After two years of working with Navy SEALs and CIA officers, Avery thought she had gotten over her sense of being an outsider, but as the team straggled in from the night’s operations, the old feeling returned with a vengeance. They were all soaking wet and bedraggled. Tam was limping. Greg was hugging his ribs protectively and moving like an old man. Kasey had fresh bruises on her face and both she and Stone were filthy. Worst of all, there was an aura of defeat, the kind of shared misery that she could only pretend to understand.
Their collective appearance was a reminder of the gulf that stood between her and the world the rest of the team inhabited. She was just a computer jockey, a bookworm. They were operators, people who actually went out and did stuff. Even Sievers, the brawny security contractor who had crashed the party and was now watching and listening quietly in an effort to figure out exactly what he had gotten mixed up in, looked more like he belonged in the room than Avery did. She knew, if only at an intellectual level, that her contribution was critical. The general failure of the mission affected her as much as them, but they were the ones who had gotten their asses handed to them.
“Hey,” she said, trying to fill the miserable silence. “At least we have the real Spear. That’s something, right?”
The others seemed to exchange a glance before Tam, in a patient voice, answered. “Unfortunately, if they don’t realize the Spear they took is a fake, they may go ahead with whatever it is they have planned.”
“But they must already know. Zanger and Karcher are Heilig Herrschaft.”
Stone leaned forward. “We’ve missed something. Something important.”
Avery stiffened defensively. “Really? Because it seems to me that this is exactly what we expected.”
Stone shook his head but instead of answering, got to his feet and went over to the suite’s writing desk where he took out a pad of hotel stationery and a pen. “There are more pieces in play than we first realized. Let’s start at the beginning.” He wrote something and then turned the pad to show everyone. In large letters that nearly filled the page, he had written: “Mexico.”
He tore the sheet off and placed it on the coffee table in the center of the room where they could all see it. “This all started with the events in Juarez, right? The massacre of the students, followed by the phone call that mentioned...” He glanced at Avery.
“Destiny,” she supplied.
Stone wrote the word down and tore off the page, placing it alongside the first.
“And Vienna,” Tam added.
“Vienna and an item related to General Patton,” Stone said, writing both words down and adding them to the others to form a row. “Okay. Those are things that we know to be factual. We are working under the assumption that the massacre in Mexico was carried out by a drug cartel...” He wrote something down. “And we suspect Dominion involvement.” He wrote out “Dominion” and laid that on the table as well. “Now, tonight we may have added another variable.”
Tam nodded. “The Russian.”
“Our Russian thief took the Spear replica, which the Dominion already knew it was a fake. What does that tell us?”
Avery spoke up quickly. “The spear Heilig Herrschaft knew it was fake.”
“Same difference,” said Greg, speaking up for the first time. “They’re the German branch of the Dominion.”
“True, but we know the Dominion utilizes cellular organization. Maybe the branch responsible for ‘Destiny’ isn’t talking to the Heilig Herschaft.”
Stone pointed a finger at Avery. “Good.” Then he turned to Tam. “We got lucky when we smoked out Zanger’s little switcheroo with the Spear, but as you said, the thief tonight may not realize he has a fake. We need to figure out exactly who he is and what his connection to the Dominion is.”
Avery felt obliged to check her email again, even though it had only been a few minutes since her last check, and less than half an hour since she had uploaded the video Greg had shot through the window of the Riesenrad gondola to the CIA for analysis. As expected, there was no response. It might be hours or days before positive identification could be established for the men in the video.
“Is there a Russian branch?” Stone asked.
“None that we’re aware of,” Tam said. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t have one.”
Stone wrote the word “Russian” on another sheet, then added it to the growing collection.
Mexico
Patton
Destiny
Vienna
Dominion
Russian
He stared at the papers, then moved the individual pages around on the table top, arranging them differently.
Vienna
Patton
Russian
Mexico
Dominion
Destiny
He turned to Tam again. “The phone call about Destiny. Exactly what did they say about Patton and Vienna?”
Avery fielded the question. “‘Get the Patton item from Vienna.’ That could only mean the Spear.”
Stone seemed on the verge of rebutting this, but instead he rearranged the papers, placing “Patton” in the center, and then arranging the others around it. “So, Patton connects to Vienna and Destiny, which in turn connects to the Dominion. Is there anything that connects Patton to the Russian or to Mexico?”
Avery was about to answer when Sievers unexpectedly spoke up. “Both, actually. Patton’s first taste of combat was during the Mexican Revolution. He accompanied Black Jack Pershing on the hunt for Pancho Villa, back in 1916. As for the Russkies, during World War II, Patton got in a lot of trouble with Allied command for insulting the Russians. He was convinced that the Soviet Union would be as big an enemy of the US as the Nazis had been. He actually favored rearming former Nazis and leading them against the Soviets. There’s a pretty compelling theory that Patton’s death was no accident but was actually an assassination carried out by an NKVD agent.” When he saw Stone’s look of surprise, Sievers gave a sheepish shrug. “Old Blood and Guts has always been a hero of mine.”
“I don’t buy it,” Greg said. “The Allies didn’t want to fight the Russians, so there’s no reason to assassinate him.”
Avery cleared her throat. “Actually, it makes a lot of sense. Patton wasn’t very popular with the leadership, but the American people loved him. He was planning to leave the Army and run for President. I suppose if he had done that, he might have gotten his war with Russia, after all.”
“He was?” Even Sievers was surprised by this revelation.
Avery nodded. “I don’t see how it’s relevant though.”
Stone’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. He stared at Sievers for a moment. “You didn’t know Patton wanted to be president?”
The contractor shook his head. “I’ve read a lot of books about General Patton, but I’ve never heard that. Doesn’t surprise me though. The Army was about to put him out to pasture, and he knew it. Without a war to fight, he had no purpose, and he knew that too. Running for office sounds exactly like the sort of thing he would do. Hell, I’m sure he would have won. If the Russkies knew about that, then they definitely would have had a good reason to ice him.”
Stone turned to Avery. “How did you know about Patton’s plans?”
“I must have read it somewhere. Probably during my research...” Avery trailed off as a strange cold feeling settled into the pit of her stomach. “Oh, no.”
Tam moved quickly, gripping her shoulders. “Avery, honey, what is it?”
Stone answered before Avery could find the words. “There’s another Patton item in Vienna, isn’t there?”
She nodded, now feeling as dejected as the others had upon returning from their respective missions. “Patton’s diary, where he wrote about the history of the Spear. It’s in the Library at the Hof.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Stone said in a grave voice. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, that diary was the item the Dominion agents requested in that phone call. And what that Russian was really after.”
“You can’t know that for sure.” Avery’s rebuttal was half-hearted. She knew he was right.
Stone raised his hands. “Call the library...or better yet, the police. If you can get them to cooperate, I’ll bet you money that the diary is missing.”
“A book?” scoffed Greg. “I’m not buying it. It’s not their style. Besides, they picked the name ‘Destiny.’ That points to the Spear.”
“Pun intended, I’m sure,” Stone replied. “The Spear may be a part of this, or it may be a ruse to throw us off the trail, but the diary is the important thing.”
“How can the ramblings of an old World War II general mean anything today? What does it have to do with what’s going on in Mexico? It just doesn’t fit.”
“Just because we can’t see the connection,” Stone insisted, “doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I suspect that if we could get a look at that diary, we’d find the answer.”
Tam faced Avery again. “How ‘bout it? You read the book. Did Patton mention Mexico at all?”
Avery half-closed her eyes, searching her memory. “I skimmed over the parts that didn’t relate to the Spear. He rambled a lot. Stuff about ancient battlefields and past lives.”
Sievers stood up suddenly. “Are you guys for real? You told me you were trying to stop some kind of terrorist attack. But first you’re going on about the Spear of Destiny, and now Patton’s diaries? Seriously? What the hell is this, a treasure hunt?”
Avery’s eyes flew open. “Treasure. He mentioned something about...” She faltered, the thought slipping away as quickly as it had come.
Sievers rolled his eyes. “For Christ’s sake.”
Stone raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Sievers, give it a chance.” He turned back to Avery. “We need to find out if that diary was scanned. A copy isn’t as good as the original, but it might give us an idea of what they’re planning. And right now, we know even less than we thought we did.”
“I’ll ask at the library tomorrow. First thing.”
“We don’t have time for that.” Stone came around the table and sat beside her at the computer. “May I?”
Avery felt another twinge of jealousy. She still had not quite come to terms with what she had learned about Stone, and his abrupt take-charge attitude was not helping. But the real problem was that she had goofed, and he had caught it, and that was a tough pill to swallow.
“Fine.” She pushed the laptop in his direction.
Stone quickly found his way into the Austrian National Library online catalog and just as quickly gained administrative access. “The diary was never digitized, but there is a microfilm copy...”
Stone trailed off, lost in his search. Avery leaned over to see what he was looking at, but as she did, she spotted a notification for new email in the corner of the screen. Without asking permission, she snatched the computer back and opened her email. “We got a hit on the Russian.” She scrolled through the official looking email, looking for the part that would explain who the man was. “Oleg Samsonov. He’s the deputy chief of something called the Economic Security Directorate.”
She looked up, sensing that her words had triggered a stir in the air. “Does that mean something? Sounds pretty innocuous to me.”
“The Economic Security Directorate is the operations arm of the FSB,” Tam explained patiently.
Avery knew what the FSB was. In her earliest memories, they had been known by another set of letters—KGB—and although the political landscape and name had changed, the organization remained more or less the same. They were Russia’s FBI and CIA rolled into one, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. As far back as Stalin, the security agency had been the de facto ruler of the country. Most of the nation’s leaders, including the current president, had come from the leadership ranks of the KGB and FSB.
“The job of the Economic Security division is to ensure that Russia’s economy is protected, by any means necessary,” Tam went on. “Espionage, sabotage, assassination... whatever it takes. Russia has only one source of income—oil—and global oil prices have crashed in the last six months. The ruble is in a death spiral. The Russian economy has gone into recession. They need a game changer, something that will increase the demand for oil and weaken foreign currency.”
“So it’s true,” Greg said. “Destiny is a joint operation. The Russians and the Dominion.”
Stone, who had been listening patiently, now turned to Tam. “You have to go to Mexico. Right now. That’s where it’s going to happen.”
Greg let out a derisive laugh. “And just how do you know that?” He threw up his hands. “This is crazy. We should be tracking Samsonov. That’s our best lead.”
Tam silenced him with a wave of her hand and faced Stone, scrutinizing him in earnest. “You know I trust you, but... Give me something to work with.”
Stone seemed to consider the request for a moment, but then stood, went back to the coffee table and pointed to the pages he had earlier written. “It’s right here. Vienna. Patton.” He held up each page as he spoke the words. “We know that was a reference to the diary. We know what the Russian connection is, even if we don’t completely understand it. We know the Dominion is involved. The one thing that still doesn’t fit is what happened in Mexico.” He shook the page emphatically. “The massacre in Juarez happened for a reason. That’s the key to this. When we understand why it happened, we’ll know what they’re trying to accomplish.”
Avery felt a twinge of irritation at how quickly Stone had switched gears. “What happened to tracking down Patton’s diary? I thought that was the key.”
Stone answered without looking away from Tam. “She’s not wrong. There was a microfilm copy of the diary, but it was donated to the Patton collection years ago. It’s currently at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Avery and I can go there and work that angle while the rest of you go to Mexico. We’ll catch up to you as soon as we can.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Sievers put in.
Stone pressed on. “Samsonov is the deputy chief of his division, right? That makes him...what, number three in the FSB? And he personally ran tonight’s operation. Destiny, whatever it is, is big. Maybe the biggest thing since the Cold War ended. It started in Mexico, and I’m certain that it’s going to end there, too. So you have to go there as soon as possible.”
Tam nodded slowly. “We’ll drop you off in DC on our way south. Kasey, you’ll stay with them.” She cast a wary eye at Sievers. “If you suspect for even a second that Hot Rod here is going to try to grab Stone and make a run for it—”
“He won’t,” Stone said.
Avery was pleased that Tam did not seem to share Stone’s confidence in the word of his former captor. She was also glad that Kasey would be accompanying her. She didn’t trust either man any further than she could throw them. But part of her could not help but be impressed with how quickly Stone had reduced the problem to a series of variables and found the pattern.
Against her better judgment, she was actually beginning to admire him.