Game of Shadows (10 page)

A tall stone wall wrapped around the entire cemetery, topped by wrought iron fencing with sharp points at the top of each rod. Some of the newer gravestones were in immaculate condition while the ones that dated beyond ninety years had fallen into ill repair. Some were barely legible. Others were crooked or falling over onto their sides. Occasionally, a mausoleum sprang up among the ordinary graves, an eternal tribute to someone who was willing and able to spend a little more in death than their less fortunate neighbors.

Sean followed Steiner through the winding maze of tall hedges, shaggy evergreen trees, and headstones. They arrived in the center of the graveyard, surrounded by dozens of stones that were marked from a similar era. Steiner stopped in front of one in particular. His face grew respectfully solemn as he stared at the name engraved on the stone.

"This is my father's grave," he said.

Max Steiner was born in 1916 and died in 1994. His wife, Lilia, was buried next to him, having died in 1985. Sean read the Biblical passage inscribed below the name and dates. It was one he recognized from the book of Psalms in the Old Testament reading,
I will fear no evil.

A strange quote to include on one's headstone, but Sean figured it must have had personal meaning to the man, especially considering the older Steiner's close brushes with the Nazis. He'd likely seen a great deal of evil up close with his own eyes.

Over the name, Sean reread another line, one that both confused and surprised him.
May Saint Sebastian watch over you.

Sean knelt down and passed over the line one more time. "What does this mean?" he asked. Steiner was still standing behind him with a regret-filled face.

"Which part?" Sean answered by pointing at the top sentence on the stone. "Oh. Saint Sebastian?" Sean nodded. "I am not entirely sure. Father rarely spoke of a patron saint. I would assume that was the one he chose, though I do not know why. He was never a deeply religious man. That fact always made me question why that sentence was on his headstone. It was what he wanted, though."

Sean thought for a second. "This isn't the first place I've seen that. It's in Ott's journal as well. The exact same line."

It could mean only one thing. The two were connected somehow and held a deeper meaning than Sean or anyone else had first suspected. The only question was what
was
that connection?

He pulled out his phone and sent a quick text message to Tommy, asking him to dig up all he could about Saint Sebastian. Sean leaned closer to the stone, staring hard at a small emblem etched into the surface. His eyes widened. Carved into the smooth stone was the shape of a bell, no longer than two inches and maybe an inch wide. Four numbers surrounded it. On the left side, a one. On top was a five. The right side of the bell and the bottom both had zeroes.

It’s 1500. The same number as the U-boat that was rumored to carry the strange object.

Sean's heart began to beat.
How are the two connected? Why is Saint Sebastian mentioned twice? What does it have to do with the U-boat? And where did it end up?

The thoughts stormed through his mind, and he couldn't sort them all out at once. He stood up and turned around to face Steiner. "This has been very helpful," he said. "I hope I haven't taken up too much of your time."

"Not at all," Steiner smiled and shook his head. "If anyone can put an ending to this mystery, I would be most grateful. My father went to his grave with a very serious and deep secret. I believe that had he wanted to keep it completely hidden, he would not have left little clues lying around."

"I agree," Sean offered. His eyes narrowed at the sight of movement a hundred feet away, just beyond a row of headstones.

Sean instinctively grabbed his weapon and held it low, not wanting to alarm Steiner too much. The sudden movement took the older man aback. The weapon was also disconcerting. "What are you doing?" he asked, bewildered.

"Herr Steiner, stay here, and keep low. I believe we were followed."

Sean
turned and ducked behind a wide headstone. Someone knew he was here, but how was that even possible? He peeked over the top and motioned for Steiner to join him. Steiner's immediate concern was reaffirmed when he glanced back the way they'd come and saw two men moving quickly, keeping low behind the headstones and other monuments as they approached.

He ducked for cover where Sean had holed up and waited for orders. "Who are those men? What should we do?"

"Not sure who they are," Sean said. "First I've seen them, although they could be the guys I ran into in Switzerland." It was impossible to know since the approaching threat was clad in scarves that covered half of their faces and wore black baseball caps on their heads. In the quiet solitude of the empty, small town cemetery, no one would see them and raise an alarm. Sean noted the silencers on the ends of the weapons the men carried.

He gripped his own weapon and snapped on a three-inch long, black metal box to his barrel. The suppressor was unlike any he'd seen on the market, a product from his friend at DARPA. This new kind of silencer was nearly half the length of standard ones, and didn't have to screw into place. Grooved clasps locked it onto the end of a weapon like a vice grip. In field tests, the prototypes had endured several hundred pounds of pressure before the metal succumbed and snapped free. On the up side, even when it did, the guns weren't damaged other than a few scratches, so the shooter could continue using the weapon, albeit in a much louder capacity.

Sean kept his back to the gravestone and looked toward the back of the cemetery. At the moment, the men were only approaching from the front, which meant they could go out the back door, if there was one.

"Is there a way out the other end of the cemetery?" Sean asked quietly.

Steiner followed his gaze toward a thick stand of willows, oak, and pine. The walls on either side extended over a small rise and beyond. The older man nodded. "Yes, there is a gate."

A little luck after all.

"But it is usually locked."

Of course it is.

Sean thought for a second and took a peek back around the side of the headstone. A splinter of concern shot through his spine. The men were gone. Either they had passed by, gone around a different direction, or..."

The stone next to his face exploded, sending fragments of gray shrapnel past his face. One of the broken pieces struck his cheek just below the eye, and he pulled back instantly. The spot on his face throbbed. Sean glanced back over at Steiner who stared at him with mouth agape.

"Is it bleeding?" Sean asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

Steiner gave a terrified nod.

Sean pursed his lips for a second. He pulled his body back to where he'd been and quickly surveyed their right flank. Whoever the guy was that took the shot had gone back to his hiding place. An old feeling crept into Sean's mind, and he turned around just in time to see another attacker pop out from behind a pine tree on the left flank.

Sean fired four rapid shots, but range and accuracy was an issue with the compact weapon, no matter how good he was with it. Two of the bullets burrowed into the tree, the other two ended as plumes of dirt and grass near his target's boots.

Even though he didn't hit the man, the shots did enough to scare him back to cover. Three more muffled shots came from the center of the makeshift battlefield. Sean ducked back down as the rounds cracked into the hard front of the gravestone.

"We're going to have to make a run for it," Sean said. He leaned forward and fired two shots to the right, then two to the left. Both men had started to peek around the trees they were using for cover. Sean's volley sent them back. He poked the gun over the top of the headstone and fired two more. On the third trigger pull, the gun merely clicked.

"We'll be easy targets if we do that," Steiner protested.

Sean pushed the button on the side of his gun's grip and watched the empty magazine slide out and fall to the grass. In an instant, he'd retrieved a full one from the carrier attached to his holster strap and smacked it into place. He pulled back the slide and stared hard at the old man.

"When I start shooting, you go as fast as you can. Get over the hill and out the back. I'll be right behind you."

Steiner frowned. "How many of those bullets do you have?"

"Don't worry about that, Herr Steiner. Just go. Stay low, and use the headstones for cover."

The older man seemed reluctant, but there was no time to argue.

"Ready?" Sean asked. The question was rhetorical. He crouched behind the headstone and fired a shot straight at the man forty feet away who was poking his head around the edge and trying to line up a shot. Sean's round pinged off the other gravestone in a small dust cloud, but it did the job, sending the attacker reeling for cover once more.

He turned left again, ready to fire, but the man on that side was still behind cover. A bullet ripped through the edge of Sean's shoulder from the backside. The searing hot pain instantly called his attention to the right flank. The man who'd shot tucked back against the tree, but this time left the front of a black boot exposed. Sean lined up the foot carefully and squeezed the trigger.

The foot popped in an eruption of red and black, causing the man to bend forward involuntarily to grab at the destroyed appendage. The move was a fatal mistake, and Sean sent two more rounds at him, the first missing narrowly behind the target, the second going through the man's neck.

Sean didn't wait to see the man collapse to the ground. He'd already returned his attention to the left flank and the man in the center. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Steiner working his way back through the headstones, attempting to stay as low as he could. Sean squeezed off another shot at the man to the left and started slinking backward, ducking behind a headstone each time he reached one. With the guy still on the left, the farther back in the cemetery they went, the clearer the shot from that flank would be. Sean knew he needed to put himself between the shooter and Steiner if the older man was to have a chance of escaping.

He shifted to the left and fired another shot down the center column. The attacker in the middle ducked out of the way but reappeared and fired several shots of his own. The bullets bounced off the stones around Sean, but he realized the men were pressing now. The one on the left moved up the side, taking three shots to cover himself before he sprinted to the next tree. Sean watched as the man repeated the process a second time, trying to cut off the angle Sean was hurrying to protect.

Sean saw the gun stick out from behind an ancient oak, pointing in Steiner's direction. From the deliberateness of the movement, Sean knew he was lining up the weapon to take the perfect shot at the old man.

Sean crouched on one knee and wielded his weapon, snapping off three more shots, each one missing the target and sinking into the trunk's thick wood. He saw the barrel fire four times, puffing a thin waft of smoke and flame from the tip. Sean glanced back and saw Steiner drop to the ground behind a tall, narrow headstone. Clenching his teeth, Sean rose from his cover and sent three shots at the man in the center, who had stood up and was charging toward him. The volley sent him diving out of the way, one of the rounds barely missing his legs, instead striking the dirt just beyond. Sean sprinted toward the oak and caught the man just as he'd stepped out to fire into the middle.

The attacker's eyes went wide with surprise for a moment, not realizing Sean had abandoned the safety of the headstones. The American launched into the air, leading with the barrel of his gun, and squeezed the trigger repeatedly until it clicked again.

Three hollow points found their mark squarely in the man's chest. He fell backward, firing one harmless shot into the air before hitting a cluster of tangled tree roots on the ground. The body shivered for a few seconds and then went limp.

More bullets screamed through the air at Sean's position, and he pressed up against the tree for a second to shield himself from the onslaught. Unconsciously, he hit the release button on his gun. The empty magazine dropped to the ground and he mechanically inserted the last full clip he had. He looked down at the body and had an idea. The man was strong, but thin, probably about the same height and weight as Sean.

He stepped over to the dead man, careful to keep out of the last attacker's line of sight, and grabbed the body by the back of the collar. He jerked it up, and quickly removed the man's jacket, then dropped the body to the ground and returned to the tree. Sean swallowed hard and took a deep breath. He gave another look back to where Steiner had fallen, but from what he could tell, the man wasn't moving. He took another breath and poked the jacket out from the right side of the tree trunk.

The other attacker's weapon popped several times, ripping through the right half of the coat. Sean kept his grip on the collar of the decoy, making it appear as though whoever was there was still standing against the tree. Then he wrapped his right arm around the tree and lined up the man in the center. He pulled the trigger, and the target on the other end of his sight shuddered for a second before falling prostrate to the ground.

Sean dropped the jacket and hurried back into the rows of graves. He kept his weapon at the ready, checking various trees and monuments he thought could be threatening positions of attack as he made his way over to where Steiner had fallen.