The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  “No,” said the King. “Uh-uh. I got one of those letters too, and I threw it in the trash.”

  Mark Hall knew that times had changed, even if Larry Crane didn’t. In those months after the war the world was still in chaos, and a man could get away with a great deal once he took even a little care about it. It wasn’t like that now. He had kept a watchful eye on the newspapers, and had followed the case of the Meadors with particular interest and concern. Joe Tom Meador, while serving with the U.S. Army during World War II, had stolen manuscripts and reliquaries from a cave outside Quedlinburg in central Germany, where the city’s cathedral had placed them for safekeeping during the conflict. Joe Tom mailed the treasures to his mother in May 1945, and once he returned home he took to showing them to women in return for sexual favors. Joe Tom died in 1980, and his brother Jack and sister Jane decided to sell the treasures, making a futile effort to disguise their origins along the way. The haul was valued at about $200 million, but the Meadors got only $3 million, minus legal fees, from the German government. Furthermore, by selling the items they attracted the interest of the U.S. attorney for eastern Texas, Carol Johnson, who initiated an international investigation in 1990. Six years later, a grand jury indicted Jack, Jane, and their lawyer, John Torigan, on charges of illegally conspiring to sell stolen treasures, charges that carried with them a penalty of ten years in prison and fines of up to $250,000. That they got away with paying $135,000 to the IRS was beside the point for Mark Hall. It was clear to him that the smart thing would be to take to the grave the knowledge of what he and Larry had done in France during the war, but now here was dumb and greedy Larry Crane about to draw them into a whole world of potential hurt. Hall was already troubled by the appearance of the letter. It meant that someone was making connections, and drawing conclusions from them. If they stayed quiet and refused to take the bait, then maybe Hall would be able to go to his grave without spending his children’s inheritance on legal fees.

  They were parked in the driveway outside the King’s house. His wife was away visiting Jeanie, so theirs was the only car present. Larry laid a shaky hand on the King’s arm. The King tried to shake it off, but Larry responded by turning the resting hand into a claw and gripping the King tightly.

  “Just let’s take a look at it, is all I’m sayin. We just need to compare it with the picture, make sure it’s the same thing we’re talking about. These people are offering a whole lot of money.”

  “I got money.”

  For the first time, Larry Crane’s temper frayed.

  “Well I sure as fuck don’t,” he shouted. “I got shit, King, and I’m in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble can an old goat like you get into?”

  “You know I always liked to gamble.”

  “Ah, Jesus. I knew you was the kind of fool thought he was smarter than other fools, but the only folks who should bet on horses are those who can afford to lose. Last I heard, you weren’t exactly high on that list.”

  Crane took the insult, absorbing the blow. He wanted to lash out at the King, to beat his head against the pine-fresh dashboard of this Scandinavian piece of shit, but doing that wouldn’t get him any closer to the money.

  “Maybe,” he said, and for a few moments Crane allowed his self-hatred, so long buried beneath his hatred of others, to shine through. “I never had your smarts, that’s for sure. I married bad, and I made bad decisions in business. I ain’t got no kids, and could be that’s for the best. I’d’ve screwed them up too. I figure, all told, I got a lot of what I deserved, and then some.”

  He released his grip on the King’s arm.

  “But these men, they’re gonna hurt me, King. They’ll take my house, if they can get it. Hell, it’s the only thing I have left that’s worth anything, but they’ll cause me pain along with it, and I can’t handle no pain like that. All I’m askin is that you take a look at that thing you got to see if it’s a match. Could be we can cut a deal with the folks that are lookin for it. It just takes a phone call. We can do this quiet, and no one will ever know. Please, King. Do this for me, and you’ll never have to see me again. I know you don’t like me bein around, and your wife, she’d see me burnin in the fires of hell and she wouldn’t waste her sweat to cool me down, but that don’t bother me none. I just want to hear what this guy has got to say, but I can’t do that unless I know that we have what he’s lookin for. I got my part here.”

  He removed a greasy brown envelope from a plastic grocery bag that lay on the backseat. Inside was a small silver box, very old and very battered.

  “I never paid it much mind, until now,” he explained.

  Even seeing it here, in the driveway of his own house, gave the King the creeps. He didn’t know why they had taken it to begin with, except that some voice in his head had told him it was strange, maybe even valuable, the first time he’d laid eyes on it. He liked to think he’d have known that, even if those men had not died trying to keep it for themselves.

  But that was in the aftermath, when his blood was still hot; his blood, and the blood of others.

  “I don’t know,” said the King.

  “Get it,” whispered Larry. “Let’s put them together, just so we can see.”

  The King sat in silence, unmoving. He stared at his nice house, his neatly kept lawn, the window of the bedroom he shared with his wife. If I could undo just one element of my life, he thought, if I could take back just one action, it would be that one. All that has followed, all the happiness and joy, has been blighted by it. For all the pleasure I have enjoyed in life, for all of the wealth that I have amassed and all the kudos I have gained, I have never known one day of peace.

  The King opened the car door and walked slowly to his house.

  Private Larry Crane and Corporal Mark E. Hall were in real trouble.

  Their platoon had been on patrol in the Languedoc — part of a joint effort with the British and Canadians to secure the southwest and flush out isolated Germans while the main U.S. force continued its eastward advance — and had wandered into a trap on the outskirts of Narbonne: Germans in brown-and-green camouflage uniforms, backed up by a half-track with a heavy machine gun. The uniforms had thrown the Americans. Because of equipment shortages, some units were still using an experimental two-piece camouflage uniform, the M1942, which resembled the clothing routinely worn by the Waffen SS in Normandy. Hall and Crane had already been involved in an incident earlier in the campaign, when their unit opened fire on a quartet of riflemen from the Second Armored Division of the Forty-first who had become cut off during bitter fighting with the Second SS Panzer Division near Saint-Denis-le-Gast. Two of the riflemen were shot before they had a chance to identify themselves, and one of them had died of his wounds. Lieutenant Henry had fired the fatal shot himself, and Mark Hall sometimes wondered if that was why he allowed the troops advancing out of the darkness crucial moments of grace before ordering his own men to open fire. By then, it was too late. Hall had never before seen troops move with the speed and precision of those Germans. One minute they were in front of the Americans, the next they were dispersed among the trees on both sides of the road, quickly and calmly surrounding their enemies prior to annihilating them. The two soldiers buried themselves in a ditch as gunfire exploded around them and the trees and bushes were turned to splinters that shot through the air like arrows and embedded themselves in skin and clothing.

  “Germans,” said Crane, a little unnecessarily, his face buried in the dirt. “There ain’t supposed to be no Germans left here. What the hell are they doing in Narbonne?”

  Killing us, thought Hall, that’s what they’re doing, but Crane was right: the Germans were in retreat from the region, but these soldiers were clearly advancing. Hall was bleeding from the face and scalp as the fusillade continued around them. Their comrades were being torn apart. Already only a handful were left alive, and Hall could see the German soldiers closing in on the survivors to wipe them out, twin lightning flashes now gradually being reve
aled as the need for duplicity was eliminated. Hall could see that the half-track was American, a captured M15 mounted with a single thirty-seven-millimeter gun. This was no ordinary bunch of Germans. These men had a purpose.

  He heard Crane whimpering. The other man was so close to him that Hall could smell his breath as Crane cowered against him in the hope that Hall’s body would provide some cover. Hall knew what he was doing, and pushed the younger man hard.

  “Get the fuck away from me,” he said.

  “We got to stick together,” pleaded Crane. The sounds of gunfire were becoming less frequent now, and those that they heard were single bursts from German machine guns. Hall knew they were finishing off the wounded.

  He started to crawl through the undergrowth. Seconds later, Crane followed.

  Many miles and many years away from the events of that day, Larry Crane sat in an air-conditioned Volvo rubbing his fingers on the cross carved into the box. He tried to remember what the paper that it once contained had looked like. He recalled taking a look at the writing on the fragment, but it was unreadable to him and he had rejected the fragment as worthless. Although he did not know it, the words were Latin, and largely inconsequential. The real substance lay elsewhere, in tiny letters and digits carefully drawn into the top right-hand corner of the vellum, but both the King and Larry Crane had been distracted by the illustration upon the page. It looked like a design for something, a statue of some kind, but neither man had ever understood why anyone would want to make a statue like this, using what looked like pieces of bone and dried skin scavenged from both humans and animals.

  But somebody wanted it, and if Larry Crane was right, they were prepared to pay handsomely for the pleasure.

  The two soldiers were wandering aimlessly, desperately trying to find shelter from the strange, unseasonable cold that was settling in, and from the Germans who were now presumably combing the area for any survivors to ensure that their presence was not communicated to superior forces. This was no last-ditch assault, no futile German attempt to force back the Allied tide like the actions of some Teutonic King Canute. The SS men must have parachuted in, maybe capturing the half-track along the way, and Hall’s belief that they had some seriously dark purpose for doing so was reinforced by what he had witnessed as he and Crane retreated: men in civilian clothing emerging from cover, shadowing the half-track and apparently directing the efforts of the soldiers. It made no sense to Hall, no sense at all. He could only hope that the path he and Crane were taking would lead them as far away as possible from the Germans’ prize.

  They made for higher ground, and at last found themselves in what appeared to be an uninhabited region of the Corbière hills. There were no houses, and no livestock. Hall figured that any animals that had once grazed had been killed for food by the Nazis.

  It started to rain. Hall’s feet were damp. The top brass had taken the view that the new buckled combat boots recently issued to soldiers would suffice for winter once treated with dubbin, but Hall now had conclusive evidence, if further evidence were needed, that even in the early fall this was not the case. The boots neither repelled water nor retained warmth, and as the two men trudged through the cold, damp grass Hall’s toes began to hurt so badly that his eyes watered. In addition, problems with the supply chain meant that he and Crane were clad only in wool trousers and Ike jackets. Between them, they had four frag grenades, Crane’s M1 (with a spare “immediate use” clip carried on his bandolier sling, for reasons Hall couldn’t quite figure out since Crane had barely managed to fire off a couple of rounds during the ambush), and Hall’s Browning automatic rifle. He had nine of his 13x20-round mags left, including the one in the gun, and Crane, as his designated assistant, had two more belts, giving them twenty-five mags in total. They also had four K rations, two each of Spam and sausage. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either, not if those Germans found their trail.

  “You got any idea where we are?” asked Crane.

  “Nope,” said Hall. Of all the men he had to end up with after a goddamned massacre, it would have to be Larry Crane. The guy was unkillable. Hall felt like a pincushion, what with all the splinters that had entered him, but Crane didn’t have a scratch on his body. Still, it was like they said: somebody was looking out for Crane, and by staying close by, a little of that protection had rubbed off on Hall as well. It was a reason to be thankful, he supposed. At least he was alive.

  “It’s cold,” said Crane. “And wet.”

  “You think I haven’t noticed?”

  “You gonna just keep walking until you fall down?”

  “I’m gonna keep walking until —”

  He stopped. They were on the top of a small rise. To their right, white rocks shone in the moonlight. Further on, a complex of buildings was silhouetted against the night sky. Hall could make out what looked like a pair of steeples, and great dark windows set into the walls.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a church, maybe a monastery.”

  “You think there are monks there?”

  “Not if they have any sense.”

  Crane squatted on the ground, supporting himself with his rifle.

  “What do you reckon?”

  “We go down, take a look around. Get up.”

  He yanked at Crane, smearing blood on the other man’s uniform. He felt stabs of pain run through his hand as some of the splinters were driven further into his flesh.

  “Hey, you got blood on me,” said Crane.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” said Hall. “Real sorry.”

  Sandy Crane was talking to her sister on the phone. She liked her sister’s husband. He was a good-looking man. He wore nice clothes and smelled good. He also had money, and wasn’t afraid to spread it around so that his wife could look her best at the golf club, or at the charity dinners that they seemed to attend every second week and about which her sister never tired of telling her. Well, Sandy would show her a thing or two once Larry got his hands on that money. Barely eight hours had elapsed since she opened the letter, but already Sandy had their windfall spent ten times over.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Larry looks like he might be coming into a little money. One of his investments paid off, and now we’re just waiting for the check to be cut.”

  She paused to listen to her sister’s false congratulations.

  “Uh-huh,” said Sandy. “Well maybe we might just come along with you to the club sometime, see about getting us one of those memberships too.”

  Sandy couldn’t see her sister proposing the Cranes for membership in her swanky club for fear of being run out of the gates with the dogs at her heels, but it was fun to yank her chain some. She just hoped that, for once, Larry wouldn’t find a way to screw things up.

  Hall and Crane were a stone’s throw away from the outer wall when they saw shadows cast by moving lights.

  “Down!” whispered Hall.

  The two soldiers hugged the wall and listened. They heard voices.

  “French,” said Crane. “They’re speaking French.”

  He risked a glance over the wall, then rejoined Hall.

  “Three men,” he said. “No weapons that I can see.”

  The men were moving to the soldiers’ left. Hall and Crane followed them from behind the wall, eventually making their way to the front of the main chapel, where a single door stood open. Above it was a tympanum carved with three bas-reliefs, including a brilliantly rendered crucifixion at the center, but the wall was dominated by a stained glass oculus and two windows, the traditional reference to the Trinity. Although they were not to know it, the door they were watching was rarely opened for any reason. In the past, it had been unlocked only to receive the remains of the viscounts of Navarre or other benefactors of the abbey to be buried at Fontfroide.

  There were noises coming from inside the chapel. Hall and Crane could hear stones being moved, and grunts of effort from the men within. A figure passed through the shadows to their right, keeping watch on t
he road that led to the monastery. His back was to the soldiers. Silently, Hall closed in on him, sliding his bayonet from his belt. When he was close enough, he slapped his hand over the man’s mouth and placed the tip of the knife to his neck.

  “Not a move, not a sound,” he said. “Comprenez?”

  The man nodded. Hall could see a white robe beneath the man’s tattered greatcoat.

  “You’re a monk?” he whispered.

  Again, the man nodded.

  “How many inside? Use your fingers.”

  The monk lifted three fingers.

  “They monks too?”

  Nod.

  “Okay, we’re going inside, you and me.”

  Crane joined him.

  “Monks,” said Hall. He saw Crane breathe out deeply with relief, and felt a little of the same relief himself.

  “We don’t take any chances, though,” said Hall. “You cover me.”

  He forced the monk down the flight of four stone steps that led to the church door. As they drew closer they could see the lights flickering within. Hall stopped at the entrance and glanced inside.

  There was gold on the stone floor: chalices, coins, even swords and daggers that gleamed with gemstones set into their hilts and scabbards. As the monk had said, three men were laboring in the cold surroundings, their breath rising in great clouds, their bodies steaming with sweat. Two were naked from the waist up, forcing a pair of crowbars into the gap between floor and stone. The third, older than the others, stood beside them, urging them on. He had sandals on his feet, almost obscured by his white robes. He called a name, and when no response came he moved toward the door.