The Vengeance of the Tau (16 page)

“Then the Nazis blew up their own escape route,” Melissa concluded in exasperation. “It makes no sense!”

“Even less than you think, Melly,” Blaine said, looking her way. “These aren’t Nazis, they’re Jews.”

McCracken showed her the withered etchings that looked as if they were embroidered onto the mummified wrists. The numbers were no longer intelligible, but the size and location of the mark made for sufficient indication by themselves.

“Auschwitz,” Melissa realized.

“Or a reasonable facsimile.”

“Slave labor left here to die?”

“Not exactly. All three were killed with bullets to the head,” Blaine said, after completing his inspection of the other two bodies.

“Killed by the one the pistol was next to, who then took his own life. Is that it?”

“Apparently. But not before they blew up the tunnel to make sure nobody else could ever retrace their steps.”

“Except somebody did.”

“How long would you say these corpses have been here?”

“Between forty and forty-five years.”

“The end of World War II, then. And you said the crates in the cavern were removed in two shifts,
decades
apart.”

“There’s got to be another route!” Melissa finished, hope returning to her voice. “Let’s start looking.”

Melissa returned to the vast storage chamber and focused her mind on the construction of the cavern about her. The Nazis could not possibly have built this chamber. They simply made good use of something they had discovered, something that fit their needs perfectly. Melissa forced her mind to focus on her father’s research, on some of his final words, spoken just in passing, deemed unimportant at the time …

What were they?

Egyptian!
That was it! He had said that the construction reminded him of the pyramids, and the dating bore him out. Successive generations normally build new edifices squarely atop the previous foundations. Logically, there should be a chamber built above the exact center of this one. By pacing off the dimensions of the chamber she was able to pinpoint that spot.

“Up there,” Melissa gestured.

Blaine shone his fast-fading flashlight upward to follow her hand. “I don’t see anything.”

“There’s an exit up there, I’m sure of it, but it’s been covered up. If not by the original builders, then by the Nazis.” She stopped for a moment. “The trick right now is climbing up.”

“Leave that to me.”

Actually, they did the work together. Melissa dragged over a collection of the crates used to camouflage the large hatchway. Though empty, they were still plenty firm enough to support the weight of a person. McCracken stacked the crates to create a pyramidal stairway rising up to the ceiling forty feet up. Then, once atop the highest crates, he and Melissa were able to stretch their arms above their heads, searching for indications of a hatch or door.

“Got it!” Melissa told Blaine.

She clawed away at the dirt and debris affixed to the underside of a fold-down hatch. Blaine watched her locate the handhold and yank. The hatch popped downward.

Melissa first hoisted herself upward and then lent Blaine a hand. The chamber they had uncovered this time was circular in design, with a fifteen-foot ceiling. A single corridor led from the room, and Melissa took the lead into this passageway. It made sense that it would bring them back to the surface, since whoever had removed the second batch of the missing crates must have used this same passage. Their only fear, an unspoken one, was that this person or persons might have blown up that exit, too, after it had served its purpose.

When they were not far along the passageway, their last remaining flashlight flickered and died. The darkness around them became total.

“Melly,” Blaine called softly.

“Take my hand.”

“Keep talking. Where— Wait a minute, got it. At least I hope it’s yours.”

But he wasn’t able to hold it for long. The height of the corridor dropped considerably, and they were forced to crouch their way along the slightly uphill grade. McCracken took this as a sign that they were heading back to the surface. That hope made the darkness and claustrophobic feeling tolerable, and before long he fell into an uneasy rhythm.

“Can you smell it?” Melissa said all of a sudden. “Can you smell it, Blaine?”

At first he could smell nothing besides what the ancient earth gave up. Then a whiff of freshness entered his nostrils. Air! Wonderful, glorious air bled from the open sky! Air coming from not too far ahead.

“Greatest scent in the world,” he told her.

The cramped passageway hit a steep grade at the last, and they emerged through a wide fissure camouflaged by underbrush into a dry riverbed.

“Any idea where we are?” Blaine asked Melissa, after she had helped him through.

“I think so.”

“Good.”

“Not really. We’re twenty-five miles from civilization, and that means—”

Wop—wop—wop—wop …

Melissa’s eyes followed the sound to the sky. A floodlight pierced the darkness, streaming toward them. The helicopter hovered for a brief moment, then continued on. Her first instinct was to rise up and signal it for help. But McCracken grabbed hold of her and took her down to the hard-packed earth of the dry riverbed’s bank behind the meager cover of a nest of bushes.

“Stay low. Don’t move,” he told her.

The chopper sped closer. Its floodlight reached for them in the night.

“But who—”

“Don’t speak!” McCracken ordered. The light came closer.

“Our fuel is low,” the man in the JetRanger’s front reported. “We should head back.”

The passenger frowned. “We must fear the worst.”

“No. Trust me.”

“With our destiny? That is what it comes down to now, that and nothing else.”

“It can still be salvaged.”

“Not without help. Everything we have worked for hangs in the balance. Years, generations. We were so close. And now …”

“We will find it.”

“How?”

“Leave it to me.”

The guard at the gate, shotgun strapped to his shoulder, had been expecting Billy Griggs and waved him straight through. The black wrought-iron fence surrounding the estate was ten feet high. The individual bars were finished with arrowheadlike tops, and Billy had heard it said that the Twins sharpened one for every kill they successfully completed.

Probably not many left dull at this point.

The big house itself was hidden from sight beyond the gate, visible only once a visitor got fifty yards down the curved entry road. It was palatial in all respects, Victorian in design and color. The shade was a subtle mauve, the angles on the house gentle and curved. Billy parked his car and climbed the marble steps, where another pair of guards stood attentively.

“They’re waiting for you,” one said, “by the pool. Straight through the foyer to the house’s rear.”

Billy nodded and entered the mansion. The dozen guards on the property were not there to protect the Twins. No.

They were here to discourage them from leaving until their services were required.

The house was dark, and Billy proceeded through the foyer, which was like a luxury hotel’s lobby, to the house’s rear. There was a sunroom filled with plants beneath a roof of glass. Battling the plants for space was an incredible array of weightlifting equipment, everything shiny chrome. A bar loaded atop a bench press had been packed with just under four hundred pounds. The unused plates were stacked neatly, meticulously, upon steel-pegged weight trees. There were several more modern muscle-building machines as well, a few that Billy had never seen before. The entire rear wall was glass, and Billy could see the pool beyond it. One of the sunroom’s set of sliding glass doors had been left open. Billy stepped through them.

The Twins were lying side by side on the baked asphalt surrounding the pool, no towels beneath them. The pool was crystal blue, and the water ruffled in the stiff breeze. Beyond them, at the far side of the pool, lay more weightlifting equipment, spillover from the cluttered sunroom. Billy advanced tentatively to within ten yards of the Twins and then stood there, waiting. In normal circumstances the sight of two men lying there with massive chests and arms, abdominals layered like washboards, would have aroused him. But these were the Twins.

Suddenly they rose to their feet together, motions easy and deliberate. They stood side by side, huge V-shaped upper bodies blocking the view of most of the weightlifting equipment behind them.

“Hello, Billy,” they said in perfect unison, lips mirroring each other’s.

“Did you know I was coming?”

“We were told to expect you,” one said.

“What have you brought us?” the other followed immediately.

“A difficult assignment.”

“No assignment is difficult,” they said together, the harmony unnerving.

“Challenging, then.”

“We’ll be the judge of that.”

“Blaine McCracken.”

The Twins looked at each other. Their chest muscles rippled and danced. It was the most emotion Billy had ever heard of them showing.

“I have his file with me,” Billy told them.

“We don’t need it.”

Again the Twins looked at each other. Then they smiled: together, as with everything else.

“Just tell us where we can find him.”

Part Three
Izmir

Israel: Thursday, nine A.M.

Chapter 15

ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN WAS HAPPIEST
when he was in Israel. Though German by birth and American by choice, he considered the Jewish state his true homeland, a fact demonstrated by his donations of upward of a hundred million dollars to the various causes supporting her. Add to this the additional sums he had helped raise, and the total was much closer to one billion.

As one of the richest men in the world, no portion of it was untouched by his influence. He had made his original fortune in diamonds and later in oil, but now he owned a major Hollywood studio, a New York publishing house, a magazine distributorship, and a convenience-store chain, just to name a few. He had been likened to such tycoons as William Randolph Hearst, Rupert Murdoch, and the Rothschilds. At the age of sixty-five, life had never seemed more vital to him. There had never been more to do.

The only thing he truly hated about his success was the privacy it denied him. He could seldom go anywhere without being accompanied by an entourage or being accosted somewhere en route. Only in Israel could he come and go as he pleased. Only in Israel did he feel truly at home.

Especially at the kibbutz known as Nineteen.

Here he was treated like everyone else. Here people passed by without taking special notice. The women greeted him respectfully and went about their chores. Occasionally the children would follow along for a while, growing tired at the lack of excitement. Most of the time they wouldn’t. He passed the tank memorial inside the entrance and thought of similar vehicles he had driven in wars from different ages.

“She’s been waiting for you,” the female leader of Nineteen told him, as she led Rothstein toward the private home set apart from the rest. “She barely slept last night and won’t tell us what’s wrong.”

Rothstein found the old woman seated behind her wrought-iron table. A shawl covered her shoulders to guard her from the early morning cold. The sight of her made Rothstein’s heart sink. He wondered about himself, still fit and trim, thanks to making time for exercise. Sixty-five years old and he could still run three miles in a half hour. But would the mirror soon be betraying him as well?

How old she had gotten … How helpless she looked …

Had she been this bad the last time he had visited? Had her hands been so frail and bony, her wrists swollen with the disfigurement of arthritis? Even from this distance Rothstein could see how rapidly she was breathing. He steeled himself and approached her.

“You’re late as always, Ari.”

He had leaned over to kiss her lightly on the cheek but stopped at the mention of his real name.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him.

“You know no one else calls me that except you. Everytime I hear it …”

“Do you wish to forget?”

“Of course not! You know I don’t!”

“Then remember, Ari. You must remember, especially now.”

“You think I forget, Tovah? Did I not build this place for you? Did I not have the best engineers in the world upgrade your water and irrigation system just six months ago?”

“I wasn’t talking about that.”

The old woman grasped a set of press clippings from her lap and raised them toward him. It was all she could do to hold them. And yet when Arnold Rothstein took them, the first thing he noticed was how carefully and perfectly the articles had been trimmed from their newspaper pages.

But his eyes scorned her. “You promised me you would stop.”

“It’s a good thing I didn’t. Read them. You’ll see.”

Rothstein started the first one while standing. By the third he was slumped in the chair opposite the old woman.

“This … doesn’t mean anything,” he said, without looking at her.

“Doesn’t it?”

“Just a few articles, Tovah …”

The old woman’s face had flushed red. “They’ve come back, Ari. I can feel it in my heart. They’ve come back.”