Chris Kuzneski - Sign of the Cross

‘The scroll? Someone’s trying to kill you, and your focus is on the scroll? Give me a break! I don’t buy that at all. At some point self-survival has to enter your mind. It has to. That’s just human nature.’

‘Really?’ he argued. ‘If self-survival is so important, then why are you here?’

It was the question that Payne had been struggling with for the past few days. And the truth was, he didn’t have a solid answer until Boyd forced him to respond. ‘As crazy as this sounds, I think I’m here to figure out why I’m here.’

‘A bit of a paradox, wouldn’t you say?’

Payne nodded at Boyd’s assessment. ‘But if you think about it, it makes sense. Manzak wanted me involved in this mess for some crazy reason. Now I feel obligated to figure out why.’

55

Once everyone calmed down, Payne told Jones about Manzak and Buckner’s fingerprints. Jones’s computer was still in the Roman Collection Room, so they headed upstairs to see if Randy Raskin had sent the results from the Pentagon. Thankfully, there was an e-mail waiting for them.

hey guys,

i checked our records. neither dude is cia. definitely not the real manzak and buckner. you guys should’ve been more thorough… i ran their prints through some european databases and got 2 hits. the results are interesting. what are you guys involved in now?

r. r.

p. s. did i mention you guys should’ve been more thorough?

Payne read the message over Jones’s shoulder and sensed his stress over the thorough line. If there’s one thing that Jones prided himself in, it was his thoroughness. Then again, that’s probably the reason that Raskin mentioned it twice. Why have friends if you can’t bust their balls? Still, Payne didn’t want Jones to get upset, so he said, ‘Someone at the Pentagon needs to show Raskin how to use the shift key. Seriously, how hard is it to capitalize?’

Jones laughed as he clicked on the first attachment. ‘OK, who do we have first?’

Sam Buckner’s ugly mug filled the screen. Or in reality Otto Granz, because that was his real name. Born near Vienna, he entered the Austrian army at the age of eighteen for his mandatory six-month stint and decided to stay on for an additional ten years. From there he bounced around Europe, doing all kinds of mercenary work, before he took permanent residence in Rome.

Last employer: unknown. Last whereabouts: unknown.

‘We should tell Raskin he can update the second category. Otto’s on a slab in Milan.’

Jones nodded. ‘We probably should, just to be thorough .’

Payne laughed, while Jones opened the second attachment. They knew Manzak was running the show, so in their minds the organization he worked for would be the key to everything. ‘Richard Manzak, come on down. You’re the next contestant on the — ’

And that’s when they saw the name. A name that ended their joking.

‘No way,’ Jones groaned. ‘You gotta be shitting me.’

Payne looked at Manzak’s face. It was definitely him. Payne never forgot a guy he had recently killed. Jones knew it was him, too. But it took him longer to accept it. Mostly because he had the hots for Maria and realized he had to confront her with the new information. He had to march right up to her and ask her which side she was on. And her reaction would be the key. It would tell them everything they needed to know. Whose side was she really on?

Jones skimmed through Manzak’s personnel file as he printed a copy as evidence. When he was done, he said, ‘Let’s get her. We need to talk to her now.’

Payne nodded. ‘Lead the way. I got your back.’

Little did Payne know how prophetic his words would be.

As they hit the front stairs, Payne glanced out the window at a distant peak, half expecting to see snow, even though it was the middle of July. Instead, what he saw was a blur in the corner of the property grounds. Something human. Someone scrambling for cover.

‘Hold up,’ he said, grabbing Jones’s shoulder. ‘Check three o’clock.’

That was all it took. One simple phrase, and he entered war mode. From researcher to soldier in half a second, like Payne had flipped a switch in the back of his head. No debating or questioning. He trusted him enough to know if Payne was worried, then he should be, too.

They were halfway down the stairs, so Jones hustled to the bottom while Payne ran back to the top, figuring two perspectives were better than one. There was a vertical notch in the wood paneling of the left-hand wall. Payne squeezed his body into the crevice, hoping to get a clean view while still being protected. The sun was fading in the western sky, which meant the overhead lights were bound to give their position away on the stairs. Payne searched for a light switch but saw none. ‘What do you see? Anything?’

Jones was blessed with eyes that allowed him to see things that other people couldn’t. That was one of the reasons he was such an effective sniper. While most soldiers were busy adjusting their scopes, Jones was pulling his trigger. ‘Not yet… Wait! We have a man down. Eleven o’clock, near the boulder.’

The notch in the wall obstructed everything to Payne’s left. He dropped to the floor and scurried to the opposite side, where he verified what Jones had spotted. There was a guard lying facedown. The back of his shirt was stained red. ‘Get Boyd and Maria. I’ll get Petr.’

Jones flung the bottom door open while Payne bolted in the opposite direction. Neither of them had any weapons, since they weren’t allowed to bring them into the Archives. Somehow they doubted the enemy would follow the same rules.

At this time of day, most of Ulster’s employees had gone home for the night, making Payne’s job a lot easier. Protecting twenty is a lot harder than protecting one. Payne shouted Ulster’s name several times, hoping to get his attention. But the only person he spotted was Franz, the gentleman who’d told him about the Lipizzaner stallions. ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded.

‘We’re under attack. One guard’s dead. We need to get everybody out of here.’

Payne shouted for Ulster again. ‘We need weapons. Do you have any?’

‘ Ja , in the basement. There is armory. Many weapons.’

Thank God, Payne thought to himself. ‘Do you have the key?’

‘ Ja , I have the keys.’

‘Then you’re coming with me.’

‘What about Petr? We need to find Petr.’

‘We will once we’re armed. We can’t save Petr without guns.’

Franz moved fast for an old guy. Two minutes later they were standing outside the basement armory. Its door was made of German steel and was built to withstand an atom bomb. No way Payne could’ve kicked it in. Thankfully, Franz knew his keys, so they got inside without delay. The concrete room was smaller than he’d expected yet had enough weapons to overthrow a Central American country. Rifles lined the far wall while a variety of handguns hung on wooden pegs. To Payne’s right there was a series of wooden shelves jam-packed with ammo and gear bags, plus several military helmets and a wide variety of… Oh shit. Payne forced his eyes back to the helmets. They weren’t normal helmets. They were Nazi helmets. From World War II.

And that’s when it hit him. He wasn’t standing in a twenty-first-century armory. He was in a museum. A fuckin’ war museum. And everything around Payne was older than he was.

Franz sensed Payne’s concern. He said, ‘I assure you, they will kill just the same. I have seen it with my own eyes.’

That was good enough for Payne. He grabbed one of the gear bags and jammed it with three rifles, five handguns, and all the ammo he could carry. Franz did the same with a second bag and flung it over his shoulder. Payne wasn’t leaving the room unarmed so he loaded three Luger P-08 9 mm pistols and handed one of them to Franz. The look on his face told Payne he knew what to do with it, like he had been here before. The look on Payne’s face said the same.