The Cotton Malone Series 7-Book Bundle

by Steve Berry

  He heard rubber soles sweep onto the upper gallery’s floor.

  He began to rethink what he was doing, standing on a ledge ten inches wide, holding a gun with only five rounds, a good twenty-foot drop below. He risked one peek and saw two forms on the far side of the throne. One of the armed men advanced behind the bier, the other assumed a position on the far side—one probing, the other covering. The smart tactic showed training.

  He pressed his head back against the marble and stared out across the octagon. Light from the windows behind the throne cast a glow on the shiny pillars of the far side, and the fuzzy shadow of the imperial chair was clearly visible. He watched as another shadow circled behind the throne, now on the side closest to where he stood.

  He needed to draw the attacker closer.

  Carefully, his left hand searched his jacket pocket and found a euro coin from the restaurant. He removed it, dropped his hand to one side, then gently tossed the coin in front of the bronze grille, finding the ledge ten feet away, where the next set of pillars rose. The coin tinkled, then dropped to the marble floor below, a ding echoing through the silence. He was hoping that the gunmen would realize he was the source and come forward, looking left, while he struck from the right.

  But that didn’t take into account what the other armed man would do.

  The shadow on his side of the throne grew in size.

  He’d have to time the move perfectly. He switched the gun from his right hand to his left.

  The shadow approached the grille.

  A gun appeared.

  Malone pivoted, grabbed the man’s coat, and yanked him out over the rail.

  The body flew into the octagon.

  Malone rolled over the railing as a shot popped and a bullet from the other gunman smacked off the marble. He heard the body slam into the floor twenty feet below, chairs clattering away. He fired one shot across the throne then used the momentum he’d generated to hustle to his feet and find refuge behind the marble pillar, only this time in the gallery as opposed to the ledge.

  But his right foot slipped and his knee banged the floor. His spine vibrated with pain. He shook it off and tried to regain his balance, but he’d lost any advantage.

  “Nein, Herr Malone,” a man said.

  He was on all fours, holding the gun.

  “Stand,” the man ordered.

  He slowly came to his feet.

  Hatchet Face had rounded the throne and now stood on the side closest to Malone.

  “Drop the weapon,” the man ordered.

  He wasn’t going to surrender that easily. “Who do you work for?”

  “Drop the weapon.”

  He needed to stall but doubted this man was going to allow too many more questions. Behind Hatchet Face, near the floor, something moved. He spotted two soles, toes pointed upward, in the darkness beneath the throne. Christl’s legs sprang from her hiding place and slammed into Hatchet Face’s knees.

  The gunman, caught by surprise, crumpled backward.

  Malone used the moment to fire, a bullet thudding into the man’s chest. Hatchet Face cried in pain, but seemed to immediately regain his senses, raising his gun. Malone fired again and the man sank to the floor, not moving.

  Christl wiggled out from under the bier.

  “You’re a gutsy lady,” he said.

  “You needed help.”

  His knee ached. “Actually, I did.”

  He checked for a pulse but found none. Then he walked to the railing and glanced down. The other gunman’s body lay contorted among a rubble of chairs, blood oozing onto the marble floor.

  Christl came close. For a woman who hadn’t wanted to see the corpse in the monastery, she seemed to have no problem with these.

  “What now?” she asked.

  He pointed below. “Like I asked you before we were interrupted, I need you to translate that Latin inscription.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  VIRGINIA, 5:30 PM

  Ramsey showed his credentials and drove into Fort Lee. The trip south from Washington had taken a little over two hours. The base was one of sixteen army cantonments built at the outset of World War I, named for Virginia’s favorite son, Robert E. Lee. Torn down in the 1920s and converted into a state wildlife sanctuary, the site was reactivated in 1940 and became a bustling center of war activity. Over the past twenty years, thanks to its proximity to Washington, its facilities had been both expanded and modernized.

  He wound a path through a maze of training and command facilities that accommodated a variety of army needs, mainly logistics and management support. The navy leased three warehouses in a far corner among a row of military storage units. Access to them was restricted by numeric locks and digital verification. Two of the warehouses were managed by the navy’s central command, the third by naval intelligence.

  He parked and left the car, drawing his coat closely around his shoulders. He stepped beneath a metal porch and punched in a code, then slid his thumb into the digital scanner.

  The door clicked open.

  He entered a small anteroom whose overhead lights activated with his presence. He walked to a bank of switches and illuminated the cavernous space beyond, visible through a plate-glass window.

  When had he last visited? Six years ago?

  No, more like eight or nine.

  But his first visit had been thirty-eight years ago. He noticed that things inside weren’t much different, besides the modern security. Admiral Dyals had brought him initially. Another blustery winter day. February. About two months after he returned from the Antarctic.

  “We’re here for a reason,” Dyals said.

  He’d wondered about the trip. He’d spent a lot of time at the warehouse the past month, but all that abruptly ended a few days ago when the mission was disbanded. Rowland and Sayers had returned to their units, the warehouse itself had been sealed, and he’d been reassigned to the Pentagon. On the ride south from Washington the admiral had said little. Dyals was like that. Many feared this man—not from temper, which he rarely displayed, nor from verbal abuse, which he avoided as disrespectful. More from an icy stare of eyes that never seemed to blink.

  “Did you study the file on Operation Highjump?” Dyals asked. “The one I provided.”

  “In detail.”

  “And what did you notice?”

  “That where I was in Antarctica corresponded precisely to a location the Highjump team explored.”

  Three days ago Dyals had handed him a file marked HIGHLY CLASSIFIED. The information contained inside was not part of the official record that Admirals Cruzen and Byrd filed after their Antarctic mission. Instead the report was from a team of army specialists who’d been included among the forty-seven hundred men assigned to Highjump. Byrd himself had commanded them on a special reconnaissance of the northern shoreline. Their reports had only been provided to Byrd, who’d personally briefed the then chief of naval operations. What he’d read amazed him.

  “Before Highjump,” Dyals said, “we were convinced the Germans had constructed Antarctic bases in the 1940s. U-boats had been all over the South Atlantic both during and shortly after the war. The Germans mounted a major exploratory mission there in 1938. Had plans to return. We thought they did and just didn’t tell anybody. But it was all crap, Langford. Pure crap. The Nazis didn’t go to Antarctica to establish bases.”

  He waited.

  “They went to find their past.”

  Dyals led the way into the warehouse and threaded a path through wooden crates and metal shelving. He stopped and pointed to one row of shelves loaded with rocks covered with a curious mixture of swirls and curlicues.

  “Our people in Highjump located some of what the Nazis found in ’38. The Germans were following information they’d uncovered that dated back to the time of Charlemagne. One of their own, Hermann Oberhauser, discovered it.”

  He recognized the surname, from NR-1A’s crew. Dietz Oberhauser, field specialist.

  “We approached Dietz Oberhauser
about a year ago,” Dyals said. “Some of our R and D folks were researching German archives captured from the war. The Germans thought that there might be things to learn in Antarctica. Hermann Oberhauser became convinced that an advanced culture, one that predated our own, lived there. He thought they were long-lost Aryans, and Hitler and Himmler wanted to know if he was right. They also thought that if the civilization was more advanced they might know useful things. In those days, everyone was looking for a break.”

  Which hadn’t changed.

  “But Oberhauser fell out of favor. Pissed Hitler off. So he was silenced and shunned. His ideas abandoned.”

  Ramsey pointed to the rocks. “Apparently he was right. There was something to find.”

  “You read the file. You were there. Tell me, what do you believe?”

  “We didn’t find anything like this.”

  “Yet the United States spent millions of dollars to send nearly five thousand men to Antarctica. Four men died during that venture. Now eleven more are dead and we’ve lost a hundred-million-dollar submarine. Come now, Ramsey. Think.”

  He didn’t want to disappoint this man who’d shown so much confidence in his abilities.

  “Imagine a culture,” Dyals said, “that developed tens of thousands of years before anything we know. Before the Sumerians, the Chinese, the Egyptians. As tronomical observations and measurement, weights, volumes, a realistic concept of the earth, advanced cartography, spherical geometry, navigational skills, mathematics. Let’s say they excelled in all these centuries before we ever did. Can you imagine what they may have learned? Dietz Oberhauser told us that his father went to Antarctica in 1938. Saw things, learned things. The Nazis were total fools—pedantic, parochial, arrogant—so they couldn’t appreciate what all that meant.”

  “But it seems, Admiral, that we too suffered from ignorance. I read the file. The conclusions from Highjump were that these stones, here in the warehouse, were from some sort of ancient race, perhaps an Aryan race. Everybody seemed concerned about that. It seems we bought into the myth the Nazis formulated about themselves.”

  “We did, which was our mistake. But that was a different time. Truman’s people thought the whole thing too political to deal with publicly. They didn’t want anything around that lent any credence to Hitler or the Germans. So they stamped TOP SECRET on the whole Highjump venture and sealed everything away. But we did ourselves a great disservice.”

  Dyals pointed ahead, at a closed steel door. “Let me show you what you never saw while you were here.”

  Ramsey now faced the same door.

  A refrigerated compartment.

  The one he’d entered thirty-eight years ago for the first and only time. That day Admiral Dyals had issued him an order—one he’d followed ever since—leave him alone. That order had now been rescinded but, before he acted, he’d come to make sure they were still here.

  He grasped the latch.

  FORTY-SIX

  AACHEN

  Malone and Christl descended to ground level. The bag that held the guidebooks lay on an unmolested wooden chair. He found one of the booklets and located a translation of the Latin mosaic.

  IF THE LIVING STONES SHOULD FIT TOGETHER IN UNITY IF THE NUMBERS AND DIMENSIONS SHOULD CORRESPOND THEN THE WORK OF THE LORD WHO ERECTED THIS GREAT HALL WILL SHINE BRIGHTLY AND GRANT

  SUCCESS TO THE PIOUS ENDEAVORS OF MAN WHOSE WORKS ALWAYS REMAIN AS AN EVERLASTING ORNAMENT IF THE ALMIGHTY ADVISER PROTECTS AND WATCHES OVER IT SO MAY GOD LET THIS WHOLE TEMPLE EXIST ON THE FIRM FOUNDATION LAID BY EMPEROR CHARLES

  He handed the pamphlet to Christl. “Is this right?” He’d noticed in the restaurant that a few of the other books contained translations, each one slightly different.

  She studied the text, then scanned the mosaic, comparing back and forth. The body lay a few feet away, limbs contorted at odd angles, blood on the floor, and they both seemed to pretend that it wasn’t there. He wondered about the gunshots, but doubted with the thickness of the walls and the wind outside that anyone had heard. At least no one had come to investigate so far.

  “It’s correct,” she said. “A few minor variations, but nothing that changes the meaning.”

  “You told me earlier that the inscription is original, only it’s a mosaic instead of paint. The chapel’s consecration—which is another word for ‘sanctification.’ Clarify this pursuit by applying the angel’s perfection to the lord’s sanctification. The number twelve is the angel’s perfection, from Revelation. This octagon was a symbol of that perfection.” He pointed at the mosaic. “Could be every twelfth letter, but my guess is count every twelfth word.”

  A cross signified where the inscription began and ended. He watched as she counted.

  “Claret,” she said, coming to twelve. Then she found two more words in the twenty-fourth and thirty-sixth positions. Quorum. Deus. “That’s all. The last word, velit, is number eleven.”

  “Interesting, wouldn’t you say? Three words, the last stopping at eleven so there’d be no more.”

  “Claret quorum deus. Brightness of God.”

  “Congratulations,” he said. “You just clarified the pursuit.”

  “You already knew, didn’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I tried it at the restaurant with one of the translations and found the same three words.”

  “You could have mentioned that, along with the fact we were being followed.”

  “I could have, but you could have mentioned something, too.”

  She tossed him a perplexed look, but he wasn’t buying, so he asked, “Why are you playing me?”

  Dorothea stared at her mother. “You know where Christl is?”

  Isabel nodded. “I watch over both of my daughters.”

  She tried to keep her features placid, but a growing anger complicated the task.

  “Your sister teamed up with Herr Malone.”

  The words stung her. “You had me send him away. You said he was a problem.”

  “He was and still is, but your sister spoke with him after he met with you.”

  A feeling of worry passed into foolishness. “You arranged that?”

  Her mother nodded. “You had Herr Wilkerson. I gave her Malone.” Her body seemed numb, her mind paralyzed.

  “Your sister is in Aachen, at Charlemagne’s chapel, doing what needs to be done. Now you must do the same.”

  Her mother’s face remained impassive. Where her father had been carefree, loving, warm, her mother stayed disciplined, distant, aloof. Nannies had raised both Christl and her, and they’d always craved their mother’s attention, competing for what little affection there was to enjoy. Which she’d always thought accounted for much of their animosity—each daughter’s desire to be special, complicated by the fact that they were identical.

  “Is this just a game for you?” she asked.

  “It is far more than that. It is time my daughters grow up.”

  “I despise you.”

  “Finally—anger. If that will keep you from doing stupid things then by God hate me.”

  Dorothea had reached her limit and advanced toward her mother. But Ulrich stepped between them. Her mother held up a hand and stopped him, as she would a trained animal, and Henn stepped back.

  “What would you do?” her mother asked. “Attack me?”

  “If I could.”

  “And would that obtain what you want?”

  The question halted her. Negative emotions ebbed away, leaving only guilt. As always.

  A smile crept onto her mother’s lips. “You must listen to me, Dorothea. I have truly come to help.”

  Werner watched with a tempered reserve. Dorothea pointed his way. “You killed Wilkerson and now have given me him. Does Christl get to keep her American?”

  “That would not be fair. Though Werner is your husband, he’s not a former American agent. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

  “And how do you know where he’ll be tomorrow?”

  “That’s just it, child. I k
now precisely where he’ll be and I’m about to tell you.”

  “You have two master’s degrees, yet Einhard’s will was a problem for you?” Malone asked Christl. “Get real. You already knew all of this.”

  “I won’t deny that.”

  “I’m an idiot for getting myself in the middle of this disaster. I’ve killed three people in the past twenty-four hours because of your family.”

  She sat in one of the chairs. “I was able to solve the pursuit to this point. You’re right. It was relatively easy. But to someone living in the Dark Ages it was probably insurmountable. So few people then were literate. I have to say, I was curious to see how good you were.”

  “Did I pass?”

  “Quite well.”

  “But only those who appreciate the throne of Solomon and Roman frivolity shall find their way to heaven. That’s next, so where to?”

  “Whether you believe me or not, I don’t know the answer. I stopped at this point three days ago and returned to Bavaria—”

  “To await me?”

  “Mother called me home and told me what Dorothea was planning.”

  He needed to make something clear. “I’m here only because of my father. I stayed because somebody is upset that I got a peek at that file, and that reaches straight to Washington.”

  “I didn’t factor into your decision in any way?”

  “One kiss does not make a relationship.”

  “And I thought you enjoyed it.”

  Time for a reality check. “Since we both know this much of the pursuit, we can now solve the rest separately.”

  He headed toward the exit doors, but stopped at the body. How many people had he killed through the years? Too many. But always for a reason. God and country. Duty and honor.

  What about this time?