The Charlemagne Pursuit by Steve Berry Read Free Book Online Page B

lesson about lying, she told him how a bear came from the woods and attacked her, but was fended off by a tiny hound who beat the bear back with just a bark. ‘You believe that?’ the teacher asked. ‘Sure,’ my pal said, ‘because that was my dog.’ ”
    Stephanie smiled.
    “Edwin’s my dog, Stephanie. What he does gets run straight to me. And right now, he’s in a stink pile. Can you help me out on this one? Why are you interested in Captain Zachary Alexander?”
    Enough. She’d gone way too far, thinking she was only helping out first Malone, then Davis. So she told Daniels the truth. “Because Edwin said I should be.”
    Defeat flooded Davis’ face.
    “Let me speak to him,” Daniels said.
    And she handed over the phone.

 
    TEN
    M ALONE FACED D OROTHEA L INDAUER AND WAITED FOR HER TO explain.
    “My father, Dietz Oberhauser, was aboard Blazek when it disappeared.”
    He noticed her continual reference to the sub’s fake name. She apparently did not know much, or was playing him. One thing she said, though, registered. The court of inquiry’s report had named a field specialist. Dietz Oberhauser.
    “What was your father doing there?” he asked.
    Her striking face softened, but her basilisk eyes continued to draw his attention. She reminded him of Cassiopeia Vitt, another woman who’d commanded his interest.
    “My father was there to discover the beginning of civilization.”
    “That all? I thought it was something important.”
    “I realize, Herr Malone, that humor is a tool that can be used to disarm. But the subject of my father, as I’m sure is the case with you, is not one I joke about.”
    He wasn’t impressed. “You need to answer my question. What was he doing there?”
    A flush of anger rose in her face, then quickly receded. “I’m quite serious. He went to find the beginning of civilization. It’s a puzzle he spent his life trying to unravel.”
    “I don’t like being played. I killed a man today because of you.”
    “His own fault. He was overzealous. Or perhaps he underestimated you. But how you handled yourself confirmed everything I was told about you.”
    “Killing is something you seem to take lightly. I don’t.”
    “But from what I’ve been told, it’s something you’re no stranger to.”
    “More of those friends informing you?”
    “They are well informed.” She motioned down at the table. He’d already noticed an ancient tome lying atop the pitted oak. “You’re a book dealer. Take a look at this.”
    He stepped close and slipped the gun into his jacket pocket. He decided that if this woman wanted him dead, he would be already.
    The book was maybe six by nine inches and two inches thick. His analytical mind ticked off its provenance. Brown calf cover. Blind tool stamping without gold or color. Unadorned backside, which pinpointed its age: Books produced before the Middle Ages were stored flat, not standing, so their bottoms were kept plain.
    He carefully opened the cover and spied the frayed pieces of darkened parchment pages. He examined them and noticed odd drawings in the margins and an undecipherable text in a language he did not recognize.
    “What is this?”
    “Let me answer that by telling you what happened north of here, in Aachen, on a Sunday in May, a thousand years after Christ.”
     
    Otto III watched as the last impediments to his imperial destiny were smashed away. He stood inside the vestibule of the palace chapel, a sacred building erected two hundred years earlier by the man whose grave he was about to enter.
    “It is done, Sire,” von Lomello declared.
    The count was an irritating man who ensured that the royal palatinate remained properly maintained in the emperor’s absence. Which, in Otto’s case, seemed most of the time. As emperor he had never cared for the German forests, or for Aachen’s hot springs, frigid winters, and total lack of civility. He preferred the warmth and culture of Rome.
    Workers carried off the last of the