Gregg Loomis - The Julian secret

''And the others?"

"One. He went chasing off somewhere."

She nodded, slowly digesting the news, before groping into her massive purse and producing a pack of cigarettes.

Turning from the mirror, he frowned as she lit it. "Those things will eventually kill you." She ejected a stream of blue smoke. "Not if you get us shot by the police first."

Touche.

She glanced around for an ashtray, found one, and deposited the spent match. "Did you find anything at the professor's house besides the police?"

"Somebody had pretty thoroughly tossed it, papers scattered all over the place. Gestapo showed up before I had time to really look through any of it."

She sat on the edge of the bed, the hand without the cigarette in it twisting the small glass ashtray around and around. "I suppose we will be leaving Heidelberg soon."

He turned back to the mirror to inspect the dye job. "Shortly. As in 'shortly before the cops can get my picture spread even wider than the newspaper.' "

"And we go where? They will be looking at every airport."

Satisfied, Lang reached for the hotel's hair dryer. Before turning it on, he said, "How 'bout a nice drive-say, to Montsegur?"

She stubbed out her cigarette and raised her voice to be heard above the whine of the dryer. "Why Montsegur?"

He turned to face her, his hair multidirectional. "If we can find out what this guy Skorzeny was looking for, we may learn why someone wants us dead and who that someone might be."

Berlin (Wilhelmstrasse)

The Reich Chancellery

March 1944

Adolph Hitler usually worked standing up behind the massive marble desk. Today he was not only on his feet but pacing, waiting for the news that would arrive any moment. Plans for the defense of the French coast, crucial orders for the movement of troops, could wait just as he, the most powerful man in Europe, possibly the world, had waited.

Although he was expecting it, the knock at the door of his office made him jump.

An immaculately clad SS Feldwerbel, sergeant, stood in the doorway, arm outstretched in salute. Well over six feet, his blond hair and blue eyes could have been taken from a recruitment poster had the SS needed to seek members. "Mein Fuhrer!" he almost shouted, eyes locked onto a spot several feet above Hitler's head, "Reichsfuhrer Himmler!"

Small by comparison, Heinrich Himmler entered, giving the same salute as the sergeant withdrew, quietly shutting the door. The light from the windows reflected from Himmler's glasses, making it impossible for Hitler to see the man's eyes. He was dressed in the black dress uniform of the SS: pressed jodhpurs stuffed into jackboots that gleamed with polish, a blouse resplendent with party, rather than military, decorations. The most feared man in Germany, Himmler commanded both Gestapo and SS as well as the latter's own intelligence agency, the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD. It was in connection with this latter function that Himmler had come today.

"Well?" Hitler asked, too eager to observe the pleasantries with which he normally greeted old comrades from the early Nazi party. "What have you found?"

Unfazed by the unusual brusqueness, Himmler smiled. "Good news, Mein Fuhrer! The priest Kaas has confirmed the rumors."

Hitler looked puzzled. "Kaas?"

"The Vatican priest, the one whose family lives in Munich. He has confirmed the discovery made while excavating for the last Pope's tomb."

Hitler's eyes took on that faraway look Himmler knew so well. "Excellent! All we have to do is verify it for ourselves. That whining Pope in the Vatican will be silenced!"

Himmler was unsure exactly what difference papal pronouncements could possibly make. After all, the total army at the Vatican's command, Swiss Guards, numbered only a hundred or so, but he knew better than to question Germany's leader. Hitler was, after all, following the advice of his astrologer, the infallible prophet who had advised action in the Rheinland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia when the generals had wavered.

Hitler had a fascination for religion and the occult. Himmler winced when he thought how much had been spent to obtain the spear of Longinus, supposedly the spear that had pierced Christ's side but actually a very ordinary piece of ancient military hardware that looked suspiciously contemporary. Hitler had thought nothing of the expense and risk of sending a team to British controlled Palestine in a fruitless search for the Ark of the Covenant. He had had four truckloads of what looked like pure junk removed from a cave in southwestern France, a cave Himmler understood had served as the last refuge of some medieval group of heretics. Only the threat of a cross-Channel invasion had delayed a further expedition to southwestern France, where Hitler was convinced the Holy Grail was hidden.

But then, who was Himmler to question the mind that had defied first the political geniuses of Germany by becoming Chancellor perfectly legally, and then the best military minds by the bloodless annexation of what was rightfully Germany's? If Der Fuhrer said the Pope needed to be cowed into silence, so be it.

"Imagine, Himmler," Hitler continued, "no longer having to be concerned about that damned Dago meddling with world opinion." He glanced around the room as though he anticipated seeing someone or something not there before. "In fact, Himmler, I have additional plans for the Pope." Himmler recognized the onslaught of one of Hitler's famous monologues that frequently went on for hours. Feeling only slightly disloyal, Himmler tuned him out and began to make mental plans to accomplish his Fuhrer's wishes. "… And you have just such a man," Hitler finished. Uncertain if he had been standing there an hour or only a few minutes, Himmler came back to the real world. "Who would that be, Mein Fuhrer?"

He was not surprised at the answer.

It was then Himmler had one of his few original ideas, an inspiration so brilliant he could not keep it to himself. "Mein Fuhrer, why bother? Would it not make more sense to simply take this potentially bothersome Pope prisoner, do so secretly? That would shut him up. We could also ransom him off for the considerable treasure of the Catholic Church."

Himmler could see from the flare in Hitler's blue eyes that his plan was recognized as potentially brilliant.

"Say nothing of this," Hitler said slowly. "Let us keep it to ourselves while I consider it. First, though, let us see about obtaining this new discovery from under the Vatican."

The door had hardly closed behind Himmler when Hitler picked up the phone on his desk. "Get me General Wolff, SS commander in Rome."

Southwestern France

Montsegur

The present

How the hell had Skorzeny gotten up there? From where Lang stood, the south face of the hill went straight up, crowned by what could have been a pile of scree or the ruins of some sort of building. Two of the other sides, east and west, were even steeper. The north of the hill, Lang guessed, could have been conquered by experienced climbers hammering pitons into the few crevices in the white rock. That was it, he decided. The Germans had made a technical climb up the north face, then rappelled down to the cave's mouth.

''You will not be climbing that," Gurt said from the car, where she had retreated after one glance at the slopes.

"There is nothing left there, anyway," added Guillaume, the guide they had hired for the day. Montsegur was not exactly on the maps tourists bought. "Half the cave collapsed a few years ago, anyway."

Alternating his gaze between the hillside and the rock strewn ground, Lang began to circle the incline. "Maybe so, but I still need to get up there."

Guillaume sighed with a Galic shrug that conveyed his frustration with people who did not understand. Americans never admitted something was impossible; they just went ahead and did it. In this case, ascent of Montsegur was not only impossible but pointless. A number of nearby mountains had as good or better views of the tortured landscape of the Languedoc, with the Pyrenees little more than a blue dream in the west. Some of these views came along with small restaurants where the food was passably good and, if one was a local, you were not cheated on the wine.