The Illumination

by Karen Tintori

  From the beginning, Natalie knew well, people have always found a prolonged stare unnerving. That’s why, throughout history, most cultures have replicated the open eye as a protective amulet—like the one in her hand—to reflect back the evil effects of a suspect gaze.

  She’d always found it fascinating that people in the Middle East, since the days of early Sumeria, believed that light was generated in the heart and projected outward through the eyes, and that an evil heart cast an evil eye capable of harming whatever it looked upon.

  It seemed that humans had always worried that a covetous undercurrent flowed beneath every glance of admiration. That one could cause intentional or inadvertent harm with the naked eye. In many languages and through many centuries, there was a single name for the feared glance—the evil eye.

  The Italians called it malocchio, the Scots droch shuil, the Jews ayin ha’ra. In Spanish it was mal de ojo, in Polish oko proroka, in Farsi bla band. And the Greeks called it matiasma.

  Even the Torah spoke of the evil eye. In the Book of Proverbs, King Solomon cautioned, “Eat not the bread of him that hath an evil eye.” And St. Paul wrote in the New Testament, “Oh foolish Galatians, who has cast the evil eye upon you?”

  The evil eye had intrigued the ancient Romans Cicero, Virgil, and Pliny, all of whom had commented on it in their writings. As did the first-century Greek historian Plutarch, who wrote that certain men’s eyes could bring harm to infants and young animals whose bodies were still weak and vulnerable, but that these same gazes couldn’t wield the same power over adults. Except for Thebans, of course. Plutarch was convinced that their eyes possessed the power to harm both infants and adults.

  Natalie had spent years examining and cataloging hundreds of protective eyes from the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean basin. The eye amulets had come from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Africa, Italy, Turkey, Persia, Iraq, and Israel.

  But she felt a special spark of excitement as she tilted the eye pendant from Dana beneath the lamp. Though she’d inspected countless amulets painted or engraved with the protective eye, she’d never come across one quite like this.

  Like the others she’d studied, it was old and outlined as if with the greasy kohl commonly employed by men and women alike to protect the eyes of the wearer since before the days of Cleopatra.

  But the eyes on this pouch and amulet were different. They were doubly encircled with thick blue borders of lapis lazuli. And the red stones forming the irises—carnelian, she guessed—were not set against the usual background of white, but against a sea of yellow. She wondered if the yellow stones were jaspers. All three of those gems had been used for adornment as far back as the Babylonian period.

  Lost in thought, Natalie chewed her lip. There was a heft to the darkened gold setting—and she’d bet her fifth-century Etruscan amulet emblazoned with the head of Medusa that the setting was of real gold—that told her this pendant was crafted for someone of wealth and importance. From what she could deduce on first glance, this necklace was far from the trinket Dana’s note had jokingly suggested.

  Dana has no idea what this is, she thought, shaking her head. But then, neither do I.

  And there wouldn’t be time to properly investigate it, she realized with a disappointed sigh, not until she’d dug out from a backlog of work that could fill an Egyptian burial chamber. Still, it was an enticing mystery waiting to be solved. More important, it was an overture from her sister, an opening for a much-needed conversation.

  A sliver of apprehension suddenly tingled through her. She hoped to God Dana hadn’t bought this pendant on the black market, inadvertently paying next to nothing for an unrecognized treasure that had been looted in Iraq at the start of the war.

  Tomorrow, she promised herself, she’d have to make time to check the latest list of antiquities still unaccounted for—and pray she wouldn’t see this evil eye pendant staring back at her from her computer screen.

  As she lifted the pendant by its chain to slip it back into the pouch, Natalie paused, once again struck by its heft. But it isn’t only the gold, she realized with a start. There’s something inside.

  She reached for her magnifying glass and peered at the metal ring through which the chain was threaded, probing it to see if it doubled as a clasp. But it didn’t—the pendant wouldn’t open, and its surface appeared intact. She couldn’t detect a seam anywhere in the gold.

  Suddenly her concentration was broken by the sound of a drawer closing. What was that? It seemed to have come from down the hall.

  A moment later, the sound came again.

  Who else is up here after hours? Dennis? Did he leave his wedding ring in his desk again?

  Her eyes narrowed at the thought of the Armani-obsessed associate curator whose office was a few doors down. Dennis Bellweather considered himself hot stuff, with his five published pieces in Art News magazine and his frequent lunch dates with a series of women half his age. You’d think by now the little Lothario would be more adept at juggling his double life.

  Just then she heard a crash and she rushed around the desk.

  “Den—” But the word died in her throat as a figure appeared in Dennis’s doorway twenty feet away. And it wasn’t Dennis.

  It was a man, but one tall and twice Dennis’s girth, with shoulders hewn from either sweat or steroids. He could have been a linebacker for the Giants, except he wasn’t wearing a red-striped helmet or a royal blue uniform. He was wearing a black ski mask, black gloves, and baggy gray sweats.

  After the first thump of fear slammed through her chest, logic spun out an answer. Valerie finally hired a private detective to nail the scumbag. As the thought flashed through her mind, the stranger started toward her with a lumbering gait.

  “Quiet,” he warned in a throaty baritone, lengthening his strides to close the gap between them.

  “Security!” Natalie took a step backward, shouting at the top of her lungs.

  He burst into a sprint, charging toward her. Heart hammering, she veered to the left, darting toward the reception desk and the alarm button on the underside of Lita’s keyboard shelf. Private detective or no, he was moving like a man determined to shut her up.

  She made it only three strides down the hallway before she heard him directly behind her. At that, her training kicked in, and she spun to face him.

  He couldn’t slow down fast enough, and his momentum was exactly what she’d counted on. Her arm shot out, the heel of her palm aimed toward his nose as she leaned her body into the slam. Reflexively, her other fist—the one clutching tight to the pendant—shot up to protect her face.

  Ski Mask grunted at the impact, stunned by the sharp jolt of pain and the blood spurting from his nostrils. Through the eye slits in his mask, she could see the pain glaring from amber-flecked brown eyes. Without giving him an instant to recover, she drove her heel down hard on his instep.

  The maneuvers bought her another second. She lunged for the reception area once again, but as she rushed toward the desk and the buzzer, her heel caught on the wheeled base of Lita’s chair and she tumbled against the bookshelves lining the wall, her shoe flying in the opposite direction.

  Then she felt his hands tangling in her hair. He was on her in a fury, dragging her backward as pain ripped from her hairline to her nape. The force of his grip brought tears.

  “I’ll take this, ma’am.” His voice was thick with a mouthful of blood. A faint drawl tinged his words. He grabbed her hand in a fist the size of a gorilla’s and began prying her fingers from the pendant.

  In the instant it took her to realize what he was after, her fingers clamped tighter around the amulet and she fought back, ramming her free elbow backward and up toward his sternum.

  “Security!” she screamed again, frantic. “Zone 6!”

  His foot hooked around hers, brought her down hard. She hit the carpet like a roped calf. As he dropped down to straddle her and grabbed for the pendant once more, she pitched it past him—sending it deep into the leafy
jungle of plants.

  To her shock, he scrambled to his feet to lurch after it. On his hands and knees, he began groping among the porcelain pots cradling split-leaf philodendron and ficus. She clambered to her feet and saw the thin beam of his penlight probing the dirt, fronds, and carpet. The sound of voices and pounding footsteps filled the stairwell.

  “Here!” she yelled. “Reception!”

  The exit door burst open, and Ski Mask sprang up, tucked his head down, and made a beeline for the elevators, hitting the buttons repeatedly with the flat of his gloved palm. The center door slid noiselessly open, even as Natalie launched herself toward the plants.

  Had he found the pendant? Had he taken it?

  Then her breath whooshed out in relief as she caught its glint from the carpet behind the cycas palm. Her fingertips scrabbled for the hammered gold as the security guards surged past her and toward the elevator bank.

  But they were too late. All they caught sight of were the doors closing on a huge ski-masked man—and Natalie rising from her knees amid the array of plants, trembling, wearing only one high-heeled red shoe.

  10

  Barnabas kept his steps to a measured pace as he walked toward Central Park, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his sweatshirt. Behind him sirens screamed, but he forced himself not to run, hoping it was too dark for anyone to notice the blood dried beneath his nostrils and speckled across the gray fleece fabric covering his chest.

  In the dark, the spots could easily be mistaken for sweat. To passersby he was merely a jogger on the way home from his nightly run. No one looking his way would possibly guess how he’d gotten tonight’s workout.

  Blood and sirens pounded in his ears as he reached the park and ambled down a winding path. He skirted the Great Lawn at Turtle Pond, keeping his pace steady. Though outwardly calm, inside he was raging, and it was a struggle to keep his breathing even.

  How could he have let himself fail? The Light had been a hand’s breadth away, and he’d been driven off by a woman’s slap and a bunch of rent-a-cops.

  That green-eyed woman had surprised him. She was trim, no more than five feet six, but toned like a female who took her elliptical workout seriously. Still, he’d never expected her to fight back like that—she was much faster and stronger than he’d have guessed.

  How would he tell Reverend Mundy that a woman had bested him?

  Tears of frustration squeezed from the corners of his eyes. He’d had four chances today—four—but each time he’d been a beat off the mark. If only he’d been able to take it from the bald guy before he’d ducked into that cab at JFK. He’d followed fast enough in the next cab, but had gotten hung up at a traffic light, and by the time Barnabas had jumped out and run across the street, someone else was in the bald guy’s cab and the target was entering the museum.

  Even when he’d finally caught up with Mister Rusty Sutherland outside the museum and managed to inject him with two milligrams of Ativan without anyone being the wiser, he’d still failed. He’d dragged Sutherland up two flights of stairs in a condemned building in Alphabet City, and searched him thoroughly, but hadn’t found the Light in his backpack or anywhere else.

  Barnabas had been left with no other choice than to bind the man like Abraham had bound Isaac—rendering him a ducttaped sacrificial lamb ready for the altar of interrogation.

  He’d had to wait nearly two hours for the Ativan to wear off, but he’d used the time to pray, certain that the Lord would aid him in getting the information he needed without having to resort to violence. But the Lord had different plans, and they were not for Barnabas to question.

  Pain normally worked quickly on people, but Sutherland had proved stubborn. Barnabas realized the Lord was testing him in this task. Even after he’d snapped several of Sutherland’s fingers like pencils, the bald man had refused to say what he’d done with the Light.

  Barnabas had assured him that he didn’t want to inflict any more pain. Everything would have been so much simpler if only Sutherland had complied. Though Barnabas had apologized over and over, he’d found it necessary to force the man into cooperation. The most he could get out of him, even as he held him by the feet over the abandoned elevator shaft, was that Sutherland had left the Light at the museum.

  The museum. That was my fourth failure. Why, Lord? Why didn’t you see fit to bless my quest? Why are you testing me?

  Now everything was far more complicated. The police would be looking for him, and the woman still had the Light.

  What is she telling the police about it? How much does she know?

  Sweat soaked along his hairline as he began to pray again, praying now for guidance, for God to grant him the Light. His lips moved beneath the murky glimmer of the streetlights as he walked. He was heedless of the passersby and of the pain throbbing through the nerve endings in the center of his face.

  The pain in his soul was far worse.

  Suddenly the answer crept into his mind, like a whisper from above. The Sentinel. If anyone could find out the woman’s identity, it was the Sentinel. He needed to call Reverend Mundy and ask for that help.

  And admit his failure.

  Barnabas’s shoulders were bent by the time he entered his room in the Skyline Hotel two miles away.

  His voice cracked as the reverend answered his cell phone. Reverend Mundy sounded so eager.

  “Please don’t be disappointed in me, sir. I failed you tonight—but I will do better, I give you my promise. We don’t have to worry about the man anymore—but now the Light is in the hands of a woman.”

  Or in the hands of the police, he thought in panic, not daring to give voice to such a possibility.

  “I need the Sentinel to find out who she is, sir. The woman who works in the museum.” He rushed on, delaying the moment when he would hear the disappointment in the reverend’s voice. “Tell me who she is, and then, in the name of the Savior, I’ll find her. And the Light will be ours.”

  11

  “Fill me in on something, Dr. Landau. Why were you here in the building after hours?”

  Detective Marv Henderson inspected the tiny sloping scrawl across his notebook, then lifted his glance once more to Natalie’s drained face. He sat stout as a beer keg in the seat across from her in the museum director’s office, a no-nonsense man with bristly gray hair, nibbled-down fingernails, and an unwrapped cigar sticking out of his breast pocket.

  Throughout the museum, every light blazed as police fanned out to search the galleries, storerooms, and corridors, assisted by staff members who’d been summoned to ascertain whether anything had been taken or damaged. Roberta Flaherty, the museum director, had rushed over from the theater still clutching her program.

  “As I told Officer Garibaldi already, I came back to get something from my desk.” Natalie slouched back in her chair wearily, Dana’s pendant clenched between her hands in her lap.

  The detective was once again studying his notes from behind his thick eyeglasses, his manner almost distracted. “And you were here how long before you heard the intruder?”

  “Five minutes . . . ten. No more.”

  “And are you in the habit of returning to the museum after hours?” At that, his gaze locked on hers.

  “Of course not.” She bit back her annoyance. “It’s my habit to go home at the end of the day.”

  “But not today?”

  “No. I told you, just as I told Officer Garibaldi, I had dinner with a friend and then came back to get something from my desk.”

  “And what was that?” His pen was poised in midair. His eyes looked twice their size, magnified by the thickness of his lenses.

  Slowly Natalie unclenched her hands and held out the pendant she’d retrieved from the tangle of plants.

  “It’s an evil eye amulet. I was planning to study it at home this evening.”

  Detective Henderson’s brows slid together, colliding in the middle of his creased forehead. “Are you in the habit of taking museum property home with you in the evenings
?”

  “Absolutely not.” Natalie felt a twinge of alarm. The amulet had nothing to do with the break-in. And the last thing she wanted was for the police to get sidetracked. “This isn’t the museum’s property. It’s mine.” She closed her hand around the pendant again and met his magnified eyes. “My personal property.”

  “You said the intruder tried to take it from you. And that he was wearing gloves. Which means the only prints on it would be yours, Dr. Landau?”

  “Yes, that’s right. He was wearing gloves. Black gloves. The thin cotton kind you’d wear for gardening.”

  He paused to scratch again at his notepad and Natalie waited uneasily. She suddenly felt too warm in her belted gray cashmere sweater. Detective Henderson’s manner reminded her, uncomfortably, of her childhood neighbor, Mr. Petroskey, who spent every spring accusing her or Dana of picking his precious tulips.

  “Is it valuable? Your amulet?”

  The question jolted her, and her mind raced in a panic.

  How was she to answer that? She had no idea yet whether it was valuable or not. And if she told him it might be, he’d ask her where she’d gotten it—and then what? She’d have to tell him that her sister, the famous newscaster, had sent it from Iraq. Without knowing its provenance, the last thing she’d want was to inadvertently get Dana in hot water or to embarrass her network.

  Natalie’s thoughts flew ahead. What if Henderson followed up—and it turned out the pendant was an antiquity and valuable? That Dana actually had unwittingly sent her something looted from the Iraq museum?

  Her throat went dry. Dana’s career could go up in flames like one of the car-bombed armored vehicles she reported about.

  I can’t risk it. If there’d been some horrible mistake, it can be taken care of quietly. Diplomatically. Not tossed in the lap of an NYPD detective on a wild goose chase.

  “No, it’s not valuable at all.” The lie just sprang from her lips. And then it was too late to take it back.

  It’s a very small lie, Natalie told herself. If it even is a lie. It wasn’t as if Henderson needed the truth about the amulet for his investigation. She didn’t even know what the truth was yet.