Cheeks noticeably flushed, Kate grabbed hold of McGuire’s wrist. ‘Finn, I think you’d better show him.’
‘I’m not showing him jack.’
‘You’ve been falsely accused of killing two men. Do you next want to be falsely accused of associating with a bunch of latter-day Nazis?’
‘Pardon me for interrupting your tête-à-tête, but what the bloody hell is going on?’ Cædmon demanded to know, the two of them behaving like criminals in the dock.
‘If you won’t do it, I will.’ Ultimatum issued, Kate made a futile grab for the canvas satchel that McGuire wore, bandolier-style, across his chest.
‘Shit.’
With that muttered oath, McGuire capitulated. Unzipping the canvas satchel, he shoved his hand inside. When, a few seconds later, he pulled out a gleaming gold pendant, Cædmon’s eyes opened wide.
Shite.
‘You actually stole the Montségur Medallion. You lying bastard!’ Shoving the computer on to Kate’s lap, Cædmon lurched to his feet. Fists clenched, he was sorely tempted to bash McGuire in the face.
‘I can assure you that Finn had the noblest of intentions,’ Kate exclaimed, quick to defend her mastodon. ‘The only reason he took the medallion was to keep it out of the hands of men who would profit from it.’
Pitying Kate for being so sadly deluded, Cædmon thrust out his hand. Glaring at McGuire, he silently dared the commando to refuse the request.
Wearing his trademark sneer, McGuire dropped the medallion into his palm. ‘Read it and weep.’
For several long moments Cædmon stared at the relic, the gold pendant divided into four separate quadrants, each containing a unique image.
‘You do know that this may actually be the Cathars’ only material legacy, making it an incredible historic find?’
‘Well, don’t get any ideas about putting it in a display case at the Louvre,’ McGuire shot back.
‘Any guesses as to what it means?’ Kate enquired in a conciliatory tone.
‘No need to guess. Its meaning is perfectly clear. These symbols are a hieroglyph of the heliacal rising of Sirius. Viewed as a pictorial depiction of the cosmos, the setting sun is seen in the west with the star, Sirius, in the east and the moon directly overhead. Clearly, the medallion is connected to the Axe Historique.’
‘What about these four As?’ Kate pointed to the fourth quadrant. ‘Instead of the usual horizontal cross bars, they all have an angled crossbar.’
‘A stylistic flourish, and as such, inconsequential. As to what they mean, I’m no expert on the Cathar religion, but the “A”s may represent the Four Ages of Man. Difficult to say.’ He flipped the medallion over to examine the back.
‘We were hoping you could translate the inscription.’
Cædmon tapped the first two incised lines with his index finger. ‘These are inscribed in medieval Occitan, the lingua franca of the Cathars. The inscription reads “In the glare of the twelfth hour, the moon shines true.” The last line, Reddis lapis exillis cellis, is written in Latin.’ Belatedly realizing the meaning of what he’d just said, his heart slammed against his breastbone. ‘I don’t bloody believe it!’
‘Believe what?’
He brought the medallion several inches closer to his face. Squinting, he reread the inscription, verifying the translation.
‘The inscription is written in grammatically incorrect, corrupted Latin. That said, it roughly translates, “The Stone of Exile has been returned to the niche.”’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ McGuire asked gruffly.
‘A great deal to anyone who has read Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. In that classic medieval tale, von Eschenbach refers to the Grail as the Lapis Exillis. The “stone in exile”.’
Hearing that, Kate gasped. Even the dour-faced commando seemed genuinely taken aback.
‘As in the Holy fucking Grail?’
‘Yes, that Grail. Which means –’ Suddenly noticing a pinprick of light in his peripheral vision, Cædmon stopped in mid-stream. Glancing down, he was horrified to see a red laser dot on his chest, centred over his heart.
Jesus!
37
‘Christ!’
His reflexes honed from three wars, Finn roughly shoved Cædmon Aisquith in the shoulder, knocking the other man off-centre. The bullet, intended for the Brit’s heart, ploughed into a maple tree instead, a chunk of sheared bark blasted into the air.
The next instant, seeing a red laser light bounce in Kate’s direction, Finn spun on his booted heel and dived straight at her, lifting her up and over the retaining wall. The two of them crash landed in the narrow gully behind the concrete barrier – just as another piece of bark chipped off the tree trunk.
Finn clamped a hand over Kate’s mouth, muffling her in mid-scream.
‘We’re under fire!’ he hissed. ‘I need you to stay calm. Got it?’
Grey-blue eyes wide with fear, Kate nodded. Finn removed his hand from her mouth.
‘Where’s Cædmon? And why didn’t I hear any gunfire?’
Her questions were asked with the rat-a-tat-tat rapidity of automatic weapons fire.
‘The shooter’s got a silenced weapon.’ Finn raised up slightly and peered over the top of the retaining wall. Aisquith was nowhere in sight, the man smart enough to turn tail and run. He also didn’t see anyone who looked like a cold-blooded killer on the prowl. In fact, none of the milling masses was even aware that there was a gunman in their midst.
Fuck.
He slammed shut the upended laptop computer. Then, snaking his hand over the top of the retaining wall, he snatched Kate’s knapsack and dragged it down into the gully.
‘Quick! Stick this inside the knapsack.’ He shoved both items at Kate.
No time to lose, he scoped out their position – hunkered behind the three-foot-high retaining wall, with a four-foot-high hedgerow to the other side of them, they didn’t have a whole helluva lot of options. Just the one, actually. Seeing a narrow gap in the hedgerow, he looped his left arm around Kate’s torso.
‘Carpe diem,’ he muttered, dragging her through the leafy breach, branches snapping in his broad-shouldered wake. While the thick bushes wouldn’t stop a bullet, they’d camouflage their whereabouts. An expert marksman, he knew that you gotta be able to see the target in order to shoot at it.
Aisquith, crawling on all fours, came barrelling through the bushes about ten feet away. Moving surprisingly fast for a tall man, he scurried over to their position.
He removed the Montségur Medallion from his jacket pocket and handed it to Finn. ‘You left your trinket behind. Tad close for comfort. My heart is still racing.’ Obviously, the Brit referred to the fact that he’d narrowly escaped the grim reaper and his laser-guided pistol. ‘Unless I’m greatly mistaken, our gunman is a bald bloke in a black jacket. He’s positioned approximately sixty-five metres away, standing behind the statuary just south of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. I saw him dash in that direction after he fired his weapon.’
‘I think I know the dude that you’re talking about,’ Finn said, quickly searching his memory bank. ‘I saw a bald-headed guy earlier, staring at his iPod or cell phone or something. A big-ass cue ball who didn’t strike me as the artsy-fartsy let’s-do-lunch-at-the-Louvre type. I’d peg him at six two, two twenty.’
Aisquith nodded tersely. ‘That’s our man.’
Unzipping his Go Bag, Finn deposited the gold medallion. He then pulled out a pair of Bushnell binoculars, aiming them at the statue on the other side of the Arc de Triomphe. ‘Got him. The bastard hasn’t moved to a new position.’ He handed the binocs to Aisquith.