The Bonaparte Secret (28 page)

Academics, Lang thought, were even more jealous of their contemporaries’ success than lawyers.

Something caught his eye and he swept a nearby wall with his light. “Let the games begin. That looks like a carving of some sort.”

Rossi stepped over to it, raising a hand to brush away the dirt caked around it. “It will need cleaning, but it appears to be a battle scene. I would guess Greeks versus Persians.”

“That sounds like Alexander to me.”

Rossi shook his head almost sorrowfully. “Not necessarily. Many wished to, er, clothe themselves in the glory of Alexander. For example, there is the misnamed Alexander Sarcophagus found in Sidon. It was carved with the exploits of Alexander shortly before his death. For years after its discovery in 1887, it was thought it had been carved for Alexander if not actually used.”

“And?”

“Most likely carved for a minor puppet king, Abdalonymus, whom Alexander appointed to rule. It is the gem of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, though.”

“You’re saying this tomb, if that is what this is, could be carved with scenes from Alexander’s life even if the tomb was somebody else’s?”

Rossi was still studying the carvings. “The Ptolemy dynasty legitimized itself by stressing it was Alexander’s rightful successor. They even formed Alexander cults. They were the ones who promoted him into being seen as a god. Their tombs contain more about him than themselves.”

Lang looked perplexed.

“You’ve seen such things in modern times. Didn’t Stalin claim to be Lenin’s rightful political heir even after disposing of such inconveniences as Trotsky?”

“I guess I never thought of it that way. I—”

Before he could finish, there was a dull thud from above. The whole ground, including the chamber, shook, unleashing a new avalanche of dust and dirt. Lang had an immediate vision of an explosion.

Then, the lights went out.

Worse, the generator powering fans sucking air in from above and water out was silent. It seemed to be getting more difficult to breathe.

Someone’s voice shouted excitedly from the corridor behind them, echoes distorting the tone.

Lang swung his light toward the voice. “What’d he say?”

“He said the entrance to the surface is closed,” Rossi said calmly. “Digging may have undercut the foundations of the old stones, caused them to fall into the excavation. Or one of the supports we erected against the outside water pressure collapsed.”

“Sounded more like an explosion to me.”

“No, no, my friend. We brought no explosives to the dig. To use such things would risk destroying what we hope to find.”

“Now what?” Lang wanted to know.

“Now we wait for the crew above to dig us out.”

Why did Lang think it wasn’t going to be that simple? Was it because he was beginning to smell a whiff of that heavy, pungent, sweet odor of nitroglycerin-based explosives such as dynamite, something someone other than Rossi’s crew might have brought to the site? And if that someone had blasted the opening closed, they certainly had not done so with the consent of Rossi’s people above, the people who supposedly would dig them out.

Lang inhaled a mouthful of dust. No doubt about it: it was getting harder to breathe.

And water was collecting around his feet.

472 Lafayette Drive, Atlanta

9:22 the same day

From under the kitchen table, Grumps watched with palpable relief as Gurt bundled Manfred against one of those late winter storms that paralyze the city every few years. Ice, not snow, covered every outdoor surface, transforming the most humble bush into an iridescent handful of diamonds. At irregular but persistent intervals a rifle shot–like crack attested to the inability of another tree limb to bear the extra weight. As usual, schools, including Manfred’s private pre-K, had announced shutting their doors as the first frozen precipitation had fallen the night before. Predictably, state, local and federal governments seized the opportunity to suspend operations along with a number of large businesses. Smaller operations, those whose bottom lines might be adversely affected by an unplanned holiday, bravely remained opened in the face of a clientele largely fearful of risking life, limb and automotive coach work on streets slick as oil.

Gurt had had enough of being confined in a house with a five-year-old’s rambunctiousness despite her normally strict discipline. Manfred had lost interest in his toys, tired of his mother’s reading to him from books already nearly memorized and tormented Grumps to the extent the dog had taken rare refuge from his young master and closest pal. One alternative was to turn on the television and let the magic screen absorb the child, something Gurt was loath to do. She severely limited Manfred’s TV watching, certain that the mindless junk that passed for entertainment would decrease her son’s IQ if not rot the brain entirely.

Gurt zipped up the child’s jacket, smiling at the resemblance the bulky clothes gave Manfred to the Michelin Man. “There,” she said in German, “now we will go to the park.”

All Gurt had to do was dream up some activity that would both engage and exhaust her son. She shrugged into a knee-length fur coat, checked to make sure her gloves were in the pocket and started to push Manfred toward the front door. In midfoyer she stopped. Grumps had abandoned the safety of the kitchen table. His tail broke into a furious rhythm as Gurt pocketed a tennis ball.

“Wait here,” she commanded both the little boy and the dog.

Grumps, now joyful at the possibility of a romp outside, skidded to a stop just short of a collision with the front door. He waited, tail wagging in impatient anticipation as she trotted up the stairs.

In the bedroom, she removed the Glock 19 from the bedside table, checking the action and magazine before stuffing it in a coat pocket. She normally did not carry a firearm when escorting or driving Manfred, out of the fear that should she need to use it, she would draw return fire, endangering the little boy. Besides, how often did a mother driving her child to kindergarten need a weapon?

But these were not normal times. After Venice and the crude but frightening attempt on her home, she felt leaving her pistol behind was foolish.

She watched her and Manfred’s step carefully as they made their way carefully down the three short but icy stairs from the front door to the brick path that led to the driveway. With canine impetuosity, Grumps made the transition in a single leap, landing hard and sliding a couple of yards on his rear on the ice-encrusted bricks. Both Gurt and Manfred nearly lost their balance as they doubled over with laughter.

By the time they reached the driveway, the stillness of the scene became apparent. Although Ansley Park was normally a quiet neighborhood, today it was totally and eerily silent. The sounds of the surrounding city, the white noise of traffic on busy Peachtree Street three blocks away, the whine of jets arriving or departing distant Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, the hum of civilization, were absent as if the blanket of ice were some huge sponge that soaked up all sound.

The rattle of tire chains on pavement across the park was like a shout in an otherwise-silent church and reminded her few of her neighbors were natives of Atlanta. This transplant had brought his winter paraphernalia with him when he left Michigan, Illinois or one of those places where snow and ice were common.

The next interruption of the crushing stillness was the cough of an engine cranking. Gurt looked at a black SUV with an exhaust trail, idling at the curb. Although tinted windows prevented her from seeing the occupant, she recognized the vehicle as belonging to the security service Lang had hired.

A door opened and a man got out. She thought she remembered he had been introduced to her as Randy. The way his eyes had never left her bustline made her wonder whether this was a name or a description. He was a beefy man with streaks of gray in his fading red hair. The fouled anchor and globe of the Marine Corps was tattooed on his right forearm above the “
semper fidelis
” motto.

Randy came around the car and opened the rear passenger door. “Going somewhere Mrs. Reilly?”

Even in her bulky coat, his stare made Gurt a little uncomfortable. “No, thank you. Just over to the park. The child is restless.”

She started to add that her name was Fuchs, not Reilly, decided the rebuke was not worth the effort and guided Manfred onto the driveway.

Randy turned to take a long look at the Iris Garden. “I don’t feel comfortable with that, ma’am. Even with the foliage off the trees and bushes, too many places somebody could hide.”

Not without leaving tracks in the sheet of ice a blind man could spot
, Gurt thought. But she said, “Thank you for your thoughtfulness, but we will be quite all right.”

Taking Manfred by the hand, although there was no sign of traffic, she stepped into the street. Grumps, lesson unlearned, dashed ahead, again unable to put on the brakes. This time he hit the far curb.

Randy shut the SUV’s door with a little more force than Gurt thought necessary. “Then I’ll have to go with you ma’am.”

The thought of the man’s stares made Gurt inexplicably uncomfortable. She’d been . . . what would Lang say? Ogled, that was it, ogled. She’d been ogled by men all her adult life and most of her adolescence.

Her tone had a little more snap in it than she might have wished. “I said, we will be quite all right, thank you. I would prefer to be alone with my child.”

Randy shrugged. “Orders are orders, ma’am. I’m to stay with you while you’re outside.”

She saw no one else was in sight on this rare day when fireplaces would be more than decorative and at least half her neighbors would be home. On the unlikely chance anyone showed up to walk the Iris Garden, he would be as obvious as a wart on the nose. But she understood the necessity of obedience to orders as only those of Teutonic origin can. She herself had complied with enough of them in her time with the Agency.

She sighed, admitting defeat. “Very well, but try to keep a distance.”

Randy gave her a wary smile. “I don’t mean to give offense, ma’am.”

“It is not you who is offensive,” Gurt lied smoothly, all too conscious of the gun in her own pocket. “It is I dislike to have my child exposed to men, er, carrying firearms. There is too much violence on television and in the papers already.”

“I understand. The kid won’t see my gun, ma’am.”

“Gun?” Manfred piped up. “The man has a gun?” he turned to Randy. “Can I see?”

Gurt sighed deeply, taking Manfred by the arm. “Come, Manfred. Grumps wants to play.”

“Aw, Mom . . .”

“I said,
come!
”

Today Grumps was more interested in the various smells of the Iris Garden than he was in fetching the tennis ball. Perhaps the small park’s resident squirrels had left a different scent or the neighborhood dogs had deposited more “pee mail” than normal, each requiring a prompt reply.

Whatever the reason, the first toss of the Day-Glo chartreuse ball only got a glance from the sniffing dog. At the second attempt, Grumps stopped his exploration long enough to watch the ball roll down one of the two slopes that formed the valley that was the park. The dog favored Manfred with a look that clearly asked, “Just what, pray tell, do you expect
me
to do with
that?”

The little boy’s enthusiasm undiminished, he followed the dog, followed by Gurt, followed by Randy.

Gurt was breathing hard, the air cold enough to slice her lungs like a surgeon’s scalpel. Cresting a small rise, she saw other human figures, those of her next-door neighbors Paige Charles and her son Wynn Three, Manfred’s friend.

“I am surprised you are out in this cold,” Gurt said when she was within earshot, motioning Randy to keep his distance.

Paige shook her head, a movement hardly perceptible under the fur-lined hood of her heavy parka. “It was either brave the weather or a restless child. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be cooped up with a kid as active as Wynn Three.”

Gurt watched Manfred and Wynn Three, now playing with a compliant Grumps. “Believe me, I do not have to imagine. I—”

A sharp crack shattered the morning’s cathedral-like silence. Gurt’s hand went to her coat pocket as she frantically motioned Manfred to come to her.

Paige must have seen the consternation on her face. “What? That was just another limb breaking off from the tree because of the weight of the ice.”

Gurt barely heard her. She had a protective arm around Manfred, her eyes searching what she thought was the direction of the sound, but she was certain only of two things: Randy was no longer in sight and she surely knew the difference between a shattering oak limb and a gunshot.

The White House

Washington, D.C.

The previous afternoon

The secretary of defense stood, hands clasped behind his back as he stared out of the Oval Office’s French doors into a rose garden desolated by winter. He checked his watch. The president was twenty minutes late for the meeting. That wasn’t even close to the record. The young chief executive had no qualms about keeping staff waiting an hour or so if the opportunity arose for an impromptu press conference, something he invariably mishandled. The man was a golden-tongued orator as long as he could stick to prepared notes and the teleprompter. Off the cuff, he tended to sound self-contradictory or confused. Fortunately, a sympathetic press usually edited out his most nonsensical responses, leaving only Fox News and conservative bloggers to broadcast the miscues.

Still, the man liked press exposure. Many said someone should tell him he no longer had to campaign and should get down to the business at hand.

The business at hand. The SecDef glanced around the room. An odd crew: a fiftyish female lieutenant colonel who had something to do with intelligence; the U.S. delegate to the Organization of American States; and the new head of the CIA, a former college radical, community organizer and a man who, as far as the SecDef knew, had had no experience in running anything the size of a taco stand, let alone one of the world’s largest intel agencies.