New York City
“And here I thought this day couldn’t get any worse.” Tam Broderick rubbed the bridge of her nose as if trying to banish a headache. “Jesus give me strength.”
Avery Halsey stared back at her for a moment—the amount of time it took for the signal to travel from Tam’s computer in the CIA safe house that was serving as their present headquarters, across the satellite network high above the earth’s surface, to Avery’s computer presently located in another safe house in Zurich—and then grimaced. She held up a bright brass head that looked like it belonged on an android in a Star Wars film. “We did manage to keep them from getting this.”
“You were supposed to protect it, not steal it from its rightful owner. I didn’t think I needed to tell you to avoid getting in a very public gunfight.”
“We’ll give it back to Mr. Loew when this is over,” Avery said. “Besides, it’s safer with us than with him, right?”
“For what it’s worth,” Greg Johns said, leaning in close to Avery so that he was visible to the webcam. “It looks like the Swiss authorities are keeping the whole thing under wraps. No mention of the incident in local news reports.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” She raised a hand to forestall any further explanations. “Look, I’m glad you guys made it out okay. You came out of it a lot better than we did.”
In truth, she was relieved that none of her people had been injured in the surprise attack, and even a little bit pleased that they had managed to take possession of the Brazen Head. There would be blowback to be sure, but she had no doubt that, given the circumstances, they had made the right decisions.
Tam did not feel the same certainty about her own actions, and unlike her colleagues, she had lost. Stone and Martiel had vanished, and she didn’t have the slightest idea where to begin looking for them. And while Sievers had kept busy with reviewing surveillance camera footage in hopes of finding a lead to their whereabouts, she had been obliged to handle the fallout of her team’s failures. Her boss at the CIA could not find fault with anything the Myrmidons had actually done, but smoothing all the feathers they had ruffled by carrying out not one but two unsanctioned operations, one of them on American soil, had used up an extraordinary amount of political capital and he wasn’t about to let her forget about it.
But dealing with that was her problem. She wasn’t going to take it out on the rest of the team. She placed her hands flat on the tabletop, attempting to preserve at least a modicum of professional dignity. “Avery, have you learned anything about that brass gizmo? Why is it so da—” She caught herself, barely. “What makes it worth killing for?”
Avery shook her head. “I don’t know. Yet, I mean. I’m not even sure it’s the real Brazen Head of Albert Magnus.”
“Well can you find out?”
“Umm. Maybe.” She paused a beat and then said, “I did find out one thing. Just before the attack, Loew said something about reacquiring the head.”
“Reacquiring? Like it used to be his?”
“Right. We know it came from the collection of Gerald Roche, but there’s no record of how he got it, which means it was probably something shady. Stolen property, sold on the black market. Stolen from Loew or maybe his ancestors. Southwick’s wouldn’t have handled the sale of an item with contested ownership, so evidently Loew didn’t have a strong claim, but it was important enough for him to pay for it with his own money.
“But it got me thinking. How did they lose it in the first place? So I did a little digging into Max Loew, and guess what I found out?”
“You know how I feel about guessing games, Avery.”
“Oh. Sorry. Um, well, Max grew up in the Bronx, but he was born in Prague. That’s in the Czech Republic. It used to be Czechoslovakia, and before that, it was–”
Tam sighed. “Avery. Get to the point.”
It took a couple seconds for Avery to register the interruption.
“—Bohemia, but when Max was born in 1935 it was still... Oh, Sorry. The point is, he was born into a wealthy Jewish family, living in Prague, which was taken over by the Nazis in 1939. Max’s family escaped the Holocaust, and eventually made it to America, but everything they owned was seized by the Nazis. I think Max’s family owned the Brazen Head, but left it behind when they escaped.”
Tam had figured as much when Avery mentioned 1935, but she withheld comment, knowing that the signal delay would only create confusion. Instead, she just nodded. “Go on.”
“I couldn’t find any evidence that the Nazis ever possessed the Brazen Head, and it doesn’t appear on any of the lists of things that were recovered by Allied forces at the end of the war. You know, like in Monument Men? But those stories about the Nazis being obsessed with the occult aren’t an exaggeration. They would have recognized the Brazen Head for what it was, and they would have tried to use it.”
“Nazis,” Tam muttered. “It’s always Nazis. All right. Let’s put a pin in that. We need to find Stone.”
“What do you want us to do?” Greg said. “Do you need us there?”
She shook her head. “Just before things went sideways, Stone said this has something to do with Mystic.”
“Wasn’t there a secret government agency called Mystic?” Greg said. “Something to do with UFOs?”
“You’re thinking of Majestic Twelve,” Avery replied. “Also sometimes called Majic or MJ-12.” She shrugged guiltily. “Bones told me about it.”
Tam recalled when Avery had briefly dated Uriah “Bones” Bonebrake, the treasure-hunting partner of Avery’s half-brother. Bones was a good man in a fight, but not ideal life-partner material. Although she tried not to interfere in the personal affairs of her team members, Tam was secretly glad Bones was mostly out of Avery’s life.
She realized that Avery was still talking.
“Mystic is a word that describes esoteric knowledge. Same root word as mystery. Or it could refer to a person who studies mysticism. There’s also a Mystic River in Connecticut. And a movie called—”
“This Mystic is a computer,” Tam said, trying to stop the information free-fall. “Or a computer program. I wasn’t too clear on that.”
Avery leaned over her own computer and began typing. “Got it. Mystic is the name of an operating system and trading platform used by several large financial institutions, including the bank where Thom Martiel works. It’s an artificial intelligence that utilizes something called the Monte Carlo method of computation... Oh, it’s the same principle used to generate Markov chains. Like Stone was talking about.”
Tam’s patience was wearing thin. “Is that important?”
Avery shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. This is all pretty dense stuff. Stone would get it.”
“Well, Stone isn’t here,” Tam snapped, and then immediately regretted losing her cool. “Sorry. But we’re going to have to do this without him, Avery. You are going to have to do this.”
Avery swallowed. “Okay, if I’m reading this right, the Monte Carlo method works by repeated random statistical sampling to determine the probability of a specific outcome. It’s kind of like casino gambling, which is how it got its name, but there are a lot more variables in play in the world financial system, so it requires a huge amount of computational power. In a way, you were right. Mystic is both a computer and a program. The Mystic trading platform is an online service, but the actual processing all takes place in a secure server farm in Washington State, near Spokane.”
“Iron River.”
“Right. The company was founded by Wayne Valero in 1990. He built it around the Mystic OS.”
Tam searched her memory, trying to recall the details of Stone’s conversation with Martiel. “Stone asked about the possibility of someone trying to manipulate Mystic.”
Avery stared back blankly for a few seconds, but then seemed to have an epiphany. She resumed typing on her keyboard and then sat back. “That’s the connection. All of the bankers and finance people who died worked for institutions that use Mystic. Those deaths would have created vacancies, and what do you want to bet the Immortal had people hand-picked to fill them?”
“How does this help us find Stone?”
Avery appeared to consider her answer. “I guess it doesn’t. But figuring out what the Immortal is trying to do is the only chance we have of stopping him, isn’t it?”
Tam knew Avery was right. They had to keep their eye on the ball, stop the Immortal from doing...whatever it was he was trying to do. Saving Stone would have to take a back seat for the moment.
She realized that Avery was speaking again. “This is going to sound weird, but....”
“But what?”
“Well, it occurred to me that the Brazen Head is sort of the medieval equivalent of Mystic. I mean, it was a machine designed to answer questions about the future. In a way, it was a sort of mystic machine.”
Tam looked at Avery sideways. “Is that why the Immortal wants it?”
Avery gave a nervous laugh. “It’s silly, I know. I’m sure it’s just symbolic.”
“Hell of a lot of trouble to go to for a symbol,” Greg put in.
“No kidding,” Tam said. “All right. We need to know why they want it. Stick with this. Run down the Nazi angle and see where it leads.”
“I guess we could talk to the auction house in London,” Avery said. “Maybe they can tell us a little more about its provenance.”
“Do what you have to, but whatever you do—”
“I know,” Greg said. “Be careful. We will.”
“I was going to say, don’t lose it.”
Billy Sievers withheld comment until Tam finished her teleconference with the rest of team, but when she closed the laptop, probably a little more forcefully than she should have, he remarked, “Nazis, huh?”
“Can’t seem to get away from them,” Tam growled. “Seventy years since we kicked their butts, and they’re still ruining my day. We know the Dominion has ties to neo-Nazi groups, so it won’t surprise me if they’re involved, but right now, all we’ve got is Avery’s theory that the Head might have been captured by the Nazis. It could be a dead end.”
“You know, the Nazis took a lot of loot from wealthy Jewish families, and a lot of it ended up in Swiss banks. Still there today, protected by Swiss law and...” He made air quotes with his fingers. “Neutrality.”
“What are you driving at?”
“Those guys that hit the Council of Rome sound like professionals. And the cover-up tells me they weren’t freelancers. I’d bet money those guys were ARD 10. Swiss military special forces. They handle the paramilitary and counter-terrorism operations for the Swiss police. Helluva a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Tam raised an eyebrow. “You’re a very suspicious man, Billy. And smarter than you want folks to think, too.”
“Shucks, I just hear things.” Sievers grinned. People often made the mistake of underestimating his intelligence; something to do with his Texas drawl, probably. Unfortunately, working with the Myrmidons meant he usually was the dumbest guy in the room.
“Maybe I should have sent you to keep an eye on them.”
“And miss all the excitement here?”
“I could go for fewer thrills.” Tam’s expression softened a little. Her eyes dropped to the tablet computer Sievers was holding. “Is that movie any better the second time around?”
Sievers’ tablet was displaying video footage taken from one of the security cameras in the high-rise building. Since Stone’s disappearance, they had both reviewed the video feed from every operating camera in the tower, hoping to catch a glimpse of the real kidnappers. The daredevil BASE jumpers were still in custody, but beyond the fact that an anonymous sponsor had given them ten thousand dollars in cash to stage the stunt, they had little to offer, which was unfortunate for them as well since what was left of that payment had been seized as evidence, and the four young men were in a lot more trouble than they realized.
“Not really. These guys, the ones that really grabbed Stone, knew what they were doing.”
“Why kidnap them? He or they or whoever killed all the others. Why take Martiel alive?”
Sievers thought Tam was just thinking aloud, and since he didn’t have an answer to offer, he kept silent. He was wrong about that, though.
“Come on, Billy,” Tam said, fixing him with her stare. “I need your input. What’s going on? How do we crack this nut?”
“I’m a soldier, Tam, not a detective.”
“Fine. Tell me what a soldier would do.”
Sievers rubbed his chin. “Start with threat assessment. Figure out what the enemy’s next move is going to be. Which, if I heard correctly, has something to do with this fancy computer program. Now, it sounds to me like this Immortal has spent the last two years putting his people in position to hijack Mystic. And then, out of the blue, he wants this brass doodad in Switzerland. Why shift gears like that?”
“Because he’s ready to take it to the next level.”
Sievers nodded. “His troops are in position. All they’re waiting for is the signal to attack. We may not know who he is, but we can figure out who they are—the people who took over for the people who got killed.”
Tam shook her head. “I can’t just round them all up. Not without a lot more proof.”
“Then we figure out how to shut them out of Mystic.”
“I don’t know how to do that. Do you?”
Sievers straightened, working out the kinks from too much time spent sitting and staring at a computer screen. “I spent most of last night rebuilding an engine. I could do that, because I know how it works. But if you’d asked me to rebuild that Lexus, I’d have been lost in the woods. It’s all electronics and computers now.”
“You’re saying we have to find an expert on Mystic. Someone who can help us figure out how it’s vulnerable.”
“I’m sayin’ we should probably talk to the guy who built it.”