and the pope’s blessing, but I am not stupid. What we have discussed together tells me that you have a purpose other than the simple ones of the pope.”
“The Stewards of the Faith are dedicated to preserving the Catholic Church. There is no secret in that.”
“Perhaps not.” Ahmed sighed. “Perhaps only your methods raise doubt. Somehow I do not think the Holy Father, as you call him, would approve of some of what you have agreed to.”
“The Holy Father lives in a simpler world. Reality must be dealt with.”
“Yes,” Ahmed answered. “And now you must trust me to handle reality. I will deal with these traitors because they have harmed my cause.”
For a few minutes, neither man spoke.
“Trust me,” Ahmed said again. “I am as angry as you and your Church.”
Finally Veltroni nodded. When he spoke, his tone intimated a threat that his words did not. “We are left to trust in God. God—Allah—will honor our sincere efforts toward peace, however they may go awry.”
“Yes,” Ahmed said, rising. “Thank you for coming, my friend. You are always welcome in my home. Perhaps you can…buffer…the opinions of your superiors, as they consider these horrors. I have no wish to incite another crusade.”
“Nor do we,” Veltroni said. “Nor do we.”
After Veltroni left, Ahmed Ahsami called for a glass of brandy—one of his few secret vices—and pondered the conversation. Yes, he would deal with the traitors who had blown up the cathedrals. He had already set the wheels in motion to find them and kill them.
But the Catholic Church was now a wild card on the board. The pope had spoken of forgiveness, but Veltroni’s words had carried an implicit threat. Perhaps his doubts about the Stewards of the Faith were correct.
But correct or not, at the moment they were not his greatest concern. He could deal with them later if it became necessary. For now he had to find the men behind the true horror of Black Christmas.
And kill them all.
4
Frankfurt Airport, Germany
“You know,” Assif Mondi said—in English, for the benefit of the rest of the group, who all spoke English but otherwise diverged greatly in their linguistic skills—“it would have been better if you had wanted to crack into this network a few years ago.”
Renate simply stared expressionlessly at him. All the tears she had shed in the privacy of her apartment since Black Christmas had turned into something harder than diamonds. Sometimes her nostrils flared a little, anticipating the scent of blood. The blood of the killers. No one knew it, though, and no one would, because if they learned of it, she would be removed from this case instantly. But deep inside her, the only purpose she had left, the only desire that existed, was to destroy any and all who had taken part in the killing of her family.
But Assif was on his hobbyhorse now and not likely to slow down. “A few years ago the banks were on dial-ups. Can you believe it? They used X.25 protocol, which was a good protection, but not unhackable. Now you want me to break into SWIFTNET, a dedicated hardwired network with the most powerful NetScreen encryption devices made. They have firewalls, massive encryption, and worse, they have an untrust fallback.”
“Untrust?” Lawton asked.
“If the NetScreen device senses anything unusual in the connection, it will immediately fall over to a backup connection. On a different line.”
“Oh, goodie.”
Assif looked at him, then nodded. “Exactly.”
Renate spoke, feeling a flame-lick of the fury that had filled her since Christmas. Assif, she was sure, had no idea how close to the edge he was walking with her. “Are you saying this is impossible?”
“If I thought it was impossible, I would not have come. I am here. It is not impossible. But don’t expect it to be fast.”
They were standing on the chilly, windblown concrete platform at the Frankfurt Airport, awaiting a train to take them to the Frankfurt Main Station. From there they would catch a tram to the business suite Office 119 had rented for them.
Right now there were only a few people inside the steel-and-glass tunnel, farther along the tracks, but Renate glanced toward the escalators and saw more arrivals beginning to appear. The sky through the overhead glass remained gray and uninviting, maybe even promising snow. The chill nipped at her nose.
“Let us talk later,” she said to Assif. Then, surprising Lawton, she pulled out a pack of cigarettes, moved toward the smoking area on the platform and lit one.
Lawton exchanged looks with Assif, who was a handsome Indian with the friendly features of the Punjab. Assif shrugged; then they both followed her.
“Local color,” she said when they joined her. “And the smoking section is here at the end of the platform, where we’re most likely to have privacy.”
Assif laughed. “Then give me one, please? I haven’t smoked since I left New Delhi.”
Lawton stepped upwind. Renate noticed the movement, and something almost like amusement flickered in her eyes before dying. Dying again beneath the ice of death.
They let the first, and then a second, train leave for Frankfurt. Assif and Renate were still chatting casually when a compact, powerfully built man joined the growing number of travelers in the smoking area. He watched indifferently as another train arrived and departed. A short time later, he alone remained with them.
He turned and took a couple of strides their way. “Renate,” he said, holding out his ticket as if he were asking directions. “Are we all here?”
“Yes, Niko. You know everyone?”
He nodded. “By reputation, at least. You must be Lawton Caine.”
Lawton did not extend his hand but simply gave an affirmative glance, as did Assif when Niko greeted him.
When they at last boarded the train to the city, they took seats in separate cars. The essence of the team was now together.
Guatemalan Highlands
Paloma drew Steve Lorenzo away from the rest of the villagers. Most were already asleep, wrapped in colorful wool blankets they carried with them nearly everywhere, blankets that now provided the only protection they had from the elements, except for the tree canopy above. As was so often the case, water dripped steadily from a light rain, and the lanolin in the wool repelled it.
Steve was grateful for his own blanket, a gift from Paloma, the tribe’s elderly bruja. The word could be translated as witch, but in Steve’s estimation it would be fairer to call her a shaman, or, better yet, curandera, healer.
Hundreds of generations of knowledge lay behind Paloma’s lively dark eyes, knowledge of curative properties that U.S. pharmaceutical companies would give—or take—nearly anything to discover and patent.
“You are a good man, Padre,” she said to him as they
