Free The Charlemagne Pursuit by Steve Berry

you.”
    “Still doesn’t explain how you knew I’d be on that mountain today.”
    “How about we leave that a mystery for the moment.”
    “You sent those two to steal it?”
    She nodded.
    He didn’t like her attitude but, dammit, he was intrigued. He was beneath a Bavarian abbey, surrounded by an array of ancient stones with strange markings, and staring at a book, supposedly from Charlemagne, that could not be read. If what Dorothea Lindauer said was true, there may well be a connection to his father’s death.
    But dealing with this woman was nuts.
    He didn’t need her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll pass.” He turned to leave.
    “I agree,” she said, as he headed for the door. “You and I could never work together.”
    He stopped, turned back, and made clear, “Don’t screw with me again.”
    “ Guten abend, Herr Malone.”

 
    THIRTEEN
    FÜSSEN, GERMANY
8:30 PM
     
    W ILKERSON STOOD UNDER THE SNOWY BRANCHES OF A BEECH tree and watched the bookshop. It was located midway into an arcade of picturesque boutiques, just outside the pedestrian-only zone, not far from a boisterous Christmas market where the squeeze of bodies and a hot glow from floodlights infused an element of warmth into the night’s wintry blast. The aroma of cinnamon, gingerbread, and sugarcoated almonds drifted on the dry air, along with scents of sizzling schnitzel and bratwurst. High atop a church, strains of Bach rose from a brass ensemble.
    Weak lights illuminated the bookshop’s front window and signaled that the proprietor was dutifully waiting. Wilkerson’s life was about to change. His current naval commanding officer, Langford Ramsey, had promised him that he’d be coming home from Europe with a gold star.
    But he wondered about Ramsey.
    That was the thing about blacks. Couldn’t be trusted. He still recalled when he was nine years old, living in a small town in southern Tennessee, where carpet mills provided a living for men like his father. Where blacks and whites had once lived separately, a shift in law and attitude had started forcing the races together. One summer’s night he was curled on a rug, playing. The adjacent kitchen was full of neighbors, and he’d crept to the doorway and listened as people he knew debated their future. It had been hard to understand why they were upset, so the next afternoon, while he and his father were outside in the backyard, he’d asked.
    “They destroy a neighborhood, son. Niggers got no business livin’ around here.”
    He summoned the courage and asked, “Didn’t we bring ’em over from Africa in the first place?”
    “So what? That mean we owe ’em? They do it to themselves, son. Down at the mill, not a one of ’em can keep a job. Nothing matters but what white folks give ’em. People like me, and the rest of the folks on this block, work their whole lives and they just come along and destroy it.”
    He remembered the night before and what he heard. “You and the neighbors going to buy the house down the block and tear it down to keep ’em from living here?”
    “Seems the smart thing to do.”
    “You going to buy every house on the street and tear them down?”
    “If that’s what it takes.”
    His father had been right. Can’t trust none of them. Especially one who’d risen to become an admiral in the US Navy and the head of the Office of Naval Intelligence.
    But what choice did he have? His road to the admiralty passed straight through Langford Ramsey.
    He glanced at his watch. A Toyota coupe eased down the street and parked two businesses away from the bookshop. A side window descended and the driver motioned.
    He slipped on a pair of leather gloves, then approached the bookshop’s front door. A light rap and the proprietor unlatched the lock. The tinkle of a bell announced his presence as he entered the store.
    “ Guten abend, Martin,” he said to a squat, overweight man with a bushy black mustache.
    “Good to see you again,” the man said in German.
    The