Carpathian (8 page)

“What are you thinking?” Alice asked as she slowly pulled the expensive gown over her head and then tossed it into the boat. Her slip was soaked through and Lee could see that Alice was in no mood to care who could see her body underneath the thin material—especially Garrison Lee.

As the small boat bobbed in the water and searchlights started to poke through the mist, Lee reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the piece of stone he had torn from the block after it had fallen through the deck. He looked it over and then pressed the large piece into his palm and closed his fingers around it.

“I’m thinking we had better take a closer look at what we have in Vault 22871 when we get back to the complex.”

Alice tilted her head as she also tossed the wide-brimmed hat into the sea. She shook out her long brunette hair and then caught the item Lee tossed to her.

“Because I have never seen anyone go that far to create a hoax.”

As Alice brought the chunk of block closer to her salt-encrusted vision, her heart froze. “Yes, I think we may have something a little more to investigate at Jericho than just the ancient ruins of the city, because something else was happening a few thousand years ago that isn’t recorded in the Bible.”

As the small piece was rolled in Alice’s hand the bone was clearly seen underneath the petrified fur of that long dead animal. What antiquities forger would think to do that, place bone under the petrified skin of a hoax?

Alice Hamilton and Garrison Lee of the Event Group had learned that night for the first time that things do go bump in the night and there is always the beast under the bed and in the closet.
So yes, Mrs. Hamilton
, Lee thought,
there really may be monsters in the world
.

PART ONE

OLD SCORES

We cry “Our Father!” we that yearn

Upward to some divine embrace,

And dimly through the mist, discern

At times a lovely awesome Face,

Whose darkened likeness haunts our race.

—Caroline Spencer, “On the Dark Mountains”

1

2577 FLAMINGO BOULEVARD, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA—PRESENT DAY

As she reached for the small piece of broken block her hand lightly rubbed against the stronger hands of a man she hadn’t felt the touch of in nearly a year. All thought of that long-ago Hong Kong night vanished during the daylight hours only to reappear when sleep claimed the eighty-four-year-old woman. As the small rubber boat bobbed up and down in the cold waters outside Hong Kong harbor she remembered the feel of the piece of stone block and the touch of Garrison Lee’s fingers as the dream continued. In her sleep the woman wanted to cry out that she didn’t want the relic, she wanted him. As always in her dream all Lee would do is smile and wink that irritating wink he always did to make her think everything was all right—she knew it wasn’t. This was the same dream Alice had been having for the past six days and it always ended the same way—with the feeling of massive loss and the sharp pain of her heart breaking every time she saw Garrison in the dream.

“Hamilton, you’re obviously dreaming this for a reason—
now wake up!”

The voice of a man gone for a full year woke her as she lay at her small desk in her bedroom. She had fallen asleep again at her computer terminal and as she looked at the screen she saw the jumbled words in one long and continuous sentence, the result of her head lying on the keyboard.

Alice Hamilton reached out and angrily punched at the keyboard and cleared the screen of all the nonsensical words. As she yawned she looked at the clock on the wall. It was four-thirty in the morning and for the fifth straight night she had fallen asleep while in the midst of her research, and that in turn brought on the dreams of Garrison Lee and the time they spent together in China in the forties. Alice straightened in her chair, finally remembering what had prompted this dream in particular. She frantically searched the scattered papers on her usually neat desk.

“Where is it, where is it!” she asked herself, almost fearing the letter itself was part of her sleeping remembrances.

“Calm down and think,”
came his voice. This was a tool she used many times. Garrison always told her think and then act.

Alice stopped her searching and then squeezed her eyes closed and thought. She opened them suddenly and reached for her robe’s front pocket. She took a deep breath as her fingers touched the two-page letter that had been overnighted from Rome.

“Thank you,” she said as she pulled the letter from her pocket and opened it, sitting back in her chair as she did. Alice again closed her eyes realizing that she just thanked a man gone from her for what seemed an eternity. She swallowed and then caught herself and mentally shook the tears from her eyes before they fully developed and then opened the letter. She read it once more for the umpteenth time in the twenty-four hours since receiving it.

“Europa, am I still signed in?” she said aloud as she folded the letter but this time held it tightly in her hand as she forced herself to relax. Alice was finally feeling her age after many years of keeping up with the best of them.

“Yes, Mrs. Hamilton, User 0012 is still logged on,” came the sexy Marilyn Monroe–voiced Cray supercomputer located at the secure center inside the Event Group complex underneath Nellis Air Force Base ten miles from her house.

“My apologies for being rude and dozing off on you,” Alice said as she pulled her robe tighter around her.

“Computer center activity is light, access should be uninterrupted until 0600.”

“Well, thank you anyway, Europa. Now, can you…” Alice stopped briefly to stifle a yawn, making herself realize she was getting far too old for these all-night research digs. “Excuse me, can you give me the status of security element Goliath please?”

“Security element Goliath has not reported in as of this time.”

“Europa, I am expecting a package through the complex communications system and I want that e-mail package to come straight to me and is not, I repeat, is not to be entered into the incoming communications log. Is that clear?”

For the first time in many years Europa didn’t answer right away. Alice thought maybe her systems were still being disrupted from the troubles a few months earlier when her mainframe was attacked from an outside source.

“Mrs. Hamilton, your request cannot be granted due to security regulations.”

Alice closed her eyes knowing that she could seal the incoming e-mail off from everyone—except one man, and that was the head of Event Group security and the smartest man outside of Garrison Lee and Director Niles Compton that she had ever known—Colonel Jack Collins. As far as she could see there was no way around Jack not seeing the e-mail, especially from a source as important to Department 5656 as anyone could ever remember—Goliath, a code name for one of the security departments and Director Compton’s most guarded deep operatives. The information this agent gives the Group is as important as any historical intelligence they had ever received from any one source. Goliath was deep—the deepest any security element had ever been before, and only Jack, Niles, deputy director Virginia Pollock, Captain Carl Everett, and Alice knew who it was and where he, or she, was buried.

“I understand, Europa, but no one else gets copied on the package. I hope I can handle Colonel Collins on this one security oversight.”

“Incoming packet has arrived, Mrs. Hamilton.”

Alice was stunned at how fast her requested data from their deep operative came as a follow-up to the first communication, which had set Alice on a course of action she had wanted to take since 1951.

“Put it through, please,” she said.

The coded pictures sent by Goliath slowly started coming up on her monitor as fast as Europa could decipher them. As she scanned the screen trying to figure out what the coded pixels were starting to form, her eyes started to widen and then recognition struck and with her usual self-control lost for the moment, Alice clapped her hands together and let out a yelp. She stood and hopped once as she picked up a picture of Garrison Lee that sat upon her desk. She kissed it, knowing in real life that gesture would have caused an immediate rebuke if it had not been done in private. She looked at the pictures once more as Europa broke them down into a four-square shot and they all clearly showed the item she had for so long searched.

“You were right, damn you, you were right! This would have been something that had to have been covered up. And it was your idea to get someone inside—oh, not for this, you old goat, but I figured our agent was in place anyway so why not have him do a little private searching for me?” She kissed the picture again. “Now I’ve got to kiss Jack and Niles for getting our agent placed!” Alice stopped dancing and then looked at the picture of the one-eyed love of her life. “Jack and Niles are going to hang me out to dry for this one,” she said sadly, and then she suddenly smiled. “But what the hell, Europa, I’m fully vested so they can’t take my retirement away.” This time it was Alice who winked at Lee as he grimaced back from his eight-by-ten glossy.

“Mrs. Hamilton, should I code-name and secure the file in your private program?”

“Yes, Europa, I also want you to place all files developed on the contents of Vault 22871 with this new file and secure it.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hamilton. Do you wish a code name for the new combined file?” Europa asked in her sexy voice that Alice never quite noticed any longer.

“Yes, code it—Grimm.”

VATICAN CITY, ROME, ITALY

The young Vatican counsel held the door open for a young woman. He nodded as she went past. Once outside he placed the black hat on his head and looked around the building. The cybercafe wasn’t as crowded as it would be when the students hit just before classes started in less than an hour.

As he turned toward Vatican City a mile distant he felt the eyes on him just as he had the day before and then again this morning—both times coming to and from his office and then from his office to the cybercafe. Now he was feeling it again. His training was either kicking in or he was starting to lose it. He dipped his head as he passed another young lady on the street. As he did he used the opportunity to glance in the storefront window to his right. Beyond his own reflection of black robe and collar he saw a lone woman about fifty feet behind him. Her gaze seemed just a little too intent on him. He quickened his pace.

Crossing St. Peter’s Square he felt more secure as the crowds grew thick with tourists and others seeking the comfort of the city. He no longer felt the eyes upon him as he had. As he made his way back to his office inside the Vatican archival building he stopped and leaned down to tie a shoe that needed no tying. He again looked around and his heart froze. Not twenty feet away from where he had stopped that same young woman he had seen on the street was staring right at him. He was tempted to turn and walk toward the girl just to see what reaction he would get, but his training told him to cut and run and then report, let others far above his pay grade make the decisions. He did however reach his cell phone and then he brazenly straightened and started taking pictures like he was a normal tourist. He framed the young woman in his fourth shot of the milling crowd. For good measure he took another just as her face went stern and she turned away. The young Vatican archivist smiled and turned away himself.

The man deep undercover at the Vatican, United States Army Second Lieutenant Leonard DeSilva, knew he would have to report to Colonel Collins in Nevada, because if his cover inside the Vatican was blown there was going to be hell to pay.

The young priest, who had spent the past year and a half after graduating from Notre Dame fighting for his assignment at the Vatican, knew he would have to call home for instructions—and that entailed a call to Department 5656—the Event Group.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

Lieutenant General Addis Shamni slowly laid down the report from his agent at the Vatican and then slammed his hand down upon it. He raised that same hand to his forehead and then cursed his bad luck.

“With everything going on in the world I have to deal with this!” he said aloud as his hand left his furrowed brow and slammed into the report once more. “How in the hell did someone get a man inside the archives when the Mossad couldn’t get into the damn lobby just for a research paper!”

Lieutenant Colonel Avis Ben-Nevin sat silently in his chair as he listened to the general angrily curse the file in front of him. The colonel with his meticulously trimmed pencil-thin mustache saw the fear in a man’s eyes that up until now had never known the feeling. He knew this involved the Vatican, an area the lieutenant colonel had a special and vested interest in. Ben-Nevin was known as the religious factor inside the Mossad. Anything and everything that had to do with religion inside the state of Israel, Ben-Nevin had a firm grasp of it and the event happening at this moment in Italy had a firm hold on the colonel’s imagination.

“Colonel, you may have to get on a plane to Rome and find out exactly what is going on here. I need someone on station that knows just what in the hell they’re doing. Young Sorotzkin is one of the best but she may be out of her element where Ramesses is concerned.”

“Perhaps if I could be briefed on Project Ramesses I could—”

The general looked up with an arched graying eyebrow.

“You could what, read something that could possibly get you killed by someone higher in rank than myself? Colonel, outside of this office that code name is never to be mentioned. Your father knew of it and took it to his grave.” The eyes of the general bore into the younger Mossad officer. “You are to evaluate the situation with Major Sorotzkin, then report back to me. Nothing is to be done with this American spy. This may be our chance to get into the archives and find out exactly what the Holy Roman Church knows about our history.”

Ben-Nevin knew he was on the trail that his father had discovered four decades earlier in Hong Kong and the trail just got a little warmer.