“The protector of the Oculto Canyon,” said Christa. “Salvatierra described the rock outcropping above the temple hiding the canyon as Demon’s Wings.”
Conroy nodded. “I was young and heavily sedated,” he said, “but it’s coming back to me. I wonder now, could Jairo’s father have possibly foreseen what has come to pass? Is that why he insisted I accept it even though I knew I wasn’t worthy? I do believe that shamans are often endowed with a kind of sixth sense, specifically clairvoyance and precognition. It could be genetic. I conducted a study once, quite fascinating, really.”
Daniel groaned. “How is this going to help us get the gems,” he asked, “and the Breastplate?”
“Your words, Christa, that gold endures,” said Conroy, “jogged my memory. Jairo’s father told me. El Dorado is a guardian, between Earth and Heaven. Only he can show you the way to paradise. The Oculto Canyon was their Garden of Eden.” He bent down to examine the lock holding closed the hinged lid of the glass display case. “You’ve got to get this figurine to Gabriella,” he said. “Perhaps she has to use it with a map, I don’t know. But without it, she will never find the entrance to the temple leading to the Oculto Canyon.”
“It’s gold. The case is locked,” said Daniel. His tone was condescending. “I don’t suppose you have the key.”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” said Conroy. He extracted the archaeologist’s hammer and chisel from his jacket pocket and, without hesitation, jammed the chisel behind the hasp with a shiver of metal against metal.
“Stop,” shouted Daniel. “It’s got to be alarmed.”
Too late. Conroy pounded on the chisel with his hammer. Alarm claxons blared into the room. Blinding lights flashed on. Christa reflexively cringed at the din and raised an arm to protect her eyes from the sudden glare. Conroy pounded away. The chisel edged its way in behind the hasp, slowly bending the metal.
“They’re coming,” said Daniel. In between the deafening alarms, heavy footfalls approached rapidly from down the hall. He grabbed Christa’s arm. “He’s nuts. Let’s get out of here.”
Christa shook off Daniel’s hand. She wasn’t about to let Conroy take this risk for nothing. With a snap, the hasp broke open. Conroy lifted the case’s hinged lid. He reached in and snatched up El Dorado from its velvet cradle. He thrust the figurine into her hand. “Take El Dorado,” he shouted over the alarm. “I’ll stall them. Out the window with you. Run!”
They ran all right, in a full out sprint, around the building, back across the courtyard. Christa dove behind a hedge of boxwoods lining the sidewalk near her car. Daniel stumbled in beside her, breathing hard. He pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. “Great,” he said, “we’re thieves. I sure didn’t predict that part of God’s divine plan for us.”
Her cell phone chimed. An email coming in. She looked at the screen. “My God,” she said. “It’s from Ahmed.”
“That name Conroy asked you about. Who the hell is Ahmed?”
“My father’s friend from Morocco. He’s here in New York.” She showed Daniel the picture of the stunning cat’s eye Emerald on her phone. “And he has the Tear of the Moon Emerald.”
CHAPTER 39
Jared knew he had little hope, but he had to try. Contreras brought the duplicate of Edward’s sapphire closer to his eye; he had to suspect it was a fake. Jared would grab the champagne bottle, swing at Torrino first, maybe get lucky and clock him in the head. His plan didn’t go beyond that. By then, he knew, he’d be dead.
Jared tensed to make his move, but he saw something truly unexpected. Contreras smiled.
Contreras removed the loupe from his eye and closed his gloved fingers around the sapphire. “Well done, Jared,” he said. “This is truly the gem of a monarch.” Jared hoped the man had not heard his sigh of utter relief. “Mister Torrino, my briefcase.”
The beefy man picked up the silver Halliburton case, crossed over to Contreras and presented it to him like a vassal with a treasure chest. Contreras spun the combination locks and released the latches. He opened the top lid, leaving the case balanced on Torrino’s formidable forearms. Jared could see that the black velvet lining of the case had been tailored to fit a customized, protective foam. The entire case was built for one purpose. In the velvet, precisely sized hollows awaited seven roughly oval objects, varying in length and width from ten to fifty millimeters. The seven sacred stones.
“And so it begins,” Contreras said. He placed the sapphire in the fifth spot from the left. The blue looked proud against the black, terrifying in its brilliance. Contreras drank in a long, slow look. He waved his hand. Torrino stepped back. Contreras set his sights on Jared. “Now for the Kohinoor diamond.”
Jared grasped the diamond between his forefinger and thumb with renewed confidence and held it towards the window. Although it was dark and stormy without, the diamond was alive with a brilliance from within. Cut from what was once the largest diamond in the world, he balanced between his fingertips 105.6 carats of purest white. Oval in shape, faceted expertly to fully enhance its inner beauty, Jared felt as if its refractions of light had to be the Earthly version of the tunnel people describe when the “see the light,” when they die, are called towards heaven and then are yanked back to life. “The Mountain of Light diamond,” he translated from the Persian, Kohinoor. “And yet that is a most recent name for the gem. It was first written about 5,000 years ago in the ancient Sanskrit texts. Its first known name was Syamantaka, one of the most powerful gems in Hindu mythology, a gift to Krishna from the Sun God, who wore it round his neck.”
Contreras rose from the chair like a specter from the grave. “He who possesses this diamond rules the world.”
Jared tightened his grip on the gem. Contreras’s desire to hold it was palpable. “And so they have, Baltasar,” he said. “But with great power comes great risk. In the 1300s, a mighty Shah possessed the diamond, only to have his army defeated, the stone taken away as war bounty to Delhi. By 1526, it belonged to the sultan, Babur, who claimed the diamond’s value could feed the whole world for two days. It was a time of conquest and defeat in the mogul’s empires. In 1547, the diamond was temporarily lost in the annals of history.”
Contreras stepped ever closer, drawn to the diamond. “Not lost in the history of my family. In the eleventh century, a Moorish invader absconded with the Breastplate from the Holy Land. The Arab brought it in utmost secrecy to Spain in hopes of using its power to retain conquest of the land. But even then, the Breastplate was incomplete, its gems missing, its divine powers diminished. In twelfth-century Spain, as El Cid expanded his conquest, a Contreras captured a Moorish ruler. The coward offered the Breastplate in exchange for his pitiful life. My family’s destiny was set in motion. And in the sixteenth century, my ancestor, Alvaro, acquired the last of the missing gemstones, the Kohinoor diamond. He brought the completed Breastplate to the New World, to begin the world anew.”
His words intoxicated Jared. Once again, he was dizzy with the thought that he could be a part of a new evolution in the history of mankind. He forcibly drew his gaze from the brilliance of the diamond. “The Kohinoor resurfaced in India,” he said, partially to buy time, but mostly for his passion for the gemstone. “Shah Jahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal, placed it in his magnificent Peacock Throne. Yet the Shah was overthrown by his own son, Aurangazeb. Aurangazeb murdered his three brothers and imprisoned his father in the Agra Fort, with only one small window to look over his beloved Taj Mahal, some say only by seeing it reflected in this very diamond. Though the diamond was in Aurangazeb’s empire, he, too, was conquered in 1739, his cities sacked, by the Shah who, finally able to obtain this most famous diamond, exclaimed Kohinoor, when he saw it, dubbing it the Mountain of Light.”
“And so it is,” Contreras said, reaching for the diamond. “And I shall reclaim its true destiny, to create an empire that will finally rule the world.”
“Just as the British believed they would,” said Jared, “in 1849, when the Kohin
oor was handed over to the possession of the Queen Victoria as part of the Treaty of Lahore. At that time, the British empire spanned the globe, including India, large swaths of Africa and, of course, Australia and Canada.” Jared was a traitor to all that his country had bled for. Once he handed over this gem, he would either die as that traitor, or live for a chance at redemption. “Now it is said that if these gems were to leave England, the British Empire will fall.”
Contreras snatched the diamond from Jared’s palm. “Too late for that,” he said. He clutched the diamond in his gloved fist and pressed it against his heart. “It is mine.” He closed his eyes. When he opened them, they looked even blacker than before. “And I will soon wield its power in its entirety. Alvaro shall be avenged. I will fulfill the destiny that was set forth a millennium ago. I will create the world that God envisioned, where no son will lose his mother to please a false prophet.”
Contreras turned away, gestured for Torrino, who approached bearing the open briefcase. He placed the diamond next to the sapphire, into its perfectly matched hollow in the black velvet. He drank in one last look and closed and locked the lid. “I would pay a fortune simply to sit and admire these stones which I’ve devoted my life to acquiring,” he said, “but all my money cannot buy time.” He punched his hand from his cuff to look at his watch, a vintage Patek Philippe. “I am very close to acquiring the third of the seven sacred stones. It is a time for action, not accolades.”
Jared stole a glance at the clock on the desk. He, too, wished he could buy time. He judged that Fox, at best, would not arrive for several minutes. The realization that he had actually fooled Contreras filled him with elation and self-doubt. It had been far too easy to convince the man to incorporate him into the master plan. Like a poker player who had risked the pot on a bluff, he had to play it out. He thought about Zoe and his unborn child. He no longer cared about the money, nor the heavenly reward. He just wanted to hold his wife in his arms, to feel the breath of their baby on his cheek. “So what is our next step?” he dared to ask. Contreras often indulged in boasting about his intricate plans, no matter how precious the time.
“Your next step is one that cannot be taken lightly,” said Contreras. “The sword is in readiness for the dinner tonight.”
It was a statement, not a question, but Jared quickly went to the bedroom and retrieved the black walnut box from beneath the bed. As he did so, he saw Contreras hoist the bottle of champagne from its bucket. Without removing his gloves, Contreras removed the foil from the champagne and deftly uncorked it. He shimmied the bottle back into the ice bucket. Jared tried not to look at it too intently.
He brought the box to Contreras, opened it with a flourish. On the plush, maroon velvet lay a bejeweled masterpiece of Jared’s own craftsmanship, the Lux et Veritas sword. Its blade was thirty-five inches of finely honed carbonized steel. Its hilt was gold, inlaid with twenty precious and semi-precious stones. But these stones, like the sacred stones, carried with them a certain power in their provenance.
Each of the countries in the G-20 had contributed one of the stones. Each was unique. It was the culmination of months of negotiations to get each nation’s representative to agree to which stone their country would contribute. It was only a small prop to the aspirations of the G-20 summit, but almost a miracle that the sword was completed. It surely would not have been if not for Contreras’s worldwide network of corporate diplomats and behind the scenes promises of new jobs and affordable medicines. The sword, once presented at tonight’s dinner, would reside, in turns, on exhibition in each of the twenty nations, symbolizing cooperation and strength. Looking at the sword with Contreras standing by it, Jared realized that it was this heady commission that had made him arrogant enough to believe in Contreras’s mission.
Contreras lifted the sword from the box by its grip. He hefted it upwards, admired the simple yet elegant design that incorporated the twenty stones. He gingerly tested the blade’s razor sharp edge. “Just as I envisioned,” he said. “You have once again done a masterful job.”
“With your inspiration,” Jared said.
“There are those who are protesting the meeting of the G-20,” Contreras said. “Even those who are determined to derail the world leaders’ talk of peace.”
Jared laid the sword’s box on the desk. “This sword symbolizes everything the terrorists despise,” he said. Despite his despicable crime, he was proud of the sword he had designed and crafted. “As one nation passes this sword to another, they pass along a vow of cooperation, an alliance that they will fight together the power of evil.”
“It is a threat to the terrorists,” Contreras said. “One might even believe that they would kill to defame the symbolism of this sword. It would become a new symbol, of a new ruler who can truly bring about world peace.”
Jared stepped back. He could see death in Contreras’s black eyes and feel the cold breath of Satan on the back of his neck. Contreras clutched the sword’s hilt with both hands. He thrust it forward with the violence of murder. Jared heard a grunt of surprise and realized it came from Torrino. A blow punched Jared in the gut. He doubled over, but was confused. Had Contreras merely struck him with his fist? Then he felt the invasive cold of the steel blade inside him and the warmth of his blood seep into his shirt. He looked down. Contreras released his grip on the handle. It was beautiful, that handle, a masterful design of gold, silver and small but precious gems. It brought a tear to Jared’s eye. His knees buckled. He fell backwards, his arms flailing. His hand hit the ice bucket, sending it crashing off the serving cart. Contreras snatched the neck of the champagne bottle, pulling it to safety, as the ice skittered across the carpet.
Jared landed hard on the floor, his arms outstretched. He could not move. He had done good work on the blade, its point so sharp that it had thrust him through and penetrated the wood floor. His sword pinned him there, as his lifeblood pooled around him.
Contreras looked down upon him. He poured champagne into the two flutes, handed one to Torrino. He held his flute towards Jared in a toast. “In death, as in life, you are an admirable gentleman,” he said. “You have fallen upon your own sword.” He grinned thinly, not without mirth. He drank, then stepped back as a rivulet of blood neared the toe of his Italian made loafer.
“Please, Mister Contreras,” Jared croaked. His own voice sounded distant, as though he were already leaving behind his physical self. “Zoe, she’s pregnant.”
Contreras frowned. He nearly looked regretful. “I will see that she is cared for,” he said, “and your child.” With that, he turned away. Jared could hear Contreras and Torrino’s footsteps as they left the room. He could hear the door shut and latch behind them. And he could hear Alba’s voice calling him from heaven, as he fell further and further away from her.
CHAPTER 40
Christa checked her cell as she hurried along Tenth Avenue, past the lone vender hawking I Love NY t-shirts. She and Daniel had made good time getting into New York, but time was running out. She had to get that Emerald from Ahmed.
Dark storm clouds choked out the daylight above. Buildings pressed in on each side. A biting wind whipped up from the Hudson River. The few people hustling down the sidewalk bent their shoulders to the cold. Christmas stress outgunned holiday cheer these days, but their sense of urgency was frantic, as if the cold gusts were the push before the raging waters of a flash flood that would suddenly thunder down this canyon of a street and wash them away to their deaths. No festive conversations were shouted above the din of honking horns, squealing brakes and the ragged, oppressively festive holiday tunes oozing from the stores. Even the pungent smoke from the street vendor roasting chestnuts wasn’t enticing any customers.
“The poison,” Christa whispered to Daniel. A vibration trembled through the city, a sense of dread that became more palpable as she neared the Marrakesh restaurant. “It’s starting to affect people.”
Daniel reached for her hand and held it, tight. His warmth felt out of place. A
ffection, like fear, had become an indulgence she couldn’t afford. She tried Percival’s cell again. Still no answer. He would have turned off his cell in the clinic, but the spindly-fingered heebie-geebies were crawling up her spine. Never a good sign.
“Contreras will need a theologian,” said Daniel. “Only a high priest can wear the Breastplate of Aaron.”
“Daniel, I don’t know if I should love your naiveté or fear it. He’s not worried about communicating with God. He thinks he is a god.”
Daniel clasped his coat in tighter against the north wind. “This Ahmed you’re meeting. He’s a Muslim. This time in history is not exactly that religion’s finest hour. If they get their hands on the Breastplate of Aaron, it could be just the power they need to rid the world of infidels. Converting everyone to Islam is one of their core beliefs.”
“The core of Ahmed’s belief is to do the right thing.”
“As is mine,” said Daniel. “Question is, what is the right thing?”
The Seventh Stone Page 24