“Now, that is downright rude. Shall we?”
SABRE KEPT HIS GUN LEVELED AT THE BACK OF THE GUARDIAN’S head. They passed more buildings and headed deeper into the complex, near a point where the human-made met the natural.
He loathed the unholy calm.
An unassuming church washed primrose yellow nestled close to the rock face. Inside, the vaulted nave was naturally lit and crowded with icons, triptychs, and frescoes. A forest of silver and gold chandeliers hung above a richly detailed mosaic floor. The opulence stood in stark contrast with the simple exterior.
“This isn’t a library,” he said.
A man appeared at the altar. He, too, was olive-skinned, but short with ash-white hair. And older. Maybe seventies.
“Welcome,” the man said. “I’m the Librarian.”
“You in charge?”
“I have that honor.”
“I want to see the library.”
“To do that, you must release the man you’re holding.”
Sabre shoved the Guardian away. “All right.” He leveled the gun at the Librarian. “You take me.”
“Certainly.”
MALONE AND PAM ENTERED THE CHURCH. TWO ROWS OF monolithic granite columns, painted white, their capitals gilded, displayed medallions of Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles. Frescoes on the walls showed Moses receiving the Law and confronting the Burning Bush. Reliquaries, patens, chalices, and crosses rested in glass-fronted cupboards.
No sign of McCollum or Straw Hat.
To Malone’s right, in an alcove, he spotted two bronzed cages. One held hundreds of sandstone-colored skulls, piled upon one another in a ghastly hillock. The other housed a hideous assortment of bones in an anatomical jumble.
“Guardians?” Pam asked.
“Has to be.”
Something else about the sunlit nave caught his attention. No pews. He wondered if this was an Orthodox church. Hard to tell from the decoration, which seemed an eclectic mixture of many religions.
He crossed the mosaic floor to the opposite alcove.
Inside, perched on a stone shelf, backdropped by a bright stained-glass window, was a full skeleton dressed in embroidered purple robes and a cowl, propped in a sitting position, head slightly atilt, as if questioning. The finger bones, still clinging to bits of dried flesh and nails, clutched a staff and a rosary. Three words were chiseled into the granite below.
CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA
“Prudence is the guardian of things,” he said, translating, but his Greek was good enough to know that the first word could also be read as “wisdom.” Either way, the message seemed clear.
What sounded like a door opening then closing echoed from beyond an iconostasis at the front of the church. Clutching the gun, he crept forward and stepped through the doorway in the center of the elaborately decorated panel.
A single door waited on the far side.
He came close.
The panels were cedar, and upon them were inscribed the words from Psalm 118. THIS GATE OF THE LORD, INTO WHICH THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL ENTER
He grasped the rope handle and pulled. The door opened with a cacophony of moans. But he noticed something else. The ancient panel was equipped with a modern addition-an electronic deadbolt fit to the opposite side. A wire snaked a path to the hinge, then disappeared into a hole drilled into the stone.
Pam saw it, too.
“This is weird,” she said.
He agreed.
Then he stared beyond the doorway and his confusion multiplied.
SEVENTY-FIVE
MARYLAND
STEPHANIE LEAPED FROM THE CHOPPER THAT HAD DEPOSITED her and Cassiopeia back at Camp David. Daniels waited for them on the landing pad. Stephanie marched straight for him as the helicopter rose back into the morning sky and disappeared across the treetops.
“You may be the president of the United States,” she said in a sharp tone, “but you’re a sorry son of a bitch. You sent us in there knowing we’d be attacked.”
Daniels looked incredulous. “How would I have known that?”
“And a helicopter with a marksman happened to be in the neighborhood?” Cassiopeia asked.
The president motioned. “Let’s take a walk.”
They strolled down a wide path. Three Secret Service agents followed twenty yards behind.
“Tell me what happened,” Daniels said.
Stephanie calmed down, recapped the morning, and finished by saying, “He thought somebody is plotting to kill you.” Weird referring to Daley in the past tense.
“He’s right.”
They stopped.
“I’ve had enough,” she said. “I don’t work for you anymore, but you’ve got me operating in total darkness. How do you expect me to do this?”
“I’m sure you’d like your job back, wouldn’t you?”
She did not immediately answer and her silence conveyed, to her annoyance, that she did. She’d conceived of and started the Magellan Billet, heading it for its entire existence. Whatever was happening had, at first, not involved her, but now men she neither liked nor admired were using her. So she answered the president honestly. “Not if I have to kiss your ass.” She paused. “Or place Cassiopeia in any more danger.”
Daniels seemed unfazed. “Come with me.”
They walked in silence through the woods to another of the cabins. Inside, the president grabbed a portable CD player.
“Listen to this.”
“That was taped over five hours ago,” Daniels explained. “No call has come from my trusted attorney general. You would think he could have at least tried. Like I’m hard to find.”
She wanted to know, “Who killed Daley?”
