Steve Berry - The Charlemagne Pursuit

"Keep an eye on the door," he told Sayers. He knelt and tried the combination he'd been provided.

Three clicks confirmed that the numbers worked.

He opened the safe and spotted the retrieval bag. He slid it out and felt its rectangular contours, eight by ten or so, maybe an inch thick. He unzipped the top, slid out the contents, and immediately recognized a ship's logbook. On the first page, scrawled in blue ink with a heavy hand, was written MISSION STARTING OCTOBER 17, 1971, ENDING____________________ . The second date would have been added after the sub docked back in port. But he realized that the captain who'd made those entries would never get that chance.

Sayers came close. "What is it?"

The compartment door swung open.

Ramsey stepped inside. "I thought you two would try something like this."

"Stick it up your ass," Rowland said. "We're all at the same grade. You're not our superior."

A smile curled on Ramsey's black lips. "Actually, I am here. But maybe it's better you went ahead and saw. Now you realize what's at stake."

"You're damn right," Sayers said to him. "We volunteered, just like you, and we want the rewards, just like you."

"Believe it or not," Ramsey said, "I was going to tell you before we docked. There are things to be done and I can't do them alone."

Stephanie wanted to know, "Why was it so important?"

Davis seemed to understand. "It's obvious."

"Not to me."

"The logbook," Rowland said, "came from NR-1A."

MALONE CLIMBED THE ROCKY PATH, LITTLE MORE THAN A THIN shelf that zigzagged every hundred feet up the wooded slope. On one side, wrought-iron stations of the cross spanned out in a solemn procession, on the other the vista below steadily grew into a panorama. Sunshine bathed the precipitous valley, and he noticed, in the distance, deep jagged gorges. Bells far away announced midday.

He was headed for one of the cirques, circles of high precipices set into mountainous pockets, accessible only by foot, common in the Pyrenees. Beech trees sustained the slopes, stunted and twisted, their bare snowy branches interlaced in misshapen knots. He kept watch on the uneven path but noticed no footprints, which meant little given the wind and swirling snow.

A final semicircular sweep and the monastery's entrance, perched on the cirque, rose ahead. He paused for a breath and enjoyed another wide-flung view. Snow, refrigerated by cold gusts of wind, swirled in the distance.

Tall masonry walls stretched left and right. If what he'd read was to be believed, those stones had borne witness to Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, Franks, and the crusaders of the Albigensian wars. Many bat stevetles had been fought for this vantage point. Silence seemed a physical presence, which gave the place a solemn mood. Its history probably lay buried with the dead, the true record of its glory etched neither in stone nor in parchment.

Brightness of God.

More fiction? Or fact?

He walked the remaining fifty feet, approached an iron gate, and spotted a padlocked chain.

Great.

No way to scale the walls.

He reached out and gripped the gate. Cold seeped though his gloves. What now? Scour the perimeter and see if there was an opening? Seemed like the only course. He was tired, and he knew this stage of exhaustion well-the mind easily became lost in a maze of possibilities, every solution meeting a dead end.

He shook the gate in frustration.

The iron chain slithered to the ground.

STEPHANIE DIGESTED EXACTLY WHAT HERBERT ROWLAND HAD said and asked, "You're saying NR-1A was intact?"

Rowland appeared to be tiring, but this had to be done.

"I'm saying Ramsey brought the logbook back from the dive."

Davis threw her a look. "I told you the SOB was deep in this."

"Was it Ramsey who tried to kill me?" Rowland asked.

She wasn't going to answer, but saw Davis was not of the same mind.

"He deserves to know," Davis said.

"This is already out of hand. Do you want more?"

Davis faced Rowland. "We think he's behind it."

"We don't know that," she was quick to add. "But it's a distinct possibility."

"He was always a bastard," Rowland said. "After we got back, he's the one who sucked up all the benefits. Not me or Sayers. Sure, we got a few promotions, but we never got what Ramsey managed." Rowland paused, clearly fatigued. "Admiral. All the way to the top."

"Maybe we should do this later," she said.

"No way," Rowland said. "Nobody comes after me and gets away with it. If I wasn't in this bed, I'd kill him myself."

She wondered about the bravado.

"I took my last drink tonight," he said. "No more. I mean it."

Anger seemed an effective drug. Rowland's eyes were ablaze.

"Tell us everything," she said.

"How much do you know about Operation Highjump?"

"Just the official line," Davis said.

"Which is total garbage."

Admiral Byrd brought six R4-D aircraft with him to Antarctica. Each was equipped with sophisticated cameras and trailing magnetometers. They launched from a carrier deck using rocket propulsion bottles to assist in takeoff. The aircraft spent over 200 hours in the air and flew 23,000 miles across the continent. On one of the final mapping flights, Byrd's plane returned from its mission three hours late. The official account was that he'd lost an engine and had to limp home. But Byrd's private logs, returned and reviewed by the then chief of naval operations, revealed a different explanation.

Byrd had been flying over what the Germans named Neuschwabenland. He was inland, headed west over a featureless white horizon, when he spotted a bare area dotted with three lakes separated by masses of barren reddish brown rocks. The lakes themselves were colored in shades of red, blue, and green. He noted their position and the following day dispatched to the area a special team, who discovered that the lake water was warm and filled with algae, which provided the pigmentation. The water was also brackish, which indicated a connection to the ocean.

The discovery excited Byrd. He was privy to information from the 1938 German expedition, which had reported similar observations. He'd doubted the claims, having visited the continent and knowing its inhospitable nature, but the special field team explored the area for the next few days.

"I wasn't aware Byrd kept a private log," Davis said.

"I saw it," Rowland said. "The entire Highjump operation was classified, but we worked on a lot of things when we returned and I got a look. It's only during the last twenty years that anything about High-jump has been revealed-most of it false, by the way."

She asked, "What is it that you, Sayers, and Ramsey did when you returned?"

"We relocated all the stuff brought home by Byrd in 1947."

"It still existed?"

Rowland nodded. "Every bit. Crates of it. The government doesn't throw anything away."

"What was inside them?"

"I have no idea. We simply moved them, never opened anything. And by the way, I'm concerned about my wife. She's at her sister's."

"Give me the address," Davis said, "and I'll have the Secret Service make contact. But it's you Ramsey's after. And you still haven't told us why Ramsey considers you a threat."

Rowland lay still, both his arms connected to intravenous bags. "I can't believe I almost died."

"The guy we surprised broke into your house yesterday while you were out during the day," Davis said. "I'm guessing he screwed with your insulin."

"My head is pounding."

She wanted to press harder but knew that this old man would talk only when ready. "We'll make sure you're protected from here on. We just need to know why it's necessary."

Rowland's face was a kaleidoscope of twisting emotions. He was struggling with something. His breath came ragged, his watery eyes fixed in a disdainful stare. "The damn thing was dry as a bone. Not a water smear on any page."