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Authors: David Hagberg

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“You won’t get out of here alive,” McGarvey called.

Al-Rashid fired two more shots, and a moment later the sound of a lot of breaking glass came from just below.

McGarvey looked over the edge again, but al-Rashid had disappeared through the second-floor window.

Unless the assassin had a spare magazine the pistol was dry.

*   *   *

Al-Rashid got to his feet and raced out to the corridor and headed in a dead run to where the wooden ladder from the roof came out of the ceiling in one of the restoration rooms adjacent to Dr. Vergilio’s office.

He held up at the doorway and looked inside. He’d expected to see McGarvey climbing down the ladder, but the man wasn’t there.

Getting away from the museum was contingent on two things: First of all he had to eliminate McGarvey and then he had to set a fire.

“A deal is still possible,” he called.

“You’re not leaving here tonight,” McGarvey said from the shadows to the left. “I want you alive.”

“Then you’ll get your wish,” al-Rashid said. He fired three shots into the darkness, and ducking behind a cabinet fired two more shots in the same direction, when something slammed into his shoulder.

He turned in time to see Otto Rencke, with a pistol in hand just a few feet down the corridor, a cop with an MP7 a few feet behind.

Otto fired a second shot, catching al-Rashid in the mouth, driving him backward before he could switch aim and return fire. A third shot entered his brain through his right eye, and he fell back dead.

“Mac?” Otto called.

McGarvey stepped out of the shadows in the corner, blood dripping from his chin. He held his left hand over a wound in his right arm. “Damned good shooting.”

“Louise said I ought to practice up a bit if I was going to continue to hang around you.”

The cop had come to the open door, but he just looked from Otto to McGarvey and to the body on the floor.

“What about Major Prieto?”

“No way I was going to make it across to the Cathedral, so I figured it’d be better if I came here and lent a hand. Did I do right?”

McGarvey nodded. “You did right.”

 

Gran Meliá Colón

Two days later

 

Back in their suite after dinner Otto spent a couple of minutes on his computer and then headed out the door. “Be back in a flash,” he said.

McGarvey, his arm in a sling, was on the balcony watching the night traffic. It was just about eleven in the evening and Seville was coming alive. Party hour here usually didn’t get into full swing until around midnight, and the riots seemed to have come to a sudden end for no known reason, and Spain was ready to have some fun again. At least for now.

The CNI had cleared them to leave first thing in the morning after forty-eight hours of intense questioning. Montessier had carried no identification, the flash drive they’d retrieved from his body was blank, and his encrypted phone had been sent to headquarters in Madrid for examination.

Major Prieto had cleared their release with someone very high in the government. No one wanted the politically embarrassing situation to continue to spin out of control. Crimes had been committed by the CNI on American soil, and by Americans on Spanish soil. Never mind Cuba, and no one was willing to talk about the so-called Voltaire Society. Spain wanted the problem to disappear.

No cipher key existed, because the diary that was supposedly stolen from a bank vault in Bern was a myth. The entire operation had been a failure from the start; intelligent men chasing after a will-o’-the-wisp, so intently that lives had been lost for no reason.

“Do not come back to Spain, señors,” Major Pietro had said to them at the end.

Otto had first called Louise to tell her that everything was fine, that he and Mac were okay. She would have Audie brought up tomorrow, and in the meantime Otto arranged for a CIA aircraft to pick them up. It was at this moment over the Atlantic inbound for Seville’s San Pablo Airport, and would be touching down around 7:00
A.M.

McGarvey went to the minibar for another beer, when Otto came back, a big smile on his face. He was carrying a small leather-bound book that looked very old.

“No one who knew that Montessier was staying here under the name of Paul Harris was left alive,” he said. “No ID on the body, no hotel key card, nada.”

“You got in?”

“Four-oh-seven. I hacked the hotel’s computer, switched our room number with his, then called the front desk and told them that I had lost my key, so they made me a new one.”

“To four-oh-seven.”

“Bingo,” Rencke said, and he began to hop from one foot to the other like he used to do in the old days when he was excited. “I was there two minutes ago and found this tucked in a pocket of his suitcase.” He held up the book. “The arrogant bastard didn’t think that anyone would find him and come looking.”

“Jacob Ambli’s diary?”

“Yup.”

“No good without the key.”

Otto’s grin widened. “I figured it out on the way up in the elevator,” he said. He opened the diary to the first page, and began to read, slowly, but in English:

“For the Sanctified, Caesarean, Catholic Pontiff, the Bishop of Rome, his holiness Gregory XVI, our Sacred and Blessed Pope.”

Otto looked up. “And it goes on for an entire page and a half about grace, and peace and that kind of crap, along with a list of all of Vatican’s holdings, including those most recently saved souls in the New World—all of it in his name, of course.

“Then there’s a couple of more pages about Mexico City, about the Spanish military expedition to Northern Mexico under the orders of the SMOM, and signed Yr. Most Obedient servant Father Jacob Ambli.”

Otto looked up again. “From there it’s mostly sketch maps and daily logs. I haven’t read it all.”

“Is it in plain text after all?”

“No, it’s Latin, but encrypted. Easy enough to sight read if you know the trick and go slowly. Two keys. First is that it’s a substitution cipher based on the Fibonacci chain of numbers. Our military used to use it for their crypto machines back in the sixties.”

“Never heard of it.”

“No reason, unless you’re a geek like me. A mathematician by the name of Leonardo Fibonacci came up with it just as a curiosity—though it’s been used for lots of stuff—especially in the past forty or fifty years in electronics. It starts out with the number one, then one again, then two, then three, then five, then eight then thirteen. You just have to add the previous two numbers to come up with the next. Add three and five to get eight. Add eight and five to get thirteen.”

McGarvey was following him. “What’s the second key?”

“Figuring what number in the chain to start with—it’s a different starting point for each sentence, and then always subtracting just enough so that the resultant number never gets above twenty-three—that’s how many letters are in the ancient Latin alphabet.”

McGarvey had never seen Otto happier, except when he and Louise were with Audie.

“You just have to do the addition and subtractions in your head as you go along, and then figure out a few of the substitutions, and after that it’s a piece of cake. So now what? Do we take this home with us?”

McGarvey had known the answer almost from the beginning, and he shook his head. “Photograph the pages on your iPad, and include the explanation of the two keys and send it to everyone. The Vatican and SMOM, Spain, Cuba, our people—Callahan will want to know if all of this was worth something—and the Voltaire Society.”

Otto held up Jacob’s diary. “What about this?”

“We’ll have the hotel deliver it to the Archives after we’ve left Spain’s airspace,” McGarvey said. “That’s where it belongs.” He got the Heineken and opened it. “And then we’re finally done.”

“Yeah, right,” Otto said. “Until the next time.”

 

BOOKS BY DAVID HAGBERG

Twister

The Capsule

Last Come the Children

Heartland

Heroes

Without Honor
*

Countdown
*

Crossfire
*

Critical Mass
*

Desert Fire

High Flight
*

Assassin
*

White House
*

Joshua’s Hammer
*

Eden’s Gate

The Kill Zone
*

By Dawn’s Early Light

Soldier of God
*

Allah’s Scorpion
*

Dance with the Dragon
*

The Expediter
*

The Cabal
*

Abyss
*

Castro’s Daughter
*

Burned

FICTION BY BYRON DORGAN AND DAVID HAGBERG

Blowout

Gridlock

NONFICTION BY DAVID HAGBERG AND BORIS GINDIN

Mutiny!

 

 

*
Kirk McGarvey adventures

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DAVID HAGBERG is a former U.S. Air Force cryptographer who has traveled extensively in Europe, the Arctic, and the Caribbean and has spoken at CIA functions. He has published more than seventy novels of suspense, including the bestselling
Allah’s Scorpion, Dance with the Dragon,
and
The Expediter
. He makes his home in Sarasota, Florida.

 

Visit his website at
www.david-hagberg.com
.

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

BLOOD PACT

 

Copyright © 2014 by David Hagberg

 

All rights reserved.

 

Cover photographs by Shutterstock and Getty Images

 

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

 

www.tor-forge.com

 

Forge
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

 

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Hagberg, David.

    Blood pact / David Hagberg. — First Edition.

        p.  cm.

    A Tom Doherty Associates Book.

ISBN 978-0-7653-2022-3 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-4883-8 (e-book)

1.  Thieves—Fiction.   I.  Title.

    PS3558.A3227B56 2014

    813'.54—dc23

2013025070

 

First Edition: March 2014

BOOK: Blood Pact (McGarvey)
13.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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