Bes, who changed into a cream button-up and dark brown pants since I last saw him, looks at me carefully over the rims of his glasses. His gaze roves over my thighs, my hips, then drags up my waist, my chest, and my face, until he reaches my hair, which I now remember I loosened from its normal braid.
The heat behind his eyes strips me bare, heating my core. I recall how he had me pinned down in the training room, how we might’ve kissed if not for that damned instructor…
“I do,” he says finally.
She nods at me. “Good.”
Then she turns to speak to the others as if I’m not there. “If you remember, in April of last year, one of the twelve oak panels from Jan van Eyck’s painting, Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, was stolen from Saint Bavo Cathedral by the God Men. We still don’t know where it’s being kept. But there’s a rumor it recently passed through the hands of the Third Reich art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, who traffics in art stolen from mostly Jewish collectors.” She glances at me. “I’ve also heard he has a special interest in Egyptian artifacts.”
A special interest in Egyptian artifacts?Maybe he’s the reason the God Men came after me.
“He’s staying in Liechtenstein for the next few days before heading back to Germany,” she finishes.
Bes crosses his arms over his chest. “I thought we determined there’s no real significance to the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.”
She shoots him a look. “We were wrong. Gurlitt is telling anyone who will listen that he found the map to The Holy Grail on the back.”
“Shit,” Bes swears, right as Cec exclaims, “Bollocks.”
“The Holy Grail?” I practically yell. It echoes brashly through the Archive, but I press on. “TheHoly Grail? The one Jesus Christ drank from at the Last Supper and was later used to collect his blood when they crucified him?”
All four of them stare at me. Though I hate remembering all of the biblical bullshit that the priests drilled into my head as a child, at least it’s given me context for this astonishing nugget of information. People have been searching for the HolyGrail for centuries, some because of its historical and scriptural significance, others because it claims to give immortal life to whomever drinks from it.
I don’t have to guess why the God Men—and subsequently Hitler himself—might want something like that.
Bes nods, his attention on me cooled. “The very same. It’s one of the many items the Third Reich has been searching for, for some time now. The painting was one of the items taken from the German people in the Treaty of Versailles, and he believes restoring it back to the Germans will be a kind of retribution—a symbol of taking back their culture.
“But this is the reason he shares with the public,” Nonna Alessa claims, “not the one he believes in his heart.”
“And which reason is that?”
She continues, “The map in code on the back of the twelve-panel oak painting not only shows where the Holy Grail is, but the other two Arma Christi as well—the instruments of Christ’s Passion: the Holy Grail, the Crown of Thorns placed on his head, and the Spear of Destiny which pierced him while he hung on the cross. Hitler believes the person who possesses all three Arma Christi will gain”—she searches for the words—“supernatural powers.”
I scoff. “That’s ridiculous.”
“More ridiculous than magic leaves choosing your fate?” Cec asks.
I purse my lips to stop myself from saying something I’ll regret. It’s all still too fantastical to truly believe.
“And you’re certain about this?” Anders asks Nonna Alessa.
“As much as anyone can be in these dark times.”
She holds up her hand when Bes opens his mouth to ask another question.
“There’s one more thing. A little more than a month ago, the newly-appointed head of Hitler’s SS division, HeinrichHimmler, ordered the creation of a new research group called the Ahnenerbe.”
She pronounces it on-en-air-bu, which sounds off-putting outside its native tongue.
“In reality, he’s simply provided the God Men with government funding and called it something else. Though I haven’t been able to gather much more information on them, I have confirmed that the fascists you ran into in Egypt are a part of this group.”
I vaguely recall Cec mentioning that the information the Maestro passed on to him was that the German Third Reich is now employing the God Men in an official capacity to search for known mythic artifacts. But he also mentioned something else…something worse is on the horizon—something we’ve been anticipating since the end of the Great War.
Now, I wonder what that is.
Cec nods. “In other words, this is not the first paranormal item the Nazis will try to get their hands on, nor the last.”
I place my hand on the other end of the table to steady myself, my mind reeling. To give the God Men access to the weapons and intel the Third Reich has means that they’ll be unstoppable in their quest to obtain the Amulet of Amun. They’ll be able to find me no matter what I do or where I go, even all the way back to the States.
