Black Order (15 page)

Still, he remembered Logan Gregory’s admonishment. He had already disobeyed orders to follow Fiona here. He dared not involve himself even more intimately.

He felt Fiona’s eyes on him.

If he started bidding, it would put their lives in danger, painting a bull’s-eye on both of them. And what if he lost the bid? The risk would be for nothing. Hadn’t he been foolhardy enough today?

“Ladies and gentlemen, how much to start the bidding on today’s last lot?” Ergenschein said grandly. “Shall we open with one hundred thousand? Ah, yes, we have one hundred thousand…and from a
new
bidder. How wonderful. Number 144.”

Gray lowered his paddle, all eyes on him, committed now.

Beside him, Fiona smiled widely.

“And we double the bid,” Ergenschein said. “Two hundred thousand from number 002!”

The silent-movie stars.

Gray felt the room’s focus shift back to him, including the pair in front. Too late to back down. He raised his paddle again.

The bidding continued for another ten tense minutes. The auction room remained full. Everyone was staying behind to see what the Darwin Bible would fetch. There was an undercurrent of support for Gray. Too many others had been outpaddled by number 002. And as the figure crossed the two million mark, well above the maximum estimate, murmurs of hushed excitement burbled around the room.

There was another flash of excitement when a phone bidder jumped into the fray, but number 002 outbid him, and he didn’t counter.

Gray did.
Two mill three
. Gray’s palms began to sweat.

“Two million four from number 002! Gentlemen and ladies, please keep your seats.”

Gray raised his paddle one more time.

“Two million five.”

Gray knew he was sunk. He could do nothing but watch as 002 rose again, unstoppable, relentless, merciless.

“Three million,” the pale young gentleman said, tiring of the game. He stood and glanced back at Gray, as if daring him to challenge that.

Gray had reached his limit. Even if he wanted, he couldn’t bet more. His hand ground on his paddle. Gray shook his head, admitting defeat.

The other bowed toward him, one adversary to another. The man tipped an imaginary hat. Gray noted a blue blemish on the fellow’s right hand, at the webbing between thumb and forefinger. A tattoo. His companion, who by now Gray realized must be the young man’s sister, perhaps even twin, bore the same mark on her left.

Gray fixed the tattoo in his mind’s eye, perhaps a clue to their identity.

His attention was interrupted by the auctioneer.

“And it appears number 144 is finished!” Ergenschein said. “Any more bids. Once, twice, thrice.” He raised the gavel, held it for a breathless moment, then tapped it on the edge of the podium. “Done!”

Polite applause met the concluding bid.

Gray knew it would have been more boisterous if he had won. Still, he was surprised to see who was clapping beside him.

Fiona.

She grinned at him. “Let’s get out of here.”

They joined the flow of people filing out the door. Gray was offered sympathy and condolences from a few of the other participants as he departed. Soon they reached the streets. They all went their separate ways.

Fiona tugged him a few shops down and directed him into a nearby patisserie, a French affair of chintz drapery and wrought-iron café tables. The girl picked a spot near a display filled with cream puffs, petits fours, chocolate éclairs, and
smørrebrød,
the ubiquitous Danish open-face sandwich.

She ignored the treats, beaming with a strange glee.

“Why are you so happy?” Gray finally asked. “We lost the bid.”

Gray sat facing the window. They would have to watch their backs. Still, he hoped now, with the Bible sold, that perhaps the danger would subside.

“We stuck it to them!” Fiona said. “Drove it to three mill. Brilliant!”

“I don’t think money means that much to them.”

Fiona pulled the pin on her bun and shook her hair loose. She lost a decade of age in appearance. Amusement continued to shine in her eyes, with an edge of malicious delight.

Gray suddenly felt a sick twist of his stomach.

“Fiona, what have you done?”

She lifted her purse to the table, tilted it toward Gray, and held it open. He leaned forward.

“Oh, God…Fiona…”

A battered leather-bound tome rested in her purse.

A match to the Darwin Bible that had just been sold.

“Is that the
real
one?” he asked.

“I nicked it right from under that blind wanker in the back room.”

“How—?”

“A bit of the old bait and switch. Took me all day to find a Bible the right size and shape. Course I had to tinker with it a bit afterward. But then all it took was lots of tears and shouting, a bit of fumbling…” She shrugged. “And Bob’s your uncle, it was done.”

“If you already had the Bible, why did you have me bid—?” Realization struck Gray. “You played me.”

“To make those bastards shell out three mill for a two-pence fake!”

“They’ll discover soon enough that it’s not the real book,” Gray said, horror rising.

“Yeah, but I plan to be long gone by then.”

“Where?”

“Going with you.” Fiona snapped the bag closed.

“I don’t think so.”

“You remember when Mutti told you about the disbanded library? Where the Darwin Bible came from?”

Gray knew what she was talking about. Grette Neal had hinted that someone was reconstructing some old scientist’s library. She had been going to let him copy the original bill of sale, but then they’d been attacked, and it was lost to the flames.

Fiona tapped her forehead. “I have the address stored right here.” She then held out a hand. “So?”

Frowning, he went to shake it.

She pulled her hand back in distaste. “As if.” Extending her arm again, she turned her palm up. “I want to see your real passport, you wanker. You think I can’t scope out a fake one when I see it.”

He met her gaze. She had stolen his passport earlier. Her look now was uncompromising. Frowning, he finally reached to a concealed pocket of his suit and took out his real passport.

Fiona read it. “Grayson Pierce.” She tossed it back on the table. “Nice to meet you…
finally.
”

He retrieved his passport. “So the Bible. Where did it come from?”

“I’ll only tell if you take me with you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t come with me. You’re only a child.”

“A child with the Darwin Bible.”

Gray tired of her blackmail. He could snatch the Bible whenever he wanted to, but the same couldn’t be said for her information. “Fiona, this isn’t some goddamn game.”

Her eyes hardened on him, aging before him. “And you don’t think I know that.” Her words were deadly cold. “Where were you when they took my Mutti out in bags? Bloody goddamn
bags
!”

Gray closed his eyes. She had struck a nerve, but he refused to relent. “Fiona, I’m sorry,” he said with a strained voice. “But what you’re asking is impossible. I can’t take—”

The explosion shook the patisserie like an earthquake. The front glass rattled, dishes crashed. Fiona and Gray stood and went to the window. Smoke billowed across the street, fuming and roiling into the dusky sky. Flames danced and licked upward from the shattered side of a building across the street.

Fiona glanced to Gray. “Let me guess,” she said.

“My hotel room,” he admitted.

“So much for the head start.”

11:47
P.M
.
HIMALAYAS

Captured by the Germans, Painter rode behind Lisa on a sled pulled by one of the snowmobiles. They had been traveling for almost an hour, cinched in place with plastic straps and bound together. At least their sled was heated.

Still he kept hunched over Lisa, sheltering her as best he could with his body. She leaned back into him. It was all they could manage. Their wrists were bound to stanchions on either side.

Ahead, the assassin rode on the backseat of the towing snowmobile. He faced to the rear, rifle pointing at them, mismatched eyes never wavering. Anna Sporrenberg piloted the vehicle, the leader of this group.

A group of former Nazis.

Or
reformed
Nazis.

Or whoever the hell they were.

Painter shoved the question aside. He had a more important puzzle to solve at the moment.

Staying alive.

En route, Painter had learned how easily he and Lisa had been discovered hiding in their cave. Through infrared. Against the frigid landscape, their heat signature had been easy to pick up, revealing their hiding place.

The same would make flight across this terrain almost impossible.

He continued his deliberation, mind focused on one goal.

Escape.

For the past hour, the caravan of snowmobiles had trundled through the wintry night. The vehicles were equipped with electric motors, gliding with almost no noise. In silence, the five snowmobiles traversed the maze with practiced ease, gliding along cliff edges, diving down steep valleys, sweeping over bridges of ice.

He did his best to memorize their route. But exhaustion and the complexity of their path confounded him. It didn’t help that his skull had begun to pound again. The headaches had returned—as had the disorientation and vertigo. He had to admit that his symptoms were
not
subsiding. He also had to admit that he was thoroughly lost.

Craning, he stared at the night sky.

Overhead, stars shone coldly.

Perhaps he could fix his position.

As he stared, the pinpoints of light spun in the sky. He tore his gaze away, a stabbing ache behind his eyes.

“Are you all right?” Lisa whispered back at him.

Painter grumbled under his breath, too nauseated to trust speaking.

“The nystagmus again?” she surmised on her own.

A harsh grunt from the assassin silenced any further communication. Painter was grateful. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths, waiting for the moment to pass.

Eventually it did.

He opened his eyes as the caravan edged up to a crest of rock and slowed to a stop. Painter searched around. Nothing was here. An icy cliff cracked the crest on the right. Snow began to fall again.

Why had they stopped?

Ahead, the assassin climbed from his seat.

Anna joined him. Turning a shoulder, the hulking man spoke to the woman in German.

Painter strained to hear and caught the assassin’s last words.

“—should just kill them.”

It was not said with any vehemence, only dread practicality.

Anna frowned. “We need to find out more, Gunther.” The woman glanced in Painter’s direction. “You know the problems we’ve been having lately. If he was sent here…if he knows something that can stop it.”

Painter was clueless as to what they were talking about, but he allowed them this misconception. Especially if it kept him alive.

The assassin just shook his head. “He’s trouble. I can smell it on him.” He began to turn away, dismissive, done with the matter.

Anna stopped him with a touch to the man’s cheek, tender, grateful…and maybe something more. “
Danke,
Gunther.”

He turned away, but not before Painter noted the flash of pain in the man’s eyes. The assassin trudged to the broken cliff face and disappeared through a crack in the wall. A moment later, a cloud of steam puffed out along with a bit of fiery light—then cut off.

A door opening and closing.

Behind him, one of the guards made a derisive noise, grumbling one word under his breath, an insult, heard by only those closest to him.

Leprakönige.

Leper King.

Painter noted the guard had waited until the hulking man named Gunther was out of earshot. He had not dared say it to the man’s face. But from the hunch of the assassin’s shoulders and gruff manner, Painter suspected he’d heard it before.

Anna mounted the snowmobile. A new armed guard took the assassin’s seat, weapon pointing. They headed out again.

The path switchbacked around a spur of rock and down into an even steeper notch in the mountain. The way ahead was a sea of ice fog, obscuring what lay below. A heavy crest of the mountain overhung the misty sea, cupped low like a pair of warming hands.

They descended into the vast fog bank, lights spearing ahead.

In moments, visibility lowered to feet. Stars vanished.

Then suddenly the darkness deepened as they trundled under the shadow of the overhang. But rather than growing colder, the air grew notably warmer. As they descended farther, rocky outcroppings appeared out of the snow. Meltwater trickled around the boulders.

Painter realized there must be a localized pocket of geothermal activity here. Hot springs, while rare and known mostly to the indigenous people, dotted the Himalayas. Created by the intense pressures of the Indian continental plate grinding into Asia, such geothermal hot spots were believed to be the source of the Shangri-La mythology.