The Sacred Weapon: A Tom Wagner Adventure

by Roberts, M. C.

  Another explosion shook the building. This one didn’t come from inside the treasury but from the courtyard. Tom narrowed his eyes. “Right. They’ve got multiple teams. All the more reason to find out what they’re after.” Tom drew his Glock and Leitner did the same.

  Tom opened the door and dashed into the first of the exhibition rooms before he had even finished speaking. The windows were shuttered, darkening the interior to protect the precious garments on display in the cabinets from being bleached by sunlight. Tom stopped and listened. Leitner, behind him, was panting so loudly that Tom had to put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Settle down. You’re trained for this, well trained. These guys are unlikely to be any more professional than us. We’ve got this.”

  Tom, ducking low, sprinted from one exhibition room to the next. The rooms were small and numerous display cases stood on the floor or hung from the walls, each one holding treasures and relics from the Hapsburg era. Tom glanced at a diamond-studded crown.

  “Okay, looks like run-of-the-mill theft is out, too. These are some valuable pieces and they didn’t even look at them. What the hell are they after?”

  Tom heard a sound: a boot crunching on shattered glass. More glass fell to the floor. Someone was breaking into one of the glass cases. Tom and Leitner were halfway through the exhibition rooms now. They saw a frightened museum employee cowering in a corner and pointing.

  “They’re at the Holy Lance. Room 11,” the man whispered.

  The Holy Lance. It made sense. Tom could vaguely recall that the Holy Lance, according to the legend, was the weapon the soldiers used to stab Jesus Christ in the side when he was on the cross—apparently another Catholic treasure on the thieves’ list.

  Tom ran into Room 10 in time to see one of the men leaving on the other side. He crept to the next entrance and cautiously looked around the corner. Nothing. He started. Was that music? His heart was suddenly pounding in his throat. He knew the piece by heart. It was burned into his brain, just as Guerra’s tattoo was.

  Tom crept on and was just able to duck for cover behind a free-standing exhibition cabinet. One of the men had been lying in wait for him, and a burst from the man’s machine pistol poured in Tom’s direction. Shards of glass and shreds of the valuable objects in the cabinet flew through the air and rained down on Tom, who returned fire from behind the cabinet.

  Tom sneaked a glance around the corner and saw another man, his back to Tom, lifting the Holy Lance from the smashed cabinet and stuffing it into a backpack. When he saw the tattoo on the inside of the man’s forearm, Tom had to make an effort to stop himself from breaking cover and running at him.

  Apart from the tattoo, Tom was presented with a bizarre scene. Guerra stood a little to one side. In his hand he held a mobile phone that was playing the music Tom had heard just seconds earlier. Guerra had his eyes closed, and was waving his arms in the air like a conductor. Leitner had joined him now. The thieves had what they wanted and turned to go. Tom sprinted after them and threw himself on the man holding the machine pistol. They crashed together into a large display case filled with priceless robes.

  Tom’s opponent was back on his feet first, and while Tom was still pulling himself up, the man managed to kick the gun out of his hand.

  Tom looked the man in the eye: definitely a professional. There was no trace of fear on his face. Lightning-fast, Tom stepped back to the shattered display case which had held the Holy Lance and snatched up the Kreuzpartikel, a fragment of the cross on which Jesus had died, now mounted in gold with a metal point at the bottom end. Tom threw it hard at his attacker, and the throw hit its mark, spearing the man’s right shoulder. The man cried out, dropped his machine pistol and went down.

  “You take care of him. I’ll go after the others,” Tom shouted to Leitner. He grabbed the gun from the floor and disappeared into the next room.

  Guerra and the other guy had a good lead, but they didn’t have a lot of exit options and Tom kept after them. Leaving the exhibition, he raced downstairs and looked around. The man at the ticket desk pointed anxiously toward the exit: “That way.”

  Tom sprinted out into the courtyard and instantly saw the damage done by the explosion they had heard earlier from the treasury. The narrow, covered passageway leading to the Redoutensäle and on to the courtyard at Josefsplatz was impassable, covered in rubble. Tom wheeled around and was met by a hail of bullets from yet another machine pistol. He threw himself behind one of the two columns framing the exit to the courtyard, and could only watch as Guerra and his man climbed into the patrol car in which they had arrived. The blue light came on and the car drove away. Tom bolted through the entrance to the next courtyard and saw the car moving in the direction of the Spanish Riding School, scattering crowds of tourists left and right.

  Just then, another explosion roared. The archway on Tom’s left, leading to Heldenplatz, now stood in flames. A wave of heat knocked him off his feet. He lay on his back, staring into the flames, and was instantly transported back three years.

  He was in Jerusalem, working with Mossad to protect the Austrian chancellor. A suicide bomber had targeted the chancellor and the Israeli president. Tom could remember only fragments of the apocalyptic scenes, the screams of the injured, the inferno that followed. The chancellor and the Israeli president were saved—but Noah, who had been with him on the mission, had been less fortunate.

  All because I was scared of a wall of flames! Tom mentally screamed at himself.

  He gazed at the flames as if hypnotized. He felt as if he’d been turned to stone. For a few seconds he was gripped by a naked fear of the fire, then he jumped to his feet and took up the pursuit.

  17

  Michaelerplatz, Vienna

  Tom ran as fast as he could after Guerra’s car. The tourists who had dodged out of the path of the honking patrol car moments earlier had begun to fill the square again. “Out of the way!” Tom bellowed, barging through. He dashed through the next archway, drawing shocked and frightened looks: a man in a gray suit with a machine pistol in his hand and chasing a police car was not an everyday sight. Tom kept on, running through the enormous, domed vestibule and past the entrance to the Spanish Riding School, and a moment later found himself standing on Michaelerplatz.

  He looked around quickly. In the center of the circular plaza, tourists thronged the Roman excavations. He spotted the only vehicle he could commandeer.

  Not the best idea you’ve had, Tom thought, but it would have to do for now. With his Cobra ID in one hand and the pistol in the other, he jumped into the first of the lined-up fiaker carriages and shouted, “Follow that police car!” at the confused coachman.

  He gestured with the gun to the northeast, toward the pedestrian street called Kohlmarkt, where the car in question was forging a path through the crowds, blue light flashing and horn blaring. The shocked fiaker driver hesitantly muttered a few commands in unintelligible Viennese to his horses and, with a snap of the reins, set the coach in motion.

  Just then, Hellen climbed into the fiaker from the other side. She had spotted Tom jumping into the carriage as she ran from Josefsplatz to Michaelerplatz.

  “What the . . . what are you doing here?” was all Tom could say in his amazement.

  Hellen glared angrily at him. “It’s nice to see you, too. Still, that’s just what I’d expect, coming from you.”

  Tom sensed how his one-time girlfriend had managed to throw him completely off balance in a few seconds, but there was no time for that now.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We have to follow that car.” He was about to say something to the coachman, but Hellen spoke first.

  “Did they take the Holy Lance?”

  “Yes. Or did you think I was chasing them for kicks? Besides, this is official police business and nothing to do with you. Let me do my job.”

  Tom’s voice was icy. He stared ahead. The car was still making its way through the Kohlmarkt, Vienna’s most elegant shopping street, lined with luxur
y brands like Lagerfeld, Gucci, Armani, and Furla. God, another pedestrian zone, Tom thought.

  “What do you mean, nothing to do with me? You know as well as I do that this is more my job than yours, and in case you hadn’t noticed, they’re getting away. A fiaker is a lousy pursuit vehicle.”

  The driver nodded enthusiastically.

  “Then I’ll just take one of the horses.” Tom rose to his feet and was about to climb over the front.

  Hellen pulled him back down onto the seat. “Tom, you don’t know how to ride a horse. I do, and I also know that fiaker horses are not used to being ridden. If you get onto one of them, the poor thing will go berserk and you’ll end up in a hospital. If it can gallop at all.”

  The driver nodded enthusiastically again.

  “Do you want to ride, then? And what would you do when you caught up with them? Ask them nicely to pull over?” He put on a face. “Oh, by the way, please be so kind as to hand over the lance or my horse will drop a load of apples on your hood.”

  He did it every time: dragged everything down into the ridiculous. It made her angry. Still, she found herself smiling, at least a little. The coachman raised his hand to say something, but Hellen and Tom were so caught up in their argument that they ignored him completely.

  “Do we have to discuss this now? You’re not Lara Croft. You’re a scientific adviser, that’s all. This is my business.”

  The coachman raised his hand again, this time clearing his throat as well.

  “It’s just as much my business as yours. And if I think about it, it’s really more mine than yours. At Blue Shield, our mission is to safeguard, oversee, and recover historical treasures.” Hellen couldn’t believe her own words. She sounded like an advertising slogan.

  “Well you’re not doing such a great job of safeguarding, if the news is anything to go by. Now let me get on with my job.”

  The coachman had had enough. “Enough! Quit yer squabblin’!” he groused in a thick Viennese dialect, turning back to them, but it still took Tom a few seconds to drag himself away from the quarrel. The driver pointed ahead and rolled his eyes. The patrol car had vanished.

  “Oh, terrific. Now we’ve lost them, thanks to you,” Tom snapped at Hellen.

  “Me? If you’d jumped on that horse like you were planning to, it would not have followed the car. It would probably have trotted back to its stable in Prater park.” Now it was Hellen’s turn to roll her eyes. She looked up to the coachman. “Can you take me back to Josefsplatz?”

  “Why, o’ course, ma’am. That’ll be 150 euros.”

  18

  Imperial Treasury, Hofburg, Vienna

  The treasury looked like a war zone. In the heat of battle, Tom hadn’t noticed the destruction they were causing. He frowned. Hellen had managed to find a way through the chaos, too, and had gotten past the police barricade with her Blue Shield ID.

  “Oh, nice work, Tom,” Hellen said. “Really. Just your style. Do you have any idea what these masterpieces are worth? Not to mention that most of them are irreplaceable.”

  Tom said nothing. He went instead to Jakob Leitner, who was standing beside the body of the terrorist Tom had hit with the Kreuzpartikel. The terrorist lay on his back, a large shard of glass jutting from his neck.

  “You didn’t have to kill him. You could have just arrested him,” Tom said with a dry smile.

  “I didn’t kill him. He did that to himself,” Leitner said in his own defense.

  “What?!”

  “It’s true. I’d love to have arrested him, but he grabbed that piece of glass and stabbed himself in the neck,” Leitner said, still somewhat shocked at what he’d been through.

  Tom stepped around the body. The forensics guys were already there, taking photographs and measuring the crime scene. The coroner had also arrived and was prodding at the dead man. Hellen picked her way through the room carefully, looking at the artifacts, obviously upset at the damage done. When the body was ready to be carried away, Tom noted the all-too-familiar symbol tattooed on the dead man’s forearm.

  On his way outside, the strident voice of his boss suddenly assaulted his ear.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind, Wagner?” Captain Maierhofer’s face was beet red and the veins in his neck stood out. Tom had seen this coming.

  “I get that question a lot,” Tom said.

  Maierhofer ignored the remark. “Let me give you a quick rundown of the last twenty-four hours,” the captain said. “You haven’t exactly covered yourself in glory.” He raised his hand, index finger extended. “First, you put the lives of hundreds of passengers on an Austrian Air flight at risk, not to mention the people on the ground.” Another finger joined the first. “Second, you ignored every regulation we have, just so you could play hero. Again. Do you have any idea what would’ve happened if your lame-brained idea hadn’t come off?”

  “But—” Tom tried to interject.

  But the captain was just getting started.

  “Third, you took a cell phone, which is evidence that should have been handed over at the scene. And you yourself say it’s just because you were curious. If you had done what you were supposed to do and handed the thing over to forensics and IT, we might well know far more than we currently do. But no, Mr. Wagner had to take it home with him.”

  They moved out of the treasury and down the stairway. Every Cobra, every uniformed cop, every forensics officer they passed looked at Tom with scorn, but also a little sympathy.

  “And fourth, we would have been spared all this morning’s shit, too. Shoot-outs and car chases belong in the movies, not on Kärntner Strasse!” He paused to draw breath. “The priest at the cathedral called the mayor, the mayor called the Chief of Police, and the Chief just tore me a new asshole. And as you can probably imagine, I don’t enjoy having myself a new asshole torn at all. That’s usually my job.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “But we’re not done yet. Oh, no. You left your post in mid-assignment without calling it in, you didn’t wait for backup, and you tried yet again to tackle a situation on your own. In the process, you destroyed half the treasury and used the Kreuzpartikel as a fucking throwing knife! Who knows how long it will take the people from the Art History Museum to open the Treasury to the public again.”

  They had now arrived in the chapel courtyard. Tom had to concede that none of what the captain had mentioned would look good in his file. He’d had better days.

  “And just to cap things off, you weren’t even able to stop the thieves.” Captain Maierhofer planted his hands on his hips and exhaled audibly. “Nice job, Wagner. Brilliant, even by your standards. Piling shit this high in twenty-four hours is an art. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  “Yes, actually. You’re still mispronouncing my name. My father was American, so my family name is pronounced in English: Wagner.”

  As he finished speaking, it occurred to Tom that his objection didn’t do much to improve the situation. The captain seethed.

  “That’s your only concern? Now? We’re in Vienna, and I’ll call you ‘Vaaahhhhgner’ as long as I damn well please. You’ve spent the last twenty-four hours screwing up one thing after another. I’ve got the Interior Minister asking me if we’re recruiting our Cobras from ISIS terrorist cells these days . . . give me one good reason not to suspend you until the end of the millennium.” Captain Maierhofer’s voice rang clear across the courtyard.

  Hellen, leaving the treasury just then, looked at Tom and the captain in passing, smiled pityingly, shook her head, and exited the courtyard through the Swiss Gate. She immediately pushed any thoughts of Tom out of her mind. She had more important things to do, like pack—her flight was leaving in the morning.

  “So you don’t think we should follow up this lead?” Tom said. “Let me quickly sum up the facts: the dead thief up there has the same symbol tattooed on his arm as we found on the arm of one of the hijackers. Because of that hijacker’s phone, someone chased me through half of Vienna, shoo
ting all the way. The theft of the Holy Lance is connected directly to the theft of all the other holy artifacts all over Europe. Even the Blue Shield people have confirmed that.”

  “Wagner, we’re not following up any leads at all! We’re Cobra. We’re not running around with a hot magnifying glass, investigating clues. We’re not Columbo, goddamn it!”

  “People are dead. Someone has to investigate.”

  “And that just has to be you, does it? Tom Wagner, knight in shining armor, charging in on his white horse to save the world from an international conspiracy. All at the expense of the Austrian taxpayer. Let the Italians find their own damn tablecloth! That’s about as interesting to me as a wet sponge.”

  “But, Captain—”

  But Maierhofer interrupted him instantly, raising his index finger and holding it to his lips, an unambiguous signal to shut up.

  “I’m not even interested in finding out if this obscure terror organization even exists, whether they’ve developed a group fetish for Catholic loot to go with their matching tattoos, or what. You are taking a vacation. You are letting your bruises heal and taking the time you need to consider your future as a Cobra. I will see you again in two weeks. I’ve got enough on my plate with the goddamned Atlas mission in Barcelona next week without having to babysit you, too.”

  Tom thought for a moment about saying something but realized it would be pointless. Captain Maierhofer, drained by his extended tirade, leaned against the wall by the staircase that led to the Hofmusikkapelle, the Hofburg choral chapel, and searched his jacket for his cigarettes. He glowered at Tom, waiting for him to finally get out of his sight.

  Tom nodded, turned on his heel, and left the courtyard. First thing I need’s a drink, he thought. And one probably won’t be enough. He took out his phone and dialed Noah’s number.

  19