The Charlemagne Pursuit (Cotton Malone 4)

"I'm not here in an official capacity."

She appraised him with suspicious eyes. "The president doesn't know?"

He shook his head. "This one's personal."

"You need to tell me why."

She'd only dealt directly with Davis once, and he hadn't been forthcoming, actually placing her life in jeopardy. But in the end she'd learned that this man was no fool. He possessed two doctorates-one in American history, the other in international relations-along with superb organizational skills. Always courteous. Folksy. Similar to President Daniels himself. She'd seen how people tended to underestimate him, herself included. Three secretaries of state had used him to whip their ailing departments into line. Now he worked for the White House, helping the administration through the last three years of its final term.

Yet this career bureaucrat was now openly breaking rules.

"I thought I was the only maverick here," she said.

"You shouldn't have let that file go to Malone. But once I learned that you had, I decided I needed some help."

"For what?"

"A debt I owe."

"And now you're in a position to repay it? With your White House power and credentials."

"Something like that."

She sighed. "What do you want me to do?"

"Malone's right. We need to find out about Holden and its officers. If any of them are still around, they need to be located."

MALONE FOLLOWED THE PEUGEOT. SAWTOOTHED MOUNTAINS sliced with streaks of snow stretched skyward on both sides of the highway. He was driving north, out of Garmisch, on an ascending zigzag route. Tall, black-trunked trees formed a stately aisle, the picturesque scene clearly something Baedeker would have reveled in describing. Winter this far north brought darkness quick-not even five o'clock and daylight had already waned.

He grabbed an area map from the passenger seat and noted that ahead lay the Alpine valley of the Ammergebirge, which stretched for miles from the base of Ettaler Mandl, a respectable peak at over five thousand feet. A small village dotted the map near Ettaler Mandl, and he slowed as both he and the Peugeot ahead entered its outskirts.

He watched as his quarry abruptly wheeled into a parking space before a massive white-fronted building, two-storied, ruled by symmetry, populated with gothic windows. A towering dome rose from its center, flanked by two smaller towers, all topped with blackened copper and flooded with light.

A bronze placard announced ETTAL MONASTERY.

The woman exited the car and disappeared into an arched portal.

He parked and followed.

The air was noticeably colder than in Garmisch, confirming a rise in altitude. He should have brought a thicker coat, but he hated the things. The stereotypical image of a spy in a trench coat was laughable. Way too restrictive. He stuffed gloved hands into his jacket pockets and curled his right fingers around the gun. Snow crunched beneath his feet as he followed a concrete walk into a cloister the size of a football field, surrounded by more baroque buildings. The woman was hustling up an inclined path toward the doors of a church.

People were both entering and exiting.

He trotted to catch up, dashing through a silence broken only by soles slapping the frozen pavement and the call of a distant cuckoo.

He entered the church through a gothic portal topped by an elaborate tympanum displaying biblical scenes. His eyes were immediately drawn to dome frescoes of what appeared to be heaven. The interior walls were alive with stucco statues, cherubs, and complex patterns, all in brilliant shades of gold, pink, gray, and green, that flickered as if in constant movement. He'd seen rococo churches before, most so over-laden that the building became lost, but not here. The decorations seemed subordinate to architecture.

People milled about. Some sat in pews. The woman he was following walked fifty feet to his right, beyond the pulpit, heading for another sculpted tympanum.

She entered and closed a heavy wooden door behind her.

He stopped to consider his options.

No choice.

He moved toward the door and grasped its iron handle. His right fingers stayed tightened around the gun, but he kept the weapon tucked into his pocket.

He twisted the latch and eased open the door.

The room beyond was smaller, with a vaulted ceiling supported by slender white columns. More rococo ornamentation sprang from the walls, but it was not as bold. Perhaps this was a sacristy. A couple of tall cupboards and two tables accounted for the only furnishings. Standing beside one of the tables were two women-the one from the cable car and another.

"Welcome, Herr Malone," the new woman said. "I've been waiting."

EIGHT

MARYLAND, 12:15 PM

THE HOUSE WAS DESERTED, THE SURROUNDING WOODS BARREN OF people, yet the wind continued to whisper his name.

Ramsey.

He stopped walking.

It wasn't quite a voice, more a murmur that drifted on the winter wind. He'd entered the house through an open rear doorway and now stood in a spacious parlor dotted with furniture draped in filthy brown cloths. Windows in the farthest wall framed a view of a broad meadow. His legs remained frozen, ears attuned. He told himself that his name had not been spoken.

Langford Ramsey.

Was that indeed a voice, or just his imagination soaking in the spooky surroundings?

He'd driven alone from his Kiwanian appearance into the Maryland countryside. He was out of uniform. His job as head of naval intelligence required a more inconspicuous appearance, which was why he routinely shunned both official dress and a government driver. Outside, nothing in the cold earth suggested that anyone had recently visited, and a barbed-wire fence had long rusted away. The house was a rambling structure of obvious additions, many of the windows shattered, a gaping hole in the roof showing no signs of repair. Nineteenth century, he guessed, the structure surely once an elegant country estate, now fast becoming a ruin.

The wind continued to blow. Weather reports indicated that snow was finally headed east. He glanced at the wood floor, trying to see if the grime had been disturbed, but saw only his footprints.

Something shattered far off in the house. Glass breaking? Metal clanking? Hard to say.

Enough of this nonsense.

He unbuttoned his overcoat and removed a Walther automatic. He crept left. The corridor ahead was cast in deep shadows, and an involuntary chill swept over him. He inched forward to the end of the passageway.

A sound came again. Scraping. From his right. Then another sound. Metal on metal. From the rear of the house.

Apparently, there were two inside.

He crept down the hall and decided a rushing advance might give him an advantage, particularly after whoever it was continued to announce their presence with a steady tat-tat-tat.

He sucked a breath, readied the gun, then bolted into the kitchen.

On one of the counters, ten feet away, a dog stared back. It was a large mixed breed, its head topped with rounded ears, the coat a tawny color, lighter underneath, with a white chin and throat.

A snarl seeped from the animal's mouth. Sharp canines came into view, and hind legs tensed.

A bark came from the front of the house.

Two dogs?

The one on the counter leaped down and bolted outside through the kitchen doorway.

He rushed back to the front of the house just as the other animal fled through an open window frame.

He exhaled.

Ramsey.

It seemed as if the breeze had formed itself into vowels and consonants, then spoke. Not clear, or loud. Just there.

Or was it?

He forced his brain to ignore the ridiculous and left the front parlor, following a hallway, passing more rooms dotted with sheathed furniture and wallpaper bubbled from the elements. An old piano stood uncovered. Paintings cast a ghostly nothingness from their cloth coverings. He wondered about the artworks and stopped to examine a few-sepia prints of the Civil War. One depic

ted Monticello, another Mount Vernon.

At the dining room he hesitated and imagined groups of white men two centuries ago gorging themselves on beefsteaks and warm crumb cake. Perhaps whiskey sodas served in the parlor after. A game of bridge might have been played while a brazier warmed the air with an aroma of eucalyptus. Of course, Ramsey's ancestors had been outside, freezing in the slaves' quarters.

He gazed down a long corridor. A room at the end of the passageway drew him forward. He checked the floor, but only dust covered the planks.

He stopped at the end of the hall, in the doorway.

Another view of the barren meadow loomed through a dingy window. The furniture, like the other rooms, was sheathed, except for a desk. Ebony wood, aged and distressed, its inlaid top coated with blue-gray dust. Deer antlers clung to taupe-colored walls and brown sheets shielded what appeared to be bookcases. Dust mites swirled in the air.

Ramsey.

But not from the wind.

He targeted the source, rushed toward a draped chair, and ripped off the sheet, generating another fog-like cloud. A tape recorder lay on the decaying upholstery, its cassette about halfway spun.

His grip on the gun stiffened.

"I see you found my ghost," a voice said.

He turned to see a man standing in the doorway. Short, midforties, round face, skin as pale as the coming snow. His thin black hair, brushed straight, gleamed with flecks of silver.

And he was smiling. As always.

"Any need for the theatrics, Charlie?" Ramsey asked, as he replaced his gun.

"Much more fun than just saying hello, and I loved the dogs. They seem to like it here."

Fifteen years they'd worked together and he didn't even know the man's real name. He knew him only as Charles C. Smith Jr., with an emphasis on the Junior. He'd asked once about Smith Sr. and had received a thirty-minute family history, all of which was surely bullshit.

"Who owns this place?" Ramsey asked.