by Rachel Lee
Then, unbidden, he thought of the symbol that adorned the U.S. one-dollar bill: the pyramid with the all-seeing eye.
He'd always dismissed that as a symbol of boys at play in their secret societies. Men were forever doing things to make themselves feel special, as if they belonged to some group that knew secrets that could not be shared. The Masons claimed a lineage that went back to ancient Egypt. He had never before believed it.
But now…He thought of the pyramid in his pouch. Maybe the Masons really didn't hold any esoteric knowledge. But maybe they held the memory of it. And maybe that came from somewhere else.
All he knew for sure was that Paloma had been killed, so somebody either wanted this gem or wanted to prevent it from falling into other hands.
That alone made it both dangerous and valuable. And if it was what Paloma had hinted…
He had become the guardian of a terrible, terrible secret. One that might well upend reality. One that might, as Paloma had warned, set off the ultimate war.
Despite his worries and sorrow, sleep crept up on him anyway, and he dreamed of Moses on the mount, receiving the tablets of the law, dreamed of the Ark of the Covenant and its contents, dreamed of things that had never happened. Things that might have happened.
His mind jumbled them all together, as if trying to work a puzzle. In his sleep he mumbled uneasily, trying to find answers to questions he couldn't quite form.
It was a nightmare, and he stood squarely in the middle of it.
16
Tel Al-Amarna, Egypt
Nathan Cohen sat bolt upright in bed. Through his eastern window he could see red streamers as the sun prepared to climb over the Sinai.
But it was not the light that had awakened him, although it was near the hour when he said his prayers to the Great Light. No. Even in his sleep he had felt a temblor in the threads of reality. Somewhere, someone had found one of the two missing Codices.
An icy vice gripped his heart, and he tried to assure himself that even if someone had indeed found it, he would not know how to use it. Years of study and the passing of arcane secrets through the generations were necessary to begin to unfold the stones.
But someone had briefly touched upon the power. He had felt it, and he was sure it was not one of his brother or sister priests.
Rising swiftly, he pulled a cloth around his waist, a cloth such as his predecessors had worn for millennia. Then he crossed to a safe that was hidden beneath the floor, a true anachronism in this simple hut made of mud. In this town he was known as the rabbi who studied the Kabbalah. They came to him, Christian, Muslim and Jew alike, for advice, and he dispensed it carefully, not wishing the full nature of the power at his disposal to be revealed.
His family had lived in this area since the days of Akhenaten, when a rich and glorious city had risen from these sands around the new worship of the One God. Generation after generation, they had been sages of one kind or another, descended in direct line from Akhenaten's vizier.
But that was knowledge he kept to himself. Over the centuries the family had worn many names, but in these parts they were known and trusted, whatever religion they seemed to be at any time.
He opened the safe, then drew out a golden chest and opened it. Inside, the fine white powder of shemana shone brightly, seeming to contain a light of its own. Carefully, he removed a pinch and sprinkled it over himself.
An instant later he stood on a featureless plain in a place that had no sun yet was bright enough to see clearly. Above, the blue sky was as featureless as the plain and seemed deeper than an ocean.
Before him, on the smooth sand of the plain, atop a pillar of gold, sat the sappir stone, the sapphire pyramid of light. Hidden here, in another dimension, it was safe from thieves.
He laid his hands upon it and closed his eyes, calling to his brothers and sisters.
One by one they materialized, until the twelve stood together around the sappir.
"Someone has found one of the missing Codices," Cohen said. "What is worse is that he stirred its power somehow, or I might never have known of it."
The others frowned deeply. They had only two missions in life, and one of them involved keeping the pyramids out of the hands of others until the time came to bring them together.
"The time is approaching," said Ulel, a priestess who wore her years gracefully. "Perhaps it is time to gather the stones."
"But," said Maram, another of the elder priests, "while it may be approaching, it is not yet here. Bringing the Codices together prematurely could cause effects we do not yet want."
There were murmurs of assent from the others. Ulel shrugged. "So be it," she said.
"But," Maram said, "we must find out who has the stone and what they plan to do with it. Can you do that?" He looked directly at Nathan.
"I have a suspicion. One of the Stewards of the Faith confided they had sent a priest to seek out the Kulkulcan Codex."
"Which is?" asked one of the others.
"The Crimson Codex," Cohen explained, using a euphemism designed to conceal the real nature of the stone. "The ruby pyramid."
"You think he may have found it?
Cohen nodded slowly.
"Will he bring it back to his superiors?"
"Probably." Cohen sighed. "My brothers and sisters, our goals are not so very different from these Stewards, although they do not plan as grandly as we. They do not know what they seek, and their reasons for seeking it are petty. It is likely that this priest will consider the pyramid to be something he must return to his superiors, for that was his assigned task. But it may be that Paloma told him enough to convince him to protect it."
Heads bowed momentarily, in silent observance of Paloma's passing. She had been one of them for a very long time.
"It may be," Cohen said, "that she passed the knowledge to him. That she may have chosen him as her successor."
Again silence answered him.
"Find him," Maram ordered. "Find him, and make sure he will protect the pyramid."
"Or take it from him," Ulel added. "His life is irrelevant."
Frankfurt, Germany
"Any traffic yet?" Lawton asked, glancing in the bathroom mirror as he scraped a razor over his face.
"Nothing that seems important," Niko replied. "Assif and Renate are working on the decryption now, but judging by the sender and receiver addresses, I'm guessing all we have so far are routine bank transactions."
Niko was using the adjacent sink to do what he called "a field bath," washing from the waist up. In the absence of a shower—and the office suite had none—it was the best they could do. An angry red welt creased Niko's back from right shoulder to left hip.
"That looks like it still hurts," Lawton said.
"It does," Niko replied, "when I have time to think about it. I usually don't let myself."
"Chechnya, wasn't it?" Lawton asked.
Niko nodded. "I did something dumb, and I paid for it."
"What happened?"
"We'd penetrated an Al Qaeda cell operating there. They were holding a big meeting, so we sent in an ops team. I was the team leader. I thought we had good intel. Everything looked set."
"And then?" Lawton asked.
Niko's face took on a faraway look. "Either someone had misinterpreted the intel, or they moved the meeting ahead by six hours. This wasn't the kind of place where my team could just ride up in a couple of Land Rover vehicles. We were slipping in by ones and twos. The idea was that everyone was supposed to be on scene two hours before the meeting started. I only had half my team ready."
"And you went in anyway," Lawton said. It was not an accusation, merely a statement of fact.
"I did," Niko said. "I didn't think I could count on them sitting around talking for six hours while the rest of my men showed up. Besides, it was possible that our source had tipped them off and they'd moved up the meeting to set a trap. If that was the case, it was better to hit them while they were unprepared, even if we had fewer men."
"Tell that to Otumbo and Kaleek," Niko said. "We didn't have sniper cover yet. Kaleek was spotted moving across a square, and they opened up on us from the second-floor windows. If I'd had my snipers in place…"
"We have a saying in America," Lawton said. "Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Could have, would have, should have. You can play that game over every decision you make, Niko. You made the best decision you could with the information you had available."
"Yeah," Niko said. He tapped his forehead. "I know that up here. But part of me still wonders…. Kaleek went down in the first volley. Otumbo and I went into the square to get him while my fourth man covered us. We got him almost back to the corner when a new shooter opened up from the roof. One of the bullets took off the top of Otumbo's head before it hit me. The fourth man dragged me to cover and held off the shooters while I called the snipers in. He and I piled into the back of their Land Rover, and we got the hell out of there."
"And two months later, here you are," Lawton said.
"Exactly."
"The situation might well have turned out exactly the same way, even if you'd had your entire team in place," Lawton said.
"I know," Niko said. "Doesn't change the fact that I want to get back at the bastards who killed my men. You know, Otumbo had three younger brothers and two sisters in Rwanda. He was a sergeant in the Rwandan army before he joined 119. The insurgents had a price on his head, and on the heads of his family. So he 'died,' like the rest of us. He thought that would protect his family. After he was killed in Chechnya and Al Qaeda found out who he was, word got back to Rwanda. The insurgents wiped out his brothers and sisters while I was in the hospital. Now here we are, sneaking into a bank, looking for the people who killed Renate's family, when the rest of the Black Christmas plotters—the same people who killed Otumbo, the same people who butchered his six-year-old sister—are still out there."
Lawton turned to face him. "You think this operation is a waste of resources?"
Niko shrugged. "I do. I think we're on a vendetta. Renate wants revenge."
"As do you," Lawton said, impassively.
"You're right," Niko said, his features taut and hard. "I do. But she wants the people who killed her parents and her cousin. I want the people who killed thousands of innocent people on Christmas, the people who go right on killing thousands every month in places no one cares about."
"I can see that," Lawton said, nodding. "But it's just possible that Renate's right. That we're after the people who financed Black Christmas. So who are the real killers, Niko? The angry, disaffected kids who pull the triggers, or the people who strip them of hope, build the training bases, buy the aliases and the fake IDs, and put the guns in their hands? Do you blame the arrow or the archer?"
"Americans," Niko said, smiling. He put a hand on Lawton's shoulder. "You really do believe that you can make it better, don't you?"
"Don't you?" Lawton asked.
"No. We're still cops, Lawton. Cops don't stop crime. Not most of the time. We've had cops, or people like cops, for as long as we've had civilization, and still there is crime. We're just cops, trying to bring criminals to justice."
Niko shook his head slowly and took a breath. When he spoke again, his voice was muted. "No, my friend, we're not saving the world, you and I. Your country wants to bring democracy to the world. But we Greeks invented democracy, and it took us almost two thousand years to spread it over all of Greece. We're not missionaries. We're cops, trying to round up the current crop of bad guys. Maybe, if we do our jobs well, we can stay ahead of the tide, so the water doesn't flood the city. But the ocean will always be there."
"Maybe you're right," Lawton conceded. "But we have a job to do. And Renate deserves the same justice you want for Otumbo."
"Yes," Niko said. "But after that…I want them."
* * *
Assif Mondi was chafing at the bit, too, although he never would have said so aloud. He had too much respect for Renate. He was not, however, as certain as she that finding the people responsible for the deaths of her parents would lead them to any great revelation about those responsible for the entirety of Black Christmas.
Yes, he understood the reasoning that the Frankfurt Brotherhood might well have funded the operation and that they might have left their footprint by trying to draw Renate out. But on the other hand…well, tapping into the Brotherhood's communications was not likely to yield a confession. People like this were far too smart to send self-congratulatory e-mails, even in highly encrypted form.
"You know," he said to Renate when they took a brief break for coffee and a snack, "these guys may have had nothing whatever to do with the attack on Baden-Baden."
She looked at him from hollow, too-tired eyes. She had been pushing so hard he was beginning to wonder if she might not make a critical mistake in their attempts to find the correct decoding sequence.
"How can you possibly think that?" she asked.
"Well," he said carefully, "I'm not sure the attacks on the churches and the attacks on the non-religious sites were perpetrated by the same group."
Tired as she was, she nodded slowly, listening. Thinking. He could almost see the wheels spinning.
"They're different," he said, pressing on, now that he had her full attention. "It's almost as if two different groups with different agendas were involved. As if…" And here he really hesitated. "…as if one group were using the other for cover."
Something sparked in her eyes. Her head lifted sharply. "I've been thinking that, too. But the only trail we really have to follow is the money. Only the money would link the two. Only the money will tell us who the players are."
Assif drew a deep breath. He was all too aware that months could be wasted while they tried to build a financial trail. People like the Brotherhood were adept at laundering money through enough points of disbursement to make tracking it nearly impossible. Sometimes he wondered how they even knew what they were doing themselves.
"Renate," he said finally, gently.
Her icy eyes lifted to his, as she detected his change in tone.
"Our time is limited," he said. "Very limited. You know what the Americans are hinting at."
"I know. But I was ordered to do this, rather than seek answers in Baden-Baden."
"There are no answers in Baden-Baden. You know that. Whoever committed that atrocity and all the others…they were long gone by the time the police moved in. Already in another country or on a different continent."
"What are you saying, Assif?"
He hesitated. "You know these people and their tricks as well as anyone. You hacked into their system once before. How likely is it we will overhear them plotting their next attacks?"
"Infinitely more likely than it was before we hacked into their computers," Renate answered coldly.
He nodded and scooted his chair just a little closer to hers. "Think about it, Renate. I know how hurt and angry you are. But in terms of the world, is it better to run down the Frankfurt Brotherhood or to find the perpetrators of Black Christmas?"
A weary smile lifted the corners of her mouth. "They are one and the same, Assif."
A sigh escaped him, his entire mood seeming to change on that breath. "You want to know something?"
"Of course."
He looked at her again. "If I were the American president, I would use those weapons and much more after this."
Renate stiffened. "How can you say that?"
He dared to meet her gaze. "I'm getting so tired of these people who don't care how many innocents they kill. Who don't believe they're bound by any morality, any laws. I lost friends on Black Christmas. I'm not sure that any justice in this world will be enough for these savages. So maybe the American president is right. Maybe the only answer is to exterminate them all."
17
Madrid, Spain
Barak Al-Ibrahim heard the alarm and rolled o
ver sleepily. It was 2:00 a.m., and he was not yet ready to face another day. Last night, at dinner, his son had announced his engagement. The bride-to-be was a fellow Muslim, the daughter of a long-time family friend. The celebration had lasted long into the evening, far beyond Barak's usual bedtime. With only four hours' sleep, he knew he was in for a very long day.
Still, he had responsibilities, not only to his family but also to his community. He was a baker, and his shop had served his neighbors for five years, since he'd immigrated to Spain from his native Algeria. It was said that most people eat to live, while Spaniards live to eat. If that were true, Barak helped to feed them. And he took pride in that.
The alarm was insistent, and he forced himself to sit up and open his eyes. Looking out the window, he saw dots of orange light, as if fading stars had settled over the city. But these were not stars, he realized. They were fires, and now, as he reached over to silence the buzz of the alarm, he heard the distant wail of sirens.
"What's happening?" his wife murmured sleepily, as if sensing his unease.
"Nothing, my love," he replied. "Just fires somewhere in the city. Probably the cold. People use those electric heaters, and they ignite the draperies. Go back to sleep."
"Anwar will marry," she whispered, reaching over to squeeze his hand.
"Yes," he said. "Anwar will marry. And I am certain that you will make sure it's the most beautiful wedding in all of Spain. And since I will have to pay for it, I must go to work."
"Listen to you," his wife said, a quiet lilt of humor in her voice. "You already sound like an old man."
He chuckled. "This morning, I feel like one."
"I could make you feel…young again," she said.
"I am sure you could," he replied. "But not this morning. This morning, I must work."
"Go, then," she said, playfully pushing him out of the bed with her foot. "Go and bake your bread."
"Do not think of it as baking bread," he said, lightly grasping her toes through the blanket. "Think of it as baking Anwar's wedding cake."