St. Matthias was not an ordinary church. It was damned near a cathedral. The building took up an entire city block. At the nearest corner, an enormous bell tower climbed several stories into the sky. The bronze bells chimed ten o'clock, perfectly harmonized.
The first floor was faced in brick, but the entire second story held the story of the Bible with its long row of stained glass scenes. The largest above the door detailed the crucifixion. If Brandt had not been certain this church was Rebecca's destination before he saw the church, he was now.
In addition, if you looked just a little closer, you could see that the church's grandeur had not come in one fell swoop. Far down the street you could make out a small chapel that must have been the first place of worship. From this humble beginning the congregation had added on more chambers, and they had become larger and more elaborate, ending in the jutting bell tower.
If you took a picture of the impressive structure and Photoshopped out the surrounding structures like the Fisherman's Bastion, you might mistake the church as one of its European sisters, but St. Matthias' roof told you of its Eastern influences. The tiles were bright, vibrant colors. Rich greens and blues lay over one another in triangular patterns. They reminded Brandt of the scales on that snake back in the Ecuadorian jungle. Even the crosses on the spires were made of the richly colored tiles. The watery colors were that of a mosque, yet the structure was classic Catholic.
All of this would have been absolutely fascinating if his heart rate wasn't two hundred. The streets were still crammed with Roman revelers, but no Davidson and Svengurd. The two had left on recon over fifteen minutes ago and still weren't back yet. How long could it take to find a change of clothes? Brandt wanted to get a closer look at the church, but their travel-soiled business suits would stand out against the brightly costumed revelers. So until they had better camouflage, they had to sit tight.
Brandt swung his binoculars back to the church. Two nuns and a novice, all in full habits, stood on the church's steps but still within the vestibule. A moment ago a priest had joined them. With the joy and excitement of those who did not know a shit-storm was about to hit, they waved to the children in the parade and called out to passing parishioners. It would have been quaint if his stomach were not in knots.
How had he let Monroe go off on her own?
Brandt surveyed the ever-growing throng. It looked like the entire two-million-plus population of Budapest had turned out for this damn festival. He scanned for his men. Where the hell were they?
"Oh, shit!" Lopez announced from the driver's side.
"What?" Brandt said, as he turned in the direction of the church.
He didn't need Lopez to answer him. The man who had evoked the corporal's response was the bastard who had held him at gunpoint in the stairwell back in Paris. Quickly, Brandt scanned the rest of the street for Tok, the man in charge who had orchestrated the past twenty-four-hours-worth of destruction. But he came up empty.
Brandt went back to studying the tall, craggy-faced man who strode toward the church. As Petir mounted the steps, all three women pulled deeper into the vestibule. The priest went to block his entry into the church, but the prick uttered several harsh words, and the clergyman stepped out of his way.
Once the man was out of sight, the priest pulled the nuns off to the side, his eyes darting up and down the street. Within seconds, the black-clothed women hurried the novice inside. After another furtive glance outside, the priest entered the church, pulling the two huge oak doors shut.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Brandt didn't know if he hated it more when he was wrong or when he was right. This was the place. Was Rebecca already inside? Maybe she was still en route to the church. He looked at his watch. The doctors had landed in Budapest at eleven p.m. Even if they stayed low overnight, they would have had enough time to get inside already.
Fuck. He had to assume that Tok's presence was not a coincidence. Indeed, the priest seemed on strained but familiar terms with his assistant. How Brandt wished he could contact the Den, but now more than ever he needed to maintain radio silence.
Off to his left, he sensed motion more than saw it. Pulling his gun, he aimed at the intruder.
"Hey! Sarge! Watch it!" Davidson screamed as he looked down the barrel of Brandt's MK23 pistol, or as the guys affectionately called it, "Thor's Hammer."
It took a second to register that the masked Roman actor was his most junior officer. The kid had done a damn good job of blending in.
"We've got company," Brandt said as he lowered the weapon.
Davidson lifted his mask to show his cheeks painted with white makeup and dark circles around his eyes. "Crap. They must have taken off in a private plane before they blew up the airliner."
Brandt nodded. The only way to beat them here was to fly. No one, but no one, drove here faster than Lopez.
"Can you get us in the front door?" he asked the private.
Davidson shook his head. "I spotted at least six snipers' dens. If I were them and I had all night to set up, I'd have rifles in each of them."
Svengurd joined the private. "That door is right in the cross fire."
The sergeant didn't really need either person's input. He already knew that they were screwed. Walking in the front door was no longer an option, if in fact it ever had been. Their infiltration of the crowd became even more important.
"Any back doors?" he asked.
"That door is the only way in or out."
Again, information he already knew. Would the bastard have exposed his position if there were a more low-profile entrance?
"Windows? Roof access? Anything?"
The private shrugged. "Those stained glass windows don't look like they open. We could blow a hole in the roof, but with this crowd..."
Brandt didn't ask for clarification. There would be no explosives, at least not out in public. The sergeant exited the car with Lopez close behind.
"Did you find us clothes?" Brandt noticed that Svengurd was dressed in dirty rags. "What are you supposed to be?"
"A slave," the tall man said with a shrug.
Davidson gave Lopez a cavalry officer's robe, but threw a tiny leather garment to Brandt.
The sergeant turned it over. "A gladiator? I'm not amused, Davidson."
But the younger man was adamant. With your arm width? You are not fitting into anything else. Unless of course you'd like to be the slave?"
Brandt wanted to argue, but they had already wasted too much time. Back to the crowd, they changed and redistributed their gear to Svengurd's leather sack.
But where to go?
"All right, we'll have to search the surrounding buildings and try to find a wall we can breach."
Lopez interjected, "Sarge, I was thinking maybe coming up from underground might be the best route."
"You mean through the sewers or water pipes?"
The corporal shook his head. "No, there's an underground structure beneath the older wing of the church."
"The chapel and crypt. I know, but how does that help?"
"It's connected to a labyrinth of caves that lies under Budapest. The tunnels can be accessed at numerous points around the city."
"Really?" Brandt asked. "You've had a mission here before?"
Almost embarrassed, Lopez pulled out the tourist map they had bought to find the church. "No. I just read up on it in the car."
Okay, this was pretty much the bottom of the fucking barrel. The enemy probably had the architectural survey plans of the church, along with intense satellite video surveillance of the entire city, and all they had was this flimsy two-color map. Yeah, he missed the Den, all right, but you took help where you could get it.
He clapped Lopez's shoulder. "Excellent. Let's head to the entrance of the cave system."
"Um, that's the problem. There are only four caves open to the public, and they are situated across the city. It's at least three miles to the nearest access point."
Brandt felt his stomach twist another forty degrees. He really did not know how much tighter it could turn without rupturing.
Despite the bad news, Davidson smiled. "Who said we need a public entrance?"
"Explain," Brandt barked.
"Svengurd, how much of the explosive paste do we have left?"
The taller man dug through his pack. "Looks like all of it."
"We won't need that much, at least if we don't want to draw a crowd with the noise. We'll have to pick somewhere deserted and well insulated."
"Let's move like we have a purpose," Brandt said as he headed eastward toward a cluster of buildings.
Rebecca read the first passage aloud. "For he who bore James sought the center of Pest. There he would find those who revered both Moses and Jesus. Those who knew Isaiah and John to be one and the same. The dualist would protect forever the most favored brother."
Angered, Lochum put on his reading glasses as he read the second stanza. "He who was pure returned as if he had lived ten lives, his beard long enough to rival Moses. The man without contempt wished to carry him within the house along with the others of the Knot, but he would not allow it. His life was seeping from him, and he wished all to know that he had learned of the four and one. That James was protected by the stag."
"Do you see what I mean?" Rebecca asked as she brought up the two texts side by side. "The first section stressed the importance of the number two. Whereas this passage specifies the four and one, whatever that is, and the stag. An image not at all referred to in the first."
Their driver laying on the horn quieted them both. Crowds surged around their car. They hadn't gotten more than a few hundred feet closer to the Lancid, also known as Chain Bridge. The great stone structure towered before them. A pair of carved lions stared down their majestic noses, sizing up anyone who dared pass. At a span of three hundred fifty- seven meters, the bridge was the first to connect Buda and Pest, but right now revelers crammed the narrow bridge.
The horn finally let up, so Rebecca pointed to the computer screen. "Not only do they not match, they contradict one another."
Lochum waved off her concern, as he always did. "What scriptures ever agree? You know the adage. If two ancient passages agree, then one of them is a forgery."
Despite herself, Rebecca felt a grin flicker across her lips at the old saying. It usually held true, but there was something more than the section's differences that bothered her. "But taking the two-"
"What would have us do, 'Becca?" the professor asked, his face surprisingly calm. "Spend weeks wrangling over syntax? We both know that there is only one place in Hungary that meets the first criterion. Are we to ignore that self-evident fact in favor of the second, much more vague, passage?"
"Had you let me finish," Rebecca said, "I meant that we need to reconcile the two sections. You said it yourself. They would have spoken in code to avoid the Romans discovering their most sacred relics."
"Your program takes into account such variables, does it not? Or are you telling me your vaunted software is not up to the task?"
Rebecca shook her head in frustration. Long ago she thought Lochum near to a god because he seemed to work in such mysterious ways, but now he was just a dog with an old bag of tricks. Whenever in danger of running afoul of his own logic, the professor would cast aspersions on his verbal opponent.
Not rising to the bait, she responded coolly, "Perhaps code was not the correct term. Parable may be closer to what I'm thinking. You don't actually believe the man came back aged a hundred years, do you?"
Lochum had to shake his head. "No. No. In ancient texts, rapid aging usually implies guilt or suffering."
Rebecca was about to elaborate when someone hit the hood hard enough to shake the vehicle. Glancing up, she thought she saw Brandt. Nearly panicked, she searched the crowd, but when Rebecca found the man she thought was the sergeant, he was walking away... in a leather skirt.
Definitely not Brandt's style.
Grief certainly played tricks on the mind.
Shaking off the mirage, Rebecca opened the cab door.
"Where are you going?" Lochum asked.
"To Pest."
"But-"
She indicated the thriving city. "We're getting nowhere. It's time to take to our feet, Lochum. Tread the same path as he who was pure."
He looked ready to argue, but then he smiled. "How right you are."
Lochum paid the very disgruntled cab driver as Rebecca followed the jubilant parade over the carved bridge. Plebeians, Senators, and more fierce warriors than she could count bustled around her.
She took it all in. The sun on her shoulders. The glistening Danube River beneath them. The firm stone beneath her feet. She could not take back leaving Brandt in Paris, nor the plane plunging to its destruction, but she could be certain that she'd never let anything beautiful go unnoticed again.
Brandt stopped as he entered the Turkish bath. A square pool of aquamarine water lay in the center of an enormous room lined with towering columns. Slits in the roof allowed beams of sunlight to dance across the water's surface. The entire structure seemed to be hewn out of rock, giving it a quiet, romantic, almost surreal atmosphere. In this oppressive heat, the cool water invited you to strip down and dive right in.
Rebecca would have loved this place and its history. Even to his untrained eye, the bath ached of untold stories. He was sure Rebecca could have told him the exact mineral content that made these waters medicinal. She and Lochum would have argued over the exact date when the columns were imported.
But neither doctor was here, and it was time to correct that problem. It had turned out to be a lot harder to find a place to blow up than they had first thought. Then Lopez had mentioned the baths from the brochure.
Svengurd was haggling over the price, but Brandt flashed a wad of American bills. The attendant's eyes widened. His team may not have much ammunition, but cash, cash they had. He had feared they might have to bribe their way out of Ecuador, so Brandt had made sure they had been well funded.
"Tell him we want somewhere far from the street."
As Svengurd translated, the attendant clearly thought they were gay, but who cared if it meant more privacy? Peeling off another hundred-dollar bill, Brandt watched as the money disappeared into the man's pocket before he hurried down a set of steep stone stairs.
At the end they found a mineral spring carved out of the earth itself.
Once the attendant left, Lopez pulled out the map. A tunnel connecting the chapel was right under their feet. But how much rock were they going to have to blow through? Exactly how much sound would leak to the street?
"Sarge, do you feel that?" Davidson asked.
He stopped searching but felt nothing. "Feel what?"
"A cool breeze," Lopez answered.
Then Brandt realized there was a cold draft. "Up there."
Davidson scrambled up the rock wall. "Oh, yes! There's a shaft. Svengurd, hand me a glow stick." The private shook the tube until it glowed green, then dropped it down the shaft. "We've got tunnel."
Finally, luck had turned in their favor.
CHAPTER 13.