by C. M. Palov
A few minutes later, they approached the towpath. Kate picked up the pace. Like a wooden lock on the historic canal, the floodgate of relief slowly creaked open inside her. Almost there.
‘I’m the green brick house at the end of the row.’
‘There’s no paved street in front of these houses,’ Finn muttered. ‘Where the hell do you park?’
‘There’s a public garage on Wisconsin Avenue.’
Craning his neck, he peered back in that direction. ‘But that’s two blocks from here.’
Kate made no comment; she lived in one of the city’s most charming neighbourhoods and considered the two blocks a paltry price to pay. Situated a few feet from the C&O Canal, the row of diminutive nineteenth-century townhouses was a far cry from the residence she’d shared with her ex-husband, a six-bedroom palatial mini-mansion in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
While modest, it was her sanctuary.
Immediately following her son’s death and subsequent divorce, she moved into a drab, nondescript high-rise apartment building on Connecticut Avenue. Where, on several occasions, blindsided by grief, she barely got through her front door before she collapsed in the hallway, amidst the corrugated towers of unpacked cardboard boxes. One night she actually stayed there, curled on the parquet floor, until dawn.
The recent move to the little terraced house was her attempt to get on with her life; to move past the heartache of having lost a child. And having been betrayed by the man she once loved.
So far, she’d not had a whole lot of success ‘moving on’. Truth be told, there was a decided sameness to her days. Every Monday and Thursday she went to Safeway for groceries. On Fridays she did her banking. And every Saturday she went to Georgetown Video to check out the new arrivals. Lately, she’d found herself fantasizing about leading a different sort of life.
Given what she’d just been through, sitting with a bowl of buttered popcorn on her lumpy sofa suddenly had a whole new appeal.
When they reached the black wrought-iron railing at her front steps, Kate quickly turned to Finn and said, ‘Thank you for escorting –’
‘I need to perform a security check of the premises,’ he rudely interjected, bulldozing right over her prepared speech.
‘Under no circumstances are you coming inside my house.’ That was an intrusion she couldn’t tolerate, the thought of him roaming inside her house, her sanctuary, more than she could bear. ‘This, Sergeant McGuire, is where we part company and go our separate ways.’
For several drawn-out seconds, he stared intently at her. Caught in a silent battle of wills, Kate held her ground. No easy feat given the ferocity of Finn McGuire’s brown-eyed stare.
To her surprise, Finn blinked. An instant later, he shook his head, surrendering the field.
‘Look. Kate. I’m sorry.’ The mea culpa was issued in short, choppy sentences. His signature speech pattern. ‘I never meant to involve you in this mess.’
‘Apology accepted,’ she mumbled, too weary to hold a grudge. She was moments from retreating inside her house and slamming the door on this horrible night. Dead bolt and chain latch a given.
Extending a hand towards her face, Finn brushed the pad of his thumb against her lips. ‘You got a clot of dried blood in the corner of your mouth.’
‘Somewhere between the crash and the foot race, I must have bitten my lip,’ she said when Finn showed her the blood on his thumb. ‘I was scared as a ninny. Although I’m not exactly sure what a ninny is. I only know that when the Mercedes drove past the alley, I thought –’ Kate self-consciously broke off in mid-babble, unnerved by the intimacy of his touch.
Earlier, at the Pentagon, when he had unexpectedly hopped into her Toyota, Kate had been convinced that there wasn’t a hint of a spark between them. Now she wasn’t so sure. Granted, it’d been a long time since she’d been with a man, but she definitely felt something when Finn touched her lip.
‘Make sure you disinfect that cut with some rubbing alcohol.’
‘Yes, I … I will.’ She unzipped her handbag and rummaged for her keys. ‘That’s strange. I can’t seem to find my –’ She glanced up, surprised to see her key ring dangling from Finn’s middle finger.
‘I lifted them from your bag when we first arrived at the embassy.’
The confession, uttered without a trace of recrimination, stunned her. From the onset, he’d been using her.
‘You mean that you stole them from me.’ She snatched the key ring off his finger. Sexual spark be damned. ‘Goodnight, Sergeant.’
‘See you around, Kate.’
She gave him a tight parting smile before ascending the front steps. About to insert the key in the door lock, Kate belatedly realized that she still had Finn’s suit jacket draped around her shoulders.
So much for a graceful exit.
‘Finn! Wait!’ She dashed down the steps, hurrying to catch up with him. ‘I forgot to give you –’
A blinding flash of light accompanied by a sonic boom! was the only warning Kate had before being violently hurled several feet into the air, lifted off her feet by a powerful explosion.
In a peripheral blur, she glimpsed a huge fireball shoot heavenward, emanating from her house. The destructive force of the blast thrust a length of wrought iron over the towpath and pelted the canal with brick chunks and shards of glass. And heaved wooden trim at nearby trees.
Who? Why? My God, how?
Kate gasped. It took her breath away. No – breath knocked out of her. She’d seen it. Heard it. And painfully felt it. But still couldn’t believe it. A gas main blew. Or perhaps an unventilated propane tank exploded. Something plausible, albeit shocking, just occurred. It couldn’t have been something so improbable, so horrific, as a detonated bomb. But even as she tried to rationalize what had happened, coloured lights began to swirl nightmarishly and fuse in front of her eyes, only to expand into a dark void.
In that instant, she lost all sense of gravity. Suddenly weightless.
Oh, no … I think I’m dead.
13
Sixth Arrondissement, Paris, France
Ivo Uhlemann gleefully took his opponent’s queen.
The field his, the battle won, he logged off the computer. Pushing the gilded Louis XV salon chair away from the desk, he rose to his feet. The sudden motion cost him, a bolt of pain bursting free and radiating to the back of his spine. Shuddering, Ivo placed a stabilizing hand on top of the desk, fighting the urge to gasp, well aware that a large intake of air would only intensify the agony.
Long moments passed, the pain finally ebbing to a tolerable level.
Ivo glanced at his right hand, palm still pressed against the smooth inlaid cherry desktop. Noticing the raised blue veins and splotchy, tissue-paper-like skin, he frowned. If only the body kept pace with the mind. Yet another battle he had to wage.
Chaos, destruction and death, the sum of each man’s journey through life. Ivo first experienced the brutal trinity at a tender age. Even now, all these years later, he could still vividly recall that night in 1943 when British RAF pilots rained deadly bombs on Berlin’s sleeping neighbourhoods. An act of callous savagery, thousands were immolated alive, with Ivo’s own grandparents among the victims. But to the Allies utter disbelief, Berliners rose up from the ashes, Phoenix-like, the firebird heroically transformed into a Reichsadler, the proud eagle of the Reich.
Seized with patriotic fervour, his own spirit burnished in the flames, Ivo straight away joined the Hitler-Jugend. Eleven years and three days of age, he proudly wore the black shorts, long-sleeved brown shirt and peaked cap. And though he couldn’t fully grasp the meaning of the slogan ‘Blood and Honour’, he nonetheless shouted it with great ferocity at war rallies. Assigned to an anti-aircraft crew, he was trained to use a flak gun. Bursting with pride, his mother Berthe showered him with adoring kisses. His father, stationed at the SS Headquarters in Wewelsburg, sent letters commending Ivo for his unparalleled bravery.
That bravery was put to a gruelling test seventee
n months later when Ivo was issued a steel helmet, a Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon and a bolt-action rifle with one hundred rounds of ammunition. Marching in perfect unison, heel to toe as they’d been trained, Ivo and his regiment of Hitler-Jugend were ordered to take up a position on the Pichelsdorf Bridge. Part of the last German defence, the ‘boy brigade’ was to halt the Russian advance and prevent the enemy from entering Berlin.
For two gore-filled days, they held their ground. Of the five thousand boys sent to the bridge, only five hundred remained standing at the end of those horrific forty-eight hours. Just as the jubilant Red horde stormed across the bridge, Ivo was severely wounded in a mortar blast.
When he finally regained consciousness in an American field hospital, the Führer was dead, Germany a conquered nation. Bandaged from head to foot, immobilized in a traction device, Ivo was filled with shame.
If I’d only fought harder. Fired more bullets. Killed more Russians.
Six months would pass before he was discharged from the military hospital with a wooden cane, a Hershey’s chocolate bar and a silver Reichspfennig coin. Oskar Baader, a grey-haired, bespectacled man who’d been his father’s colleague in the physics department at Göttingen University, met him at the hospital gate. On the train ride to Göttingen, the professor informed Ivo that his mother had been killed during the Russian attack on Berlin and that his father, who’d risen within the SS to the rank of Oberführer, was a wanted fugitive. The shock more than he could bear, Ivo burst into tears.
As the months passed, Ivo settled into his new life in Göttingen with the elderly Baader couple, marching drills and combat practice replaced with violin lessons and science tutorials. Eventually the sorrow faded. In its stead was a wide-eyed curiosity as encoded letters from his father – postmarked from such far-flung places as Lisbon, Genoa and Cairo – began to arrive at the flat.
With each encoded letter, more and more of an incredible tale began to unfold. According to the missives, his father had been assigned to a highly-classified research project under the auspices of the Ahnenerbe. The project, which involved an ancient relic known as the Lapis Exillis, had been sanctioned by the Führer himself. Even more amazing, although the war had ended and the surviving members of the Ahnenerbe were either on the run or facing a military tribunal in Nuremberg, Friedrich Uhlemann still actively sought the relic. His father claimed that this relic contained unique properties that could be used to harness a heretofore untapped energy.
Hearing the ormolu clock on the mantel chime the new hour, Ivo turned his head. One o’clock. He assumed the Dark Angel had detonated the plastic explosive. With Katsumi Bauer removed from the equation, the American commando could be lured back to the bargaining table. Every man had his price. Too much was at stake. Encrypted clues to the whereabouts of the Lapis Exillis were engraved on the Montségur Medallion.
They had only five days to find it.
Five days until the Heliacal Rising of Sirius when the great star would appear on the eastern horizon just before sunrise. Five days until that powerful energy burst that could change the course of history.
Would change it, provided they located the Lapis Exillis.
Ivo again glanced at the clock, silently damning the reminder that each minute, each hour, each day lost could not be regained.
Only five days.
A trained physicist, Friedrich Uhlemann had gone to his grave convinced that the ancient technology contained within the Lapis Exilis could have saved the Reich from total annihilation.
Ivo, also a trained physicist, knew that it wasn’t too late. If found, the Lapis Exilis could still save the Reich.
14
‘Here. This should help.’ Finn offered Kate a chipped Redskins mug filled with hot coffee and a slug of Jameson’s whiskey. ‘You’re damned lucky to have landed in that barberry bush.’
Tersely shaking her head, Kate refused the pick-me-up. Instead, she continued to sit on the sofa with her arms wrapped around her chest, hands coiled around her elbows. Since the blast, the woman hadn’t uttered a single word. They’d just entered the second hour of radio silence.
‘Drink it, Kate. The booze will do you good. I don’t want you fainting on me again.’ He butted the mug against her chest, forcing her to accept the spiked coffee.
Her expression blank, Kate stared straight ahead as she obediently took a sip.
She must have had a sheltering angel standing sentry at the front door. Because, somehow, against all odds, she’d managed to survive the blast relatively unscathed. Scratches, bruises, minor abrasions and a swollen right knee; the kind of injuries that always hurt worse the morning after.
Immediately after the explosion, he’d thrown Kate over his shoulder and hauled ass to Wisconsin Avenue. Needing to find a hidey-hole on the double-quick, he’d flagged down a pizza delivery guy and paid him a hundred bucks to drive them to a houseboat docked at the Gangplank Marina. While he didn’t personally know Major James Bukowski, the owner of the houseboat, he’d once overheard the cocky officer bragging about his waterfront digs. Since Bukowski was currently deployed in Afghanistan, the trespass had been child’s play. He’d even told the neighbour that ‘Jimbo’ gave him the key.
For the time being, they were safe.
Still nameless, still faceless, the enemy possessed the stealth of a well-trained Delta unit. If it wasn’t for the freaking suit jacket, Kate would have been killed in the explosion.
‘If you speak of this matter to anyone, they will be targeted for execution.’
Warning issued. Action taken. Clearly these rat bastards did not make idle threats.
Pricked by a guilty conscience, Finn turned away from Kate and walked over to the window. Pulling the drawn curtain aside, he watched silently as drops of rain plopped against the varnished deck before congealing into plump translucent beads. Scanning the marina, his gaze ricocheted between the dark waters of the Washington Channel and the wood-planked dock.
He let the curtain fall back into place.
‘Listen, Kate, I need to know …’ Finn hesitated, trying to think of a tactful way to phrase the question. Realizing there wasn’t one, he got right to it. ‘Is there anyone – a parent, a sibling, a close friend – that these murdering thugs can go after next?’
The question hung silently between them, Kate, no doubt, wrapping her dazed mind around this new, unforeseen danger.
‘My parents are vacationing in Japan,’ she said at last. ‘I have no siblings. And I’m not altogether certain, but I believe that my ex-husband is conducting field research in Papua New Guinea. As for friends, well, let’s just say that I’ve been something of a loner these last two years. After the divorce, Jeffrey retained custody of our social circle.’
Finn breathed a sigh of relief. One less headache.
‘I just want you to know, Kate, that I’m truly sorry. I never meant to put you in harm’s way.’
‘I would prefer, Sergeant, that you not insult me with a phony apology. All along you’ve been using me. And now, because of you, all of my worldly possessions have been reduced to this.’ Kate held her handbag aloft. Somehow, miraculously, she’d managed to keep it slung across her chest during the explosion.
About to inform her that with a death sentence hanging over her head, being homeless was the least of her worries, Finn thought better of it. Instead, he seated himself next to her on the sofa.
‘You might find this hard to believe, but I know what you’re going through,’ he said without preamble, heartfelt confessions not his strong suit. ‘No matter what, you’ve got to stay strong. Like a sapling. Bend. Don’t break. Got it?’
The pep talk met with a derisive snort. ‘Please spare me the sappy sentiments. I want you to tell me, right now, why someone tried to kill me. For God’s sake! All I did was give you a ride to the embassy.’
‘My guess? They think that I took you into my confidence.’
‘About what?’
‘Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to –’<
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‘Cut the crap, Finn! Either you tell me what’s going on or I will pick up the phone and call the police.’
While Kate’s fury was completely justified, Finn debated how much he should, or could, reveal. The mission in Al-Qanawat had been black ops and –
Ah, fuck it.
Whether she knew or didn’t know, Jutier’s henchmen would still be gunning for her. Better that she face the enemy with eyes wide open.
‘You might find this hard to believe, but the men who set the explosive device at your house are after a thirteenth-century relic. And they’ll stop at nothing to get it.’
Her expression said it all – Kate Bauer thought that he was a lying sack of shit. ‘Hard to believe? Try flat-out impossible. And even if I did believe you, which I don’t, what does that have to do with you? Or me, for that matter.’
‘See, it’s like this –’ Leaning forward, Finn braced his elbows on top of his thighs. ‘Four months ago, I led a black ops mission into Al-Qanawat, Syria. The mission was straightforward: grab contraband vials of smallpox and get out of Dodge with no one the wiser. But when we arrived at the coordinates, there was no contraband smallpox. There wasn’t even a terrorist cell. There was just some relic hidden inside a chapel.’
Hearing that, her eyes narrowed suspiciously; the woman was a hard sell. ‘You need to be more specific. For starters, what did this relic look like?’
‘It was a gold disk about yea big –’ he curved both his hands to give her an idea as to its size. ‘At the time I was royally pissed that my team was being used; that we were sent into Al-Qanawat for the sole purpose of stealing a damned relic so a fat cat general could pad his retirement account. I’m a trained warrior, not Indiana Jones.’
‘And what does the mission in Syria have to do with Fabius Jutier?’
‘According to Jutier, he is – or was – a member of a group called the Seven. The group paid General Robert Cavanaugh to retrieve the Montségur Medallion for them. When Cavanaugh failed to deliver as promised, they arranged for him to have a fatal car accident.’