I ran back into the kitchen and talked to the daughter, who was sitting on the floor hugging her grandchildren. “Was there an older guy here?” I asked. “Fifties. Silver beard.”

She nodded, hugging the children protectively to her chest. “He said he’d kill them both, if we didn’t tell him where the key was. We don’t know about any key! He left, just before you got here.”

I crouched down. “Where did he go?”

The woman sniffed. And then she said the words I didn’t want to hear. “He went to find my brother,” she told me. “At the church.”

I jumped to my feet. “JD!”

Erin was at the church.

64. Erin

64

ERIN

Vasiliy had lent me a car: not one of the big, bulletproof Mercedes but a modest—or at least, modest for their family—BMW that blended in a little more. “I use it when I want to meet with someone discreetly,” he’d told me with a wink. I remembered what Arianna had said about his American girlfriend, and wondered who she was.

Some quick internet searching had revealed that the General’s son worked at St. Hedwig’s Cathedral. I found a place to park, jumped out and hurried along the street. It was late morning by now, I’d been up all night and I was running on raw adrenaline. It was only when I glanced up and saw a German street sign that it hit me: I was on my own in a foreign country, on the run from the police, chasing down a lead. A week ago, I’d been scared to leave my apartment in Vegas.

I ran up the steps of the cathedral. The place was a towering mass of gray stone topped with a huge, copper dome that age had turned turquoise. I ran from room to room, my footsteps echoing around the vaulted ceilings, until a nun pointed me in the right direction.

I found the General’s son dressed in his priest’s robes, about to begin mass. When I explained about the nuke, he crossed himself. “But what has that got to do with me?” he asked.

“The bomb can’t be activated without a key,” I told him. “And I think your father hid that key in a very safe place. Can I see your crucifix?”

He carefully took it from around his neck and handed it over. I examined it, feeling the weight. Too heavy to be wood. I’d been right.

“Sorry,” I told the priest. And snapped the crucifix in two.

He let out a strangled cry…which turned to a choked gasp when he saw the cylindrical metal key inside. “I thought he was giving me a gift,” he said, fingering it. His voice turned bitter. “I thought he’d made his peace with me.” The poor man was crushed.