They needed to leave. The shots could have been heard in the cathedral and he did not want to be around when anyone came to investigate. Thankfully, they’d garnered a few uninterrupted minutes that had turned productive. He could only hope Alle would do what he asked.
“Jamison dead?” he whispered.
“Yes. But there’s something you need to know.”
He listened as Rocha told him what Jamison had said before being shot, the same thing Alle had reported. He now wondered about Bene Rowe. Had everything and everybody been compromised?
But first, “Go get the body and clean up any mess.”
He waited a few minutes before Rocha returned with Jamison slung across one shoulder. He led the way to the exit and carefully opened the inside latch. Daylight was fading into shadows.
“Wait here.”
He stepped out and casually walked to where another street led away from the alley. A trash receptacle caught his gaze. Small, but large enough. He returned to the iron door and noticed no latch or lock on the outside. This was a one-way portal. Tom Sagan had thought ahead.
Again.
Which only reinforced the notion that Sagan had lied to him.
“I’m leaving. Dump the body in that container around that corner, then join me at the car.”
———
ALLE FOUND HERSELF SHAKING. WAS IT FEAR? DOUBT? CONFUSION? She wasn’t sure. The woman who’d introduced herself as Inna Tretyakova, apparently an acquaintance of her father’s, had led them to a nearby U-bahn station. They’d taken the subway across town to a residential area heavy with apartments. The St. Stephen’s spire loomed in the darkening sky a mile or so away. A clock in the station had told her it was approaching 7:00 P.M.
Her father had said nothing on the train, speaking only briefly to Inna. The woman appeared to be in her forties, attractive, with blue eyes that had apprised her with a penetrating gaze. She’d introduced herself as an editor for
She told herself to stay calm, but she could not rid her mind of the sight of Brian Jamison being shot. She’d never seen such a thing. He’d been a danger, a person she’d never accepted and never believed. He’d lied to her outside the cathedral about being alone. He spoke Hebrew, carried a gun—none of it made sense.
What was happening here?
She was a twenty-five-year-old graduate student with an interest in Columbus who wrote an article for a British periodical. One day she was in Seville wading through 500-year-old documents, the next she was in Austria involved with a man searching for the Temple treasure. Now she was on the run with her father, a man she deeply resented, acting as a spy.
Inna led them to a modest building and up to a third-floor apartment, not much bigger than the one Zachariah had provided her. This unit held Inna and her two children, both teenagers, whom she met. No husband, Inna explained, as they had divorced five years ago.
“You didn’t mention that earlier,” her father said.
“How was it important? You asked for my help and I gave it. Now tell me what happened back there.”
“A man was killed.”
Alle wanted to know, “What did you give Zachariah?”
“Do you have any idea the trauma you put me through?” her father asked. “I thought you were in danger. I watched while men—”
“That was real.”
And she meant it. She could still feel their disgusting touches.
“I took a lot of chances for you,” her father said.
“I was told you were about to kill yourself.”
“A few more seconds and I would have never been a problem for you again.”
“I’m not sorry for what I did. It had to be done. There’s a lot at stake here.”
“Enlighten me.”
That she did not plan to do, especially in front of a stranger, whom she knew nothing about.
So she asked again, “What was it you found in Grandfather’s grave?”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
ZACHARIAH STEPPED FROM THE CAR AND TOLD ROCHA TO wait behind the wheel. They’d driven out of central downtown to Vienna’s western outskirts and Schonbrunn. Once the residence of the Hapsburg emperors, now the Baroque palace stood as a tourist attraction.
And a popular one.
He’d visited once himself, admiring some of the 1,400 rooms, particularly impressed by the Hall of Mirrors where, he’d been told, a six-year-old Mozart once performed. Its magnificent grand gallery was where delegates to the Congress of Vienna danced away the night in 1815, after carving up Napoleon’s defeated empire. He admired that audacity.
