Blood Pact (McGarvey) (34 page)

He had considered breaking in and looking for the expedition’s documents, but merely finding the right files and then interpreting them would take too long. Perhaps weeks, even for a trained historian. But Dr. Vergilio would know exactly where they were shelved. All she needed was the incentive to get them.

He telephoned her office and she answered on the second ring. “Hello.” She sounded harried.

“Good morning, Doctor. This is Paul Harris. I’m calling you about the diary.”

“Do you actually have it?”

“I will by this evening. It’s coming by courier.”

“From where?” Dr. Vergilio demanded.

“Out of the country, but we’ll need to meet as soon as I have it. Perhaps first thing in the morning in your office?”

“No. I don’t want to wait that long. We can meet tonight.”

“The police are expecting another riot tonight, so maybe someplace else would be better.”

“Someplace neutral, Señor Harris.”

Al-Rashid smiled. “You still do not trust me?”

“Of course not. In any event before we can make any sort of a deal I’ll have to see the document to determine if it’s genuine or merely a clever fake. And believe me that will take less than one minute.”

“And the cipher key?”

“For that you will have to trust me. But I can guarantee you your story and the Archives will certainly pay you a finder’s fee if it’s the real thing.”

“That’s all I ask,” al-Rashid said. “You can expect my call between six and ten this evening. We’ll meet in the Cathedral across the street from you.”

“That’s hardly a neutral spot,” Dr. Vergilio objected.

“On the contrary. With a riot most likely going on, and armed police officers everywhere, the Cathedral will be the safest spot in all of Seville for us to meet.”

“As you wish.”

“Bring the cipher key.”

“I don’t have it,” Dr. Vergilio said.

Al-Rashid pushed the end button, pocketed the phone, and stood for a long half minute staring at the Archives, and the centuries-old secrets it held.

He started to turn away when a taxi pulled up at the rear entrance, and an attractive woman with long dark hair, wearing jeans and a fashionable white top, got out, and went inside. He got only a brief glance of her profile, but something about her self-assured manner, the way she walked, the way she held herself erect, almost with a military bearing, struck him. She was not the usual visitor to the Archives, and it bothered him that he should know who she was, and did not.

He walked away, reaching his car that was parked well outside the police control zone. Traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, was as normal as was possible under the circumstances of the blocked roads. But the people seemed to be taking it all in stride.

His cell phone rang as he settled in behind the wheel. He expected it might be Dr. Vergilio calling him back, but the caller ID was blocked. It was Prince Saleh from Jeddah.

“Where are you at this moment?” the prince demanded brusquely.

“Seville.”

“Do you have the cipher key yet?”

“Tonight. But you didn’t call to ask me about that. Is there trouble?”

“There may be,” the prince said. “But you’ve actually found it? Where?”

“Tell me about the trouble.”

Saleh hesitated for only a moment. “I got a call a half hour ago from General Abd al-Yasu.” The general was the head of the General Investigative Directorate, known as the Mabaheth, which was Saudi Arabia’s interior police and internal security agency.

“I’m listening.”

“A man who has been identified as likely agent of the Central Intelligence Agency got a phone call on his cell phone, after which he began making inquiries about me.”

“This has happened before,” al-Rashid said. “You are a very high-profile man, near the top of the Americans’ watch list.”

“Yes. But never in connection with your Montessier persona.”

Al-Rashid’s grip tightened on the cell phone, and he looked out the windshield at the buildings on either side of the street, and in his rearview mirror at the people and the traffic. All of it seemed normal. But if the CIA knew his work name, had his description or even a photo, and if they had somehow traced him here to Seville there might even now be an assassin’s rifle trained on him.

But that wasn’t possible. Not so soon. And yet the dark-haired woman entering the Archives through a rear door bothered him, though he didn’t know exactly why.

“Do you have this man in custody?”

“The order was given but he had left his office and he was not at his home. He’s disappeared.”

“What is his name?”

“Bren Halberstrom. He traveled under a Norwegian passport.”

The name meant nothing to al-Rashid. “Do we know who called him?”

“It was from a cell phone but the number was blocked, although the general believes that the call originated in Malta.”

For just a moment al-Rashid was at a loss, but suddenly it struck him. He held the excitement from his voice. “Was the call recorded?”

“It was encrypted. The technical people don’t know how it was done, because Halberstrom’s phone was not capable of encryption, though how the general’s people knew this is beyond me. The fact of the matter is that someone has made a connection between you and me.”

“Do you wish me to withdraw?”

“I’ve thought about it. But what do you think?”

“The CIA makes random sweeps from time to time, looking for the stray bits of intelligence. This Halberstrom may have been nothing more than a Norwegian businessman who cooperated with the CIA, or more likely he was a deep-cover agent, maybe stationed in Jeddah merely to watch you. Such a possibility should not come as a surprise to you.”

“No, of course not. But what about you?”

“I’ll either have the cipher key tonight, or it will have been destroyed. Either way I’ll be leaving first thing in the morning.”

“Your name has come up, the airport may be watched.”

“I won’t be taking a commercial flight out of here. I’ve made other arrangements.”

“You know what’s at stake.”

“Yes, I do,” al-Rashid said, but he was certain that Prince Saleh did not.

“Then go with Allah.”

Al-Rashid ended the call. Halberstrom was almost certainly a CIA NOC. The call had come from Kirk McGarvey. And the fact that it had been placed from Malta made it a very real possibility that the Catholic Church was not only involved in the search for the diary, but had agreed to help.

Which still left him with the mysterious dark-haired woman.

SIXTY-THREE

María León showed the pass that Dr. Vergilio had given her several months ago to one of the security officers who’d happened be near the rear stairway as she started up. He smiled nervously but nodded.

“Looks like it was a big night here,” she said to him in Spanish.

“
Sí, señora,
and tonight promises to be just as bad or perhaps even worse.”

“Was any damage done to the Archives? I didn’t see any from the outside.”

“Oh, no. The police were mindful, and whatever the people think of our government, they have respect for history. They weren’t hoodlums.”

“Let’s hope that their regard for this place holds. Is Dr. Vergilio here?”

“Yes, she arrived earlier. Shall I escort you up?”

“No, that’s not necessary. I know the way.”

The guard nodded and left.

Upstairs María walked down the corridor past the stacks, a couple of researchers at work, until she reached the doctor’s suite of offices, but instead of going in she turned and sat at one of the small tables by a window looking down on the street. If anyone arrived or left the offices they would pass by in plain sight.

In Madrid just after she’d passed through passport control and picked up her single bag, she’d been paged. It had been Louise needing to reach her before she caught the flight to Seville.

“Mac and Otto were in Malta, but by now they’re on their way to Gibraltar. I’m sending you a photograph. Hang on.”

A moment later what was obviously a passport photo came through. She did not recognize the man. “Who is he?”

“We don’t know his real name, this was from a French passport under the name Bernard Montessier. Otto is sure it’s a work name. And he’s pretty sure that this was the guy who managed to swipe the diary from the bank in Bern. Apparently he’s a hired gun of a Saudi prince in Jeddah. A big money player.”

“Do we know anything about him?”

“Just that he was in Bern when the diary went missing, after which he returned to Jeddah. From there he went to Paris where Otto thinks he killed the vice mayor and his mistress and most likely several others—possibly Voltaires.”

“He’s looking for the cipher key, and anyone who doesn’t cooperate gets killed,” María said. “Nice.”

“Thing is it’s likely that he’s in Seville for the same reason you’re headed there, so Mac says for you to watch your back. He and Otto should be there later this afternoon or early this evening.”

“I’m not armed.”

“I’m sure that you can arrange something,” Louise said dryly. “You have more connections in Spain than we do. Especially right now.”

She’d made one call to the Special Interests Section duty officer at the Cuban embassy on Paseo de la Habana in Madrid where she’d explained who she was and what she needed. And when she arrived at the airport in Seville a man waiting with his taxi opened the rear door for her.

On the seat was a small package, the contents of which were a Glock 29 subcompact pistol, a silencer, and three spare magazines of 10 mm ammunition. She’d loaded the pistol, screwed the silencer on the threaded muzzle, and put it and the extra magazines in her big shoulder bag. She ordered the driver to take her to the Archives and when they’d arrived she paid him the standard fare. Nothing else was said between them.

During the cab ride into the old city she’d phoned Manuel Campos, her new chief of staff at DI headquarters in Havana, and sent him the photo of Montessier. “He’s evidently a player, though probably not French. A freelance for a Saudi prince in Jeddah. Find out who he is.”

Sitting by the window now, her telephone chimed softly. It was Campos. “He’s a French importer/exporter with an office in Marseilles, but beyond that he comes up clean. Almost too clean.”

“Do you have an address?”

Campos gave it to her.

“Keep digging. Because if he’s who we think he is, he’s probably been involved in any number of incidents. He’ll have left footprints somewhere.”

“I’ll keep on it,” said Campos. “The president called earlier this afternoon asking for a progress report.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Not that you were wounded. How are you doing, Colonel?”

Campos had risen from a working man’s family in Havana, but he had none of the Hispanic male macho attitude toward women, or at least he’d never treated her that way. So far as she could tell his comments were always truthful, on the mark, and sincere.

“I’ve been better, but I’ll live. The doctor was damned good.”

“Watch your back,” he said, and rang off.

It struck her as curious that he would use the same boyish American expression as Louise had used.

Dr. Vergilio, dressed in baggy khaki slacks and a short-sleeved safari shirt, passed by the two stacks, her head down. She was in a hurry, and her concentration was elsewhere.

After a moment María muted her cell phone because she did not want to be disturbed at this point, then got up and went to the end of the stacks in time to see the doctor disappear between another set of bookcases one-third of the way to the other end of the building.

She waited a little while longer before she went down the corridor, pulling up just at the edge of the aisle that Vergilio had gone down for just a second before she peeked around the corner.

Vergilio was up on a ladder pulling a leather-bound box about six inches thick from a top shelf. When she had it she started down, but it wasn’t until she had reached the bottom and had turned that she noticed María standing there, and she reared back.

“Is everything okay?” María asked.

“I wasn’t expecting you so soon, you startled me.”

“I came early because I found out something that you must know. It’s important.”

“Tomorrow, Colonel.”

“Right now. This could mean your life if you reveal the cipher key.”

“What are you talking about, what cipher key?” Vergilio asked. She held up the box. “You mean this?”

María inclined her head. Either the doctor was a damned good liar or what she’d fetched from the top shelf of the bookcase did not involve any cipher key.

“This is Pope Alexander VI’s Papal Bull dividing the New World between us and Portugal. A researcher in Leipzig wants copies.”

“You have assistants,” María suggested, not believing her.

“Easier for me to do it myself. I know where practically everything is located here.”

The lie hung in the air between them

“We need to talk.”

“Not today.” Vergilio was stubborn. “You have no authority here, Colonel. Nor does Cuba have any rightful claim to whatever may be discovered from the Ambli diary.”

“Without the information from my father’s journals in Mexico City before the revolution you would be nowhere. I thought that we had an agreement to find the caches for their historical value and then let our governments decide what came next.”

“Leave or I will call the police.”

“No you won’t,” María said. She pulled out her cell phone, brought up the photograph of Montessier, and walked back to where Dr. Vergilio stood clutching the book box to her bosom, her eyes wide, her expression angry.

“Leave…”

María held up the phone. “Has this man been here?”

Dr. Vergilio wilted. “His name is Paul Harris.”

“He’s almost certainly an assassin, and likely the one who managed to steal the diary from a bank vault in Bern.”

SIXTY-FOUR

They’d finally gotten out of Malta about an hour ago and were in the air en route to Gilbraltar’s North Front Airport. Otto was on his computer trying to find out if there’d been any unusual occurrences in Seville overnight or anytime today, and McGarvey took out his Vatican passport that Msgr. Franelli’s people had made for him.