Текст книги "Tracker"

Автор книги: James Rollins

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James Rollins
Tracker

March 4, 5:32 P.M.

Budapest, Hungary

He knew she was being hunted.

Seated at a chilly bistro table, wrapped in a woolen jacket, Tucker Wayne watched the woman hurry across the icy medieval plaza known as Szentháromság tér, or Trinity Square. The blonde, early twenties, glanced over her shoulder one too many times. She wore sunglasses even though most of the plaza was already thick with shadows as the sun set. Her crimson silk scarf had been tugged too high over her chin, not because she was cold; such thin material offered little practical protection against the chilly gusts that swept the plaza. Also, she walked too fast compared with the others ambling around the heart of the city’s Royal Castle District, a major tourist hub for Budapest.

The army had trained him to maintain such diligence, to watch for the unusual amid the ordinary. When he’d been a captain with the army rangers, he and his partner had served as the unit’s trackers through two tours in Afghanistan – for search-and-rescue operations, for extraction, for hunting down targets of acquisition. In the outlying districts and villages of Afghanistan, the difference between life and death was not so much about rifles, Kevlar, and the latest risk assessments as it was about noting the rhythms of the environment, the normal ebb and flow of life, and watching for anything out of the ordinary.

Like now.

The woman didn’t belong here. Even the brightness of her clothing was out of place: the ivory knee-length coat, the red shoes that matched her scarf and hat. Among a winter crowd dressed in browns and blacks or tans and grays, she stood out.

Not wise when you were being hunted.

As he watched her nervous progress across the square, he cradled the cup of hot coffee between his palms. He wore a pair of gloves with the fingertips cut out of them. Other patrons of the pastry shop gathered inside the small space, where it was warm and crowded at this hour. They were bellied up to the counter or perched at small window-side tables. He was the only one banished to the outdoor patio at the edge of the cold square.

He and his partner.

The compact shepherd, known as a Belgian Malinois, lay at his feet, the dog’s muzzle resting on the tip of his boot, ready for any command. Kane had served alongside him through two tours in Afghanistan. They’d worked together, eaten together, even bunked together.

Kane was as much a part of his body as his own arm or leg.

When Tucker left the service, he took Kane with him.

Since then, Tucker had been adrift in the world, intending to stay lost, taking the occasional odd job to support himself – and then moving on. He liked it that way. After all he had seen in Afghanistan, he needed new horizons, new vistas, but mostly, he had a drive to keep moving.

With no family attachments in the States, he no longer needed a home.

It came with him.

He reached down and ran his fingers through the dog’s dense black-and-tan fur. Kane’s muzzle lifted. Dark brown eyes, flecked with gold, stared up at him. It was one of the unique features of domesticated dogs– they studied us as much as we studied them.

He matched that gaze and gave a small nod – then flicked his eyes to the square. He wanted his partner to be ready as the woman crossed toward them, about to skirt past the outdoor patio.

He scanned the flow of humanity into and out of the plaza as it wound around the towering statue in the center of the square. Its Baroque façade was covered in marble figures, climbing skyward, toward a brilliant gold star. It represented those in the city who had escaped the Black Plague during the eighteenth century.

As the woman neared, he kept a close eye on anyone staring toward her. There were a few. She was a woman who naturally turned heads: slender, curvaceous, with a fall of blond hair to the middle of her back.

At last, across the plaza, he spotted her hunter – or rather, hunters.

A mountain of a man, flanked by two smaller figures, entered from a street to the north. They were all dressed in trench coats. The leader was black haired, well over six feet, hugely muscled, and, from the prominent pocking over his face, a chronic abuser of anabolic steroids.

Tucker noted bulges under the trench coats that suggested concealed weapons.

The woman didn’t notice the group, her eyes glancing right over them.

So she knew someone might be looking for her, but she didn’t have the skill or knowledge to pick them out. Yet she had the instinct to stay around other people.

She hurried past his location, a whiff of jasmine left in her wake.

Kane tilted his nose up to her scent.

She headed toward the doors of the massive Matthias Church, with its towering stone-laced gothic spire and fourteenth-century reliefs depicting the Virgin Mary’s death. The doors were still open, waiting for the last of the day’s tourists to straggle out. She headed inside, casting a final look around before ducking past the threshold.

Tucker finished his coffee, left a tip, and stood. He grabbed Kane’s leash and exited just as the trio of hunters swept past. As he followed them, bundled in his jacket and coat, he heard the tallest of the three give quick orders in Hungarian.

Local thugs.

Tucker shadowed the group as they moved toward the church. One of the three glanced back at him, but Tucker knew what he would see.

A man in his late twenties, taller than average, sandy blond hair worn a little shaggy, walking a dog outfitted in a brown sweater. Tucker hid some of his muscled height by slumping his shoulders and hunching down. His clothing was already nondescript: worn jeans, a battered olive green coat, a wool cap tugged low. He knew notto avoid eye contact – that raised as much suspicion as staring. So he merely nodded politely back and showed disinterest.

As the other turned around, Tucker touched his nose and ticked his finger toward the mountain of a man in the middle.

Acquire that one’s scent.

Kane had a vocabulary of a thousand words, understood a hundred hand gestures, making the dog an extension of himself. The shepherd trotted forward, sniffing behind the man, close to his heels, nose near the edge of the trench coat.

Tucker pretended to ignore his partner’s efforts, staring off across the square.

Once Kane secured what he needed, the dog dropped back and waited for the next command. His ears remained stiff, his tail high, expressing his alertness.

As the trio reached the church, more orders were passed brusquely in Hungarian, and the group split up, spreading out to cover the exits.

Tucker stepped over to a park bench, crouched down next to Kane, and tied the end of the leash loosely around its iron leg but unclipped the other end. He merely tucked it in place behind Kane’s collar, making it look as if the dog were secured there.

Next, he slid his fingers under the brown sweater to the camouflaged K9 Storm tactical vest. It was waterproof and Kevlar reinforced. His fingers flicked on the built-in camera and snaked up its fiber-optic lens, smaller than a pencil eraser, hiding it between the dog’s pricked ears.

“Stay,” he ordered.

Kane sat in the deep shadows of the church, just another dog waiting for the return of its master.

With a final scratch at his partner’s ear, ensuring the Bluetooth earpiece was secure, Tucker leaned forward, bringing his face close to his dog’s. It was a ritual of theirs.

“Who’s a good boy?”

Kane reached his cold nose forward and touched his.

That’s right. You are.

A tail thumped good-bye as Tucker straightened. Turning, he watched the huge man stride toward the church’s main entrance with the full confidence of a hunter whose prey had been trapped.

He followed, freeing his modified cell phone – courtesy of the military, as was the tactical vest, both stolen when he had left the service. For that matter, so was Kane. But after what had happened at that village outside Kabul…

He shied from that painful memory.

Never again…

His whole unit had helped him escape with the dog.

But that was another story.

He switched on the phone, tapped a few icons on the screen. Then a video appeared: of his backside, walking away, the feed coming from Kane’s camera.

All was in order.

Tucker pocketed the phone and followed the tall hunter through the doors of the church. Inside, massive spiral pillars held up a cavernous space. All around, the plastered walls displayed a frenzy of brilliant golden frescoes depicting the deaths of Hungarian saints, brought to life by the flickering of candles throughout the nave. Farther down, a series of chapels opened off to the sides, containing a few sarcophagi and a museum of medieval carvings. The entire place smelled vaguely of incense and mildew.

Tucker easily spotted the target, again standing out in her ivory coat. She sat in a pew halfway down the length of the nave, her head bowed.

The hulk of a man took a post near the entrance, leaning against the wall, preparing to wait her out. Clearly, the group was afraid to nab her in front of witnesses and was biding its time before making a move. With the sun almost down and the church emptying out, it would not be a long wait.

Unless Tucker did something about it.

He slipped past the wide bulk of the man, noting the earpiece in his left ear, then continued into the main church. He moved down to the pew where the woman had parked herself and slipped in next to her. She moved a few inches farther down the bench, barely glancing his way. She had taken off her hat and sunglasses in respect for the church. He reached up and did the same with his cap.

Her hair shone like gold in the candlelight. Her eyes, as she glanced at him, were a watery blue. In her hands, she fondled a cell phone, as if unsure whom to call – or maybe she was hoping for a call.

“Do you speak English?” he asked softly.

Even the whisper made her flinch, but after a long pause, she answered curtly, “Yes, but I prefer not to be bothered.”

She spoke the words as if she had said them countless times before. Her accent was distinctly British, as was her reserve as she slid a full foot away from him.

He knelt down in the pew, offering a less intimidating pose, bowing his head to his hands as he spoke. “I wanted to warn you that three men are following you.”

She tensed, looking ready to bolt.

“I think you should pray,” he said, motioning her down.

“I’m Jewish.”

“And I’m only here to help you. If you want it.”

Again that calculating pause, but she slipped gently to her knees.

He whispered without facing her. “They are watching each door out of here.” When she tried to glance back, he tightened his voice. “Don’t.”

She bowed her forehead to her hands. “Who are you?”

“Nobody. I saw those armed men following you. I saw how scared you looked—”

“I don’t need your help.”

He sighed. “Okay. I offered.”

He began to stand up, knowing he had done as much as his conscience demanded. He couldn’t help those who were too proud or stubborn to accept it.

She reached low and pinched the sleeve of his jacket. “Wait.” When he settled back to his knees next to her, she asked, “How do I know I can trust you?”

“You can’t know for sure.” He shrugged. “Either you do or you don’t.”

She stared at him, and he met her gaze. “I remember you. You were sitting at that patio with a dog.”

“ Thatyou noticed. Not the armed thugs trailing you.”

She turned away. “I like dogs. She was pretty.”

He smiled into his raised palms, warming up to this woman. “ Hisname is Kane.”

“Sorry. Then hewas handsome.” She moved a little closer, sounding calmer. “But what can youdo?”

“I can get you out of here. Away from them. What you want to do from there is up to you.”

That was one of his specialties.

Extraction.

She glanced over to him, swallowing hard. “Then please, help me.”

He held out his hand. “Then let’s get out of here.”

“How?” she asked, surprised. “What about—?”

His hand closed over hers, silencing her. Her palm burned like an ember in his. “Just stay close to me.”

He drew her back out of the pew, letting go of her hand but motioning her to stay behind him. In his other hand, he held a black KA-BAR fighting knife hidden alongside his leg. He had slipped the blade out of its ankle sheath as he knelt. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

He led her away from the main entrance toward a smaller exit on the south side of the church. He glanced sidelong toward the tall man. The hunter was already swinging away, touching his ear, plainly alerting the man guarding this door. Then his hulking form vanished out of sight as he swung around the church to join his comrade. They were likely planning on ambushing her once she stepped outside.

Once he was gone, Tucker abruptly turned, caught the woman around the waist, and swung her around.

“What are you—?”

“Change of plans,” he said. “We’re going out the other way.”

Without letting go of her waist, he hurried her toward the north-facing portal, hoping that the radioed message from the big man was drawing all eyes to the south, expecting her to exit there.

Once at the door, he paused. He held her back and checked his cell phone. Video bloomed to light on the tiny screen. Though the sun had set by now, the view through the night-vision camera was grainy but bright. It showed the plaza and the main entrance to the church as Kane stared toward where his partner had vanished, waiting patiently.

Good boy.

Satisfied, he stepped toward the exit, hoping the guard posted out there had been tricked into retreating to the other side of the church, along with their leader.

And apparently his ruse worked, unfortunately not to his benefit.

The door swung open as Tucker reached for it.

The third hunter barged inside, plainly intending to take a shortcut acrossthe church rather than aroundit, planning to bring up the rear behind his fleeing quarry.

Both Tucker and the man were equally caught off guard.

Tucker reacted first as the hunter’s eyes spotted the woman in the ivory coat and struggled to comprehend how she could be there.

Using that momentary confusion, Tucker lunged and barreled into the man with his shoulder, driving him back out the door and into a narrow dark alley. He slammed him against the brick wall on the far side, driving an elbow into his solar plexus, hard enough for the air to burst from his chest.

The man gasped and slumped, but he had enough wits to paw for a hidden weapon. Tucker spun, swinging his arm with all the strength in his shoulder. He struck the hilt of his KA-BAR dagger against the man’s temple – and drove him to his knees, where he fell limply on his face.

Tucker quickly searched him. The woman stepped out, too, smartly closing the door to the church, looking terrified.

For the moment, with the church mostly deserted, no one seemed to note the attack. He confiscated a FÉG PA-63 semiautomatic pistol, used commonly by the Hungarian police and military. He also found an I.D. folder topped with a badge and flipped it open, recognizing the man’s face, but not the badge, though it looked official. Across the top it read Nemzetbiztonsági Szakszolgálat,and at the bottom were three letters: NSZ.

The woman gasped upon seeing it, recognizing it.

That can’t be good.

He stared up at her.

“He’s with the Hungarian national security service,” she said.

Tucker took a deep breath and stood. He had just cold-cocked a member of the Hungarian FBI. What had he gotten himself into? Right now, the only answers lay with this woman.

He knew he didn’t want to be found crouched over this unconscious form, especially by the guy’s teammates. People still had a tendency to disappear in this former Soviet Bloc country, where corruption continued to run rampant.

And, at the moment, was he on the rightside of the law or the wrong?

As he stood, he studied the scared eyes of the woman. Her fear seemed genuine, based on confusion and panic. He remembered how she had crossed the plaza, offering so open a target. Whoever she was, she wasn’t some criminal mastermind.

He had to trust his instincts. One of the reasons he had been paired with Kane was his high empathy scores. Military war dog handlers had a saying– It runs down the lead—describing how emotions of the pair became shared over time, binding them together as firmly as any leash. The same skill allowed him to read people, to pick up nuances of body language and expression that others might miss.

He stared at the woman and recognized she was in real trouble.

Whatever was happening was not her fault.

Committed now, he took her hand and headed quickly for a back alley. His hotel was not far off – the Hilton Budapest, right around the corner. Once he got her stashed somewhere safe, he could figure out what was really going on and do something to end it.

But first, he needed more information. He needed ears and eyes in the field – and in this case, a nose, too.

He recovered his cell phone, tapped a button, and radioed a command.

* * *

Kane hears the word in his ear, spoken with authority.

“TRACK.”

He stands and tugs free of the leash, ignoring the clatter of the clasp on the pavement behind him. He slinks behind the bench to where the shadows will hide him. He lifts his nose to the night, senses swelling outward, filling in the world around him with information beyond mere sight, which is keen enough in the dark.

The ripeness of garbage rises from a pail…

The tang of old urine wafts from the stone wall…

The smoky exhaust of cars tries to wash through it all…

But he stays focused, picking out the one scent he was told to follow. It is a blazing trail through all else: the smell of leather and sweat, the salt of skin, the musky dampness held trapped beneath the long coat as the man walked in front of him.

He follows that trail now through the air as it hangs like a lighted beacon through the miasma of other scents. He hunts along it from the bench to the stone corner, staying to shadows. He watches the prey come running, circling back into view.

He slinks low.

The prey and another man rush past him, blind to him.

He waits, waits, waits – only then does he follow.

Belly near the ground, he moves from shadow to shadow until he spots the prey bent over another man. They pick him up, search around, then head away.

He flows after them, a ghost upon their trail.

* * *

Tucker hurried the woman through the main entrance to the Hilton Budapest. The historic structure was just steps away from the Matthias Church. They had no trouble reaching it unseen.

He rushed her into the lobby, struck again by the mix of modern and ancient that typified this city. The hotel incorporated sections of a thirteenth-century Dominican monastery, integrating a pointed church tower, a restored abbey, and gothic cellars. The entire place was half modern hotel and half museum. Even the entrance they passed through was once the original façade of a Jesuit college, dating back to 1688.

He was allowed a room here with Kane because of a special international military passport that declared the dog to be a working animal. Kane even had his own rank – major, one station higher than Tucker. All military war dogs were ranked higher than their handlers. It allowed any abuse of the dogs to be a court martial offense: for striking a superior officer.

And Kane deserved every bit of his rank and special treatment. He had saved hundreds of lives over the course of his tours of duty. They both had.

But now they had another duty: to protect this woman and discover what they had stumbled into.

Tucker led her across the lobby and up to his guest room: a single with a queen-sized bed. The room was small, but the view looked off to the Danube River that split the city into its two halves: Buda here and Pest across the river.

He pulled out the chair by the desk and offered her a seat, while he perched on the edge of the bed. He glanced to the video feed and saw that Kane continued to track the two men, now carrying their third teammate, groggy and slung between them. The group threaded through a series of narrow winding streets.

He kept the phone on his knee as he faced her. “So maybe now you can tell me how much trouble I’m in, Miss—?”

She tried to smile but failed. “Barta. Aliza Barta.” Tears suddenly welled, as the breadth of events finally struck her. She looked away. “I don’t know what’s going on. I came from London to meet my father – or rather look for him. He is a professor at the Budapest University of Jewish Studies.”

Aliza glanced back at him to see if he knew the university.

When he could only give her a blank expression, she continued, some family pride breaking through her tears. “It’s one of the most distinguished universities of rabbinical studies, going back to the mid-1800s. It’s the oldest institution in the world for training and graduating rabbis.”

“Is your father a rabbi?”

“No. He is a historian, specifically researching Nazi atrocities, with a special emphasis on the looting of Jewish treasures and wealth.”

“I’ve heard about attempts to find and return what was stolen.”

She nodded. “A task that will take decades. To give you some scale, the British Ministry that I work for in London estimates that the Nazis looted $27 trillion from the nations they conquered. And Hungary was no exception.”

“And your father was investigating these crimes on Hungarian soil?” Tucker began to get an inkling of the problem here: missing historian, lost Nazi treasures, and now the Hungarian national security service involved.

Someone had found something.

“For the past decade he had been researching one specific theft. The looting of the Hungarian National Bank near the end of the war. A Nazi SS officer– OberführerErhard Bock – and his team absconded with thirty-six cases of gold bullion and gems valued today at $92 million. According to reports at the time, it was all loaded onto a freighter steaming up the Danube, headed to Vienna, but the party was bombed by fighter planes, and the treasure was jettisoned overboard, near where the Morava River joins the Danube.”

“And this treasure was never found.”

“Which struck my father as odd, since this theft was so well known, as was its fate. And the mouth of the Morava River is quite shallow that time of year, made even shallower by a two-year-old drought at the time. To my father, it seemed like someonewould have found those heavy crates before the river mud claimed them.”

“But your father had another theory, didn’t he?”

Her bright eyes found his. “He thinks the treasure was never removed but hidden somewhere here in Budapest, stashed away until Erhard Bock considered it safe to return. Of course, that never happened, and on his deathbed, Bock hinted that the treasure was still here, claiming it was buried below where even the claws of the Jewish dead could reach it.”

Tucker sighed. “Like they say, once a Nazi, always a Nazi.”

“Then, two days ago, my father left me a cryptic message on my answering machine. Claimed he had made a breakthrough, from a clue he had discovered in some newly restored archive of the university’s library, something from the Prague cave.”

“The Prague cave?”

A nod, then Aliza explained, “The university library here contains the largest collection of Jewish theological and historical literature outside of Israel. But when German troops marched into the city, they immediately closed the rabbinical university and turned it into a prison. However, just before that happened, the most valuable manuscripts were hidden in an underground safe. But a significant number of important documents – three thousand books – were sent to Prague, where Adolf Eichmann planned the construction of a Museum of an Extinct Racein the old Jewish Quarter.”

“What a nice guy.”

“It took until the eighties for that cache of books to be found in a cave beneath Prague. They were restored to the library here after the fall of Communism in 1989.”

“And your father discovered something in one of those recovered books.”

She faced him, scrunching up her face. “In a geologytext, of all places. On the message, he asked for my help with the British Ministry to obtain satellite data. Something my father in Hungary couldn’t easily access.”

“What sort of data?”

“Ground-penetrating radar information from a U.S. geophysical satellite. He needed a deep-earth scan of the district of Pest on the far side of the Danube.”

She glanced out the window toward the river as the spread of the city glowed against the coming night. “After I got that message, I tried calling him for more details, but I never heard back. After twenty-four hours, I got concerned and asked a friend to check his apartment. She reported that his flat had been ransacked, torn apart, and my father was missing. So I caught the first flight down here. I spent the day with the Hungarian police, but they had barely made any headway and promised to keep me informed. When I got back to my hotel room, I found the door broken open, and all my luggage searched, the room turned over.”

She glanced at him. “I didn’t know what else to do, didn’t know who to trust, so I fled and ended up at the square. I was sure someone was watching me, following me, but I thought maybe I was being paranoid. What could anyone want with me? What were they looking for?”

“Did you ever get that satellite information your father asked about?”

Her eyes widened, and her fingers went to the pocket of her coat. She removed a tiny USB flash drive. “Is this what they were looking for?”

“That, and possibly you. To use you as leverage against your father.”

“But why? Where could my father be?”

Tucker stared down at the cell phone on his knee. The party that Kane tracked had reached a parked sedan beyond the historical district. He saw Kane slow to a stop and slink back into the shadows nearby. The leader was easy to spot, leaning against the hood, a cell phone pressed to his ear.

“Maybe these guys can tell us,” he said. “Do you speak Hungarian?”

“I do. My family is from here. We lost most everyone following the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. But a few survived.”

He patted the bed next to him. “Then listen to this.”

She joined him and stared at the live feed on the screen. “Who is filming this?” She leaned closer. “Aren’t those the men who were following me?”

“Yes.”

She squinted up at him. “How—?”

“I had my dog track them. He’s outfitted with a full surveillance package.”

His explanation only deepened that pinched look. Rather than elaborating in more detail, he simply turned up the speakerphone so the audio from the video feed could be heard. Traffic noises and a whisper of wind ate most of the big man’s words, but a few coarse phrases came through clearly.

Aliza cocked her head to the side, listening.

Tucker appreciated the long curve of her neck, the way her lips pursed ever so slightly as she concentrated.

“What are they saying?” he asked.

She spoke haltingly, listening and speaking at the same time. “Something about a cemetery. A lostJewish cemetery.” She shook her head as the man ended his call and vanished into the sedan. “He mentioned something at the end. A street. Salgótarjáni.”

As the car pulled away, Tucker lifted the phone and pressed the button, radioing to Kane. “Return home. Good boy, Kane.”

Lowering the phone, he watched Kane swing around and begin backtracking his way to the hotel. Satisfied, he turned to Aliza.

“I’m guessing that trio went rogue. Some faction heard about your father’s inquiry, about his possible breakthrough in discovering that lost treasure trove. And they’re trying to loot what was already looted.”

“So what do we do? Go to the police?”

“I’m not sure that’s the wisest plan, especially if you want your father back alive.”

She paled at his words, but he didn’t regret saying them. She had to know the stakes.

“Now that they’ve lost your trail, they’ll run scared.” He saw it even on that grainy footage. “The police are already investigating the disappearance of your father. Since they came after you, to use as leverage, that suggests he’s still alive at the moment. But now with the police closing in and you nowhere to be found, they’ll act rashly. I fear that if they can’t get what they want by tonight, they’ll kill your father to cover their tracks. Likewise, if he gives them what they want, the end result may be the same.”

“So there’s no hope.”

“There’s always hope. They’re scared and will be more apt to make a mistake.”

And be more dangerous,he added silently.

“Then what do we do?”

“We find out where they took your father. That street you mentioned. Do you know where that’s located?”

“No. I don’t know the city that well.”

“I’ve got a map.”

He retrieved it and spread it on the bed.

She leaned next to him, shoulder to shoulder, her jasmine perfume distracting. “Here it is,” she said. “ SalgótarjániStreet.”

He ran a finger along the dead-end street. “It lies near the center of Pest, and it looks like it runs adjacent to…” He read the name and looked at her. “Kerepesi Cemetery. Could that be the lost Jewish burial site you heard them talking about?”

“No. I don’t see how. Kerepesi is the oldest cemetery in all of Hungary.” She shifted her finger closer to the Danube. “This is the Jewish Quarter, where you’ll find most of our burial plots. It’s a good three miles away from Kerepesi Cemetery.”

“Then I’ll have to take Kane and check out that street myself.”

“It’s too dangerous.” She touched his arm. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You don’t have to ask. If I don’t end this, they’ll come after me, too. That guy I knocked down in the alley will know you weren’t alone. I’d rather not spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for a rogue agent from the Hungarian NSZ.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“Sorry. Kane and I work alone. You’ll be safer here.”

She blocked him when he made a move toward the door. “You don’t speak the language. You don’t know what my father looks like. And you don’t know anything about the city. It’s myfather’s life that’s in danger. I’m not going to sit idly by, hoping for the best. That didn’t work so well for my people in the past.”

She was ready to argue, but he shrugged. “You had me at You don’t speak the language. Let’s go.”