Ascendant

by Sean Ellis

  Mira felt a momentary pang of sympathy, but then the last piece of the puzzle slid into place. She turned abruptly, accusing: “You think you’re here to protect me.”

  DiLorenzo frowned, betraying the truth of her words. “Obviously you don’t need my help. But you had no way of knowing that you would be on this guy’s home turf. I thought the least I could do was warn you.”

  Mira turned away, shaking her head. “Prince Charming, come to rescue me.”

  “Oh, well excuse me for being concerned about you.” Before she could parry, he became contrite. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Confused by his sudden reversal, she turned to him again, unable to hide the conflicting emotions in her expression. “How did you mean it?”

  He shrugged. “You left without saying good-bye.”

  In spite of her ire, she found herself laughing at the simple statement. “You’re right, I did. I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Good.” He grinned weakly and stared at her for a moment. “I guess you’ve had another run in with Montero.”

  She nodded. “And Rachel Aimes and our friend from Walter’s apartment.”

  “It’s a regular family reunion down here. Any clue as to what it is they want?”

  “Actually, I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  Over a light meal delivered from the café downstairs, Mira recounted her misadventures off the Chilean coast. Although she omitted mention of her battle with the reanimated remains of the SS officer, she grudgingly showed the detective the Trinity relic she had recovered.

  “Can I touch it?” When she did not forestall him, DiLorenzo extended a cautious finger, acting as if he expected to receive a shock from the artifact. “I still don’t completely understand what all the fuss is about.”

  “I think there were originally three of them, and that when they were joined together—three in one, a true Trinity—they produced staggering supernatural power.”

  “I know, you told me.” DiLorenzo continued to evince skepticism. “But if it’s all that, then how did they get lost for so long?”

  “A fair question. Clearly, the pieces were separated at some point, but they were still individually quite powerful. One of them stayed in Atlantis, where it became the center of a revolt that ultimately destroyed the entire civilization.”

  DiLorenzo reached out for the relic again, this time without hesitancy. “But this isn’t that Trinity?”

  “No. According to the notes I found with it, this one is from a culture in Asia that paralleled Atlantis. It seems that in the years leading up to World War II, certain elements in the Nazi hierarchy devoted themselves to a search for occult knowledge—”

  “Mmhmm. I saw the movie.”

  Mira laughed dryly. “Well, the movie may have exaggerated a little, but for a while, some of the high-ranking members of the Nazi party were convinced that they could find Atlantis.

  “There was another legend that caught their fancy as well; a myth about a kingdom hidden in the interior earth that was home to a superior white race known as the Aryans.”

  DiLorenzo’s eyebrows went up in disbelief. “Now why does that sound familiar?”

  “It was the key to their doctrine of racial purity. The Nazis, and by extension all Germans who fit into the mold, could claim to be descendants of that supposed ‘master race.’ Finding proof of the existence of the hollow earth was, you can imagine, of great interest.

  “There was a particularly unscrupulous man named Tarrant—an American fortune hunter—who brought the Nazis artifacts, which he claimed to have recovered from an Aryan dwelling in Southeast Asia. Despite his ethical shortcomings, Tarrant came pretty close to finding it.”

  “Wait a minute. You mean this Aryan kingdom really existed?”

  “Not as Hitler imagined it. There was no white master race living in a hollow earth. But after Tarrant found the first Trinity—he didn’t actually use that word—he told Mann, the SS officer who was running him, that there was another just like it somewhere in the South Pacific—”

  “The lemur place!” DiLorenzo exclaimed.

  Mira flashed a smile. “Very good. At that point, Tarrant began calling the talismans ‘the Twins’ evidently evoking dualities common in folklore: the Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux; Romulus and Remus; the Mayan hero twins Hunahpu & Xbalanque; as well as oppostire pairings, God and the Devil, Yin and Yang, and so forth.

  “When they studied the first relic, the Nazis realized that they had found something of unbelievable power—the kind of power that might actually change the outcome of the war.

  “Mann funded Tarrant’s second search and then rendezvoused with him on a remote island. Tarrant then claimed that there was a third artifact, but Mann didn’t believe him. Instead, he killed Tarrant and took the second Trinity—”

  “This one?” DiLorenzo held out the artifact.

  “Exactly. But Tarrant was right; there was a third piece, the Trinity of Atlantis, hidden in a temple in Panama.”

  “Which you found.”

  “Which I found,” Mira confirmed.

  “So the Nazis had two of the three Trinities. Why didn’t they use that power to win the war?”

  “The war was already lost. It was no coincidence that Mann was in the South Pacific when he was. It seems that in addition to searching for the entrance to the Aryan kingdom at the center of the Earth, he was also in charge of building the Nazis’ last redoubt; an underground bunker where they would be able to nurse their war wounds and plan the Fourth Reich. After killing Tarrant, Mann returned to his U-boat, planning to unite the Twins in the secret facility he had built in South America.”

  “Where the escaped Odessa Nazis have been hiding out for the last sixty years.”

  Mira shook her head thoughtfully. “I don’t think the Nazi survivors or their heirs ever made it there. Apparently, only Mann knew the exact location. Like the Pharaohs of Egypt, he used slave labor to build his stronghold and executed everyone when it was done. He was to have led the way when the evacuation began, but he never made it. The sub foundered off the coast and the location of the refuge died with him, along with one of the three relics.”

  The last piece of the puzzle clicked into place for the detective. “So Montero and Rachel Aimes are just the last in a long line of Nazis who have been searching for this lost refuge, doubtless hoping to find a mother lode of Nazi gold.”

  “Along with the other Trinities.”

  DiLorenzo relinquished the talisman. “So what do we do now?”

  “‘We’ don’t do anything. You can finish your vacation anywhere you like—”

  “While you traipse off to this hidden fortress and grab the other Trinity. You make it sound so easy.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I have had some experience with this, thank you very much.”

  “Come on,” he chuckled. “You know you need me.”

  Despite her firm conviction that she would be continuing on alone, Mira found herself compelled to let the handsome detective attempt to convince her otherwise. “I need you?”

  “Well, for starters, I’d be an extra pair of eyes and hands. Montero and the gang will still be looking for you. Looking for you. Not the two of us. This is their turf. If you go cruising through the city on that motorcycle, how long do you think it will be before they spot you? I can rent us a car or something, and while you keep your head down, we can drive away, right under their noses. And you do know that they will be expecting you to lead them to this Nazi refuge, don’t you?”

  “That’s how the game usually plays out.”

  “Yeah, well anything we can do to escape their notice right now, will put them off the scent.”

  Mira unconsciously chewed her lower lip. DiLorenzo’s logic was unassailable. In fact, she knew that teaming up with him was probably the course of wisdom. But something prevented her from encouraging his participation in the quest, something she was not quite ready to admit to herself. The brief infatuation she had
flirted with during their encounters in New York had returned with a vengeance, as did all the guilt that had resulted from the last time she had let herself entertain those feelings. . . .

  Before she could sort out the dilemma, a premonition of danger snapped her back to reality. Her face took on a razor sharp intensity, and DiLorenzo paled beneath the sudden harsh glare. He fumbled to apologize for whatever he had said or done to warrant the abrupt metamorphosis, but before he could utter a single word, Mira snapped erect, the Beretta in her right hand. “Down!”

  “Jesus!” gasped DiLorenzo, rolling out of his seat and sprawling out on the floor in a panic.

  The gun roared in the tiny room, a deafening thunderclap to accompany the tongue of flame that erupted from the muzzle, scorching the air where DiLorenzo had been standing. Before the spent cartridge could hit the floor, Mira sprang forward, reaching out with her empty left hand. In the periphery of his vision, he saw her thrust clawed fingers into a newly created void where a windowpane had been an instant before. When Mira drew back her hand, her fingers were curled around the loose cloth of a dark military-style shirt.

  The shirt adorned the staggering form of a man, gasping for air as he flailed his arms uselessly. DiLorenzo almost missed the oblong metal object clutched in the man’s right fist, a long-barreled .22-caliber semi-automatic pistol, equipped with a suppressor which, like a car’s muffler, baffled the sound of the exploding gases in the firing chamber. Mira had detected his presence and preemptively silenced him with a single shot. The man’s eyes, barely visible through the slit in the ski mask-style balaclava that hid his features, glazed over a moment later, and his dead weight pulled his shirtfront from Mira’s fingers.

  In a fluid movement, like a dancer executing a ballet step, Mira plucked the pistol from the dead man’s fingers and tossed it to DiLorenzo, who caught it, more out of reflex than intent. She spun on a heel, sweeping Mann’s papers and the Trinity into her backpack, and then she was gone, plunging through the smashed window. DiLorenzo stared at the weapon in his hand, waiting for the incredulity of the moment to pass.

  Mira peeked through the opening, her eyes ablaze with intensity. “Coming?”

  The alley below the second-story window was empty but for Mira’s Harley Davidson and the usual flotsam of daily urban life. There was no sign of reinforcements or transportation for the lone assailant that now lay dead on the floor of Room Six, but Mira knew the man was not alone. After quickly urging her new companion to follow, she holstered her gun, turned back toward the window frame, and stepped off.

  Her fingers caught the outside sill, arresting her fall, after which she safely dropped to the street below. The detective’s face appeared in the window frame, a bewildered expression distorting his otherwise attractive face.

  “Unless you want to entertain his friends,” Mira stage whispered from the alley below, “I suggest you get moving.”

  DiLorenzo muttered a stream of disbelieving profanity as he clumsily crawled over the window frame, awkwardly lowering first his left leg, then his recalcitrant right. Unwilling to surrender to gravity, he lingered there, his torso teetering on the sill. Shaking her head in frustration, Mira turned and sprinted toward her motorcycle.

  In some remote corner of her mental process, a flicker of resentment toward the detective began to smolder. Already he was proving to be a liability. How he had prospered in the police force tasked with patrolling the reputedly mean streets of New York City was a mystery to her. His languor endangered both of them. While she waited, concerned for his safety, she was as much a target as he.

  Curtis would have . . .

  She banished the thought before it could lead her down a dangerous path. She trusted her psychic gift to keep her one step ahead of a bullet, but she couldn’t extend that protection to DiLorenzo any more that she had been able to protect Curtis in Panama. She could try to warn him, but he would hesitate and he would die, and she would be left to carry the guilt for another lost lover.

  She contemplated simply leaving, diverting the pursuit away from him and drawing the assassins after their real target. That she did not abandon him was a further source of irritation to her. Had she already gotten so attached to him that her emotions were clouding her judgment on a subconscious level?

  The motorcycle roared between her legs, a single downward stroke of the kickstarter sufficing to bring it to life. The glass-pack mufflers, a flashy addition by some previous owner, did little to dampen the noise, but the idling of the Harley’s engine was unquestionably quieter than the earlier gunshot. It would, however, reveal her intent to escape to the slain man’s accomplices. She figured the detective had about five seconds to grow a backbone and catch up to her, or else she would leave him behind forever.

  DiLorenzo finally got his nerve and dropped awkwardly to the pavement. The silenced pistol was threaded between his belt and the waistband of his trousers; that it would become entangled if he attempted to draw the weapon was a foregone conclusion in Mira’s mind. She prayed that she would not have to rely on his shooting skills to survive what lay ahead.

  Mira scooted forward as far as was possible, contorting her leg in order to manipulate the shifter, and made room for DiLorenzo. He straddled the rear fender, instinctively wrapping his arms around her narrow waist, and let his toes drag on the ground. As soon as his hands clasped together, his chest pressed tight against her back, she released the clutch lever and the motorcycle shot forward.

  Riding with the extra weight of a passenger required her full attention. The center of gravity had changed, and the bike felt sluggish and wobbly, but the gyroscopic effect of the spinning tires quickly compensated. And after a few seconds, she knew how to handle the bike efficiently in spite of the added mass.

  The motorcycle roared into the street that intersected the alley, skidding sideways in a carefully controlled maneuver that caused DiLorenzo’s grip to tighten. Mira righted the bike immediately and charged straight ahead down the nearly empty street. Before she had gone a block, however, two parked cars rumbled to life behind her. She didn’t have to look back to identify them. She had noticed the Suburban the instant they left the alley; the ragged holes in its fiberglass grille marked it as one of those she had disabled after escaping Rachel Aimes’ trap at Muldoon’s port village. Almost as conspicuous was a sleek black Volvo S80 T6 sedan parked facing in the opposite direction, obviously out of place in the rundown neighborhood where the Hotel Imperial was situated.

  Vehicle traffic on the streets around the Imperial was light. Mira wove the Harley in between the meandering cars and the odd delivery truck, eliciting vocal responses from a few drivers, but scarcely impacting the flow of the mid-afternoon commute. All that changed in the instant that the Volvo squealed through a broad U-turn and created instant pandemonium. The Suburban slipped into the void created when half a dozen vehicles abruptly stopped, scattering to the sides of the avenue in a desperate attempt to avoid a collision with the Volvo. Both chasing vehicles left trails of smoking rubber on the macadam as they screamed after Mira and her passenger.

  Mira pushed the Harley as fast as she dared, cutting in and out of traffic and dodging down surface streets in search of a new place to hide. They worked their way through rambling neighborhoods and were eventually shunted into the arterial thoroughfares that crisscrossed the city. The two pursuers rapidly closed the distance, out-muscling the overburdened antique Harley Davidson engine, and only the motorcycle’s maneuverability kept Mira and DiLorenzo ahead of the chase. On the more heavily traveled avenidas, however, the game turned in favor of the prey.

  Midday congestion, the first wave of urbanite Argentines escaping the workplace, had snarled traffic in their path. Long streams of automobiles, belching heat and noxious vapors without making any discernible progress, seemed to stretch ahead forever, broken only by an occasional intersection mechanically regulated by a traffic signal.

  Mira drove into the current without slowing, leaning to the right as the rea
r tire skidded into line. She felt her passenger flailing and leaned a little further to compensate for his erratic movements. There was no time to teach him how to survive the ride—barely enough for the split-second decisiveness that would keep them from spilling onto the crowded pavement. DiLorenzo, she decided, was on his own.

  As he regained his equilibrium Mira aimed the front wheel into the narrow channel between the stagnant rows, down the painted line, and goosed the throttle. The Harley shot forward, the speedometer needle marking thirty . . . forty . . . fifty miles and hour. This was going to be the trickiest driving she had ever attempted.

  The detective from New York thought that he was getting the hang of riding on the backseat. He glanced back over his shoulder, and saw that their foes had been momentarily thwarted by the gridlock.

  “Duck!”

  Though he had spent only a few hours in her company, DiLorenzo had already begun to learn how to respond to his new traveling companion’s orders. In another life, he would have questioned her, demanding clarification or explanation. But with the adrenaline surge that even now lingered as a numb tingling in his fingertips, he had learned how to simply react, following Mira’s lead and directions without question.

  He ducked.

  Something bright flashed over his head, passing behind him before he could put a name to the object that had missed him by a hand’s breadth. The protruding side mirror of an oversized pick-up truck, stretching out almost as far as the midpoint between the two lanes of traffic, had nearly taken his head off.

  His amazed relief at the near miss quickly gave way to a different sort of awe. Though the two chase vehicles were eclipsed from his view, a sudden cacophony of horns and screeching metal, strangely audible over the roar of the motorcycle’s engine, reached his ears, giving testimony to the fact that the hunt was far from over.