Seeing Kellerman standing there dressed like that and in those circumstances, Holliday suddenly realized just how insane the SS officer’s son really was, living out some Goethe-like Sturm und Drang aristocratic fantasy. Kellerman wasn’t alone; one of his blond thugs stood close to him, machine pistol held to the neck of Manuel Rivero Tavares, the captain of the San Pedro.
Between Peggy and Holliday, Rodrigues sagged to the ground.
“Put the shotgun down, Miss Blackstock,” said Kellerman, smiling. “You can keep the sword for now, Dr. Holliday. It suits you.”
Peggy carefully did as she was told.
Holliday kept his eyes firmly on Kellerman.
“I’m very sorry, Doutor,” said Tavares, his eyes pleading. “I could not help it.”
“A few simple threats,” said Kellerman. “Apparently the good captain has grandchildren. Little girls.”
He looked past them down the ragged hole in the ground.
“I gather from the noise a few moments ago that some of my employees fell afoul of some sort of IED.” Kellerman grimaced. “That’s more lives you owe me, Dr. Holliday, although they served their purpose. Now at least I know where my legacy is hidden. It only remains for me to retrieve it.”
“The legacy isn’t yours any more than it was your father’s,” said Holliday. He gripped the hilt of the sword tightly in his hand. “It doesn’t belong to any one man.”
“It belongs to anyone who takes it,” spat Kellerman, getting to his feet and stepping closer. “The world has always been that way. Victory to the strong.” He sneered down at the curled still figure of Rodrigues. “Defeat to the weak.”
“We’ve all heard that filth before,” said Holliday. “ ‘Arbeit macht frei,’ ‘Kraft durch Freude,’ ‘Drang nach Osten,’ and in the end none of it came to pass.” He shook his head. “You’re nothing more than a dirty joke gone wrong, Kellerman, just like your father before you.”
Light flashed in the New World Nazi’s eyes. He surged forward, fumbling beneath his tightly buttoned jacket, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. There was a blinding flash of lightning and an enormous thunderclap. The heavens opened.
It happened in the blink of an eye.
“Vai-te foder!” Tavares said furiously. He brought his foot down hard on the blond thug’s instep and threw himself wildly to one side. Reacting instantly, Peggy dropped to the ground, swept up the shotgun, and pulled both triggers. The heavy gun jumped in her hands, the butt thumping back into her shoulder. The thug made a grunting sound and sat down on the ground abruptly, staring down at the plate-sized bleeding hole in his belly as the torrential rainfall began.
Kellerman had his weapon out, a flat little Walther PPK. He kept coming, lifting the pistol in his hand.
Holliday didn’t even think twice. The sword came up, and he took one step forward, setting his leg with the knee slightly bent and his elbow locked. Unable to stop his forward momentum Kellerman ran onto the blade, unblooded for more than seven hundred years. It sliced through the thick tweed of his waistcoat, his shirt and the flesh just beneath the xiphoid process of his diaphragm. Still going forward, the broad wedge of Damascus steel thrust through both the right ventricle and left atrium of his heart before it finally ground against his spine. The furious light went out in the madman’s eyes, and Kellerman died, skewered.
Holliday stepped back, pulling the sword out of the man’s body with a light twisting movement to break the inevitable suction. There was a ghastly sucking sound as the blade slid out of Kellerman’s chest. The dead man slithered to the ground. Holliday dropped the sword and turned, trying to wipe the rain out of his eyes.
Peggy was on her knees, one hand cradling her bruised shoulder, staring at the corpse of the blond thug, the blood from his wound diluted by the rain into a spreading pink puddle on the rocky ground.
“Are you all right?” Holliday asked, bending over her.
“Just fine,” she said quietly, staring vacantly at the man she’d just blown out of his socks. “Peachy.”
Tavares sat on the ground, cradling Rodrigues’s head in his lap, the steady rain soaking them both. Holliday knelt beside them.
“He is my friend,” whispered Tavares, weeping, the words catching wetly in his throat. He stroked Rodrigues’s forehead soothingly. “My dear, dear friend for all these years. I cannot let him die.”
Rodrigues opened his eyes, blinking them hard against the rain.
“We all die, Emmanuel,” murmured the ex-priest.
He made a small sighing noise, managing to lift his hand and grip Tavares’s broad, hairy wrist. He turned his head slightly so that he could see Holliday above him.
“Keep Manuel close. He is brother to my soul and knows about everything. He has been my eyes and ears in the world of men for a long time.”
“I will,” promised Holliday, feeling his own eyes dampen, trying to tell himself it was the rain.
“Kellerman is dead?”
“Very,” nodded Holliday.
“Good enough,” murmured Rodrigues. “Good enough.” He sighed again. “Then the torch is passed. Iacta alea est. Vale, amici.” The ex-priest lifted his head from Tavares’s lap. His eyes stared up at the dark sky, seeing nothing now. “Too many secrets,” he whispered. “Too many secrets.” He made one last, small sound, closed his eyes, and died.
The rain crashed down in long, weeping curtains all around them in the bowl of the island crater.
Peggy rose, turned away from the two dead men, and put her hand on Holliday’s shoulder.
“We never really knew him,” she said sadly, looking down at Rodrigues.
“And now we never will.”
“What was that he said at the end?”
“Iacta alea est. It’s what Julius Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon and entered Roman territory, defying the Senate and starting civil war.”
“What does it mean?”
“ ‘The die is cast.’ There’s no way to turn back from destiny now. He meant for you and for me.”
“And the last ‘Vale, amici’?”
“ ‘Farewell, friends,’ ” said Holliday softly.
Two hours later they sat in the snug cabin of the San Pedro, wrapped in blankets, a kettle whistling on the small gas stove. Peggy got up from the little table and began making tea. With Holliday and Peggy in the San Pedro bobbing gently at anchor in the tiny harbor, Tavares was dealing with the embarrassment of dead bodies back at Rodrigues’s little cottage. The rain still thundered down, hammering on the cabin roof of the old Chris-Craft, and, according to Tavares at least, making his job much easier. They would stay aboard the San Pedro tonight, and tomorrow the rotund captain would take them across the narrow strait to Flores and a flight back to civilization.
Holliday sat at the table, leafing through the fat little notebook Rodrigues had insisted he take from his pocket. Aos, Sword of the East, cleaned and dried, lay on a folded towel in front of him. Peggy put two mugs of hot sweet tea on the table and slid down the upholstered bench beside Holliday. Rain streaked against the cabin window behind her, and she snuggled down into the blanket, pulling it around her more tightly. She shivered and took a sip of the tea.
“What’s in the book?”
“Names and addresses,” said Holliday. “Hundreds of them. People all over the world. Something called the Phoenix Foundation and some sort of special prefix number I’ve never seen before. Figures and letter codes that look like they might be bank accounts.”
“Is Raffi in the book?”
“No.” He smiled. “I haven’t seen it so far.”
“But you checked, didn’t you, Doc?”
“Of course.” He grinned.
“Still suspicious?” Peggy asked.
“Always,” said Holliday.
“I’m going to see him when we get out of here,” she said, a little defensively. “See how he’s doing in the hospital. See if he could use some help.”