“I promise, this is all between us. I’m simply looking for information that will help us solve this case. I’m not looking to exploit your mother or get you in trouble.”
She hesitated a moment, a small smile on her lips, watching him. Finally, she said, “Cheers,” and turned to the door. “Duty calls, as always. Since I’ve left my duties and come out to the godforsaken countryside, we’re throwing a small dinner party tonight, a few friends I haven’t had a chance to see for a while. I’d love for you to join us, if you can.”
Ben had the idea that Melinda’s idea of a small dinner party was going to be slightly different than his.
“I appreciate the offer. We’ll see how I’m doing out here.”
Melinda grinned, and the smile took her from serious to ethereal fairy in a heartbeat. “I’m sure you’re about to either find everything you need or drive yourself batty. I’ll send Annalise with more tea, and a sandwich for lunch. Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
When the door closed, Ben could have sworn some of the light went from the room. He pulled out his notebook and approached the table behind the desk. He’d read large portions of Appleton Kohath’s initial biography on the plane, so he was familiar with the background of the Kohaths, at least. He hoped he’d know what was unique when he saw it.
Since he couldn’t take anything with him, he pulled out his phone and opened the camera. He documented everything he could see. With a sigh, he sat down and waded in. He opened the drawer, and the manuscript was there, as promised.
He pulled it out and placed it on the table in front of him, started to read, and his jaw dropped.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND VOLUME ON APPLETON KOHATH (DRAFT ONE)
It isn’t rare for a historian to revisit a biography, but there are times when it becomes clear that not all of a story has been told, and I am the first to admit the Kohaths are a family who don’t easily let go of the imagination. I was recently approached by a member of the family who wanted to tell me a story. His name is David Maynes. He is a professor of antiquities, a man about town in London, and husband to the famed archaeologist Helen Kohath, who was lost on a dig in the Gobi Desert in 2006. Helen is one of a long line of Kohaths who dedicated their lives to searching for the ultimate treasure: the Ark of the Covenant.
David Maynes came bearing letters, notebooks, an entire cache of Kohath family lore that quickly showed this biographer she had barely scratched the surface of this amazing and obsessive family.
In my first volume on Appleton Kohath, I was fascinated by his dedication to finding the Ark. His dogged, unrelenting obsession imbued his entire family with the desire, more madness, really, for this ongoing quest. And quest it is.
Legends and prophecies abound about when the Ark was last seen, but there is no actual documentation. That has only enhanced its historical fascination, primarily because of its promised power. What I have learned is that the Kohaths believe they alone are destined to find the Ark and control its power.
It is a mad obsession, though one can hardly blame them. Imagine, ultimate power over the world. And more? How far does the power of God reach?
My first biography was solely about Appleton Kohath. With the advent of the letters, notebooks, journals, and other paraphernalia now in my possession, I am able to build a fuller picture of the entire Kohath family, from Appleton to the current day. Five generations of Kohaths, all with a singular focus.
Finding the Ark of the Covenant.
And I now know the secret behind the Kohath family’s search.
It began in Egypt and has spanned the globe. As a hint of what’s to come, allow me to pique your interest here.
For a decade, young Appleton Kohath was fully convinced the Ark resided in the Valley of the Kings. His contemporary, Howard Carter, so focused on the ancient Egyptians, dismissed Kohath’s ideas that the Ark would be discovered inside King Tut’s tomb, and the idea that the curse of the pharaoh was actually the curse of the Ark itself. Kohath hung on to the belief despite his friend’s disbelief.
I have written before about Kohath’s sudden change of focus in the early 1900s. In the previous manuscript, I was not privy to the incident that altered his belief about the whereabouts of the Ark. I now know why Kohath suddenly broke from Carter and began seeking the company of another young genius, Nikola Tesla.
By the time Kohath and Tesla became good friends, Tesla was out of favor with New York society and the scientific community. Why? Because Thomas Edison’s people did everything they could to discredit the young genius. In the end, Tesla’s funding dried up and he was left with almost nothing—no money, no recognition, and no way to continue his scientific discoveries.
Then Appleton Kohath appeared. The two men became inseparable for several years before they suddenly went their own ways, never to communicate again, the reasons still a mystery.
The project they were working on during those years involved the drawings of a machine—found in a dusty Italian junk shop—which Appleton Kohath believed came from Leonardo da Vinci himself. The diagrams and formulas allowed Kohath and Tesla to develop a machine that could control the weather.
Simply imagine: two excited, innovative geniuses, influenced by Da Vinci, determined to create weather. Did they indeed strip God of this power?
I hope you enjoy this fresh look into the mind of a genius, and the ways his obsession shaped future generations.
Elizabeth St. Germaine
London, 2016
CHAPTER FIFTY
Castiglione del Lago, Italy
Nicholas told them he was Mike’s husband so he could keep close. It didn’t matter, the emergency room doctors quickly wheeled her away, directing Nicholas to an empty waiting room, where he sat alone, replaying the past hour.
He dropped his head into his hands. He was tired, scared, his brain mush. But over and over he asked himself, how had it come to this? His fault, all of it, his fault; it was always the answer.
He knew he wasn’t helping her, wasn’t helping himself or anybody else. He got some coffee from a vending machine and reached for his mobile, realized, of course, it was at the bottom of Lake Trasimeno. His laptop and his comms and another mobile were in his car, halfway up the mountain.
He needed to call in, needed to get in touch with Adam and Louisa, but he wasn’t about to move from the hospital until he saw Mike and knew she would be all right.
He paced the small room, playing back every move he and Mike had made in the tunnels. And Lilith’s body, killed by one of the Kohath twins. The sheer barbarity of it, the utter disregard, made his blood cold.
At least Kitsune and Grant Thornton were still alive. But why hadn’t Cassandra Kohath killed them?
His mind circled back, and none of it mattered. What if Mike died? What if she’d been in the water too long, what if—
A young doctor came into the room. She looked tired and grim. She held out a hand to shake, then gestured toward the chairs.
“Sit.”
He did, and she sat beside him. “I am Dr. Teresa Sienza. I am a neurologist. Your wife is in serious but stable condition. How long was she underwater before you started CPR?”
“Four minutes, maybe closer to five minutes. I was trying to count off, but it was hard to keep track. Maybe she wasn’t under quite that long. But she was definitely not breathing for several minutes.”
Dr. Sienza patted his arm. “You’ll be happy to know she was conscious when I spoke to her, so this is a very good sign. In these situations, we are always concerned about the impact on brain function. She has a cut on her head that is being sutured now. The cold water helped slow the progression of hypoxia, which was very lucky for us.”
His heart wouldn’t slow. “Tell me, swear to me, she’s okay. She’s going to be herself again?”
“Your wife has cardiac arrhythmia, and she is confused, though as I mentioned, she is awake. I believe the confusion is from the concussion, but it
could be from the near-drowning. She will be here for a few days while she heals, but I think she will make a full recovery.”
“A few days? We—I—” He dragged in a breath, and she patted his arm again.
“It is hard, sometimes, with near-drowning, for the diagnosis to be known right away. We must keep an eye on her to make sure there isn’t a secondary event. Her lungs were full of water, so she could get pneumonia if they don’t drain properly. She was lucky you were there and knew how to perform CPR. You saved her. Now, how did you get into Lake Trasimeno?”
“We drove off the cliff. It was an accident.”
“Yes, of course it had to be an accident. You do not strike me as the suicidal type.” She smiled, then said, “You need some dry clothes and some warm food. I will send someone when your wife is moved to a room.”
She stood, and Nicholas did, too. “Forgive me, Dr. Sienza. I will be honest with you. Mike is not my wife. She is my partner. We’re American FBI. We’re here on a case, and she is in danger. Especially now, when she’s not able to defend herself. I need to be with her.”
The young doctor stared up at him, her head cocked to the side. “You have proof of this?”
It took him a second to get the waterlogged leather out of his jeans, but finally he was able to pull his credentials from his pocket and hand them over. “Special Agent Nicholas Drummond. You’re treating Special Agent Michaela Caine. And I need to see her, right away.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Nicholas stood in the door to the hospital room, heart pounding hard and fast. Why wouldn’t his heart believe the news that Mike would be all right?
Her hair was a mass of damp tangles all over her head. She was still slightly blue around the lips, but she had some color in her cheeks. She looked at him come into her room. She reached out a hand, and smiled.
“Nicholas.”
Relief poured through him. He sat on the side of her bed, leaned down, and lightly stroked his fingers over her pale cheeks. Her flesh was warm. He brushed the hair back from her forehead, pulling out tangles. He leaned down and kissed her cold mouth, then laid his forehead against hers. “To have you whole again, here with me, smiling at me—I’ve promised more good works than I can do in a lifetime. But I’m going to try.”
He felt her hand stroking through his hair, felt her warm breath whisper against his face. “We’re okay.” Her voice was lower than usual, her speech slightly slurred. He leaned down, kissed her again, looked into her eyes.
“You and I are a pair.”
She whispered, “I can still picture you firing your magazine into that old wall, wood splinters flying, and then we were the ones flying. Do you see the stitches in my head?”
He looked at the small square bandage over her right temple, and it made his heart stumble again. “You hit something solid when you landed on the water.”
“I don’t know what. The water was so dark, Nicholas. How did you find me?”
She sounded like she was barely hanging on. He said quietly, “It took me too long.”
“You lamebrain, you saved me. They told me if you’d given up, I would have died. Completely. Thank you for my life.” She leaned against him, her face against his, and closed her eyes.
She felt the wet of his tears on her face. Mike knew she couldn’t stay awake much longer, the meds they’d given her were too strong. He was so valiant, she wanted to tell him, but the words floated out of her brain.
Her head hurt, the wound was starting to throb despite the pain medications. She reached up, rubbed her forehead. “I can’t remember hitting the water, I can’t remember anything. And then I woke up here.”
He was glad of it.
He regained control, straightened over her now. “Your doctor Sienza says you should stay for a few days.”
“No. I can’t stay here. Nicholas, help me get up and get dressed. We have too much to do.”
He gently pushed her back down. “You very nearly drowned. There’s a danger you could get pneumonia. You have a concussion. At least until tomorrow, let the doctor have her way. Besides, you don’t have any clothes. Rest, okay?”
She tried to struggle up again. This time Nicholas took her shoulders in his hands and pressed her down. “Lie still, and that’s an order from your partner. Kitsune and Grant are alive, we have the tracker inside her, so we’ll know where she is. I’ll call Adam, make sure he’s watching for it. I’ll call Zachery and Savich, warn them about the storm coming to D.C. We both lost our mobiles and our comms in the lake.
“I’m going to have someone give me a ride back to the car. I’ll get our go-bags. Thankfully, I have another mobile stashed in there.”
He kissed her again, tucked the covers around her neck.
“Nicholas?” Her voice was only a whisper of a sound.
He leaned over her.
“Please, don’t leave me behind.”
And she was asleep in the next moment, her breathing steady. He touched the pulse in her throat, to reassure himself, he supposed. She was alive, and she would recover, and he thought about all the good works he’d be performing over his lifetime. It wasn’t even a partial payment for her life. He kissed her, straightened the covers, and stepped into the hall where the doctor was waiting. “Dr. Sienza, may I have a word?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ve lost my mobile and I need to make a call.”
“Use mine.” She handed over a small cell phone. He looked at it with a smile.
“I know, it is a dinosaur. My son dropped my smartphone off the balcony last night and shattered the screen. At least this one still works.”
“It’s fine, thank you.”
“I will check on your wife—sorry, your partner—while you make your call.”
“She’s sleeping.”
“Ah. Good,” Dr. Sienza said, and went back to reviewing a chart.
He stepped away and dialed Adam’s mobile. Adam answered on the first ring, a little out of breath.
Nicholas said, “It’s me.”
“Where have you been? What happened to you? You’ve been offline for over an hour, we’ve been trying to call. Louisa and I were getting ready to find a plane to fly us to you—”
Nicholas managed to stem the tide. “Adam, I apologize. It’s a very long story. There’s been an accident and Mike was hurt. We’re at the hospital in Castiglione Del Lago. Have the Kohaths left yet?”
“No. No one’s been in or out since you disappeared off my radar. Wait, Mike’s hurt?”
“She’ll be okay. Is Kitsune’s tracker working?”
“It still hasn’t moved, and I’m wondering if the electromagnetic pulse affected it somehow. This long with no movement—stop stalling, tell me what happened.”
“We sort of flew out of a tunnel on a motorcycle high above Lake Trasimeno and she smacked her head on a log or something when she hit the water.”
Adam said, “Louisa, don’t pull the phone out of my hand! Okay, okay, I’m putting him on speaker.”
Nicholas filled in Adam and Louisa, but only the highlights.
When he’d finished, Louisa said, “Lots of nice detail at the beginning, then we have CliffsNotes. You’re obviously leaving out massive amounts of info, but we’ll get it out of you later. You promise Mike’s okay?”
“I do.”
Adam said, “What do you want us to do now? We’ve been on hold here, running numbers and watching satellite footage.”
“We need to talk more, but first I’ve got to go to the car. All my backups are in our go-bags in the boot. Oh, yes, Mike and I found Lilith Forrester-Clarke buried in the tunnel. We need to get back into that palazzo.”
“You’re not going in alone,” Louisa said flatly, and it wasn’t a question.
“Absolutely not. It’s time to get the cops involved. I’ll rustle up a couple from the police station across from the hospital. You two pray the locals aren’t on the Kohaths’ payroll. Give me a couple of hours, then I’ll check in again. S
till nothing from Ben in London or from Savich?”
“Not yet,” Adam said. “I don’t suppose you’re going to call Zachery, tell him Mike’s laid up?”
“Maybe, after I tell him the Kohath twins’ next plan.”
“And that is?” Adam asked.
Nicholas took a deep breath. “Here’s the deal, Louisa, Adam. The Kohaths are planning a massive weather attack on D.C. I heard them talking about a hurricane in the Atlantic, whipping it up, sending it to land, destroying Washington.”
“What?” Both Adam and Louisa yelled into the phone. “Destroy the capital? Impossible, isn’t it?”
Nicholas explained, leaving them in frozen silence.
“No,” Louisa finally said. “It’s not possible. That’s science fiction. The Kohaths are nutcases.”
Adam said, “I’m with Louisa. I still can’t believe weather control at this level is possible.” He paused. “But then again, look what they did in the Gobi Desert . . . and now they want to destroy Washington?”
“I can’t imagine how people will take that news,” Louisa said. “You and Mike will stop it, won’t you?”
Ah, such faith. “We’re going to try. You’ll know more when I do. Keep doing what you’re doing, Adam. Thanks, guys.”
When he’d punched off, Nicholas opted to call Savich and explain what he and Mike had heard, let him deal with the powers that be. And Zachery.
After ten minutes of grilling, Nicholas was aware of a headache pounding over his right eyebrow. He knew Savich would speak to the vice president, explain the inexplicable, and then Zachery. Thank you, Savich.
He found Dr. Sienza in Mike’s room, checking her vitals. He handed back the phone.
She said, “All signs are good for our patient. The polizia are here, my brother with them. I have explained she could be in danger. He will stand guard over Agent Caine.”
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