The Illumination

by Karen Tintori

  “What do you want with it?” She braced her feet against the ground, trying to clear the fear from her head. “Who are you?”

  “That’s not important. The Light is the only thing that matters. That’s why it’s resurfaced now—it’s nearly time.”

  “Nearly time for what?” Keep him talking, Natalie thought. And get ready. He’s just a kid. A big, strong kid.

  But a big, strong, dangerous kid. His irises grew unexpectedly dark. He was studying her with a flicker of contempt. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re not a believer.”

  “I believe lots of things. I believe stealing is wrong. And that murder is evil.”

  That was a mistake. She realized it as soon as she said it. His face darkened, and he moved so quickly she never even had time to duck. He backhanded her, his knuckles cracking against her cheek, sending blinding pain through her ears. The sunlight dimmed.

  His breath was hot on her face. “I’m a servant of the Lord. I do what is necessary to serve Him, and one cannot sin in the service of the Lord.”

  For a moment she couldn’t see her surroundings, and she fought to keep her feet. Dizzily, she shifted the car keys in her hand, careful not to let them jingle. Through the haze of nausea and pain she worked them until they protruded between her fingers.

  “The Sentinel has given me my mission. The Light must shine from the Third Temple. Its radiance will usher in the Rapture.”

  The Sentinel? The Rapture?

  He’s delusional. A loose cannon.

  But someone powerful’s giving him his orders. A loose cannon wouldn’t have the resources to have tracked Rusty—or to find me in Rome.

  Natalie struggled to speak through the pain eddying through her head. “Just let go of me and—”

  He thumped her head against the car.

  “I can wait,” he said softly. “It won’t take long. In the end I’ll simply take the Light away from you.”

  D’Amato dodged through the warren of narrow streets, bearing north, working his way toward the Piazzi di Spagna—and the Spanish Steps.

  He’d lost the NSU guys in the Piazza della Rotonda after ducking into the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj. He knew the vast stone museum well. With its four picture galleries off the courtyard, its Mirror Gallery, private apartment, chapel, and the Via della Gatta wing, they’d waste a good couple of hours hunting for him before they caught on. He pictured them dashing up and down all those stairways, through the numerous salons. Maybe they’d soak up a little culture while they were chasing his shadow. He’d be on the Via del Corso looking for Natalie before they realized he’d given them the slip—as slyly as the cat the Via della Gatta was named for.

  He strode past the Colonna dell’Immacolata with barely a glance at its statue of the Virgin Mary. Suddenly, a young woman holding a baby shoved a map in his face, pointing, asking directions. D’Amato wasn’t about to fall for this thieves’ trick, common among the Gypsies who plagued Rome’s tourists. He pushed her away and shouldered his way through the swarm of handsome, dark-haired, dark-eyed Gypsies intent on distracting him, one hand protecting the pocket in which he carried his passport and wallet.

  But he didn’t make it as far as the next piazza before he felt the unmistakable pressure of a gun digging into the small of his back.

  A small car screeched to a halt two feet away.

  “Get in.”

  The voice behind him was a terse whisper. The accent eluded him as the man jammed the gun harder against his spine.

  Another man appeared from the street, dark and swarthy, swinging open the car door and allowing his jacket to fall open just enough for D’Amato to see that he, too, was armed. The gun at his back drove him forward, leaving D’Amato no choice but to duck his head as he was shoved inside the car.

  40

  The lane was still deserted.

  Natalie could hear faint strains of laughter carrying on the breeze from the gelateria. She could taste the metallic tang of blood in her mouth—she’d bitten a gouge inside her cheek when he’d slugged her.

  “Don’t make this worse than it has to be. I know you’ve got it in your purse.” The young thug’s eyes bored into her. “Women keep everything in their purse. So hand it over, and I won’t have to hit you again.”

  She sighed in resignation and let her shoulders slump as she balanced herself evenly on both feet. Then she reached with her free hand to grasp the purse strap, lifting it slowly over her head. As his gaze followed the arc of the shoulder bag across her body, she punched out desperately with her other hand, stabbing the protruding keys into his nose with all the force she could muster. He bellowed in pain and shock, doubling to his knees as blood gushed from his nostrils. Natalie kicked him straight in the face, and he tumbled backward, his nose now a crushed mass of blood and cartilage.

  But before she could duck into the car, he kicked upward, leading with his heel, hitting her full in the side. Natalie would have gasped in pain as she slammed against the Fiat’s door, but there wasn’t a breath of air left in her burning lungs. Then he was up again, towering over her. Howling. Furious.

  Struggling to draw breath, Natalie flung one arm across her face to stave off his blow. Focus. But how could she focus when she couldn’t breathe . . .

  Ignoring the crushing pain in her side, she took one step toward him to get clear of the car and pivoted toward him in a blur of motion. The next instant her entire weight slammed into a roundhouse kick. Her kneecap torqued through his midsection and up into his rib cage with shattering force.

  He went down like a wounded bull, and she heard the dull thwack of his head hitting the pavement. As he lay on the ground, contorted with pain, he reached under his hooded sweatshirt into the waistband of his jeans, and yanked free a knife. It looked like a steak knife, probably stolen from a café.

  For an instant, a vision of Maren being stabbed burst through Natalie’s mind and then she was in motion, stomping on his wrist, forcing him to release his hold on the knife. She kicked the blade away, only to have his free hand clamp around her ankle and pull it out from under her.

  She fell hard, toppling half across him, and grunted as his heavy body rolled and knocked her beneath him. Her shoulder bag slid away, several feet across the pavement. Desperately, she jammed the flat of her palm up and into his bloodied nose and heard a sickening crack. He bellowed in pain and his hands reflexively went up to protect his face. It was the opening she needed. She hooked her left leg around his right leg, giving herself leverage to thrust her left hip and roll his weight off of her. As the back of his head smacked on the pavement, she sprang from the ground and kicked at his head. She kept kicking until blood began to pour from his ear, trickling to the street in a sticky, ruby-colored stream. His hands never left his nose. He looked like he was in shock. Yet his lips were still moving.

  Natalie spotted a billfold hanging halfway out of his sweatshirt pocket. Cringing, she snatched it out. As she backed away quickly, she thought she heard him whisper.

  “The . . . Light . . .”

  Then something soft and black was draped across her face. It was pulled tight and knotted at the back of her head. She struggled, striking out with a rear defensive kick, but she never made contact with her attacker. She felt herself lifted, clamped by four impossibly strong hands. The billfold was ripped from her grasp.

  They captured her swiftly, and she was helpless, submerged in darkness. Where’s the tzohar? she thought frantically.

  The next thing she knew she was being hustled onto hard leather seats. She felt someone squeeze in beside her in the tight space. Car doors slammed as a powerful engine roared to life, even as her fingers tore at the knotted ends of the hood.

  41

  Air Force One

  The President cradled the phone between his chin and his shoulder, swiveling in his overstuffed leather chair as the plane cruised at thirty-seven thousand feet.

  “What kind of chatter?” he asked Jackson Wright. “Same stuff we’ve been screening
for the past month—or something new?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary for this part of the world, Mr. President.” The Secretary of Defense’s voice boomed loud and clear from Oslo. “We’re still getting intel about the Shomrei Kotel, independent of what the Israelis are sharing with us. Their right-wingers are still protesting, still threatening to blow up the Temple Mount—but no one believes that they have the ability to make good on their promises. Various Al Qaeda groups are making the usual noises.”

  Garrett closed his eyes. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  He’d worked too hard for this—his dream of peace in the Middle East. His legacy. He wasn’t about to let any fanatical thugs steal it from him and from the world.

  “So we’re on course. Let’s keep it that way.”

  “Believe me, Mr. President, no amount of abstruse chatter is going to destroy a profound opportunity. Israel wants this treaty as much as we do. The Mossad is all over this summit like hummus on pita.”

  The words were reassuring, yet Garrett knew that in the Middle East, in an instant, anything could change. In Oslo, Yitzhak Rabin thought he was brokering a peace, too . . .

  Suddenly the sun was glaring too brightly in his eyes, distracting him. Garrett snapped the plastic shade closed, shuttering the window beside him.

  “Keep me updated, Jackson. Now give me the status of Firefly.”

  He heard a sigh on the other end. “The NSU has tracked the Landau woman to Rome. Firefly, however, is still in flight. We expect to have them both before you land in Israel.”

  “Capture it already, damn it.” Scowling, Garrett ended the call. He wouldn’t rest easy until the signatures were indelibly scrawled on the peace treaty and Firefly was secured. His plans for Firefly would supersede even his legacy of bringing peace to the Middle East.

  He glanced at his watch. In just fifteen minutes he’d have to put on his most optimistic face and head back to the rear of the plane, where the press corps would pump him for comments on the momentous upcoming event. He refused to dwell on any possibility that the historic meeting on the Temple Mount could evaporate like the smoke trailing behind his jet.

  42

  “Give that back to me.”

  Natalie had escaped the blindness of the hood just in time to see the olive-eyed young man next to her pull the evil eye pouch from her purse. Ignoring her demand, he spilled the pendant into his palm and stared at the jeweled eyes winking up at him.

  “I have it.” He spoke in Hebrew to the two men in the front seat. “It’s protected by the eye, just as the scroll says.” His voice was tinged with awe. “I’m holding the tzohar.”

  Swift as a hawk, Natalie plucked the pendant from his grasp, her fingers closing on it like talons. “Not anymore you’re not.” Instinctively, she replied in Hebrew. He was an Israeli, that much she was certain.

  She was shaking all over. She’d just killed a man. And been kidnapped in broad daylight. Her face throbbed with pain, but it was nothing compared to the agony arcing across her stomach from the museum thug’s kick. Despite all that, she wasn’t about to let anyone take the tzohar from her. Especially not this guy . . . there’s something about him . . .

  And then it hit her. She looked down at his feet. Sneakers. Tied now.

  “You followed us into the alley,” she accused, willing herself to appear strong. “Who are you?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Just where do you think you’re taking me?”

  “To safety.” The driver spoke over his shoulder.

  His front-seat passenger turned, revealing a round, friendly face with dark stubble across his jawline. “Kol b’seder.” You’re okay. “We had to grab you like that to get you off the street. There was no time to explain.”

  The man beside her cocked an eyebrow. “Do you know how many people are looking for you? You’re much better off with us. And so is the tzohar.”

  “You’re Israelis—are you Mossad?”

  “What do you think?” The round-faced man in the passenger seat tore his gaze from the pendant to smile at her, revealing dimples and perfect white teeth. “For now, let’s just say I’m Rafi,” he continued. “Our driver here is Lior, and the joker seated beside you is the infamous Yuvi, our resident ladies’ man. Me . . .” He shrugged. “I have to work on my pickup technique—somehow the hood doesn’t endear me to the ladies.”

  I’m sure kidnapping them doesn’t either, Natalie thought, adrenaline still coursing through her. “I’m supposed to be meeting someone near the Spanish Steps.” Her voice sounded steadier than she felt. “He’s waiting for me. You have to take me there.”

  “Don’t worry about Mr. D’Amato.” Yuvi shrugged. “He’s already en route to the same place we are. With a similar escort.”

  Somehow Natalie couldn’t quite picture D’Amato with a black hood over his head. “Where are we going?”

  “Where else?” The driver, Lior, who looked to be in his late forties, spoke up, his voice deep and lazy. “We’re taking the tzohar back where it belongs. We won’t allow one of our people’s treasures to be stolen again.”

  Natalie sank back against the seat. She’d come to the same conclusion herself—that the Israeli government had dispatched these men to reclaim whatever was inside the pendant. All in all, she was almost relieved to have this particular escort. But she wasn’t particularly overjoyed about having the decisions taken out of her hands.

  “Let’s get this straight. If anyone’s going to deliver this pendant to the Israel Antiquities Authority, that would be me.” Her voice was quiet now, resolute.

  When they said nothing, she leaned forward. “Agreed?”

  Rafi hesitated. Then Lior nodded and shifted his gaze from the road just long enough to glance down at the pendant before Natalie returned it to its pouch. “The IAA is already aware of your experience with ancient artifacts,” Lior told her. “You won’t be unwelcome.”

  “Sit back and relax. You won’t even need your passport,” Yuvi assured her as she drew a shuddering breath. “We have a private jet standing by. No one looking for you in Rome will be the wiser that you and your friend D’Amato are no longer here.”

  43

  D’Amato stared at Natalie’s bruised face as the wings of the private plane angled after takeoff. He ignored the two Israelis sitting across from him—his kidnappers—the red-haired Doron and the squat, balding Nuri, who was now sporting a broken nose. D’Amato had gotten in one quick punch when he’d spotted the length of steel pipe Nuri had shoved into his back, simulating a gun. He’d paid for it with a jab to the ribs that still kept him from sitting up straight, but then he’d always thought good posture was overrated. A good pain pill, on the other hand . . .

  But he wasn’t about to take a single step down that road again. He’d deal with the pain.

  What bothered him most was that Natalie looked ten times worse than he felt. The ice pack the cabin attendant had given her had done little to lessen the swelling across her cheek. An ugly bruise was already purpling beneath her left eye.

  “Who did that to you? These guys?” His eyes hard, he nodded across the aisle to where Yuvi, Rafi, and Lior were hunched around a laptop and sipping from mugs of steaming tea. He’d recognized Yuvi from the alley the moment he walked onto the plane and was ticked off that he’d dismissed an operative as “harmless.”

  Natalie shook her head. “It was the guy from the museum,” she said in a low tone. “He attacked me just as I reached the car. He told me to hand over the ‘Light.’ That he was on a mission for some guy he called the Sentinel.”

  “And he did that to your face?”

  She grimaced. “When I wouldn’t give him the pendant, he stopped asking nicely.”

  D’Amato banged his fist on the tray table in front of him. “How did he find you here? And who sent him?”

  The last question was directed more to the Israelis than to Natalie. He’d answered enough of their questions during the drive to the private airfield at the Fiumicino Airport; now he
wanted some answers from them.

  But it was Natalie who replied.

  “They think they know.” She tilted her head toward the Mossad agents studying the computer screen. “The thug’s name is Barnabas Lewis, by the way. I managed to grab his billfold, but Lior took it away from me while I was being dragged to the car. In addition to a driver’s license, he found some hotel receipts—”

  “Charged to Reverend Kenneth Mundy,” Lior interrupted in his lazy voice, without looking away from the screen. “Shabak has quite a file on the good reverend. He seems to think the tzohar can help him instigate the Rapture.”

  Shabak was the internal security service of Israel. Its equivalent of the FBI.

  “Mundy heads up some fringe group out of Florida under the cover of the Radiant Light of Heaven Church,” Lior continued. “His name is on the U.S. guest list for the peace summit.” He regarded the other Israelis with a frown. “Though no one from the U.S. State Department seems to know how it got there.”

  The agents seated across from Natalie and D’Amato exchanged glances. D’Amato picked up on the subtle shift in their postures.

  Then Yuvi unbuckled his seatbelt and stood, balancing easily despite the slight tremble of the plane. “The Office has been aware of Mundy for some time,” he told Natalie and D’Amato. His close-cropped dark hair seemed to glisten in the overhead lights. “He has a secret core following—unknown to his congregation. They call themselves the Sons of Babylon. They’ve been socking away money in Panama to rebuild the Temple.”

  “His Sons of Babylon are loosely linked with Shomrei Kotel, the Israeli extremist group intent on the same goal,” Lior added dryly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Mundy’s so confident of his plans, he’s even got the blueprints ready.”

  “Just how big a following does he have?” Natalie lifted her cup of tea and took a sip, her mind racing.