The Cotton Malone Series 7-Book Bundle

by Steve Berry

  The drive from Toulouse had taken him through a host of picturesque mountain villages. He’d visited the region several times, most recently last summer. Little differed among the countless locations save for names and dates. In Ossau a ragged line of houses straggled up winding streets, each faced with coarse stone and embellished with ornaments, coats of arms, and corbels. Only the peaks of the tiled roofs exposed a confusion of angles, like bricks tossed into the snow. Chimneys exhaled into the cold midday air. About a thousand people lived here and four inns accommodated visitors.

  He motored into the center of town and parked. A narrow lane led back to an open square. People in warm clothes, with unreadable eyes, darted in and out of the shops. His watch read 9:40 AM.

  He stared past the rooftops toward a clear morning sky, following the side of an escarpment upward to where a square tower rose from a rocky spur. Scraps of other towers on either side seemed to cling to it.

  The ruins of St. Lestelle.

  Stephanie stood beside Herbert Rowland’s hospital bed, and devis opposite her. Rowland was groggy but awake.

  “You saved my life?” Rowland asked in a voice not much more than a whisper.

  “Mr. Rowland,” Davis said. “We’re with the government. We don’t have much time. We need to ask you a few things.”

  “You saved my life?”

  She threw Davis a glance that said, Let me do this. “Mr. Rowland, a man came to kill you tonight. We’re not sure how, but he sent you into a diabetic coma. Luckily we were there. Do you feel up to answering questions?”

  “Why would he want me dead?”

  “You remember the Holden and Antarctica?”

  She watched as he seemed to search his memory.

  “A long time ago,” Rowland said.

  She nodded. “It was. But that’s why he came to kill you.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “An intelligence agency.” She pointed at Davis. “He’s with the White House. Commander Alexander, who captained Holden, was murdered last night. One of the lieutenants who went ashore with you, Nick Sayers, died a few years ago. We thought you might be the next target and we were right.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “What did you find in Antarctica?” Davis asked.

  Rowland closed his eyes and she wondered if he’d dozed off. A few seconds later he opened them and shook his head. “I was ordered never to speak of that. Not to anyone. Admiral Dyals himself told me from his own mouth.”

  She knew about Raymond Dyals. Former chief of naval operations.

  “He ordered NR-1A down there,” Davis said.

  That she didn’t know.

  “You know about the sub?” Rowland asked.

  She nodded. “We’ve read the report on its sinking, and we talked to Commander Alexander before he died. So tell us what you know.” She decided to make the stakes clear. “Your life may depend on it.”

  “I’ve got to stop drinking,” Rowland said. “The doctor told me that it would eventually kill me. I take my insulin—”

  “Did you last night?”

  He nodded.

  She was growing impatient. “The doctors told us earlier that you had no insulin in your blood. That’s why you went into shock—that and the alcohol. But all that’s irrelevant now. We need to know what you found in Antarctica.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  Malone investigated Ossau’s four inns and concluded that L’Arlequin would be the correct choice—all mountain austerity on the outside but elegant on the inside, decorated for Christmas with aromatic pine, a carved nativity scene, and mistletoe over the doors. The proprietor pointed out the guest book—which, he explained, contained the names of all of the famous Pyrenean explorers, along with many nineteenth-and twentieth-century notables. Its restaurant served a wonderful monkfish casserole diced with ham, so he’d enjoyed an early lunch and lingered for over an hour, waiting, finally savoring a log-shaped cake made of chocolate and chestnuts. When his watch read eleven AM he decided that he may have chosen wrong.

  He learned from the waiter that St. Lestelle closed for the winter, and opened only from May to August to accommodate visitors who flocked to the area to enjoy the summer highlands. Not much there, the man said, mostly ruins. Some restoration work occurred each year, financed by the local historical society and encouraged by the Catholic diocese. Other than that, the site remained quiet.

  He decided a visit was in order. Night would come quickly, certainly by five, so he needed to take advantage of what daylight remained.

  He left the inn armed, three rounds left in the gun. He estimated that the temperature was in the low twenties. No ice, but lots of dry snow that crunched like cereal beneath his boots. He was glad he’d bought the boots earlier in Aachen, knowing that he was headed into some rough terrain. A new sweater beneath his jacket kept his chest extra warm. Tight leather gloves sheathed his hands.

  He was ready.

  For what?

  He wasn’t sure.

  Stephanie waited for Herbert Rowland to answer her question about what had happened in 1971.

  “I don’t owe those bastards a thing,” Rowland muttered. “I kept my oath. Never said a word. But they still came to kill me.”

  “We need to know why,” she said.

  Rowland inhaled oxygen. “It was the damnedest thing. Ramsey came to the base, picked me and Sayers, and said we were going to Antarctica. We were all special ops, used to weird things, but this was the strangest. That’s a long way from home.” He savored another breath. “We flew to Argentina, climbed aboard Holden, and stayed to ourselves. We were told to sonar-search for a pinger, but we never heard a thing until we finally went ashore. That’s when Ramsey donned his gear and dove into the water. He came back about fifty minutes later.”

  “What did you find?” Rowland asked, helping Ramsey from the frozen sea, his grip tight on one shoulder of the dry suit, lifting man and equipment onto the ice.

  Nick Sayers tugged on the other shoulder. “Anything there?”

  Ramsey slipped off his faceplate and hood. “Cold as a Siberian ditch digger’s fanny down there. Even with this suit. Hell of a dive, though.”

  “You were down nearly an hour. Any depth problems?” Rowland asked.

  Ramsey shook his head. “I stayed above thirty feet the whole time.” He pointed off to the right. “The ocean juts a long way up there, straight to the mountain.”

  Ramsey removed his underwater gloves and Sayer handed him a dry pair. Bare skin could not stay exposed more than a minute in this environment. “I need to get this suit off and my clothes back on.”

  “Anything there?” Sayers asked again.

  “Some damn clear water. Place is full of color, like a coral reef.”

  Rowland realized they were being ignored, but he also noticed a sealed retrieval bag clipped at Ramsey’s waist. The bag had been empty fifty minutes ago. Now it held something.

  “What’s in there?” he asked.

  “He didn’t answer me,” Rowland whispered. “And he wouldn’t let me or Sayers touch the bag.”

  “What happened after that?” she asked.

  “We left. Ramsey was in charge. We made some more radiation checks, found nothing, then Ramsey ordered Holden to head north. He never said a word about what he saw on that dive.”

  “I don’t get it,” Davis said. “How are you a threat?”

  The older man licked his lips. “Probably because of what happened on the way back.”

  Rowland and Sayers were taking a chance. Ramsey was topside with Commander Alexander, playing cards with some of the other officers. So they’d finally decided to see what their compatriot had found on the dive. Neither of them liked being kept in the dark.

  “You sure you know the combination?” Sayers asked.

  “The quartermaster told me. Ramsey’s been throwing his weight around and this ain’t his ship, so he was more than happy to help me out.”

  A small safe lay on the deck
beside Ramsey’s rack. Whatever he’d brought up with him after the dive had rested inside for the past three days while they’d left the Antarctic Circle and found the South Atlantic Ocean.

  “Keep an eye on the door,” he told Sayers. He knelt and tried the combination he’d been provided.

  Three clicks confirmed that the numbers worked.

  He opened the safe and spotted the retrieval bag. He slid it out and felt its rectangular contours, eight by ten or so, maybe an inch thick. He unzipped the top, slid out the contents, and immediately recognized a ship’s logbook. On the first page, scrawled in blue ink with a heavy hand, was written MISSION STARTING OCTOBER 17, 1971, ENDING___. The second date would have been added after the sub docked back in port. But he realized that the captain who’d made those entries would never get that chance.

  Sayers came close. “What is it?”

  The compartment door swung open.

  Ramsey stepped inside. “I thought you two would try something like this.”

  “Stick it up your ass,” Rowland said. “We’re all at the same grade. You’re not our superior.”

  A smile curled on Ramsey’s black lips. “Actually, I am here. But maybe it’s better you went ahead and saw. Now you realize what’s at stake.”

  “You’re damn right,” Sayers said to him. “We volunteered, just like you, and we want the rewards, just like you.”

  “Believe it or not,” Ramsey said, “I was going to tell you before we docked. There are things to be done and I can’t do them alone.”

  Stephanie wanted to know, “Why was it so important?”

  Davis seemed to understand. “It’s obvious.”

  “Not to me.”

  “The logbook,” Rowland said, “came from NR-1A.”

  Malone climbed the rocky path, little more than a thin shelf that zigzagged every hundred feet up the wooded slope. On one side, wrought-iron stations of the cross spanned out in a solemn procession, on the other the vista below steadily grew into a panorama. Sunshine bathed the precipitous valley, and he noticed, in the distance, deep jagged gorges. Bells far away announced midday.

  He was headed for one of the cirques, circles of high precipices set into mountainous pockets, accessible only by foot, common in the Pyrénées. Beech trees sustained the slopes, stunted and twisted, their bare snowy branches interlaced in misshapen knots. He kept watch on the uneven path but noticed no footprints, which meant little given the wind and swirling snow.

  A final semicircular sweep and the monastery’s entrance, perched on the cirque, rose ahead. He paused for a breath and enjoyed another wide-flung view. Snow, refrigerated by cold gusts of wind, swirled in the distance.

  Tall masonry walls stretched left and right. If what he’d read was to be believed, those stones had borne witness to Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, Franks, and the crusaders of the Albigensian wars. Many battles had been fought for this vantage point. Silence seemed a physical presence, which gave the place a solemn mood. Its history probably lay buried with the dead, the true record of its glory etched neither in stone nor in parchment.

  Brightness of God.

  More fiction? Or fact?

  He walked the remaining fifty feet, approached an iron gate, and spotted a padlocked chain.

  Great.

  No way to scale the walls.

  He reached out and gripped the gate. Cold seeped though his gloves. What now? Scour the perimeter and see if there was an opening? Seemed like the only course. He was tired, and he knew this stage of exhaustion well—the mind easily became lost in a maze of possibilities, every solution meeting a dead end.

  He shook the gate in frustration.

  The iron chain slithered to the ground.

  FIFTY-THREE

  CHARLOTTE

  Stephanie digested exactly what Herbert Rowland had said and asked, “You’re saying NR-1A was intact?”

  Rowland appeared to be tiring, but this had to be done.

  “I’m saying Ramsey brought the logbook back from the dive.”

  Davis threw her a look. “I told you the SOB was deep in this.”

  “Was it Ramsey who tried to kill me?” Rowland asked.

  She wasn’t going to answer, but saw Davis was not of the same mind.

  “He deserves to know,” Davis said.

  “This is already out of hand. Do you want more?”

  Davis faced Rowland. “We think he’s behind it.”

  “We don’t know that,” she was quick to add. “But it’s a distinct possibility.”

  “He was always a bastard,” Rowland said. “After we got back, he’s the one who sucked up all the benefits. Not me or Sayers. Sure, we got a few promotions, but we never got what Ramsey managed.” Rowland paused, clearly fatigued. “Admiral. All the way to the top.”

  “Maybe we should do this later,” she said.

  “No way,” Rowland said. “Nobody comes after me and gets away with it. If I wasn’t in this bed, I’d kill him myself.”

  She wondered about the bravado.

  “I took my last drink tonight,” he said. “No more. I mean it.”

  Anger seemed an effective drug. Rowland’s eyes were ablaze.

  “Tell us everything,” she said.

  “How much do you know about Operation Highjump?”

  “Just the official line,” Davis said.

  “Which is total garbage.”

  Admiral Byrd brought six R4-D aircraft with him to Antarctica. Each was equipped with sophisticated cameras and trailing magnetometers. They launched from a carrier deck using rocket propulsion bottles to assist in takeoff. The aircraft spent over 200 hours in the air and flew 23,000 miles across the continent. On one of the final mapping flights, Byrd’s plane returned from its mission three hours late. The official account was that he’d lost an engine and had to limp home. But Byrd’s private logs, returned and reviewed by the then chief of naval operations, revealed a different explanation.

  Byrd had been flying over what the Germans named Neuschwabenland. He was inland, headed west over a featureless white horizon, when he spotted a bare area dotted with three lakes separated by masses of barren reddish brown rocks. The lakes themselves were colored in shades of red, blue, and green. He noted their position and the following day dispatched to the area a special team, who discovered that the lake water was warm and filled with algae, which provided the pigmentation. The water was also brackish, which indicated a connection to the ocean.

  The discovery excited Byrd. He was privy to information from the 1938 German expedition, which had reported similar observations. He’d doubted the claims, having visited the continent and knowing its inhospitable nature, but the special field team explored the area for the next few days.

  “I wasn’t aware Byrd kept a private log,” Davis said.

  “I saw it,” Rowland said. “The entire Highjump operation was classified, but we worked on a lot of things when we returned and I got a look. It’s only during the last twenty years that anything about High-jump has been revealed—most of it false, by the way.”

  She asked, “What is it that you, Sayers, and Ramsey did when you returned?”

  “We relocated all the stuff brought home by Byrd in 1947.”

  “It still existed?”

  Rowland nodded. “Every bit. Crates of it. The government doesn’t throw anything away.”

  “What was inside them?”

  “I have no idea. We simply moved them, never opened anything. And by the way, I’m concerned about my wife. She’s at her sister’s.”

  “Give me the address,” Davis said, “and I’ll have the Secret Service make contact. But it’s you Ramsey’s after. And you still haven’t told us why Ramsey considers you a threat.”

  Rowland lay still, both his arms connected to intravenous bags. “I can’t believe I almost died.”

  “The guy we surprised broke into your house yesterday while you were out during the day,” Davis said. “I’m guessing he screwed with your insulin.”

&n
bsp; “My head is pounding.”

  She wanted to press harder but knew that this old man would talk only when ready. “We’ll make sure you’re protected from here on. We just need to know why it’s necessary.”

  Rowland’s face was a kaleidoscope of twisting emotions. He was struggling with something. His breath came ragged, his watery eyes fixed in a disdainful stare. “The damn thing was dry as a bone. Not a water smear on any page.”

  She registered what he’d said. “The logbook?”

  He nodded. “Ramsey brought it up from the ocean in the bag. That meant it never got wet before he found it.”

  “Mother of God,” Davis muttered.

  She now realized. “NR-1A was intact?”

  “Only Ramsey knows that.”

  “That’s why he wants them all dead,” Davis said. “When you let that file go to Malone, he panicked. He can’t have that get out. Can you imagine what that would do to the navy?”

  But she wasn’t so sure. There had to be more to the story.

  Davis stared at Rowland. “Who else knows?”

  “Me. Sayers, but he’s dead. Admiral Dyals. He knew. He commanded the whole thing and gave us the order of silence.”

  Winterhawk. That’s what the press called Dyals, referring to both his age and his political leanings. He’d long been compared to anotheraging, arrogant naval officer who also eventually had to be chased off. Hyman Rickover.