by J. F. Penn
As he emerged onto the right shoulder of Christ, Jake gasped at the panoramic view before him — and the realization that nothing but air separated him from the drop below.
He scrambled onto the shoulder, lying flat, his hands clutching the thin conductive cable that bisected the statue to channel lightning strikes.
The trapdoor slammed shut behind him. Jake had one chance to disarm Frik or the fight would be over before it even started.
A creak of metal.
Frik burst up through the trapdoor, throwing off its weight with one powerful thrust. The huge bodyguard emerged out of the darkness, gun in one hand.
But Jake had the upper ground.
He kicked at Frik’s face, the powerful heel strike connecting with the man’s nose, breaking it. Frik roared with rage, blood streaming from the wound as he clutched at the side of the trapdoor.
Jake kicked again, this time with a scraping movement. The gun spun out of Frik’s loosened grip and plummeted off the edge of the statue.
But the massive South African didn’t stop. He clenched his meaty fists into hammers of flesh and pulled himself out of the trapdoor.
Jake crawled out of reach, acutely aware of the precipitous drop below. Frik stood up on the narrow shoulder. He shook his head and snorted to clear his nose, drops of blood splattering over the concrete.
“It’s time you paid for what you did.” He stretched out his arms for balance and took a step forward.
Jake scrambled to his feet, his senses alert as Frik edged toward him. The shoulder of Christ ended close behind, and a dizzying drop lay on either side. It was a strange place indeed for such a fight, but a sense of calm rose within Jake as he faced the man determined to kill him. He thought of the young capoeiristas in the plaza of Recife, the way they flowed and moved with such grace, seemingly resistant to gravity. If only he’d learned such skill.
But he was not done yet.
Frik advanced another half step and threw a punch.
Jake ducked back out of reach, but as he moved, he wobbled a little. A cold flush flooded his system as he glimpsed the ground far below. He knew that Frik would not leave the statue without killing him.
Jake clenched his fists. If he went down, he’d take the bastard with him.
17
A sudden cry from above.
Morgan looked up as a figure tumbled from the shoulder of Christ, a dark shape silhouetted against the sun, his features obscured.
“Jake!” Morgan couldn’t help his name escaping her lips.
Her heart beat faster as the body hit the concrete below the statue with a sickening thud.
Aurelia stopped struggling in her arms and they stood for a moment, both of them waiting in a beat of silence for the truth to unfold.
Another man looked over the edge of the shoulder of Christ and waved down.
It was Jake. Morgan sighed with relief and as Aurelia sagged in her arms, defeated, she couldn’t help but smile. Jake had as many lives as the jungle cat he sometimes reminded her of with his muscular grace and dark amber-flecked eyes.
She dragged Aurelia up the concrete deck toward where Frik had landed.
“I don’t want to see him,” the heiress pleaded. “Please, just let me go.”
But something in her tone was off. Morgan didn’t trust the weak woman, little girl lost routine. It might work with all those alpha males she surrounded herself with, but there was a core of steel to Aurelia dos Santos Fidalgo. Morgan dragged Aurelia on.
Jake beat them to the concrete platform. He stood over Frik’s body, his face betraying a mix of emotion. Morgan knew him well enough to know it was not the killing of a man that concerned him, but the events that led to the demise of someone he had been partially responsible for creating. If Jake had not sent Frik down the mine that day, would he now be lying dead so far from his homeland?
But as with the history of the very land they stood upon, there would always be questions of how the past intersected with the present. Without the Portuguese Empire landing here five hundred years ago, would this city be what it was today? Would Christ even be the Redeemer here, or would a god of the indigenous tribes spread his arms wide to welcome travelers?
Aurelia tore herself from Morgan’s grip and sank to her knees by Frik’s body. She bent over the big man and laid her head on his chest as she wept. Her tears seeped into the pool of blood that spread out from his skull, dashed on the stones beneath. Had Frik been more than just a bodyguard, or was Aurelia playing for time while she figured out her next move? Morgan found the heiress hard to read as she and Jake stood in silence.
After a few minutes, Aurelia fell quiet. She turned and looked up at Jake, her dark eyes flashing with anger. “You will never find Eden. I’ll never give you the other pieces. You can send me to my grave before I share their location with you.”
“We will find the Garden.” Jake’s voice was low and menacing, certainty clear in his tone. “And we’ll witness what you will never see. You’ll go to your grave never knowing what could have been.”
Aurelia wrung her hands together, her knuckles white as she tightened her grip along with her resolve. But Morgan saw something in her eyes, a flare of desire for the mythical place that went far beyond her need for revenge. Frik had been a love of some kind, but he was nothing to Aurelia’s true passion and she was clearly weighing her options.
They had to get to Eden as fast as possible — the professor’s life was at stake and the clock ticked away the seconds since she had been taken. If there was a chance they could get the pieces, they needed to take it. Morgan took a calculated risk. “What if we take you with us to Eden?”
Jake spun around in surprise, but she ignored him. They had been partners long enough that he would go with her intuition on this.
The heiress frowned. “How can I trust you?”
Morgan reached out a hand. “I can only give you my word.”
“And mine,” Jake said after a moment. “If you give us the other pieces of the map, we’ll find Eden together. When we reach the Garden, this agreement is over and you’re on your own. But until then, we can put aside our differences and work together.”
Something like triumph flashed in Aurelia’s eyes, and she gave a half-smile. She took Morgan’s hand, shaking it as she rose to her feet, the body behind her forgotten.
“That is enough for now. I’ll take you to the other pieces of the map. They’re not far away.”
Once they were airborne again, Aurelia directed the pilot to head downtown, flying over the city to the north-east. They landed on the rooftop of a modern skyscraper, the Fidalgo headquarters.
As the rotors spun gently to a stop, Aurelia looked out the window with a wistful gaze. “I’m just a figurehead here now. My search for Eden is the very opposite of what the company would want. They have no wish to see me here, but it’s close to where the pieces are and the easiest place to land. We’ll go straight down in the elevator and out onto the street.”
They clambered out of the helicopter and headed into the building.
True to her word, Aurelia did not even stop to greet anyone. In fact, it seemed as if people who might have boarded the elevator saw her and chose to take another route. Others scurried away at her approach. Morgan noticed how Aurelia’s spine stiffened and how she wrung her thin hands as they descended. For all her wealth, it seemed the heiress truly was a pariah in the empire her father had built.
They exited the office building and emerged onto the busy streets of the Centro district, the historic and financial hub of the city. Morgan and Jake kept close to Aurelia as they hurried through the warren of streets.
Eventually, they emerged into a wide open square with the hand-cut Portuguese paving stones reminiscent of Lisbon and Macau, but this was no thriving plaza where tourists could sit and drink coffee in the sun.
There were a few sparse trees for a splash of green, and a geometric modern sculpture with faded yellow paint, but the buildings surrounding the sq
uare were rundown and covered with graffiti. While Morgan appreciated urban street art when it had an element of beauty or a message to consider, this was just ugly tagging and spray-painted scrawl. It didn’t seem like a place Aurelia would frequent.
But as they walked across the square, Morgan caught sight of their true destination. The Real Gabinete Português de Leitura, the Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading, stood like a proud sentinel at the opposite end of the square, the repository of the largest collection of Portuguese works outside of Portugal. Built in a Gothic-Renaissance style, its high arched windows were marked with ornate crosses and the delicate stone filigree brought to mind the Jeronimos Monastery in Belém back in Lisbon. Four statues looked out onto the square; Pedro Álvares Cabral, the discoverer of Brazil, Vasco da Gama, the first European to reach India, and Morgan also recognized Henry the Navigator, who inspired the Age of Discovery.
She pointed to the fourth statue. “Who’s that?”
Aurelia looked up with a smile. “Luís de Camões, Portugal’s greatest poet whose work is considered in the same realm as Shakespeare, Homer or Dante. ‘Time changes, and our desires change. What we believe — even what we are — is ever changing.’” She shrugged. “So says the poet, but can we ever really change?”
They entered the library, and Aurelia nodded at the guard by the entrance. He waved them through, clearly accustomed to her visits. They walked through the corridors toward the Reading Room.
“Time magazine named this as the fourth most beautiful library in the world,” Aurelia said. “It has been my sanctuary. Whenever I was forced to attend the company headquarters and endure days of meetings and legal matters, I would schedule time to come here and sit in the silence and read. This is where I first found mention of the map to Eden, so it is only right that we end it here. Come, I stored the pieces with my research.”
Aurelia pushed open the door to the Reading Room and Morgan looked around in wonder, Jake motionless by her side as they both took in its grandeur.
Three stories of bookshelves encased in dark wood flanked the room with spiral pillars highlighted in gold around them, while geometric shapes etched in black stone bisected the white and grey marble flagstones beneath. Above the shelves, beyond the reach of even the tallest library ladders, a golden canopy stretched up to a stained glass window bringing light into this haven of learning. Sixteen individual antique desks provided places for scholars to work, but only two were occupied, and those working studiously ignored the newcomers.
Aurelia walked softly into the library and led Morgan and Jake up a staircase to the second level, the old wood creaking underfoot.
Morgan appreciated the almost religious atmosphere of the library. She felt closer to whatever might be called God in a house of learning than she did in a traditional place of worship. She wanted to run her fingers over the spines of these old books and dislodge the dust of antiquity. She didn’t speak Portuguese, but Morgan thought that some books might communicate their meaning through mere physical proximity. At least, that’s what she told herself when her book pile back home in Jericho, Oxford, teetered on the edge of overflowing. Owning books meant possessing the knowledge within, and that was sometimes as good as reading it. If that was true, this place was rich indeed.
Aurelia stopped at one particular bookcase and pulled down an oversized tome, a historical book of botanical illustrations with intricate labeling. She opened it to reveal a plastic folder and inside, the two pieces of the manuscript from Amsterdam and Macau.
Jake reached over and took them out of the book, his gaze fixed on Aurelia. Anger flared in her eyes for a moment, and then she nodded her agreement.
Morgan exhaled a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding. They finally had all the pieces of the map. They were going to find Eden.
18
When Martin Klein stepped off the plane, Morgan couldn’t help but give a fond smile. His shock of blonde hair spiked up all over the place, his jacket was done up with the wrong buttons and he jerked away from people around him to maintain his need for personal space. He carried a small backpack with everything he needed for this short trip to help them with the mission. Most would consider him unusual, many might even use the word ‘special’ in a way that wasn’t a compliment. But few understood how special Martin really was, and Morgan was grateful that she was one of them.
They had grown close over the missions they had experienced together with Jake. Although Martin wasn’t a natural field agent, his knowledge and ability to think differently had often proved to be the missing link that the team needed to discover the next step. His rational and unemotional approach had helped in the past, but this time, Morgan knew the journey was personal. Martin had shaken off the effects of the poison but Sebastian was still in hospital, Professor Camara Mbaye remained missing, and he blamed himself for involving them.
Martin looked up and Morgan lifted a hand to wave a greeting as he hurried over.
“You have all the pieces?” he asked, his eagerness hard to contain. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet with no need to rest after the long flight from London to Rio de Janeiro.
Morgan nodded as she led him toward the taxi rank. “Yes, we’ve got an office suite at the Fidalgo mining headquarters reserved for our investigation.” She shrugged as they jumped in a cab. “Strange times make for strange bedfellows, indeed. I’m glad you’re here to help.”
During the journey into the city, Martin tapped his long fingers on his knees, as if limbering up for the code he would soon generate, and the taxi soon pulled up outside the towering skyscraper.
Morgan flashed her temporary identification, and the guard let them through and into the bank of shining chrome elevators. They sped up to the penthouse suite that Aurelia had commandeered for their preparation to travel east, leveraging her remaining authority to get them the resources they needed.
Jake stood with the heiress in a glass-fronted meeting room before an oversized whiteboard covered in scrawled handwriting. He waved as they passed, indicating that he would be out soon. Aurelia glanced over with barely concealed disdain. The woman clearly had a penchant for strong South African men, and Morgan was happy for Jake to take the lead in managing her — at least for now.
She led Martin into a smaller room kept with blinds closed down over the full-length glass walls and overhead lights dimmed low enough to protect the pieces of ancient manuscript laid out on the table. There was an extensive amount of other equipment in the room, everything they might need to investigate the map further.
Martin whistled a little under his breath. “Finally together again.”
Morgan nodded. “It’s likely that they haven’t been this way since 1496, when the Jews were expelled from Portugal and scattered across the empire.” As she said the words, a sense of foreboding rose within. Whoever made this map went to a lot of trouble to make sure the pieces were separated when it was a lifetime’s journey to travel across the globe.
But why not destroy the map altogether?
She tried to imagine the person who created it. Perhaps some old Rabbi, desperate to save the rare knowledge but afraid for its future potential. Did he rip it apart with tears in his eyes at the thought of what might be lost? There was no way to know how it had come into being, or what the map might lead to in reality. Perhaps there was nothing there at all. But at least now they could find out.
Martin opened his backpack and pulled out a slim laptop through which he could access the ARKANE servers. But first, they needed to know what to search for, and that’s where Morgan appreciated Martin’s different way of looking at things.
The map was now complete — but it was not a simple, modern geographical layout with a clear path. A verdant garden lay at the center of four rivers with phrases written around its heart, interwoven with faded images of many kinds of trees, plants and flowers.
But there was something wrong about it. Morgan didn’t know what it could be, but the map looked unfin
ished in some inexplicable way.
Martin stared down at the fragments, his brow furrowed in concentration, clearly feeling the same way. They had both seen enough ancient maps and manuscripts in their time and researched a lot more. Both found this one unusual.
“There must be something more…” Martin whispered.
A moment later, he brightened. “Of course! Bring it over here.”
He turned on a light box with a glass top, back-lit with bulbs that enabled different layers to be seen within whatever lay above. “Many of the Kabbalist manuscripts in particular use different kinds of ink visible in certain lights. This should give us a new perspective.”
Morgan carefully placed the pieces on top and as light flooded through, the pigments deepened in color. Greens split into shades of dark moss and emerald, and the bark of the tree shifted into shiny chestnut with walnut hues. The vines seemed to shimmer as spines of silver emerged with razor-sharp, wicked blades. More text appeared, the writing almost frenzied, and there were droplets of something darker on the page. Rust perhaps… or blood.
This wasn’t a map to a gentle Eden. This was a warning to stay away.
“Can you decipher the text?” Morgan said, bending closer. “It looks a bit like Hebrew, but not something I can understand.”
“Let’s see what we can do.” Martin picked up a handheld scanner and ran it over the map, holding it just an inch or so above. Once the scan was complete, a digital image appeared on his computer screen.
He sat down and typed so rapidly that Morgan could barely see his fingers as they flashed over the keys. It was a pleasure to watch Martin at work, and she felt privileged that he allowed her to see him like this.
The world fell away as he worked with the tools he had developed for ARKANE, delving into databases linked by strange coincidences using ancient keywords in dead languages. He accessed the machine learning algorithms he had trained to discover new information, hidden to even the most knowledgeable human brain.