The Charlemagne Pursuit (Cotton Malone 4)

She decided to try something.

"What's the point in running?" she called out. "There's nowhere to go. The house is sealed."

Silence.

Small dressing rooms opened to her left, one door after another. She imagined proper ladies and gentleman a hundred years ago changing into recreation clothes. The corridor ahead ended back where Davis waited near the swimming pool. She'd already made the loop.

"Just come on out," she said. "You're not getting to leave here."

She sensed he was near.

Suddenly, twenty feet away, something appeared from one of the dressing rooms.

A bowling pin, propelled at her, swooshing through the air like a boomerang.

She ducked.

The pin thudded into the wall behind her and clattered away.

Chinos made his escape.

She recovered her balance and darted forward. At the corridor's end she peered around. No one in sight. She rushed to the steps and climbed the risers back into the pool room. Chinos was across, at the shallow end, where the door for the exercise room opened, rushing away. She raised her gun and aimed for his legs. But before she could fire, Davis exploded from the doorway and tackled him. They slammed into the wooden railing that surrounded the pool, which instantly gave way, and the two bodies fell three feet into the pool's empty shallow end.

Flesh and bones smacked hard tile.

SIXTY-NINE

To my son, this may be the last sane act I ever do. My mind is rapidly slipping into a deep fog. I have tried to resist but with no success. Before my wits fully leave me, I must do this. If you are reading these words then you have successfully completed Charlemagne's pursuit. God bless you. Know that I am proud. I also sought and discovered the lasting heritage of our great Aryan ancestors. I knew they existed. I told my Fuhrer, tried to convince him that his vision of our past was inaccurate, but he would not listen. That greatest of kings, the man who first foresaw a unified continent, Charlemagne, knew well our destiny. He appreciated what the Holy Ones taught him. He knew they were wise and he listened to their counsel. Here, in this sacred earth, Einhard hid the key to the language of heaven. Einhard was taught by the High Adviser himself, and he safeguarded what he was privileged to know. Imagine my ecstasy, over a thousand years later, at being the first to know what Einhard knew, what Charlemagne knew, what we, as Germans, have to know. But not a single soul appreciated what I'd discovered. I was, instead, branded dangerous, deemed unstable, and forever silenced. After the war, no one cared about our German heritage. To speak the word Aryan was to invoke memories of atrocities no one wanted to recall. That sickened me. If they only knew. If they'd only seen. As I had. My son, if you have come this far it is because of what I told you of Charlemagne's pursuit. Einhard made clear that neither he nor the Holy Ones have any patience with ignorance. Neither do I, my son. You have provedme right and proven yourself worthy. Now you can know the language of heaven. Savor it. Marvel at the place from which we came.

"YOUR MOTHER SAID HERMANN CAME HERE THE SECOND TIME IN the early 1950s," Malone said. "Your father would have been in his thirties then?"

Christl nodded. "He was born in 1921. Died at fifty."

"So Hermann Oberhauser brought back what he'd found, replaced it, so his son could take up the pursuit."

"Grandfather was a man of strange ideas. For the last fifteen years of his life, he never left Reichshoffen. He knew none of us when he died. He barely ever spoke to me."

He recalled more of what Isabel had told him. "Your mother said that Dietz came here after Hermann died. But he apparently found nothing, since the book is here." He realized what that meant. "So he really did go to Antarctica knowing nothing."

She shook her head. "He had Grandfather's maps."

"You saw them. There was no writing. Like you said in Aachen, maps are useless without notations."

"But he had Grandfather's notebooks. There's information there."

He pointed to the book lying on the oilcloth. "Your father needed this to know what Hermann knew."

He wondered why the navy had agreed to such a foolish journey. What had Dietz Oberhauser promised? What had they hoped to gain?

His ears were numb from the cold.

He stared at the cover. The same symbol from the one found in Charlemagne's grave had been stamped into the top.

He opened the ancient tome. In shape, size, and coloration it was nearly identical to the two he'd already seen. Inside was the same odd script, with additions.

"Those curlicues from the other book are letters," he said, noting that each page contained a way to convert the alphabet into Latin. "It's a translation of the language of heaven."

"We can do it," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"Mother had Charlemagne's book electronically scanned. A year ago she hired some linguists and tried to have it deciphered. They, of course, failed since it's not in any known language. I anticipated this, realizing that whatever was here had to be a way to translate the book. What else could it have been? Yesterday Mother gave me the electronic images. I have a translation program that should work. All we'd have to do is scan these pages into it."

"Tell me you have the laptop with you."

She nodded. "Mother brought it from Reichshoffen. Along with a scanner."

Finally, something had gone right.

STEPHANIE COULD DO LITTLE. DAVIS AND CHINOS WERE ROLLING deeper into the empty pool, across the slick white tiles to the flat bottom of its deep end, eight feet below her.

They crashed into the lower portion of a wooden ladder, which led up to a platform that would have been submerged when the pool had been filled. Another three steps led from the platform up to her level.

Davis shoved Chinos off him, then sprang to his feet, swinging around to block any escape. Chinos seem to suffer a moment of indecision, whipping his head left and right, realizing they were encased in an unusual arena.

Davis shucked his coat.

Chinos accepted the challenge and did the same.

She wanted to stop this, but knew Davis would never forgive her. Chinos looked maybe forty to Davis' late fifties, but anger could even the odds.

She heard the sound of a fist meeting bone as Davis caught Chinos full on the jaw, sending him spiraling to the tiles. The man immediately recovered and pounced, planting a foot into Davis' gut.

She heard the wind leave him.

Chinos danced in and out, delivering quick sharp blows, ending with a jab into Davis' breastbone.

Davis, off balance, spun around. Just as he gathered his coordination and tried to swing again, Chinos lunged forward and smacked him in the Adam's apple. Davis threw a right cross that connected only with air.

A prideful smirk crept across Chinos' face.

Davis dropped to his knees, leaning forward, as if praying, head bowed, arms at his sides. Chinos stood ready. She heard Davis catch his breath. Her mouth went dry. Chinos stepped closer, seemingly intent on finishing the fight. But Davis summoned all his reserves and lurched upward, tackling his opponent, planting his head into the man's ribs.

Bone cracked.

Chinos howled in pain and fell to the tiles.

Davis pummeled the man.

Blood gushed from Chinos' nose and splattered on the tiles. His arms and legs went limp. Davis kept peppering him with hard, sharp punches from a closed fist.

"Edwin," she called out.

He didn't seem to listen.

"Edwin," she screamed.

He stopped. Breath wheezed from him, but he did not move.

"It's done," she said.

Davis shot her a murderous look.

He finally crawled off his opponent and came to his feet, but his knees immediately weakened and he stumbled. He straightened one arm and caught himself, tried to remain standing, but couldn't.

He collapsed to the tiles.

SEVENTY

OSSAU, 3:00 AM

MALONE WATCHED AS CHRISTL REMOVED A L

APTOP FROM HER travel bag. They'd returned to the inn without seeing or hearing anyone. Snow had started to fall outside, a wind spinning it into fluffy eddies. She switched on the machine, then removed a handheld scanner and connected it to one of the USB ports.

"This is going to take a while," she said. "It's not the fastest scanner there is."

He held the book from the church. They'd thumbed through all of the pages, which seemed a complete translation of each letter of the language of heaven into its Latin counterpart.

"You realize this is not going to be exact," she said. "Some of the letters could have double meanings. There could be no corresponding Latin letter or sound. That sort of thing."

"Your grandfather did it."

She eyed him with an odd mixture of annoyance and gratitude. "I can also instantly convert Latin to German or English. I didn't really know what to expect. I was never quite sure if Grandfather was to be believed. A few months ago Mother allowed me access to some of his notebooks. Father's, too. But they told me little. Obviously, she withheld what she deemed important. The maps, for example. The books from Einhard's and Charlemagne's graves. So there was always a nagging doubt that Grandfather may have simply been a fool."

He wondered about her openness. Refreshing. But also suspect.

"You saw all that Nazi memorabilia he collected. He was obsessed. The odd thing is that he was spared the disasters of the Third Reich, yet he seemed to regret not being a part of their downfall. In the end, he was just bitter. It was almost a blessing he lost his mind."

"But he now has another chance to be proven right."

The machine dinged, signaling it was ready.

She accepted the book from him. "And I plan to give him every chance. What are you going to do while I work?"

He laid back on the bed. "I intend to sleep. Wake me when you're done."

RAMSEY MADE SURE DIANE MCCOY LEFT FORT LEE AND HEADED back to Washington. He did not revisit the warehouse so as not to draw any more attention, explaining to the base commander that he'd borne witness to a minor territorial dispute between the White House and the navy. The explanation seemed to have satisfied any questions that may have arisen from so many high-level visits over the past couple of days.