He stood up and Stark shot to his feet, as well.
“I think we understand each other, Commandant?” suggested Bell, his dark eyes intense. He offered his hand and when Stark took it, they shook.
Like gentlemen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Harry Bolt did not know that he could scream like a movie actress in a grade B slasher flick. It was not something he’d ever be proud of. Though at the moment he gave in to it as the only possible response.
He screamed his head off.
Then one second later he stopped. Because that’s what you do when someone presses the cold, hard, merciless edge of a knife against your throat.
The figure came out of nowhere. One minute he was alone with the dead parts of his team and the next someone occupied the shadows to his right. Dressed in black, holding a knife to his throat.
“Shhh,” she said.
Harry Bolt’s body was a block of ice, but he cranked his eyes sideways to see her with his peripheral vision. Definitely a woman. Young, slim, very fit. She had long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and flexible combat clothes that clung to her. Even in that moment Harry checked her out. That was Harry. She was built like a dancer. Tall, though, with small breasts and long limbs. She was an inch or two taller than Harry, who was five nine. Her features were foxlike, with sharply defined cheekbones, thin lips, and intense eyes. Her clothes were fitted with lots of pockets and crossbelts for weapons. A compact Micro Tavor-21 Israeli bullpup assault rifle with an extended thirty-two-round magazine was clipped to one belt. A pair of sheaths were strapped to each thigh. Both empty. One of those knives was held down at her side, the other was keeping Harry on his tippy-toes.
She said, “Who are you?”
“N-night watchman,” he stammered.
The woman smiled. Very coldly. The knife pressed more deeply into his throat. “Try again. Are you with the Brotherhood?”
“The… who?”
She rattled off something that sounded like Latin to him. “Ordo Fratrum Claustrorum.”
“I–I have no idea what you just said,” he admitted.
She studied him. It was hard to tell if she believed him. Her expression seemed to be a mix of relief and disappointment.
“CIA?” she asked.
Ouch, he thought. “Wh-who are you?” he said, hoping to get a grip on this conversation.
The woman lowered the knife and stepped back.
“A friend,” she said.
“What kind of friend? What agency?” He knew that she wasn’t American because her accent sounded Italian.
“You won’t have heard of us. It’s above your pay grade.” She turned him into the light so she could take a better look. Her eyebrows rose. “Wait, I know who you are. You’re Harcourt Bolton’s son. You’re with the Hungary station.”
“I—”
“You’re one of the Three Stooges.”
Yeah, well, that was like a kick in the nuts, though he tried not to let it show on his face.
“Who are you?” he asked again.
She ignored that and looked past him and he turned to follow her gaze. The heads of Olvera and Florida seemed to glare at him, their dead eyes filled with accusation. Harry’s stomach did a greasy little backflip.
“I’m sorry for what happened to your friends,” she said.
“Christ, did you—?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she snapped. “Of course I didn’t do that.”
“Then—?”
She suddenly froze and stared beyond the blood to where the big ironbound book lay. The sight of it tore a cry from her and the knives were back in her hands as if by magic. She whirled and kicked Harry in the stomach, knocking him backward into the wall, then she was on him, the one blade back at his throat and the other pressed to the underside of his crotch. Her eyes seemed to blaze with fire.
“Did you open the book?” she demanded. “Lie to me and I will gut you like a pig.”
“No! I didn’t open it. I swear.”
She bent close to look deeply into his eyes and he could almost feel her pry open his head to look inside. The moment held, stretched…
And then she sagged back, exhaling and removing the knives. She looked relieved but visibly shaken. “No, you did not look into that book.”
“I…,” he began, but he had nowhere useful to go with that.
The woman sheathed one of her knives but kept the other in her hand as she walked through the blood toward the book. She knelt and used the very tip of the knife to touch it. “Such an ugly thing,” she said. “You have no idea how many people have died because of it. We need to take this book out of here. The men who killed your friends are probably downstairs looking for it. They will be furious when they learn it’s gone.”
“Furious?” Harry pointed to the corpses. “How much madder can they get?”
She shook her head. “You have no idea. They are the Ordo Fratrum Claustrorum. The Fraternal Brothers of the Lock, sometimes known as the Brotherhood. A sacred order charged with finding and destroying books like that one.”
“Personally not a fan of book burning,” he said. “But I’m considering amending that policy. That thing gives me the creeps.”
“It should,” she said, nodding. “If you truly understood what this is you would run screaming from here.”
“I might anyway.”
The woman smiled at that.
“Look,” said Harry, “will you at least tell me your name and who you work for? Are you with Terrorelhárítási Központ? No, you sound Italian. Are you with the Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza, or maybe NATO?”
“Hardly. You haven’t heard of my group, so don’t ask. For now you can call me Violin.”
Harry grunted. “Violin? That your real name?”
“Don’t be naïve.”
“Well… can you at least tell me you’re one of the good guys?”
She gave him a long, strange look. “You really are an idiot, aren’t you?”
“I—,” he began, but this time it was another voice who cut him off.
A man’s voice. A sharp growl of surprise and outrage.
Harry and Violin turned as five strangers came crowding through the doorway to the inner library. They, too, were dressed in black. And they, too, carried knives. Lots of knives.
Guns, too.
The obvious leader of the group pointed to the book on the floor. Everyone looked at it. Even Harry. Then the men all raised their eyes and looked at the man and woman standing on the other side of the book. The leader pointed his knife at them. He said something in Italian that, once again, Harry couldn’t translate. But he knew what it meant.
The five men howled in fury and came running forward to kill.
INTERLUDE TWELVE
“And all of this is for me?” asked Prospero without even trying to hide the skepticism in his voice. “This lab, all this equipment. All of it?”
Commandant Stark smiled. Prospero always thought the man had a truly oily smile. He bet that if he put that face in a vise he could wring a gallon of grease from it.
“Of course, Cadet,” said Stark, whose voice was icy and hard, quite at odds with his unctuous leer. “You know that your father loves you and wants only the very best for you.”