The Nostradamus File (15 page)

He who gave hostage to the King speaks from the grave

Eight lie beside him

Three seek his wisdom

I have no idea what this is about.
Why couldn't he just say what he means, for once?
She read the next quatrain.

The army begins the return from the far lands

War waits in a different place

Under the banners of the Eagle, the Star and the Crescent

False gods and retribution supreme

That one was clearer. The eagle, the star and the crescent. America was the eagle. The star was probably Israel. She couldn't think of another country so identified with a star, except maybe North Korea. The crescent had to refer to a Muslim nation. Iran? Saudi Arabia? All of them?

Troop withdrawals were underway in Afghanistan. Returning from far lands. She felt a shiver run down her spine. It was as if Nostradamus was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder. If he was right, if she understood the prophecy correctly, then a new war was waiting to happen.

There were more quatrains. It would take time to translate them. Selena decided to take the manuscript to Project headquarters so she could work on it with Stephanie. Elizabeth and the others needed to know about this. But before she did that, she thought she might as well make a copy for studying here.

She took the document over to her computer and scanner and began transferring it to electronic files. Ten minutes later she was finished. She copied it to her email and sent it to Stephanie. She turned off the computer and put the manuscript back in the file folder. She put the folder in a black leather briefcase. She clipped her holster back on, closed the door behind her and walked to the elevator.

S
elena watched the numbers change as the elevator rose to her floor, thinking about the quatrains. The doors of the elevator opened. She got in and pressed the button for the ground floor. The elevator descended, smooth, efficient.

The doors opened on
to the lobby. It took a second to notice that the guard was not at his station. A tiny alarm went off in her head.
There's always someone at the desk
, she thought.
Always.

Instinct and training saved her. As she stepped from the elevator someone swung a club at her from the right. She
moved and took the blow on her shoulder. Her arm went numb. The briefcase was in her left hand. She swung it around in a fast arc, more to distract than injure. The man grunted and blocked the blow. Selena bent and kicked and landed a solid hit on his chest. He grunted again and swung the club at her. She dodged, let go of the briefcase, spun and threw her left elbow into his face, followed with a knee to the groin, slammed the hardened edge of her left hand against the side of his neck. She felt bone break under the blow.

He went down. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two more men coming
for her. Her right arm was still numb and useless. She couldn't draw her pistol. She ran for the stairwell door on the side of the lobby and pushed it open. The body of the guard lay crumpled at the foot of the stairs. She ran up three steps and turned as one of the men came through the door. She launched herself from the steps and caught him with both feet under his chin. His head snapped backward. She heard the bones crack. She fell hard onto her back on the cement floor. It knocked the breath out of her. Gasping, she climbed to her feet.

The door to the lobby stayed closed. Feeling came back in her arm. Her fingers tingled, but she had control again. She drew her pistol
and took a deep breath. She stepped over the body of the guard and pulled open the door.

The lobby was empty. The man who had
clubbed her lay partway in the elevator, his head at an odd angle. There was a two foot length of pipe lying on the lobby floor next to him.
Must be what he hit me with
. The elevator doors were cycling, trying to close against his body. The third man was gone.

So was her briefcase with the Nostradamus file.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

"The men who
went after you were both in the system," Elizabeth said. "Convictions for assault and burglary. One of them just got out after doing five years for armed robbery."

Selena, Ronnie, Nick and Stephanie were in Harker's office. The cat lay sleeping in the sun outside the garden doors.

"Only five?" Ronnie said.

"He got paroled. Good behavior."

"A boy scout," Ronnie said.

"I'm following up with his parole officer. Known connections, all that. I don't expect to find much. We're not cops. We can't track down every low life he might have known."

"Be nice if we could turn up the third guy," Nick said.

"Selena, I'm sending you over to
the Metro Police HQ to look at mug shots, on the off chance we can ID him. You'll liaise with a Detective Mark Hanson over there."

"All right."

"How's your arm?"

She flexed her shoulder. "I'm okay
. The shoulder's sore."

"You're lucky he didn't break something," Nick said.

"He wasn't fast enough."

Nick smiled.

"This is starting to feel personal," Elizabeth said. "We need to get this resolved."

"Maybe the new Nostradamus material will help," Selena said.

Elizabeth nodded. "It's a good thing you copied it. They want it that badly, there has to be something in it."

"I printed it out," Stephanie said. She handed copies around.

"There are five quatrains that might have something to do with the Ark," Selena said. "I haven't finished all of the rest them yet but these five are grouped together. They could be relevant."

"How many more are there?"

"Another seventeen."

They looked at the quatrains.

Under a broken sword a great treasure lies

He who gave hostage to the King speaks from the grave

Eight
lie beside him

Three seek his wisdom

"Under a broken sword," Ronnie read aloud. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I don't know," Selena said. "Someone's dead, that much is clear. And there are eight others with him."

"So it's about nine dead guys."

"Not just any nine dead guys," she said. "Probably nine dead knights."

"How do you get that?"

"The sword. They used to decorate the tombs of medieval knights with a figure of the knight in his armor, with his sword on top."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Nick said.

Selena nodded. "One of the Knights Templar. After finding those Templar symbols in Jordan, that's the only thing that makes sense."

"That narrows it down some," Elizabeth said. "How many Templar tombs are there?"

"A lot. Even if we find the right one, we still have to make sense of the quatrain. It's like chasing the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland."

"How does a man speak from his grave?" Nick asked.

"Through writing, or something left behind. I think there might be something inside the tomb itself. Under the sword."

"
That's great," Nick said. "First we have to find the right tomb, then we have to open it up on a million to one chance there's something there except bones."

"Do you have a better idea?"

Harker leaned back in her chair. "What about the other quatrains?"

"Nostradamus is predicting a war."

The army begins the return from the far lands

War waits for them in a different place

Under the banners of the Eagle, Star and Crescent

False gods and retribution supreme

"Eagle, star and crescent. America, Israel and the Muslim world."

"War in the Middle East?" Ronnie said.

"Not again," Nick groaned.

"Our troops are coming back from Afghanistan. It's today he's talking about, right now."

"It might refer to what happened when Nick was in Jerusalem," Harker said.

"It could," Selena said. "But this next one bothers me."

In the seventh month no time remains

The prince's calculations anger heaven

Fire over the Holy City, the sun touches the earth

If the Container is found, then success

"The seventh month is July," Selena said. "That's in just a few days. If any of this means anything, if Nostradamus really saw the future, we're running out of time."

Nick's ear began itching. "It's like the one you think is about Hiroshima."

"Yes. That bit about the sun touching the earth. It's how Nostradamus would have thought about a nuclear explosion, if he'd seen it in a vision. The Holy City would be Jerusalem or Rome. Or even Mecca. He capitalizes the word container. That could be the Ark. It's called the Sacred Container in the Bible. The next quatrain mentions it again."

"Who's the prince?" Ronnie asked.

"The bad guy," Nick said. "He thinks he's got it covered but he's making a mistake."

"Phillip Harrison," Elizabeth said. Her voice was strange.

They looked at her. "What's the matter, Director?" Stephanie said. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I just had this very odd feeling," she said. "My intuition says this prince is Harrison. He's planning something bad."

"A nuclear war would qualify," Nick said.

"What about this other one?" Ronnie said, "the one about wine?"

Four will share wine but three will drink

One less to mark the path

The Sacred Container is beyond

That which is desired

"I don't know. But it has to be about the Ark. That would be the only sacred container anyone would think of."

Harker picked up her Mont Blanc and began tapping. "This is the most bizarre investigation I've ever heard of," she said.

It broke the tension. Everyone laughed.

"Nothing new for us," Nick said. "Pyramids,
ancient artifacts, we do it all. Why not prophecies?"

"All right," Harker said. "What's the next step?"

"Let me see if I can pin down a Templar tomb that matches the quatrain," Stephanie said.

"Ronnie and I are going over to Bethesda to see Lamont," Nick said.

"And I'll meet with the detective," Selena said. "What was his name?"

"Hanson. Mark Hanson." Elizabeth wrote his phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her.

"Give him a call. He's expecting you."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

It was a gorgeous summer day on the Maine coast. This time of year, the sun turned unsuspecting visitors red as a Maine lobster in no time flat. The tourist season was in full swing, but on Indian Island there was none of the chaos that marked the vacation spots along the shore.

Phillip Harrison III sat on the shaded porch above the lawn with a glass of good whiskey and thought about what he was planning.
Things were progressing more or less on schedule. Wiesner's rhetoric of hatred was doing it's work. Using Croft and his network of arms dealers, a difficult transaction with the Iranians had been concluded. They didn't know that it contained the seed of their destruction. It was a delicious irony that the Iranians saw it as the seed of their victory.

It was all about perception.
Victory and destruction were two sides of the same coin.

The book that guided Harrison's life was the Bible, but the
words that resonated in his heart weren't the words of love taught by Christ. He preferred the harsh teachings and instructions of the Old Testament. Forgiveness of those who resisted the Lord's Will was not encouraged. One of his favorite quotations was from Deuteronomy:

...the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them...

For Phillip Harrison, those words could have been written to describe Islam and all it's adherents.

Harrison considered himself a patriot.
He believed that America had become soft, weak. War was the solution. War hardened a people, gave it purpose, forged the strength of a nation. It was the fire of war that had given birth to the Republic. It was war that had united it. It was war that had made America supreme in the world.

Now t
hat supremacy was at risk because of misguided efforts at negotiating peaceful solutions in a world where peace was impossible, with nations that could not be trusted. The current President was a good example of what could happen. He'd failed to exploit his opportunities. He'd had an opportunity to crush the Muslim world and gain the oil fields of the Middle East, but he'd backed away. He was a coward.