Steve Berry - The Alexandria Link

“Saudis.”

“Now, that’s a feat. How did you manage to piss everybody off?”

Two men crested the knoll, headed their way.

“No time to explain,” Stephanie said. “Shall we?”

They hustled in the opposite direction, a fifty-yard head start on their pursuers, which meant nothing if the men decided to shoot.

“I assume you planned for this contingency?” she asked Cassiopeia.

“Not entirely. But I can improvise.”

MALONE FORGOT ABOUT ADAM AND SCRAMBLED FROM HIS SAFE position behind the parked car to where Pam lay bleeding. Street dust clung to his clothes. He turned for an instant and caught a glimpse of the Israeli racing away.

“You all right?” he asked her.

Pam’s face grimaced in pain, her right hand clamped to her injured left shoulder.

“Hurts,” she said in a strangled whisper.

“Let me see.”

She shook her head. “Holding it…helps.”

He reached out and started to peel her hand away. Her eyes went wide with pain and anger. “Don’t.”

“I have to see.”

He didn’t have to say what they were both thinking. Why didn’t she stay upstairs?

She relented, removed her bloody fingers, and he saw what he suspected. The bullet had merely grazed her. A flesh wound. Anything worse would have already been obvious. People shot went into shock. Their bodies shut down.

“Just skimmed you,” he said.

Her hand re-vised the wound. “Thanks for the diagnosis.”

“I do have some experience at getting shot.”

Her eyes softened at that realization.

“We have to go,” he said.

Her face scrunched in pain. “I’m bleeding.”

“No choice.” He helped her to her feet.

“Damn, Cotton.”

“I realize it hurts. But if you’d stayed upstairs like I said-”

Sirens wailed in the distance.

“We have to go. But first there’s one other thing.”

She seemed to recover her composure, determined to keep calm and stay lucid, so he led her into the building.

“Keep a clamp,” he told her as they climbed the stairs to Haddad’s apartment. “The bleeding should stop. It’s not that deep.”

Sirens were coming closer.

“What are we doing?” she asked, as they found the third-floor landing.

He recalled what Haddad had said right before the shooting started. You taught me a great deal. I recall every lesson, and up until a few days ago I adhered to them strictly. Even those about safeguarding what really matters. When he’d first hid Haddad away, he’d taught the Palestinian to keep his most important things ready to go at a moment’s notice. Time to find out if Haddad meant what he’d said.

They entered the apartment.

“Go into the kitchen and find a towel,” he said, “while I tend to this.”

They had maybe two or three minutes.

He bolted for the bedroom. The tight space wasn’t much larger than his own apartment in Copenhagen. Piles of long-neglected books and papers lay stacked on the floor, the bed unmade, the nightstands and dresser loaded like flea-market tables. He noticed more maps on the walls. Israel, past and present. No time to consider them.

He knelt beside the bed and hoped his instincts were right.

Haddad had called the Middle East knowing a confrontation would ensue. When that inevitable conflict arrived, he hadn’t shied from the fight but had instead gone on the offensive, knowing he’d lose. But what had his friend said? I knew you’d come. Damn foolish. There’d been no need for Haddad to sacrifice himself. Guilt about the man he’d murdered decades ago had apparently swirled through the old man’s head for a long time.

I owe this to the Guardian I shot. My debt repaid .

That, Malone could understand.

He probed beneath the bed and felt something. He grabbed hold and freed a leather satchel, quickly unbuckling its straps. Inside lay a book, three spiral notebooks, and four folded maps. Of all the information scattered about the apartment this, he hoped, was the most important.

They had to go.

He raced back to the den. Pam emerged from the kitchen with a towel clamped to her arm.

“Cotton?” she said.

He heard the question in her voice. “Not now.”

With the satchel in hand he shoved her out the door, but not before he grabbed a shawl from the back of one of the chairs.

They quickly descended.

“How’s the bleeding?” he asked as they found the sidewalk.

“I’ll live. Cotton?”

The sirens were no more than a block away. He draped the shawl around her shoulders to shield the injury.

They walked casually.

“Keep the towel on the arm,” he said.

A hundred feet and they found a boulevard, plunging into a sea of unknown faces, resisting the temptation to hasten their pace.

He glanced back.

Flashing lights appeared at the far end of the block and stopped before Haddad’s house.

“Cotton?”

“I know. Let’s just get out of here.”

He knew what she wanted. When they’d returned to the apartment he’d noticed, too. No blood on the wall. None on the floor. No suffocating stench of death.

And the bodies of Eve and George Haddad were gone.

RHINE VALLEY, GERMANY

5:15 PM

SABRE STARED AT THE TOWERING MOUNDS THAT ENGULFED THE river’s edge. Steeply scarped banks lined both sides of the narrow gap. Deciduous forests abounded, the hillsides relieved only by sparse green scrub and gangly grapevines. For nearly seven hundred years the highest elevations had supported fortresses with names like Rheinstein, Sooneck, and Pfalz. Rounding the treacherous turn of the Loreley, where ships once foundered on rocks and rapids, high atop the river’s east bank he spied the rounded keep of Burg Katz. Farther on stood Stolzenfels, the tawny tint of its two-century-old limestone barely discernible. The final marker on his journey appeared a few minutes later.

The unmistakable outline of Marksburg.

He’d left Rothenburg two hours ago and followed the autobahn north, maintaining a constant ninety miles an hour, slowed only on the outskirts of Frankfurt, where he’d caught the beginnings of the afternoon commute. From there, two routes wound north to Cologne: A60 or follow the Rhine on the two-lane N9. He’d decided that the first half of the journey would be here, along the river, but the remainder had to be by autobahn. So he slowly threaded his way out of the ancient valley and followed the blue markers for A60.

An entrance ramp appeared and he sped onto the superhighway. He revved the rented BMW’s engine and settled into the far-left lane. A patchwork quilt of hills, woods, and pasture rolled out on either side.

He glanced in the rearview mirror.

His tail, a silver Mercedes, was still there.

Back a respectable distance and shielded by three cars, the Mercedes could easily have gone unnoticed. But he’d been expecting them and they hadn’t disappointed, following him ever since he’d left Rothenburg. He wondered if the body in the Baumeisterhaus had been found. Killing Jonah had probably saved the Israelis the trouble-betrayal came at an extreme cost in the Middle East-but the Jews had also lost the opportunity to interrogate a traitor, which may have soured their mood.

He loved the way Germans built superhighways-three wide lanes, few curves, sparse exits. Perfect for speed and privacy. A sign informed him that Cologne lay eighty-two kilometers ahead. He knew his position. Just south of Koblenz, fifteen kilometers east of the Rhine, the Mosel River fast approaching.

He switched lanes.

Farther back, beyond the Mercedes, he noticed four more vehicles.

Right on time.

Nine years he’d been searching for the Library of Alexandria, and all on behalf of the Blue Chair. The old man was obsessed with finding whatever was out there, and initially he’d thought the search ridiculous. But as he’d learned more, he’d come to realize that the goal wasn’t as far-fetched as he’d first thought. Lately he’d begun to think there might even be something to find. The Israelis were certainly engrossed. Alfred Hermann seemed focused. He’d learned many things. Now it was time to use that knowledge.