John and Leo walked around the room with Lev, taking in the layout and looking at all of the equipment, while the Israelis continued to study the two new members of their team.
From one of the tables, Alon grabbed a small radio and clipped it to his belt before plugging in the tiny earpiece and boom microphone. He then walked over to the locked vault door and entered a code into a keypad on the wall. The thick steel door opened slowly, allowing Alon to enter the vault and return with a backpack and a large pistol in a shoulder holster. He motioned to John. “Come with me.”
John cast a “who, me?” look at Alon. “Where are we going?”
“Outside for a quick patrol of the perimeter.”
Sizing up Alon, who truly did seem as solid as an oak tree, John knew it was pointless asking any more questions. Looking back over his shoulder at Leo, he timidly followed Alon up the stairs, looking like a teenager who had just stepped off the bus to boot camp trailing behind his new drill instructor.
Once outside in the bright sunshine, Alon explained to John that the property was surrounded by individual rings of security. Walking past a young man armed with an assault rifle, the two continued along the sand dunes for a quarter of a mile until Alon came to a stop at the perimeter of the property.
“What do you see?” Alon asked.
Looking down the line of shifting sand dunes toward the villa in the distance, John was puzzled by the question. “I’m not sure what you’re asking, Alon. I see the ocean, fields of crops, some houses, and the villa over there. Other than that, I just see sand dunes and some palm trees.”
“That’s all we want people to see.”
Opening his olive-colored backpack, Alon pulled out a small shovel and a device that resembled a mini metal detector. Pointing the device at the ground, he began scanning the sandy soil around them. After receiving a strong, audible signal, he began to dig. Barely three shovelfuls of sand later, he exposed the tip of a wire connected to a black plastic box.
“There. That’s a motion detector,” Alon said. “They’re all around the perimeter. When anything crosses this area, an alarm goes off and the exact location of an intruder flashes on a computer screen in the command post by the front gate.”
“Pretty impressive, but why are you showing me this? I’m not a security person or a soldier. Do you want me to help you patrol around the villa for terrorists or something?”
“No, I’m sorry, of course not, John. We have our own trained people for that, although in this country, we’re all soldiers until a certain age. Something happened a few hours ago that you need to know about.”
Alon scooped sand back over the motion detector, and the two began heading back down the line of dunes. They were almost to the villa when John noticed the blue flashing lights of an Israeli police vehicle as it raced through the front gate, followed by two dark-brown military Humvees. Holding his hand to his earpiece, Alon said something in Hebrew into the microphone and began running toward the villa while signaling for John to follow.
The vehicles skidded to a halt on the circular gravel driveway in front of the house and several uniformed police officers piled out, dragging two handcuffed men dressed in suits with them. A senior officer approached Alon, and after a brief exchange, everyone headed inside.
“What’s going on?” John asked. “What are all these police doing here?”
“I believe this has something to do with what I was getting ready to tell you about. Come on. Let’s go inside.”
The police led the men through the doors of the main entrance, where they came face-to-face with Lev and the rest of his team standing at the bottom of a winding staircase.
“Are these the two men we called you about, Commander?” Lev asked.
“Yes, sir. The license plate on their car matches the number you gave us and they have pictures of the villa on their digital cameras. We stopped them about twenty miles south of here outside of Tel Aviv.”
Lev patted the police commander on the shoulder. “Nice work, David. Thanks for helping us out.” Lev had known this policeman since he was just a boy, the son of a close friend. “Have they said anything to you?”
“Not a word. Here are their IDs and passports.”
“They’re not Israeli?”
“Look for yourself, Professor. These guys are Swiss Guards from the Vatican.”
The two men in handcuffs shot glances at Leo and John, followed by a quick look back in the direction of the police commander.
“Well, it looks like some of your friends from Rome followed you two here,” Lev said. “Undoubtedly, whomever these men take their orders from knows exactly where you two are.”
John and Leo were speechless. They believed they were free from the intrigue and dangers they had faced in Rome. Now, in the foyer of Lev’s villa in Israel, they had two Vatican security men standing right in front of them.
“What are they going to do with them, Lev?” Leo asked. “Can we speak to them?”
The police commander faced Leo. “I’m sorry, sir, but they’re in our custody now. We can’t allow you to talk to them, but I assure you, we will find out what they are doing in our country. For now, they will be charged with trespassing. After we find out why they were taking pictures of the villa, they may have additional charges added on.”
“Do you know when they arrived from Rome?” Moshe asked.
“According to customs, they checked into the airport three days ago.”
“That’s before we arrived,” John said.
Alon looked at John. “It’s also before we knew you were coming.”
Lev handed the passports back to David. “There are still a lot of questions to be answered, and we need to let you do your job and see where that leads us. Thank you for bringing them by, David.”
Ariella stepped forward and gave the police officer some photos the security force at the villa had taken of the men from a hidden rooftop camera. These included pictures of the vehicle’s license plate and one of the men talking on a cell phone.
“One picture is worth a thousand words,” Lev said, looking at the photos in the police commander’s hands. “I sure would like to know who he was talking to.”
The police commander nodded his head. “So would we …we’re working on that. I’ll give you a call, Professor, if we learn anything else that might be of value to you. Shalom.”
“Shalom,” the group responded as the police led the two men away.
“That was amazing,” John said. “If you don’t mind, Alon, I’d like to spend some time learning all I can about the security precautions you guys use.”
The Israelis smiled as Alon slapped John on the back. “Then tomorrow we start with target practice. You’ll be like a soldier when I get through with you. An Israeli-trained soldier.”
“I can’t figure out how they knew we would be here,” Leo said. “These people are really spooky. Father Morelli said our lives would be in danger-that there are dark forces aligned against us. I only hope those forces don’t already have the upper hand.”
“At least we had the upper hand today, Father,” Lev said.
“True, but those men were human. All the motion detectors and weapons in the world are useless if we come up against a supernatural force.”
The others sobered noticeably when Leo mentioned the word supernatural.
Leo looked across the foyer and noticed Daniel walking from the hallway with a sheaf of papers in his hands.
“Professor Wasserman, I think you need to see something.”
“What have you got there, Daniel?”
“It’s a printout of something I just found in that section of the Bible we’ve been trying to decipher for the past two months.”