by mike Evans
When Prevost was gone, Tejada leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. In spite of the way things appeared, all wasn’t lost. Not really. There was only Russia to persuade and that could be accomplished. He would have to coach Philippe, but he could do that too. Things could be salvaged. All was not lost.
Then the phone rang and he knew by the sound of the ringtone it was Abaddon’s line. He didn’t even have to pick it up to hear the Master’s words. “Come to me. At once.”
Sophia insisted that Maria go to a bedroom and at least try to sleep for a few hours. Winters knew she was right, but it was all he could do not to post himself outside her door. Of course, he didn’t have a weapon, beyond a cast-iron skillet and some kitchen knives. But they were not completely defenseless. They had information and right then, that was what they needed.
While Maria rested, Winters used the time to chart out everything that had happened and the things Maria had told them. A time line, he’d learned, was an important tool for viewing events. It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with several significant pieces missing—pieces he needed if he was going to get into the heads of Tejada and Molina. He had to know how they thought, what drove them, or he couldn’t protect Maria or Sophia . . . or himself.
Twenty minutes into the task, Winters tossed the pen on the table and folded his hands behind his head. He could contact the Service, but he had to have more to give them than this puzzle with its gaping holes. He’d also been away from therapy with Julia Archer longer than he’d expected to be, so who knew what kind of reception he’d get if he called Rebhorn?
Winters pushed his chair back and stood for a view of the chart from a different angle.
“How can I help?” Sophia set a steamy mug in front of him and glanced over the chart.
“You can tell me why Catalonia Financial cares about the journal,” he said. “If they consider it the property of Spain or whatever, why not just ask us for it? Why all the subterfuge?” He scratched his head. “Usually when people in power are this desperate for something, it’s because it threatens their power. But the journal is over five hundred years old.”
Sophia looked over at him. “Will it do me any good to remind you of the prophecy of the tetrad?”
“You’re talking about some Barcelona group being the Antichrist.”
She nodded, still meeting his gaze.
“Catalonia Financial is a multibillion-dollar conglomerate, not a ‘brotherhood.’”
“I’m not so sure about that, Dad.”
Winters turned to see Maria crossing the room bundled in a pale blue terry-cloth robe, her hair pulled into a bun at the crown of her head. She looked so much like Anne he almost gasped. And just as her mother’s so often had been, her eyes were bright with an idea she just had to tell.
“Coffee, Maria?” Sophia asked.
“Please.” Maria came around the table to stand next to Winters.
He glanced at her. “What aren’t you sure of?”
“That the board at Catalonia isn’t a brotherhood. You should hear the chant they recite at the start of their meetings.”
Sophia abandoned the coffee. “Do you remember any of it?”
“You would think I would—I heard it enough times, but it was in Spanish. Something about ‘Con los antiguos . . . and for the future something-something.’” Maria tightened the belt on the robe. “I know it ended with ‘nuestras fortunas con el maestro’ because I thought that sounded like a dish they served at Los Caracoles.”
“‘Con los antiguos’ is ‘with the ancients,’” Sophia said. “So ‘with the ancients and for the future of’—we don’t know. And then ‘our fortunes to the Master.’”
“What master?” Winters frowned.
Maria shrugged. “I have no idea, but whoever it is, they practically worship him. They spoke the whole thing together and all of them had matching rings. Tejada wore his all the time.”
Winters looked at Sophia. “Is that some kind of Spanish business custom?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“But this isn’t just any business.” Maria poured her own coffee and took a seat at the table. “They’re all about their history, or at least Tejada is. He showed me pictures of his ancestors—Sebastian Somebody was one of them—he told me that Catalonia goes back to 1382.”
Sophia squeezed Winters’ fingers. Maria looked from one of them to the other. “What?” she said. “Does that mean something?”
“It could,” Sophia replied.
Winters let go of her hand and folded his arms across his chest. “Let’s not get carried away. I’m sure lots of European businesses go back that far.”
“What’s going on?” Maria set the mug down too hard and its contents splashed over the lip of the cup. “I mean, I’m in this just as deep as the two of you. Only I don’t know why you’re in it.”
“It’s a long story,” Winters said.
“I’ve got nothing but time right now.”
His stomach churned. Actually, they didn’t have time. This whole thing was becoming more dangerous by the minute. If they were dealing with psychos he was going to have to anticipate every move, and that was impossible to do unless he knew his enemy inside out.
“Dad.”
Winters shook himself and looked up at her. “We’ll explain it all to you—we will. But right now, I need you to tell me everything you know about this brotherhood thing.”
Maria gave him one more narrow-eyed look before she said, “Okay—from the fourteenth century on they were financiers, importers, that kind of thing. Tejada called them ‘A group of Barcelona businessmen.’”
Sophia leaned toward her. “Those were his exact words?”
“Yeah. Like I said, he has all these paintings of them and their descendants in his house and some on the walls at Catalonia’s office, but they’ve never published pictures of the board. You can’t find them anywhere on the Internet, not even on their website, which I found completely weird.”
Winters found it almost too incredible to believe. But he did.
“I told you about the mystery deal that Snowden was involved in,” Maria continued. “About Elena finding out about it and trying to cover it up—I know that’s why Molina had her killed.”
“I am sorry,” Sophia said.
“But I didn’t really believe Tejada was part of that, and I still don’t know for certain that he was. It seemed like it was all Molina. He was the one I saw with Schlesinger.”
Winters’ head came up from the chart. “Schlesinger? CIA Schlesinger?”
“I didn’t tell you this part?”
“What part?” He knew his voice was sharp, but the more Maria revealed, the more worried he became.
“After my initial trip over here, I went back to DC briefly. My assistant met me at the airport and we stopped for lunch on our way to the office. Molina and Schlesinger were in that restaurant having lunch together. They were at a table in back. I took notes on my cell phone but I left that in the apartment.” Her eyes opened wide with a look of realization. “Oh,” she gasped. “They’ve seen that by now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Winters said with a shake of his head. “They’re coming after us anyway. Do you remember any of what they were talking about?”
Maria’s face had gone pale, leaving only the faded traces of childhood freckles across her nose. Fear rose inside her but she pushed it aside, took a deep breath, and continued. “Apparently Molina had done Schlesinger some favor in Kenya and he was asking Schlesinger for a payback. Something about whatever had been intercepted in Chechnya, something that was now in a secure location.”
Winters fought against the familiarity of this as he strained to hear every word she said.
“Whatever Molina was asking him to do was ‘insane,’ at least in Schlesinger’s opinion. But it sounded like he’d committed some kind of indiscretion in Copenhagen that involved pictures of him with Danish schoolgirls. That part I learned later, on my own.”
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br /> “Molina was blackmailing him,” Winters said.
“He doesn’t know how to do anything else,” Maria said. “Except kill people.”
Winters pumped a clenched fist as he paced back and forth at the end of the table. “Did you hear anything else?”
“Yes. Something about someone picking up a suitcase. Someone named Jason Elliot. My assistant looked into that and found a Jason Elliot was killed recently. He’d been shot and then for some reason mowed down by a hit-and-run driver.”
Winters stopped pacing and looked away. “John?” Sophia asked. “What is it?”
Winters’ eyes closed and his mind whirred as snippets of information dropped into place. The prophecies—the journal—the ancient brotherhood—the idea of an Antichrist that seemed so outrageous. Until someone believed he was the one. Until he resurrected what had been intercepted in Chechnya on its way from Moscow to Tehran and hidden for forty-five years.
In a suitcase.
“Dad—you’re freaking me out,” Maria said.
“I’m freaking myself out.” He looked at them with his eyes wide and his cheeks ashen. “I know what they’re doing.”
When Tejada arrived in El Masnou, darkness had overtaken not just the somnolent city but Abaddon’s room. The old man, seated in his chair, was silhouetted in the window by the thin light of the moon, making it impossible to detect the expression on his face. Tejada was sure that was intentional.
“I came as soon as I could,” Tejada said.
“No, you did not.” Abaddon’s voice was not stern, as Tejada had expected, but it had the unexpected edge of excitement, as if something long anticipated had come to fruition. “You came when I summoned you, Emilio. You could have come sooner.”
“When was that, my lord?”
“When you knew that the plan as you saw it would not be fulfilled.”
“I do not know that yet. Another day of trading will—”
“Will do nothing,” Abaddon interrupted.
The fury Tejada had dreaded came alive for an instant but died in a single breath. Abaddon’s next words were soft, coaxing. “You still hold out hope that our one-world currency—our first step to the global government you will rule—will come about by acclamation.”
Tejada stepped forward, hoping to catch Abaddon’s face in the light, but the old man thrust out his hand. It was best to tread carefully. This was his last chance to stop this.
“Well?” Abaddon said.
“It is preferable to the alternative.”
“The alternative. You mean the ultimate solution I gave you.”
“Yes.”
“That is because you still harbor a soft spot for human beings.”
Tejada felt a chill run through his body. “I am one of them,” he replied.
“No!” Abaddon retorted. “You are not one of them. You are mine. You are one with me.”
“The Russians will agree—”
“No, they will not. Koslov has his own scheme for world power, but unlike you, Emilio, that is not his destiny. Yet unlike you, he has no tenderness.”
Abaddon turned his head, creating a dark, featureless profile against the window in the background. Tejada’s chill ran deeper.
“You must put aside tenderness in all its forms,” Abaddon continued. “You have already seen how it weakens you—in this turmoil you feel over Maria Winters.”
“She is gone,” Tejada said.
“And you plan to go after her.”
Tejada was speechless, not from Abaddon’s perceptiveness, but from Carlos Molina’s betrayal. He should have known this the moment Molina quoted Abaddon to him.
He should have known many things.
“There are some who seem to be more loyal to me than you are,” Abaddon said, confirming what Tejada already knew. “But I see through them—and that is what you must learn to do. You must sense things before you are told.”
The old man’s words were dizzying.
“But that does not matter at this moment,” Abaddon said with a dismissive gesture. “It is time for the solution.”
“I had hoped to avoid—”
“It is too late. The device is in place?”
“It is, my lord, but—”
“Then do it.”
“Because we have been unable to retrieve the journal?”
“Because Molina is a pretender.” Abaddon jabbed a gnarled finger in the dim light. “You, Emilio, are the only one I can trust to do as I say. When the documents are recovered—and they soon will be—they must be destroyed, along with the people who possess them. All of them. Only then will you be secure in taking your rightful place.”
Abaddon paused to draw a long, rattling breath. “The Americans must be crippled so that you can ascend. They have not been handicapped by the efforts you’ve made so far.”
Slowly Abaddon leaned forward and his face emerged from the shadows. At the sight of him, Tejada took a convulsive breath. The old man’s skin was thin and tight along his cheek bones. His eyes were sunken and when he smiled his lips pulled back to reveal the blackened roots of his teeth.
“It is time,” he said. “You will do it. You will give the order to detonate. And the bastion they call Wall Street will be demolished.”
The energy of Abaddon that had always infused Tejada’s soul and raised him to the heights of charisma and power now seemed instead to be sucking his soul out of himself. Tejada tried to pull away from the corpse of a man who now drew closer, but even his eyes could not move. Abaddon’s were locked on his with a hideous force Tejada could not resist.
“You are one with me,” Abaddon said in a low, raspy voice. “You are one with me.”
That idea was not new. Tejada’s complete revulsion was. Drawing on his last reserve of strength, Tejada nodded, bowed his head, and backed away. With words that had been drilled into him all his life he said, “It will be as you have said.”
Only then did Abaddon release him. And only then did Tejada take leave of the man he had called “Master” . . . and whom he now knew was completely deranged.
Within a matter of hours, the airy, white-walled house that overlooked the tiny village was transformed from Sophia’s retreat to a lockdown facility for the two women Winters loved most.
Curtains were drawn and shutters closed. Doors were locked and reinforced with bureaus and armoires, while emergency exits were fashioned from windows and a laundry chute. Sophia’s driver brought in new burn phones for all three of them, and then she dispatched him to a separate location—close enough to collect them on a moment’s notice but far enough away to put off anyone who might have followed him.
Winters had gathered every implement that could be used as a weapon and instructed Sophia and Maria on how to use them to defend themselves. At the same time, he also stressed the need to follow his orders without question, knowing secretly that he wouldn’t let either of them wield so much as a rolling pin against Tejada’s people.
With their physical security addressed, the most vital remaining issue was that of contacting Rebhorn to alert him to what Winters was certain Tejada and Molina planned to do. Then the appropriate agencies would go into action and he’d be out of it. More important, so would Maria and Sophia. But contacting Rebhorn was the tricky part. He already suspected Winters was crazy. If Winters didn’t have hard evidence to convince him, Rebhorn would simply write him off as lost and that would be the end of it—the end of his attempt to stop Tejada and Molina, and the end of his career with the Secret Service.
But hard evidence was something he lacked.
Winters still wasn’t sure he knew the true nature of Maria’s relationship with Tejada. She’d told him many things, none of which implicated her in any way, but every time she mentioned him a light went on in her eyes and the look on her face softened. It might matter—it might not. But he was going to have to wait for the right moment to ask her. She was vacillating between uncanny strength and an uncharacteristic vulnerability, and Sophia had
advised him to gauge his approach carefully.
And truth be told, his mind was otherwise occupied. He sat now in the dimly lit nook off the kitchen, half-listening to the murmur of female voices upstairs as he went over what he knew. He had to be clear before he called Rebhorn.
Winters pushed the notes he’d made into the yellow arc of light on the table. He was born about the time the so-called suitcase bombs had been intercepted on their way to Iran in the early seventies, but their existence was well known among the ranks of the Secret Service. Several of them had supposedly been hidden in secure locations around the United States. Speculation about those locations was a popular late-night topic among agents as they shared a beer after a long day. Rumor had it that the CIA had one or two that they kept for archival purposes—secured in a vault at Langley or in the fifth level of the Pentagon basement, depending on who recounted the story. Others suggested they were poorly constructed and leaked radiation, so it was a mystery to him why the CIA would have insisted on keeping them. He’d always suspected they’d forgotten where they’d put them—or that the rumors of their existence were unfounded—but apparently not.
He tapped his pen on the name Schlesinger and recounted in his mind the conversation Maria overheard. He could be totally wrong about what it meant. But the part about him having a dalliance with Danish schoolgirls was a no-brainer. Schlesinger was a sleazeball and should have been replaced long ago.
Winters stirred in his chair.
Schlesinger was obviously being blackmailed, but was he vulnerable enough to allow someone to talk him out of a radioactive bomb just to protect a reputation that didn’t exist? There had to be more to it, but that really didn’t seem to be the point. From the gist of the conversation, Molina had a nuclear suitcase bomb. That was the point. And if Molina did have a bomb, Winters had to assume he was going to use it.
And if these people would kill for a five-hundred-year-old journal they could have had for the asking, why wasn’t it plausible that they’d detonate a bomb? It would be nice to know why, but the essential question was . . . where?
