“It sounds like Matthew was writing about the end of days.”
“He was quoting Jesus. In Revelation, 12:12, John was quoting God.”
“Do you remember what the passage in Revelation says?”
Marcus closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Therefore rejoice, your heavens and those of you who will dwell in them. But woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has gone down to you. He is filled with fury because he knows that his time is short.’
Alicia lowered her eyes from the bell tower to Marcus. “Paul, this is being revealed to us in layers…maybe in a way we can fully grasp it.”
“There is a woman mentioned in Revelation twelve, who is described as clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet. On her head is a crown of twelve stars. Alicia, there is a similarity that Joseph gives of his father Jacob or Israel, his mother and their children. What if the stars refer to the twelve tribes of Israel…what if the woman in Revelation twelve is Israel…the place of Christ’s birth?”
“The metaphor, the woman, is really a nation…Israel?”
“When Revelation speaks of the woman fleeing into the wilderness for 1,260 days, maybe it means the future time some have called the Tribulation. Twelve hundred sixty days is forty-two months of thirty days each. Forty-two months is three-and-a-half-years. In Daniel’s prophecy, he mentions time, times and half a time…the seven-year week, may be divided into two periods of three-and-a-half-years each.”
“Okay, Paul, what if we go back to what we found on the bridge over the Tiber River? We’d reached the year 2011 with some certainty — the year 2024 is still iffy. If we factor in Daniel’s prophecy, a seven-year-week or what is really seven years, if the seven years is added to 2011 we come to the year 2018.”
Marcus watched a large bat circle the bell tower three times and fly inside the belfry. “The bat flew in a perfect circle…and that’s it!”
“What”
“The Circle of 13. Alicia, remember that Daniel 12:1 and Revelation 13 both deal specifically with the end of times. Add Daniel 12:1 and you have the number thirteen. That’s the common factor, the number thirteen. That’s our key and it points directly to the Circle of 13 and what those people have done to fulfill a prophecy of evil.”
Alicia looked up at the bell tower, the moonlight iridescent in her pupils. She whispered. “Add thirteen to the year 2011 and it’s the year 2024…the same number, the same year we reached on the bridge over the Tiber River. Paul, I have goose bumps all over my arms.”
“We may know when…and we may know where…the woman, is the place of Christ’s birth…”
“We need to get out of here. I wonder what’s taking the taxi driver so long. Maybe I can pick up the Internet here.” She used her mobile to find a signal. “It’s weak at best.”
“All I need is a half hour and I can finish and upload everything. See if you can find the ferry schedules from Salerno in Messina. Maybe there’s an Internet connection on the ferry boats.”
Alicia looked up the information. “Some of the ferryboats leave port at night so they’ll be in places like Messina in the morning. Our shuttle leaves in one hour, and we can buy tickets up to departure time.”
Heydar Kazim braced his rifle on the open door of the rental car he parked in the dark under a cypress tree with low-hanging limbs. He stood in the shadows within fifty meters of the Cathedral of Salerno. He waited. Twenty seconds later, the taxi driver walked out of the restaurant carrying a paper bag. Kazim followed him for three seconds, the rifle cross-hairs in the center of the man’s chest. Kazim squeezed the trigger. A bloom of red popped across the man’s T-shirt. He toppled on his back to the sidewalk. The assassin set his rifle in the front seat and started the car. He raced to the taxi.
“Oh God!” shouted Alicia, watching the driver collapse in a pool of blood.
“Stay down!” Marcus yelled, crawling in the driver’s seat. He started the taxi just as a car pulled in front of him, blocking the way forward. A rifle bullet exploded the passenger window above Alicia’s head.
Marcus pulled the pistol from his belt and fired directly at the front windshield of the car. He backed up, put the taxi in drive and slammed into the rear section of the man’s car before pulling out onto the street. He floored the accelerator. Marcus drove through the city square, tires screeching, a pedestrian running for the safety of a tree.
Alicia didn’t move from the rear floorboard. “Did your bullets stop him?”
Marcus looked in the rearview mirror. The car was stationary. Two seconds later, the car was on the street, high-beam headlights reflecting from the mirror and burning into Marcus’s eyes.
“No! He’s coming. Stay down!”
ONE-HUNDRED-ELEVEN
There was the approaching sound of emergency vehicles coming from all directions in the city. Marcus drove down one-way streets and back alleys, through ancient cobblestone and brick streets. He drove through a medieval cemetery where gothic tombstones and mausoleums cast shadows of stone under the moonlight.
Marcus looked in the rearview mirror. “I think we lost him.”
Alicia rose from the backseat and crawled to the front. She pointed down the hillside to the bay and a lighted waterfront about two miles from them. “It looks like that’s the port down there.” She glanced at her phone. “My battery’s dead.”
The ticket office was less than one minute from closing when Marcus pulled the taxi into the lot. The ticket agent, a woman with dark circles under her eyes, face flaccid and rubbery, glanced at Alicia in the maternity dress, no sign of pregnancy.
Marcus asked, “How much? Quanto per due biglietti al messina?”
“I speak English. You want a cabin or seats?”
“Cabin, thanks. How much”
“One hundred fifty Euros per person.”
Marcus counted the money and handed it to the agent. She printed the tickets and said, “The ferry to Messina leaves from pier seven.”
They boarded the ferryboat, approached the purser’s desk and got directions to their cabin. Alicia asked, “Does the boat have Internet service?”
The purser shook his head, face flat. “Not yet. We’ll have that service in the spring.”
They found a small bar, ordered two sandwiches, and took the food to their cabin to eat. “Well, it’s a little bigger than what we had on the train,” Alicia said, sitting at the small table in the room. She unwrapped the sandwiches. “Try to eat, Paul.”
He set the laptop on the table with the flash drive and spearhead. “In Messina, we’ll have Internet service again. That’s when it all comes together. Then we’ll see if we can hire a helicopter pilot to take us to the mouth of Mount Etna. We don’t even know if the eruptions have subsided.”
“It’s hard to catch the news when we are the news. I’d love to get in touch with my sister and mother…just to let them know I’m okay.”
Marcus said nothing. He bit into the sandwich and chewed quietly, the food tasteless.
Alicia said, “We don’t even know if the killer chasing us is from Carlson or Iran…or from somewhere else.”
“Can we trust Bill Gray?”
“I don’t know anymore. I’d like to think so. He saved our lives.”
“We both worked for him, and I’d like to think he always worked for America, what it stands for…a constitution…a nation under God. But, then I look at the back of the dollar and see that eye staring at me. Our founding fathers were, I always believed, good men. Now, good men, and good women, for that matter, are a vanishing species. I trusted Merriam Hanover. Before Nathan Levy died, he said we could trust no one. After all of this is online, we have to vanish…literally. I have a bounty on my head, wanted dead or alive, large enough to float most small nations.”