by Joanne Pence
She walked over to an electric coffee maker that held a half-empty pot of coffee. “Would you like some?”
“Yes, thanks,” he said. “I just got off a flight from Rome. It’s”—he looked at his watch—“already night there.”
“Which means you probably haven’t slept for, what, a day?”
“Well over twenty-four hours.” He took a sip of the coffee. It was no espresso, but it helped. He placed the photo on the table. “I understand this is your father,” he said, pointing to Daniel Holt.
She took a deep breath and nodded.
“Also, here are”—his finger hovered over each figure as he spoke—“Gene Oliveros, Senator Kevin Wilson, Jonathan Vogel, Scott Jones, Stuart Eliot, and Hank Bennett.”
“How do you know their names?”
“They’re all wealthy, important men.” A thought struck Michael. “Didn’t your father talk about them?
She shifted uncomfortably. “No, he didn’t. I recognize the senator.”
Michael was surprised her father hadn’t talked about knowing such influential people. Michael told her the job title of each man in the photo.
A stunned expression filled her face. She placed her fingers on the photo. “Where did you get this?”
“A priest.”
She looked skeptical. “A priest? Who is he? Where?”
“He’s dead.”
Her brow furrowed. “Was he related to one of these men?”
“Not that I could find.”
“How did he die?” Her face paled. “Was it like—”
“No. Let me try to explain.” He worked to keep his voice calm and soothing. He wondered how much he dared to reveal, and quickly decided: not much. “First, let me say none of it makes much sense—not yet, at least. Three nights ago in Florence, a stranger, a Chaldean priest, came to my apartment and gave me a certain artifact, a bronze receptacle containing a kind of amalgam. Shortly after that, he died. I was going through his few possessions to find a relative to give the bronze to, and came across this photo. When I looked into who the men were, I learned that Gene Oliveros died after the priest, and your father a day later.” He took out the newspaper photo of the priest. “Have you ever seen this man before? Or heard of him? His name was Father Yosip Berosus.”
She studied the photo and shook her head. Her blue eyes twinkled with intelligence and he knew the question that was coming: “Why did he go to you?”
He hated lying, but couldn’t tell her the truth. “I have no idea.”
She squeezed her hands together. “Your explanation of finding out the names of the men in the photo was too facile. You had to have some idea of the date of the photo, the name of the ship they were on—something. But there’s nothing of that sort in the photo as far as I can see.”
He shrugged and didn’t meet her gaze. “I have clever friends.”
“No one’s that clever. If the priest didn’t tell you, you must have access to government records.”
He slid the photo from her and put it in the breast pocket of his sports jacket. “Enough of that. What’s important is what happened to the men who died, who killed them and why—and if the men still alive are in danger.”
“I’ve asked the FBI to look into the photo,” she said coolly.
He lifted his brows.
“And perhaps they will. Eventually.”
He actually felt good about her answer. It showed she was as skeptical of the FBI satisfactorily handling these weird deaths as he was. But then he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I came here because I thought you would have answers for me about the men in the photo, and possibly the old priest. But it seems you’re as much in the dark as I am. Maybe more.”
“My father never showed me the photo or talked about the men with him” she admitted.
He tried a different tack. “Did your father ever talk about any problems he had when he was in the Navy? Or his shore leave in Egypt? Perhaps he mentioned something about a priest, or a religion, or anything at all that can help me with the task the priest gave me. It would make it easier if I knew why the priest carried this photo when he died.”
“What task?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t everything?” She rubbed her arms as if chilled. “I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time coming here. My father told me he joined the Navy because jobs were difficult to come by in the 1970s. Back then, he had no ambition beyond drinking and hanging out with the guys, but he returned a new man, and ended up with a full fellowship to UCLA’s School of Law.”
“Remarkable,” Michael said flatly.
“Not really. I suspect his time in the service taught him to focus, to realize he’d just been wasting his life.”
“Right. And it’s just a coincidence that the same thing happened to the other six men in the photo with him. They all enlisted, joined the Navy with no more than a high school diploma, and a few years later were top men in their fields. What’s strange about that?”
She blanched, and in a small voice, said, “What are you suggesting?”
He stared back. “I’m not sure.”
“It’s time for you to be honest with me,” she said, her blue eyes boring into him. “I’m supposed to believe that a priest you don’t know gave you a valuable artifact, then died, and you traveled all the way to Los Angeles to try to find out about a photo he carried?”
“I’ve seen much in this world that’s inexplicable,” Michael said. “And something about the old priest caused me to take him seriously. Something’s going on, a great evil. And when I put that together with the two deaths—”
“Evil?” Her mouth wrinkled with disdain. “What men call evil is simply someone choosing to do something bad.”
He wished it were that simple. He leaned back in the chair. “Would it be more believable to you if I said I have a professional as well as an innate interest in anything that is old, rare, and culturally significant?”
She frowned, but then her eyes grew wide. “Now I remember who you are. I’ve seen articles about you. The Indiana Jones guy. You were going out with some starlet”—an eyebrow quirked up—“more than one, now that I think about it. And there was talk about using some of your adventures in a new mov …” Her expression dropped from awe to dismay to pure scorn, and she stood. “My God, are you wheedling your way into the investigation of a judge’s death for some entertainment show?”
“Of course not. Don’t be silly. Sit down.”
“Just get out of here and leave me alone.” Angry tears filled her eyes.
He remained at the table and spoke more calmly. “Miss Holt, Kira, there was no truth to those stories. Well, maybe a bit, but none of it was serious, and has nothing to do with me being here.” He paused a moment. “Think about it. A publicity stunt wouldn’t have given me the Egyptian photo of your father, and it sure as hell wouldn’t have had me traveling overnight from Italy.”
Hands on hips, she blinked away her tears. “I’m a trained clinical psychologist and I can tell when someone is lying or holding back necessary information.”
He admired her strength. She was hurting, confused and overwhelmed by her father’s horrific death, yet she continued to question, to investigate. He owed her the truth. “All right. I’ll tell you what I know, but it’ll be difficult to believe.”
She folded her arms. “Try me.”
“It began with Marco Polo—”
“Marco Polo!” She nearly spat the name out. “Marco Polo, evil pearls, and bull shit! You almost got me. Now get out!”
Michael raked his fingers through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. He was too tired for this. “All right. Here’s my card. Call me when you’re ready to talk.”
With that, he left.
Scott Jones tilted back in the executive leather chair behind his desk in his walnut-paneled corner office at the Los Angeles Post. He read, and then reread, his staff’s news articles about his two former Navy buddies’ deaths. It had to be a coinc
idence, he told himself. He wasn’t in any danger.
Why should he be? He’d done everything right, and everything had happened just as predicted.
His life was fine, great in fact. No, it was better than great. All he had ever wanted was to be a reporter, and now, not only had that happened, but he owned the goddamn newspaper. Still, he had to admit that covering stories was a lot more fun than running a newspaper. But it didn’t pay near as well.
He sighed as he thought back on his reporter days. Reagan’s “Western White House” gave him lots of exposure back in the day. Of course, he couldn’t talk about it anymore, because when he did, people looked at him strangely as they calculated how old he must be, and then tried to understand how he could look so young. He chuckled. Just dumb luck, he guessed.
Hank Bennett had phoned him yesterday. He refused to take his call, refused to listen to what that paranoid bastard had to say. Last he heard, Bennett had pulled a Unabomber and was living in some outhouse in the hills of Montana or some such place.
Jones wished the lunatic would simply leave him alone. Bennett was the reason he’d love to find the pearl himself. He’d use it to wipe Bennett off the face of this earth, just so he’d never have to hear the testy bastard again. That the guy was certifiable was evident by his walking away from his multi-billion dollar computer security firm. He sold it for big bucks, but it wasn’t as if he wanted to spend more time with his family. He had no family.
Jones, too, had no family, but in his case the reason had been the law—until recently, it hadn’t allowed the kind of marriage he would have wanted. The end result was fine, however, since Raymond—the man he would have married—turned old, gray, and flabby, while Jones remained youthful and trim. He eventually walked out on Raymond—the guy just didn’t excite him anymore. Raymond looked old at fifty-two, and Jones—ten years his senior—didn’t.
Things were looking up, however, with Leland, his latest fling. He was so busy thinking about Leland and the excitement the coming evening would bring, that he paid little attention to the window washer’s platform outside window directly behind him. Little attention, that is, until the platform began to sway.
At the squeal of the equipment, Jones swiveled his chair to face the windows with their view of exciting, albeit smoggy, downtown Los Angeles. He watched as the platform swung back and forth, farther each time, and finally bumped against the window.
“What the hell?” Jones said, standing now. The window washer, if one had ever been there, was gone.
But as he stared, he noticed something lying on the washer platform. At first, it looked like an animal, but then it pulled itself up and turned into a man—a naked man who would make Adonis weep with jealousy. His hair was blond, long and straight, reaching past his shoulders. He was tanned and shiny, as if he had oiled his body to better show off the beautifully sculpted contours of the muscles on his arms, thighs, and chest. Jones swooned. This must be a gift from one of his cronies—a sex toy sent to him in this most outlandish way.
Only once before had he seen such beauty in the male body—in Egypt. God, how had he forgotten? Before that, he had been too naïve to even realize that there was more to life and love than the few women he had dated.
On the other side of the window, the man stared, and then cocked his head slightly. Jones heard the sound of a nearby helicopter, and he stepped closer to the window to see where it was.
The sounds of war filled the room, turning his blood to ice.
“No,” he whispered.
Gunfire, shouted orders, cries from the wounded. Memories of servicemen fighting, running, and dying, flooded his brain until it felt ready to burst. He put his hands over his ears.
“No!” he shouted. “I won’t have it!”
The window washer platform swung away from the window, then slammed back against it, striking with a hard, glassy pang. The Adonis pressed his hands to the window, his face on the other side of the glass. And that was when Jones noticed his green eyes. Jones quaked, but couldn’t turn away as the platform swung back again. His Adonis vanished, and in his place stood a black fox.
With tears rolling down his cheeks, Jones cried out. “Please. You can’t do this. Talk to me, damn it! Talk to me!”
He tried to run, but terror and memories filled his heart. The platform swayed back, much farther than before.
Then, as if in slow motion, the platform began a relentless, steady arc towards the window. This time, when it struck, the safety glass crumbled like sand.
Jones’ terrified screams stopped abruptly as the platform struck his neck and severed his head.
Chapter 22
Michael headed towards downtown. It was more crowded than ever, and the traffic crawled. The first time he saw L.A., he was a child. His parents owned a beach house near Santa Barbara—the one that was now his. They would spend a month there every July when he was a boy, and they’d often head south to Los Angeles and Disneyland. Adventureland was Michael’s favorite.
Now, William Claude Rempart rarely left Wintersgate, his estate overlooking Cape Cod. Even before his wife died, he was a strange man. After her death, he became even more reclusive.
Michael’s mother had died at age forty-four, only three years older than he was now. She was only eighteen when she married William Claude. He was thirty, and already a wealthy recluse. Their first child, a girl, was born a little over a year after the marriage, but soon died. The birth was difficult and losing the child even harder. Five years passed before she conceived again, giving birth to Michael’s older brother. Another ten years passed before Michael entered the world.
By then, all his mother’s dreams had vanished into the netherworld in which she seemed to live. She would often sit on a rocking chair in the study on the third floor of the mansion they called home. Michael would crawl up on her lap, and she would hold him and rock. Sometimes, she would speak to him about her life, but she always couched such thoughts around books, as if they were the only thing real to her.
He remembered her love of classical mythology. Her favorite bedtime reading to him was Bullfinch’s Mythology in which Greek and Roman gods wandered the earth. She read him The Iliad and The Odyssey when he was only six and read them again several times thereafter. No wonder he became an archeologist.
A few years after her death, he came across her book of Longfellow’s poem, Evangeline. He remembered that she often reread it, or sat with the book open on her lap, staring out at the sea. He sometimes read it simply to feel her presence around him once more, romanticizing her as the Evangeline of the poem and telling himself she hadn’t died, but had gone away to search for her lost love. He practically memorized the poem, half believing Longfellow wrote it to explain his mother’s grief:
* * *
Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey;
Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended.
Each succeeding year stole something away from her beauty,
Leaving behind it, broader and deeper, the gloom and the shadow…
* * *
As a child, Michael hadn’t understood half of what she’d said, but he remembered her words, and eventually they began to make sense. He even remembered her saying she used to see herself as a poor waif like Jane Eyre, and her husband as the wild, exciting Mr. Rochester. The way she sighed, he knew such romantic dreams had come to nothing.
And then she died.
William Claude, who never paid much attention to his sons, was even less of a father after her death. Michael was ten years old at the time, and his older brother was a student at Yale. Michael was pretty much raised by Magda—the woman he thought of as a gypsy. When she came to live in Wintersgate as its housekeeper, Michael was nine. She brought with her a daughter, Irina, who was four at the time.
They were more of a family to Michael than his father ever was. And Irina …
No, he wouldn’t go there. He shook away a memory that still held too much power over him
.
Up ahead, Michael saw the Ritz Carlton, where he’d booked a room before leaving Italy. He checked in, but felt too antsy to stay in the hotel room, and decided to walk around for a while.
After a couple of busy blocks, he turned into a Starbucks.
Standing off to the side, waiting for the barista to make her latte, was a woman he couldn’t help but appreciate. Her hair was long and lush, a shiny rich brown color. Her white and mauve dress showed off a trim waist and nicely rounded hips, while shapely legs stretched way, way down to sky-high strappy heels. When the barista handed over her coffee, she took it, turned around, and then looked up.
Their eyes met, and Michael’s world stopped. Even after all these years …
She almost dropped her coffee.
He jumped out of the line and reached for the cup to help her hold it. Their fingers touched.
“Michael,” she whispered.
Nothing about her had changed—not her face, her voice, or those eyes, a blue so light they sometimes sparkled white—eyes that seemed to see into his soul. And always had. “Irina.”
She smiled at that.
“Let’s sit,” he said. “There’s a table in the corner.”
“Sir?” the barista asked.
He ordered an Americano and then led Irina to a table where he pulled out the chair for her.
“Is it really you?” she murmured.
He also sat and scooted his chair a little closer.
Neither spoke, but searched the other’s face, and then both began.
“What are you doing …?”
“Why are you …?”
They stopped and stared into each other’s eyes.
“You first,” Michael said.
She admitted that she kept up with his exploits and exciting life. That was why she was momentarily taken aback when she saw him. It was as if a magazine article or TV special had suddenly come to life right there in Westwood.