"We thought so. Margaret studied ancient languages at Columbia."
"A real Renaissance woman."
"A daughter a mother can be proud of."
"Handy with a gun, too," said Holliday dryly.
"She's been hunting at Poplar Hill since she was a child. She's a better shot than her big brother."
"The next president of the United States?"
"Quite so," she replied.
"Why me?" Holliday asked. "There are plenty of better-known medievalists around."
"I've been interested in you ever since your trip to the Azores a while back," she said. Her thin smile reminded Holliday of a snake swallowing a small animal. "As much as we need you to authenticate your little find on the table, I'd very much like to leaf through that little notebook that Brother Rodrigues gave to you with his dying breath on Corvo. I presume you have it safely hidden away."
In a safe-deposit box in a bank in Geneva, but he wasn't going to tell her that. "You presume correctly."
"Excellent. You can fetch it for us after the authentication at the conclave tomorrow. We'll take the G5 and make it a little celebration."
"What makes you think I'll do that?" Holliday said, even though he already knew. Katherine Sinclair smiled and took a heavy drag on her cigarette, taking it deeply into her lungs. When she spoke smoke burst out of her mouth like a dragon exhaling. An emaciated dragon at the end of its withered, leathery life.
"You'll do it because your life depends on it and the lives of Miss Blackstock and her new husband."
31
After Holliday's brief conversation with Katherine Sinclair he was escorted to one of the third- and top-floor tower rooms that overlooked the porte cochere and the lavish, formal terraced gardens at the front of the castle. The view was as grandiose as the castle itself. From the love seat beneath the curved glass windows Holliday was able to see the entire town of Frankfort nestled in the valley below the estate, surrounded on all sides by low hills, their flanks covered by lush green forests. From the high round room he could see the dome on the state capitol and the winding course of the Kentucky River, making its slow way north to join the broader reaches of the Ohio.
The tower room was lavishly decorated with scattered Persian carpets on the floor, a huge four-poster canopy bed at the far end of the room, a delicately scrolled marble mantel over a sizable fireplace hearth and a gigantic flat-screen television on one wall with a soft, comfortable couch in front of it. An en suite bathroom was next to the enormous bed and there was an antique circular breakfast table with two matching chairs next to the couch. There was even a bar fridge stocked with airline bottles of booze, mixers, cans of soda and a big jar of macadamia nuts. All the comforts of home if home happened to be a Hilton hotel.
After checking to see if the big oak door was locked, which of course it was, Holliday spent a long time pacing out the perimeters of the room and mentally going over his options. He knew he could almost certainly jimmy the old skeleton key lock on the door, but where would that get him? There could easily be a guard posted at his door, and even if there wasn't there were almost certainly lots of armed guards all over the estate.
The top floor of mansions like this was usually given over as the servants' quarters, but it could just as easily be a barracks for the security people. And barracks was the word; the security people he'd seen so far were all ex-military, Holliday was sure of it; none of the ragtag mercenary wannabes from that Blackhawk bunch; these guys were the real McCoy.
He tired of pacing the floor eventually and flopped down on the couch. He picked the remote up off the coffee table in front of him and clicked on the flat screen, scrolling through rock-star reality shows, Maury Povich dealing with an endless supply of pregnant trailer-trash women wanting DNA tests and reruns of CSI and Law and Order.
He watched ten minutes of Claudette Colbert in the title role and Henry Wilcoxon as Mark Antony in the original, 1934 version of Cleopatra on Turner Classic Movies and finally settled on CNN. There was no mention made of any abductions in Israel, but that didn't really mean anything; CNN seemed to think that the only international news worth reporting was plagues, floods, earthquakes and wars. Outside dusk was falling, the air itself glowing with the strange, ozone-heavy yellow light that usually precedes a storm.
At 6:00 p.m. on the dot he heard the sound of his door being unlocked. A few seconds later two of Kate Sinclair's goons appeared, the one in the lead carrying a large silver tray. Behind the two men Meg Sinclair appeared. She was wearing formal riding clothes, including tall black boots and jodhpurs. Her hair was tied back with a black velvet ribbon. The man with the tray set it down on the round table beside the couch and began setting the table for two and unloading the food, including a vacuum carafe of coffee.
"Come to gloat?" Holliday asked.
"I'm not the gloating type," said Meg. "I just thought you might like some company for dinner."
"Very hospitable of you."
"We don't have to be adversarial about this, Doc."
"Yes, we do," he answered. "Your mother had Peggy and her husband kidnapped. You're holding me against my will. You can't get much more adversarial than that."
"They won't come to any harm and neither will you." She sat down at the table.
"As long as I do precisely what you and your mother want."
"Come and eat your dinner, you must be starved."
"You didn't answer my question," said Holliday, sitting down. The dinner was four-star-restaurant grade: porcini-stuffed and balsamic-glazed filet mignon with a baked potato and grilled mushrooms. The soup was lobster bisque, some kind of ironic little joke from Meg, no doubt. Dessert looked like creme caramel.
He ate a spoonful of the bisque; it was perfect right down to the slight brandy aftertaste and the dollop of creme fraiche and flat- leaf parsley stalks floating on the pale pink surface of the white ceramic bowl.
"Why would it be so difficult to do what we ask?"
"Because it's a lie. A setup, a fake."
"In aid of a good cause, though."
"Who says?" Holliday asked, slicing into the filet mignon, the rich stuffing oozing out.
"I say," answered Meg, beginning to work on her own meal.
"From what I gather you're going to use the counterfeit contents of the box as leverage to have your brother made head of your little cult."
"The little cult, as you call it, has combined net assets of half a trillion dollars, and that's becoming a problem. Power tends to corrupt," said Meg.
"And absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely," said Holliday, finishing the quote. "The first Baron Acton. It's the only noteworthy thing he ever said. It was in response to Pius IX's Bull about papal infallibility back in the 1860s."
"Well, that's what's happening within Rex Deus. The order has so much power concentrated in such a small group of people that it has been corrupted. There are some people within the order who see it as a means to an end, that end being personal gain. They've lost sight of the principles that made this country great. They've lost their way, just like the rest of America."
"And your brother's going to get the country back on track?"
"Yes."
"What makes you think he'd be any better able to do that than anyone else in the Senate or anywhere else?"
"Doc, if the president is elected to a second term it will be too late. The country will become a socialist hellhole with the government sticking its nose everywhere, in business, health care, industry, Wall Street. Another Kremlin."
"You really believe that?" Holliday said.
"I not only believe it, I know it," answered Meg, fire in her eyes. "Some of the members of Rex Deus know it too, and they're planning to take advantage of it."
"How?"
"The cadre involved, if they can convince the other members of the order, want to manipulate another market crash, among other things. When the smoke clears they'll be even richer and the entire country will be in extremis. It might never recover; we'd tur
n into a third-rate power overnight. We can't let that happen, Doc. You can't let it happen." Holliday nodded thoughtfully. She'd used his nickname three times since entering the room, something she'd never done once that he could remember when they were together.
"So you want me to lie for you."
"Not about anything real, about a myth, something that probably never was. Is that so hard?"
"Who's to say I want to put your family at the helm of the ship of state?" said Holliday.
"It's better than sinking it," answered Meg Sinclair.
"This thing has been a lie from the beginning. You lied to me and now you want me to lie for you?"
"I'd lie if it was my family's lives at stake," said Meg.
"All right," said Holliday. "If you promise to release Peggy and Rafi as soon as I've done what you want."
"Of course," said Meg. "You have my word."
Holliday didn't believe it for a minute, but he said nothing. Better to live and fight another day.
"Okay," he said. He put down his fork, his appetite gone.
"What will you need to open up the box when the time comes?"
Holliday thought for a long moment then spoke. "A pencil butane torch and a utility knife or a heavy-duty box cutter."
"Why the box cutter?" she asked, her tone lightly suspicious.
"I'm going to hijack your mother and fly her to Cuba, of course."
"Please," said Meg. "I need you to be serious."
"The butane torch is to soften the lead seal; the box cutter is to slice through the softened lead."
"I see," said Meg. She stared at Holliday across the table, a strange expression on her face. "It could have been different between us, you know, Doc," she continued.
"No, it couldn't," he answered, and that was the end of dinner. Without another word the red-haired woman got to her feet and went to the door. She tapped out a three-two knock code and the door was instantly opened by one of the goons who'd brought in the tray of food. She left without turning around or saying good night and the door was closed again.
Thinking about what Meg Sinclair had said, Holliday finished his dinner. The first axiom of a soldier: eat when you've got the chance; it may not come again for a while. He ate both desserts and drank almost the entire carafe of coffee. Even so he had no trouble falling asleep, fully dressed, in the big bed as the first raindrops tapped against the room's tall windows like a faint memory of the approaching hurricane on Sable Island.
It was just past seven when he awoke from a deep, dreamless sleep. It was still raining, a constant downpour spilling out of a sky the color of slate. It rippled down the tower room windows in long erratic tear streaks and dripped from the eaves. The view was gone and Holliday could see no farther than the bright splashes of color in the formal gardens. Beyond that everything was a universal gray.
Holliday turned away from the windows, stripped off his clothes and padded across the room to the bathroom. Everything was there just like a good hotel: shampoo, soap, towels, shaving equipment, deodorant, a toothbrush and toothpaste and even a big fluffy white bathrobe. He ran the shower hot, shampooed the sand from his hair and then did it again.
He lathered his entire body, rinsed, then did it again. Squeaky clean at last, he got into the robe and spent another fifteen minutes carefully shaving. He wondered if the Sinclairs were going to provide him with new clothes. Presumably they didn't want him showing up at their so-called conclave looking like a bum. He also found himself feeling hungry again and wondered if the condemned man would get a last meal.
He finished up in the bathroom feeling refreshed and wide-awake. Stepping back into the tower room he saw that the Sinclairs were one step ahead of him. While he'd been in the shower the dinner things had been removed and a single place setting laid out. The bed had been neatly made and across the fluffy duvet there was a suit, shirt, tie, shoes, socks and even underwear laid out.
The white shirt was silk, the suit was a conservative dark pinstripe with a Zegna label and the shoes were black Crockett amp; Jones oxfords. The tie was handmade dark blue silk with a pattern of tiny Saint-Clair engrailed crosses in muted gold. The socks were black and silk as well.
Staying in the bathrobe, he sat down at the table and lifted the silver top of one of the salvers. Scrambled eggs, not too wet and not too dry. He opened up the rest of the covered dishes. Crisp bacon, sausages, home fries, fried green tomatoes and hush puppies instead of toast. He loaded up his plate, poured himself some coffee and dug in.
Breakfast turned out to be an anticlimax. He dressed carefully, enjoying the feel of the new clothes and even the slight pinch of the expensive British shoes. Everything fit perfectly. Nine o'clock came and went and still no one had come to fetch him. At nine thirty the first of a dozen vehicles came out of the misting rain and pulled up under the porte cochere below the tower window. The first car was a black, six- passenger Lincoln limousine.
The vehicles that followed over the next two hours were a lavish assortment of Town Cars, Escalades, Mercedeses and Jaguar sedans. There was even a Bentley and a Rolls-Royce. The color of choice appeared to be a discreet black. Watching them appear from his vantage point in the tower room, Holliday wondered if that many high-end cars would draw unwanted attention and then dismissed the thought.
This was the Kentucky of multimillion-dollar stud fees and Triple Crown winners. There were probably more Saudi oil princes driving around in cars like the ones he'd just seen than Americans. The world had changed over the last decades. Was Meg Sinclair right? Had the United States lost its way, or was it just adapting to new realities? Was there really anyplace left for the concept of a world power? It didn't matter; he was going to give her what she wanted if there was the faintest possibility that it would keep Peggy and Rafi from coming to any harm. He'd lasted this long and somehow he always seemed to survive. Go figure.
32
They fed him a Cobb salad lunch at noon and came for him at five to one. A pair of Katherine Sinclair's goons escorted him down to the Dining Hall on the main floor, an immense, high-ceilinged and narrow room that looked more like the nave of a cathedral than a place to enjoy a meal.
There were three tall, arched stained-glass windows at the curving far end of the chamber and a long refectory table capable of seating at least twenty but only set for sixteen.
The triptych of stained-glass windows had a sword-bearing St. Michael in the center flanked on either side with knights in thirteenth-century armor, their shields emblazoned with the engrailed Saint-Clair cross. Today the Dining Hall was being used as a conference room, place settings replaced with glasses and water carafes and pads for taking notes.
Holliday was led into the churchlike room, the sudden focus of everyone's attention. Katherine Sinclair was seated in the exact center of the table on the right, flanked by Meg Sinclair on one side and a handsome auburn-haired man on the other. The resemblance to both Katherine and Meg was obvious, so presumably he was Meg's brother, Richard Pierce Sinclair, the presidential hopeful.
He had a suitably somber expression for the job and temples shot with gray, so at least he looked right for the part. To Meg Sinclair's right was an empty chair, the only one at the table. The two goons led him to the vacant seat and then withdrew. Holliday sat and looked around.
Of the twelve other people at the table Holliday recognized some but not all. There was a four-star general he recognized from his years at the Pentagon, now a member of the Joint Chiefs, several congressmen and congresswomen, Miles Bainbridge with Ronald Reagan shoe polish hair and his hatchet- faced Shirley Jones clone wife, Beth, owners of the Gifts from God Prosperity Church and dispensers of its franchises.
GGPC was a billion-dollar business with churches in twenty-seven countries and with seven hundred and fifty thousand "partners" following the church's simple credo: The best way to get God to give you money is to give some money to the Bainbridges first. Among other things the message had got them half a dozen houses spread across th
e nation and a Cessna Citation XLS to get to them in.
Beside the Bainbridges was a well-known real estate tycoon who, among other things, owned the biggest casino in Las Vegas, and beside him was the lady CEO of the biggest combined tobacco, agribusiness and soft drink company in the world. There were others at the table whom Holliday didn't recognize, but recognizable or not they all exuded self-confidence, utter assurance of their own worth and immutable power.
And there wasn't a Timex in the room. Every wrist was decorated with Rolex, Omega, Patek Philippe or at the very least Cartier. Miles Bainbridge and his wife took the prize wearing his-and-hers matching Jules Audemars-Piguet Grande Complication platinum-cased watches at seven hundred thousand dollars a pop. If nothing else, God had answered their prayers at least.
With Holliday finally seated, Katherine Sinclair stilled the muted chatter by rapping her knuckles on the old scarred walnut table.
"Before we start I'd like to express my condolences to all the members of the family of our late leader and brother in the order, William Henry Adams. He will be greatly missed.
"In light of his passing, by the rules and Constitution of the Order, we are required to immediately call for conclave to elect a new leader, which is the reason we have all been called together as heads of all the surviving Rex Deus families.
"However, before we begin the voting procedures, I would like to introduce my daughter, Margaret Sinclair, who, as you all know, is a biblical archaeologist of some note. For the last two years and recently with the help of Lieutenant Colonel Dr. John Holliday, well-known medieval historian, Margaret has been on a quest for nothing less than the True Ark, which all of us here are aware of, I'm sure. I'll let Margaret make her announcement."
Meg stood up. She was dressed in a dark, expensive-looking pantsuit, her bright red hair up in a businesslike French twist. She was wearing cat's-eye librarian glasses around her neck on a velvet cord, an added touch that gave her a serious, no-nonsense look even though Holliday was fairly sure she didn't need them.
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