by David Wood
Stone raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Sievers, give it a chance.” He turned back to Avery. “We need to find out if that diary was scanned. A copy isn’t as good as the original, but it might give us an idea of what they’re planning. And right now, we know even less than we thought we did.”
“I’ll ask at the library tomorrow. First thing.”
“We don’t have time for that.” Stone came around the table and sat beside her at the computer. “May I?”
Avery felt another twinge of jealousy. She still had not quite come to terms with what she had learned about Stone, and his abrupt take-charge attitude was not helping. But the real problem was that she had goofed, and he had caught it, and that was a tough pill to swallow.
“Fine.” She pushed the laptop in his direction.
Stone quickly found his way into the Austrian National Library online catalog and just as quickly gained administrative access. “The diary was never digitized, but there is a microfilm copy…”
Stone trailed off, lost in his search. Avery leaned over to see what he was looking at, but as she did, she spotted a notification for new email in the corner of the screen. Without asking permission, she snatched the computer back and opened her email. “We got a hit on the Russian.” She scrolled through the official looking email, looking for the part that would explain who the man was. “Oleg Samsonov. He’s the deputy chief of something called the Economic Security Directorate.”
She looked up, sensing that her words had triggered a stir in the air. “Does that mean something? Sounds pretty innocuous to me.”
“The Economic Security Directorate is the operations arm of the FSB,” Tam explained patiently.
Avery knew what the FSB was. In her earliest memories, they had been known by another set of letters—KGB—and although the political landscape and name had changed, the organization remained more or less the same. They were Russia’s FBI and CIA rolled into one, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. As far back as Stalin, the security agency had been the de facto ruler of the country. Most of the nation’s leaders, including the current president, had come from the leadership ranks of the KGB and FSB.
“The job of the Economic Security division is to ensure that Russia’s economy is protected, by any means necessary,” Tam went on. “Espionage, sabotage, assassination… whatever it takes. Russia has only one source of income—oil—and global oil prices have crashed in the last six months. The ruble is in a death spiral. The Russian economy has gone into recession. They need a game changer, something that will increase the demand for oil and weaken foreign currency.”
“So it’s true,” Greg said. “Destiny is a joint operation. The Russians and the Dominion.”
Stone, who had been listening patiently, now turned to Tam. “You have to go to Mexico. Right now. That’s where it’s going to happen.”
Greg let out a derisive laugh. “And just how do you know that?” He threw up his hands. “This is crazy. We should be tracking Samsonov. That’s our best lead.”
Tam silenced him with a wave of her hand and faced Stone, scrutinizing him in earnest. “You know I trust you, but… Give me something to work with.”
Stone seemed to consider the request for a moment, but then stood, went back to the coffee table and pointed to the pages he had earlier written. “It’s right here. Vienna. Patton.” He held up each page as he spoke the words. “We know that was a reference to the diary. We know what the Russian connection is, even if we don’t completely understand it. We know the Dominion is involved. The one thing that still doesn’t fit is what happened in Mexico.” He shook the page emphatically. “The massacre in Juarez happened for a reason. That’s the key to this. When we understand why it happened, we’ll know what they’re trying to accomplish.”
Avery felt a twinge of irritation at how quickly Stone had switched gears. “What happened to tracking down Patton’s diary? I thought that was the key.”
Stone answered without looking away from Tam. “She’s not wrong. There was a microfilm copy of the diary, but it was donated to the Patton collection years ago. It’s currently at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Avery and I can go there and work that angle while the rest of you go to Mexico. We’ll catch up to you as soon as we can.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Sievers put in.
Stone pressed on. “Samsonov is the deputy chief of his division, right? That makes him…what, number three in the FSB? And he personally ran tonight’s operation. Destiny, whatever it is, is big. Maybe the biggest thing since the Cold War ended. It started in Mexico, and I’m certain that it’s going to end there, too. So you have to go there as soon as possible.”
Tam nodded slowly. “We’ll drop you off in DC on our way south. Kasey, you’ll stay with them.” She cast a wary eye at Sievers. “If you suspect for even a second that Hot Rod here is going to try to grab Stone and make a run for it—”
“He won’t,” Stone said.
Avery was pleased that Tam did not seem to share Stone’s confidence in the word of his former captor. She was also glad that Kasey would be accompanying her. She didn’t trust either man any further than she could throw them. But part of her could not help but be impressed with how quickly Stone had reduced the problem to a series of variables and found the pattern.
Against her better judgment, she was actually beginning to admire him.
CHAPTER 13
El Paso, Texas
The unrest in Mexico City was the lead story of the twenty-four hour news cycle, but Roger Lavelle was more interested in watching Esperanza’s reaction to the repetitious coverage than he was in the latest updates. He made no comment, content to let Esperanza draw his own conclusions, and why not? The over-hyped media coverage made the argument far more persuasively than anything he might say.
When the pundits finally came up for air, the Mexican businessman turned to his host and asked the question again. “Do you really believe this is the answer, Roger?”
Lavelle gave a patient smile. “We’ve known each other for…what? Two years now? Have I ever led you astray? Your country has a problem that’s bigger than any one man. You know it. I know it.” He paused for dramatic effect. “History knows it, Guillermo. This should have happened long before either of us was born, but it didn’t. We have a chance to correct that mistake, once and for all, and for the good of all.”
He might have continued on in this vein, but a musical chirp from his pocket distracted him. He took out his phone, read the text message, and then rose from his chair. “I need to see to a matter. And you, my friend, need to get some rest. You, more than anyone else, are going to need it.”
My friend.
The lie came easy after two years of saying it, and his partnership with the Mexican had been so profitable that sometimes he almost forgot that the man was most certainly not his equal. Esperanza and his people had been put on earth to mow the lawns of people like Roger Lavelle.
He left Esperanza in the company of the talking heads and strolled down the hall to a conference room where his aide, Eric Trent, was working on the mystery of the Patton item. As important as it was to make sure that Esperanza played his part, none of it would matter if they could not unravel the secrets contained in that battered leather-bound journal, and soon. The wheels were already turning. Worse, there had been a troubling breach of security.
Samsonov had been quick to blame them for the slip-up, but Lavelle was not so sure. The Russians were not exactly masters of subtlety, and their vaunted spy organization was like an aging heavyweight champion, long past its Cold War prime.
Still, Destiny had been Samsonov’s idea. Maybe the KGB, or whatever they were calling themselves this week, had a few moves left, after all. As audacious as the plan was, what was even more astonishing was the fact that Samsonov had known exactly whom to bring it to.
Lavelle still recalled that first meeting, where Samsonov had shown him the letter, intercepted by Soviet agents s
even decades earlier, in which the heroic but irascible General George S. Patton had declared his intention to launch a political career, with the ultimate goal of running for the office of president in 1948.
Winning the presidency on the strength of his war record would be only the first battle in a much larger campaign. Patton had been very clear about his motivations. The Soviet Union was, in his mind, an even greater enemy than the Nazi regime of Germany, and every day that passed would see the Russians consolidating their power and rebuilding their war machine. To defeat them would require more than just strong leadership, but the general had an ace up his sleeve which he believed would make all the difference when the inevitable showdown finally arrived.
Patton had been right about the Soviets, right about the threat of Communism and the eventual decline of American moral character. With a man like that leading America, there would have been no need for something like the Dominion. And while he might not have envisioned the coming of the atomic age or the protracted chess game that was the Cold War, in a prescient moment, Patton had foreseen the possibility that his decision would make him a target.
The letter openly detailed the contents of what Patton called “the Devil’s Gift”—neither the letter nor the diary explained why he chose this name—and how he would use it to forge a new chapter in American history, but it did not explicitly state where the object was. That information, if the letter was to be believed, was contained in his diary, written in a code which could only be understood, in Patton’s words “by someone worthy of such a destiny.” Given the context, there was little doubt that the reference was a play on words, a reference to the Spear of Destiny, with which Patton had been obsessed following the fall of Berlin. Patton rightly believed that the Devil’s Gift would hold the key to America’s future, and Lavelle felt certain the general would have approved of both the Dominion’s aims and its methods.
He wondered how Patton would have felt if he had known it would also mean salvation for the Russians.
He strode into the conference room and found Trent seated at the table, the diary open before him. On his right was a laptop computer, and on his left, resting on a square of velvet, was the Spear of Destiny, disassembled into its component pieces.
Trent was a compact, bookish man in his early thirties, an engineer by trade and one of the smartest men in Lavelle’s acquaintance. Lavelle, like many of those who had emerged to take positions of leadership in the Dominion following the roll-up of almost everyone involved in the Kingdom Church, was not a true believer, at least not in the quasi-religious mystical mumbo jumbo that had led Bishop Hadel and the others into ruin. Lavelle and Trent shared the view that the economic and political goals of the new and improved Dominion were of paramount importance, but Trent’s inquisitive mind and encyclopedic knowledge base made him the perfect point man for this particular task. As far as Lavelle was concerned, the Spear of Destiny was an interesting historical artifact albeit one with dubious provenance, but not much else.
The look on Trent’s face was about what Lavelle expected given the terse text message he had sent just a few minutes earlier.
“What’s wrong?”
Trent slid the Spear across the table. “See for yourself.”
Lavelle peered down at the relic, unsure exactly what he was supposed to be looking for. Samsonov had told him that the Spear was the key to cracking the code in the diary, and Trent had confirmed this shortly after returning from Vienna with the two items, but Lavelle had no clue as to exactly how the key was concealed.
He looked at the gold band with its legendary inscription, and then at the smaller silver band which had been added by Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV in the eleventh century. Trent had carefully removed both, as well as the black iron nail, allegedly used in the crucifixion.
Trent pointed again, leaning across the table to rest his finger on the gold band. Lavelle looked closer and saw a row of tiny letters stamped upon it.
REPLIK
“God damn it,” Lavelle breathed. “A goddamned fake.”
Trent nodded. “The museum put this on public display. The real one is probably locked away in a vault somewhere.”
Lavelle stared at the replica for several seconds. “If it’s an exact duplicate, then it should still work, right?”
Trent spread his hands. “If there’s a code key hidden there, I don’t know what it is.”
Lavelle took out a pre-paid “burner” cell phone and typed in the thirteen-digit string of numbers that would connect him to a similar phone unit on the other side of the world. It took a few seconds for the call to be connected and a few more before he heard a grunt. “Da?”
There was no need to waste time with pleasantries. “It’s a fake.”
Samsonov easily switched to English. “I have just learned this. There was a second break in, probably the same Americans who tried to stop me.”
“How did they find out about it?”
It was not the first time he had asked the question, and Samsonov’s answer was no more enlightening. “They are CIA. Who knows how they were tipped off?”
“We need the real Spear to crack the code.”
“That is your problem.” Before Lavelle could protest, Samsonov continued. “The Americans have the Spear now. If my information is correct, they are on their way to Washington D.C.”
“D.C.?”
“There is copy of diary in American Library of Congress. Soon, I think, they will know more than you do. If you hurry, you should be able to catch them and take back Spear.”
Lavelle did not like the sound of that. “Hang on. The cloak and dagger stuff is your job.”
“I am going to Mexico City to carry out next part of plan.”
“There won’t be a plan if we don’t crack that code. And don’t forget, I have to be in Mexico, too.”
“Is time to get your hands dirty.” Samsonov did not sound the least bit sympathetic. “If you cannot handle this small problem, then perhaps you are not ready for what will come when we succeed.”
Lavelle let his breath out slowly, measuring his reply. Without the Russian’s help, everything would fall apart. He could not afford to appear desperate or incompetent at this stage in the game.
“Relax,” Samsonov said, at length. “You know where they are going. Easy thing to set trap.”
CHAPTER 14
Washington D.C.
The flight from Vienna to Washington D.C. took nearly sixteen hours, including refueling stops in Ireland and Greenland, but because they were racing the sun, they arrived just before noon, local time. Or so their hired pilot informed them. Avery was so exhausted that, even absent the change in time zones, her body had no clue what time it really was.
She had tried to sleep during the flight, but even in the relative comfort of the Learjet, sleep and air travel just didn’t mix well. When she actually did doze off, she awoke feeling even more fatigued. She had spent the intervening waking periods alternately berating herself for her mistaken assumption about the importance of the Spear of Destiny, and trying to figure out how to redeem herself. There was some connection between the situation in Mexico, and something that Patton might have written about in his diary in the closing hours of World War II, but what it was remained a complete mystery.
She was surprised to learn that the Patton family on his mother’s side had inhabited California in the days prior to its inclusion in the territories of the United States, which provided a somewhat tenuous connection to old Mexico. Avery filed the information away and moved onto Patton’s adventures with General Pershing during the Mexican Revolution.
That part of the story read like an old-fashioned western, not surprisingly since much of the information she found about the showdown with Pancho Villa’s henchman, Julio Cardenas, was on websites dedicated to memorializing famous gunfights of the Old West. In true gunslinger fashion, Patton had carved notches into his ivory-handled revolver, tally marks for each man he had killed.
Or ra
ther, allegedly killed.
Avery quickly discovered numerous contradictions between the many different accounts, as well as the official military record of the expedition. She wondered if perhaps the key to solving the mystery lay in one of those inconsistencies. Had Patton done something, or perhaps failed to do something, which would have scandalized him in later life, thwarting his political aspirations? Some act of brutality or cowardice that might have tarnished his legend?
She searched her memory again, trying to recall the passages she had read only a couple of days previously. Her mistake then had been to focus only on what she assumed was relevant, but she had skimmed the entire document. Maybe the answer was already there, in her brain.
The four of them—Avery, Stone, Kasey, and Sievers—rode the courtesy shuttle from Dulles International Airport to a nearby hotel, which would serve as their base of operations while in the nation’s capital. As they rode along, she became aware of Stone’s eyes upon her. She turned to him, raising her eyebrow in a look that she hoped would convey her complete disinterest in having a conversation with him. Either the look was misinterpreted or Stone simply didn’t care. “Did you have any luck with your research, Dr. Halsey?”
She shook her head.
“Maybe something will click when you read the diary again.”
“Maybe. I’m still not sure how something Patton wrote seventy years ago could possibly make any kind of difference.” She cocked her head sideways. “Can I ask you something? Something personal?”
Stone regarded her with a faint smile. “You want to know why I do it? Why I turned to a life of crime?” He wiggled his hands as he finished the question as if to make it seem like a joke.
Avery shrugged. “In a nutshell, yes. You’re clearly very intelligent. You could do anything you wanted. You don’t even seem like a bad guy. I mean, you’re helping us stop the Dominion, so obviously you’re not a…” She was going to say “villain,” but decided that sounded too melodramatic. “So, yeah. Why?”
