The Devil in the Details Read online

  “That’s something you don’t see every day,” Maggie said.

  “I’m more worried that whoever’s out in the passageway saw the light when we opened the slider,” I said. I walked to the hall door, pulled it open, and checked the number on the outside.

  “We’re off by one. Father Aloysius is next door.”

  “The bathrooms connect. Are you any good with locks?”

  I pulled the leather case with my set of travel lockpicks from my pocket. “I like to think of myself as a talented amateur.”

  The Jesuit’s room, on the other side of the bathroom once I’d unlocked the connecting door, was as I’d left it. The smell of sulfur hadn’t gone away, though the smell of death was stronger.

  Sister Thérèse looked at the circle-and-pentagram design. “This wasn’t built to keep something out; it was built to keep something in.”

  Maggie edged around the circle and examined the side closest to the hall door. “Whaddaya know,” she said, pointing. A black feather was duct-taped to the bottom edge of the door, set to sweep over the chalk lines and break them the moment the door was opened. “Booby-trapped.”

  I reshuffled my hypotheses. “Someone comes in from the sliding door, tapes on the feather, draws a circle, raises a demon inside it, and departs. The next man through the door breaks the circle, and the demon breaks his fast. Sound reasonable?”

  “They could have entered this way,” Sister Thérèse said, nodding in the direction from which we’d come. “The fact that we have another corpse over there doesn’t rule it out.”

  “And look here,” Maggie said. She was pointing to the bed, or, rather, the floor where the bed made a lean-to against the wall. Another jackal-headed jar stood there. “Trouble O trouble in the Promised Land.”

  “Thoughts?”

  “Check the next room,” Maggie said, pointing. “In and out through the secret passageway. Two seconds. And if we meet anyone, we deal.”

  A plan. I like having plans.

  The next room over had another corpse. This one was wearing US Army mess-dress blues, General’s stars, and three bullet holes in the center of his chest. Scorch marks on his shirt said close range. And another jackal-jar.

  “I’m sensing a pattern here,” I said.

  “Each death appropriate to the person,” Maggie said. “I wonder what they have planned for us?”

  “I’d get burned at the stake. Don’t know about you.”

  A rattle sounded at the door, like someone trying the knob. I pointed at the corners of the room on the side closest to that door; Maggie took one, I took the other, the older nun ducked into the bathroom. I pulled my revolver; Maggie had both of her pistols out.

  The lock clicked over and the door opened. The Chicks in Chitons walked in, dressed much as I’d seen them before, only Barbie had an olive-drab messenger bag marked with paratrooper wings hung over her shoulder, Rita had replaced her sandals with combat boots, and Cathy had a hand-and-a-half bastard sword strapped to her back.

  When they saw the corpse, they halted. Rita said something unladylike in Koine Greek. I answered in the same language from behind them: “Hands where I can see them.”

  The three turned, slowly. We all froze for a moment. Then, “I don’t suppose this guy would mind if I raided his mini-bar,” Rita said, with a nod at the general. “Want something?”

  “Thanks, I’m good.”

  Sister Thérèse came out of her hiding place and addressed the three in a language I didn’t recognize. Barbie replied in what sounded like the same tongue. A few more seconds of jabber, and Thérèse turned to me and Maggie. “You can put up your weapons. They’re on the side of the angels.”

  “As are you,” Cathy said. “You mentioned joining forces. Now seems like a good time.”

  “Know anything about this?” I pointed at the guy on the floor.

  “I know that the last four rooms we’ve been in have held similar,” Barbie said.

  “This is our third,” Maggie said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Theories about the jars?”

  “That’s easy,” Cathy said. “Someone’s collecting souls.”

  “Who?”

  “Devotees of Neith—Egyptian goddess of war and wisdom. Watch and listen.” Cathy pulled on the lid of the jar. It gave way with a pop; a moment later I heard a sigh.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah.” She put the lid back on the jar.

  “Any idea what they’re collecting souls for?” I asked.

  “No idea,” said Cathy. “But some of the souls here today do not belong to very nice people.”

  Maggie looked pointedly at the location of the secret door. “I say we clear the hot zone before somebody stuffs our souls into jars.”

  “One thing to do first,” I replied. “My orders are not to leave without those pages from the Voynich.”

  “Great. We grab ’em on the way out,” Maggie said, “and I’ll be mission-accomplished too.”

  “Three gets you seven there’s an easy way into the auction room from that secret passageway.”

  “Which will be crawling with unfriendlies.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Cathy said, putting one hand on the hilt of her sword and pulling it up a couple of inches out of its sheath to reveal glistening steel. “I delight in the truth.”

  “Let’s motivate before the hostiles return,” I said, heading for the secret panel. “I’ll take point. Maggie, you bring up the rear; everyone else, one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of you. If you hear shooting, hit the deck. And . . . go.” I flipped off the room lights, pulled on my night-vision goggles, slid the panel, and exited. The others followed.

  I retraced our path to the stairway going down. One hand on the rail, one hand on my piece, and Barbie’s hand on my shoulder. It was warm, soft, and comforting. I shook my head to clear it, and descended. We weren’t as totally silent as I’d have liked; still, we continued down, then down again, and . . . I froze and flattened back against the wall. Someone was coming. A bunch of someones. From up ahead, I could hear the sound of footsteps. I killed my light; Maggie did the same. Anyone out in this Stygian space would have to be using technical aids to vision.

  But they weren’t. The footsteps belonged to Sam and Mort and a half-dozen more well-groomed young men in identical conference staff blazers and gold-toned name tags. Each of them had a Cyalume glow stick pinned to his lapel, and each of them carried one of those jackal-headed jars. In the green light of the glow sticks the porcelain shone like jade. The young men turned a corner ahead. They looked like they knew where they were going, which was more than I did. So I followed them, and my retinue followed with me.

  Sam and Mort and their brethren proceeded down a short hallway, down another set of stairs, and through a door. We followed some twenty feet behind. For eyes adapted to the dark, the scene beyond the opened door was brightly lit. For someone like me, wearing night goggles, the light was almost too bright to bear. I could see, however, that the room they had come to was the auction room, cleared of chairs. There each staff member put down his burden, adding his jar to the scores of others already waiting. Then, one by one, they exited the auction hall through the door to the lobby.

  The rent-a-cop still stood beside the other door by the stage. With my goggles in place I could see that he had three heads.

  The last of the young men exited; the outer door snicked closed behind him. I said a Pater Noster and knelt in the gap where our door hadn’t quite closed.

  “Trouble?” Barbie whispered.

  “Pass to Maggie: Come forward,” I whispered back to her. The word went back, the quiet susurration of the order, the shuffling, and Maggie was at my side and peering through the gap.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Sometimes, violence is an answer,” she replied. “I want to see what’s behind the stage.”

  “Shoot our way in, shoot our way out,” I said. “It has a simple joy. This guy is mine; you
take the door to the left.”

  “Negat, Pete. Violence is my specialty.” Her lips were so close to my head she was damn-near nibbling my earlobe. She pushed the door open a trifle wider, said, “Cover your ears,” hauled out her pistols, and put a round each between the guard’s eyes. All three sets.

  We pushed into the room.

  “Okay, people, we’re on minus minutes,” Maggie shouted over the ringing in our ears. “Go get ’em!”

  I ran up to the door beside the stage. It yielded to my size 12 brogans. On the other side was a closet containing a leather case on a wheeled cart. A quick check inside the case revealed what sure looked like pages from Voynich, augmented with words written in a thin, spidery hand in red ink between the lines. I didn’t recognize the language, but the letters were Roman. I grabbed the sheaf of manuscript pages and stuffed them into my inside jacket pocket.

  “Okay,” I said, “got it.”

  Maggie said, “Then let’s get out of here before the rest of the balloon goes up.”

  Out in the auction room, the three professors and Sister Thérèse were busy taking lids off jars and releasing souls. “Ladies, we are leaving!” I shouted as Maggie and I ran to the main door.

  The lobby outside was filled with yet more well-groomed young men in name tags and blazers—what looked like the entire conference center staff, some with firearms, others with bludgeons or knives, all of them looking pissed. I emptied my revolver, going center-of-mass on the ones with ranged weapons first, then filled my piece with a speed-loader and emptied it again.

  Maggie added her twin H&Ks to the chorus of gunfire.

  Behind me came the crump of an explosion, followed by the sighing noise of escaping souls as the rest of the jars shattered. One of the professors had clearly done something impressive, but I couldn’t risk turning my head to see exactly what.

  “Stand aside,” Cathy said. She had that serious pig-sticker out, three-plus feet of double-edged nasty. “These guys are mine.” She swung her sword in front of her in flat figure-eights with an easy grace, blocking, parrying, and inducing arterial sprays.

  We cleared our way through the conference center lobby with fire and sword, up to the outside door. It was locked, and it was heavy and solid. No exit.

  Barbie came up, fishing in that canvas messenger pouch of hers. “Buy me a minute,” was all she said.

  I did my best. I only had three more speed-loaders on me. No telling what Maggie had; probably not much more. Cathy was doing the bulk of the work, as more and more of the handsome young men pressed close toward us. She started singing the praises of Holy Wisdom in ancient Greek as she swung that sword in sweeping arcs, ferocity incandescent around her.

  Next to me, Barbie pulled a couple of blocks of C-4, detonators, cord, and a hell-box out of her messenger bag. Rita set each charge for her in turn.

  I couldn’t help myself. “What do you guys study at Bryn Mawr anyway?”

  “Languages, literature, and field-expedient demolition,” Barbie said as the last charge went into place.

  “Right,” I said. I’d had to ask.

  “I think we need to get behind the front desk now,” she added.

  We pushed our way through, Cathy in the front, Rita beside me, Barbie bringing up the rear. Maggie was in the center this time, keeping herself between Sister Thérèse and the hostile crowd. The space behind the front desk was a tight fit, but we all made it in.

  Then Barbie shouted, “Fire in the hole!” and squeezed the hell-box.

  The pressure wave of the explosion swept over us. Part of the ceiling collapsed. Dust billowed. But the doors that had blocked our way to the outside were gone. So was most of the conference staff.

  We ran out into the gathering night.

  “Time to hit the road,” I said. “We want to be out of here before they get a chance to recover and regroup.”

  I located my car—I was ready to take whatever vehicle presented itself, if necessary, but the rental was parked where I’d left it, so I didn’t need to add grand theft auto to my list of sins. The three Chicks in Chitons squeezed into the back; Maggie, Thérèse, and I got up front; and I gunned it down the drive. I didn’t pause for the gate. The Temple wasn’t going to get its security deposit back on the rental.

  Once we reached the main road I moderated my speed to avoid interest from the cops as the sky behind us lit up with what was probably going to be a four-alarmer.

  “What do we have?” Maggie asked, as we settled back.

  “The documents, I hope,” I replied.

  “They aren’t genuine,” Sister Thérèse said. “I know those pages.”

  “What?”

  “I wrote them,” she said. “In my youth, while I was still secular, and working on my first degree. It was at the beginning of the Cold War, you understand: The pages came with a legend that they had been taken from Hitler’s collection of esoterica, and that they contained a secret which would give its holder the power to rule all of Germany. It was false, of course. The plan was to put the manuscript into the hands of Lavrentiy Beria—I don’t know if you remember him—”

  “I know the name,” I said. The head of Stalin’s NKVD was well before my time, but his reputation lives on in the trade.

  “He was a very bad man,” she said. “But it was thought that he could be convinced to reunify Germany in return for aid from the West, especially if he believed that he could become Germany’s de facto ruler. Those pages were intended to be his lever.”

  “And you people actually thought something like that would work?” Maggie said.

  “I was never asked for my opinion,” Sister Thérèse told her. “I was only a student, after all, and young and a woman besides. In any case, the operation was never carried out. Stalin died and Khrushchev had Beria executed before the forgery could be brought into play, so the whole plan was filed away and forgotten. How the acolytes of Neith came across the manuscript after all this time, I can’t imagine.”

  I could, though. All it needed was somebody involved in the original scheme deciding not to let a perfectly good forgery rot away in a filing cabinet when it could be sold off to a credulous buyer for a tidy sum . . . Doctor Dee’s good buddy Edward Kelley would have approved.

  Out loud, I said, “The manuscript sale was never meant to be anything but bait, something that would draw potential buyers to a place where Neith’s acolytes could harvest powerful and wicked souls undisturbed.”

  Maggie said, “Care to hazard a guess as to why the Neith-worshipers wanted that many jugged souls?”

  “No,” I said. “But it can’t have been for anything good.”

  “A honey-pot. And we nearly got caught in it.”

  “The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways,” said Sister Thérèse. “If those nice young women hadn’t helped us, we might not have escaped.”

  That got me to look in the rear-view mirror. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that the back seat was empty.

  We drove the rest of the way to New York City in silence.

  I packed up the manuscript pages and forwarded them by secure courier to Châtillon, with a note that they hadn’t been touched by anyone but me.

  Some while later I got a comm back: “Well done.”

  I didn’t agree. The whole op had been messy as hell, and the acolytes of Neith had slipped under everyone’s radar. But I knew better than to reply.

  Two months later, I was in a bar in the lower East Side. Someone sat beside me. I looked over; it was Professor Barbara, dressed in civilian rig. The glow around her might have been the light from the neon sign in the window.

  “You have questions?” she asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  Non nobis, Domine.

 

 

 
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