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She followed.
MALONE SURVEYED THE FLOORING IN THE CENTER OF THE NAVE. Most of the pavement was there, the joints earth-filled and lichen-encrusted. They'd descended to ground level and he shone his beam on the center stone, then crouched.
"Look," he said.
Not much was left, but carved into the face were faint lines. A slash here and there of what was once part of a triangle and the remnants of the letters K and L.
"What else could it be but Charlemagne's mark?" she asked.
"We need a shovel."
"There's a maintenance shed past the cloister. We found it yesterday morning when we first came."
"Go see."
She hustled off.
He stared at the stone embedded in the frozen earth while something nagged at him. If Hermann Oberhauser had followed the same trail, why would anything be here now? Isabel said that he first came in the late 1930s, before he traveled to Antarctica, then returned in the early 1950s. Her husband came in 1970.
Yet nobody knew a thing?
Light danced outside the church, growing in intensity. Christl returned, shovel in hand.
He grabbed the handle, surrendered his light, and wedged the metal blade into one joint. Just as he suspected, the ground was like concrete. He raised the shovel and slammed the point down hard, working the blade back and forth. After several blows he began to make progress and the ground gave way.
He again spiked the shovel into the joint and managed to wiggle it beneath, working the wooden handle like a fulcrum, loosening the stone from the earth's embrace.
He withdrew the shovel and did the same thing on the other sides.
Finally, the slab began to wobble. He pried it upward, angling the handle.
"Hold the shovel," he told her. He dropped down and worked his gloved hands underneath, freeing the edges from the ground.
Both flashlights lay beside him. He lifted one and saw that only dirt was visible.
"Let me try," she said.
She kneaded the hard ground with short jabs, twisting the blade, working deeper. She hit something. She withdrew the shovel and he stirred the loose dirt, scooping out cold earth until he saw the top of what at first looked like a rock, but then he realized it was flat.
He brushed away the remaining dirt.
Carved in the center of a rectangular shape, clear and distinct, was Charlemagne's signature. He cleared more earth from the sides and realized that he was looking at a stone reliquary. Maybe sixteen inches long, ten inches wide. He worked his hands down either side and discovered that it was about six inches tall.
He lifted it out.
Christl bent down. "It's Carolingian. The style. Design. Marble. And, of course, the signature."
"You want the honor?" he asked.
A blissful half grin claimed her mouth and she grasped the sides and lifted. The reliquary parted in the middle, the bottom portion framing the shape of something wrapped in oilcloth.
He lifted out the sheathed bundle and untied the drawstrings.
Carefully, he opened the bag as Christl shone a light inside.
SIXTY-EIGHT
ASHEVILLE
STEPHANIE DESCENDED THE STAIRCASE, WHICH TURNED AT RIGHT angles until it found the chateau's basement.
Davis was waiting at the bottom. "Took you long enough." He wrenched the gun from her grasp. "I need that."
"What are you going to do?"
"Like I said, kill the piece of crap."
"Edwin, we don't even know who he is."
"He saw me and he ran."
She needed to take control, as Daniels had instructed her to do. "How did he know you? Nobody saw us last night, and we didn't see him."
"I don't know, Stephanie, but he did."
The man had run, which was suspicious, but she wasn't ready to order a death sentence.
Footsteps came from behind and a uniformed security guard appeared. He saw the gun in Davis' grasp and reacted, but she was ready and produced her Magellan Billet identification. "We're federal agents and we have someone of interest down here. He fled. How many exits from this floor?"
"Another staircase on the far side. Several doors to the outside."
"Can you cover those?"
He hesitated a moment, then apparently decided they were for real and unclipped a radio from his waist, instructing others on what to do.
"We need to get this guy, if he comes out a window. Anywhere. Understand?" she asked. "Put men outside."
The man nodded and gave more instructions then said, "The tour group is out and in the buses. The house is empty, except for you."
"And him," Davis said, moving off.
The guard wasn't armed. Too bad. But she did notice in his shirt pocket one of the brochures she'd seen others in the tour group carrying. She pointed. "Is there a sketch of this floor in there?"
The guard nodded. "One of all four floors." He handed it to her."This is the basement. Recreation, kitchens, servants' quarters, storage. Lots of places to hide."
Which she didn't want to hear. "Call the local police. Get them over here. Then cover this stairway. This guy could be dangerous."
"You don't know for sure?"
"That's the whole problem. We don't know crap."
MALONE SAW A BOOK INSIDE THE BAG AND A PALE BLUE ENVELOPE protruding near its center. He reached in and removed the book.
"Lay the bag on the floor," he said, and he gently rested the book atop, grabbing his light.
Christl slipped the envelope free and opened it, finding two sheets of paper. She unfolded them. Both were filled by a heavy masculine script-German-in black ink.
"It's Grandfather's writing. I've read his notebooks."
STEPHANIE HURRIED AFTER DAVIS AND CAUGHT UP TO HIM WHERE the basement corridors offered a choice, one angling left, the other straight ahead. Glass-fronted doors opened off the path ahead into what looked like food pantries. She quickly checked the map. At the end of the hall she identified the main kitchen.
She heard a noise. From their left.
The schematic in the pamphlet indicated that the path ahead led to servants' bedrooms and did not connect with any other portion of the basement. A dead end.
Davis headed down the long corridor to their left, toward the noise.
They passed through an exercise room with parallel bars, barbells, medicine balls, and a rowing machine. To their right they found the indoor swimming pool, everything, including
the vault overhead, white-tiled, with no windows, only harsh electric light. No water filled the deep shiny basin.
A shadow swept across the pool room's other exit.
They rounded the railed walk, Davis leading the way.
She checked the map. "This is the only way out from the rooms beyond. Besides the main staircase, but hopefully the security guards have that covered."
"Then we've got him. He has to come back this way."
"Or he's got us."
Davis stole a quick look at the map, then they passed through a doorway and down a few short steps. He gave her the gun. "I'll wait." He pointed left. "That hall loops all the way around and ends back here."
A sick feeling filled her gut. "Edwin, this is crazy."
"Just flush him this way." A tremor shook his right eye. "I have to do this. Send him my way."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'll be ready."
She nodded, searching for the right words, but she understood his intense desire. "Okay."
He retreated up the stairs they'd come from.
She advanced to the left and, at the main staircase leading up, spotted another security guard. He shook his head to indicate that no one had come his way. She nodded and pointed that she was headed left.
Two meandering, windowless corridors led her into a long rectangular room filled with historical exhibits and black-and-white photographs. The walls were painted in a collage of colorful images. The Halloween Room. She'd recalled a mention in the pamphlet about how guests at a 1920s Halloween party painted the walls.
She spotted Chinos, on the far side, weaving through the exhibits, heading for the only other exit.
"Stop," she yelled.
He kept moving.
She aimed and fired.
Her ears stung from the gun's retort. The bullet found one of the display placards. She wasn't trying to hit the man, only scare him. But Chinos lunged through the doorway and kept running.
She followed.
She'd caught only a fleeting glance of the man, so it was impossible to know if he was armed.
She passed through a recreation room and entered a bowling alley, two lanes equipped with wood planking, balls, and pins. Had to be quite a convenience in the late nineteenth century.
