The Nostradamus File (5 page)

The house was
a single story made of stone, washed white in the afternoon sunlight, with a tiled roof and covered porch. It seemed like part of the natural landscape, a house out of another time. Nick could imagine Cezanne or Van Gogh painting in the back yard.

"Nice," he said.

"It was a farmer's cottage in the old days. Jean-Paul renovated it. I've never been here, but he talked about it a lot. He loved it."

"I can see why."

Nick parked. They got out and walked to the porch.

"The door's open," he said.

Both reached for their pistols at the same time. Nick nudged the door with his foot. It swung inward. He couldn't see anyone inside, but he could see the mess.

It only took a minute to clear the house. There was a bathroom, a bedroom and a combined kitchen and living area. A back porch looked out over a garden and a small, natural pool shaded by oaks. No one was there.

Books and papers were scattered about the living area. Drawers had been pulled out and dumped on the floor. There was a broken vase by the door, knocked off a side table.

"Seems like someone is always one step ahead of us," Nick said.

Selena looked out the window. "There's a car coming."

An old Citroen 2CV came up the drive, trailing blue smoke. The wheels crunched on the rock. They watched it from the living room.

"Maybe the bad guys missed something," Nick said.

"I don't think the Mafia would drive around in something like that," she said.

"You're a car snob. Maybe it's all they could find."

The Citroen parked next to their rented Renault. A woman got out of the car. She was dressed in a
purple, flowery print dress that bagged loosely around her body. A bandana was wrapped around hennaed hair damaged by too many trips to the beauty parlor. She was around fifty, plump, with swarthy skin. She wore white plastic sandals. She reached inside the car and brought out a basket. Nick could see spray bottles sticking out and a roll of paper towels. He put his pistol away.

"Cleaning lady, looks like." He stepped out on the porch with Selena.

"Bonjour, Madame
," Selena said.

"Bonjour
." The woman reached inside the basket and took out a Swedish machine pistol and pointed it at them. "Get on your knees," she said in English. "Now."

Selena looked at Nick. "I don't think she's here to clean."

Another car pulled into the drive, this one a black Mercedes. "That the right kind of car?" Nick said to Selena.

"Shut up," the cleaning lady said. "Put your hands up. Get on your knees or I shoot."

They got on their knees, hands in the air. The Mercedes stopped. Two men got out of the car. One was tall and thin, one short and squat. They wore casual clothes that looked expensive. Guns came out, pointed at Nick and Selena.

"They're armed," the woman said. "The man has a shoulder holster."

The tall one spoke. "Take out your weapons and put them on the ground. Be very careful. Do it slowly."

He's American
, Nick thought.
From somewhere on the East Coast.

"Selena, do as he says. Remember how we did it in Mali."

"Shut up. Take out the guns. Two fingers."

Nick took out his new SIG-Sauer, holding it by the butt between his thumb and finger. He laid it on the porch. Selena did the same.

"Very good. Get up. Keep your hands in the air."

They stood, slowly.

"Kick the guns away."

They kicked them off the porch. The cleaning lady lowered the barrel of her gun and moved behind the others. The two men stepped onto the porch. Short Man had plastic ties in one hand, his pistol in the other.

"Turn around," the tall one said. "Put your hands behind you."

They turned. Short Man stepped close.

Selena moved first. She whirled and knocked the gun from his hand. It went off, sending a flock of birds shrieking into the sky. She slammed the edge of her rigid palm against his neck, harder than she'd meant. Something broke.

Tall Man hadn't expected trouble. He froze for an instant. It was enough.

Nick swept the gun away with a quick crossing motion of his hands and moved in. The pistol fired into the ground. He drove his knuckled fist into Tall Man's throat, a killing blow to the larynx. The cleaning lady brought up her gun. The man clutched at his throat, trying to breathe. His face went purple. Nick pushed him off the porch into the cleaning lady as she fired, using him for a shield. The bullets hit him in the back. The woman fell backward with both men on top of her. Nick reached past the dead man and slammed his fist into her face, brought his hand up and struck down across the bridge of her nose. It shattered. She screamed curses at him, trying to bring her gun to bear, firing into the air. He hit her again, a hammer blow. She fell silent.

On the porch, the second man lay dead. Nick got to his feet.

"Mali?" Selena said.

"Maybe not exactly the same. But you knew what I meant."

In Mali, they'd been attacked on the street. Selena's martial arts had kept them alive.

"Yes. I did."

"Did you mean to kill him?" he asked.

"No. But he asked for it."

She'd changed a lot since Nick had met her. Two years with the Project had stripped away most of her hesitation about hurting people who tried to hurt her. It was a question of survival. You couldn't hesitate. The second man had hesitated, which was why he was dead.

Nick said
, "We'd better get out of here."

"Shouldn't we keep searching?"

"If anything was here, they've already got it."

"What about her?"

The cleaning lady was unconscious. Her face was covered in blood.

"She can clean up after herself."

They got in the car and drove away.

CHAPTER NINE

Nick dreamed.

He's in the village again, where a child will die. On the right are the flat roofed houses that will turn into platforms of death for his Marines. On the left, more houses and a patchwork of ramshackle bins and hanging cloth walls that make up the market. Flies buzz in clouds around meat hanging in the butcher’s stall.

He hears a baby cry. He always hears the baby cry, somewhere in one of the houses, a thin, frightened wail. The street is deserted.

The enemy rises up on the rooftops and begins firing, like always. The market stalls
turn into a firestorm of splinters and plaster and rock exploding from the sides of the buildings, like always.

A child runs
at him from one of the houses, yelling that God is Great. He can't be more than ten or eleven years old. The boy cocks his arm back and throws the grenade. Nick's rifle kicks back in a quick 3 round burst and the child's face disappears in a plume of blood. The grenade drifts through the air in slow motion...everything goes white...

"Nick!"

Selena's voice woke him. They were in a hotel in Paris. He sat upright, heart pounding as if it would smash through his ribs. He wiped his hand across his face, rubbed his eyes. The dreams had come back, more frequent since the attack on the old Project building. Always some variation of the same dream, reliving the day he'd almost died. The day he'd shot a child.

Selena stood naked by the side of the bed. She didn't look happy.

"Why are you out of bed?"

"You hit me in your sleep, thrashing around. I got out of the way."

"Oh, hell. I'm sorry."

"You have to do something about this. It's getting worse. We've talked about it before. You have to see someone."

Nick was silent.

"I know you don't want to talk with a therapist. But you have to do it. For both of us. You have to see someone."

"All right. I'll think about it."

She sat down on the bed. "Promise me, Nick. Promise you'll do it."

"I said I'd think about it."

"Promise you'll do it."

There was something unspoken in her voice
, a warning.

"Okay," he said. "I'll do it. After we get back." He looked at the clock. "It's too early to get up," he said.

She moved next to him. "We don't need to get up."

She touched his face, ran her fingers over the stubble.

"I don't think I can go back to sleep," he said.

"We don't have to sleep."

Selena moved her hand down his side, feeling the old scars, the legacy of war written on his body.

"Besides," she said, "if you're not asleep, I don't have to duck."

He looked into her eyes, felt the smooth curve of her hip.

Later, they slept.

CHAPTER TEN

Nick and Selena
took an Air France flight from Paris to Amman in Jordan, rented a Land Rover at the airport and drove to the American embassy. Harker had arranged for their guns to be forwarded from the embassy in Paris. It was a handy use for the diplomatic pouch.

They picked up the guns
and went to their hotel. It was situated on the highest hill in Amman, looking out over the city in a spectacular view. Tall, Romanesque columns scaled the facade. A row of palms marched along the street in front of the building. The lobby featured a huge central display of purple and white flowers. It was the kind of hotel where everything was marble and polished wood, where you felt like you were worth a million. In Selena's case, she was. Her uncle's death two years before had left her a rich woman.

The next day they set off for Mount Nebo, 40 kilometers south of Amman. The road south was modern blacktop, busy with heavy truck traffic.
The Land Rover ran smoothly over the pavement.

The day was hot and clear
. Once out of the city, the desert stretched in all directions, a harsh landscape of sand and rock that sent shimmering heat ripples into the air under the brilliant sun. Selena wore a loose blue scarf around her neck and a white cotton blouse that set off her tan. There was a brown leather pouch on her belt. A calf-length cotton skirt and hiking boots completed the outfit. The gun was tucked away in the pouch. Her violet eyes were hidden behind dark brown sunglasses. Wind from the open window ruffled her hair.

Nick had opted for jeans, a short-sleeved shirt and a light jacket to conceal his holster.
He wore Ray-Bans against the relentless light. The air smelled of the desert, dry and clean.
It probably smelled like this when Moses was here
, he thought.

"We're right in the heart of the Old Testament," Selena said. "Moses is supposed to be buried
where we're going, on Mount Nebo. This whole area was fought over for centuries. The Israelites, the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Byzantines, the Nabateans."

"You wonder why," Nick said. "
Who would want it? This is a desolate place. Look at it. Sand, rock, sun. Hell, the nearest water is the Dead Sea. Reminds me of parts of Utah or Nevada."

"You won't find anything like Las Vegas here," she said.

They turned west at Madaba, a town famous for elaborate Byzantine mosaics. From there it was another ten kilometers to Mount Nebo. The road leading up the mountain was paved in a herring bone pattern of gray-blue and light stone, bordered by stone curbing and tall Eucalyptus trees on both sides.

They had come to one
of the most famous places in the Bible.

They parked and walked
the rest of the way to the top, where a chapel had been built in the 4th Century CE to commemorate the death of Moses. A Byzantine church had followed two hundred years later. Now it was a Franciscan monastery, a focal point of anger for the Muslim extremists. A shelter had been erected over the ruins of the old church to form the new Memorial Chapel.

A low wall of limestone blocks marked the edge of the summit. A tall, modern sculpture of Moses' staff rose like a silent sentinel into the sky. Before them stretched the desert battleground of
the three great Western religions.

The Holy Land.

"Hell of a view," Nick said. "You can see all the way to Jerusalem from here."

"Is that all you can say?" she said. "A hell of a view?" She shook her head.

"What do you expect me to say? All I know is that a lot of people died here for thousands of years because they had different names for God. They're still dying. It's as senseless now as it was back then."

Selena changed the subject. She pointed to the left at a large body of water. "That's the Dead Sea. And over there you can just make out the West Bank of the Jordan."

The sun beat down on them, hot and searing. "It does give you a sense of history," Nick said. "Imagine walking through that wasteland thousands of years ago. It must have been tough."