So screw the religious mystery here. The Ten Commandments? If he had to find them and shatter them all over again, he’d do it to keep the world from seeing a Rinderpest epidemic.
Still, he made the sign of the cross as he passed under an arch decorated with a panel honoring Jesus.
No disrespect meant, Brandt thought. Hoping none was taken.
* * *
Despite her dour mood, Rebecca couldn’t help but be impressed with the sanctuary she’d just entered. One dedicated to Saint Alexander Svisrky, she believed. Rebecca was a little sketchy on the details of his canonization, but he had been the heguman, or leader of infamous Trinity Monastery. Considered the heart of the Russian Orthodox Church, the monastery had withstood Tartan invaders and a sixteen-month siege by the Polish.
However it wasn’t the walls’ intricate carvings or delicate paintings that held her fascination, but the architecture of the place. The sanctuary was built in the fashion of a cross vault. The skill it took to create a chamber formed by four-barrel vaults was considered one of the most difficult of all. The stone used for the arches had to be perfectly cut to lay together at the arrisses. The style was so difficult to get right, in fact, that across Europe it was abandoned for the easier and therefore less grand ribbed vaulting.
Brandt joined her, following her gaze upward. “Gotta give the Russians credit. They know how to use stone.”
Yes, they did. And not just for decorative purposes. Just behind the westernmost walls held the hidden staircase found not twenty years ago. What other secret passages did this church hold?
“I heard voices this way,” Harvish whispered, pointing to the southern passageway.
Brandt nodded for them to follow the trail.
Sandwiched between Harvish and Brandt, Rebecca took care with her steps on the cool tile floor. By the men’s tense jaws and careful treading, stealth was a premium. Harvish clicked off his light as candlelight spilled from one of the inner sanctuaries. It was another cross vault, although larger than the last. Harvish’s back blocked most of her view, but she was pretty sure the light came from St. Basil’s tomb.
The voices were clear now. A younger woman’s lighter tone, which Rebecca could only assume was Bunny, and a deeper, older voice. They spoke Russian fluently. Really? Bunny knew Russian? She’d just assumed the woman would manhandle a word, then giggle…and probably flip her hair.
What in the hell was she doing in Russia, speaking Russian?
They were about to find out as Harvish rushed into the sanctuary. “Hands up.”
Bunny’s squeal made it all the way out to Rebecca.
“Ostavaĭtesʹ na meste,” Brandt announced as he swept in behind the point man.
Rebecca snuck in last. While the Russian man held his hands up, a string of very forceful curses followed which contrasted his thick blue flowing robes. Somewhere in there he kept insisting he was the “episcop.”
“He’s the bishop of Moscow,” Rebecca warned Brandt.
“Yep, I kinda got that the tenth time he told me.” Brandt turned to Bunny. “Is there anyone else here?”
Bunny didn’t seem to hear him as her eyes found Rebecca. The young redhead rushed across the room. “Rebecca!”
“Watch it!” Brandt warned, trying to intersect Bunny.
“No, it’s okay,” Rebecca said as the young woman wrapped her into a bear hug.
“Oh my God!” Bunny squealed. “They told me you died.” The younger woman searched behind Rebecca. “Where’s Lochum?”
Rebecca shook her head as Bunny’s bright smile faded.
“Did he at least find his prize?”
That was a complicated question. One that Bunny did not have clearance for. Again, Rebecca simply shook her head. Bunny pulled her even tighter into the hug. “I’m so sorry.”
And the younger woman didn’t know the half of it.
“What are you doing here?” Bunny asked, pushing a pile of red curls from her face.
“Good question,” Rebecca hedged. “I might ask the same of you?”
For the first time Bunny’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “At gunpoint?”
CHAPTER 12
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Moscow, Russia
10:08 p.m. GMT
Hell yes, at gunpoint, Brandt wanted to say but held his tongue. Probably best not to piss off the bishop of Moscow. Or at least not more than he was already. Brandt gave a curt nod to Harvish to lower his weapon.
“Belinda,” Brandt said, using the younger woman’s given name. He just couldn’t get “Bunny” out of his mouth. “You are supposed to be safely tucked away in the Midwest.”
The young woman sighed, finally releasing Rebecca. Funny, Brandt did not remember the women being all BFFs the last time around. As a matter of fact, they’d perfected their romantic rival act to a fine art.
“After,” Bunny gulped, pulling aside her shirt to reveal a network of scars that disappeared below her belt. “After Paris with a piece of shrapnel lodged so closely to my spine the doctors are afraid it’s going to cut my spinal cord every time I sneeze, I kind of couldn’t do suburbia, ya know?”
Unfortunately, Brandt did know. Going from crisis mode to domestic bliss wasn’t as smooth a transition as it should be.
“I realized that I had to do what I love,” Bunny continued. “I couldn’t give up proto-Christian archeology. If I was going to die, it would be doing something that mattered…at least to me.”
“That still doesn’t answer why you’re here, in Russia, in this cathedral,” Brandt pressed.
The bishop rose, raising his hand. “Nyet. Why you storm in with guns?”
The time for delicate diplomacy was over, if there ever had been a time for it on this mission. Brandt turned to the bishop and met his righteous indignation with his own. “You were visited by a terrorist named Amed last week.” While the bishop didn’t answer Brandt directly, his eyes dilating as he sat down hard on the edge of St. Basil’s tomb kind of confirmed Brandt’s suspicions. “Why?”
The old man didn’t respond. Instead, he combed his fingers through his long gray beard.
Bunny was the one who answered. “I think you know why.”
“The Ten Commandments,” Rebecca clarified.
“Amed came with the broken piece of tablet that Osip had translated,” Bunny confirmed. “Amed threatened that unless the bishop helped him find the rest of the commandments, he would unleash his bioweapon on Russia first.”
Sounded like the terrorist.
“But why did Amed think the bishop could help?” A look passed between Bunny and the bishop. “What?” When neither answered, Brandt pressed, “I don’t think I should have to mention that this mission is a bit time sensitive.”
The bishop went into a litany…of curses. The guy’s bright blue Russian Orthodox robes made it seem almost comical. A little hard to get worked up by a big Smurf.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Brandt coaxed. “I want to get the Rinderpest off the streets as much as you do.”
“Da,” the bishop retorted. “But only so the Americas can hoard it.”
“Really?” Brandt countered as he leaned forward. “Because let’s keep it clear that Amed stole the weaponized virus from your laboratory. From Russia’s illegal stores.”
The bishop glared back, clearly not used to being questioned or rebuked.
Rebecca stepped forward, speaking into the tense silence. “Let’s just say that it’s in all of our best interests to track down Amed’s trail. No matter what games the superpowers are playing, they aren’t as erratic or as dangerous as an Islamic extremist’s plans.” She looked to Bunny. “Right?”
Surprisingly, the younger woman turned to the bishop. “If you don’t tell them, Tolst, I will.”
The bishop’s cheeks billowed in and out, making his beard rustle against his blue velvet robes. In the end, he finally spoke. “I doubt if you know the tale of the Lost Library.”
“Of Constantin
ople,” Brandt offered. “Yeah, yeah. Ivan the Terrible went all Lego-crazy and built a labyrinth beneath the city, but we’re pretty damn sure he hid a nice big chunk of the tablet in the church here.” The older man’s cheeks flared red above his beard. Kind of like a pissed off Dumbledore. “That pretty much get us up to speed?”
By the way the man sputtered, sending spittle across the room, Brandt guessed it did.
“Yes,” Bunny confirmed. “The bishop has been sorting through old documents to narrow down the search for any hidden room while I have been trying to backtrack Amed’s movements to figure out where he might have hidden the Rinderpest.”
Brandt’s estimation of the redhead just leapt up about a thousand percent. “And?”
She frowned. “We know he found the chunk of tablet when he was excavating a chamber for the storage of the Rinderpest. My supposition was that it must be in the Holy Land somewhere ancient Jews migrated yet accessible to a modern day jihadist.”
He looked to Rebecca, who frowned as she spoke. “Actually, that is quite a swath of territory to consider. Basically her theory only rules out Israel.”
Did Rebecca just school Bunny? By the girl’s flushed cheeks, yes Rebecca did.
“Actually,” Bunny answered, “I was specifically speaking of Moses’s well-documented travels, which eliminated nearly all northern Arab countries.”
It was a little like watching a nerd-off tennis match, only both of the contestants were pretty easy on the eyes, as Rebecca responded. “Except that would be following the path of the second set of tablets in the ark. What we are looking for are the first, the original tablets whose travels are not well documented.”
Again the younger woman blushed deeply. Yeah, about the only person Brandt had even seen go up against Rebecca’s nearly encyclopedic knowledge of ancient religious history and win was their mutual professor, Lochum. Even he, in the end, was eclipsed by Rebecca.
And as much as he loved watching Rebecca in robo-scholar mode, it was not helping them get closer to Amed’s freaking Rinderpest stash.
From across the room Harvish broke the deadlock. “Um…then what in the hell was Amed doing so far from the Holy Land? Bringing his stink to Croatia?”
Brandt looked to Bunny first, who suddenly found a button on her shirt incredibly fascinating. He turned his attention back to his go-to girl, Rebecca.
“What?” his ex-fiancée snorted. “She’s the one that’s had all week to work on this.”
Brandt tilted his head. “Rebecca…”
* * *
Okay, that sounded kind of bitchy even to her own ears. Rebecca opened her laptop, hoping it would take her mind off of the fact that somehow Bunny had gotten even prettier and apparently smarter as well. It shouldn’t matter given the fact they were tracking down a terrorist, but if Rebecca was being completely honest, it did. And Harvish stealing glances over at Bunny’s legs was not helping.
“Croatia has a rich Jewish history,” she said as she brought up a map of the country. “I am assuming Amed went to the Split Synagogue since they have found ancient Jewish remains predating Roman times in the hills surrounding the area.” Rebecca looked to Brandt. “And I am assuming that after his capture the Croatian forces scoured the area for any sign of the Rinderpest?”
The sergeant nodded.
“The important fact is that Amed himself was clearly looking well beyond the ‘well-documented travels’ of Moses to locate the tablets.”
“So we are back to square one,” Brandt grumbled. “Even if we find these fragments of the so-called Ten Commandments, they may not lead us to the stash after all.”
Everyone’s face clouded at the proclamation. Rebecca however wasn’t so sure of that comment. Her theory, like most of her theories, was probably not going to make anyone any happier, but it might help them find the virus.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to throw in the towel,” Rebecca said.
“Why?” Brandt asked, hope flickering in those blue eyes of his.
She’d really hoped to not have to offer up this one particular theory until she had more proof. “Something about the biblical version of Moses coming down the mount has always bothered me.”
Brandt crossed his arms, challenging her to shake his faith once again.
“Here he is carrying the word, the literal word of God,” Rebecca said, trying to be as respectful as she could. “And I get the fact that he found his people worshipping a false idol and all, but why would he…” She took a deep breath. “Why would he throw the tablets down and shatter them? I mean, God supposedly touched those tablets. Isn’t that a bit…”
“Childish?” Harvish offered but piped back down as Brandt’s glare found him.
Rebecca nodded though. She could take the sergeant’s ire. She’d felt it before. Although after the entire Maria thing she didn’t think she’d ever be so lucky as to feel it again.
“Yes. I mean, we shatter God’s word because the people aren’t obeying God’s word? Then we make a new set?”
Brandt’s features darkened. “You are saying that Moses lied?”
“No,” Rebecca said, which only seemed to confuse Brandt more. “I am saying Moses smashed the tablets for another reason.”
“And that would be?” Brandt asked, skepticism thick in his voice.
“Think about it. Moses goes away for forty days and comes back to his people doing all kinds of wonky things, and here he is carrying a load of God’s strict word…” Rebecca braced herself. This next part Brandt was not going to like. “I think he worried that his people couldn’t handle the ‘truth,’ so to speak. That whatever was on those tablets was just too much, so he smashed them.”
Bunny took a step closer. “So you are saying he destroyed the original tablets fearing his people could not follow God’s word and then created a second set that was pared down?”
“Kind of like an Idiot’s Guide to God’s Word?” Harvish offered.
Guess the point man liked being skewered by Brandt’s stare because Harvish was just asking for it.
“Crudely put,” Rebecca continued, “but yes. He created a simpler, bullet-pointed set of God’s rules that he felt his people could handle…the Ten Commandments.”
Those stormy, suppressing-his-anger-the-best-Brandt-could-do eyes found Rebecca. “I am assuming you are challenging several millennia’s faith for a reason other than sport?”
“Of course,” Rebecca sighed. Granted they were no longer intimate, however he should give her more credit than that. “Whatever else was written on those first tablets contained something that needed to be hidden. I’m thinking if we know what that was, it might point us to where they hid the rest of the tablets.”
Brandt’s frown intensified, which only meant he was starting to understand her logic. “In this scenario they created the Ark of the Covenant as a decoy?” Off her nod, he continued. “So all eyes were pointed to the ark’s position rather than the original tablets.”
Bunny nodded vigorously. “It does make more sense why the ark’s legend has never been fulfilled. I mean if the ark truly did carry the might of God, then why didn’t the Jews use it at Masada? The first attack on the Temple of Jerusalem? Or a thousand other battles?”
“And I don’t think I’m the first person to have these thoughts,” Rebecca stated, turning her attention to the robed man. “Am I, Bishop Tolst?”
* * *
Brandt turned to the bishop. “Do you have something to add?”
The old man clutched some old papers to his chest. “Nyet.”
“Tolst,” Bunny urged. “You need to tell them.”
The bishop shook his head from side to side, gritting his teeth. Bunny gave him a sympathetic glance before turning back to Brandt. “You have to understand, he hasn’t told the authorities or even the church’s patriarch about what we’re doing.”
The young woman knelt next to the bishop’s knee as she coaxed, “Tolst, Amed is dead. The knowledge you hold may be our only way to find the R
inderpest before it is spread.”
A tear sprang to the man’s eye and ran down the craggy side of his face. Slowly his fist unclenched, revealing an old sketch. Bunny removed it and handed the page to Brandt. His eyes scanned it quickly, but they made no sense. They were just old religious paintings. Much like the fourteen million covering the rest of the church. He offered the paper to Rebecca. “I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I,” Rebecca said as she studied the artwork. “Wait…”
Brandt waited and waited as Rebecca’s eyes scanned the document. “You have something?”
The faint smile on her lips said yes. “These paintings aren’t in the style of the sixteenth century. They are nineteenth century, if I’m not mistaken.”
Bunny looked to the page. “You’re right.” The younger woman looked to the bishop. “These paintings there were ‘removed’ from the cathedral back in the sixties.”
Tolst nodded, indicating to the wall across from them. He spoke slowly as if weighing each of his words. “But the renovation damaged the wall. It was one of these weakened sections that were replaced in the seventies. For the first time since Ivan the Terrible, a wall was completely removed, taken down to the wooden frame.”
“Who was it?” Rebecca asked, clearly not of Brandt. “The architect’s name? The guy who supervised the restoration?”
“Nikolay Sobolev,” Bunny answered.
One hand of Rebecca’s worked furiously across the keys. With the other hand she gave Harvish the power cord. “Plug this in, would you?”
“Rebecca?” Brandt asked.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, waving him off. “Give me a second.”
Brandt’s patience was running thin. They had already spent too much time talking rather than doing. He liked his ratio favoring the action side. A metronome in his head had him calculating exactly how much leeway they had before their attackers caught up with them. His only comforts, and those were pretty small, was Talli perched atop the Russian museum, covering the building. The other, which actually did get his pulse to slow down, was the fact that Lopez was out there somewhere with their getaway vehicle.
The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection Page 66