The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (22 page)

Any other time, Lochum might have lured Rebecca into his hyperbole, but today she just wanted to close her eyes and pray for a dreamless sleep.

Rebecca could feel her old mentor’s eyes upon her, but she kept her gaze to the window. Out there, somewhere, they were preparing Brandt’s body for transport back to the States. Did he have any family? Would they have a formal funeral? Did covert operatives have that honor?

A tear trickled down her cheek. Lochum was blabbing on, but he stopped and wiped it away. “My sweet, your sergeant would be quite embarrassed by such a display.”

Words finally rose to her throat as she sat up in bed. “Just stop it. You didn’t know him at all. You were barely in the same proximity for an hour, and the entire time you hated him.”

A sad smile spread across the professor’s face. “I did not hate him, darling. I was jealous of him.”

“Whatever,” Rebecca said, as she wiped away tears.

“Do you know why?” The softness to his voice made her turn. “I was jealous, because for the entire time he had your eye. I tried to manipulate, cajole, and dance my way into your gaze, but I could not.”

Even though Lochum was being as sensitive as a man like him could be, it didn’t make her feel any better. If anything, it made her ache for Brandt all the more.

“Oh, ‘Becca. If I could leave you to your sorrow I would, but I need you, child.” He picked up one leaf of his notes. “I have transcribed the entire codex from the bone. Many passages I have been able to decipher, but none which hold a single clue to James’ whereabouts.”

When she did not respond, the professor pulled out a small magnifying glass from his pocket. Only Lochum would carry around a miniature magnifier. He tried to get her to look at the surface of John’s bone. “Within these untranslated passages is locked the answer to the greatest mystery man has ever known.”

Obviously, the professor realized that encouragement was having no effect, because he stood up to his full height. “This is quite enough, young lady. Do you or do you not have your interpolative translation program on your computer?”

Rebecca nodded, mainly so he would stop needling her.

“Good, good. I just need you to enter in these nine passages.”

She glanced down at the paper. Rebecca could see why he needed her help so badly. Ancient Greek was a bitch of a language. Not because they used past, present, and future tense in the same sentence, but because they used no punctuation and very often didn’t bother to even put spaces between the words. Her eyes ran back and forth over the text. You had to hunt for words with unique lettering, pull them out of the passage, then work forward and backward to find the next word. Even under the best of circumstances this tedium made her brain hurt, but today the letters were just a huge jumble that came close to giving her a migraine.

“It’s too much,” Rebecca heard herself say.

Lochum only sounded encouraged. “I know. I know. But I have asterisked these three sections that were near references to James.”

Whether it was the sheer look of eagerness on his face, or her soul finally being roused from its slumber, Rebecca picked up the paper. “I’m going to need my laptop.”

Like a child told he could go play in the park after a long rain, the professor ran over to their table and grabbed her computer.

Stomach still sour, Rebecca launched the translation program. “Don’t get your hopes up. This could take hours, even days, and I can’t even guarantee that the program will produce a true translation.”

“Yes, yes, you are a rousing example of enthusiasm.”

Frowning, she typed in line after line of cryptic letters into the program. Finally, an error message sprang up. She had exceeded the buffer’s capability, yet she had barely entered the first passage of three.

“I’m going to have to do the translation section by section,” Rebecca said with a flat tone.

Lochum looked to argue, but she pointed to the error message. “Scare me up another sixteen gigs of RAM, and I could do it all at once.”

Since he obviously did not even know what sixteen gigs of RAM were, let alone how to obtain some for her, Rebecca closed the error window then hit the button. The tiny on-screen centurion spun around and around.

Rebecca sank back onto the bed. “There’s nothing to do now but wait.”

“Perhaps I might talk you into a shower?”

She glared. “I might not get out of bed all day, so just deal with it.”

Lochum grabbed his coffee cup from the table. “I’m off then, to refresh my beverage and get you some sustenance.”

Without waiting for a response, he was out the door. Rebecca breathed out a long sigh. Last night she might not have wanted to be alone, but today all she wished for was solitude. Was a single day off too much to ask, after everything that had happened?

Leaning her head against the wall, ignoring its flaking paint, she tried to shut off her own internal RAM, but every time she closed her eyes, images of blood and explosions filled her vision. The look of desperation on Brandt’s face as she left him in Paris. That was the last memory she had of the man who had saved her life.

Squeezing her lids shut, Rebecca started counting off the sequence-specific Haplo genes of the First Migration Eurasian population. Science, as always, was her solace. She felt better already.

Rebecca wasn’t sure how much time passed, but her limp hand slid off the laptop and hit something hard. Even after she realized that she was touching John the Baptist’s relic, Rebecca did not move her fingers.

Yesterday, she would have been worried that the oils from her skin would damage the delicate bone structure, but now she just let her hand lie there. Besides, the bone had a nice, cool feel to it.

Despite the smooth look, its surface was an interlacing of small protuberances and grooves. Areas where tendon attached or blood vessels entered the bone marrow created a patchwork of tiny defects in the surface. Her finger ran along the shaft of the femur, feeling all the little bumps and furrows. It was almost like Braille, or how gypsies feel a person’s skull and tell a life’s history from bumps on the head.

Yes, it was much like that. The bone’s surface told a story of its own.

She stopped abruptly. Her musings had given off a spark. Much more carefully, Rebecca picked up the bone. Using Lochum’s magnifying glass, she studied the inscriptions. Especially those three the professor had given her.

Breath caught in her throat. If she used a nearly microscopic pockmark as a period, would that passage make more sense?

Rebecca opened her laptop. The program was fifteen minutes into its work, but wasn’t even a single percent finished. Quickly, she aborted the translation, then reentered the letters from the first passage, only now giving them grammatical delineation based on the bone’s intrinsic markings.

Rebecca hit , and this time the program began spitting out potential translations almost immediately. Her eyes scanned the possibilities. The gypsies had it right after all.

Lochum entered with fresh coffee and a bag of pastries in hand. “You would not believe the service at—”

There must have been something in her eyes, because he dropped the bag and rushed to her side. “What have you discovered?”

His gaze ran over the same amazing data. The professor sat down hard next to her on the bed. Even he was speechless.

Rebecca climbed out from beneath the covers. “I’ll jump in the shower. We’ll be out of here in ten minutes.”

* * *

“Can’t you go any faster?” Brandt asked, even though everyone was clinging to the Beamer’s handgrips and Lopez had to rely on the emergency brake as they skidded around the ninety-degree corners, laying down rubber.

“I could if there weren’t so many fucking pedestrians.”

They had made good time. Actually, excellent time. Paris to Budapest in under seven hours, but each minute was too long. Rebecca was in the wind, and that was simply unacceptable.

Davidson sounded slightly nauseated. “Do we even know where we are going?”

At the last gas stop, Brandt had bought a tourist guide of Budapest. After studying it, he had found Rebecca’s most logical move—St. Matthias Church. As the most ancient church in the area with an underground chapel that dated back to the first few centuries AD, Brandt had singled it out.

At the very least, they could recon the church, speak with the clergy, and get a better feel for the doctor’s destination. At best, Rebecca would be down in the crypt digging away for her precious bones, and he could round the doctors up and get the hell out of Europe.

Brandt had settled on St. Matthias fairly quickly, but he had not shared this information with his men. Even though they had served together for over a year and Svengurd for over two, the multiple ambushes had triggered his suspicion radar. None of his men could ever be disloyal to him or their country, yet Brandt compartmentalized their destination. What was not spoken could not be betrayed.

To that end, at the last rest stop they had smashed all of their communication equipment. For good measure they burned the devices, and then just to be extra certain he had them bury the charred remains alongside a deserted stretch of highway. And not just their radios and earpieces, but any electronic devices that might be used for passive or active communications.

Even poor Lopez’s iPod. Brandt didn’t think he had ever seen the husky man cry before, but the corporal had come damn close back at the metal pyre.

Unfortunately, the sergeant knew that even if they maintained absolute radio silence, they had a narrow window to extract Rebecca. It would only take their adversaries another short five to six hours to realize his team was not on that London-bound plane. After that, the dragnet would be doubled by his enemies as well as his allies. They were probably wondering where in the hell he was by now.

As they drew nearer to the heart of Budapest and St. Matthias, Brandt ticked off his team’s assets for the hundredth time, but they never got any better. They were well armed, but woefully low on ammo. Even with Davidson’s sidearm, a barely used Beretta, they had less than ten rounds each. The sniper rifle was nearly full, but had limited usefulness in close combat.

Not only were they going to have to be quiet, but precise as well.

There could be no more surprises.

“Which way?” Lopez asked as they rushed headlong toward a T-intersection.

Brandt glanced at his map. “Hang a left, then a pretty hard right.”

The corporal nodded, jerked the parking brake all the way up, skidding them into a left turn. Then he released it as he gunned the car back up to full speed.

“Right! Right here!”

The parking brake squealed as they sailed around the sharp turn. Lopez had to slam on all the brakes, throwing everyone forward in their restraints, but no one complained.

Despite their urgency, the sight silenced them all.

Davidson was the first one to find his voice. “Um, is it just me or are there a bunch of ancient Romans walking around?”

Damned if there wasn’t an entire legion of centurions marching past.

Guess he hadn’t planned for this.

* * *

Rebecca followed Lochum down the hotel’s steps, two at a time. He was eager to get moving, not even letting her stop to eat the breakfast he had brought. The professor hadn’t even wanted to talk about the bone’s translation before leaving the room, but she had so many questions.

Like she said, ancient Greek was a bitch, and her program could only take into account so many variables. The translation was still up for grabs, but Lochum’s grip seemed fueled by certainty, and she just didn’t have the energy to resist.

So they hit the street at a brisk pace, but Rebecca pulled to a stop when she saw the crowd before her. “What the—?”

Lochum coolly looked at the multitude of people wearing authentic Roman costumes. “Ah, do you not recognize the celebration?”

She was too taken aback by the sheer number of people in the streets and their elaborate attire to respond to his poorly veiled criticism. A veritable parade flowed past the hotel. Burgundy-crested centurions marched with an assembly-sized group of Senators following close behind. It was as if they had stepped into distant ages.

“I don’t—”

The professor picked up her hand and headed down the street. He spoke as if describing the origin of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. “They celebrate the naming of Anquincum as the capital of Lower Pannonia.”

“Of course,” she replied as her mind worked out the rest of the puzzle.

Anquincum was the Roman name for Buda.

Now the ancient Celts in the crowd with their faces painted in bright blue war paint and their almost dreadlocked hair streaked with thick red clay made sense. The legions’ conquering of these Celts had been the reason Anquincum was chosen as the region’s capital.

She had little time to think as dozens of horse-drawn chariots groaned under the weight of full-sized statues from the Roman pantheon. Athena with her characteristic helm and owl rolled past.

“First century AD?” she asked.

“106 AD to be exact.”

They turned the corner onto a decidedly less crowded street. Lochum tried to flag down a cab, but still had little luck. “I do wish you would invest more energy in detail, ‘Becca. We have no room for sophomoric generalizations.”

As he moved them farther up the road, Rebecca found that not only were the parade participants costumed, but the vast bulk of the cheering crowd was similarly dressed. The entire city had transformed into the very past she and Lochum now sought.

“I’ve heard of the festival, but I thought it was a Renaissance Fair wannabe. Not this…”

A young Roman page ran past. Everything down to the hand-cut leather ties on his sandals appeared completely authentic. In addition to the costumes, the Hungarians with their dark hair and complexion bore a striking resemblance to the civilization they meant to honor.

“I must admit I felt compelled to carbon-date a few of the uniforms,” Lochum stated as he tugged her toward a cab, but what the professor thought a car could do for them, Rebecca wasn’t certain. The streets were packed with revelers. Nobody was driving anywhere today.