“Yes.”
Marcus stared out the university window for a few seconds. He leveled his eyes back to Kogen. “Can you really trust him?”
“Of course. Why?”
“He, or someone in your intelligence, needs to bring out all the troops again.”
“What do you mean, Paul?”
“I mean to prevent a new assassination attempt.”
“Oh God…what do you know now?”
“I read the prime minister is going to be at a UNESCO park, a memorial in Paris. He is scheduled to speak at the memorial that was erected to commemorate the life and death of former Primer Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The event is planned for the tenth anniversary of Rabin’s death. That’s in four days.”
Jacob sat down, his face filled with deliberation, his eyes probing the unseen for a sense of direction. “Tell me, Paul. You have cracked it, haven’t you? I can feel it. You have discovered something in Newton’s notes — the Bible, that’s opening these visions, these doors into the future. Newton didn’t just write your name in his notes. He took dictation, and he received it from the word of God.”
“I spoke with Gisele Fournier, the woman who donated the remaining Newton papers to the library.”
“Yes…and?”
“I have reason to believe that a reference to a weeping angel in the Bible is somewhere in the same UNESCO park where the prime minister will speak. I’m going there.”
Alicia sat alone in the patio garden of the Tabard Inn Restaurant and looked at her watch for the third time: 12:45. She located Greg Owens’ number in her cell and hit the dial button. The call made an abrupt, sharp sound and then went to silence. No rings. No voice-mail. Alicia keyed in the GPS mode grid from Owens’ phone. She could make out a faint signal coming from the northwest side of the district. Alicia stared at her phone. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “The river.”
She stood and walked quickly inside the inn and entered the stylish bar, an old episode of Law and Order was playing above the bar on a wide plasma screen. Alicia caught the attention of the bartender. “Excuse me. Would you turn on the news?”
“Sure.” He reached for a remote control and flipped through the channels. “Any preference on the channel?”
An image caught her eye. “Stop! Please turn up the sound.”
There were images of a car being pulled from the Potomac River. The graphic in the lower part of the screen read: Live Video from Chain Bridge. A news reporter, off screen said, “A witness told us he saw the car plummet off the Chain Bridge about ninety minutes ago. Rescue divers found one person in the submerged car. The car was in about twelve feet of water on the bottom of the Potomac River. They report the body, which is that of a man, was found on the driver’s side of the car. The vehicle is a late model Hyundai Sonata. We don’t have a positive identification of the victim. Why the car veered off the bridge is not yet known. The investigation will continue when the car is hauled and inspected. Ron Brooke, News Three.”
Alicia felt tightness in her chest. She remembered the words Greg Owen had said, “Too bad Travis won’t be around to see it.”
FIFTY-NINE
Sam Quincy could feel the prop blast from the choppers descending into the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. He lay on his back, his blood mixing with the rich mud from the swamps, a single round from an AK-47 through one leg, shattering his femur. Dead and dying men scattered all around him. They were boys mostly — some young as eighteen, talking to God, others crying for their mothers.
Sam opened his eyes, the delta of South Vietnam dissolved into the still grey of a dawn filling his family room. He looked at the oaks and pines through the bay window. He tried to sit from the near prone position in his recliner, blankets up to his chest. Sam could taste the morphine in his mouth, smell it in his pores along with the stench of rotting organs inside his body. He managed to adjust the chair to a sitting position.
He thought about his granddaughter held captive in Iran, his conversation with Alicia; and through the haze of drugs, he remembered an obscure detail of World War II that he’d discovered in his research years ago. It was mentioned to him by a veteran who had been a chief assistant to one of the U.S. lawyers who prosecuted members of the Third Reich in the Nuremberg Tribunals. The man had spent a few days in the liberated Dachau concentration camp in Germany, saw the bodies stacked like cordwood, the adult survivors resembling human skeletons, unable to stand or speak, eyes wide and welling with tears like warehoused, abused and abandoned children.
Sam closed his eyes for a moment, and then he looked across the family room where Helen slept in the fetal position under a quilt, her face traced with worry even under the illusion of rest. Sam wanted to get out of the damned chair and walk to her, to lie down with Helen and simply hold her. Just one more time. One more morning to wake up by her side in their bed. But he could no longer stand on his own.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. The WWII veteran, what the hell was his name? Better write it down for Alicia. He struggled to reach the pad of paper and pen on the table-lamp. “C’mon body…move again,” he mumbled, unable to get close enough. Sam found his cell phone on a small stand next to his chair. He called Alicia.
“Hi, Daddy,” came her voice through a vapor of awakened slumber. He knew she tried to sound alert.
“Hey, sweetheart…I know it’s early, but I remembered some information, something that might help, since you were asking about that spear.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m whispering because I don’t want to wake up your mom. Also, I wanted to share a sunrise with you.”
“That’s so sweet.”
“Alicia, a vet from the big war, Lawrence J. Foster — met him at a VFW in Charlottesville. Anyway, he worked as a prosecutor’s assistant in the Nuremberg Tribunals and later took a job with the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. He told me a soldier by the name of Marcus…don’t know if that’s his first or last name…and another man had foiled an attempt by Stalin to find that spear you mentioned. Stalin wanted to bring it to Russia, and he’d handpicked his top assassin to bring it back. The story goes that this Marcus knew somebody even better than the man Stalin chose. The man was a spy in the French Resistance…last name of Fournier. Probably long since dead. I heard he was very good as an operative and a pain in the ass to Germany and Russia. He could have sold the Spear of Destiny to anyone with a big bank account.”
“If it’s true, this sounds like the accident involving Patton was anything but an accident. Maybe someone wanted him hurt or killed in order to find and steal the spear.”
“That’s a possibility. Most of the theories in this direction say if Patton was taken out, and that’s a big if, it was because someone wanted him silenced since a few people feared he was going to eventually drag the nation into a war with the Soviets.”
“Dad, the man named Marcus, was his first name David?”
“David, I think. Yes, that was his name.”
“Maybe Stalin never took possession of the spear. What happened to Foster, the man who shared his story with you?”
“That’s been at least twenty years ago. I haven’t seen him since.” Sam coughed, felt his heart flutter.
“Are you okay, Dad?”
There was long pause as Sam tried to regulate his breathing, his pulse erratic, blood pressure dropping. “Sweetheart…”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Look out that bedroom window of yours, Alicia. See this gorgeous new day greeting you?”