Page 154 of The Last Kingdom

He lifted the parchment and stepped from the chamber back into the grotto.

The others followed.

Ming stood on the far side watching.

“Here it is,” he said to him. “The deed you wanted.”

He tore it into pieces, the parchment yielding easily, ripping in clean strips, which he mutilated into smaller pieces. Then he allowed them all to rain down onto the surface of the lake, where the water claimed them, eradicating all evidence of what might have been there.

“It’s over,” he said.

Chapter 85

LUKE WALKED THE CHRISTMAS MARKET AND ADMIRED ALL THECRAFTSand food for sale. Toni was with him. They’d spent yesterday being debriefed by Koger. Today, they were off the clock. Enjoying themselves.

The bodies of Prince Stefan and his brother, the Duke of Bavaria, had been located in the cold waters of the Pöllat gorge. Both had drowned and suffered severe injuries after obviously falling from great heights. The press and public were baffled as to their sudden deaths, the speculation running rampant. The truth would never be revealed since everything that happened would surely be stamped top secret, a felony for him, or anyone else associated with the mission, to ever speak of it. No danger of him talking. He might be young, brash, and too eager for his own good, but he knew how to keep his mouth shut. And, like Malone told him years ago, that was half the fight to becoming a good agent.

They’d left the grotto violated for others to find. Ming and his men were released and quickly retreated back to the safety of their consulate.

Mission failed for them.

Fenn and his band of merry men also retreated, taking the body of the one man Trinity Dorner had plugged with them. His respect level for Dorner had increased tenfold. He’d actually not thought she had it in her, but she’d handled herself well. Killing people wasn’t easy. But you did what you had to do. And she’d done just that. And the fact that he’d escaped the situation without any holes in his skin was much appreciated.

“Check this out,” Toni said.

And they stopped at one of the booths, this one selling an assortment of miniature sheep, hay, tools, shepherds, angels, and other things found in a manger.

“They go to nativity scenes,” she said.

He noticed an assortment of small stables and grottoes fashioned from wood.

Toni lifted one of the carved angels. “My parents have one. You buy the various pieces and set up a model, at Christmas, of the birth of Christ in the manger.”

Luke recited, “‘And on the third day, after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary went out of the cave, and, entering a stable, placed the child in a manger, and an ox and an ass adored him.’”

“Look at you. A biblical scholar.”

“My mother demanded that we Daniels all know the Holy Book.”

She replaced the angel among the others for sale. They’d spent last night together, enjoying each other. He liked her. A lot. But his job did not bode well for emotional attachments. She’d seemed to abide by the same rule.

“Where do you go now?” he asked her as they kept walking through the cold and the evening crowd.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “There’s talk of sending me to England, or perhaps South Africa.”

He knew better than to ask why.

That was, as the Germans would say, “verboten.”

“And you?” she asked.

“Back to the Magellan Billet.”

He had a sense she was leading him. So he decided to not resist or question, but simply to follow. They passed through the Marienplatz, following a route similar to the one they’d taken two nights ago when the police were after them. Thankfully, all of that nonsense had been straightened out by people much higher up than him. Christophe had died in the police assault, and that fatality had seemed enough to satisfy the powers that be.

They left the main market route and headed down one of the side streets. People were still everywhere. The evening’s weather was cold with no snow, a clear sky overhead with a half-full moon. Christmas was two weeks away and he’d already decided to spend it in Tennessee with his mother and brothers, provided of course he was not on assignment.

He noticed a car parked ahead along the curb, taillights on, condensation seeping from the tailpipe signaling an idling engine.