The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (93 page)

Those damaged lips pulled up into what passed for a grin. “Sarge, you put me to bed like a third grader at eight p.m. I’m well rested, I swear.”

The kid did look pretty damned chipper, scars and all.

“Alright,” Brandt conceded, “but I’m still taking over for you.”

Davidson didn’t move though. “You might want to check on somebody that didn’t get
any
sleep, first.” He indicated toward the woman sitting cross-legged near the burned-out fire. Rebecca. What was she up to?

“I’ve got it,” Davidson said, resuming his position near the door. “Sun should be coming up soon. It’s still snowing, but seems to be letting up on the blizzard thing.”

Brandt moved across the room to Rebecca. He grabbed a poker from the fireplace tools and jabbed the smoldering embers. Once first light hit, they’d have to douse the fire to prevent any smoke from giving away their location. So they might as well get as much warmth out of the wood as they could.

Even so, Rebecca tugged her jacket tighter around her shoulders. He grabbed the blanket he’d been using and draped it over her back before sitting on his heels next to her.

Laid out in front of the researcher were two puzzles. The first were the broken fragments of the tablet they’d recovered from St. Basil’s. They were positioned exactly as they had been back on the pedestal. In front of the stone were the letters from Nikolay’s family. Rebecca chewed absently on her lower lip. Her laptop lay off to the side. Unusual.

“What are you working on?” he asked.

Rebecca seemed startled at his words and looked up at him wide-eyed. “Oh, Brandt.” She then felt the blanket over her. “Sorry, thanks.”

Her eyes drifted back to the pages in front of her.

“Going to share?” he asked, knowing once she got into this mood, a single sleepless night was just the beginning.

“Not sure if I really have anything,” she said, working on that lip again.

Brandt sat down cross-legged. He could already tell this might take a while. “How about I decide?”

Rebecca let out a long sigh. “Okay, tablets first.” Brandt’s interest was definitely piqued. The tablets were supposed to be the key to finding Amed, yet he hadn’t heard anything of the sort yet.

“Unfortunately, so far the writing on the tablets really is talking pretty standard God is good, God is great stuff.”

He didn’t think he’d let his irritation show at her casual dismissal of his faith, yet Rebecca nudged him with her elbow. “Sorry. I mean it talks a lot about God’s covenant to man and man’s covenant with God. Some other stuff about a prophet to come to fulfill David’s promise to his people.”

“Christ then?” Brandt clarified.

“Yeah, sure,” Rebecca said, then suddenly became very intent on rubbing her eyes. The action was just a distraction though. Just like she did anytime the subject of Jesus came up. He wanted to ask her again what had happened down in the back of that cave under Rome, but why would she tell him anything now? He wasn’t exactly her favorite person, at least not anymore.

Instead, he let Rebecca stretch her muscles until she finally continued on. “But nothing more specific that would have any bearing on the Rinderpest. Although I’m sure that scholars are going to have a field day parsing each and every word of these tablets out. There are just so many ways to interpret even the simplest sentence.”

She then pointed to Nikolay’s letters along with the handwritten translations of each. Bunny had done the work after they’d eaten dinner and Lopez hosted a somewhat skeptical Texas Hold ’Em poker tournament.

“These though?” Rebecca stated as she pointed to the family letters. “These are kicking my ass.”

From the droop of her lids, Rebecca really had spent the night poring over the family correspondence. Exactly what had her so interested?

* * *

Rebecca studied the multitude of letters laid out in front of her. Sure, Brandt was pretty used to her wacky theories. Used to her plucking strands from one mystery and weaving it into another. But this time?

“We’re going to be pulling out as soon as the sun is up,” Brandt reminded her.

She sighed. There was no point in delaying. She might as well get the scoffing over with.

“Alright,” Rebecca said. “This is going to sound crazy.”

Brandt’s eyebrow went up. “Why else would I be sitting here? I come to you for the crazy.”

God it hurt when he got her,
really
got her. She’d missed that. Too much.

Focusing back on the letters, Rebecca pointed to the first row. “As you can see, these letters are pretty much just small talk. Family stuff. A little about Moscow and Nikolay’s travels after he left Russia. Apparently nothing of significance.”

“I thought we’d decided that like eight hours ago,” Brandt added.

They had, but something about the letters bugged her. She was no expert on family correspondence, but this just felt…

“The small talk is just too, well…perfect,” Rebecca stated as she picked up a letter. “All is well here. We have frequented the cathedral to pay homage to your work but would like nothing more than to share the journey with you.”

Brandt looked at her like maybe she really was crazy.

Rebecca picked up another. “This stuff is like reading episodes of
Happy Days
or
Leave It to Beaver
.” She rushed on to read another letter. “Your mother is doing well. Her hearing is going, but we just speak louder.” She glanced up to Brandt. “I mean, come on, I know that things can get lost in translation, but that cannot be real.”

“This is Nikolay’s nephew supposedly writing these letters, correct?” Brandt asked.

“Yeah.”

Brandt took the letter from her. “Which means that Nikolay’s mother is the nephew’s grandmother. Wouldn’t he call her ‘Grandmother’ or ‘Babushka’?”

Damn it. She’d missed that. She’d been so focused on the diction that she’d missed the reference. Staying up all night did not hone your powers of observation.

“So if we make the leap that these letters were
not
, in fact, written by his nephew,” Brandt asked, “then who wrote them?”

She felt more sure of her working postulate now that Brandt agreed with her, yet was reluctant to really let the cat out of the bag.

“Rebecca,” Brandt sighed. “You’ve got a theory and we both know it’s going to sound ludicrous, so spit it out.”

“I think…” Rebecca backtracked. “Given that these letters were written most likely in the seventies and—”

Brandt’s hand covered hers. “Spit. It. Out.”

Withdrawing her hand from under his, Rebecca sighed. “I think it is…Osip.”

* * *

“Osip?” Brandt asked, really not expecting that name to pop out of her mouth. He probably would have been less surprised if she’d said President Jimmy Carter.

“He would have been in his late twenties, early thirties,” Rebecca rushed on. “I saw Osip’s handwriting in Pushchino, plus during the Cold War, with the huge crackdown on religion, they would have had to been extremely careful and—”

“Okay,” Brandt said, having to talk over her. “So is there a way to break whatever code they were using?”

Rebecca opened her lips, but no words came out. It was one of the few times he’d stunned her to silence.

“Code?” Brandt prompted.

“Yes…I mean, no,” Rebecca sputtered. “Well, yes and no. Yes, I think there is a code. No, I haven’t broken it yet.”

Brandt studied the page in his hand. “Well, they certainly aren’t using any kind of high-level Soviet Venona codes.”

Those were one-pad virtually unbreakable codes substituting numbers for letters. This cipher clearly was within the text itself. However Nikolay and Osip used even a simple letter substitution code, it could take days to weeks to figure it out.

“No,” Rebecca stated. “They were both religious men. I think they may be talking about their individual searches for the rest of the tablets.”

That would make sense. The letters did contain an inordinate amount of detail on their daily travels. In just one letter Osip mentioned the cathedral, St. Petersburg, and Crimea. Either this “nephew” was a Russian travel agent, or they were on the hunt for something.

“I take it the sights that Osip is talking about in Russia have important Jewish significance?”

Rebecca crossed her legs again, finding a passage she was especially excited about. “And not just Osip. Even though we don’t have Nikolay’s original letters, we can tell by Osip’s response that Nikolay was traveling all over the place too.” She brought the paper closer to read. “Osip said, ‘I can only imagine that Cyprus was beautiful. I hope that you brought back many mementos.’”

“That did sound pretty promising,” Brandt said, then followed up with his real thoughts. “If we were back in the seventies and didn’t have a plague hot on our heels. This isn’t getting us any closer to where Amed hid the Rinderpest.”

Rebecca frowned, however Bunny stirred on the couch across from them, lazily opening her eyes. “Did you look at the later letters? I think they got more cagey.”

Brandt leaned forward and grabbed a letter from the last row of pages. He read a random passage. “‘I am so glad to hear that your trip to Wadi was so successful. Your travels truly are a revelation. I can almost see the place through your words.’”

Sitting up, Bunny wiped the sleep from her eyes. “We both assumed that author of the letter referred to Wadi as in Wadi Karnataka,
India
.”

You could almost see the lightbulb go off over Rebecca’s head. “What if they meant Wadi Zered?” Off Brandt’s confused look Rebecca continued. “It is a valley that ran between Edom and Moab,” Rebecca added for those nonbiblical scholars in the room, “ancient kingdoms that occupied lands that later became Jordan.”

“Jordan?” Brandt asked, suddenly far more interested. Jordan fulfilled several of their search criteria. The country lay along the path of Moses’s exodus from Egypt. Yet it was now under Arab control. Not that Brandt believed that the Jordanian government would condone such a terrorist act as storing the Rinderpest, however those sympathetic to Amed within the government? Those who could look the other way at abnormal shipments? That Brandt believed.

Still Jordan wasn’t a small country. It was twice as big as Slovenia. That was a lot of ground to cover.

“Anything that narrows that down?” he asked as Lopez made his way down the stairs from the bunks.

“Any more of that stale, nasty-ass lumpy oatmeal left?” the corporal asked.

Bunny rose, pointing to one of the later letters. “I think that one has—”

“Shh,” Davidson hissed from the door.

Brandt tensed as Bunny turned to the private. “What—”

“Get down!”

Brandt was already on it, grabbing the younger woman by the wrist and yanking her to the floor as Lopez leapt over the stair’s railing, drawing his weapon before his feet hit the floor.

A window shattered as a bullet sped through the room, striking the solid rock fireplace and ricocheting back toward Davidson. The private ducked, covering his head.

That bitch. Brandt never should have assumed the weather would keep her at bay. The chick had a hard-on for them bigger than Bush’s for Saddam.

“Douse all the light!” he shouted. Lopez and Davidson obliged, although Brandt wasn’t sure if it did them any good. They’d been light-tight before the attack. The guy did not find them because of the fire or the lamps. That sniper must have an infrared scope. Of course, the bastard had a night-vision scope. Probably even one that had a wind gauge, because why the fuck not?

Plunged into darkness, Brandt heard movement from his men on the second floor, as he turned to Lopez. “You are getting the Bombardier ready for evac.”

“Sarge, I don’t know…” Davidson said as he cracked the door open. “Unless I set up somewhere to provide cover fire, I don’t see how anyone is making it across to the Bombardier.” He slammed the door shut as another shot flew through the crack and then dug a trough in the soft wood floor. “Like I said.”

“I’ve got a plan,” Lopez said as he army-crawled his way across the room. “But no one, and I mean
no one
is going to like it.”

Anything had to beat hugging the rug until the enemy decided on a full-out assault. Didn’t it?

* * *

Aunush let her elbow touch the sniper’s. Not enough to interfere with his aim, but enough for him to know how much she truly appreciated his skills. Dawn was only a few minutes away, but darkness still claimed the mountains as snow fell in thick sheets. The only sound beyond the muffled
pop
of the silenced sniper rifle was the crunch of ice behind her.

She didn’t flinch as a gun muzzle dug into her temple. Nor did the sniper, he just kept firing at the chalet. The only concession she made to having a gun to her head was to lower her thermal-equipped binoculars.

“What took you so long?” Aunush asked.

The
wei
’s hand shook with fury, digging the metal deeper into her temple. “What did I warn you if you tried to escape?”

“Please,” Aunush stated. “Escape? More like leaving bread crumbs across Slovenia.”

Her eyes darted up to witness the
wei
’s confusion. Clearly he wasn’t quite as adept at Western culture as he thought.

“The broken bathroom window? The tiny, almost imperceptible blood trail to the stolen car?” The muzzle fell back a millimeter as the
wei
considered her words. “Then the extremely obvious break-in at the Slovenia’s World’s Elite Winter Sport storage facility? Where the only items stolen were two electric snowmobiles?”

The gun pulled away. “You have endangered the mission.”

“Really?” Aunush asked as she handed him the binoculars. “Those seven green splotches in that house? That’s Brandt and his team.”

The
wei
peered through the lens, then snapped them down. You could tell he wanted to punish her. Really, he probably wanted to kill her except for that lingering doubt at the base of his skull. Could he have found their mutual enemy? Could he take them out without her?

The answer to both of those questions was no.

“Remember,” the
wei
said, clearly trying to stay in control, “we have your Watcher back at the hotel.”