Gray was up for it. “A fire from stones that burns. Like what happened to the parishioners at the church.”
He nodded. “I’ve thought of that quote since I first heard of the murders.”
“That’s a pretty thin connection,” Gray said, unconvinced.
“It might be if I didn’t have a third historical point to make.” Vigor lifted a third finger.
Gray felt like a lamb being led to the slaughter.
“According to historical texts,” Vigor explained, “Thomas went on to evangelize in the East, all the way to India. He baptized thousands of people, built churches, spread the faith, and eventually died in India. But in that region, he was most famous for one act, one act of baptism.”
Gray waited.
Vigor concluded with great emphasis. “Thomas baptized the Three Magi.”
Gray’s eyes widened. His mind whirled with the threads here: Saint Thomas and his Gnostic tradition, secrets whispered by Christ, deadly fire cast from stones, and all of it tied back to the Magi again. Did the connection extend further? He pictured the photographs of the dead in Germany. The wracked bodies. And the coroner’s report of the liquefaction of the outer layers of the victims’ brains. He also remembered the smell of seared flesh in the cathedral.
Somehow the bones were tied to those deaths.
But how?
If there was a historical trail leading to any clues, it was beyond his scope of experience and knowledge to follow. He recognized this and faced the monsignor.
Vigor spoke, confident of his argument. “As I said from the start, I think there is more to the deaths at the cathedral than technology. I think whatever happened is entwined intimately with the Catholic Church, its early history, and possibly even before its founding. And I am certain I can be a continuing asset to this investigation.”
Gray bowed his head in thought, slowly won over.
“But not my niece,” Vigor finished, revealing at last why he had pulled Gray aside. He held out his hand. “Once we return to Rome, I will send her back to the Carabinieri. I will not risk her again.”
Gray reached out and shook the monsignor’s hand.
Finally something the two of them could agree on.
10:45 A.M.
RACHEL HEARD a step behind her, expecting it to be Mario returning with their order. Glancing up, she almost fell out of her seat as she gazed at the elderly woman who stood there, leaning on a cane, dressed in navy slacks and a blue summer frock with a daffodil pattern. Her white hair was curled, her eyes flashing in amusement.
Mario stood behind the visitor, a broad smile on his face. “Surprise, no?”
Rachel gained her feet as Gray’s two partners looked on. “Nonna? What are you doing here?”
Her grandmother patted Rachel on a cheek, speaking in Italian. “Your crazy mother!” She fluttered her fingers in the air. “She goes off to see you in Rome. Leaves me alone with that Signore Barbari to watch over me. Like I need such care. Besides, he always smells of cheese.”
“Nonna…”
A wave of a hand held her off. “So I come to our villa. I took the train. And then Mario calls me to tell me that you and Viggie are here. I tell him not to tell you.”
“It’s a good surprise, no?” Mario repeated, glowing proudly. He must have been biting his thumb the entire time not to say anything.
“Who are your friends?” her nonna asked.
Rachel introduced them. “This is my grandmother.”
She shook each of their hands and switched to English. “Call me Camilla.” She eyed Monk up and down. “Why do you cut off all your hair? A shame. But you have nice eyes. Are you italiano?”
“No, Greek.”
She nodded sagely. “That’s not too bad.” She turned to Kat. “Is Signor Monk your boyfriend?”
Kat crinkled her brow in surprise. “No,” she said a tad too tartly. “Certainly not.”
“Hey,” Monk interjected.
“You make a nice couple,” Nonna Camilla declared, stating it as if it were set in stone. She turned to Mario. “A glass of that wonderful Chiaretto, per favore, Mario.”
He whisked off, still beaming.
Rachel settled to her seat and spotted Gray and her uncle returning from their private meeting. As they crossed toward her, she noted that Gray would not meet her eye. She knew why her uncle had walked off with Commander Pierce. And from the man’s avoidance, she could guess the outcome.
Rachel suddenly had no interest in her wine.
Uncle Vigor noticed the additional guest at their table. Shock shattered his grim expression.
The surprise was again explained, along with further introductions.
As Gray Pierce was introduced, her grandmother glanced askance at Rachel, one eyebrow raised, before fixing her gaze on the American. She clearly liked what she saw: stubbled dark chin, storm-blue eyes, lanky black hair. Rachel knew her grandmother had a strong matchmaking streak, a genetic trait in all Italian matrons.
Her grandmother leaned toward Rachel. “I see beautiful babies,” she whispered, her eyes still on Gray. “Bellissimo bambini.”
“Nonna,” she warned.
Her grandmother shrugged and raised her voice. “Signore Pierce, are you italiano?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Would you like to be? My granddaughter—”
Rachel cut her off. “Nonna, we don’t have much time.” She made a show of checking her wristwatch. “We have business in Milan.”
The grandmother brightened. “Carabinieri work. Tracking stolen art?” She eyed Uncle Vigor. “Something taken from a church?”
“Something like that, Nonna. But we can’t talk about an open investigation.”
Her grandmother crossed herself. “Horrible…stealing from a church. I read about the murders up in Germania. Terrible, just terrible.” She glanced around the table, taking in the strangers. Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, settling on Rachel.
Rachel noted the sharp-eyed realization in her grandmother’s gaze. Despite her outward appearance, nothing slipped past her nonna. The theft of the Magi bones was all over the newspapers. And here they were traveling with a group of Americans, near the border of Switzerland, heading back into Italy. Had her nonna guessed their real purpose?
“Terrible,” her grandmother repeated.
A server arrived laden with two heavy bags of food. A loaf of bread poked from each like a pair of baguette masts. Monk rose to accept the burden with a broad smile.
Uncle Vigor spoke, leaning forward to kiss both her cheeks. “Momma, we’ll see you back home in Gandolfo in a couple of days. Once this business is finished.”
As Gray stepped past, Nonna Camilla took his hand and pulled him down closer. “You watch after my granddaughter.”
Gray looked up to Rachel. “I will, but she takes pretty good care of herself.”
Rachel felt a sudden flush of heat as his eyes met hers. Feeling ridiculous, she glanced aside. She wasn’t a schoolgirl. Far from it.
Her nonna gave Gray a peck on the cheek. “We Verona women always take care of ourselves. You remember that.”
Gray smiled. “I will.”
She patted him on his backside as he stepped away. “Ragazzo buono.”
As the others headed out, her grandmother motioned Rachel to stay. She then reached out, turned back the corner of Rachel’s open vest, and exposed the empty holster. “You lost something, no?”
Rachel had forgotten she was still wearing the empty shoulder belt. She had left her borrowed Beretta back at the cathedral. But her nonna had noticed.
“A woman should never leave the house naked.” Her grandmother reached down and collected her purse. She opened it and pulled out the matte-black handle of her prized Nazi P-08 Luger. “You take mine.”
“Nonna! You shouldn’t be carrying that around.”
Her grandmother dismissed her concern with a wave. “The trains are not that safe for a woman alone. Too many Gypsies. But I think you
maybe need this more than me.”
Her grandmother’s gaze weighed heavily on her, making it plain she understood the danger of Rachel’s mission.
Rachel reached out and closed her purse with a snap. “Grazie, Nonna. But I’ll be fine.”
Her grandmother shrugged. “Terrible business up in Germania,” she said with a significant roll of her eyes. “Best to be careful.”
“I will, Nonna.” Rachel began to turn away, but her wrist was grabbed.
“He likes you,” her grandmother said. “Signore Pierce.”
“Nonna.”
“You would make bellissimo bambini.”
Rachel sighed. Even with danger threatening, her grandmother knew how to stay focused. Babies. The true treasures of nonne everywhere.
She was saved by Mario arriving with the bill. She stepped aside and paid it in cash, leaving enough to cover her nonna’s lunch. She then gathered up her things, kissed her grandmother, and headed out to the piazza to join the others.
But she carried her grandmother’s spirit with her. Verona women certainly did know how to take care of themselves. She met her uncle and the others at the car. She fixed Gray with her best poisonous stare. “If you think you’re going to kick me off this investigation, you can walk to Rome.”
Keys in hand, she rounded the Mercedes, satisfied by the surprised look on the man’s face as he glanced back to Uncle Vigor.
She had been ambushed, shot at, and firebombed. She wasn’t about to be left at the side of the road.
She pulled her door open, but she kept the other doors locked. “And that goes for you, too, Uncle Vigor.”
“Rachel…” he tried to argue.
She slid into the driver’s seat, slammed her door, and keyed the ignition.
“Rachel!” Her uncle knocked on the window.
She shifted into gear.
“Va bene!” her uncle yelled to her over the supercharged engine, agreeing. “We stay together.”
“Swear it,” she called back, keeping her palm on the gear knob.
“Dio mio…” He rolled his eyes heavenward. “And you wonder why I became a priest….”
She revved her engine.
Uncle Vigor placed a palm on the window. “I submit. I swear. I should never have tried to go against a Verona woman.”
Rachel twisted and locked eyes on Gray. He had remained silent, his face hard. He looked ready to hotwire a car and take off on his own. Had she overplayed her hand? But she sensed she needed to make a strong stand now.
Slowly Gray’s blue eyes shifted with a glacial coolness to her uncle, then back to Rachel. As they faced each other, at that moment, Rachel felt how deeply she wanted to remain, down to the marrow of her bones. Maybe he understood. Gray ever so slowly nodded, a barely perceptible movement.
It was enough of a concession.
She unlocked the doors. The others climbed in.
Monk was last. “I was fine with walking.”
11:05 A.M.
FROM THE backseat, Gray watched Rachel.
She had donned her blue-tinted sunglasses, which made her expression all but unreadable. Her lips, though, were pressed tightly. The muscles of her long neck remained taut as bowstrings as she glanced around for traffic. Despite the fact they had relented, she was still angry.
How had Rachel even known what had been decided between her uncle and himself? Her intuitive capacity was impressive, along with her no-nonsense approach to conflict. But he also remembered her vulnerability in the tower, her eyes meeting his across the gap between the two spires. Yet, even then, among the bullets and flames, she had not crumbled.
For a moment, he caught a glance from Rachel in the rearview mirror, her eyes shaded by her glasses. Still, he knew she was studying him. Too conscious of the scrutiny, he glanced away.
He balled a fist on a knee at his reaction.
Gray had never met a woman who so confounded him. He’d had girlfriends before but nothing that lasted more than six months, and even that relationship had been in high school. He’d been too hotheaded in his youth, then too devoted to his career in the military, first in the Army, then in the Rangers. He never called one place home for longer than six months, so romance was usually no more than a long weekend leave. But in all his dalliances, he had never met a woman who was as frustrating as she was intriguing: a woman who laughed easily over lunch, but who could turn hard as a polished diamond.
He leaned back as the countryside flashed past. They left behind the lake country of Northern Italy and descended the foothills of the Alps. The journey was a short one. Milan lay only a forty-minute drive away.
Gray knew enough about himself to understand part of his attraction to Rachel. He was never fascinated by the middle of the road, the mundane, the undecided. But neither was he a fan of extremes: the brash, the strident, the discordant. He had preferred harmony, a merging of extremes where balance was achieved but uniqueness was not lost.
Basically the Taoist yin-and-yang view of the cosmos.
Even his own career reflected this—the scientist and the soldier. His field of disciplines sought to incorporate biology and physics. He had once described this choice to Painter Crowe. “All chemistry, biology, mathematics boil down to the positive and the negative, the zero and the one, the light and the dark.”
Gray found his attention drifting back to Rachel. Here was this same philosophy in shapely flesh.
He watched Rachel lift a hand and knead a kink from her neck. Her lips were slightly parted as she found the sweet spot and rubbed. He wondered what those lips would taste like.
Before he let this thought drift further, she whipped the Mercedes around a tight curve, throwing Gray against the door frame. She dropped her hand, downshifted, gassed the engine, and took the turn even faster.
Gray hung on. Monk groaned.
Rachel merely wore a ghost of a smile.
Who wouldn’t be fascinated by this woman?
6:07 A.M.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
EIGHT HOURS and no word.
Painter paced the length of his office. He had been here since ten o’clock the prior night—as soon as the news reached him about the explosion at the Cologne Cathedral. Since then, information had been filtering in slowly.
Too slowly.
The source of the incineration: bombs filled with black powder, white phosphorus, and the incendiary oil LA-60. It had taken three hours until the fire was contained enough to attempt entry. But the interior was a smoky, toxic shell, burned down to the stone walls and floors. Charred skeletal remains were discovered.
Was it his team?
Another two hours passed until a report came in that the slag remains of weapons had been found with two of the bodies. Unidentified assault rifles. No such weapons had been deployed with his team. So at least some of the bodies had been unknown assailants.
But what about the others?
Satellite surveillance out of NRO proved useless. No eyes in the skies had been sampling the area at that hour. On the ground, business and municipal cameras in the vicinity were still being canvassed. Eyewitnesses were few. One homeless man, sleeping near Cathedral Hill, reported seeing a handful of people fleeing the burning cathedral. But his blood alcohol level was over .15. Stumbling drunk.
All else was quiet. The safe house in Cologne hadn’t been breeched. And so far, not a word from the field.
Nothing.
Painter could not help but fear the worst.
A knock at his half-open door interrupted him.
He turned and waved Logan Gregory into the office. His second-in-command had reams of paper tucked under his arm and dark circles under his eyes. Logan had refused to go home, sticking at his side all night long.
Painter looked on expectantly, hoping for a good word.
Logan shook his head. “Still no hits on their aliases.” They had been checking hourly at airports, train stations, and bus lines.
“Border crossings?”
??
?Nothing. But the EU is pretty much an open sieve. They could have crossed out of Germany any number of ways.”
“And the Vatican still hasn’t heard anything?”
Another shake of his head. “I spoke to Cardinal Spera just ten minutes ago.”
A chime sounded from his computer. He strode around his desk and tabbed the key to initiate the video-conferencing feature. He faced the plasma screen hanging on the left wall. A pixilating image appeared of his boss, the head of DARPA.
Dr. Sean McKnight was at his office in Arlington. He had abandoned his usual suit jacket and had the cuffs on his shirt rolled up. No tie. He ran a hand through his graying red hair, a familiar tired gesture.
“I got your request,” his boss started.
Painter straightened from where he had been leaning on his desk. Logan had retreated to the door, staying out of camera view. He made a move to step out, to offer privacy, but Painter motioned him to stay. His request wasn’t a matter of security.
Sean shook his head. “I can’t grant it.”
Painter frowned. He had asked for an emergency pass to go to the site himself. To be on hand in Germany during the investigation. There might be clues others missed. His fingers curled into a fist in frustration.
“Logan can oversee things here,” Painter argued. “I can be in constant communication with command.”
Sean’s demeanor hardened. “Painter, you are command now.”
“But—”
“You’re no longer a field operative.”
The pain must have been evident in his expression.
Sean sighed. “Do you know how many times I’ve sat in my office waiting to hear from you? How about your last operation in Oman? I thought you were dead.”
Painter glanced down to his desk. Binders and papers were piled everywhere. There was no relief to be found among them. He had never suspected how agonizing this job had been for his boss. Painter shook his head.
“There is only one way of handling matters like this,” his boss said. “And believe me, they’ll happen on a regular basis.”
Painter faced the screen. An ache had settled behind his breastbone, throbbing and hot.
“You have to trust your agents. You put them into the field, but once they’re let loose, you have to have confidence. You picked the team leader for this op and his support. Do you trust they are capable of handling a hostile situation?”