The Cosega Sequence Box Set

by Brandt Legg

  “Not a whole history. There aren’t enough hours for that. But in case you’ve forgotten, the Vatican is trying to kill me, and your boyfriend, Senator Monroe, is best buddies with the Pope. That was probably worth mentioning!”

  “I didn’t tell you about Monroe because it’s ancient history and had no relevance to our situation.”

  “No relevance! When did you last talk to him?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Come on, Gale, think about it. You and I met on July 10th, so go from there.”

  “I guess it was on the ninth,” she said softly.

  “What? Could you speak a little louder? I’m not sure the NSA’s mics can hear you when you whisper.”

  She just looked at him.

  “Don’t, Gale. You have the audacity to look at me as if you’ve been betrayed. You talked to Monroe the day before I found the Eysen, and you pretend that it didn’t matter. Do you know he regularly meets with Vatican officials? And what about his nickname, Senator NSA?”

  “His opponents call him that for political gain.”

  “Because it’s true; he is the agency’s greatest champion. Your lover is big brother; he’s the God-damned Antichrist. How could you?”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong. I even thought of calling him to help us.”

  “That’s so funny, it’s not even funny. Gale, I don’t believe anything you say. You kept your relationship with Larsen secret. Now the Senator, and Sean Stadler, were they ever on our side, or were they working with the NSA from the start?”

  “The NSA?”

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t know.” Rip couldn’t stop his anger. “I do have one question for you. And, if you’re capable of honesty, I’d really appreciate knowing. That first day, were you the one who called from the camp and told what we found?”

  “I can’t believe you’d even ask me that.” Gale clenched her fists around the wheel, determined not to cry.

  “You had access to Larsen’s satphone. Did you call Monroe? The FBI? Were you the Vatican plant?”

  “Go to hell, Rip!”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Has that been the plan all along? Find out everything I know, and then kill me?”

  “You’re so confused.”

  “Damn right I’m confused. Being surrounded by nothing but lies tends to do that to a person. Sean traps us, wants to kill me, you with Larsen, with Monroe . . . Senator freaking NSA! Man, it’s hard to believe, I actually . . . All you’ve done for days is try to poison me against the one person who could help me, not coincidently also the person who could tell me the truth about you.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “I wish I were, Gale,” he said, trying to calm down. “But even if you were innocent, and all of this soap opera was an awful coincidence, how do I know what else you haven’t told me? I mean, come on, you’re sleeping with the enemy. Tell me what you would think, if you were me?”

  “I would believe the good and not the bad. I would do what Clastier says . . . trust.”

  Chapter 57

  For more than an hour, there had been only the sound of the rattling engine of Tahoma’s old truck, and the tires rolling along the sun-baked asphalt. Gale and Rip both tried to make sense of Larsen being alive, Sean being dead, the Monroe drama, and the complex ramifications of it all. They rode in rigid silence until, just outside Flagstaff, Gale pulled into an empty parking lot in front of an abandoned building that looked like it might have once been a carpet store. She stepped onto the broken blacktop that had mostly been reclaimed by weeds.

  “What’s this?” Rip asked, ready to pull out Grinley’s gun. His eyes darted. “Is this where someone kills me?”

  Gale shook her head, squinted her eyes in disbelief, tossed him the car keys, turned, and walked away.

  Rip jumped out. “Where are you going?”

  “Away from you,” she said, adjusting her pack.

  Rip didn’t know what to say, wasn’t sure what to do. He watched her going down the highway for a minute, before calling after her, “It’s not safe to be out there walking around in broad daylight. They know we’re going to Flagstaff. Come back, let’s talk about this.” He couldn’t believe that he was calling her back.

  “I’ll be fine.” She waved over her shoulder.

  He thought for a minute. Gale would be fine. Monroe would protect her. Maybe that’s why she’d been so cool throughout all of this; she was never in any danger. He watched her get farther away, still unsure. Gale’s leaving confirmed her guilt; she was too smart to just go on a suicide run. Rip got back in the car. He had to meet the extraction team. Gale didn’t know about that. No one did. It was almost over now.

  Rip, determined to speed by, slowed down when he caught up to her. He yelled across the open lane between them. “Are you sure?” Again, surprised to be involuntarily giving her another chance.

  “Good luck, Rip.”

  “You, too,” was all he could think to say, before stepping on the accelerator. He followed her in the rearview mirror until she was lost to the heat-blurred horizon.

  “Damn,” he said out loud. “If I can’t figure out that whole mess with Gale, how am I going to understand the Cosega sequence? How will I make sense out of the Eysen at all?”

  Gale walked on the gravely shoulder, numb with shock, unaccustomed to being exposed, feeling like a girl skipping school, except that nefarious people lurked in every shadow. Second-guessing every decision since that day so long ago when she’d accepted the invitation of her then-professor Monroe. Hers had been a serious crush, but she had never expected to cross the line. And dating Larsen, that had definitely been a mistake, even though it led her to the Eysen and the Clastier Papers. She should have told Rip about Larsen, and especially about Monroe, early on; she could have explained them a hundred different ways. Things are better up front, without anger and fear.

  Sean was a different matter altogether. The Stadler brothers had been the most innocent victims in the whole crisis. Even Topper knew, after a lifetime of guarding secrets, that danger was never far from his door. But the Stadler brothers had wandered into the storm thinking the world was a gentle place filled with laughter and pretty places. Gale felt the worst about them.

  She’d seen a billboard for a motel a few miles back, so she knew there wasn’t far to walk. Low on cash, since Rip had Grinley’s envelope, she would be able to stay only one night, but that gave her about twenty hours to take a long bath, to sleep, and to find a solution.

  Chapter 58

  Rip followed the GPS instructions and arrived near the meeting point almost a full hour before the extraction team was going to pull him out by helicopter. Fifteen minutes earlier, while at a truck stop, he’d found the tracking device in his pack. It had not been easy to find, and if he hadn’t known about it; the flexible quarter-sized chip would have remained undetected.

  He came across a driver checking his load and struck up a conversation; the guy was heading to San Diego. Rip managed to get the tracking device into the cab; then watched as the semi drove away.

  It was then that he realized Gale’s tracking device was still in her pack. Even if she wasn’t working with them, the NSA now knew the two of them had separated. And, if she were actually a Vatican agent, then everyone knew, except maybe the FBI. He still didn’t understand all the connections and the shady double-deals, as mighty powers jockeyed to get their hands on the Eysen. While thinking about Gale’s role, it occurred to him that maybe he hadn’t been the only one looking for the Eysen all these years. Many had been waiting for it. How did they know? If there were two Eysens, there could be three, ten, even a hundred. But then, why did the NSA need him? Maybe they were like nukes, every country needed one to maintain a balance of power. Gale could be working for anyone, or the prospect which bothered him most, she could be innocent.

  Fortunately, Booker’s people had chosen a low, flat field for the helicopter to land. The location allowed Rip to find a spot in the hills a
bout a quarter of a mile away. He hiked to a concealed vantage point and watched. Gale had been right about one thing: Rip was confused. He didn’t know what to believe about her, Sean, or Larsen; but the biggest mystery remained – Booker. Had Gale been working to instigate his distrust of Booker, or had it been the other way around? Did Booker tell him all those things so he would no longer trust Gale? He didn’t know anything for sure, except that he couldn’t afford to follow Clastier’s advice on trust. Too many people were after him. The extraction, his best chance of escape, could be the latest trick; another trap to get him. This time, he would play it smart and do his own stakeout.

  It didn’t take long before the FBI arrived and took up hidden positions around the field. Rip almost cried. Gale had been right. Booker’s betrayal was no longer a possibility, but rather a reality. In the hours since Larsen had given him the GPS with the time taped on the back, no one could have known about the extraction location. They had taken the precautions to set up the meeting by using the GPS to avoid any specifics on the phone. Only Booker knew all the details, and now, the FBI was waiting to arrest him. He watched a dozen agents, most with FBI emblazoned on their backs, disappear into the underbrush and trees bordering the field, and he wondered what Booker had received in exchange for him.

  Rip crouched behind a tree, devastated. He also realized there was a new problem; he had to be careful getting out of there. They wouldn’t be expecting him to show up for another forty minutes, but there were a ton of agents in the area. Carefully making his way back to Tahoma’s truck, he worried that it would already be swarming with FBI agents. This time he got lucky; the pick-up sat alone, just where he had left it, and it even started on the first try.

  He still had about four hours to kill before the meeting with his father, his last real shot at escaping. Gale knew his dad had a place in Mexico, but it would be very hard to trace. Even so, it presented a problem, one he didn’t know how to address. Gale was a real puzzle. Nothing Booker said could be believed, and yet she did admit to a relationship with Senator Monroe, a man known to be a close ally of the Vatican, the NSA, and even the FBI. She had concealed her relationship, not only with the Senator, but the whole Larsen affair, and her defense of Sean. Part of him wanted to forget he ever knew her, and the other part wanted to go find Gale and bring her to Mexico. But in the end, protecting the Eysen was more important than anything.

  Rip drove to a primitive Forest Service road, not far from the airfield, where he would be meeting his father and Dyce, an old family friend with a small plane, who regularly flew to Mexico. Assuming a ranger didn’t happen by, not likely with an underfunded USFS, he could wait out the time undisturbed. The truck was concealed from the air by a thick canopy of evergreens and Rip felt quite safe. He considered using the time to study the Eysen; then decided he didn’t feel that safe. After a few minutes, he made a decision that would totally undermine Busman’s carefully constructed plans.

  Chapter 59

  The newswoman spoke in the official monotone voice that local anchors often use for serious stories. “Famed archaeologist, Ripley Gaines, was killed today in a shootout with federal law enforcement. The bizarre case began ten days ago in Virginia with the professor’s disappearance; he allegedly stole important artifacts that had been unearthed in the Jefferson National Forest. Gaines was subsequently charged with the murder of a lab worker, but those charges were later dropped. Viewers, please use discretion; the following footage contains graphic images of violence which some may find disturbing.”

  Gale sank to the floor of the motel room, but continued watching. Grainy images, seemingly filmed from a chopper, showed Rip running, stopping, pulling out a gun, and being shot several times. The screen switched to clearer images of a body covered in a sheet being loaded into an ambulance. She should have been there. “They killed him!” she cried.

  Their final minutes together had been consumed by stupid fighting. She wanted to go back and do it all differently. “Rip. I’m sorry, Rip!” she wailed. A long time passed before she stopped crying and found the strength to get off the floor. “The Eysen is lost,” she thought. “It might be time to surrender.”

  But then she remembered the Clastier Papers. She still had them, along with the notes in her journal about the letters. They could not fall into the wrong hands. And now, she and Teresa were the only ones who knew of the missing papers and a second Eysen. Rip had told her about an old lost church where Clastier had begun. He said Clastier’s friend, Padre Garcia of the Church at Las Trampas, not far from Taos, had received other letters. Could she go back? Would they still be after her, now that the Eysen had been recovered?

  No one knew where she was. But now certain things were needed; a scrambled cell phone, money, a car, a computer, and a weapon. She had to get back to Teresa. Only one person could help her. Gale looked at the hotel phone on the bed stand. “What would he think when he heard her voice?” she thought, dialing the number. Was it even safe to call him? She would never have made the call if Rip were still alive.

  Chapter 60

  Rip, suddenly worried that Larsen or Gale might have put a tracking device somewhere on the truck, had driven in the opposite direction and walked more than eight miles to the abandoned airstrip. The two-hour walk allowed plenty of thinking time, but yielded no more answers. He still managed to use his new tactic and arrived early, but to his surprise, a plane already stood waiting. He watched intently for ten minutes and saw only a single pilot. As the meeting time came and went, he wondered why his father hadn’t shown up. Without binoculars, he couldn’t be sure if the pilot was his dad’s friend, Hence. But he had to do something; he knew the FBI and NSA were close, and it wouldn’t take them long to find him.

  He slowly made his way across the rocky terrain. He came to a shallow pool he hadn’t seen from above. A short cliff rose from one end, and a thicket of cactus and vines was on the other side. He’d have to wade through it.

  The gunshots popped at the same time he saw the men. A black man in a blue FBI ball cap fell, fifteen feet in front of him. Rip instinctively ran, splashing in the opposite direction, but was stopped by the cliff. Just as he was looking for a way to climb, he heard a man yell.

  “Don’t move, Gaines,” a husky voice said. “I’ll kill you, too. I don’t care.”

  Rip raised his arms and turned around. The stocky man smiled.

  “You have something that belongs to the Vatican,” Leary said. “I assume it’s in your pack?”

  “Why does the Catholic Church think it belongs to them?” he asked, trying to buy time, searching for an escape.

  “You don’t get to ask questions,” Leary said. “Give me the pack.”

  Rip thought about Grinley’s gun. Maybe he could get this guy to let him open the pack to get the Eysen, and instead; he’d pull out the gun and shoot him. Rip had never shot anyone, but in this case he’d be more than willing. “It’s fragile, I’ll get it out,” he said.

  “Don’t play games with me, Gaines. It’s over! Walk slowly to the edge of the pool, take the pack off, and place it carefully on the ground in front of you.”

  Rip, trying to think, didn’t move.

  “Do it!” Leary cocked his Ruger and took a step toward Rip.

  Rip looked over at the bleeding FBI agent, and for the first time, wished he’d been arrested. At least being taken into custody by the feds, he might have had a chance at living; at getting the word out about the Eysen and Clastier. “Okay, I’m coming,” Rip took deliberate steps, still hoping to come up with a solution, his eyes scanning wildly, looking for an escape. Nothing.

  “Come on, Gaines.”

  Rip made his way gradually to the edge of the pool.

  “That’s far enough,” Leary said. “Take it off slowly.”

  Still standing in water, Rip could not think of anything to do. He took off the pack and carefully placed it on the ground beside the pool.

  “You realize the Church is going to destroy the greatest artif
act ever known to man?” Gaines said, trying to reason with an unreasonable man.

  “Do you know who I work for?” Leary said, with a twisted smile.

  “The Pope?”

  Leary laughed. “I don’t work for a man. I’m an agent of God.” He took a step closer and aimed his pistol at Gaines’ heart.

  Rip looked over at the dead FBI agent, then at the pack. He had to do something.

  Leary began chanting in Latin, “Aspérges me. Dómine, hyssópo, et mundábor: lavábis me, et super nivem dealbábor.” Then he spat on Hall’s body. “You might not believe me, but I’m sad that you’re never going to have a chance to meet God.”

  “I’m not interested in meeting your God,” Gaines said.

  Leary smirked. “Yeah, they’ll have fun with you, where you’re going. I’ll give you ten seconds to confess your sins. One. Two. Three. Four. Five . . . ”

  Rip wished he had Grinley’s gun, a rock, or anything. He thought again about running, but there was nowhere to go, and he was down to three seconds anyway.

  “Eight. Nine. Ten.” The shot rang deafeningly loud, an explosion of blood and flesh covered his chest and face. His last thought, before he collapsed into the water, was of the incomplete Cosega Sequence.

  END OF BOOK 2

  Table of Contents for Book Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21