“So, what the hell was in Mia’s evidence case that has everyone so interested?” Frank asked from the passenger seat as he looked back at Jack.
Jack ignored his friend as he continued examining the objects. He ran his thumb over a prayer necklace of marble-sized beads, simple polished wood with a glossy gemlike sheen. There was a bejeweled dagger looking to be of considerable value, but his focus was drawn to the passport.
He opened it and examined the picture. The man’s face was strong, free of wrinkles or blemish. His eyes were caring and warm under close-cropped black hair. Jack pondered the man and his untimely death, his last earthly possessions in Jack’s lap. He didn’t deserve to die.
And as Jack continued to look at his face, he felt a tugging on his memory, a familiarity with the man, yet he couldn’t place it. He was sure he had seen him before, but he wasn’t sure if it was just his mind playing tricks or wishful thinking, attributing the vileness to Cristos while assigning a purity to this man, as if they were night and day, good and evil. Jack thought it silly to think in such terms, like some philosopher or director from a 1940s movie.
He thumbed through the passport pages, looking at the visas, and saw the man’s recent worldly travels.
He finally flipped back to the first page and looked at the diplomat’s name. He did a double take before the confusion set in. Marijha Toulouse was the name of the member of the UN Peace Council who had sent him the blue necklace, the blue necklace that he gave to Mia the night before.
Jack’s mind was on fire as he realized that the man who was murdered early that week, whose murder Mia was investigating, whose belongings lay in his lap, was Toulouse.
But even more earth-shattering to Jack’s already fragile mind was the fact that the man known as Marijha Toulouse was Nowaji Cristos’s father.
• • •
“You and your team will continue to help him get that box,” FBI Director Lance Warren said in a measured tone of anger.
Warren sat at his desk inside his Park Avenue apartment, dressed in khakis and a polo shirt, the phone pressed to his ear at this late hour. He had changed out of the suit he had worn to the bridge earlier in the day when he escorted Sam Norris. He had played the part of the concerned friend, because despite everything, he still considered Sam his friend. It was unfortunate that Mia had become involved, but he valued his own life and freedom above anyone else’s, even the daughter of his closest friend.
“My team is growing weary,” the man on the other end said.
“With the money you are all paid, you can’t afford to be weary.”
“Six of our own are dead already.”
“A risk they all knew when they signed on.”
“What is in that box?”
“A book,” Warren said.
“A book?”
“A book containing everything, everything Cristos has ever done for us, foreign and domestic, every hit, every assassination, every plot, every coup. We don’t get that book, multiple agencies are going down. Do you understand me?”
“But he’s the enemy.”
“Not at this moment, and need I remind you that this enemy works for us?”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
“We will have no more communication until that case is safe in our hands. Too many people are involved already. I don’t want you even to fart within a fifty-mile radius of me.” Warren slammed the phone down.
Cristos stepped out from the shadows.
“How the fuck did you lose that book?” Warren shouted.
“I never said I lost it,” Cristos said calmly. “It was stolen from me.”
“By a diplomat to the UN? Don’t bullshit me.”
“I don’t bullshit. ”
“You realize the shit storm you have created by killing that man?”
“You have no idea who that man was.”
“I don’t know who you really are, either.”
“That’s best for all concerned.”
“Why would you write such things down?”
“Accountability.”
“What?”
“Without leverage, what’s stopping you from killing me?”
“If we wanted you dead, you would have died in prison, on schedule.”
“You know what I found disturbing? While I was in prison, you checked out my bank accounts, tried to access them. You betrayed me.”
“That was not my department,” Warren said dismissively.
“What, were you looking for a refund? You traitors made me. That doesn’t mean you can unmake me.”
“You’d be amazed at what we can do to you.” Warren glared at Cristos as he sat forward in his chair.
“I’d be careful if I were you. You see, I’m dead. I don’t exist. Remember that?”
“Vividly,” Warren said with a scowl.
“And if I’m dead, then I can’t possibly be accused of murder.”
“What murder?”
“Yours.”
And Cristos raised his gun.
CHAPTER 37
As they continued north on the Saw Mill Parkway, Jack tried to wrap his head around the fact that the items before him belonged to Toulouse, a man he had contact with not even a week earlier. Jack at once knew the necklace was not some token gesture by the UN but something far different. When Joy had researched him, it was in the context of the UN Peace Council and its mission, with no possible connection to Cristos.
Jack knew now who killed Mia’s priest, the man he knew as Toulouse. It was Cristos, his son. He had revealed to Jack on the roof of the highrise whom the contents of the box belonged to. Jack knew how desperate he was to possess the case and knew the man would stop at nothing, even patricide, to gain it. All of the pieces fell together.
As Jack continued to ponder the implications of the Cotis priest’s identity, he turned his focus to the other items before him. He put aside the prayer necklace and picked up the bejeweled dagger, ornate and deadly, its hilt covered in rubies and sapphires that glimmered under the lights of the highway. There were the two red prayer books, which, according to Griffin, held secrets and answers to mysteries that many desired to gain. But Jack’s eyes were drawn to something else, two drawings, incredibly lifelike.
Jack picked up the first, and his world began to spin.
“Jack, I know this isn’t the time, but if we’re to help you find Mia, we need to know what we don’t know. What aren’t you telling us? What are all those things?” Frank pointed to the object in Jack’s lap. “You go running off into the Tombs with this Cristos, leaving me not only to try and figure out where you are but to save your ass… twice, I might add. Then the cancer bombshell gets dropped in our laps, we overlook the insane-asylum thingy-”
“Pull over,” Jack said quietly.
“What?” Joy said. “No, we don’t have time to-”
“Pull over!”
Joy threw the wheel hard right onto the shoulder, locking up the brakes in an angry skid stop.
Jack leaped out of the car.
Frank threw open his door in a fit of rage. “What the hell was that all about?”
“You think I know what’s going on?” Jack shouted.
“More than I do!” Frank yelled back.
Jack yanked up his sleeve, pointing at his tattoo. “I think we’ve got this all wrong. I think we are being played. I don’t know how. I don’t know who’s pulling the strings, but there is a bigger picture here that we are not seeing.”
“What are you talking about it?”
“These items that Mia so desperately wanted hidden away… the murder she was investigating-the man is Cristos’s father.”
“You sure?”
“The necklace that Joy mentioned before, the one I gave to Mia, I didn’t know it at the time, but it was sent to me by the same man, this Marijha Toulouse.
“OK, as much as that is freaking you out, at least now we’ve got something to sink our teeth into.”
“I think we know only what people want us to know. As I said, we’re being played.” Jack reached back into the car and pulled out the two drawings.