Black Order (28 page)

“You don’t remember what it said?”

Ryan scrunched his brow. “Only a couple lines. ‘
Perfection can be found hidden in my books, dear Tola. The truth is too beautiful to let die and too monstrous to set free.
’”

Silence settled in the car.

“He died two months later.”

Gray contemplated the words.
Hidden in my books
. The five books Hugo had mailed back home before he died. Had he done it to keep some secret safe? To preserve what was
too beautiful to let die and too monstrous to set free
?

Gray fixed Ryan with a stare in the rearview mirror. “Did you tell anyone else about what you found?”

“No, but the old gentleman and his niece and nephew…the ones who came earlier this year to speak to my father about the books. They had already been here, searching through my great-grandfather’s papers in the archives. I think they must have read the same note and come to inquire further with my father.”

“These folks…the niece and nephew. What did they look like?”

“White hair. Tall. Athletic. Good stock, as my grandfather would say.”

Gray shared a glance with Monk.

Fiona cleared her throat. She pointed to the back of her hand. “Did they have a mark…a tattoo here?”

Ryan slowly nodded. “I think so. Shortly after they arrived, my father sent me away. Like with you today. Mustn’t speak in front of the children.” Ryan tried to smile, but he plainly sensed the tension in the car. His eyes darted around. “Do you know them?”

“Fellow competitors,” Gray said. “Collectors like us.”

Ryan’s expression remained guarded, disbelieving, but he didn’t inquire further.

Gray again pictured the hand-drawn rune hidden in the Bible. Did the other four books contain similar cryptic symbols? Did it tie back to Hugo’s research with the Nazis? Was that what this was all about? It seemed unlikely these assassins would just show up here and start sifting through records…not unless they were searching for something specific.

But what?

Monk still faced backward. But he swung around and settled into his seat. He spoke low, under his breath. “You know we’re being followed, right?”

Gray only nodded.

A quarter mile back, slowly climbing the switchbacks behind them, a car followed in the rain. The same one he had spotted earlier parked back at the hostel. A pearl white Mercedes roadster. Maybe they were just fellow tourists, out on a sightseeing excursion to the castle.

Right.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t follow so close, Isaak.”

“They’ve already spotted us, Ischke.” He nodded past the rainswept windshield to the BMW a quarter mile ahead. “Note how his turns are more restrained, less enthusiastically sharp and tight. He knows.”

“Is that something we want? To alert them?”

Isaak tilted his head toward his sister. “The hunt is always the best when the prey is spooked.”

“I don’t think Hans would agree.” Her manner darkened with grief.

He reached a finger and touched the back of her hand, sharing her sadness and apologizing. He knew how sensitive she could be.

“There is no other road down from the ridge,” he assured her. “Except for the one we are on. All is ready at the castle. All we have to do is flush them into the trap. If they are looking over their shoulder at us, they are less likely to see what’s in front of them.”

She inhaled her agreement and understanding.

“It’s time we cleared up all these tattered loose ends. Then we can go home.”

“Home,” she echoed with a contented sigh.

“We’re almost done. We must always remember the goal, Ischke. Hans’s sacrifice will not be in vain, his spilt blood will herald a new dawn, a better world.”

“So Grandfather says.”

“And you know it’s true.”

He tilted his head toward her. Her lips thinned into a weary smile.

“Careful of the blood, sweet Ischke.”

His sister glanced down to the long steel blade of the dagger. She had been absently wiping it clean with a white chamois. A crimson drop had almost fallen onto the knee of her white pants. One loose end severed. A few more to go.

“Thank you, Isaak.”

1:22
P.M
.
HIMALAYAS

Lisa stared at the raised pistol.

“Wer ist dort? Zeigen Sie sich!”
the blond woman called up to her.

Though Lisa didn’t speak German, she understood the gist. She rose into view slowly. Hands up. “I don’t speak German,” she called down.

The woman eyed her, so focused in intent that Lisa swore she could feel it like a laser across her body.

“You’re one of the Americans,” the woman said in crisp English. “Come down. Slowly.”

The pistol didn’t waver.

With no cover on the open balcony grating, Lisa had no choice. She stepped to the ladder, turned her back, and climbed down. With every rung, she expected to hear a blast of a pistol. Her shoulders tensed. But she reached the ground safely.

Lisa turned, arms still held a bit out to the side.

The woman stepped toward her. Lisa stepped back. She sensed a good portion of the woman’s restraint in not immediately shooting her was due to the noise it might generate. Except for the single short cry, she had dispatched the outer guards with barely a sound, employing the sword.

The assassin still held the bloody katana in her other hand.

Maybe Lisa would’ve been safer staying atop the balcony, making the woman fire at her like a duck in a shooting gallery. Maybe the gunfire would have drawn others in time. She had been foolish to put herself within sword reach of the intruder. But panic had clouded Lisa’s judgment. It was hard to refuse someone when they had a gun pointed at your face.

“The Xerum 525,” the woman said. “Is it in the safe?”

Lisa weighed her answer for a heartbeat. Truth or lie? There seemed little choice. “Anna took it,” she answered. She waved vaguely toward the door.

“Where?”

She remembered Painter’s earlier lesson after they had been captured. Be necessary. Be useful. “I don’t know the castle well enough to describe it. But I know how to get there. I…can take you.” Lisa’s voice faltered. She needed to be more convincing. And how better than to barter as though her lie had value? “I’ll take you
only
if you promise to help me get out of here.”

The enemy of my enemy is my friend
.

Would the woman fall for it? She was stunningly beautiful: svelte, unblemished skin, generous lips, but her glacial blue eyes glinted with cold calculation and intelligence.

She scared Lisa witless.

There was something unearthly about her.

“Then you will show me,” the woman said and holstered her pistol. She kept the katana in hand.

Lisa would’ve preferred it the other way around.

The sword pointed at the door.

Lisa was to go first. She circled toward the door, keeping some distance. Perhaps she could make a break for it out in the halls. It would be her only hope. She would have to watch for a moment, some distraction, a hesitation, and then just run like hell.

A brush of air, the flicker of flame in the hearth, was her only warning.

Lisa turned—and the woman was already there, a step away, having glided swiftly and silently from behind. Impossibly fast. Their eyes met. Lisa knew in the heartbeat before the sword fell that the woman had not believed her for a moment.

It had all been a trap to drop Lisa’s guard.

It would be her last mistake.

The world froze…caught in a flash of fine Japanese silver as it plunged toward Lisa’s heart.

9:30
A.M
.
WEWELSBURG, GERMANY

Gray slid the BMW into a parking place beside a blue Wolters tour bus. The large German vehicle hid the sedan from direct view of the street. The arched entryway to the castle courtyard stood directly ahead.

“Stay in the car,” he ordered the others. He twisted around. “That means you, young lady.”

Fiona made an obscene gesture, but she stayed buckled.

“Monk, get behind the wheel. Keep the engine running.”

“Got it.”

Ryan stared at him wide-eyed.
“Was ist los?”

“Nothing’s
los,
” Monk answered. “But keep your head down just in case.”

Gray opened the door. A gust of rain slapped against him, sounding like machine-gun fire as it struck the flank of the neighboring bus. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Ryan, may I borrow your umbrella?”

The young man nodded and passed it forward.

Gray climbed out. He shook out the umbrella and hurried to the far side of the bus. He took up a post near the rear door, sheltering against the rain. He hoped to appear like just another tour employee. He kept himself shielded by the umbrella while he watched the road.

Headlights appeared out of the gloom, climbing the last switchback.

The white two-seater roadster appeared a moment later. It slid up to the parking lot and, without slowing, passed it. He watched the taillights recede into the rain, heading toward the tiny hamlet of Wewelsburg that nestled against the flank of the castle. The car disappeared around a corner.

Gray waited a full five minutes, circling behind the bus and signaling the all clear to Monk. Monk cut the engine. Finally satisfied that the Mercedes was not returning, Gray waved the others out.

“Paranoid much?” Fiona asked as she passed and headed to the arch.

“It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you,” Monk called after her. He turned to Gray. “Are they really out to get us?”

Gray stared into the storm. He didn’t like coincidences, but he couldn’t stop moving forward just because he was spooked. “Stick with Fiona and Ryan. Let’s talk to this director, get a copy of old Hugo’s letter to his daughter, and get the hell out of here.”

Monk eyed the hulking mass of tower and turret. Rain poured over the gray stone and sluiced from green gutters. Only a few of the windows on the lower floors shone with signs of life. The vast bulk was dark and oppressive.

“Just so we’re clear,” he grumbled, “if I see one friggin’ black bat, I’m out of here.”

1:31
P.M
.
HIMALAYAS

Lisa watched the sword plunge toward her chest. It all happened between heartbeats. Time thickened and slowed. This was how she was going to die.

Then a tinkle of glass shattered the stillness…followed by the soft crack of a gunshot, sounding impossibly far away. Near at hand, the assassin’s throat blossomed with a fountain of blood and bone, head thrown back.

But even then, the assassin’s death stroke completed its arc.

The sword struck Lisa in the chest, pierced skin, and collided into her sternum. But there was no weight behind it. Limp fingers released the katana’s hilt. The heel of a dying hand knocked it down before further damage could be inflicted.

Lisa stumbled back, released from the spell.

The length of Japanese steel pirouetted and struck the floor with the sound of a perfectly tuned bell. The body of the assassin followed next, thudding heavily beside it.

Lisa retreated, disbelieving, numb, senseless.

More tinkling of glass.

Words reached her as if from underwater.

“Are you okay? Lisa…”

She stared up. Across the library. The single library window. Frosted and glazed before, its pane shattered away under the butt of a rifle. A face appeared in the opening, framed by shards of broken glass.

Painter.

Beyond his shoulder, a storm blew, swirling snow and icemelt. Something large, heavy, and dark descended out of the sky. A helicopter. A rope and harness dangled below it.

Lisa trembled and sank to her knees.

“We’ll be right there,” he promised.

Five minutes later, Painter stood over the body of the assassin. The second saboteur. Anna was on one knee, searching the woman. Off to the side, Lisa sat in a chair by the hearth, her sweater off, her shirt open, exposing her bra and a bloody cut below it. Assisted by Gunther, Lisa had already cleaned the wound and now applied a series of butterfly bandages to seal the inch-long slice. She had been lucky. Her bra’s underwire had helped block the blade from penetrating deeper, saving her life. Talk about offering additional support.

“No papers, no identification,” Anna said, turning to him. Her gaze fell heavily onto Painter. “We needed the saboteur alive.”

He had no excuse. “I aimed for her shoulder.”

He shook his head in frustration. A debilitating bout of vertigo had paralyzed him after his descent in the rope harness. But they had no time to spare, barely making it here from the far side of the mountain. They would’ve never made it on foot through the castle. The helicopter had been their only chance, hopping over the shoulder of the mountain and dropping someone down on a harness.

Anna was no good with a gun, and Gunther was piloting the helo.

That left only Painter.

So despite the vertigo and double vision, Painter had crawled to the castle and aimed as best he could through the window. He’d had to act fast as he saw the woman rush Lisa, sword poised.

So he had taken his shot.

And though it may have cost them everything—even the knowledge of the true puppetmaster who manipulated these saboteurs—Painter did not regret his choice. He had seen the horror on Lisa’s face. Vertigo be damned, he had fired. His head still pounded now. A new fear rose.

What if he had struck Lisa…? How long until he was more of a liability than an asset? He shoved this thought aside.

Quit wringing your hands and roll up your sleeves
.

“What about any distinguishing marks?” Painter asked, getting back into the game.

“Only this.” Anna turned over the woman’s wrist and exposed the back of the assassin’s hand. “Do you recognize it?”