PART 6 — The Trail to the Monastery
The black SUVs closed in with terrifying speed. Their large headlights cut through the soaking-wet night. Elena gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were chalk-white.
"What should I do, Maria?" she screamed panickedly over the sound of the pounding rain. "They're going to ram us!"
"Keep driving! Take the next exit, no matter how narrow!" I shouted back, desperately looking into the side mirror.
The leading car pulled alongside us. I could make out the silhouette of a man in the passenger seat. He gestured wildly for us to pull over. When Elena didn't react, the black car veered sharply to the right and rammed the side of our car.
A harsh grinding sound of scraping metal filled the cabin. The car began to skid dangerously on the wet highway. Elena screamed, but managed to maintain control of the wheel.
"Now! Baarle exit!" I screamed.
Elena slammed on the brakes and jerked the steering wheel hard to the right. The car slid across the asphalt, narrowly missing the guardrail, and shot onto the exit ramp. The pursuers, driving too fast to match the sudden maneuver, overshot and had to slam on their brakes hundreds of meters further down to turn around.
This bought us a lead of at most a minute. Elena steered the car onto a network of narrow, unlit polder roads. Trees and hedges flashed past. The flat landscape of the border region was draped in a deep, mysterious silence broken only by the howling of our engine.
After ten minutes of zigzagging through the polder landscape, the silhouette of an old castle-like building with a tall church tower loomed in the distance. The monastery of Our Lady of the Rose Garden.
"That's it!" I pointed.
Elena steered the car through an open gatehouse and parked behind a high yew hedge, out of sight from the road. We jumped out of the car. The cold rain beat against our faces, but adrenaline made us immune to the chill.
The monastery stood abandoned. The high Gothic windows were dark. We hurried to the heavy wooden chapel door. I took the brass key—the key Victor thought was for a safety deposit box in Brussels—and looked at the keyhole of the monastery door.
The lock was old, large, and made of forged iron. The brass key looked far too small and modern.
"It doesn't fit," Elena said desperately, looking back toward the road. "Maria, it doesn't fit!"
"Think, Maria, think…" I muttered to myself. Thomas was a master of hiding things. Why would he put this key in the box if it didn't fit the monastery?
I examined the brass key more closely under the light of my flashlight. The key had a hollow shaft. On the back was a small, barely visible thread. I began to twist it. After three turns, the outer sleeve of the key unscrewed!
A much smaller, finer bit key emerged, hidden inside the larger key!
I inserted the small key into a tiny, almost invisible hole beneath the large door handle. A dry, metallic click echoed through the night. The heavy wooden door slowly swung inward.
We slipped inside quickly and pushed the door shut. Inside the chapel, it was freezing cold. The scent of incense, old wood, and damp stone filled the room. High marble pillars reached up to the gloomy ceiling. At the end of the central aisle stood a large altar with a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary surrounded by carved roses.
"Where do we look?" Elena whispered. Her voice echoed softly through the enormous space.
I pulled out the diary and flipped to the drawing. "Beneath the fourth tile from the base of the altar. There must be the image of a rose on it."
We hurried to the altar. I shone my flashlight onto the floor. The marble tiles were worn down over the centuries. One, two, three, four… On the fourth tile, the fading engraving of a rose was indeed visible.
I knelt down. The tile felt slightly looser than the others. Using my fingernails and the pocketknife I found in Victor's car, I pried the marble slab upward.
Beneath the tile lay a small metal case wrapped in oiled linen to protect it from moisture.
My hands trembled as I lifted the case out. This was it. Thomas's life's work. The secret that had cost him his life.
As we unwrapped the linen, we heard the sound of braking cars outside the monastery. The headlights of the black SUVs shone through the stained-glass windows of the chapel, casting ghostly, colored shadows on the wall.
"They're here," Elena whispered with a voice choked by fear.
Heavy blows struck the wooden monastery door. "Maria! Open up! You have nowhere left to go!" a harsh voice shouted from outside.
I ignored the shouting and opened the metal case. Inside lay a stack of microfilms, a series of original documents with official seals from the Dutch and Belgian governments, and an audio cassette.
Right on top of the documents lay a handwritten letter from Thomas, addressed directly to me.
I opened the letter and read the first lines:
'Dearest Maria. If you are reading this, I am no longer here. The documents in this case prove a conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of politics. But the most important thing you need to know is that the man heading this organization is no stranger. It is someone you know very well. Someone from our own family…'
The heavy wooden monastery door could not withstand a massive impact and was forced inward with a thundering crash.
Men dressed in black stormed into the nave, their weapons aimed at the altar. In the middle of the group stepped a man wearing an expensive tailored suit and an overcoat draped over his shoulders.
As he stepped into the light of the altar and removed his hat, I felt the blood drain from my face.
It wasn't Victor. It wasn't an anonymous politician.
It was my own son, Julian.
"Hello, Mother," Julian said with a cool, rigid smile. "Give me Father's documents. Now."
* * *
