Her heart ached. The tiny dried toy was crafted from hardened lumps of leather stitched with scraps of cloth and stained the same burgundy as the robes. The child’s slack arm seemed to be reaching for her plaything, forever unable to claim it.
The abandoned doll struck Erin deeply as she remembered another like it, handmade, too. She had buried it with her baby sister. She swallowed hard, fighting back tears, feeling foolish for it. Heinrich’s death continued to throw her off balance, and right now she had to pull herself together in front of the soldiers.
Still on her knees, she glanced up to the child’s other hand, half hidden behind her body, and saw a glint from between the curled fingers.
Odd.
She leaned one palm against the wall, feeling hard mortar extruding between the bricks. Though the body was the result of a recent murder, not an ancient one, she still treated the remains with respect. This child was once someone’s little girl.
She reached for that hand. The girl’s arm trembled, then jerked. The entire mummified body shook against the wall as if the child still lived.
Erin fell back with a gasp.
A hand gripped her shoulder, steadying her.
“Another aftershock,” Jordan said.
Fine dust sifted from the stone roof. Behind Erin, a brick thudded to the floor. She held her breath until the quake ceased.
“They’re getting worse,” Jordan said. “Nothing here for us. Time to go.”
She resisted the pull of his arm. This was her site now, and there were still things here for her to explore. She shifted closer to the wall and reached again for the girl’s hand.
Jordan noted her attention and dropped beside her. “What is it?”
“Looks like the child grabbed something before she died.”
Archaeological protocol dictated that nothing be touched before it had been photographed, but this girl had not been murdered that long ago, so Erin would forgo protocol just this once.
Reaching out, she nudged the girl’s fingers open. She had expected them to be brittle but found them eerily pliable. Surprised at the state of the body, she missed catching the object as it fell free. It dropped in the dust.
She didn’t need a doctorate in archaeology to recognize this artifact.
Jordan swore under his breath.
She stared dumbfounded at the medal, at the iron cross, at the swastika.
German.
From World War II.
Here was the identity of the grave robbers, the ones who had drilled down here with modern tools. But why was this medal clutched in the mummified fingers of a girl inside an ancient Jewish tomb?
Jordan clenched a fist. “The Nazis must have got here first. Raided and emptied this place out.”
His words clarified little. Hitler was obsessed with the occult, but what had he hoped to find in Masada?
She scrutinized the girl’s clothes. Why would the Nazis take so much care to dress a child in replicas of the first millennium, only to crossbolt her to the wall?
She pictured the girl ripping the medal off her tormentor’s uniform, hiding it, stealing proof of who killed her. Again an upwelling of sympathy for this child—and for the courage of this final act—swept through her. Tears again rose in her eyes.
“Are you okay?” Jordan’s face was close enough for her to see a fine scar on his chin.
To hide her tears, she lifted her phone and took several pictures of the medal. The girl had gone to great lengths to secure a clue to the identity of her murderer. Erin would record her proof.
Once she lowered her phone, Jordan reached to the dust, picked up the medal, and flipped it over. “Maybe we can find out who did this. SS officers often carved their names on the reverse side of their medals. Whoever this bastard was, I want his name. And if he’s somehow still alive …”
At that moment she liked Jordan more than ever. Shoulder to shoulder, they studied the small metal disk. No name covered the reverse side, only a strange symbol.
She took a snapshot of it in Jordan’s palm, then read aloud the words along its border. “
“That makes sense,” Jordan said sourly.
She shot him a quizzical glance. Recent German history was not her specialty. “How so?”
He tilted the medal from side to side. “My grandfather fought in World War Two. Told me stories. It’s one of the reasons I joined up. And I’m a bit of a history buff. The
And they got here first. She felt a sinking sense of defeat. She was used to studying graves that had already been robbed, but those thefts usually happened in antiquity. It rankled her that this tomb had been despoiled mere decades ago.
He touched the center of the symbol. “That’s not their usual symbol. Normally, the
Curious, she touched the central symbol. “Looks like a Norse rune. From Elder Futhark. Maybe an Odal rune.”
She drew it in the dust on the floor with a finger.
“The rune represents the letter
Before she could contemplate it further, McKay barked, “Freeze! Hands in the air!”
Startled, she spun around.
Jordan shouldered his Heckler & Koch machine pistol and twisted toward the tomb’s entrance. Again the ground shook, rock dust shivered—and from out of the shadows, a dark shape stepped into the room.
8
“Hold your fire!” Jordan yelled, lifting up his left arm. “It’s the padre.”
He lowered the muzzle of his submachine gun and strode over to the clergyman. It was strange enough that the priest had come down here, but he noticed something even more disturbing.
Jordan stepped in front of him as the aftershock faded. “What are you doing down here, Father?”
From under the cowl of his hood, the priest regarded him. Jordan did the same, sizing the other up. Father Korza stood two inches taller than Jordan, but under his long open jacket, he was leaner, muscular, a whip of a man. The hard planes of his face were clearly Slavic, softened only by full lips. He wore his black hair down to his collar—a bit too long for a holy man.
But it was those eyes, studious and dark—
Father Korza stared a moment longer at Jordan, then his gaze flicked away, sweeping the room in a single glance.
“Did you hear me, padre? I asked you a question.”
