Maybe.
On the other hand, it could all go wrong and he could get shot by the cops and the case would be closed. And either way, he wouldn’t get the thing he most wanted: to find out what they had done to his brother.
So he dropped that plan. Decided to play it more cautiously. Take things one step at a time. Maybe try and get some one-on-one time with one of the goons. In which case a weapon would be good. The van—and the car—could yield one. Something he could use to even out the odds a little. And maybe, with a bit of luck, he could then grab one of the killers and get the answers he wanted.
Maybe.
No one had gone in or out of the house since he’d been there, but the cars and the lights in the front ground-floor room suggested the goons were in. He tried to think back at how many were in the van—four, he thought. Which was bad enough. He didn’t know if the two in the Chrysler were part of that crew, or if they were additional, in which case there’d be six of them in there. Which would be even worse.
The house next door looked dark and empty by comparison, with no sign of life apart from a Christmas tree that blinked on and off mind- numbingly in its front window. A five-foot-tall hedge ran between the houses, alongside the target’s driveway. Matt thought of waiting till it got dark, to give him more cover, but he didn’t feel like loitering around that long and wasn’t sure how long they’d be staying in there.
He decided to chance it.
He scuttled alongside the hedge and made his way to the back of the house. He skulked behind the Chrysler and peeked out. He couldn’t make out any movement at the back of the house. It was just dark and still. He looked through the 300C’s window. Couldn’t see anything inside, but the glove box and the trunk were the areas of real interest. The car’s doors were locked, which was expected—and unhelpful. It was a new car, high-specced, with robust locks and both perimetric and volumetric alarms as standard. Which meant that before he could get inside the cabin he’d need to get under the hood without disturbing the car too much. Not the easiest car to break into, certainly not with the basic tools he had at hand.
He crept over to the van. It was slightly older and had a more basic locking mechanism that would surrender more easily. He glanced inside. Again, nothing on view, but once inside, things could prove different.
He knelt by the passenger door and was about to start jimmying the lock when he heard a car slow down by the house and turn into the driveway. He ducked down and slipped quickly around to the front of the van as the other car, a black S-Class Mercedes, pulled up and stopped alongside the house.
Matt crouched low and peered out from under the van. He heard the Merc’s door open and watched as a man climbed out of it and walked up to the back door. Matt leaned over and risked a side glance off the van’s left fender. The man was close to six feet tall and had a sharp, accurate step. He walked with purpose. He had a shaved head and wore a dark suit that he was subtly packed into, but not with fat. Matt recognized the build from his time in prison. The slightly bow-legged step, the arms cocked out just a touch, limbs whose natural rest positions were impeded by the bulk of muscle. Not huge. Not in-your-face. But there, lurking under the otherwise-slender build, waiting to inflict damage.
As he turned, Matt saw the missing ear and the spiderwebbed burn scar spreading out from it. The unsettling sight took him by surprise. Matt wondered if the man was ex-military. Maybe they all were. And judging by the step, the suit, and the car, this guy didn’t seem to be just another one of the drones. He was their boss. As if to confirm it, the rear door of the house creaked open as the man in the suit approached it. One of the goons stepped out and took an instinctive glance around as the hard case in the suit walked right past him without acknowledging him and disappeared into the house. A moment later, the goon followed him in and shut the door behind him.
Matt crouched low, his mind working double-time at interpreting this new variable and adjusting his options accordingly. One move sprang to the forefront of his mind immediately. He embraced it, sneaked over to the 300C, and slid under it.
Chapter 35
Mountains of Wadi Natrun, Egypt
“It’s not safe,” Gracie told Father Jerome. “We have to get you out of here.”
She quickly related to the three holy men what Ogilvy had told her. “Trust me on this,” she concluded, “I know how it works. The news vans are already on their way and the satellite hookups are already booked. It’ll be a zoo out there before sunrise. At least at the monastery, you’ll have four walls around you to keep the world at bay until we figure things out.”
What she didn’t want to mention was another problem—not the bullying of the press, but an altogether more dangerous one. They were in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, in an overwhelmingly Muslim region. Sure, 10 percent or so of the country was Christian—Coptic, specifically—but that still left more than seventy million other Egyptians out there, and countless others in neighboring Muslim countries, who might take issue with what was unfolding. This was, after all, a region where the moon landings were still believed to be a hoax to promote American superiority, where everything had a “Christian plot” angle to it, where the Crusades still cast a long and angry shadow.
Father Jerome’s face sagged with dismay at the news, but he didn’t object. He’d witnessed the savagery that men in the region had a long habit of inflicting on each other for no reason other than what tribe they belonged to or what religion they were born into. The abbot and the young monk didn’t argue with Gracie’s read of the situation either. What she was suggesting seemed to be the sensible move.
“We should take what we can with us,” she told them, casting her eyes around the cave’s spartan interior before pointing at the journals. “Everything you wrote, Father. And anything else that’s of value to you. I don’t know what condition the cave will be in next time you see it.” She looked up at the markings on the ceiling with a sense of foreboding, wondering how long it would be before they’d be defaced, and asked for permission to film their exit, which was given. She got Dalton to shoot a quick take of the cave and of its ceiling while the others helped Father Jerome gather his belongings.
Before long, they were back under the stars and heading down the mountain.
Chapter 36
Brighton,Massachusetts
Matt was just sliding out from under the big Mercedes when he heard the back door of the house creak open.
He huddled against the car’s front passenger door and froze. He couldn’t risk a look, but he didn’t need to. The odds were, it was the hard case in the suit, but he knew he was in trouble regardless of who was coming out of the house. The Merc was blocking the Chrysler and the van. Before either of them could be driven out, the Merc would have to be moved first. And the Merc itself was exposed. It had yards of open air in front and behind it, the side and rear of the house to its left and the five-foot hedge that separated the two houses to its right, behind Matt. All of which meant that if anyone was driving anywhere, the Merc was about to move, and Matt was about to find himself out of cover.