Читать книгу The Crimson Code - Rachel Lee - Страница 9

Guatemalan Highlands, Present day

Father Steve Lorenzo had no idea of the carnage spreading around the world on that Christmas. His goal in life had become very simple: to keep himself and his flock alive. For the past fourteen months, he and his Quiche companions had wandered these mountains, hunted by both the Guatemalan police and the rebels. His once smooth chin now sported a bushy beard, and he could hardly remember the sensation of a hot bath.

And yet it was Christmas, and most of his friends were still alive to celebrate it.

He had no vestments. His cassock had long since given way to peasant clothing offered to him by his friends, who could hardly spare even that. He wore sandals one of his flock had made from vine and sections of tire rubber.

And never had he felt closer to God.

When life seemed its worst, as it had often since the police attack on the village of these people, he found a deep well of spirituality that reminded him of the early days of Christianity, when to hold faith in Jesus brought persecution and often demanded flight. Those early Christians had possessed little more than his tiny flock of survivors. In this time he lived as the early martyrs had lived, and it refreshed his faith even as it wore him out.

But his little band was well versed in the skills needed to survive in these mountains. The food might not be as reliable, nor always as familiar, as their rich fields of maize and their herds of sheep, but the forest was bountiful in its own right, and his friends knew how to use everything it provided.

This Christmas morning he celebrated Mass yet again on an altar made of fallen trees, with tortillas made of corn flour he had managed to purchase—along with beans—from a village they had passed a few days ago, with the few quetzals remaining in his pockets. The women had made the tortillas, patting them back and forth to flatten the balls of dough with an expertise that came from lifelong experience. They had been lightly cooked on a rock set amidst the burning coals of a fire. A nearly smokeless fire. Steve was still amazed that they could manage that here in the jungle.

He used the chalice and paten given him on his ordination so long ago by family and friends. The years had burnished them, and now when he touched them he remembered the faces of all his loved ones. Yet he was determined that when the time came, he would sell them without regret to keep these people alive.

It had been a long time since he had even thought of the Kulkulcan Codex, or the reason he had been sent to these people. The Church’s concern was so far away now, so remote.

He smiled into the faces of his flock and lifted a tortilla for all to see. Esto es mi cuerpo. This is my body.

This was all that mattered.

Fredricksburg, Virginia

Earlier that morning, FBI agent Miriam Anson was in church with her husband, Terry Tyson, a D.C. homicide detective, when her pager began to vibrate insistently. She had been tempted to ignore it entirely until after the service—this was Christmas, after all—when it started buzzing a second time. She turned to Terry, about to whisper an apology, when she saw he had pulled his own pager off his belt and was looking at the number.

Damn! The word exploded in her head, and she touched Terry’s arm. He looked at her, and she jerked her head toward the rear doors. He nodded and followed her just as the congregation stood up to sing a hymn. Nearly a thousand voices singing “Pass Me Not” followed them out into the frigid morning air.

Fredericksburg, beneath a bright blue sky and a layer of fresh snow clinging to trees and patches of grass, looked beautiful this morning. Picture-postcard perfect, Miriam thought as she grimly pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed. Terry turned his back to her and did the same.

If they were both being paged…

“Anson,” Miriam said into her phone. “Kevin Willis called me.”

Kevin’s voice sounded in her ear a second later. “Come in now,” he said. “Black Crescent.” The current code for terror attack.

All Christmas spirit vanished from Miriam’s heart. “I’m on my way.” She flipped her phone closed and saw Terry turning to her, his dark face creased with consternation.

“I have to go in,” he said.

“Me, too.”

Now, hours later, as she sat through one briefing after another on the growing worldwide horror, Miriam wondered at the hearts of men who could perpetrate such atrocities on this holiest of days.

It would be so easy to give in to hate. But hate would not bring her any closer to justice. It would only push her closer to the very evil she fought.

As the briefing officer presented yet more grim statistics and the anger flashed through her, Miriam reminded herself of the central truth of the Christmas sermon she had heard: God appears in this world in stables, not in mansions or palaces, in the quiet of the human heart and not in a blaze of herald trumpets.

And not in the blinding, crushing explosions of bombs.

No, she couldn’t blame God for this one. Humans had done this all on their own. And if Miriam could help track them down, in the dark, silent corners where they hid…that would be the coming of God in this madness.

Rome, Italy

“I have to go to Baden-Baden,” Renate said to the chief. Lawton Caine, who was in the office, too, looked at her with something between sympathy and concern.

Jefe looked at her as if she were mad. “Are you out of your mind? You know the rules we play by.”

“They murdered my family,” she said tautly.

“I know.” The chief’s voice dropped with sorrow. “But you’ll do no good there now.”

“I have to go.”

“Damn it!” Cursing might be considered extremely impolite by Germans, but for once Jefe didn’t seem to care about cultural sensibilities. “Haven’t you noticed the pattern? Baden-Baden doesn’t fit.” He slapped his open hand against the paper map of the world on the back wall of his office, a map that covered nearly the entire space. “If you’re right, they’re after you!”

Lawton stiffened and straightened. “They think she’s dead.”

She shook her head. “After what happened in Idaho and Montana, they know better. There was absolutely no reason to pick that church in Baden-Baden if they thought I was dead. The grudge is an old one, Law. A very old one. What I did to the Brotherhood…”

The chief compressed his lips tightly. “I’ll have to forbid it. You stay here, Renate, where your skills can actually do some good.” He sighed. Then he ran his fingers impatiently through his dark hair. “Okay,” he said. “Renate, why don’t you tell me who would have the funds to support this attack, apart from the Saudi royal family.”

Renate regarded him stonily. “The Frankfurt Brotherhood.”

“Precisely! So why hit a parish church in Baden-Baden? To get you there. They’re hoping you’ll go to find out what happened to your family. Bookworm shows up again in her hometown. Renate, you nearly exposed them a few years ago. I don’t think they’ve forgotten.”

Renate lowered her head for a moment. Then she looked straight at the chief, her eyes like chips of glacial ice. “I’ll take a job as a dealer at the casino. I’ll change my appearance. My father worked there, and there will be talk. Plenty of it.”

“You’d be recognized within an hour. Renate, we could even give you contact lenses, hair dye and facial implants, and your old friends would still know you. You’re entirely too distinctive.”

“I’m not going to let them get away with this,” she said. “This is not negotiable, Jefe. I’m going to take the Brotherhood down. And I’m going to take out the son of a bitch who planted the bomb in my family’s church. It’s only a matter of how.”

“Then for God’s sake, let’s think about the how,” Lawton said. “He’s right. Going into Baden-Baden would do nothing but sign your own death warrant. Hell, we’re not going to find them in Baden-Baden anyway. You know that.”

“What’s their weakness, Renate?” Jefe asked. “The most you’ll find in Baden-Baden is a hit team waiting for you. A hit team you won’t even be able to trace back to them. So what is their weakness?”

“Money,” she said, instantly. “It’s their power base. It’s the blood running in the veins of the Brotherhood.”

“Well, blood runs back to the heart and the head,” Lawton said. “If we follow the money, we find the people who killed your family.”

“You can’t follow their money,” Jefe said. “They’re all bankers. They can hide money with the best of them. And you don’t even have a thread to pull to get all of it started. Renate, I know how you’re feeling, but the right thing to do is to focus on Black Christmas.”

“Our entire office is focused on Black Christmas,” she said, her voice dripping icy resolve. “The police agencies of the entire world will be working Black Christmas. You can spare me. You know that.”

“And we do have a thread to pull,” Lawton said. “We have Jonathan Morgan. Edward Morgan’s father. Edward was Brotherhood. If he was, his father is.”

Lawton had been on the case when Edward Morgan had masterminded the plan to kill U.S. Senator Grant Lawrence—at the time the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination—as well as financing a training camp for Guatemalan revolutionaries in Idaho. Although Lawrence had survived, he was now out of the presidential picture, seemingly content to be the senior senator from Florida. None of it could be proven in a court of law, however. None of it. That loose end still troubled Lawton more than he could say.

“That still doesn’t explain how you’re going to track their money,” Jefe said.

“Banks have a private Internet,” Renate said. “That’s how they transfer money, and I’ll bet the Brotherhood uses that network for its communications. If we can hack into that network, we can find them.”

“And how are you going to do that?” Jefe asked.

“I’m going to Frankfurt,” Renate said. “I broke in once before. I can do it again.”

“You’re not going alone,” Jefe said. “Lawton, you’re with her. You’ll need a computer guy, too. Take Assif Mondi from information services.”

“We may end up needing more than that,” Lawton said. “Niko Petropolis is available. He just got out of rehab. He took a bullet on that operation in Chechnya, remember?”

“I’ll have to ask the doctor if he’s field ready,” Jefe put in.

“So ask,” Renate said. Her voice was steely with resolve.

“Oh, I will,” Jefe replied. “But first, tell me what you have in mind.”