The cadet screamed and fell with Holliday still gripping the wrist. Rafi struggled to his feet as a small crowd began to gather on the pavement around them. Out of the corner of his eye Holliday saw several red-sashed cadets running toward them. The man on the ground struggled briefly, then fell still. He stared darkly up at Holliday, his jaw working as though he was grinding his teeth.
"Who the hell are you?" Holliday barked. "I know you're not a cadet."
The man on the ground began to shudder, his heels rattling on the pavement. His eyes rolled back in his head until only the whites showed and a foamy froth slipped out from between his lips.
"Dear God," whispered Rafi, staring down at him. "He's dying."
Holliday nodded to a black carbon-steel object on the ground beside the man in the cadet uniform.
"And that's a military-grade switchblade," said Holliday. "He was trying to kill me. He's an assassin."
3
They stood around the table in one of the emergency cubicles at the Keller Army Community Hospital and looked down at the naked body on the gurney. Less than an hour had passed since the events in front of Washington Hall, but the corpse already had a gray, washed-out appearance. It looked like a frighteningly realistic store mannequin. There was a complex tattoo on the left side of the dead man's chest above the heart: crossed keys behind a shield showing a lion and an anchor with a miter over the shield. Holliday used his cell phone to take a picture of it. It was clearly the coat of arms of a Pope, but he had no idea which one.
"I'm no pathologist," said the doctor, a captain named Ridley. He was young, under forty, with dark hair only just thinning back from his forehead, the temples barely fuzzed with gray. "But from the foam at the corners of his mouth and the stiffness of the limbs I'd say it was some sort of neurotoxin. Quicker than hell."
"He didn't have time to take anything," said Holliday.
"That's right," said Rafi.
"I found bits of plastic on his tongue and in the throat," said Ridley. "Some kind of capsule. It must have already been in his mouth."
"A suicide pill?" Rafi asked, astonished.
"It looks that way," the doctor said.
A representative of the West Point Garrison Provost Marshal's Office was also on hand, a husky thirty-something woman in BDUs, combat boots and a ponytail. She wore a sidearm on her hip, and her face was white as a sheet. She was a sergeant. Her name was Connie Sayers.
"I'm just a Military Police Investigator," she said. "This is way above my pay grade." She shook her head, never taking her eyes off the dead man. She looked as though her throat was full of barely contained bile. When she spoke her teeth were clenched.
"Have you called in CID?" Holliday asked, referring to the Army Criminal Investigations Department.
"Yes, sir. They're sending us up a pair of detectives from Fort Gillem."
Fort Gillem was in Georgia, which meant six to eight hours of waiting, maybe even longer. Holliday knew that the more time he spent at the Point the deeper he was going to sink into bureaucratic glue. The entire Academy was in an uproar over the situation and it was just going to get worse.
"Do we have any ID on him?" Holliday asked, knowing what the answer would be.
"No, sir," said Sayers, shaking her head. "Nothing but the tattoo."
"Whoever he was he was nuts," said the doctor. "A crazy."
Holliday picked up the knife from the stainless steel tray on the examining table. It was a carbon-steel Microtech Troodon with a five-inch out-the-front blade. A stiletto. A split second later and it would have been Holliday on the table with the blade buried in his heart. Not the kind of weapon a crazy person carried.
"Presumably we can agree that I didn't kill the guy," said Holliday.
"I can vouch for that," said the doctor. "There's no doubt that it was suicide."
"Good," said Holliday. "Because Rafi and I have business to attend to in New York."
"The investigating officers from Fort Gillem will want to talk to you," said Sergeant Sayers. "They'll have questions. Homeland Security, too, I'll bet. Maybe you should stay on base… uh, sir."
Holliday gave her the hard eyeball of a much senior officer.
"Is that an order, Sergeant?"
The young military cop got the message loud and clear. That kind of rank-pulling intimidation went against the grain for Holliday, but right now it was necessary.
"No, sir."
"Good. I'll leave my cell phone number with your boss." Holliday took a last look at the body, then turned on his heel and walked out of the cubicle, Rafi hard on his heels.
Holliday whistled up a motor pool car and they drove to the Burger King out by Mitchie Stadium on Stony Lonesome Road. True to his word Rafi packed away two enormous Double Croissan'Wiches loaded with eggs, ham and bacon, washed down with several cups of black coffee. Holliday managed to work his way through a single English muffin with egg and sausage. He could still feel the last shakes of the adrenaline rush through his blood from his incident with the killer.
"You reacted so quickly. How did you know?" Rafi asked. A sobbing mother came in with her husband and a young girl, probably the sister of a new recruit they'd just said good-bye to for the next few months. Apparently Mom was going to drown her sorrows in hash browns.
"He was all wrong," said Holliday. "The uniform was right but any real senior cadet would have shaved better on 'R' Day and the ring was on the wrong hand-always on the right, never the left. The glasses were wrong, too. You're only required to wear Army Issue BCGs during the first few weeks of Basic-Beast Barracks. After that you're allowed to wear your own." Holliday took a swallow of coffee and felt it sour in his stomach on top of the sausage and egg. "Our friend Sergeant Sayers snoops long enough, she's going to find a firstie in barracks who's missing a uniform."
"What the hell is going on, Doc?" Rafi asked. "First Peggy and now this."
"They have to be connected. It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. The tattoo is the clincher." Holliday frowned. "Reminds me of Lutz Kellerman and his neo-Nazi friends."
"You think the Templars are part of it?"
"Beads on a string," said Holliday. "According to you, Peggy was part of an expedition based on Templar texts. It would make sense." He shook his head. "It doesn't really matter. What matters is finding Peggy and getting her back."
"Where do we start?"
"By heading for New York."
"I was wondering about that," said Rafi. "What's the business we have there?"
"Catching a ride to JFK," said Holliday, standing up and putting their garbage on a tray. "We're going to France."
They returned to Holliday's quarters, and Rafi waited while Holliday quickly packed a bag and retrieved the precious notebook the monk Rodrigues had given to him. Then they called a cab and headed into Highland Falls. Rafi rented a car there in his name and Holliday drove to New York City. They left the car at the Avis Park and Loc behind Penn Station on Thirty-first Street, then took a shuttle to JFK. By four in the afternoon they were boarding an Air France Airbus 330 direct flight to Paris. They went through security and passport control without incident, which meant that so far no one back at West Point had noticed their departure.
They sat in the rear AB seats on the port side of business class just in front of the galley. There were only two other passengers in their section-an overweight man in an expensive suit who broke wind in his sleep and an icy cold woman in a Chanel outfit and four-inch Prada heels who drank white wine steadily from the moment it was offered. Beside him Rafi dozed, fighting off jet lag that was in the process of reversing itself. For the first two hours of the flight Holliday stared out the window, watching as the Atlantic Ocean unrolled beneath the big wide-body's wings.