by Gayle Lynds
She gazed at the questioner, hoping to see in his face whether she was correct. His expression showed nothing.
Yitzhak found the location of the manuscript on the list, and they walked quickly down one of the long walls, looking for it. With both hands he lifted out a gold volume embedded with sapphires and handed it to Petr Klok.
There was a long pause as they waited for his answer.
With a flourish Klok took the book and stood it up on the table to admire. “The world has only eleven complete plays by Aristophanes, although he wrote forty. The Library of Gold has the entire collection.”
There was a round of jaunty applause.
Eva and Yitzhak exchanged a look of relief.
Chapman ended it: “Thom, you’re next. Try to beat them, will you?”
Judd opened the rear door to the main house and slid inside, Tucker following. Their M4s ready, they listened for sounds and checked a wall of glass displaying the reflecting pool and spotlighted palms they had seen in NSA photos. When they heard nothing, they padded past closed doors and entered an enormous living room that stretched across the front of the house, glass windows showcasing the ocean view. The wall of glass stretched around the corner on the west side, with heavy glass double doors showing a marble path that led out toward the tennis courts, pool, and distant helipad.
Two sentries were in sight patrolling, their gazes cast outward—not toward the house.
“So far so good,” Judd murmured. He pulled out his reader.
But just as they hurried toward the stairwell beside the elevators, their radios crackled. They snapped them from their belts and looked outdoors. Both of the sentries were grabbing their radios, too. And now a third sentry was in sight, doing the same.
Tucker swore, and they punched their Receive buttons.
“Three down,” the disembodied voice snapped. “Rendezvous behind the pool shed. Now.”
“It’s just a matter of time until they guess we’re inside,” Tucker said as he ran past packing crates to the stairwell door and yanked it open.
M4s ready, they raced down one flight of steps, peered through the window on the door and saw a busy kitchen, then ran down another flight. The door window showed an empty hallway of closed doors.
As they tore down a third flight, Judd whispered, “She’s on this floor.”
At the door, they looked into a sitting area of comfortable sofas and chairs. No one was in sight.
Judd inhaled, exhaled, and slid around the door, crouching, M4 in both hands. In an instant Tucker was beside him. No one was around.
Heart pounding, Judd dashed down the hall, watching the reader, and then stopped. Eva. With one hand he slammed open the door’s dead bolts and turned the knob.
“Judd, is that you?” Roberto Cavaletti stared up, his battered face breaking into a smile. “You are blond.” He scrambled to his feet.
“Where’s Eva?”
“In the Library of Gold.” He hurried toward them. “She gave me her ankle bracelet so you would find me and I could warn you. We overheard the guards talking—all of them at the big banquet have pistols. Eva and Yitzhak were taken there to be part of some mortal game. If they guess wrong, we will die. But if they guess right, I think they plan to murder us anyway.”
“Where’s the library?” Judd asked grimly.
71
Khost Province, Afghanistan
Syed Ullah met the Pakistani reporter and cameraman at the mosque and drove them out to the edge of the sleeping town. Parking near the remains of mud-brick huts, the three got out, bundled in long down coats against the night’s cold. Ullah sniffed, smelling the strong scent of animal manure.
“Please turn around, General,” the reporter said.
The cameraman motioned him into position. The two were from the respected Pakistan Television Corporation, the country’s national TV broadcaster, whose news was regularly picked up by wire services and media around the globe.
“This is Asif Badri.” The reporter held a mike and looked solemnly into the camera. “Tonight I am in Khost province, Afghanistan. With me is the esteemed general Syed Ullah, a legendary mujahideen hero of the war against the Soviets. Tell us what is in the distance, General.”
The camera focused on Ullah. Putting on his gravest expression, he spoke into the reporter’s mike and pointed with his AK-47. “That is a secret American military base. About five hundred soldiers.” He paused, considering. He did not want to completely insult American listeners, especially since he planned to make a lot of money from Chapman. Phrasing his words carefully, he continued, “They are here to clear out illegal activity and are generally well behaved. Unfortunately, there is a serious problem.”
The camera panned over to the military base with its massive lights glowing in and around it, captured beneath the special netting that stretched in a great canopy far beyond the walls. Above the netting was black night; below it, bright daylight. It was a dramatic picture, showing the infidels’ technical ingenuity and their awful ability to fool the world.
“Does your national government know about the base?” the reporter asked.
“Kabul is completely ignorant,” the warlord lied.
“You mentioned a serious problem. Tell us about it.”
“It is a sad story,” Ullah intoned, embracing his rifle. “The Americans complain about our tribal differences while they have their own. Sports, politics, religion—and business. Remember, their murder rate is among the highest in the world. One of my people overheard an American soldier talking to another in a town governed by another general. They, too, have a secret base in the mountains. Those soldiers are very angry at our soldiers. I am sorry to tell you all of them are smuggling drugs and exporting heroin. As you know, it is very lucrative.” He shook his head sadly. “The other soldiers are planning to murder the soldiers here tonight because they have been poaching their business.”
“Have you informed Kabul?”
“What can they do? I am in charge, and another general is in charge of the other town. We are helpless against the Americans’ far superior weapons. I am left only with being able to tell the world in hopes this will never happen again.” He sighed. “It is a tragedy.”
The reporter turned off his microphone. “Did you get it all, Ali?”
The cameraman nodded. “When do we go to the base?”
Ullah looked into the hills and pointed with his AK-47 at two sets of headlights. His son Jasim was in the lead vehicle with Hamid Qadeer, who spoke perfect Americanized English.
“They are coming out of the mountains now,” he told them. “Those are two American Humvees. My informant said there would be a total of about two hundred soldiers. The arrival of the Humvees means the rest are now in place nearby. Once the Humvees get inside the base, their plan is to silently kill the soldiers in the guard tower and open the gates. The rest is inevitable. Get into my car. I will drive you closer. We must go slow and without headlights. You will be able to film the action outside, and after it is over, you will be the first to record the results of the horrible massacre.”
72
The Isle of Pericles
Everyone in the Library of Gold was focused on Preston, who was standing inside the door with his M4 and thick bath towels and listening to a message on his radio. As Eva watched, he strode to Chapman and spoke quietly into his ear.
“Gentlemen, we may have visitors,” Chapman announced with relish. “Take out your pistols.”
Swiftly the men laid their weapons on the table beside the illuminated manuscripts. Although they had obviously been drinking, their hands and gazes were steady, and they moved with authority. There was an undercurrent of enthusiasm, too, Eva thought. They were looking forward to shooting their guns.
She exchanged a worried look with Yitzhak.
The sommelier advanced with bottles of brandy. He poured into Chapman’s glass first, emptying the bottle, then poured from a fresh one into the glasses of the other men.
As the sommelier returned to his bureau, everyone looked at Chapman.
Eva and Yitzhak had answered correctly seven of the eight tournament questions. The competitive excitement among the men around the banquet table was almost tactile as they waited for the final challenge—from the director, Martin Chapman.
“Jesus of Nazareth, known as the Rabbi and later as Jesus Christ, 7 to 2 B.C. to sometime between A.D. 26 and 36,” Chapman said. “Jesus was the leader of an apocalyptic movement, a faith healer, a rabble-rouser, and with John the Baptist, the founder of Christianity. The consensus of scholars is the four canonical gospels about his life—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—weren’t recorded by any of the original disciples or first-person witnesses, although they were probably written within the first century of his death. Your challenge is to find in the library where Jesus tells one of his disciples he ‘will exceed’ the others and learn ‘the mysteries of the kingdom.’”
Eva did not remember either quote. She looked at Yitzhak, and he shook his head worriedly. They turned away to study the list. There were three possibilities: One was St. Jerome’s early fifth-century Vulgate Bible. The second was Vetus Latina, which was compiled before the Vulgate. The third was even earlier, the title translating to The Old Gospels. They read the descriptions.
“He’s trying to fool us by referring to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,” Yitzhak whispered.
She had reached the same conclusion. “Do you think it’s in the Gnostic book of Judas?” The only known text of the Gospel of Judas had been written seventeen hundred years before, discovered in fragments in the Egyptian desert in 1945 and assembled and translated from the Coptic language in 2006, which was when she had read it.
“I do.”
“Then the third one, The Old Gospels, is the only choice,” she said, “although it predates the Gnostics.”
“Dazzle them.” Anger flashed in his eyes.
She turned back to the table. The brandy glasses glistened. The men’s calculating eyes watched her.
She paused. “In the New Testament, Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus to the Romans for thirty silver coins. The Gospel of Judas says the exact opposite—that it’s Jesus’ idea, and that he asks Judas to do it so his body can be sacrificed on the cross. If Jesus did ask Judas to do that, it’s logical he might’ve encouraged him by saying he ‘will exceed’ the other disciples and learn ‘the mysteries of the kingdom.’ Therefore, the quotation is from The Old Gospels. According to the list we were given, the book contains quite a few, including those of James, Peter, Thomas, Mary Magdalene, Philip—and Judas.”
Was she right? She could read nothing in Chapman’s face. Yitzhak was already walking along the wall. Following him, she passed a section on the Koran and other early Muslim works. Next to it Bibles and Christian literature were shelved.
Yitzhak stared at a manuscript covered in hammered gold. At the center was a simple design—small blue topazes in the outline of a fish. Gingerly he picked up the old book and carried it to Chapman.
Eva’s lungs were tight. She forced herself to breathe.
“Damn you.” Chapman took the book. “You’re right. The Old Gospels is an original, written on parchment pages that Constantine the Great ordered rebound and covered in gold in the early fourth century. It’s pre-Gnostic, composed in the first century A.D., during the time the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were recorded. It can arguably be considered as accurate as the New Testament.” He stroked the book. “The power of this is considerable. It explodes the myth of monolithic Christianity and demonstrates how diverse and fascinating the early movement really was.”
There was a round of enthusiastic applause—for Chapman, not for them. He stood the illuminated manuscript on the table next to his pistol and smiled at it.
The men raised their brandy glasses.
“Good question, Marty,” said one.
“Hear, hear.”
They drank.
As Chapman swallowed and put down his glass, he frowned at Eva and Yitzhak and gestured behind him to Preston.
Immediately the security chief was at his side, his M4 in one hand, the towels in the other.
“Now?” Preston asked.
“By all means.”
Preston leaned the assault rifle against the table and took his pistol from the holster at his hip. The men’s gazes were riveted as he advanced toward Eva and Yitzhak with the two towels.
“The later Assassins.”Yitzhak backed up.“That’s what the towels mean. They covered entrance and exit wounds to control the mess that spraying blood makes.”
73
Judd, Tucker, and Roberto hurried along the quiet hallway toward the stairwell. Judd saw instantly both elevators were descending. Passing them, he yanked open the stairwell’s door and heard feet pounding down from high above, echoing against the stone walls. They sounded like a battalion.
“Run!”
With Tucker and Roberto following, he hurtled down the steps to the fourth level and peered through the window into a formal anteroom. Assault rifle in both hands, he slid out, Tucker on his heels. No one was around.
Tucker pulled Roberto from the stairwell, locked and bolted the door, and shoved the small man into a corner beside a tall cabinet, where he would be out of range.
Judd nodded at a huge carved-wood door. “The Library of Gold.” But before they could breach it they still had to face the security teams in the elevators.
“Looks like it,” Tucker agreed.
Judd dropped flat, facing one of the two elevators. Tucker lay prone in front of the other. They aimed their M4s.
Tucker’s elevator arrived first. Four guards were standing inside. Tucker sent a fusillade of automatic fire across them, the noise thunderous. Completely surprised, they’d had no time to aim.
As they grabbed the walls and each other and fell, Judd’s elevator door started to open. This time gunfire exploded from the cage, but aimed high, where men should have been standing. Immediately Judd returned fire, ripping rounds across the five men’s torsos. They staggered and sank, blood pouring from their chests. The air filled with a metallic stink.
Judd and Tucker jumped up and disabled each elevator.
Roberto was already at the library’s big wood door, his eyes wide, his gaze determined.
“Don’t go in there,” Tucker snapped from across the room.
A guard appeared at the window in the stairwell door and yanked, trying to open it. Other guards were behind him, up the steps. The guard saw Judd and Tucker. As he shot through the glass, they sprinted. The rounds splintered across walls and into mirrors.
When they reached Roberto, there was sudden silence—they were beyond the guard’s view, with only seconds before he broke through the door. As bullets exploded again, Judd exchanged a look with Tucker. Tucker put Roberto behind him and readied his assault rifle.
Judd opened the massive carved door a crack, realizing instantly its core was solid steel, the hinges hidden, the movement pneumatic. It was a vault door. No way anyone could shoot through with an M4, and there was no lock to pick.
They slid inside, low, weapons leveled. As Tucker slammed the bolts behind them, sealing out the guards, Judd stared at eight pistols aimed at them by men standing around a large dining table. He quickly took in the room.
To the right was a shocked sommelier cringing in front of a wine bureau, his hand inside his tuxedo jacket, clasping his heart. Farther along the same wall Yitzhak crouched, sweat greasing his bald head. Eva was sprawled on the floor near him. Oddly, both were dressed in tuxedos. Preston lifted his pistol from Eva to train it on Judd and Tucker. Wearing jeans and a black leather jacket as he had the last time Judd had seen him, he let two towels fall from his hand.
“Judd, what a pleasant surprise,” Martin Chapman was saying. “I thought I wouldn’t have the pleasure of seeing you again.” Tall and genteel, he stood before the banquet table, his thick white hair flowing, his blue eyes sparkling with amusement, his pistol calmly p
ointed.
Judd stared at his father’s old friend. “You’re the one who had Dad killed? You son of a bitch.” As a wave of fury rolled through him, he felt Tucker’s restraining hand on his arm.
“Actually,” Chapman said, “Jonathan did it to himself. I tried to talk him out of it, but you know what a hothead he could be. He was completely unreasonable. I’m sorry we lost him. All of us liked him a great deal.”
He gestured with his free hand at the other men around the table. They came out and stood in a line on either side of him, their weapons never wavering as they aimed at Tucker and Judd.
Judd studied the men in their expensive evening clothes. Each was at least six feet tall and ranged in age from early forties to late sixties. Perfectly groomed and with strong athletic bodies, they had an unmistakable air of pride and confidence. Their uniformity was chilling.
“Yitzhak.” Roberto ran around the outside of the room, passing the sommelier.
The sommelier watched, his eyes enormous. A man in his sixties, he had deep wrinkles and a bulbous red nose, a man who enjoyed wine far too much.
“Shh,” Yitzhak warned.
Roberto dropped to the floor beside the professor. As Preston glanced in their direction, Eva lashed out a foot at his leg.
Preston stepped back and pointed his pistol down at her. “Get up!”
Judd realized several of the tuxedoed men were weaving. Those close to the table steadied themselves on it.
Chapman noticed, too. Puzzled, he looked left and right along the line.
The knees of two buckled, and they fell.
“What in hell—” The oldest grabbed his forehead and keeled over.