The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (85 page)

Brandt looked to her. Rebecca studied the artwork that Tolst indicated. “This was the last of the sanctuaries to be built. According to all the records down the ages, this room has never been renovated.”

Rebecca’s fingers slipped along the edge of the painting. There was no discernible crack or fissure. Nothing to indicate it was anything but a work of devotion.

“How would Ivan access a hidden chamber though?” Bunny asked from the other side of the bishop. “I don’t see any hinges or locks.”

Rebecca took a step back. Something bugged her. Something she had read. But she had read so much about this church. From the grounds’ ancestral history to the company currently responsible for janitorial work. Which of the thousands of random factoids was important now?

“What’s going on in that brain of yours?” Brandt asked.

How she wished he hadn’t. All eyes turned on her. This kind of pressure did not help her sifting process. Rebecca took another step back from the painting. It looked sixteenth-century authentic. What with the delicate brushstrokes and carved oak frame. The wall behind it was decorated with renditions of thin vines very much in favor in Europe at the time. The Russians truly had gone international when it came to this landmark. Again, more useless factoids.

Wait. Rebecca cocked her head, studying the wall.
International.

She turned to Brandt with a smile. “Flemish.”

* * *

That was Rebecca for you, Brandt thought as he counted to ten. If anyone expected her to give a straight answer, they clearly didn’t know her very well.

“Flemish?” he prodded.

“The Russians outsourced so much of the building of the church. Ottoman era craftsmen, German bricklayers.”

Brandt tried to hurry her along. “Which you said.”

Rebecca once again went to her laptop and brought up a new screen. “All the other countries made sense except the Flemish.” She pointed to the article detailed the various artisans who were commissioned to work on the cathedral. “Hiring Flemish craftsmen made no sense. They were all about the baroque at the time, and look around you—this place is the exact opposite of baroque.”

“But they were known for something else,” Bunny said, leaning over the keyboard. “May I?” Rebecca hesitated but then nodded for the younger woman to type. “The Flemish
were
well known however for their ability to build hidden staircases, usually inside of a dresser or armoire.”

The screen transformed into a picture of a silver cabinet that when opened parted to create an archway that led to a hidden staircase. Brandt followed Rebecca’s gaze to St. Basil’s tomb.

“No…” Brandt said, hoping his intuition was wrong. “You aren’t saying the staircase is in there.”

St. Basil’s tomb looked solid. The thing was made of thick black stone with beaten gold embellishments. The elaborately decorated canopy stood on four solid wood pillars. It was basically a shrine, as was fitting a saint.

Rebecca brought one shoulder up in a sympathetic shrug. “We’ve got to try.”

Damn it she was right. As much as Brandt wished she wasn’t. He really did not want to desecrate a saint’s tomb. Brandt did not have many lines in the sand, but he’d kind of thought that was one of them. As he helped Rebecca check around the rim of the tomb, he guessed it wasn’t.

Despite her theory, the seal around the rectangular tomb seemed intact. The richly detailed canopy above the tomb did have a thousand different crosses, knobs, hanging incense holders, and lamps. Each one could be the trigger for a release. They did not have a couple of weeks to find out which one.

Rebecca pointed to the topmost cross above the tomb. She glanced to him. “Worth a try?”

Brandt didn’t bother arguing. He just knelt and interlaced his fingers to give Rebecca a lift up to the top of the shrine. After putting her shoe in his hand, she balanced her hands on his shoulders. Brandt gave a good heave, hoisting her up, all the while trying not to notice her outer thigh brushing against his cheek.

“Not that one,” she said as she tugged on the cross, then she leaned farther over. “Let me try the others.”

After pulling on anything she could get her hands on, she finally sighed. “I don’t think the latch is up here.”

As Brandt lowered her down, their bodies slid against one another, forcing him to look away until her feet were safely on the floor.
You are a married man
is not a chant one should have to repeat to yourself over and over again like a penance.

“Tolst!” Bunny shouted.

Brandt spun around, reaching for his weapon, but stopped stunned by the sight in front of him. The old man stripped out of his robe. Apparently Russian Orthodox bishops went commando.

“Bishop Tolst, what—”

“No, let him,” Rebecca said, forcing Brandt’s gun arm down.

“Oh wow, dude,” Harvish exclaimed as he turned his head away from the sight of the pasty old man. “How is him being naked going to open the tomb?”

“Good fucking question,” Brandt grumbled and didn’t bother to apologize for cursing in front of the now naked bishop.

“St. Basil,” Rebecca said, walking slowly around the bishop as he gathered his robe. “He was known for going nude, to show his rejection of the materialistic world.” She looked to Bunny. “Does this have something to do with his great-great-great-grandfather?”

The younger woman looked a little more flustered at Tolst’s actions than Rebecca. The redhead’s cheeks bloomed nearly as auburn as her hair. “Even though they fought horribly, Ivan the Terrible and St. Basil were said to be good friends. Ivan insisted on being a pallbearer and burying Basil in his new cathedral.”

“Um, again, how is this opening the tomb?” Harvish asked again. “’Cause I did not sign on for this.”

As Tolst mumbled a prayer in Russian, Bunny’s eyes zigged and zagged back and forth, clearly trying to piece together the bishop’s behavior with a memory, any memory that might help.

“He did say…” Bunny said then paused, squinting. The younger woman was so like Rebecca. You could see her picturing the conversation again, playing it through like a recording. Brandt wondered if their similarities didn’t have something to do with them constantly looking to the past for all their answers. “When Ivan would come to meditate with Basil, he would only come in his mourning robe.”

Yeah. This was getting them nowhere fast.

* * *

“There’s got to be more,” Rebecca urged. She could see that little vein on Brandt’s forehead throb. His was more of a direct kind of intellect. Patiently piecing things together was not exactly the sergeant’s forte.

“Tolst’s ancestor said that Ivan’s only comment on his visits here was that he would need to balance the scales between he and Basil,” Bunny finished.

Scales. Gotcha. They were a common symbol in religious texts. From the Egyptians to the Incas, scales were considered important in weighing your faith or even your value in God’s eyes. Ivan had been pretty terrible. Killing tens of thousands of innocents, his own countrymen. He even killed his eldest son in a rage. It was not uncommon for such men as they entered their declining years, preparing to meet their God, to seek absolution. And since Rebecca seriously doubted that he could find that in any living man, she wasn’t surprised Ivan tried to find it in St. Basil.

But is this where Ivan would also hide his most precious treasure? The tablet that contained God’s word?

Tentatively Rebecca walked over to Tolst, trying to keep her focus on the back of his head rather than his naked backside. Rebecca gently tugged the blue robe from his hand. “I think I know what you want,” she said.

His bony fingers released the garment. Rebecca felt the weight of it. Would it be the same as Ivan’s? She could only hope so. Trusting her instincts, Rebecca raised the robe and went to put it into the gilded scale that hung from the shrine.

“Are you sure?” Brandt asked, grabbing her wrist. “We know what can happen when hidden mechanisms are triggered.”

No kidding.
That dark night in the Capuchin chapel would never leave her. But here removing something wasn’t necessary. Adding,
weighing
the garment was needed. Or at least she hoped.

Gently extracting her arm from Brandt, she placed the velvet robe into the scale, carefully folding the sleeves onto the center. Millimeter by millimeter the scale lowered. A loud creaking filled the chamber, and ever so slowly the seal on the tomb opened. With a grinding sound the top of the crypt opened. Air rushed out almost like the tomb sighed at being roused from such a long sleep.

Waving the dust away, Rebecca leaned over the opening. Her nose pinched at the bitter smell of incense and death. The skeleton of Basil lay before her. Bunny joined her.

“It looks like he was buried naked as well,” Bunny noted.

She was right. There were no remnants of cloth or even a burial shroud, which was common in the sixteenth century.

“Skeleton, but no staircase,” Brandt noted. “Any other ideas, ladies?”

Rebecca frowned. Why would Ivan go to all the trouble to build a hidden mechanism just to open the tomb? It didn’t make sense.

A loud explosion sounded overhead. Brandt grabbed Rebecca, tucking her under his body as the rest scrambled for cover. Except for the bishop, who still stood, stark naked, praying.

Rebecca prepared for the shower of debris. She prepared for hellfire to rain down. She prepared for anything, but
nothing
. Nothing happened, and then another explosion and again…nothing.

Brandt patted her on the shoulder. “Just the fireworks,” the sergeant half-stated, half-laughed. “Just the goddamned fireworks.”

Tell that to her heart, which was currently stuck somewhere between her jaw and her clavicle.

Harvish rose from behind the tomb as the loud pops of the celebrations outside became routine. Even the “oohs and ahs” from the crowd out in Red Square seeped into the sanctuary. Rebecca slipped out from Brandt’s protective stance, not wanting to look shaky or needy. Both of which she felt at the moment.

“Crap,” Harvish stated. “I really thought it was those assholes who attacked us in Pushchino.”

So had Rebecca. She was sure they’d caught up with them.

* * *

“Attacked?” Bunny asked, holding her arms tight against her chest. “You guys were attacked?”

Before Harvish could feel Brandt’s glare, the point man answered. “Hell yeah.”

Need to fucking know
,
Harvish, need to fucking know
, Brandt wanted to shout, but that wasn’t going to calm Bunny down. “Which is why this is all a little time sensitive.”

The horror of that night back in Paris was drawn on Bunny’s every feature. Brandt knew Rebecca’s dislike for the woman—she wasn’t exactly an expert in hiding her feelings—yet she still reached out to Bunny.

“You can leave if you want,” Rebecca reassured her. “We can handle it from here.”

The redhead shook her head. “No, I just…of course, I mean we are trying to find a bioweapon after all.”

Brandt scanned the younger woman’s face. PTSD was written all over it, but so was determination. He was going to let Bunny be a big girl and make her own decision. Besides, with the naked priest mumbling to himself, Bunny was the best they had in regards to Ivan and his bizarre habits.

“There’s got to be a secondary mechanism if there truly is a hidden staircase,” Brandt said, seeming to startle Bunny out of her daze.

“Yes, that would make sense, but apparently Ivan was pretty closemouthed about his visits here.”

Rebecca went back to the tomb. She ran her palms along the sides of the tomb. “They are smooth. No outcropping.” Leaning farther over, Rebecca checked the floor under Basil’s skeleton. “It’s smooth too, but it feels like wood.”

“It should be stone, right?” Brandt asked, not exactly well versed in tomb construction.

“Maybe there’s a hidden chamber under the base,” Bunny said. “They would want it lighter for easier lifting, right?”

Brandt joined Rebecca and knocked on the floor next to the saint. It sounded pretty freaking hollow.

Rebecca’s hand hovered over St. Basil’s. “I hate to say it, but the only possible trigger in this tomb is the saint’s skeleton.”

Of course it was. Why did he have to be a believer? Brandt wondered. Why had his mother raised him with such respect? Probably because she never considered her altar boy son having to decide between the sanctity of a saint versus the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.

Brandt guessed the bones would just have to get over it. Brandt nodded for Rebecca to continue. She ever so carefully tried to lift Basil’s hand. Only it wouldn’t budge. She tugged a bit harder.

“I think it’s secured down.”

Brandt shone his flashlight into the tomb and under the skeleton, confirming her suspicion. The bones were in fact tied down with thin wire. Okay, if that didn’t prove there was something under the skeleton, he didn’t know what kind of sign he should be looking for.

“Alright, let’s start—”

An explosion shook the walls.

“That payload was too close,” Harvish said as the incense burner and scale swung side to side.

No, it wasn’t
too
close. The building had been fucking hit. An airburst grenade if he wasn’t mistaken. Meant to breach the wall with minimal fire.

“Evacuate,” Brandt ordered. “
Now
.”

Before Harvish could even make it to the door, another explosion burst in the hallway. The fuckers had switched to an EBIX grenade. Enhanced blast insensitive explosive. A third explosion set the hallway on fire. Make that a rapid-fire EBIX grenade launcher.

Brandt lunged forward, slamming the door closed. It wouldn’t last long though. Not with EBIXs being used, but it bought them a reprieve from the smoke. He looked around the room. There was no other exit.

Unless they could go down.

Until then, they were in Talli’s hands.

* * *

Aunush took great satisfaction as the sniper timed another EBIX grenade launch so that it was perfectly timed with the fireworks. There was so much sparkle in the sky that none seemed to understand St. Basil’s Cathedral would soon become the brightest decoration this night.