didn’t bother to pull the cover back. Rebecca looked out the smudged window. Low clouds hung over the city as if it were under blankets as well, too sad to rise.
“Fine. If the mountain will not come to Mohammad,” Lochum said as he pulled his chair over to her bedside. “You cannot imagine what I have learned! I have single-handedly quadrupled our understanding of early Christianity in one night.”
Good for you, she thought but did not bother to give voice. She wanted to give him no excuse whatsoever to continue the conversation.
Lochum, however, seemed undeterred. “What type of revelations, you ask? Why, let me show you!”
Carefully her mentor laid out sheets of paper on the bed. They were filled with chicken scratch. If she hadn’t worked in his laboratory for years, she might have mistaken the writing for ancient Greek itself.
“It is very clear from this passage that The Baptist acknowledged Jesus as the true Messiah, and they repeatedly discussed his ultimate fate upon the cross. John even mentions that Judas was there during Christ’s Baptism! Can you imagine? Mary, James, John, Judas, and Jesus all there!” Lochum’s voice took on an ephemeral tone. “Envision standing upon that bank, looking down upon the flowing waters of the Jordan River. Did those watching know they were witnessing for the birth of a new religion? A religion that would sweep the world and ultimately transform the occupying Romans into its humble worshippers?”
Any other time, Lochum might have lured Rebecca into his hyperbole, but today she just wanted to close her eyes and pray for a dreamless sleep.
Rebecca could feel her old mentor’s eyes upon her, but she kept her gaze to the window. Out there, somewhere, they were preparing Brandt’s body for transport back to the States. Did he have any family? Would they have a formal funeral? Did covert operatives have that honor?
A tear trickled down her cheek. Lochum was blabbing on, but he stopped and wiped it away. “My sweet, your sergeant would be quite embarrassed by such a display.”
Words finally rose to her throat as she sat up in bed. “Just stop it. You didn’t know him at all. You were barely in the same proximity for an hour, and the entire time you hated him.”
A sad smile spread across the professor’s face. “I did not hate him, darling. I was jealous of him.”
“Whatever,” Rebecca said, as she wiped away tears.
“Do you know why?” The softness to his voice made her turn. “I was jealous, because for the entire time he had your eye
. I tried to manipulate, cajole, and dance my way into your gaze, but I could not.”
Even though Lochum was being as sensitive as a man like him could be, it didn’t make her feel any better. If anything, it made her ache for Brandt all the more.
“Oh, ‘Becca. If I could leave you to your sorrow I would, but I need you, child.” He picked up one leaf of his notes. “I have transcribed the entire codex from the bone. Many passages I have been able to decipher, but none which hold a single clue to James’ whereabouts.”
When she did not respond, the professor pulled out a small magnifying glass from his pocket. Only Lochum would carry around a miniature magnifier. He tried to get her to look at the surface of John’s bone. “Within these untranslated passages is locked the answer to the greatest mystery man has ever known.”
Obviously, the professor realized that encouragement was having no effect, because he stood up to his full height. “This is quite enough, young lady. Do you or do you not have your interpolative translation program on your computer?”
Rebecca nodded, mainly so he would stop needling her.
“Good, good. I just need you to enter in these nine passages.”
She glanced down at the paper. Rebecca could see why he needed her help so badly. Ancient Greek was a bitch of a language. Not because they used past, present, and future tense in the same sentence, but because they used no punctuation and very often didn’t bother to even put spaces between the words. Her eyes ran back and forth over the text. You had to hunt for words with unique lettering, pull them out of the passage, then work forward and backward to find the next word. Even under the best of circumstances this tedium made her brain hurt, but today the letters were just a huge jumble that came close to giving her a migraine.
“It’s too much,” Rebecca heard herself say.
Lochum only sounded encouraged. “I know. I know. But I have asterisked these three sections that were near references to James.”
Whether it was the sheer look of eagerness on his face, or her soul finally being roused from its slumber, Rebecca picked up the paper. “I’m going to need my laptop.”
Like a child told he could go play in the park after a long rain, the professor ran over to their table and grabbed her computer.
Stomach still sour, Rebecca launched the translation program. “Don’t get your hopes up. This could take hours, even days, and I can’t even guarantee that the program will produce a true translation.”
“Yes, yes, you are a rousing example of enthusiasm.”
Frowning, she typed in line after line of cryptic letters into the program. Finally, an error message sprang up. She had exceeded the buffer’s capability, yet she had barely entered the first passage of three.
“I’m going to have to do the translation section by section,” Rebecca said with a flat tone.
Lochum looked to argue, but she pointed to the error message. “Scare me up another sixteen gigs of RAM, and I could do it all at once.”
Since he obviously did not even know what sixteen gigs of RAM were, let alone how to obtain some for her, Rebecca closed the error window then hit the
Rebecca sank back onto the bed. “There’s nothing to do now but wait.”
“Perhaps I might talk you into a shower?”
She glared. “I might not get out of bed all day, so just deal with it.”
Lochum grabbed his coffee cup from the table. “I’m off then, to refresh my beverage and get you some sustenance.”
Without waiting for a response, he was out the door. Rebecca breathed out a long sigh. Last night she might not have wanted to be alone, but today all she wished for was solitude. Was a single day off too much to ask, after everything that had happened?
Leaning her head against the wall, ignoring its flaking paint, she tried to shut off her own internal RAM, but every time she closed her eyes, images of blood and explosions filled her vision. The look of desperation on Brandt’s face as she left him in Paris. That was the last memory she had of the man who had saved her life.
Squeezing her lids shut, Rebecca started counting off the sequence-specific Haplo genes of the First Migration Eurasian population. Science, as always, was her solace. She felt better already.
Rebecca wasn’t sure how much time passed, but her limp hand slid off the laptop and hit something hard. Even after she realized that she was touching John the Baptist’s relic, Rebecca did not move her fingers.
Yesterday, she would have been worried that the oils from her skin would damage the delicate bone structure, but now she just let her hand lie there. Besides, the bone had a nice, cool feel to it.
Despite the smooth look, its surface was an interlacing of small protuberances and grooves. Areas where tendon attached or blood vessels entered the bone marrow created a patchwork of tiny defects in the surface. Her finger ran along the shaft of the femur, feeling all the little bumps and furrows. It was almost like Braille, or how gypsies feel a person’s skull and tell a life’s history from bumps on the head.
Yes, it was much like that. The bone’s surface told a story of its own.
She stopped abruptly. Her musings had given off a spark. Much more carefully, Rebecca picked up the bone. Using Lochum’s magnifying glass, she studied the inscriptions. Especially those three the professor had given her.
Breath caught in her throat. If she used a nearly microscopic pockmark as a period, would that passage make more sense?
Rebecca opened her laptop. The program was fifteen minutes into its work, but wasn’t even a single percent finished. Quickly, she aborted the translation, then reentered the letters from the first passage, only now giving them grammatical delineation based on the bone’s intrinsic markings.
Rebecca hit
Lochum entered with fresh coffee and a bag of pastries in hand. “You would not believe the service at—”
There must have been something in her eyes, because he dropped the bag and rushed to her side. “What have you discovered?”
His gaze ran over the same amazing data. The professor sat down hard next to her on the bed. Even he was speechless.
Rebecca climbed out from beneath the covers. “I’ll jump in the shower. We’ll be out of here in ten minutes.”
* * *
“Can’t you go any faster?” Brandt asked, even though everyone was clinging to the Beamer’s handgrips and Lopez had to rely on the emergency brake as they skidded around the ninety-degree corners, laying down rubber.
“I could if there weren’t so many fucking pedestrians.”
They had made good time. Actually, excellent time. Paris to Budapest in under seven hours, but each minute was too long. Rebecca was in the wind, and that was simply unacceptable.
Davidson sounded slightly nauseated. “Do we even know where we are going?”
At the last gas stop, Brandt had bought a tourist guide of Budapest. After studying it, he had found Rebecca’s most logical move—St. Matthias Church. As the most ancient church in the area with an underground chapel that dated back to the first few centuries AD, Brandt had singled it out.
At the very least, they could recon the church, speak with the clergy, and get a better feel for the doctor’s destination. At best, Rebecca would be down in the crypt digging away for her precious bones, and he could round the doctors up and get the hell out of Europe.
Brandt had settled on St. Matthias fairly quickly, but he had not shared this information with his men. Even though they had served together for over a year and Svengurd for over two, the multiple ambushes had triggered his suspicion radar. None of his men could ever be disloyal to him or their country, yet Brandt compartmentalized their destination. What was not spoken could not be betrayed.
To that end, at the last rest stop they had smashed all of their communication e
quipment. For good measure they burned the devices, and then just to be extra certain he had them bury the charred remains alongside a deserted stretch of highway. And not just their radios and earpieces, but any electronic devices that might be used for passive or active communications.
Even poor Lopez’s iPod. Brandt didn’t think he had ever seen the husky man cry before, but the corporal had come damn close back at the metal pyre.
Unfortunately, the sergeant knew that even if they maintained absolute radio silence, they had a narrow window to extract Rebecca. It would only take their adversaries another short five to six hours to realize his team was not on that London-bound plane. After that, the dragnet would be doubled by his enemies as well as his allies. They were probably wondering where in the hell he was by now.
As they drew nearer to the heart of Budapest and St. Matthias, Brandt ticked off his team’s assets for the hundredth time, but they never got any better. They were well armed, but woefully low on ammo. Even with Davidson’s sidearm, a barely used Beretta, they had less than ten rounds each. The sniper rifle was nearly full, but had limited usefulness in close combat.
Not only were they going to have to be quiet, but precise as well.
There could be no more surprises.
“Which way?” Lopez asked as they rushed headlong toward a T-intersection.
Brandt glanced at his map. “Hang a left, then a pretty hard right.”
The corporal nodded, jerked the parking brake all the way up, skidding them into a left turn. Then he released it as he gunned the car back up to full speed.
“Right! Right here!”
The parking brake squealed as they sailed around the sharp turn. Lopez had to slam on all the brakes, throwing everyone forward in their restraints, but no one complained.