He thought of the young woman in the alley. If it weren’t for her, he’d have been taken along with Evelyn. He’d be…he imagined the power drill, its spinning tip digging into his skin. He pushed the thought away and focused on the woman again. At first, he thought it was pure luck. Just some stranger who wandered into the wrong street at the wrong time. But then he remembered the woman screaming out. He thought she might have said “Mom,” which puzzled him. Was she her daughter? Regardless, why was she there? Had Evelyn arranged to meet her there, or was it just a coincidence?
It was academic either way. He didn’t know who she was or where to reach her. He hadn’t stuck around after his escape. He didn’t even know what had happened to the girl. For all he knew, they’d taken her too.
A face crept out from the jumble in his mind. The man Evelyn was with, in Zabqine. Ramez — that was his name, wasn’t it? What had Evelyn said? They worked together. At the university.
He could find him. He’d been to the Archaeology Department. Post Hall, on campus. Ramez had seen him with Evelyn. He could tell him what he knew. She might even have told him what Farouk had told her. He’d be worried about her. He’d listen.
That was it. It was the best he could do. Thinking it through even further, the idea grew more appealing. He needed money. His cash had almost run out, and his plight was now much more desperate. It wasn’t about settling into a better life somewhere more sane than his homeland. It was about survival, plain and simple. He had to disappear, and that would take money. He had to find a buyer for Abu Barzan’s collection. He hadn’t spoken to Abu Barzan since leaving Iraq. The bastard could have found a buyer himself by now, and if he had, then Farouk would be left with nothing to sell. Evelyn’s colleague had to have contacts in that world. Wealthy Lebanese collectors. Maybe Farouk could interest him in helping to sell the pieces. Give him a cut. The divide between rich and poor was a veritable canyon in this town, and most people weren’t exactly flush these days. Money was tight. And even the virtuous and the principled had to eat and pay the rent.
A shroud of fatigue descended over him. He slid down to the ground and shriveled up into himself, hoping for sleep to overcome him. He would go to the university in the morning. Find Ramez. Talk to him. And maybe — just maybe — this could all end better for them than it had for his friend Ali.
He didn’t believe it for a second.
Chapter 12
Tom Webster put down his cell phone and looked out the floor-to-ceiling window of his office on the Quai des Bergues. It was a crisp early evening in Geneva. The sun was setting behind the craggy peaks of the Alps to the west, reflecting off the lake and bathing its still water with a fiery golden pink glow. The snow hadn’t arrived yet, but it wouldn’t be long now.
The call had left him with a feeling of deep unease.
He replayed the brief conversation in his mind, examining every nuance, going over every beat of what he’d heard. First came the pause once the call was answered. There was a definite hesitance there. Then the garbled words, in a language he was reasonably sure was Arabic. And then the man who’d finally spoken into the phone, claiming to be a colleague of hers. There was something distinctly formal about his tone. His insistence on knowing who was calling Evelyn was a definite signal that this was not the casual pickup of a friend’s phone.
She’s gotten herself sucked into this. Then, a more troubling thought: Is she alright?
The message he’d received from the phone operator at the institute had taken him by surprise. It had been…how long?
Thirty years.
He wondered what had prompted Evelyn’s call, after all that time.
He had his suspicions.
The two events — the call from one of his scouts in Iraq, out of the blue, a little over a week ago, and Evelyn’s call to the Haldane switchboard — had to be connected. That much was obvious. But he hadn’t anticipated any problems going forward. He and his partners always operated pretty much off the radar. They had to be careful, of course — discretion was paramount to their work — but there was no reason to expect any complications.
He tried to rationalize the call and calm his worries, but he couldn’t escape them. This didn’t bode well. A long time ago he had learned to trust his instincts, and right now they were clamoring for attention. He needed to know what was really going on. Then he’d need to call the others. Let them know what was happening. And come to a unanimous agreement — as the three of them always did — as to how to handle the situation.
He checked his watch. Beirut was two hours ahead. The time difference meant that he wouldn’t be able to get any answers for a few hours. He’d need to stay up and make some calls just before daybreak. Which he didn’t mind.
As with the others before him, this was what he had devoted his whole life to.
And if his instincts were right, it now involved Evelyn.
Again.
He exhaled deeply and turned to his desk. The codex was lying there. He’d taken it out of the safe earlier. It just sat there, innocently. He stared at it, then picked it up and shook his head faintly.
Innocent.
Hardly.
The book had entangled him, and others, in its tantalizing web for centuries. It was irresistible, and for good reason. It was worthy.
He shrugged, opened it to its first page, and thought back to how it had all begun.
Chapter 13
Sebastian felt the chill of dampness seep out from the walls and smother his bones with its deathly embrace as he followed the guard down the narrow, winding steps.
He kept his eyes low, away from the flames of the guard’s torch. In the swaying, golden light, he noticed that a groove had been worn into the center of the treads. It had thrown him at first, before he’d realized it had been carved into the stone by the repeated passage of shackles.
Many prisoners had languished here, in Tomar. And many more would.
He followed the guard down a long, narrow passageway. Rough, wooden doors with forbidding steel locks lined it on either side. The guard finally stopped outside one of them. He fumbled with a large ring of keys and unlocked it. It shuddered on its hinges as it swung outwards. The opening was like the mouth of a cave, a doorway to a tenebrous abyss. Sebastian looked at the guard. The sweating man nodded with unsettling disinterest. Sebastian steeled himself, pulled a torch down from its wall mount, lit it against the guard’s, and stepped inside.
Despite the hellish surroundings, the silhouetted figure, huddled against a dark corner, was instantly familiar. Sebastian froze at the sight as a feeling of infinite sadness descended on him.
“It’s alright,” the old man told him. “Come.”
Sebastian couldn’t move. His feet felt as if they were bolted to the cold stone floor.
“Please,” the old man whispered again, his voice coarse and dry. “Come. Sit with me.”
Sebastian took a hesitant step closer, then another, his eyes unwilling to accept the heart-wrenching sight facing him.
The battered, demolished man raised a chained, twisted arm and beckoned him over. Two of the fingers, Sebastian noticed, weren’t moving at all. The thumb was gone altogether.
Isaac Montalto was a good man. He’d been a close friend of Sebastian’s father’s. Both were learned men, teachers and tutors to the elite, and had spent years working together in the great city of Lisbon, studying and translating Arabic and Greek texts that were long forgotten. A small invader had put an end to that. The virus, an unremarkable flu by today’s standards, had ravaged the city mercilessly that winter, taking Sebastian’s family with it. The baby boy had survived — his father had acted swiftly and placed him in the care of his friend Isaac, at his home in nearby Tomar, when the first signs of the illness had appeared in the family. Isaac and his wife had cared for the baby as best they could those first few weeks, before Isaac’s wife had gotten sick herself. The old man had no choice but to put Sebastian into the care of the friars at the monastery of Tomar. Isaac’s wife also hadn’t made it through that winter, but Isaac and Sebastian had survived.