The Cup

by Alex Lukeman

  Forsberg was caught in the middle. Whenever things didn't go well for the politicians, someone had to pay. It wouldn't be them. Unless he was careful, it was going to be him.

  "You've seen the papers?" he said.

  Nick nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry you have to deal with this."

  "It goes with the territory. If I do my job the right way, there's always some officious idiot that wants to criticize. Intelligence work and government oversight is a contrast in terms."

  Selena laughed. "At least you broke up Hussein's operation. Have you found anything to connect it to ISIS?"

  "Funny you should ask that."

  Forsberg reached into his briefcase and pulled out a black flag with Arabic letters on it.

  "We found this in his bedroom."

  "No question whose flag that is," Nick said. "Those assholes have made sure it shows up on everyone's TV as often as possible."

  "Hussein must've thought he was invulnerable to keep that around," Selena said.

  "For all practical purposes, he was," Forsberg said. "The hands-off policy regarding Muslim immigrants has been in place for quite some time. Sweden has always been one of the most welcoming societies in the world. No one thought allowing refugees from war zones to enter would lead to this kind of chaos."

  "What was Hussein planning to do with those weapons?" Nick asked.

  "Attack polling stations throughout the country during the next election. We're still sorting through information recovered from the center."

  "Was there anything on that phone I gave you?" Nick said. His voice was casual.

  "No." Forsberg looked away. "Most of the calls were to a pizza parlor. There wasn't anything about what they were planning or about the smuggling operation."

  "That's too bad. We were hoping to get a line on the buyers."

  "We'll find out sooner or later," Forsberg said. "When we do, we'll let you know. In the meantime, I've been asked to convey the thanks of our government for your assistance. We'll forward everything we discover about ISIS to you when you're back in America."

  "You're sending us home?"

  "There's nothing left for you to do here, not in an official capacity. Why don't you take a day or two to enjoy Stockholm? I can recommend some excellent restaurants. Shopping is good, the museums are fascinating."

  Selena said, "That sounds like a good idea." She turned to Nick. "Don't you think so?"

  "Can you make us a list of those restaurants?" Nick said.

  As they drove back to their hotel Lamont said, "They're kicking us out and that boy was lying in his teeth. I thought he was a straight shooter."

  "It's not his fault," Nick said. "I got the feeling he wanted to tell us what was going on. Someone told him to keep quiet. The last thing he wants to do is make waves right now. The papers are looking for a sacrificial lamb and he'd be a good one. His only chance is to play by the rules."

  "Just the same," Lamont said, "I'm kinda disappointed."

  CHAPTER 15

  Bergstrom was thinking about his dead wife. He poured ice cold vodka into a tumbler and downed it. If Emma were here, she would have helped him figure out what to do. If she were here, he'd never have gotten into this mess in the first place. He'd always talked about everything with her. She would have stopped him from becoming involved with those people. But she hadn't been there to help him think it through. Emma had died of cancer seven years before. The pain of her death was still with him.

  Bergstrom could feel the doors closing. It was time to run.

  He had a passport in a different name and enough cash in the safe for a ticket to somewhere far away. His credit cards were good but he wouldn't be able to use those once he left the country. Besides, he wouldn't need them. There was plenty of cash in the accounts in Andorra, more than enough to live comfortably someplace where extradition was difficult. Someplace warm, where a foreigner would be welcome as long as he had enough money to keep the natives happy.

  Why did it have to turn out this way? Why did they have to kill Andersson? And then they had to show off, crucify him. They couldn't just dispose of the body. Fucking animals.

  He poured another drink. He thought he heard a brief noise, then quickly forgot it.

  I'll book a ticket for France with one of the cards. That will throw them off the trail for a little. Then, a quick change to a different look in the airport men's room, something simple. A different airline to South America. By the time they figure it out I'll be far away...

  A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. Bergstrom got up, went to the door and looked through the spy hole. A dark-haired man stood there, someone he had never seen before.

  "Who is it?"

  "My name is Antonio Bellini, Signor Bergstrom. Count Mercurio sent me to speak with you. Please, may I come in?"

  Bergstrom opened the door.

  "Unless he's prepared to make a new offer, you have wasted your trip. But come in, it's cold out."

  Bellini entered the room and stamped his feet.

  "The count has asked me to see if we can work something out. He is prepared to offer more money."

  "Come into the living room," Bergstrom said. "We'll talk. Can I get you a drink? Vodka?"

  "Brandy, if you have it."

  Bellini followed Bergstrom into the other room. The Swede took a bottle of brandy and a glass from a sideboard and poured a drink for his unexpected visitor. He gestured at an empty chair and sat down.

  "You still have the tile?" Bellini asked.

  "I do."

  "The Count is prepared to double his offer."

  Bergstrom shook his head. "I'm afraid you have wasted your time after all. The price is not negotiable."

  "Please reconsider, Signor Bergstrom. Allow me to point out the advantages to you."

  Bellini was about to begin when a man stepped into the room with a pistol in his hand.

  CHAPTER 16

  Nick and the others parked down the block from Bergstrom’s house, a single-story home set back from the street in an older residential area. The porch light was out. There were no lights in the windows.

  "What do you think?" Nick asked.

  "Doesn't look like he's home," Lamont said.

  "Maybe he went to bed," Selena said.

  Nick looked at his watch. "Pretty early for bed."

  They got out of the car and hurried to the porch. Nick tried the handle on the door. It was locked.

  "Do your thing, Ronnie."

  Ronnie reached for his lock picks and bent over the lock. In seconds the door was open. They slipped inside and shut the door behind them.

  They were in an entry hall. Everything was dark. Flashlights clicked on.

  "What's that smell?" Selena said. "Like the toilet overflowed."

  "Something's wrong here," Nick said.

  He reached for his pistol, a move born of long practice. The gun that should have been there was back in Virginia.

  They followed the smell to the first room off the hall. Bergstrom lay sprawled on the floor by an overturned chair. A second man lay back in a chair, his mouth open. Dead eyes stared at the ceiling. The stench of blood and feces was overwhelming.

  "Whew," Lamont said.

  Nick's foot knocked against a vodka bottle on the floor. It rolled away toward the wall.

  Ronnie shone his light on the bodies.

  "Shot. Two or three times each. Someone wanted to make sure."

  Nick scratched his ear. "One of these guys must be Bergstrom."

  Lamont bent down over the man on the floor and extracted a wallet.

  "This one is Bergstrom."

  "Okay. Keep going through their pockets and see what you can find. We'll search the house. Pull the drapes over the windows and turn on a light. Anyone sees, they won’t think anything of it."

  "What are we looking for?" Ronnie asked.

  "Something to give us an idea of who wanted Bergstrom dead. Anything about those artifacts or a connection to Hussein. Ten minutes, then we're gone."
>
  They started through the house. Nick went into the kitchen. Ronnie took a bedroom. Selena went into what looked like a study. The drapes were closed. There was a desk near the wall and a large closet with louvered doors. Some of the drawers were open, others closed. Papers were scattered on the floor. It looked as if someone had been searching for something and been interrupted.

  Selena felt the hair move on the back of her neck.

  There's someone here!

  The closet doors flew open and a dark shape lunged at her.

  She didn't have time to think, but the instant of recognition that she was not alone triggered an adrenaline rush. Years of martial arts training kicked in. The attacker barreled into her.

  She met the rush with a half turn and grabbed the front of his coat, pulling him past and leaning into him with her hip. Momentum sent him flying across the room. She went for him, aiming a kick at his head. He was fast, and the kick barely grazed his face. He rolled and came up on his feet with a pistol in his hand and fired.

  Selena felt the round burn across her hip. She kicked the gun from his hand and kicked him again in the groin, as hard as she could. He grunted and doubled over. She spun and aimed another kick at his head. This time she didn't miss. He went down like a rock and stopped moving.

  Nick ran into the room, looking charged. Ronnie and Lamont were in the hall behind him.

  "What happened?" He shone his light down at the man on the floor.

  "He was hiding in the closet," Selena said. "I recognize him. His name's Gabriel. He was the translator for Hussein at the refugee center."

  "Forsberg is going to love this." Nick looked at Selena. "You're bleeding."

  Selena looked down. The bullet had ripped through her jeans along the side of her hip. Blood stained the dark cloth. She started to come down from the adrenaline rush and the wound began throbbing.

  "It's only a scratch." She fingered the tear. "Damn. I just bought these before we left."

  Nick bent down and laid his fingers against Gabriel's throat. His breathing was harsh, ragged.

  "He's still alive, but you put a big dent in the side of his skull."

  Ronnie left the room. After a minute he came back with tape and gauze and handed them to Selena.

  "Found these in the bathroom."

  "Thanks."

  "Need help bandaging that up?" Nick asked.

  "No, I can do it. It's not serious."

  "Ronnie, Lamont, keep checking the rest of the house. I'll start here."

  They left the room. Selena unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them down. The bullet had just missed her hip. Two inches lower and she would have been on her way to a hospital with a smashed pelvis and a traumatic wound. As it was, it had dug a bloody groove in her side. She'd be left with another scar for her growing collection. While she improvised a bandage, Nick looked in the closet where the attacker had been hiding.

  "There's a safe in here."

  He called Ronnie back into the room.

  Nick showed him the safe. It was a newer model, about three feet high and two wide.

  "It's got a biometric lock," Ronnie said. "Let's get Bergstrom to give us a hand. He won't mind."

  They went back to the living room and dragged Bergstrom's body down the hall and over to the closet. Nick took the dead man's hand and tried fingers over the scanner until the tumblers unlocked with a quiet sound.

  There were two passports on the top shelf. One was Swedish, in Bergstrom's name. One was German. It had Bergstrom's picture but was in a different name. There was a thick packet of Swedish kroner, next to a Walther P-38. Nick held up the gun.

  "You don't see these much, anymore."

  "Good pistol. Not his service weapon," Ronnie said.

  Lamont came into the room.

  "Nothing I could see in the rest of the house," he said.

  Selena had finished with the improvised bandage. She looked over Nick's shoulder where he knelt in front of the safe.

  Selena pointed at an object in the corner of the safe. "What's that?"

  Nick took out a ceramic tile about a foot long. Brilliantly colored pieces of stone formed the image of a man in a long, black robe with a full beard against a white background. He wore a square black cap. In his right hand, he held a wine cup. Three rays of light came out of it. His left hand was at his side, the index finger pointed down at the ground. A set of keys hung from a rope tied around his waist.

  Below the figure were two lines written in Latin.

  Anastaisu confessoris ad imperatorem Theodosium

  Solus justus et inveniam Illum

  "Looks old," Lamont said. "Must be something Hussein smuggled in."

  Nick stood and handed the tile to Selena.

  "The style of mosaic looks typical for something done in the fourth or fifth century," she said.

  "What does the Latin say?"

  "The first line says, 'Anastasius, confessor to the Emperor Theodosius.'"

  "And the second line?" Nick asked.

  "That says, 'Only a just man shall find him.'"

  "Find who?"

  "It was probably an injunction to seek Christ." Then she said, "Oh."

  "Oh?" Nick said. "Why, oh?"

  "Look at the rays of light coming out of the cup. The priest is carrying the Holy Grail."

  "The Grail again?"

  "It can't be a coincidence, when you combine it with those scrolls. This could be a clue to what happened to the Grail. That would make it worth killing for."

  Ronnie said, "ISIS must have found out about the box with the scrolls and now they're looking for it. That would explain who killed these guys."

  "How would they find out?" Lamont asked.

  "Someone had to tell them," Nick said. "The only people who know about the scrolls except us are Swedish. There must be another bad cop in the mix somewhere. Or someone in the government."

  "Forsberg?"

  "I don't think so, but I don't know. We'll keep our suspicions to ourselves for now."

  Nick took a handful of papers from the safe and handed them to her.

  "What do these say?"

  She looked through them.

  "There's a will and a property deed. Also a marriage certificate from twenty years ago. A birth certificate for a daughter, and a death certificate in the same name, dated four years later."

  "What else?"

  "A copy of a newspaper article about Bergstrom's wife. She was a well-known artist. Died eight years ago."

  "Guy didn't have a happy life," Lamont said.

  "Here's something. These are statements from a bank in Andorra." She looked at one of them. "Being a policeman must pay pretty well in Sweden."

  "How much does he have?" Nick asked.

  "Three hundred thousand in British pounds. This one is dated two months ago."

  Lamont whistled. "Guess the antiques business is pretty good."

  "Those will help," Nick said. "The money had to come from somewhere. We can follow it back. With luck, we'll ID the buyer."

  He laid the bank statements out on the desk.

  "Ronnie, get pictures of these. I'll send them to Stephanie and see what she turns up. Get some shots of the tile, too. We have to turn everything over to the Swedes but I don't trust them to keep us in the loop after we leave. I want a record. "

  "Let them have the statements but keep the tile," Selena said.

  "Why keep it?"

  "It might be better if they didn't know about it."

  "That your intuition speaking?"

  "You just said there must be another corrupt cop or official. What if he's working with ISIS?"

  "It's an idea, but I want to play it straight," Nick said. "It's evidence. They'll lock it up."

  "I hope you're right," Selena said.

  "If I'm not, you can say I told you so."

  "I'll get some shots of the guy in the other room while I'm at it. Maybe he's in the database," Ronnie said.

  Lamont said, "I found his passport when I went thro
ugh his pockets. He's Italian. His name is Antonio Bellini. He had a return ticket to Milan, plenty of Italian lira in his wallet and a driver's license in the same name. He's got a fancy gold ring and a Rolex watch. What are we going to do about him?"

  Nick took out his phone. "He's Forsberg's problem."

  Forsberg and his team arrived twenty minutes later. Gabriel was still breathing. An ambulance carted him away. Forsberg looked down at Bergstrom's body and sighed.

  "A foolish man," he said. "He was never the same after his wife died."

  He turned toward Nick. "What are you doing here? I thought you were going to spend time enjoying our city. Instead I find you in the home of a murdered officer. Give me a good reason not to arrest you."

  Nick was annoyed. "Give me a break. You haven't been playing straight with us. That phone Selena found at the refugee center had a call to Bergstrom on it. You should've told us about it. This was supposed to be a joint operation, remember? We gave you the chance to come clean and you didn't, so we decided to follow up."

  "You accessed that phone? It was encrypted."

  "It's what we do," Nick said. "Our expertise is why you invited us here in the first place."

  "You didn't trust me to tell you?"

  "I was right, wasn't I? Look, I understand that everything about this operation is sensitive as hell. One of your ranking police officers was involved in helping ISIS fund their terror campaign. The media will tear you apart if it gets out. There are plenty of reasons your superiors would tell you to keep it away from us."

  Forsberg looked embarrassed. "For what it's worth, I was ordered to withhold the information. I argued against it. I thought it was a mistake."

  "I'll take that as an apology."

  "Bergstrom's partners must have decided he'd become a liability."

  "That's what we think. We were wondering if anyone else was involved."

  Forsberg sighed again. "If there is, we'll find them. Perhaps the man in the other room was part of it. I'll run him through Interpol."

  "We're going back home tomorrow," Nick said. "Will you keep us informed as things develop?"