"He draw down on you, too?" Holliday asked.
The man led him into the stone-lined tunnel.
"No, sir," said the man. "He fired on me. We don't fire unless absolutely necessary, but we always fire back when fired upon."
"That sounds like something I might have said," Holliday said and grinned.
"You did, sir. Roman Military Tactics 301, sir. Boom, Ah, USMA-Rah-Rah, USMA-Rah-Rah, Ooh, Rah, Ooh, Rah… sir." The West Point Rocket cheer. Who was this kid in the black balaclava helmet? They reached a set of stone steps and raced up them to exit in the stables.
"Do I know you?" asked Holliday. They ran across the garage side of the stables and out into the sheeting rain. Visibility was almost zero but the man in black seemed to know where he was going.
They ran into a grove of poplars and down a narrow, almost invisible path. He could hear the sound of gunfire behind him. He turned and looked back over his shoulder. There were a dozen black-suited men behind him.
They reached a clearing. Two UH-1 Iroquois helicopters stood in the clearing, rotors spinning. Surprisingly the choppers sported the red and white livery of the Franklin County Sheriff's Office. The sliding doors of the helicopters were open, a black- balaclava-wearing soldier standing beside each one.
"This way," said the man at Holliday's side, grabbing his arm in an iron grip again. Holliday, his shepherd and six others crowded into the vehicle. Even before the door slammed shut they were in the air. A man seated beside the pilot turned and slipped off his headphones. His face was darkly tanned, lined and worn by too much sun and too much worrying.
"We lose anyone, Menzer?" asked the older man.
"No, sir. All present and accounted for."
"Excellent," said the older man. His caretaker pulled off his balaclava.
"Misha?" Holliday said, dumbfounded. "Misha Menzer?" The thick eyebrows, pointy chin and the beak of a nose were a dead giveaway, although the Menzer he'd known had a face spotted with pimples and wore heavy plastic glasses. His ex-student grinned.
"That's me, sir. Thayer Hall, sir. Class of oh-five. You told me I'd wind up in the car wash at a base motor pool if I didn't pull up my socks." Menzer had been one of his exchange students back in the day. A better sense of humor than soldierly aptitude, he'd thought at the time.
"Nothing I like better than being proven wrong," said Holliday. He reached out and clapped his ex-student on the shoulder. "Especially when I get my ass pulled out of the fire."
"My pleasure, sir," said Menzer. "Pulling asses is our business, sir. They needed someone who'd recognize you. I volunteered. Orders from the boss." He nodded toward the man beside the pilot and said something in Hebrew to the other men on the chopper and they laughed. Holliday glanced out the window. He was vaguely aware of flying over hills and forest land but that was about it. He tapped the man in the front seat on the arm. The older man turned and slipped off his headphones.
"They said they'd kill my cousin and her husband if I didn't cooperate. We have to get them before it's too late," Holliday said urgently, yelling over the whickering clatter of the rotors and the roar of the big turbine.
"No need," yelled back the man. "We got a heads-up that they were going to be snatched, from the Vatican of all places. A man named Father Thomas Brennan, of all people. Head of the Vatican Secret Service," said the older man. Sodalitium Pianum. Holliday had butted heads with Brennan once before, also about a kidnapping.
"What happened?" he asked.
"We snatched them first," said the man in the copilot's seat. "They're safe and sound. We've got them at Ramat David Air Base up near Haifa in the north, waiting to fly over here and meet you."
Holliday felt his heart swell with relief.
"Thank you," he said gratefully.
"Tsu gezunt," said the older man. "You're welcome."
"I take it you're Mossad," said Holliday. "Misha wouldn't say."
"Misha is a good boy, a good shot, too," said the older man. "We had a man infiltrating Quince's group. Turns out they're an outsourcing operation the CIA uses for black bag operations in so-called friendly countries. Our man GPS-tagged your shoes and the Sinclair woman's cell phone with data-pulling chips. We've been following you ever since."
"That doesn't answer the question."
"Some questions shouldn't be asked," said the older man.
"You don't exist." Holliday smiled.
"You catch on quickly, my boy." The older man smiled back, and they flew on through the falling rain.
33
Peggy Blackstock, her husband, Rafi, Doc Holliday and Arnie Gallant were fishing with hand lines in the placid waters of Bedford Basin at the inner end of Halifax Harbour. It was a perfect summer day, bright sun shining from a cloudless blue sky. Gallant had provided the dory, obscurely named the Geoffrey G., and an endless stream of local lore, out-and-out fabrications and tall tales and an equally endless monologue on the best method of bait fishing. It was R amp; R for everyone, but especially for Peggy, who'd had a miscarriage, almost certainly brought on by recent events.
"What exactly are we fishing for?" asked Peggy.
"Bull fish and mackerel mostly," said Gallant. "Eels, maybe."
"Gross," said Peggy.
"Can you eat them?" Rafi asked.
"The mackerel, I s'pose," Gallant said and shrugged. "The bull fish if you were desperate. Eels if you like that sort of thing."
"What does bull fish taste like?" Peggy asked.
"Whatever its last meal was," said Gallant.
"What does it eat?" Rafi asked.
"Mostly chaetognatha Sagitta elegans," responded Gallant.
"Elegant spear," said Holliday abstractedly. He was staring thoughtfully at absolutely nothing.
"Pardon?" Peggy said.
"Sagitta elegans. That's what it means when you translate the Latin."
"Arrow worms," said Gallant, jigging his line a little. "They look like hairy horse penises with a big jaw on the end. And they're slimy." He nodded toward the placid water. "There's billions of them down there."
"And we're fishing here?" Peggy said. "Eee- ewe. Gross."
Gallant laughed, then turned to Holliday, who was still staring out across the water. "A penny for them," said the lobsterman.
"Rear Admiral Pulteney Malcolm, Royal Navy."
"And who might he be?"
"Commander of HMS Royal Oak, the ship that delivered Major General John Ross and his troops to the shores of Maryland. In August of 1814. Ross went on to rout the Americans at the Battle of Bladensburg. The Americans lost so badly it allowed Ross and his men to march on Washington and burn it to the ground. He was the first person credited with defeating an entire U.S. Army in the field. A month later he was picked off by a pair of teenage snipers. His body was pickled in a barrel of Jamaican rum and the Royal Oak took him to Halifax. The Royal Oak was probably anchored in Bedford Basin. Somewhere right around here."
"And what would this have to do with the price of lobster then?" asked Gallant. Peggy and Rafi had stopped concentrating on their fishing and were listening closely. Peggy knew Doc well; there was something in the air and it wasn't the smell of fish. Holliday continued the history lesson.
"There was more on board the Royal Oak than Ross's body in a barrel of rum. When he sacked Washington, Ross had three main objectives-the Capitol, the White House and the Treasury. In the treasury they found twenty thousand uncirculated silver dollars and an unknown quantity of ten-dollar gold double eagles."
"So?" Peggy asked.
"While I was doing research in Scotland I accidentally got into a batch of letters from a young midshipman on the Royal Oak named Cameron McLeod. Young Cameron was one of Admiral Malcolm's runners and one of his favorites. In one of the letters home to his mother he mentions that the rear admiral had given him an American gold double eagle as a souvenir of the successful pillaging of Washington. He also mentions the number of gold coins in the hoard on board the Royal Oak. Ten thousand."