Steve Berry - The Charlemagne Pursuit

Malone caught a blast of cold from the front door as the owner handed him a key. He climbed wooden stairs to his room. He'd brought no clothes and the ones he wore needed cleaning, especially his shirt. Inside the room he tossed his jacket and gloves on the bed and removed his shirt. He stepped into the tiny bath and rinsed the shirt out in an enamel basin, using a little soap, then laid it across the radiator to dry.

He stood in his undershirt and studied himself in the mirror. He'd worn an undershirt since he was six years old-a habit hammered into him. "Nasty to be bare-chested," his father would say. "You want your clothes to smell like sweat?" He'd never questioned his father, he'd simply emulated him and always wore an undershirt-deep V neckline, since "wearing an undershirt is one thing, seeing it is another." Interesting how the pull of childhood memories could so easily be triggered. They'd had so short a time together. About three years he could remember, from ages seven to ten. He still kept the flag that had been displayed at his father's memorial in a glass case beside his bed. His mother had refused the memento at the funeral, saying she'd had enough of the navy. But eight years later when he'd told her that he was joining, she hadn't objected. "What else would For-rest Malone's boy do?" she'd asked him.

And he'd agreed. What else?

He heard a soft rap and stepped from the bath to open the door. Christl stood outside.

"May I?" she asked.

He motioned his assent and quietly closed the door behind her.

"I want you to know that I didn't like what happened up there today. That's why I came after you. I told Mother not to deceive you."

"Unlike yourself, of course."

"Let's be honest, okay? If I had told you that I'd already made the connection between the will and the inscription, would you have even come to Aachen?"

Probably not. But he said nothing.

"I didn't think so," she said, reading his face.

"You people take a lot of foolish risks."

"There's much at stake. Mother wanted me to tell you something, not in front of Dorothea or Werner."

He'd been wondering when Isabel would make good on her promise of damn good information. "Okay, who's been trying to kill me?"

"A man named Langford Ramsey. She actually spoke with him. He sent the men who came after us in Garmisch, at Reichshoffen, and in Aachen. He also sent those today. He wants you dead. He's head of your naval intelligence. Mother deceived him into thinking she was his ally."

"Now, there's something novel. Put my life at risk to save it."

"She's trying to help you."

"By telling Ramsey I'd be here today?"

She nodded. "We staged that hostage scenario with their cooperation so they'd both be killed. We didn't anticipate the other two coming. They were supposed to stay on the outside. Ulrich thinks the shots drew them." She hesitated. "Cotton, I'm glad you're here. And safe. I wanted you to know that."

He felt like a man walking to the gallows after tying the noose himself.

"Where's your shirt?" she asked.

"You live alone, you do your own laundry."

She added a friendly smile which sweetened the otherwise tense atmosphere. "I've lived alone all my adult life."

"Thought you were married once?"

"We never actually lived together. One of those errors in judgment that was quickly rectified. We had a few great weekends, but that was about all. How long were you married?"

"Almost twenty years."

"Children?"

"A son."

"Does he carry your name?"

"His name is Gary."

A sense of peace mingled with the silence.

She wore denim jeans, a stone-colored shirt and a navy cardigan. He could still see her tied to the column. Of course, women lying to him was nothing new. His ex-wife lied for years about Gary's parentage. Stephanie lied repeatedly, when necessary. Even his mother, a reservoir of locked emotions, a woman who rarely showed any feeling, lied to him about his father. To her, that memory was perfect. But he knew it wasn't. He desperately wanted to know the man. Not a myth, or a legend, or a memory. Just the man.

He was tired. "It's time for bed."

She circled to the lamp that burned beside the bed. He'd switched off the bath light when he'd answered the door so, when she pulled the chain and extinguished the bulb, the room was plunged into darkness.

"I agree," she said.

DOROTHEA WATCHED FROM HER CRACKED-OPEN DOOR AS HER sister entered Cotton Malone's room. She'd seen her mother speak with Christl after dinner and wondered what had been said. She'd seen Ulrich leave and knew what task he'd been delegated. She wondered what her role would be. Apparently it was to make amends with her husband, as they'd been given a room together with one small bed. When she'd inquired to the proprietor about another he'd told her there were none.

"It's not that bad," Werner said to her.

"Depends on a person's definition of bad."

She actually found the situation amusing. They were both behaving like two adolescents on their first date. In one sense their predicament seemed comical, in another tragic. The tight confines made it impossible for her to escape the familiar miasma of his aftershave, his pipe tobacco, and the cloves from the gum he loved to chew. And the smells constantly reminded her that he was not one of the myriad men she'd enjoyed of late.

"This is too much, Werner. And far too fast."

"I don't think you have a whole lot of choice."

He stood near the window, arms clasped behind him. She was still perplexed by his actions in the church. "Did you think that gunman would actually shoot me?"

"Things changed when I shot the other one. He was angry and he could have done anything."

"You killed that man so easily."

He shook his head. "Not easily, but it had to be done. Not all that different from bringing down a stag."

"I never realized you had that inside you."

"Over the past few days I've realized a lot of things about myself."

"Those men in the church were fools, thinking only about getting paid." Like the woman in the abbey, she thought. "There was absolutely no reason for them to trust us, yet they did."

The corners of his lips turned down. "Why are you avoiding the obvious?"

"I don't think this is the place or time to debate our personal life."

His eyebrow raised in disbelief. "There's no better time. We're about to make some irreversible decisions."

Their distance these past few years had dulled her once perfect ability to know for certain when he was deceiving her. She'd for so long ignored him-simply allowed him to have his way. Now she cursed her indifference. "What do you want, Werner?"

"The same things you want. Money, power, security. Your birth right."

"That's mine, not yours."

"Interesting, your birthright. Your grandfather was a Nazi. A man who adored Adolf Hitler."

"He was no Nazi," she declared.

"He just helped their evil along. Made it easier for them to slaughter people."

"That's preposterous."

"Those ridiculous theories about Aryans? Our supposed heritage? That we were some sort of special race that came from a special place? Himmler loved that garbage. It fed right into the Nazis' murderous propaganda."

Disturbing thoughts swirled through her mind. Things her mother had told her, things she'd heard as a child. Her grandfather's admitted right-wing philosophies. His refusal to ever speak ill of the Third Reich. Her father's insistence that Germany was no better off postwarthan prewar, a divided Germany worse than anything Hitler ever did. Her mother was right. The Oberhauser family history needed to stay buried.

"You must tread lightly here," Werner whispered.

There was something unsettling about his tone. What did he know?