From the map she’d seen in the visitor’s center, she knew that the cemetery wasn’t far from the edge of the park. Since she couldn’t just waltz in the front gates with a shovel over her shoulder, she was going to have to find an alternate means of entry. Looking down from the top of the hill at the trees marking the park’s perimeter, Annja thought she might have found her solution.

She looked around, making certain that no one was particularly interested in what she was doing, and then slipped off down the back of the hill toward the trees. She kept her attention focused ahead of her, as if she had every reason to be there, and when she reached the tree line she didn’t stop but strode right in among the trunks. Only then, when she was out of sight from the hilltop, did she stop and look back.

There was no one there.

Satisfied her little side trip hadn’t been noticed, Annja turned around and moved deeper into the woods. Less than ten minutes later she emerged from the trees and found herself looking at a chain-link fence that stretched in both directions. Just beyond that was a single-lane road that looked like it hadn’t seen much use lately; weeds were growing through cracks in the pavement and there were a few fallen tree branches visible from where she stood.

It was exactly what she was looking for.

In order to make it easier to find the proper position from the other side, Annja broke a leafy branch from a nearby tree and jammed it through one of the holes in the fence so that it stuck there. When she returned later that night, she’d just have to look for the branch in order to know she was adjacent to the cemetery.

Satisfied with her arrangements, Annja turned around and worked her way back through the woods to the base of Cemetery Hill. She was halfway up its slope when a horse and rider came around the side of the hill, startling her.

“Everything all right, miss?” the rider asked. As he was dressed in a gray shirt, dark green pants and a tan Smokey the Bear hat, Annja felt fairly confident labeling him as a park ranger.

“Just fine, thanks,” she said, smiling at him.

He looked at her and then down the slope of the hill in the direction she’d come from, a puzzled expression on his face.

He knows, she thought, and waited for him to ask what she’d been doing down there in the woods. She already knew what she would say; she just had to make the excuse about an urgent call of nature sound genuine and was trying to come up with a way to do just that when a smile broke out across his face.

“Will ya look at that?” he said, and pointed over her shoulder back down the hill.

Annja turned around and saw a doe and her fawn standing very close to the spot where she’d exited the trees. They stepped hesitantly out on the grassy slope, eyeing the clovers mixed into the grass nearby, no doubt, and Annja felt a smile of her own cross her face.

Thank you, Bambi.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” the ranger asked.

Annja agreed that they were.

“You don’t usually see them out this late in the day. During the early-morning patrol, sure, but by the time the park opens they’re usually long gone,” he told her.

She saw a chance to extract a little information. “Is that what you do all day, patrol the grounds? That’s an awful lot of space to cover, isn’t it?”

“Over eight hundred acres,” he said, with not a little pride in his voice. “But they don’t make us patrol all day long. Just a few hours here and there. Really just an excuse to give Chestnut here—” he patted the horse’s flank “—some exercise.”

“That’s all? I’d have thought they’d make you patrol more often.”

He shook his head. “No real need for it, I guess. Nothing much to steal out here except some old gravestones and a flag or two. We do a few rounds at night, checking the place out, but for the most part it’s peaceful. If you can stand the ghosts, that is.”

He winked at her when he said it and then added a grin for good measure, making it quite clear what his intentions were. If she’d had the time, she probably would have taken him up on the challenge; he looked pretty damn good in that uniform, she had to admit.

But time was not something she had an abundance of at the moment and she was already calculating how to get rid of him without arousing his suspicions even as she flirted back with him.

“Ghosts? You’re just pulling my leg,” she said, while glancing casually around for something to use as a distraction.

The ranger’s radio went off at that point, calling him back to the visitor’s center, and she was saved the effort of coming up with a story to get rid of him. He rode off with a wave, a smile and an offer to show her the ghosts of Gettysburg any night she wanted.

Annja had to give him credit; it was one of the more original pickup lines she’d heard.

Too bad she had more important things to do.

She made her way back to the visitor’s center and from there to the parking lot. Once in her rental car, she set out to locate the road that was going to provide her access to the park after dark. Letting her instincts, and the fact that she’d been blessed with a pretty decent sense of direction, be her guide, she meandered down country road after country road until at last she found the right one.

The entrance was at the very end of a long country lane, past a pair of dairy farms. Two posts had been set up on either side of the road and a chain ran between then, blocking access. When Annja got out of the car to investigate, though, she found that the chain had simply been hooked to each side. Without a lock on it, there was nothing preventing her from unhooking it, driving her vehicle to the other side and then rehooking the chain back in place, except for the Private Property—Do Not Enter sign.

Ten more minutes of driving, and two trips out of the car to clear debris from the road, brought her directly opposite the location she’d marked on the fence.

Satisfied that she could find it again, even in the dark, she turned the car around, retraced her route to the main road and then headed back into Gettysburg to do some shopping and find a place to hole up for a few hours. Once the sun went down she’d pay Parker’s doppelgänger a visit and hopefully get to the bottom of this thing once and for all.

35

While Annja was wandering around Cemetery Hill looking for the grave of a man who couldn’t possibly be buried in it, Garin Braden was busy plotting his escape from captivity.

He’d watched dispassionately as Blaine Michaels ordered Reinhardt’s execution. Garin had known Michaels was a ruthless bastard and the decision to have the professor killed after Annja had agreed to help them hadn’t surprised him at all. Garin might have done the same thing himself, if the situation had been reversed. With that one move Michaels had shown his enemy—in this particular case, Annja—that he was not a man to be trifled with.

Knowing exactly how she’d react to the death of an innocent man, especially one she called a friend, Garin had tried to come to her aid when she rushed forward, but the quick blow of a rifle butt to the back of his head had ended his feeble attempt.

When he’d regained consciousness some unknown number of hours later, he’d discovered he was locked in a wardroom, with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling tiles and hope to be rescued.

Or so his captors thought.

Garin, of course, had other plans.

He’d been aboard enough luxury yachts to realize that he was being held captive on one now. He suspected that it was the same boat he’d snuck aboard earlier after diving from the Marietta. The low rumble of the engines, discernible to him through the floor beneath his feet, told him he was belowdecks and likely in the aft section of the craft. Breaking out would therefore mean making his way up through at least one, possibly two decks, without being seen, just to get above the waterline. Since the engines were running, he knew they weren’t sitting idle at the dock, so from there he’d have to figure out a way to get off the boat without ending up stranded in the middle of the river or, worse yet, the Atlantic Ocean.