Leaning against the window, she watched her husband enter the house. She grabbed her keys from the nightstand beside the bed, flung open the window, stepped out of her shoes, picked them up, and scrabbled across the roof.
At the roof’s edge, she hesitated. The drop was only fifteen feet or so, but it looked much farther. She tossed her shoes onto the ground, then lowered herself and hung by her arms. A moment later, she let go and dropped. When she hit the ground, she tumbled back into a yoga roll and came up on her feet.
She stepped into her shoes and ran to the front of her house. Her husband was still inside.
The driver stood outside the luxury vehicle and looked a little surprised to see her. ‘Herr Von Volker is inside the house, Frau Von Volker.’
Alice casually waved the news away. ‘I’m going into the city. I’ll talk to him later. I suppose the after-rally party ran late last night. Did you just get in from Vienna?’
‘Yes.’
Alice started to continue on her way, then she spotted the hunting jacket in the backseat of the car through the open window. Her heart lurched into a furious beat as she headed for the long garage. She knew Klaus had been to the jagdschloss that morning. The last time he’d been out there, he’d left the jacket there. He’d complained about it for a week.
Thomas!
Swallowing her fear, Alice keyed the garage door and entered. She slid behind the wheel of a white Wiesmann two-seater sports car and took out her phone. She hesitated only a moment, then punched in the number for the police patrol around the jagdschloss.
‘Hello. This is Alice Von Volker.’
The man at the other end of the connection responded immediately, obviously impressed with the name. ‘Ah, Frau Von Volker. How may I help you?’
‘Yes, I think so. Could you have someone check on my husband’s jagdschloss? I drove by there only a few minutes ago and saw a strange car parked out front.’
‘Of course. We’ll get someone out there immediately.’
‘Thank you.’ Alice turned the phone off and dropped it on the passenger seat. She keyed the ignition and triggered the electronic garage door opener. Engaging the transmission, she shot out of the garage and roared toward the front gates.
The wrought-iron barrier pulled back just in time to allow her passage. She never looked in her rearview mirror to see if her husband had come out of the house or if anyone was in pursuit.
She had only one thought on her mind as she drove toward the jagdschloss.
Please don’t be dead, Thomas.
32
Jagdschloss Volker
Outside Vienna, Austria
August 8, 2011
Thankfully, it was hot in the jagdschloss kill room. It hadn’t taken long for Lourds to work up a sweat while shifting in the chair. The men watching over him didn’t care that he occupied himself with trying to get away. The chair was bolted to the floor, suggesting it had been used for nefarious purposes before.
Bored, the men went to one of the other rooms. Every time they came to check on him, Lourds felt the air-conditioning in the other room invade the kill room for a moment and the noise of a television. Their visits had become more and more infrequent. Either the program they were watching was very good, or they didn’t care if he was in need of a bathroom. The thought that he might escape probably hadn’t crossed their minds.
Perspiration streaming down his neck and tickling his ears, Lourds leaned forward into the leather straps. Dampness from his sodden shirt had turned the leather a darker color. More importantly, the wetness had loosened the leather strap holding his arms to his sides and his hands behind his back.
In his studies, Lourds knew that American Indians and Mongols – both roving, nomadic peoples – had depended on leather to make their weapons. When they’d tied spearheads to shafts or made bows, warriors had first soaked the leather strands and tied them tightly, knowing the strands would draw up even more as they dried.
Of course, the reverse was true as well.
The door opened, and one of the guards stuck his head in. He surveyed Lourds, then flashed him a mocking smile and dangled a beer bottle from his fingertips. ‘You miss party.’ His English was heavy and accented.
‘Is that an invitation?’ Lourds smiled hopefully.
‘No. We’re going to kill you. No reason to waste beer.’ The man laughed at him, then went to tell his partner what a fine joke he’d just played on the American professor and how stupid the man was.
Lourds heard the man braying his story even over the television. For a moment, he gave in to despair, but then he forced himself to focus again on his efforts. He was making headway with the leather. Because of the sweat he’d worked into the material, he could already tell it was stretching out, loosening.
He worked solidly, concentrating on each effort, grinding his sweat into the straps. Finally, it felt looser, and the leather around his wrists no longer felt as tight.
He dropped his left shoulder and raised his right, repeating the motion again and again. Gradually, the leather strap worked up past his shoulder. Long minutes later, it was past the point of no return because any visitation on the part of his guards would give away his game, and they wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
Finally, though, his shoulder slid free of the strap. His flesh felt abraded and raw, and he knew he’d be sore from the chafing, but if his luck held, he wouldn’t be dead.
He tucked his head into his shoulder, emulating a move he’d read that Harry Houdini used to escape straitjackets. A few moves later, his head was free, too. When he stood, he walked to the sink, turned around, and carefully felt for the tap. He turned it on just enough for a trickle, then held his bound wrists under the flow. The leather binding him grew even looser. He stretched and pulled and applied pressure a dozen different ways.
After a few moments, his left hand slid free. He scooped his hat up from the counter, slid his wallet and phone back into his pants pockets, and started for the back door.
Footsteps sounded out in the hall, coming closer. ‘I’m getting another beer. Want one?’
‘Yeah. And check on the professor. He should be begging for his life right now.’
‘Maybe I should slap him around a little. Provide a little encouragement.’
The other man laughed.
Lourds tried the back door, but it was locked. Obviously, Von Volker had made certain his ‘guests’ couldn’t escape under any circumstances. Frantic, he looked around for a weapon, then spied a heavy iron frying pan on a woodburning stove. He hefted it and discovered it weighed several pounds. Moving swiftly, he positioned himself by the door and drew back the pan.
His knees trembled slightly as he thought about what he was going to do. He would have preferred to run. He was not a fighter. Fortunately, there wasn’t much time to think or dread.
The man stepped through the doorway and Lourds swung with all the strength in his arms. The frying pan hammered the guard in the face, but the sound was much duller than Lourds had anticipated, more like a thump than a bang.
Knocked out or dead, Lourds wasn’t sure, but there was enough blood from the nose and mouth that it could have gone either way, the guard dropped like a stone. The empty bottles he carried shattered against the stone floor.
‘Walter?’ The television sound muted immediately. ‘Walter?’
Lourds thought briefly of searching the fallen man for a weapon more serviceable than the frying pan, but the flight instinct in him was strongest of all. The ring of keys on the man’s belt made his choice obvious. Grabbing them, he abandoned the frying pan and tackled the back door again. It took him a moment to fumble through the lock.
‘Walter!’ Footsteps pounded toward the kill room.
Lourds got the door open just as the second guard stuck his pistol into the room and followed it around the corner. Just as Lourds charged through the door, two bullets smashed through the glass panes in it. Flying glass shards chased Lourds out into the woodlands behin
d the jagdschloss.
Aware the gunman could shoot him in the back if he stayed on a straight line, Lourds grabbed the first tree trunk he came to and veered to the left. The bark ripped free and tore at his palm, but he kept his feet under him and lengthened his stride.
In the distance, a road cut through the tree line nearly two hundred yards away at the bottom of the steep incline. Gnarled roots and the rocky soil challenged his footing as he raced down it.
The gunman pursued him, firing periodically. Every instinct Lourds possessed screamed at him to dive for cover somewhere along the way, but he knew that would only delay the inevitable. He was in shape. There was a lot of real estate in front of him. He had a chance to get away if he just kept running.
And don’t break your neck.
An unseen rock rolled under his right foot. He tried to keep his foot straight, hoped he hadn’t turned his ankle, and stumbled in the direction he almost fell in order to keep his feet under him. His rhythm was thrown off for a moment, and he crashed against a tree trunk, the impact driving his right elbow into his side and knocking the breath from his lungs.
Off-balance and in pain, he fell and rolled down the incline. The gunman fired a handful of rounds that kicked up fist-sized clods of earth around him. Still falling and rolling, Lourds managed to get back up on his feet while tumbling. Soccer games had taught him to fight for control and get back up as soon as possible if a whistle hadn’t blown.
There was no whistle while he was running for his life.
Hoping to become a harder target, Lourds charged through the brush. Once, when he suddenly found a downed tree in front of him, and there was no way he could stop or change directions successfully, he stepped up the pace and leaped. Branches and bushes whipped at him, and he couldn’t see what he was going to be landing in when he came down.
On the other side of the fallen tree, the incline plunged ten feet almost straight down. Lourds flailed his arms and tried to pick his landing spot, but he came down in a twisting, flailing fall that rolled him head over heels. As he got to his feet, banged up and sporting new bruises, he reflexively grabbed his hat and ran again.
He’d lost sight of the road, but he marked his passage by landmarks he’d chosen along the way.
The gunman had closed the distance, drawing to within twenty feet. He was still running, too, gaining steadily.
Why couldn’t I have been held by couch potatoes with guns? Lourds ran as hard as he could, but he knew he was outmatched. He was going to die out here in this forlorn wilderness, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.
Then the forest melted away in front of him, and the road was there. He ran out across it without hesitation, hoping to get across the narrow two-lane before the gunman had a clear shot at him. Gunshots echoed around him and bullets ricocheted from the road.
A car topped the hill and nearly ran him down. He threw himself forward and got clear. The gunman wasn’t so lucky. He’d come out of the tree line totally focused on Lourds and hadn’t seen the car until it was on top of him.
Brakes shrieked, but the grisly thump told Lourds that neither man nor machine had been able to avoid the collision. Out of breath on the ground, hurting and certain he couldn’t run much farther, he looked back at the road.
A police car sat sideways in the road thirty or forty feet from the point of impact. Two young uniformed officers got out of the car brandishing weapons. The passenger held a shotgun.
Dazed and battered, the gunman drew himself up from the road. Bloody scrapes showed on his face, and his left arm hung crookedly at his side. But his right arm came up with the pistol.
‘Stop! Police!’
The gunman fired at the police officers. The man with the shotgun fired once, and Von Volker’s henchman lifted from his heels and fell backwards. He quivered and was still.
The second police officer sprinted forward with his pistol in both hands. He kicked the gunman’s weapon away and hauled out a pair of handcuffs that couldn’t possibly be needed.
Lourds stared up helplessly as the policeman with the shotgun walked toward him while aiming his weapon. The man looked grim and deadly.
‘Professor Lourds?’
In disbelief, Lourds nodded but didn’t move. His hands were in plain sight for the policeman, and he knew to keep them that way. ‘I’m Thomas Lourds.’
‘Frau Von Volker sent us.’ The policeman lowered his weapon. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I am now. Thank you.’ Lourds took the proffered hand and climbed shakily to his feet.
Hours later, after being grilled by two investigators and a lieutenant of homicide, Lourds was released on his own recognizance. The lieutenant told him they would be in touch if they needed anything more.
‘I would caution you on one other thing, Professor Lourds.’
Lourds looked at the broad, clean-shaven lieutenant with sad eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘Based on your statement, and that of Frau Von Volker, we have issued a warrant for Herr Von Volker. But I must tell you, Herr Von Volker is an important person in Vienna. He has many friends. Your continued presence in this city, perhaps even in Austria, will be perilous.’
‘I plan on leaving as soon as I get out of here.’ Lourds had already changed his plane ticket to the evening flight out of Vienna instead of the morning one.
‘Good.’ The lieutenant shook his hand, then showed him the door.
Alice sat in one of the chairs out in the hallway. She looked at Lourds for just a moment, then came to him and held him. Lourds wrapped his arms around her and felt her shaking against him.
‘I hear I have you to thank for my life.’
She tilted her head and looked up at him. ‘I was also the one that very nearly got you killed by bringing you here in the first place.’
Lourds smiled at her and kissed her. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’
‘But you’re still going back to Jerusalem.’
‘I’ve got to locate whatever Lev left for me to find.’
‘You’d be safer going back to Harvard. If you had any sense, that’s where you’d go.’
‘I can’t. Lev counted on me to help him.’
‘I don’t think he would hold it against you under the circumstances.’
Lourds just held her, relishing the way she felt and smelled and made him glad to be alive.
‘You can’t go till you figure this thing out, can you?’ Alice looked disappointed.
‘No.’ The unknown was a siren call for him though he wished that call were safer sometimes. ‘But we should be safer in Jerusalem.’
Alice shook her head. ‘Not we. Not yet.’
That surprised Lourds. ‘Alice, you can’t possibly be thinking of staying here. Not with that madman still on the loose.’
‘Lieutenant Krieger is going to help me get my things from the house. And by things, I mean Lev’s collection. I can’t just pop back across the border with those. I don’t know how Klaus managed it, but I don’t have the political clout he does. So, for the time being, I’m going to stay with that collection and research it.’
‘Do you have somewhere safe to go?’
‘Yes. And the means. In order to take advantage of various tax shelters, Klaus put a number of bank accounts in my name. I intend to avail myself of those while I deal with the collection.’
‘You’re a brave woman, Alice.’
‘Perhaps it isn’t bravery at all. Perhaps it’s just curiosity.’
‘There’s a lot of that going around.’ Lourds frowned. ‘I think Von Volker is working with the Iranians on this.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the book pertains to Islam, and because Von Volker doesn’t believe it exists. I think he’s just making a token effort to get the book for the Ayatollah. I can’t think of anyone else he’d be working with in this matter, and that would explain the extremes he seems willing to go to in order to find it.’
Alice shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I do
know that a man from the Ayatollah’s Revolutionary Guard has come to our house on occasion, and I’ve seen phone numbers for him on Klaus’s cell phone.’
‘What man?’
‘Colonel Davari.’
Lourds considered the name but couldn’t place it. ‘Maybe I’ll take a look into him too. Once I get back to Jerusalem. It would be good to know who all our enemies are.’ He checked the time on a clock in the hallway. ‘I’m sorry, Alice – ’
‘I know. The plane will leave without you. Go. I’ll take care of things as best I can at this end. You just make sure you stay alive long enough for me to see you again.’
‘I promise.’ Lourds kissed her, then went to get his backpack and suitcase. The lieutenant had promised him a police escort to the airport.
33
Covert Operations
Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (Mossad)
Tel Aviv, Republic of Israel
August 8, 2011
‘We’re fortunate, Katsas Shavit.’
Glancing up from her desk, Sarah waved Isser Melman into her office. ‘Come in, please, and explain our good fortune.’
Melman entered the room and took a seat in front of her desk. He used his walking stick to lever one leg over the other.
‘We have picked up Professor Lourds’s trail once more.’
‘In Vienna?’ Shavit had spent most of yesterday and this morning trying to find agents with assets to track the American down.
‘Actually, he just left there. He’s on a plane bound for Tel Aviv. I’m betting he’ll return to Jerusalem.’
Sarah leaned back in her chair and felt her stomach rolling again. Lourds was a traveling storm, full of all kinds of portents, first here, then there. It was most disconcerting. ‘He found out something in Vienna that has sent him back to Jerusalem.’
‘I believe so.’ Melman rested his hands on top of his walking stick and grimaced. ‘While he was in Vienna, he incurred the wrath of Klaus Von Volker.’
The Temple Mount Code Page 20