by Chuck Dixon
Lee Hammond called the day before from Paris to let Dwayne and Caroline in their luxury hideaway know that the prize was going to add millions to their collective kitty.
“Well, I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere,” Dwayne said, pressing her hand in his. He settled back on the chaise to listen to the gentle surf rolling in.
A shadow blotted out the sun, and Dwayne opened his eyes to find a waiter from the hotel standing over him.
“Yes?” Caroline said.
“I am here to remind you of your luncheon reservations at Chiro’s, sir and madame.” The waiter smiled professionally.
“Reservations?” Dwayne asked.
“In thirty minutes. Party of three.” The waiter bowed once and departed.
“Party of three?” Dwayne said.
They had enough time to go to their suite and change from swimsuits into clothes more appropriate for the hotel’s main restaurant. The dining hall was mostly empty as it was mid-afternoon and well past lunch serving hours. The maître d’ led them to a table at the rear of the room, partly sheltered by potted palms.
Seated at the table was a dark-haired man with eyes of the most unusual tarnished green. He half stood to greet them.
“Hello, Samuel,” Dwayne said, pulling a chair out for Caroline.
4
Galilee
“This is not my idea of a vacation,” Hammond said and slapped a mosquito, leaving a smear of blood down his arm.
“I thought you said you like adventure,” Bat called back from a turn in the trail.
“That doesn’t sound like me.”
“Then what’s your idea of a vacation?”
“Anywhere you are, sugar.” He trotted to catch up with her, but she moved fast through the trees ahead of him.
Bathsheba Jaffe laughed as she hiked on, the backpack swaying in counterpoint to her magnificent behind.
It was her idea to show Lee her country.
The Ranger pictured lazy days on the beach at Dado Zamir and nights barhopping around Tel Aviv. Instead, she picked a week on the Israel National Trail.
It all started as an easy walk along the beach at Netanya, but they turned inland until they were in the forested high country. The mosquitos grew thick, and the stinging nettles grew thicker. Often the trail vanished into the dense trackless brush. Bat just dove in, and Lee had no choice but to follow her, drawn by the vision of those incredible legs fully visible beneath her cutoffs and whipped on by male pride. Here he was a hard-charging former US Army Ranger, and a damned skinny girl was kicking his ass.
She took the lead early and kept it. And each time they emerged from some fresh patch of spiny hell, he looked like he’d been dragged behind a truck for ten miles of bad road. She looked like she was ready to pose for an L.L. Bean catalog shoot.
The forest they moved through was a mad mix of maples, oak, cypress, poplar, and cedar. Bat explained that this forest was planted by the Trees for Israel program started in the 1950s. Jewish school kids from all over the world collected money and saved their pennies to buy saplings to replant the Promised Land. She told him that the north of the country was once carpeted with thick cedar woodlands. But they had been clear cut thousands of years ago to build ships for the Romans. So Jews from all over the world gave their lunch money so that the forests could return and the Galilee could be green once more. Those kids must have knocked on a crap-load of doors, Lee thought, because we’ve been hiking through this for two days with no end in sight.
The woods gave way to a banana plantation, another surprise for Lee. Neat rows of the broad-leafed plants ran over gentle hills under a deep blue sky. It was a country smaller than New Jersey and thinner across in spots than most counties in America, but there was a tremendous variety of terrain and vegetation.
By late afternoon they reached a bluff where they could look back at grids of segmented farmland sloping gently down to the Mediterranean. The sea was visible only as a hazy greenish bar on the horizon. They decided to pitch camp right there to take advantage of a prevailing wind rising up the face of the bluff that cooled the air as the day closed.
They shared a cold meal of tinned salmon and naan bread with butter. Lee insisted on making a small fire to use some of their water to make two mugs of his nasty coffee.
“How do you drink this stuff?” she said, making a yucky face.
“It’s cowboy coffee,” he said.
“Because they used it to kill Indians?”
“Funny.”
They were snuggled in the pop tent. The glow of the dying fire cast shadows over them through the translucent tent fabric. The air was chilling as night fell and Bat wiggled closer.
“What’s your story, cowboy?” she said.
“Well, I’m not a cowboy. I just like their coffee.”
“Well, you’re not a venture capitalist, a web millionaire, or a real estate speculator like you’ve told me the other times I asked about you.”
“I said those things?” Lee said.
“You know, to be a good liar, you need a good memory.” She tapped his lips with a finger.
“I’ll try to remember that. I was going to tell you I won the Powerball next.”
She bopped him on the forehead with the heel of her hand.
“Hey!”
“We’ve been seeing each other over three months and the only thing I know about you is your name. I know you’re ex-military because your tats don’t lie. But I don’t know shit about you beyond that. Money’s not a problem for you and your time is your own except for your mysterious trips to who knows where.”
“We have a good time, right?” Lee said. “And you know I like you.”
“We have an awesome time. You fly us around on chartered jets and spend like a Saudi. You know how to make a girl happy, and you’re good-looking in a rough kind of way.”
“Sucks to be my girlfriend, huh?” he said and tried a smile.
“Is that what I am?” Her expression darkened. “How am I supposed to know that?”
“Hey, you sound like you’re getting serious, Bat.”
“Do I?” It was a challenge.
It was at this moment in every relationship where Lee would begin his exit strategy. He’d duck away at the earliest opportunity to evade that old velvet trap. Something stirred in his gut and he was moving on before he knew it, leaving a broken heart and, usually, a good number of his clothes behind. He was the type to flee without farewells. In his mind, he’d never actually broken up with a woman. It was always just here, just tonight, and gone in the morning.
But not this time. No itch burned in his stomach. He didn’t begin fantasizing his escape. There was no urge to slip away with no forwarding. He really liked Bat and wanted to stay with her for who knew how long. Maybe she was even The One. That struck him as a crazy thought as he’d never considered that The One ever existed. The notion of the perfect girl for Lee was like Big Foot or Santa Claus, a fun idea that never stood up to serious contemplation. Still, no warning jingles from his flight instinct.
Maybe because she was also a combat vet. She knew not to ask questions about that because she wouldn’t want those questions asked of her. And, he admitted, she was a combat vet who was as hot as a swimsuit model.
Besides, stuck in a pop-up tent two days from anywhere was not a great place for the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech.
“I think I deserve the truth,” she said with a viselike grip on his right ear lobe.
So he told her the truth. The Tauber Tube and traveling back through time to prehistoric Nevada and the ancient Aegean and being hunted by the Russian mafiya some of the time and a mysterious multi-billionaire all of the time and how he and a bunch of ex-Army buddies made a fortune by finding treasure in locations they found on their visits to the past.
And the craziest part? She believed him.
5
Caesarea Provincial, Capital of Judea, AD 16
It was beastly hot despite every effort to make it
otherwise.
For prefect Valerius Gratus, no effort was made at all. He left that to the slave boys who populated his coastal palace. And there were many of them, and all had their function.
He reclined naked on a marble couch while slaves misted him with water from a clever device that sent liquid under pressure to a network of brass hoses positioned above him. Slaves worked a kind of bellows that sent the water through pipes to exit through pin-sized spicules to create a cooling vapor that descended upon him like the lightest rain. The chilling effect was aided by more boys working broad linen fans to fashion a wind to accompany the artificial drizzle.
And still Gratus sweated like a racehorse. He lay in a pool of his own effluvia that smelled like soup from the garlic-laced meal he’d eaten at last night’s feasting. This damnable place felt as though it were shrinking around him in a cloying and unwelcome embrace. The office of prefect was given him as a boon by edict of Tiberius himself. But Gratus was left to wonder what he had done to deserve such a slight as to be given the task of governing a sweltering land of swamps, sand, pestilence, and Jews. And its governance was not entirely under his aegis as he answered to the legate of Syria for all but the smallest decisions.
The single consolation of this unenviable office was that he was mostly left alone in his post. There was enough graft to more than satisfy his greed and enough pretty boys to satisfy his other needs. The boys were cheaper here than in Rome or Gaul and, while he still found Greeks to be the most beautiful, he appreciated Arab youths for their docile compliance to his every whim. Gratus raked off enough from taxes and tariffs and straight bribes to populate his home with a seraglio of young flesh.
He turned his head to regard through sleepy eyes the three boys working the fans. They were lean, dark, and free of the ugly muscle tone and body hair that would signal coming into manhood. Diminutive bronze gods they were, with sloe eyes and clever hands. Despite the crushing heat, he felt himself becoming aroused and, having made his choice of an Arab lad, began to rise from his couch.
Gratus was motioning for the selected boy to lower the fan and come closer when Ravilla, his troublesome and annoying attendant, entered the open courtyard of the villa. Ravilla was assigned as his lictor and provided legal counsel that the prefect seldom heeded. The prefect suspected that Ravilla reported to the legate in Antioch.
“Honorable Prefect, you have a visitor,” Ravilla said with the disapproving sneer that was a permanent fixture to his features.
“Tell them I am occupied with the business of the empire,” Gratus grumbled.
“They insist they have an appointment,” Ravilla insisted.
“My calendar is clear, lictor. Tell them to come another day.” Gratus was standing now and taking the boy’s hand in his. The boy looked up at him, smiling shyly. The smile the prefect returned was of a predatory nature.
“He brings gifts,” Ravilla said.
Gratus dropped the boy’s hand and whirled in fury.
“Why did you not say so as you entered, you troublesome excrescence?” Gratus roared. “See that he is attended to in my offices while I dress!”
Gratus stormed for his private chamber alone. He spared one remorseful glance back to the smiling Arab lad and that promising mouth. The business of the empire took precedence.
“And with what business do you petition the prefect?” Gratus proclaimed as he entered his official greeting room with its racks of unread scrolls and a pedestal holding up a bust of Emperor Tiberius that was as inaccurate as it was flattering. The black marble walls, high lapis ceiling, and fine fixtures of brass and ivory were meant to intimidate visitors and usually did.
This visitor was clearly not impressed. He stood before Gratus’s enormous malachite table, dressed in an indigo robe of silk-trimmed linen, looking impatient but attempting to conceal it beneath a veneer of boredom.
“You may call me Sutra Vari,” the man said with a nonchalant air. “I come from the east across the harena maris and many ranges of mountains.”
The man’s Latin was oddly accented but precise. He spoke it with no hesitation, but there remained a sense of the rote in his tone. And that was not all that was odd about him. He was tall for a foreigner from these climes. His face was close-shaven and a crown of snow-white hair atop his head. It appeared to be even whiter in comparison to his mahogany-colored skin. His features were fine, even patrician, with a thin nose well-set between black eyes. His most remarkable feature was his teeth. They were even and straight, and as white as virgin marble. Gratus had to wrench his eyes away from betraying his fascination. But he’d never seen such perfection in teeth except perhaps on a prize chariot horse.
“Are you a man of position in your land?” Gratus asked while taking a seat in his own chair and gesturing for the visitor to do the same. The man did not take the invitation and remained standing.
“I am not, honorable Prefect. I am a man of considerable resources, however.”
“And what is your business in Caesarea, if I might be so bold as to inquire? And what result do you seek from this audience with me?”
“I am a trader in goods. Rare goods of excellent quality, wise Prefect. I dare say, items such as may be unknown within your empire.”
“That answers my first query but not my second,” Gratus said, growing impatient with this foreigner’s evasive manner. Can no one east of Brundisium ever come straight to a point?
“As I told your servant, I bring gifts to honor you. In my lands it is customary to be generous with hosts and as I am a newcomer to these lands and you are, in effect, the host.”
“I see! I see!” Gratus said, fixing a smile on his face. The stranger returned it showing, once again, those magnificent dentibus.
The stranger snapped his fingers and a pair of Arabs, smelly adults with matted beards and rags for clothes, entered carrying a large cage of gleaming metal wire between them. Inside was a pair of birds that resembled pheasant but for iridescent blue wings and jet black bodies.
“A rare species from the mountains of my homeland. Their meat is tender and succulent. You may enjoy them as a meal but, as they are male and female, you may also breed them for sport.”
“Yes, yes! Birds!” Gratus said and gestured impatiently.
The stranger snapped his fingers once more and two more Arabs more filthy and ragged than the first two entered carrying a basket piled full of a fruit that resembled apples of a yellowish hue.
“A fruit of my native land. Great pains were taken to keep it chilled and unbruised for your enjoyment. It is crisp like your own apples but sweet like pears.”
“Hm.” Gratus was unable to conceal how underwhelmed he was.
A single Arab was summoned, and in his hands, he held a slender ceramic bottle decorated with exquisite relief sculptures in iridescent blue of elephants and deer and monkeys.
“The wine of my land. It is crushed and fermented from a rare berry found only at the highest reaches of the ranges that ring the place of my birth. It brings comfort and relief from pain and remorse.”
Gratus sat wrinkling his nose at the bottle as it was placed on the corner of his desk.
“And my last offering.” The dark stranger clapped his hands once and yet another pair of odiferous Arabs entered bearing a rolled carpet on their shoulders.
“A carpet,” Gratus said dryly. What was the obsession of all these black bastards with carpets? He had enough moldy rugs gifted him to cover the road back to Rome with their ornate hideousness.
The Arabs jerked at the binding ribbons and lifted one hem of the rug, causing it to unravel, suddenly depositing a figure onto the floor of Gratus’s office. A boy. A naked boy with tawny skin and flawless of limb with a shock of silken hair as black as a raven’s wing. The boy rose to his knees and peered up at the stunned prefect with bold eyes that spoke for a passionate heart. Gratus felt breathless.
“As Cleopatra was delivered to your own Julius,” the stranger proclaimed without irony or drama.
“Yes, yes.” Gratus said and reached out his hands to take the boy’s and help him to rise to his feet.
“I trust you are pleased, munificent Prefect,” the stranger said and bowed his head.
“I am. Most pleased. But what is this in aid of? What do you anticipate in return for such generosity?” Gratus said, too enthralled with the vision before him to feel the least bit suspicious.
“Only your friendly regard should our paths cross again in business or in society,” the stranger said and bowed once more as he backed away to make egress from the prefect’s presence.
“Oh, you have it. You most assuredly have it,” Gratus said, not turning from the boy’s fixed gaze to watch the stranger depart. He could not now even recall the name of the visitor with the too-perfect smile.
Gratus awoke late the next day in a state of euphoria he could not explain. His sleep had been deep and dreamless and quite sudden. He had the new boy brought to his bed where they shared the strangely bottled wine—Gratus insisting the boy drink a full measure before his lips would touch the cup. This was the land of Herod, and one must always be cautious when taking food or drink from an unfamiliar source. The boy became dreamy-eyed, but there was no further ill effect, so Gratus drank greedily the thick, sweet wine. Its effect was almost immediate, and Gratus settled back on his bed as though carried on the wings of doves and watched the world swirl close about him while the splendid boy explored his body with daring hands.
And that was the last he could recall of the evening before. He awoke as though still in the embrace of the spirit’s charms. He was warm within and cool without and had not a worry in the world. Certainly not at all like the rude awakenings he’d experienced on other mornings following a night of drinking. The haze of comforting bliss stayed with him even as he rose to find the corpse of the magnificent boy lying contorted and pale as a ghost on the floor at the foot of his bed. The lad lay with glassy eyes and foam-flecked lips, his lifeless hands gripping the nap of the carpet that had served as his vessel.