“First of all,” Helen came back, “it’s not my fault you need to lose-”
“Don’t go there, Helen! I’m a woman boiling in her own hormone hell and a few extra pounds has nothing to do with it!” Martha raged. “Besides, I paid you a compliment and you went for the gut, literally. That was uncalled for.”
Helen, wrapping herself in the oversized, down coat, mumbled sullenly, “I’m sorry, but your hormones need to stop hopping. You’re grumpy and mean sometimes. You didn’t have to get all hot about it. No pun intended.”
Martha glanced over at the now shrouded Helen and felt bad. She knew she’d been pretty testy lately.
“Well, I’m proud of you for jumping in like that and asserting yourself, but you haven’t been exactly easy going yourself lately.”
The coat answered unenthusiastically from down within its depths, “True.”
They rode for a while in silence.
“Holy Harriet, it’s cold in here,” Martha said, her hormones finally shutting off and her skin able to feel the real chilliness of the air. She fiddled with the knobs on the dash as Helen watched with a scowl on her face. After the adjustments had been made, Helen reached over and taking one of the red tresses of Martha’s hair, gave it a good, hard pull.
“What the heck did you do that for?” she asked.
“You deserved it,” Helen said smiling roguishly, and then as if a tension cord had been released, they both laughed like two women will who truly love each other and understand what each is going through.
In a short time, the car’s cab was warm and Helen was able to shed the coat. They talked about the notes in Annalena’s journal. Helen explained about the auctioneer of Count Libri’s estate, Mr. Wentzle, who had stated in his records that the Leonardo folios were purchased by someone with the initials ‘VW’. Annalena had been able to track two successful buyers from that evening had those initials: Verena Wittener and a Czechoslovakian nobleman, Count von Wallenstein.
“What do you think our chances are that we find it in Czech?” Martha asked as she nibbled on a pretzel.
“Hard to tell,” Helen answered. “It’s such a long shot simply because we have to show up on someone’s doorstep, introduce ourselves and then ask nicely if we can see their library. This might be a pretty hard sell situation.”
“Ya think?” Martha asked cynically. “Better brush our teeth and smile convincingly. Nothing like two disheveled Americans asking to see the da Vinci to entice a wealthy European aristocrat to throw open their doors and offer a warm welcome.”
“I don’t blame them. That’s why we should try and call first,” Helen said.
The coffee had grown cold in the thermos they’d brought and the last of the snacks were laying between them on the seat looking rumpled, ransacked and ravished. Lights growing in the distance, indicated they would soon be coming into a sizable metropolitan area. An overhead road sign announced Prague was only another fifty kilometers.
The villages along the road were sleeping under a freshly fallen snow that lay on the ground, on pine trees and on tops of roofs, giving the entire scene a picturesque Christmas card feeling. Weather in the higher elevations could be tricky. They’d been using the GPS map app on Helen’s phone to find the address of their first stop in search of the manuscript. The device was leading them up into taller hills covered with majestic conifer forests pressing in on either side of the road.
Light from the moon overhead allowed the women to catch a glimpse of an imposing structure sitting almost vertically above them.
“The phone says you should turn right here and go up along this narrow road,” Helen said, pointing to a lonely lane overhung with trees and a tall, ornate iron gate left open on one side.
Everything from the patches of lost plaster on the substantial gate posts to the overgrown vines that had pulled down a section of the high wall at the front of the entrance, implied a sense of either great indifference or great lack of funds to keep the old place up. Two bright spots, generous half-barrels filled with some form of greenery and tulips beginning to raise their heads indicated it was more a question of the latter issue than of the likelihood of the first.
“According to the address Annalena gives, this is the place,” Helen said. She began to read from the notebook:
“The Castle von Wallenstein is the ancestral home of an old noble Bohemian Czech family and sits outside the village of Jince. The count, a collector of religious works and a member of the Knights Templar purchased a group of ambiguously described documents at Libri’s 1861 London auction.”
“Things look like they haven’t changed much since then,” Martha muttered as she eased the car along the side of the road and put it into park.
They both strained their necks to get a better angle in order see the tips of the castle’s towers rising above massive pines near the top of what must have been the summit and the structure’s seat. A cold moon hovered above the tree line while long, stretched out, grey clouds scuttled across its face as if they wanted to get along as quickly as possible to somewhere else. Martha flipped the headlights off and turned to Helen.
“This has to be it,” Martha said. “It’s got all the elements of a nineteen-thirty’s horror film. Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney ought to show up anytime. Why did it have to look like this? It’s huge. Those three round towers are probably filled with torture equipment. Don’t you get the feeling it has some kind of sweeping, stone staircase inside and probably a few gargoyles crouching over the parapets?”
Helen studied what was visible through the windshield and released a deep sigh.
“It’s almost five o’clock in the morning. We can’t wake these people until at least nine. Let’s go into the city of Prague and get a room. We’ll sleep a few hours, have a shower and call them to set up a time to meet.”
The words had no sooner slipped from her mouth than a figure in a long cloak ambled down the shadowy lane that led up to the castle. White moonbeams filtered through the newly leafed trees and backlit the dark, inarticulate silhouette as it trod towards the gate’s opening. With each step that brought it closer to Helen and Martha’s car, the two women instinctively pushed back and down into their seats in an effort to not be seen.
“Who do you think that is?” Martha whispered.
“I don’t know. Why did you have to park right here?” Helen whispered back, but sounding a trifle frantic. “He surely can see us.”
“Well, when I parked, I didn’t think we’d be visited by Dracula,” Martha answered and double-checked that the car’s doors were locked. “Don’t roll your windows down, Helen, if he comes over. If you invite them in, you’re doomed!”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Helen hissed, “I’m going to probably kill you before Vlad the Impaler gets the chance!”
Martha shot a quick look at Helen.
“You know, you’re being the difficult one now. I’m trying to save you from what might be an evil presence, and I think the least you could do is recognize what a nice gesture on my part that is,” Martha retorted.
Helen’s mouth opened and shut again. She shook her head like she was trying to rid it of some kind of confusion. Experience had shown her that chasing after Martha, down into the rabbit holes of her outlandish viewpoints, was never the best plan of action.
Fortunately, fate intervened because while Martha was indignantly asserting her hurt feelings, the figure had emerged from the gate, ran up to the driver’s side of the car, bent down and was now pressing it’s white face against the glass.
Helen’s stroke-like expression and the way she’d pressed herself against her own car door tipped Martha off ‘the thing’ was probably on the other side of the quarter-inch safety glass. She quit talking and studied her friend’s face.
“It’s behind me, isn’t it?” she asked, never taking her eyes off Helen.
The other’s jerky, spasm-like nod was Martha’s only indication she was right. With her left eye squeezed shut against the possible hor
ror waiting only inches on the other side of the glass, she turned her head to see a man’s face pressed against her window.
A massively loud bang on the top of the car caused both women to jump as they let out bloodcurdling screams. The face, smiling broadly, revealed a fairly good set of teeth and appeared to enjoy its ability to elicit such a fun reaction in the two women. Alongside of the laughing head, two hands waved in a gesture of friendliness as the face sang a rollicking good tune with his mouth pressed against the glass.
“Roll the window down,” Helen hissed. “He wants to talk with us.”
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Martha exclaimed. “That’s EXACTLY what I said we shouldn’t do! He’s not talking, Helen! He’s mumbling a song!”
“Oh my God! Roll the damn window down! It’s obviously someone from the castle.”
“Yeah! Deranged Nosferatu wants us to roll our window down, Helen. NOT the best idea, EVER!!” Martha yelled over the ear splitting pounding as the two hands beat against the roof and some form of greeting was being yelled through the glass.
“Look!” Helen yelled pointing at the gate.
Another figure, this time a woman, came hurrying through the opening and towards the man still accosting Helen and Martha’s car.
The thumper-smiler-singer, seeing his pursuer, dashed off down the road in the opposite direction of her. As the woman passed them, she waved her hands in a frantic way, indicating she needed their help and called to them, “Pomoc! Pomoc! Prosím!”
“I don’t speak Czech but I think she needs our help, Helen,” Martha said.
“What about vampires and werewolves eating us alive?” Helen asked sarcastically.
“He’s obviously neither or the woman would be running the opposite way instead of following him. He’s probably her brother, grampa or an older person like Mr. Trowelbridge down the street from me in Marsden-Lacey who has dementia. Every once in a while, Mr. Trowelbridge likes to do a runner and his daughter, Wanda, has to get a few neighbors together to find him and bring him home. Almost every time, you’ll find him at one of the pubs. But not to worry, Helen. Just in case, I’ve got just the thing for the run-of-the-mill crazies,” Martha said.
Throwing open her car door and pulling her wooly fleece jacket from the back seat, she put it on. Then digging in her purse, she pulled out a compact cylinder of pepper spray saying, “Here it is.”
Helen, too, got out and slammed her door shut. She followed quickly behind Martha, trying to wrap a scarf around her head and neck. “Hey, wait up!”
Into the night, down a frosty unknown mountainous road went a memory challenged singer, his frantic keeper and two good-hearted souls who should have known better. As the tune of an old Czech children’s song receded into the darkest gloom, only silence was left behind. Helen’s cell phone, abandoned on the seat of the car, broke the disquiet of the women's sudden, frenzied departure.
‘Annalena Kirchner’ the display read and a text message arrived.
“There is danger. You are being followed. Hurry!”
Chapter 27
Leeds, England
The terrier cocked his head to one side as he watched Perigrine cut pieces of boiled chicken into tiny bite-sized morsels and put them on a piece of crisp, white Japanese bone china. The meeting had been a surprise to both of them, what with one seeing someone arriving through the window wearing a ski mask and the other feeling a firm bite on his left calf as his feet touched the floor.
Neither had taken either act as a real infraction that might inhibit the opportunity for a burgeoning friendship. So, being a dog lover and having opposable thumbs, it was Perigrine who had taken the first step to building a more harmonious relationship, and put the dog’s needs ahead of his own by preparing a human-canine Détente dinner.
“Here, my friend,” Perigrine said through his ski mask and putting the plate on the floor for the brown and white wire-haired dog to enjoy. The floppy-eared defender of hearth and home finished the meal rapidly, according to his canine custom, and trotted in a sociable manner alongside his new best human’s legs, straight into his old master’s office.
Curling up in his doggy bed and tucking into his favorite chew toy, Rascal, for that was the name embroidered on the dog bed, settled down for a pleasant after-dinner activity. He wasn’t inconvenienced in any way by Perigrine’s cheerful whistling or tapping upon his owner’s personal computer’s keyboard. In fact, Rascal, soon was snoring. His short hind legs paddled at the air as if he was running in his dream, and his mouth, if a dog can, smiled at the joy of crossing great lengths of ground after a cunning, fast-moving prey.
“Here’s something interesting,” Perigrine said as he flicked easily through Commissioner St. Stephens’ email archives. “Never realized such a ‘saint’ was involved. He did a beautiful job of keeping his name out of the storyline. Then they let Alistair and I take the fall. So glad to have finally found who was really running the money laundering game. Let’s see where he’s kept his correspondence… you don’t suppose. Ah! Nice!”
His youthful academic education of having to study the classics had come in handy for the thousandth time in Perigrine’s life. He scrolled through the commissioner’s files and the arrow lingered over one titled ‘Bolgia Ten’, the place in Hell for counterfeiters and deceivers.
“Has to be the right file with a name like that.”
Perigrine tapped on the icon and his eyes widened as he read the list of secondary files within. Taking out a flash drive, he inserted it into the computer. When he was finished, he scribbled a note — “Gotcha!”, which he stuck to the top of the laptop.
Seconds later, he was back over at the window where he’d first entered the beautiful sixth-story residence. Rascal had followed him. As Perigrine took out the cross bow and attached the cable to the steel firing arrow, he bent down and gave the good-natured dog a pat.
Rascal sat patiently watching as Perigrine aimed and fired the arrow out of the window in the direction of a lower building’s roof on the opposite side of the River Aire. It hissed through the night and lodged with a thud in the masonry of a Victorian chimneystack.
Perigrine reached inside his pocket and pulled out a nice sized piece of the chicken he’d cut up earlier. Connecting the metal trolley to the cable, he settled himself upon it and threw the chicken back behind him and into the room. As Rascal ran to retrieve the decoy, Perigrine closed the window and released the trolley’s brake. He slipped quietly through the space between the two buildings and made a landing so soft that those sleeping below the roof never heard the whisper of his feet as he touched down.
Scrambling back up to his original spot where he’d shot the first arrow that evening, Perigrine worked the retractable cable reel. Soon, it swallowed up the entire zip-line, so no trace would be left behind other than the one steel arrow embedded above the condo’s window. Putting everything back into his bag, he removed his ski mask from his head and slid down a drainpipe to a back street below. As he unlocked his car, he yawned contentedly and threw his bag on the backseat.
Things were falling into place nicely. His Alfa Romeo hummed into life. In no time at all, Leeds was receding in Perigrine’s rear view mirror as the sun was rising above the eastern horizon.
Chapter 28
Autobahn outside of Aalen, Germany
Max studied the car’s built-in GPS display as the autobahn’s early morning traffic thickened with each passing minute. His route would take him through the medieval city of Aalen and eastward through Nuremberg to the Czech border. If he made good time, he’d make his destination in another four hours. The two morning flights from Stuttgart to Prague were full, so driving was the only option.
“At the next exit, enter the roundabout, taking the second exit. Continue onto the autobahn,” the female voice from the navigation system said.
Easily maneuvering the vehicle through the directions, he sat back and considered what his own options were. He’d been down this road before, so to spe
ak, but last night everything had changed.
Max knew he had a problem. When he’d gone back to check the back rooms of Kirchner’s house last night, he’d heard the girl asking someone in a surprised voice, “Why did you come back here Tom? You’re not supposed to be here.”
That’s when Max grabbed the man and put him down on the ground. It wasn’t until he dragged him out into the living area and got a really good look at him, that he put the name she’d said and the man’s features together. He quickly calculated the years. It was like a kick to the gut.
Haimon hadn’t seemed to notice the strong similarities between the twenty year old boy standing in front of him and his own brother, but Max did—almost immediately. Haimon would get rid of Tom. In fact, Haimon would want to get rid of the entire group after the manuscript was collected. It wasn’t that Max minded killing. He liked killing and got pleasure from it, but there was a problem with Tom that unnerved Max. The minute he had laid eyes on him, he’d felt something he’d never felt before. The boy was his kid, not Haimon’s.
If Haimon recognized the resemblance, everything between the two brothers would be over. Patricia Keenes had died and with her, Max had hoped, also died the truth. His allegiance had always been to Haimon. He'd idolized his bother and when Patricia came into the picture, Max’s every waking hour was in conflict. His brother’s wife was beautiful and he couldn’t keep his eyes from her.
It had been a torturous hell wanting to watch her, but if Haimon had seen, he would have killed them both. Haimon was a jealous man. What was his was his. He'd known how men looked at his wife. No one, not even his own brother, was exempt from reaping the consequences of such a slight to Haimon’s ego.
Max’s mind went back to the night all those years ago when Haimon, unsuspecting of Max’s feelings, had left to drive into St. Paul for business and told Max to watch over things at the house. Even though the hour was late, Max had hoped Patricia would still be awake. He would have her all to himself, if to only talk to and look at without the fear of Haimon seeing what was behind his eyes.
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