speak with you.'
'I have to go,' she said to Daniels.
'Take care of my boy.'
MALONE MANEUVERED THE RENTAL CAR UP THE INCLINED ROAD. Snow framed the rocky countryside on both sides of the asphalt, but the local authorities had done a great job of clearing the highway. He was deep into the Pyrenees, on the French side, near the Spanish border, heading for the village of Ossau.
He'd taken an early-morning train from Aachen to Toulouse then driven southwest into snowy highlands. When he'd Googled brightness of god einhard last night he'd immediately learned that the phrase referred to an eighth- century monastery located in the French mountains. The Romans who first came to the area built a vast city, a metropolis of the Pyrenees, which eventually became a center of culture and commerce. But in the fratricidal wars of the Frankish kings, during the sixth century, the city was sacked, burned, and destroyed. Not one inhabitant had been spared. No stone had been left resting upon another. Only a single rock stood amid naked fields, creating, as one chronicler of the time wrote, 'a solitude of silence.' One that lasted until Charlemagne arrived two hundred years later and ordered the construction of a monastery, which included a church, a chapter house, a cloister, and a village nearby. Einhard himself supervised the construction, recruiting the first bishop, Bertrand, who became famous for both his piety and civil administration. Bertrand died in 820 at the foot of the altar and was buried beneath what he'd named the Church of St. Lestelle.
The drive from Toulouse had taken him through a host of picturesque mountain villages. He'd visited the region several times, most recently last summer. Little differed among the countless locations save for names and dates. In Ossau a ragged line of houses straggled up winding streets, each faced with coarse stone and embellished with ornaments, coats of arms, and corbels. Only the peaks of the tiled roofs exposed a confusion of angles, like bricks tossed into the snow. Chimneys exhaled into the cold midday air. About a thousand people lived here and four inns accommodated visitors.
He motored into the center of town and parked. A narrow lane led back to an open square. People in warm clothes, with unreadable eyes, darted in and out of the shops. His watch read 9:40 AM.
He stared past the rooftops toward a clear morning sky, following the side of an escarpment upward to where a square tower rose from a rocky spur. Scraps of other towers on either side seemed to cling to it.
The ruins of St. Lestelle.
STEPHANIE STOOD BESIDE HERBERT ROWLAND'S HOSPITAL BED, AND devis opposite her. Rowland was groggy but awake.
'You saved my life?' Rowland asked in a voice not much more than a whisper.
'Mr. Rowland,' Davis said. 'We're with the government. We don't have much time. We need to ask you a few things.'
'You saved my life?'
She threw Davis a glance that said, Let me do this. 'Mr. Rowland, a man came to kill you tonight. We're not sure how, but he sent you into a diabetic coma. Luckily we were there. Do you feel up to answering questions?'
'Why would he want me dead?'
'You remember the Holden and Antarctica?'
She watched as he seemed to search his memory.
'A long time ago,' Rowland said.
She nodded. 'It was. But that's why he came to kill you.'
'Who do you work for?'
'An intelligence agency.' She pointed at Davis. 'He's with the White House. Commander Alexander, who captained Holden, was murdered last night. One of the lieutenants who went ashore with you, Nick Sayers, died a few years ago. We thought you might be the next target and we were right.'
'I don't know anything.'
'What did you find in Antarctica?' Davis asked.
Rowland closed his eyes and she wondered if he'd dozed off. A few seconds later he opened them and shook his head. 'I was ordered never to speak of that. Not to anyone. Admiral Dyals himself told me from his own mouth.'
She knew about Raymond Dyals. Former chief of naval operations.
'He ordered NR-1A down there,' Davis said.
That she didn't know.
'You know about the sub?' Rowland asked.
She nodded. 'We've read the report on its sinking, and we talked to Commander Alexander before he died. So tell us what you know.' She decided to make the stakes clear. 'Your life may depend on it.'
'I've got to stop drinking,' Rowland said. 'The doctor told me that it would eventually kill me. I take my insulin-'
'Did you last night?'
He nodded.
She was growing impatient. 'The doctors told us earlier that you had no insulin in your blood. That's why you went into shock-that and the alcohol. But all that's irrelevant now. We need to know what you found in Antarctica.'
FIFTY-TWO
MALONE INVESTIGATED OSSAU'S FOUR INNS AND CONCLUDED THAT L'Arlequin would be the correct choice-all mountain austerity on the outside but elegant on the inside, decorated for Christmas with aromatic pine, a carved nativity scene, and mistletoe over the doors. The proprietor pointed out the guest book-which, he explained, contained the names of all of the famous Pyrenean explorers, along with many nineteenth-and twentieth-century notables. Its restaurant served a wonderful monkfish casserole diced with ham, so he'd enjoyed an early lunch and lingered for over an hour, waiting, finally savoring a log-shaped cake made of chocolate and chestnuts. When his watch read eleven AM he decided that he may have chosen wrong.
He learned from the waiter that St. Lestelle closed for the winter, and opened only from May to August to accommodate visitors who flocked to the area to enjoy the summer highlands. Not much there, the man said, mostly ruins. Some restoration work occurred each year, financed by the local historical society and encouraged by the Catholic diocese. Other than that, the site remained quiet.
He decided a visit was in order. Night would come quickly, certainly by five, so he needed to take advantage of what daylight remained.
He left the inn armed, three rounds left in the gun. He estimated that the temperature was in the low twenties. No ice, but lots of dry snow that crunched like cereal beneath his boots. He was glad he'd bought the boots earlier in Aachen, knowing that he was headed into some rough terrain. A new sweater beneath his jacket kept his chest extra warm. Tight leather gloves sheathed his hands.
He was ready.
For what?
He wasn't sure.
STEPHANIE WAITED FOR HERBERT ROWLAND TO ANSWER HER question about what had happened in 1971.
'I don't owe those bastards a thing,' Rowland muttered. 'I kept my oath. Never said a word. But they still came to kill me.'
'We need to know why,' she said.
Rowland inhaled oxygen. 'It was the damnedest thing. Ramsey came to the base, picked me and Sayers, and said we were going to Antarctica. We were all special ops, used to weird things, but this was the strangest. That's a long way from home.' He savored another breath. 'We flew to Argentina, climbed aboard Holden, and stayed to ourselves. We were told to sonar-search for a pinger, but we never heard a thing until we finally went ashore. That's when Ramsey donned his gear and dove into the water. He came back about fifty minutes later.'
