37
The Greek pilot brought the Super Puma Eurocopter over Rhodes at nine hundred feet, steering clear of the EU summit’s security red zones below and following an alternative glide path to the airstrip. The skies were clear and offered Conrad a spectacular view of the island below.
“Security zones?” Conrad asked in broken English with the best Turkish accent he could make up. His attempt was so bad it actually worked, cracking up one of the Greeks. Another, named Koulos, decided to help the confused Turk get a lay of the land.
“The red inner-security zones are around the Palace of the Grandmaster in the Old Town down there, and the Rodos Palace hotel and convention center are in New Town over there,” Koulos shouted in English above the whir of the rotor blades. “They are linked by the harbor drive. Only authorized personnel or security assigned to those zones can pass through the checkpoints.”
Conrad nodded.
“The walls of Old Town outside the Palace of the Grandmaster are the perimeter of the yellow outer-security zone. No vehicles without proper registration and full inspection are allowed through the gates.”
Conrad pulled out the military BlackBerry Packard had given him with the GPS tracking program. He called up the satellite map of Rhodes from Google Earth and tried to find the pulsing blue dot that represented the celestial globe Packard had given Serena. The glare from the sun outside the chopper windows made it too difficult to read the screen until they landed and he jumped off onto the tarmac.
That was when he got the fix: The globe was in the red zone at the convention center, hopefully with the other two.
Conrad signed for his police motorcycle as Firat Kayda. Though the bike belonged to the police department, it wasn’t an official police motorcycle and had no siren. When he reached the convention center, his ID badge worked beautifully, and he was able to glide through the checkpoint to the main entrance of the hotel, allegedly to meet his Turkish superiors.
He followed the GPS signal through the hotel atrium and into the airy exhibition area where all kinds of “green” technology companies promised to turn the Middle East into a tropical paradise for investment and generate fat profits to European investors. “More than oil” seemed to be the theme, highlighting the commercial benefits of peace in the region.
The bright sunlight provided him with the perfect excuse to keep his sunglasses on, like many others, and look nondescript as he passed a spectacular circular staircase toward the Delphi Amphitheater.
He stopped outside the door and put away his BlackBerry. The security guard glanced at his badge and nodded.
Conrad slipped into the back of the three-level amphitheater, which was packed with almost six hundred delegates. Up on the stage, speaking from the podium before an impressive array of flat-panel screens flashing all sorts of logos and graphics, was Roman Midas.
What does he have to say that any of these people want to hear? Conrad unconsciously shrank back against the wall with a group of bystanders who couldn’t find seats. He felt like a convict in a police lineup for Midas to pick out. But all the lights and attention were on Midas now, and Conrad doubted the man could see anyone beyond the front row.
“It’s the new alchemy,” Midas proclaimed. “Water springing forth from the desert.”
High-definition graphics showed how the same deep-mining technology that Midas Minerals & Mining had used to extract oil from the “world’s most difficult to reach substrata” could now be harnessed to extract water from the hidden rivers and aquifers of the Sinai Peninsula.
Midas said, “The dust bowl becomes the bread basket of the Middle East, freeing the region from dependence on foreign agriculture and offering local populations the opportunity to grow and export more than oil.”
The names of various Israeli and Arab partners popped up on the screens to underscore the international cooperation of this “consortium of leading industries” to “rid the Middle East of its dependence on oil.”
Well, that’s a new one, Conrad thought as he slowly made his way along the curving back wall of the room. He suspected he would come upon a door leading to a projection booth or control room of some kind, which was probably as obscure a place as any to store the globes until they could be moved. He couldn’t imagine them alone without armed security. But the only door that appeared was the other rear exit.
He stepped out of the amphitheater into the bar reception area and saw the celestial globe standing there like some piece of art with a young man in a suit and collar—a priest’s collar.
Worse, the priest had recognized him.
Damn, Conrad thought as he marched up to the priest.
The priest began, “Dr. Yeats—”
“Shut up,” Conrad said quietly, and glanced around. “What the hell is going on?”
“You needn’t worry,” the priest said drily. “This isn’t the globe you gave her. This is a fake. She took the real one with her after she removed the tracker and put it inside this one.”
“Where is she…Lorenzo?” Conrad said, reading the priest’s ID badge.
Lorenzo had suddenly taken a vow of silence.
Conrad pressed him. “She’s in danger.”
The priest screwed up his eyes at Conrad. “From whom?”
“Last time, Lorenzo.”
“She’s at her three o’clock appointment,” Lorenzo said. “Do I need to call security?”
“No, but I’m taking this.” Conrad took the globe off its pedestal and walked off with it, leaving an open-mouthed Lorenzo behind.
Outside, Conrad opened the globe, tossed the tracker, and strapped the globe to the back of his motorcycle. Then he pulled out his BlackBerry and called Wanda Randolph.
“Report,” said Wanda.
“Tell Packard she found the tracker. But she’s still with the packages. I need you to hack the security system here and see when was the last time her ID badge was scanned.”
“Copy that,” Wanda said.
Conrad looked at his watch. It was 3:05. He was worried he was too late.
Wanda rang him back two minutes later. “She passed through the checkpoint at Liberty Gate in the Old Town. She’s going to the Palace of the Grandmaster with two packages. They’re listed only as ‘art’ on the system.”
But Conrad had hung up at “Grandmaster,” kick-started his bike, and roared off toward the fortress.
38
Back at the hotel and convention center, Lorenzo crossed the atrium lobby and approached the commanding officer at the security desk. He was an ambitious priest, and Dr. Yeats had given him a golden opportunity to accelerate his rise within the Dei even as he attempted to protect his superiors.
“I just saw the fugitive who murdered Mercedes Le Roche,” Lorenzo said breathlessly. “Conrad Yeats the American. He is here at the summit.”
The Greek looked at Lorenzo’s badge and collar and decided to take the report seriously enough to ask further questions. “Was he wearing a badge, Father?”
“Yes,” said Lorenzo helpfully. “The name was Firat Kayda, and it had a red security stripe for access to the inner zones. Holy Mother of God, maybe this American killed Kayda and has taken his place to kill someone here!”
“Please, Father. Do not repeat this. We will investigate.”
Lorenzo detected a dismissive tone in the Greek official’s voice. “You’re not going to do any such thing, are you?”
The officer picked up a phone. “Firat Kayda,” he said, and hung up.
“That’s all?” Lorenzo said.
“Please wait, Father.”
The officer attended to some papers with the other officers while Lorenzo watched, burning with anger. A minute later, the Greek saw his frown and looked at a computer terminal. “Here it is,” he said, looking at a time-stamped video clip of the moment Kayda had passed through the hotel checkpoint. A concerned expression took hold on the Greek’s face as the facial-recognition program kicked in. “There is a high degree of probability that you are
correct.”
“At last,” Lorenzo said.
The Greek started typing furiously. “I am flagging his name and attaching the video for when he presents himself at a checkpoint. He’ll be refused entry and arrested immediately.”
“Don’t forget that he is armed and dangerous, Officer. He has killed and may kill again.”
The Greek looked up warily. “Thank you very much, Father. You have been most helpful.”
Lorenzo made the sign of the cross and walked away.
39
Vadim was sitting inside the Peugeot parked opposite the Palace of the Grandmaster. He looked past the vehicle ID badge dangling from his rearview mirror to see the silver Mercedes SUV drive through.
He reached back and pulled down the rear seat to access the trunk. Squirming next to the blocks of C4 plastic explosives was a bound, gagged, and badly beaten Abdil Zawas. Vadim had brought the Egyptian to Rhodes directly from Bern hours before the security checkpoints had been set up. Since this car had been registered to a resident for several years, the security forces sweeping the Old Town yellow zone hadn’t opened its trunk.
Abdil was waking up a little sooner than Vadim wanted. The streets were so narrow and cars so few that he couldn’t afford to have somebody walk by while Abdil banged his head and feet to draw attention.
“Siesta isn’t over,” Vadim said, and removed an injection pen from his pocket. “We have to keep you alive long enough for the coroner to pronounce your proper cause of death as a martyr for Allah.” He delighted at the look of horror in Abdil’s eyes. The pen was filled only with a concentrated dose of trazodone to put him to sleep. Nothing painful, unfortunately, and it was a shame to think that the Egyptian wouldn’t be awake for his final moments.
“Don’t you wonder how many of your little sluts will miss you when you’re gone?” Vadim asked, injecting the trazodone into Abdil’s thick neck. “I think you’ll miss them more where you’re going.”
Abdil’s eyes rolled around in panic even as his eyelids grew heavy. In a few minutes it would all be over for the late, great Abdil Zawas.
“I’m going to make you famous, Abdil,” Vadim told the Egyptian. “You’re about to open a new front on the war against Jews and Crusaders. Look at this clip that’s about to be posted on YouTube. Recognize yourself?”
Vadim was about to play the video on his BlackBerry when the device began to ring. It was Midas.
“Security says Yeats is alive and on Rhodes,” Midas barked. “She has betrayed the Alignment.”
“You seem surprised,” Vadim said. “Your plan was always to kill her as soon as she delivered the globes. She knows too much. More than I do. Nothing has changed. Yeats won’t make it in time to interfere.”
“Is everything set?”
“Yes,” Vadim said. “The only street into or out of the Palace of the Grandmaster is the Street of Knights. I’ll take care of her as soon as she leaves the palace.”
“She must not have even a moment to contact anybody with information about what she may have learned from Uriel or figured out for herself,” Midas said, and then there was a pause. “Remember, Vadim. She will be the second car. I repeat: the second car. Not the first. Everything is lost if you mistake the two.”
Vadim said, “I won’t.”
“See that you don’t,” Midas said. “It must look like the first car was the target but that Zawas hit Serghetti’s car instead and blew himself up in the process.”
“Yes,” said Vadim, looking at Abdil’s limp body in the mirror. “I understand.”
40
All the way down the Street of Knights toward the Palace of the Grandmaster, Serena wondered who Uriel could possibly be. If his role within the Alignment was true to his name, then Uriel could be the one who ultimately possessed the Flammenschwert. That pointed to Midas, however, and she braced herself to see his ugly smile waiting for her with the third globe.
“I wish I could join you inside, signorina,” Benito said as he pulled the G55 SUV up to the west tower entrance.
“Me, too,” she said.
The Greek attaché Midas had told her about was already waiting with two aides and a cart. Benito opened the rear door, and the aides placed the two steel boxes containing the copper globes on the cart. Serena followed through the entrance.
Inside, they walked past the Medusa mosaic and down a large vaulted corridor to the lower level. It was right out of the blueprints Conrad had shown her back at the lake in Italy. And when they entered the Hall of Knights and left her alone with the globes, nobody had to tell her what room she stood in. Its scale and decor announced itself in a sinister way.
Then the small wooden door on the side opened by itself, and she saw the adjoining chamber and the reflection of a fire bouncing off what could only be the third globe. She pushed the cart inside, next to the round table, and beheld the globe on top.
The third globe.
She stood in silence, staring at it. It was magnificent, like something forged from the depths of a volcano or the mountain copper ore of Atlantis. It closely resembled its celestial and terrestrial cousins and was clearly part of the family. But the dials carved across the surface of this globe marked it as an armillary, built to predict the cycles of the sun, moon, and planets. It was the third element of time that Brother Lorenzo had correctly suspected was missing from their calculations back at the Vatican.
The door opened, and she looked up to see General Gellar, the Israeli defense minister, looking her up and down in surprise.
The feeling is mutual, she thought. “You’re Uriel?” They had been acquaintances for quite some time, and suddenly, they both looked at each other in a very different way. “What do you want with these globes?” she asked.
“You have to ask?” Gellar sounded offended. “They’re ours. They belong to Israel. You took them.”
“We took them?”
“The Knights Templar stole them from under the Temple Mount along with whatever else they could pillage to fund their wars, increase their powers, and persecute the Jews.”
Serena took it in, trying to figure this all out. “Well, on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church, I certainly plead guilty. And the pope has made official apologies for all that. I wasn’t around at the time, of course. But if I had been, I’m sure that I, too, would have engaged in anti-Semitic behavior.”
Gellar seemed to realize he was being ridiculous—although he clearly regarded the Dei medallion hanging around her neck as if it were a Nazi death’s-head badge.
“You’re not one of the Thirty, General, are you?”
“No,” he said.
“But you’d do business with them.”
“You mean with you? Yes. If Israel had relations only with its friends, we wouldn’t be a country.”
Serena wanted to say “Hey, I’m not Alignment,” but that wouldn’t carry much water here beneath the bowels of the Palace of the Grandmaster, built by the Knights of St. John, a military unit itself and cousin to the Knights Templar. All the same, she had to find out the purpose of the globes and why the Alignment would give them to the Israelis. “You’re going to take these with you back to Jersualem?” she asked.
“To the place where they belong.”
Serena stared at him. “You’re going to rebuild the temple. You’ve just needed to get all the pieces together.”
“Yes.” Gellar was almost defiant.
“To do that, you need to remove the Dome of the Rock mosque.”
“Yes.”
“That would start a war with the Arabs.”
“Yes.”
“And you would defend yourselves, naturally.”
“No,” Gellar said. “You and Europe will defend us if America chooses to sit this one out. And if not, God will protect us.”
“When is all this supposed to happen?”
Gellar smiled. “You had two of the globes and are the great linguist. Could you not interpret the signs?”
Serena realized she coul
d not, but she couldn’t let Gellar slip away without giving her something more. She remembered what Conrad had told her about why he’d given up his dig in Jerusalem: He couldn’t figure out the astronomical alignments of the temple. Without them, he hadn’t known where to dig.
“The alignments of the stars on the celestial globe don’t mirror the landmarks on the terrestrial globe,” she told him. “For example, there’s no star on the celestial globe that mirrors Jerusalem.”
“Not yet,” Gellar told her with a hint of a smile. “That’s why the third globe is necessary. The Hebrew prophets believed that God used the planets to give them a sign that something important was about to happen. Look closely at this globe, and you’ll notice that we’re in the midst of an extraordinary alignment of two symmetrical triangles formed in the sky by six planets. Do you recognize this alignment?”
“Oh my God,” said Serena, seeing it clearly. “It’s the Star of David.”
“This is the star you were looking for over Jerusalem, Sister Serghetti,” Gellar told her. “It’s not a comet or a nova or a so-called star of Bethlehem. This star is the conjunction of planets that the prophet Jeremiah predicted would appear in these last days at the coming of the Messiah. It is this star to which we will align the Third Temple.”
The exit door opened, and Gellar pointed the way out to her. “Thank you for returning the globes to the people of Israel, Sister Serghetti. I will take good care of them.”
She stepped out of the chamber, and as soon as it closed behind her, she knew there was no turning back. A minute later, she climbed into the G55 SUV outside.
“General Gellar is Uriel,” she told Benito, whose face in the mirror registered shock. “The globes are going to the Temple Mount. Surely this means war. Gellar thinks he’s getting a new Jerusalem. But the Alignment is clearly betting on a new Crusade that will see them picking up all the oil and whatever else is left of the Middle East. A new Roman Empire. And that is in nobody’s interest.”
The Atlantis Revelation: A Thriller Page 16