The Cotton Malone Series 7-Book Bundle

by Steve Berry

  Both beautiful, high-strung creatures. Nearing fifty. Identical in appearance, though each tried hard to distinguish herself. Dorothea had pursued business degrees and actively worked with her mother in the family concerns. She’d married in her early twenties and birthed a son, but he was killed five years ago, a week after his twentieth birthday, in a car accident. All reports indicated that she changed after that. Hardened. Became enslaved to deep anxieties and unpredictable moods. To shoot a man with a shotgun, as she’d done last night, then make love afterward with such an unfettered intensity, proved that dichotomy.

  Business had never interested Christl, nor had marriage or children. He’d met her only once, at a social function Dorothea and her husband had attended when he’d first made contact. She was unassuming. An academician, like her father and grandfather, studying oddities, mulling the endless possibilities of legend and myth. Both of her master’s theses had been on obscure connections between mythical ancient civilizations—like Atlantis, he’d found after reading both—and developing cultures. Fantasy, all of it. But the male Oberhausers had been fascinated by such ridiculousness, and Christl seemed to have inherited their curiosity. Her childbearing days were over, so he wondered what would happen after Isabel Oberhauser died. Two women who did not like each other—neither one of whom could leave blood heirs—would inherit it all.

  A fascinating scenario with endless possibilities.

  He was outside, in the cold, not far from their hotel, a magnificent establishment that would satisfy the whims of any king. Dorothea had called from the car last night to speak with the concierge, and a suite had been waiting when they arrived.

  The sunny Marienplatz, which he now strolled, was crowded with tourists. A strange hush hung over the square, broken only by the scuff of soles and a murmur of voices. Within sight were department stores, cafés, the central market, a royal palace, and churches. The massive rathaus dominated one perimeter, its animated façade streaked with the darkened effects of centuries. He purposefully avoided the museum quarter and headed for one of several bakeries that were enjoying a brisk business. He was hungry and some chocolate pastries would be lovely.

  Booths decorated with fragrant pine boughs dotted the square, part of the city’s Christmas market, which stretched out of sight down the old town’s busy main thoroughfare. He’d heard about the millions who came each year for the festivities but doubted he and Dorothea would have time to attend. She was on a mission. He was, too, which made him think of work. He needed to check with Berlin and maintain a presence for his employees’ sake. So he found his cell phone and dialed.

  “Captain Wilkerson,” his yeoman said, after answering. “I was told to direct any call from you directly to Commander Bishop.”

  Before he could ask why, the voice of his second in command came on the line. “Captain, I have to ask where you are.”

  His radar went to full alert. Never did Bryan Bishop call him Captain, unless other people were listening.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “Sir, this call is being recorded. You’ve been relieved of all duties and declared a level-three security risk. Our orders are to locate and detain you.”

  He grabbed hold of his emotions. “Who gave those orders?”

  “Office of the Director. Issued by Captain Hovey, signed by Admiral Ramsey.”

  He’d actually been the one who recommended Bishop’s promotion to commander. He was a compliant officer who followed orders with unquestioned zeal. Great then, bad now.

  “Am I being sought?” he asked, and then a realization slammed into him and he clicked off the phone before hearing the answer.

  He stared at the unit. They came with a built-in GPS locator for emergency tracking. Damn. That’s how they’d found him last night. He hadn’t been thinking. Of course, he’d had no idea before the attack that he was a target. After, he’d been rattled and Ramsey—the SOB—had rocked him to sleep, buying time to dispatch another team.

  His daddy had been right. Can’t trust a one of them.

  Suddenly a city of 120 square miles, with millions of inhabitants, transformed from a refuge into a prison. He glanced around at the people, all huddled in thick coats, darting in every direction.

  And no longer wanted any pastries.

  Ramsey left the National Mall and drove into central Washington, near Dupont Circle. Normally he used Charlie Smith for his special tasks, but that was currently impossible. Luckily he kept a variety of assets—all capable in their own way—on a call list. He had a reputation of paying well and promptly, which helped when he needed things done quickly.

  He wasn’t the only admiral jockeying for David Sylvian’s post. He knew of at least five others who were surely on the phone to congressmen as soon as they’d heard Sylvian had died. Paying the proper respects and burying the man would come in a few days—but Sylvian’s successor would be chosen in the next few hours, as slots that high on the military food chain did not stay vacant long.

  He should have known Aatos Kane would be a problem. The senator had been around a long time. He knew the lay of the land. But experience came with liabilities. Men like Kane counted on the fact that opponents did not possess either the nerve or the means to exploit those liabilities.

  He suffered from neither deficiency.

  He grabbed a curbside parking spot just as another car was leaving. At least something had gone right today. He clicked seventy-five cents into the meter and walked through the chill until he found Capitol Maps.

  An interesting store.

  Nothing but maps from every corner of the globe, including an impressive travel and guidebook collection. He wasn’t in the market for cartography today. Instead he needed to speak to the owner.

  He entered and spotted her talking to a customer.

  She caught a glimpse, but nothing in her countenance revealed any recognition. He assumed the considerable fees he’d paid her through the years for contract services had helped finance the store, but they’d never discussed the matter. One of his rules. Assets were tools, treated the same as a hammer, saw, or screwdriver. Use them. Then put them away. Most of the people he employed understood that rule. Those who didn’t were never called again.

  The store owner finished with her customer and casually strolled over. “Looking for a particular map? We have a large assortment.”

  He glanced around. “That you do. Which is good, because I need a lot of help today.”

  Wilkerson realized that he was being followed. A man and a woman lurked a hundred feet behind him, most likely alerted by his contact with Berlin. They’d made no move to close, which meant one of two things. They wanted Dorothea and were waiting for him to lead them to her, or he was being herded.

  Neither prospect was pleasant.

  He elbowed a path through a thick knot of midday Munich shoppers and had no idea how many other adversaries were waiting ahead. A level-three security risk? That meant they would contain with whatever force necessary—including deadly. Worse, they’d had hours to prepare. He knew the Oberhauser operation was important—more personal than professional—and Ramsey had the conscience of an executioner. If threatened, he’d react. At the moment he certainly appeared to be threatened.

  He set a sharp pace.

  He should call Dorothea and warn her, but he’d resented her intrusion last night during his call with Ramsey. This was his problem and he could handle things. At least she hadn’t berated him about being wrong when it came to Ramsey. Instead she’d taken him to a luxurious Munich hotel and pleased them both. Calling her might also require him to explain how they’d been located, and that was a conversation he’d like to avoid.

  Fifty yards ahead, the close huddle of the pedestrian-only old town ended at a busy boulevard packed with cars and lined with yellow-fronted buildings that projected a Mediterranean feel.

  He glanced back.

  The two following closed the gap.

  He stared left and right, then across t
he blare and bustle. A taxi stand lined the boulevard’s far curb, drivers propped outside, waiting for fares. Six lanes of chaos lay in between, the noise level as high as his heart rate. Cars began to congeal as traffic signals to his left cycled from green.

  A bus approached from his right, in the middle lane.

  The inside and outside lanes were slowing.

  Anxiety gave way to fear. He had no choice. Ramsey wanted him dead. And since he knew what the two pursuers behind him had to offer, he’d take his chances with the boulevard.

  He darted out as a driver apparently spotted him and braked.

  He timed the next move perfectly and leaped across the middle lane just as the traffic signals changed to red and the bus began its stop for the intersection. He leaped the outside lane, which was luckily car-free for a few moments, and found the grassy median.

  The bus ground to a halt and blocked any line of sight from the sidewalk. Honks and screeches, like geese and owls quarreling, signaled opportunity. He’d earned a precious few seconds, so he decided not to waste a single one. He raced across the three lanes ahead of him, empty thanks to the red light, and jumped into the lead taxi, ordering the driver in German, “Go.”

  The man hopped behind the wheel and Wilkerson crouched as the taxi sped away.

  He glanced out the window.

  The green light appeared and a phalanx of traffic rushed ahead. The man and woman wove their way across the cleared half of the boulevard, now prevented from a complete crossing thanks to the spate of vehicles speeding toward him.

  His two pursuers searched all around.

  He smiled.

  “Where to?” the driver asked in German.

  He decided to make another smart play. “Just a few blocks, then stop.”

  When the taxi wheeled to the curb, he tossed the driver ten euros and hopped out. He’d spotted a sign for the U-Bahn and hustled down the stairs, bought a ticket, and rushed to the platform.

  The underground train arrived and he stepped into a nearly full car. He sat and activated his cell phone, which came with a special feature. He entered a numeric code and the screen read DELETE ALL DATA? He pressed yes. Like his second wife, who never heard him the first time, the phone asked ARE YOU SURE? He pressed yes again.

  The memory was now wiped clean.

  He bent over, ostensibly to stretch his socks, and laid the phone beneath the seat.

  The train eased into the next station.

  He exited. But the phone kept going.

  That should keep Ramsey busy.

  He made his way up from the station, pleased with his escape. He needed to contact Dorothea, but that had to be done carefully. If he was being watched, so was she.

  He stepped out into the sunny afternoon and found his bearings. He was not far from the river, near the Deutsches Museum. Another busy street and crowded sidewalk spread out before him.

  A man suddenly stopped beside him.

  “Bitte, Herr Wilkerson,” he said in German. “To that car, just down there, at the curb.”

  He froze.

  The man wore a long wool coat and kept both hands in his pockets.

  “I don’t want to,” the stranger said, “but I will shoot you here, if need be.”

  His eyes drifted to the man’s coat pocket.

  A sick feeling invaded his stomach. No way Ramsey’s people had followed him. But he’d been so intent on them, he’d neglect to notice anyone else. “You’re not from Berlin, are you?” he asked.

  “Nein. I’m something altogether different.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  AACHEN, GERMANY

  1:20 PM

  Malone admired one of the last remnants of the Carolingian empire, known then as the Church of Our Lady and now as Charlemagne’s chapel. The building seemed to be formed in three distinct sections. A gothic tower, which appeared to stand apart. A round but angular midsection, connected to the tower by a covered bridge, topped with an unusual pleated dome. And a tall, elongated building that seemed all roof and stained-glass windows. The conglomeration had been erected from the latter part of the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, and it was amazing that it had survived, particularly the last hundred years when, Malone knew, Aachen had been mercilessly bombed.

  The chapel stood on the low end of a city slope, once connected to the palace proper by a low line of wooden structures that housed a solarium, a military garrison, law courts, and quarters for the king and his family.

  Charlemagne’s palatinate.

  Only a courtyard, the chapel, and the foundations of the palace upon which fourteenth-century builders erected Aachen’s town hall remained. The rest had disappeared centuries ago.

  They entered the chapel through the west doors, the ancient portal cloistered from the street. Three steps led down into a baroque-style porch, its walls whitewashed and unadorned.

  “Those steps are significant,” Christl said. “Ground levels outside have risen since Charlemagne’s time.”

  He recalled Dorothea’s tale about Otto III. “Beneath here is where they found Charlemagne’s tomb? And the book Dorothea has?”

  She nodded. “Some say Otto III dug through this flooring and found the king sitting upright, his fingers pointing to the Gospel of Mark. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

  He caught her cynicism.

  “Others say Emperor Barbarossa found the grave site here in 1165, and the body was lying in a marble coffin. That Roman sarcophagus is on display in the treasury next door. Barbarossa supposedly substituted a gilded chest, which is now”—she pointed ahead into the chapel—“there, in the choir.”

  Beyond the altar, he spotted a golden reliquary displayed within an illuminated glass enclosure. They left the porch and stepped into the chapel. A circular passage spanned to the left and right, but he seemed drawn to the center of the inner octagon. Light, like mist, filtered down from windows high in the dome.

  “A hexadecagon wrapping an octagon,” he said.

  Eight massive pillars folded into each other to form double pillars that held the high dome aloft. Rounded arches rose skyward to the upper galleries where slender columns, marble bridges, and latticework grilles connected everything.

  “For three centuries after its completion, this was the tallest building north of the Alps,” Christl told him. “Stone had been used in the south to construct temples, arenas, palaces, and later churches, but this type of building was unknown among Germanic tribes. This was the first attempt, outside the Mediterranean, to build a stone vault.”

  He stared up at the towering gallery.

  “Little of what you see is from Charlemagne’s time,” she said. “The structure itself, obviously. The thirty-six marble columns, there, on the second level. Some of them are original—carted from Italy, stolen by Napoleon, but eventually returned. The eight bronze lattices between the arches are also original. Everything else came later. Carolingians whitewashed their churches and painted the insides. Later, Christians added elegance. This remains, though, the only church in Germany built on orders of Charlemagne still standing.”

  He had to tilt his back to spy up into the dome. Its golden mosaics depicted twenty-four elders, clad in white, standing before the throne, proffering golden crowns in adoration of the Lamb. From Revelation, if he wasn’t mistaken. More mosaics decorated the drum beneath the dome. Mary, John the Baptist, Christ, Archangel Michael, Gabriel, even Charlemagne himself.

  Suspended by a wrought-iron chain, whose links thickened as they rose, was a massive, wheel-shaped candelabra replete with intricate goldsmithing.

  “Emperor Barbarossa presented that chandelier in the twelfth century,” she said, “after his coronation. It’s symbolic of the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of lights, which will come down from heaven like a victor’s crown, as promised to every Christian.”

  Revelation again. He thought about another cathedral, St. Mark’s in Venice. “This place has a Byzantine look and f
eel.”

  “It reflects Charlemagne’s love of Byzantine richness, as opposed to Roman austerity.”

  “Who designed it?”

  She shrugged. “No one knows. A Master Odo is mentioned in some of the texts, but nothing is known about him except that he apparently knew of the architecture from the south. Einhard definitely participated, as did Charlemagne himself.”

  The interior didn’t impress with its size, instead the illusion was more intimate, the eyes compelled to swing upward, toward heaven.

  Admission to the chapel was free, but several paying group tours wandered about, their guides explaining the highlights. Their tail from the train station had wandered inside, too, using one of the crowds for cover. Then, apparently satisfied there was but one entrance, he had drifted back outside.

  Malone had guessed right. His rental car had been tagged. How else could the gunman have found them last night? They certainly weren’t followed. Today they’d driven the same car from Reichshoffen to Garmisch to catch the train, where he’d first spotted Hatchet Face.

  No better way to know if someone was following than to lead him.

  Christl pointed up to the second-story gallery. “That area was reserved exclusively for the monarch. Thirty Holy Roman Emperors were crowned here. Having sat on the throne and followed in the footsteps of Charlemagne, they symbolically gained possession of the empire. No emperor was deemed legitimate until he ascended the throne that sits up there.”

  Chairs filled the octagon for worshipers and, as he saw, tourists. He sat off to the side and asked, “Okay, why are we here?”

  “Mathematics and architecture were part of Einhard’s love.”

  He caught what she’d not voiced. “Taught to him by the Holy Ones?”

  “Look at this place. Quite an accomplishment for the ninth century. A lot of firsts here. That stone vault overhead? It was revolutionary. Whoever designed and built it knew what they were doing.”

  “But what does this chapel have to do with Einhard’s will?”

  “In the will Einhard wrote that a comprehension of the wisdom of heaven begins in the new Jerusalem.”