“You got tired?”
I quickly sipped the last of my cold coffee before going on. I still wasn’t sure how far I should trust this man.
“Yes, Colonel. Tired. Exhausted. I spent months staring into the adamants, trying to visualize a location where the connection to the world of angels was strongest. I tried to find what they called ‘portals.’ Niches on Earth where a divine connection is strongest. Can you imagine what my life was like? I felt like a guinea pig, a prisoner to my own husband! The second I gave him some new coordinates, we were off again to some distant country. We traipsed all across Europe before finally returning to Santiago.”
“So, you were tired and gave up.”
“Well . . .” I hesitated. “There was one other minor detail.”
“And that is . . . ?”
“Martin was raised in a Protestant home, and not a very religious one at that. And I was raised in a deeply Catholic family. All the times he tried to get me to make the adamants move or give us signs, he insisted on having me gaze upon them endlessly . . . and, well, it scared me. It started to feel like something . . . demonic. We were toying with strange and powerful forces that I didn’t understand. S-so . . . ,” I stammered, “just before he left for Turkey, after five disjointed years of wrestling with the adamants, we had a huge fight.”
“Because of the adamants?”
“I told him I was tired of his witchcraft and that I was through helping him. That his days of experimenting were over, at least for me.”
“I bet that really rattled him.”
“More than you can imagine,” I admitted. “When he realized my decision was final, he decided to separate me from my adamant and hide it someplace secret. And he took his with him to Turkey to find one of the locations that had come to me in a vision. He wanted to hide that one, too. He promised me he was through with the adamants and that he would make sure no one would ever touch them or use them again. But he said we had to be careful. He was obsessed with them not falling into the wrong hands. He wanted to make sure no one except his family could find the adamants. That’s why he decided to split them up.”
“But now we need your adamant to find Martin.”
“Why?” I shot back. “Why would you think we’d ever need it to find Martin? Those stones can burn in hell, for all I care!”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Ms. Álvarez,” he said. “I think your talismans are actually remnants of a mineral from outer space, one that crashed to Earth as a meteor and is emitting high-frequency electromagnetic radiation. And I think Martin knew it. If we could find yours, the one your husband hid before he left, we could take it back to the lab, identify the exact frequency of the radiation, and use that information to search the Ararat region, where your husband was taken captive, for a similar signature frequency. We can triangulate that position from one of our satellites and send in a special ops team to rescue him.”
“This sounds like science fiction, Colonel.”
“Ms. Álvarez, your husband is familiar with these techniques, and he knows very well what the US government is capable of. He knows that adamant is the only way we have of finding him. And that’s why he sent you that cryptic message.”
“Are you sure?”
“It can’t hurt to try, can it?”
I stayed quiet for a moment, thinking.
“All right, Colonel,” I said finally. “But the problem is, even if your theory’s right, I have no idea where he hid my adamant.”
Allen patted his trusty iPad with a sideways grin. The device had sprung back to life.
“Are you sure?” he said. “Don’t you think Martin might have hidden the location in his message?”
20
Inspector Figueiras’s heart leaped out of his chest when one of his men burst into his office and shook him repeatedly.
“Inspector, Inspector, wake up!”
Antonio Figueiras had stretched out in his office chair and nodded off, hoping to rest for the five or six hours until morning when he could begin making his calls. But he wasn’t so lucky.
“Wha . . . what’s going on?”
“The chief has been trying to call you on your cell phone for hours,” the nervous officer said. “He said it’s urgent.”
“Son of a . . . What time is it?”
“Three thirty, sir.”
“In the morning?”
Figueiras looked incredulously out his window. It was still pitch-black outside, the rain pounding the glass mercilessly. He rushed over to his trench coat and dug around for his cell phone, which he remembered he had turned off. He cursed under his breath and chased the man out of the room before he dialed the chief, only to find his boss much more alert than he was.
“Where the devil have you been, Figueiras?”
“Sorry, sir. My cell phone battery died,” he lied.
“Okay, enough with the flimsy excuses. I’ve got some information on your case.”
“About the cathedral?”
“What else? I got a call from our embassy in Washington a half hour ago. I’d asked them to poke around quietly about this spy married to our countrywoman.”
“And . . . ?”
“You’re not going to believe this. Martin Faber’s been kidnapped by a group of Turkish terrorists from the PKK in the northeastern part of the country. The United States’ NSA has launched an international search-and-rescue operation.”
“Kidnapped? Are you sure?”
“That’s the word. The PKK is a sect of radical, leftist terrorists who’ve been destabilizing Turkey’s Kurdish territories for years.”
Figueiras twisted in his chair as his boss went on.
“The shooting in the church wasn’t some random act of violence. Don’t you see? Someone’s trying to get to your witness. Protect Julia Álvarez at all costs. Understand me?”
“Yes, Chief.”
21
“There are a couple things you should know about your husband . . . ,” Nick Allen said.
“What kinds of things, Colonel?”
“Martin worked for the National Security Agency. The branch of our government that monitors communications all over the world and reports to our country’s Department of Defense.”
Allen must have seen my eyes widen in surprise. This total stranger knew things about my husband that I never would have imagined.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Álvarez. Martin wasn’t someone like me, involved in tactical operations. He was only a scientist.”
“He never mentioned any of that . . . ,” I mumbled.
“There’s a good reason for that: your own safety, ma’am. Even if you’re a janitor at the NSA, when you join the agency there are two major rules. The first: absolute discretion. Anything you see, do or learn while part of the agency stays inside the agency. And you, Ms. Álvarez, are outside the agency. We’re taught that any slipup, no matter how small, can endanger covert operations and risk innocent lives.”
“And the second rule?”
“Working for the NSA means accepting certain risks. If you’re captured by the enemy, they will try to wheedle every last bit of information from you. Even divulging the location of some menial field office can give them insight into how we move and operate. Since we’re always targets, we’re taught to do things like bury cryptic messages inside innocent-sounding phrases. Slipping a code into an innocent telephone call could be enough to save your life.”
“Martin knows to do that?” I asked, shocked.
Allen nodded. “Didn’t you notice anything strange in the video? Something about the way he delivered the last line?”
Allen clicked the button of his video player, and Martin’s emaciated face returned to the screen to deliver the last line.
“. . . and though others may strive to steal what was ours, keep envisioning a way for these two halves to be made whole again,” he said in Spanish.
Hearing the words again, this time they seemed redolent of dark omens.
“Here�
��s what I think, Julia. I think the code is in the words ‘envisioning a way for these two halves to be made whole again.’ Does that trigger anything in your mind? Do you remember your husband ever saying those words to you before? Maybe during some important moment or in some place that might give us a clue to where he might have hidden your adamant? The structure of the phrase highlights the instructions to you. It sounds like he’s saying that if you want to be reunited with him, there is a particular method or path you can envision.”
“Maybe he’s referring to my gift?”
“Hmm. Too simple.”
“Well, what if it’s a play on words? Martin loves word games.”
“Could be. Do you want to experiment with mixing up the letters?” he said, reaching into his pocket for a scrap of paper and a pen.
Just then, the lights flicked back on, and the café’s appliances came to life. The cigarette dispenser by the window flashed on. The coffee grinder began whirring. Even the coolers clanked back on. But it was a fleeting burst. A second later, they were off again, plunging us back into darkness.
22
Something was happening to the phosphorescent cloud floating above the three strangers.
The youngest of them was enthralled by it, amazed that it started to morph at the very moment the sheikh ordered him to open the black nylon bag he was carrying, allowing the rain to penetrate its contents. All he had said was simply, “It’s time to activate the Amrak.”
Instantly, the shapeless cloud floating over the ancient city of Santiago grew into a dense fog, expanding and pulsating with a sporadic rhythm, as if some creature were alive at its center, struggling to break free. A creature that reacted to the contents of that black bag. And when the young man saw the plaza’s lights flicker yet again, he knew it had something to do with this ethereal beast. To thrive, it would suck every last ounce of the surrounding energy. Maybe even his own.
“Are you ready?” the sheikh asked, oblivious to his apprentice’s worries.
The young man, who was named Waasfi and was descended from one of Armenia’s most influential families, nodded. So did the other man, a soldier who’d been in countless battles since his country slipped from the yoke of the Soviet Union.
And then the sheikh did some something strange. Without moving the black bag, he held his hands over it, as if preparing to cast a spell, and brought his face within an inch of it.
He could immediately sense the subtle aroma and the surprising breeze that always seemed to appear when he was about to tap the power of the object he handled so carefully. Bringing the object so close to Julia Álvarez, he felt, was like completing an ancient circle. His Amrak—the name he gave to his ancient charm—would finally show all the power it was capable of.
The other two men stood an equal distance from the bag and began to hum with a constant monotone voice, like a mantra. Mmmmmmmmm. The sheikh had taught them to use the resonance in their chest to awaken the Amrak. As strange as it might seem, the idea was based wholly in science. The Amrak was a squarish tablet made of a mineral whose atoms were arranged in hexagonal molecules. At the right frequency, the stone would resonate, altering its atomic structure—the way a soprano’s particular pitch can shatter a crystal champagne flute, or a focused ultrasonic blast can pulverize a kidney stone.
And in just the same way, the mysterious relic inside the bag soon began to hum, as if in sync with the serenade. At first, it was barely audible. But the humming grew, filling them with all the determination they needed.
Their leader trained his eyes on the bag until he deemed the moment just right to begin an incantation of unintelligible phrases. He could see wisps of smoke begin to form. And he knew he would soon feel its enrapturing power, an invisible but brutal force that would knock out anyone who hadn’t insulated themselves in garments lined with lead—as their clothes were.
Neither of the sheikh’s young soldiers knew exactly what was happening. But a tingling was starting to wash over them from head to toe. It wasn’t painful or even entirely unpleasant. It was like a mild static electricity that filled the air.
“Zacar od zamran; odo cicle qaa . . .”
They followed their orders and repeated the sheikh’s strange words, whatever they meant. It wasn’t Armenian, but some other arcane and mysterious tongue.
“Zorge lap sirdo noco Mad . . .”
A fresh wave of goose bumps ran across their flesh as they repeated those alien words.
“ . . . Zorge nap sidun . . .”
No one who might have happened upon that bizarre scene—three strangers dressed in black, praying around a black bag on the street in the driving rain—could ever have imagined what was happening. Nor would they have believed that this ritual was, in fact, a way to conjure a connection to the Supreme Being, to the very center of the universe—and that they were on the verge of crossing over beyond the realms of faith and theory. They repeated this ancient incantation, born of a forgotten and inscrutable language, hoping to draw the protection of the Amrak.
. . . Hoath Iada.
It was three thirty-five in the morning when the old city of Santiago fell into darkness for the third time that night. The cloud above had started just above the roofline but was now spreading out into the sprawling plaza toward the cathedral.
The sheikh was stunned as he watched it grow. “The power of God.” “His all-consuming fire.” “The glory of Yahweh.” It was known by many names. Yet few in the history of man had managed to extract such a force from that relic, which was now a weapon at their service. In fact, the sheikh had known only one person, one man, who could tap into its power. A brilliant scientific mind who had talked about using a combination of naturally occurring electromagnetic energies—the friction from tectonic forces, underground currents, atmospheric disturbances and even solar flares—to tap into the Amrak’s almost supernatural force and turn it into a fountain of inexhaustible power. Or into a powerful beacon of light. He had called it geoplasmic energy.
And now, the sheikh would use this knowledge ostensibly to rescue that very scientist—one Martin Faber.
23
The moment the lights went out again, I started to feel sick.
A nausea rose from the pit of my stomach until my mouth was swimming with saliva. I could hardly focus on Colonel Allen’s claim that the answer to Martin’s disappearance was encoded in his kidnapping video. I held on to the edge of the table in the café to keep steady. But when I looked across to Nicholas Allen by the last flash of the iPad’s screen, I could tell he, too, was about to faint. He scrunched his face in a way that made his scar seem gruesome, and he swayed from side to side in his chair. I only managed to notice a fleeting look in his blue eyes, a subtle look of panic. I could tell right away from the terrified look on his face that the soldier who had come to rescue me from God-knows-what had realized what was causing these symptoms.
But I didn’t have a chance to ask him about it.
I felt my last bit of strength leave me. My lungs had forgotten how to take in a breath. My muscles relaxed, and I suddenly stopped caring about the world around me. God, what’s happening to me?
I felt a last stab of pain and noticed that the hot coffee had spilled onto my lap. But my body couldn’t even respond involuntarily. Not even to react to the scalding coffee. Not to put my hands out before I crashed to the oak parquet floor.
A millisecond before everything went black, I had one final moment of lucidity. A terrifying last thought that felt all at once like a condemnation and a sweet release:
I am dead.
24
Father Benigno Fornés’s room overlooked the northern entrance to the cathedral. From his balcony in the San Martín Pinario seminary, he could see down to the gardens surrounding Bishop Gelmirez’s palace and into the Plaza de la Inmaculada. He always had a clear view of the cathedral and could see right away whether anything was amiss. Maybe it was his unobstructed view that kept the priest from being able to get to sleep that night.
He was more worried than usual after the first ruckus at the cathedral. Despite the biting cold, he kept the window open and his cell phone turned on. If anything else happened in his cathedral that night, he wanted to be the first to know.
The old man had a bad feeling about all of it. He had grown up just steps from those walls and he knew how quickly things could go from bad to worse. It wasn’t something he could put his finger on. He could just feel it in his bones. So he wasn’t too surprised when a series of events that night robbed him of his sleep.
First, it was the power failures that got him out of bed, the lights outside flickering before plunging the street into darkness. His mind was still spinning from the false threat of fire earlier in the night. Smart and discerning, and already unable to sleep, the seventy-one-year-old decided to take action.
He dressed quickly and quietly, grabbed his coat and flashlight and tiptoed past the other dormitories as he stepped out into the night. He hurried across the passageway along the Calle de la Azabachería to the cathedral, stopping just outside the abbey’s doors, hoping the crotchety old wiring inside him was wrong for once.
“I hope I’m wrong, Lord,” he muttered. “I hope I’m wrong . . .”
Father Fornés punched a six-digit code into the keypad by the door and turned off the alarm. Inside, he moistened his fingers in the holy water by the door and crossed himself before feeling his way down one of the cathedral’s aisles, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
At first glance, everything looked fine.
There was no trace of the haunting orange glow that had caused such a fuss. Even in the overwhelming darkness there was an imposing solemnity about the place. Only the flicker of a few fading candles highlighted niches around the old church: the baptismal font and the chapel to Santa María de Corticela. The old dean could still let himself be overwhelmed at the memory of a time when the eighty-six-thousand-square-foot cathedral kept its doors open around the clock for every man, woman and child who believed. But that was another time. A time when Christian pilgrims kept sacred the heirlooms of St. James, the “Son of Thunder,” who took the reins of the early church after St. Peter’s death. Modern times had moved beyond the old ways, unfortunately. And gunshots in the ancient church certainly didn’t help matters.
The Lost Angel Page 7