by D. J. Niko
The sidebar was devoted to the view of the New York—based clean ocean initiative Oceanus. The president, Stuart Ericsson, cautioned:
”The consequences of Poseidon could be catastrophic. If the ocean temperatures rise by even five degrees, which is entirely plausible given the current rate of climate change, algae— whether naturally occurring or engineered in a lab—has the potential to grow and metamorphose. We saw this happen in the eighties in the Mediterranean, when the Caulerpa taxifolia algae grew out of control and threatened the sea’s delicate ecosystem.”
Caulerpa taxifolia, a type of phytoplankton commonly referred to as killer algae and alien algae, was accidentally released into Mediterranean waters in 1984 from the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco. Commonly used as a decorative material in aquariums, C. taxifolia was transformed into an invasive species when it came in contact with the Mediterranean Sea. The algae, which reportedly grew to cover some seven thousand four hundred acres of the sea and threatened the region’s seaweed and fish populations, has been the subject of worldwide controversy. Some scientists believe reports of outsized growth are exaggerated, while others maintain that more than half the species of fish have been eradicated in areas of the C. taxifolia infestation.
If she had never seen Gabriel’s prophecies or Calcedony’s letter, Sarah would have dismissed all the controversy as rubbish. She would have never doubted that carbon dioxide—consuming algae would be a good thing for the environment. But the questions jabbed at her mind like barbed wire.
Her phone vibrated. The caller ID announced Dr. Simon. She answered, fearing he would tell her she no longer had a job or would be confined to a teaching post, the kiss of death for an archaeologist.
“I had a call from my counterpart at Rutgers.” The professor’s tone was graver than she’d ever heard it. “It appears Daniel Madigan never made it to Riyadh.”
She sat up. “What did you say?”
“It appears he checked in at Charles de Gaulle but never got on the plane. I must know what you know about this. You were the last person to see him.”
Sarah felt numb. “I … know nothing, I promise you. I mean … we were together the night before, but he left in the morning in a hurry, didn’t even say good-bye. I haven’t heard from him since.”
“Apparently, no one else has either. Now, Sarah, I want you to keep your wits about you. We don’t know what this is. He could be AWOL, or he could be in trouble. Trouble seems to follow you two.”
Sarah hung up abruptly and checked her text messages.
A text had been sent from Daniel’s phone at four in the morning.
You have something we want. We have something you want. We suggest an even exchange. Instructions to follow. Don’t botch this.
Twenty-Six
“Call for the king. He is waking.”
Gabriel heard the female voice and slowly opened his eyes. It took him a few seconds to realize where he was and to recall what had happened. He lay in a hard bed, covered with fine cotton sheets and sheepskin blankets. The windows were draped with great lengths of purple and gold silk tied back to admit the moonlight. Above his head hung an iron lantern casting flecks of golden light on the lion and zebra skin rugs. Women cloaked in white circled his bed, some preparing wet compresses while others sat in the corner muttering prayers and thumbing their rosaries. The palace.
His last recollection was of taking a life. Remembering the death squeal of the Blemmye who had met his sword, he felt ill. What had happened after that he did not know. Aware he was breathing shallowly, he attempted a deep breath and felt a stabbing pain in his left side. As more of the veils of confusion were lifted, he realized he was hot with fever and his bones ached mightily. He tried to move and could not. He had never known such intense pain or malaise. It was no ordinary infection, he knew. He closed his eyes and let his consciousness melt away in meditation, hoping to enter the elusive realm where comfort and peace dwelled.
Gabriel was semiconscious when Ezana entered the room. He could feel the monarch’s presence and hear the voices around him, but the words were warped and without edges, like images in a surrealist painting.
“I am … sorry … King,” he muttered.
Ezana’s bellowing voice reverberated in Gabriel’s ears. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You saved my life by risking your own. You served your king like an honorable man. Everyone in the kingdom will know of this.”
He opened his eyes and tried to focus on the massive figure before him. Ezana was dressed in gilded robes encrusted with rubies and embroidered with gold thread, a garment usually reserved for ceremony. “What was the outcome?”
“We were victorious, God be praised. Meroe was a worthy enemy, but she fell to the might of our armies. The Aksumite empire grows as the Lord God has predicted. Soon all the lands of the Nile will be ours and the might of Aksum will reach from sea to sea. Glory be to God.”
Gabriel gasped. The words came out without his willing them. “So many bodies … so much pain …”
“It was a necessary sacrifice. Those men were martyrs fighting not only for the kingdom of Aksum but for the kingdom of God. They rest in a place of plenty, eating and drinking and dancing with angels. It was their destiny. Do not mourn them.”
Hot sweat trickled down Gabriel’s forehead. His skull throbbed, the pain in his side immobilizing. “I feel life leaving me,” he whispered.
“You cannot die. I need you in my army. Tell the women how to make you better. I have ordered them to do as you ask.”
“No. It is too late for me. Leave me be.”
Ezana looked at the head nurse who monitored the patient silently from across the room. She nodded her agreement with Gabriel’s proclamation. The king stood abruptly.
“Incompetent, every one of you.” He pointed to Gabriel. “This man was sent to me by God himself, and you just stand there and let him die? You must see to his recovery at once.”
The king stormed out of the room, his long, jeweled robes undulating behind him.
That night, Gabriel was restless. Delirious with fever, he mumbled a stream of nonsense. He would fall asleep for a few minutes only to be jarred awake by convulsions. His breathing had become more labored. During one of his fits of coughing, blood splattered across his pillow. Even in his compromised mental state, he knew he was hemorrhaging internally.
The night attendant cried, “We must get the king—and Abuna.”
Within moments, Ezana entered accompanied by Abuna Salama, the bishop of the kingdom, and a coterie of his lieutenants. The bishop, a diminutive, ancient figure draped with embroidered sashes and carrying a ceremonial silver cross, approached Gabriel’s bedside. He sprinkled the patient with holy water and, with hands clasped, chanted a string of prayers. He placed his hand on Gabriel’s brow and announced, “This servant of God is hereby baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. O Lord, let Gabriel ascend to your kingdom, forgive him his trespasses, and grant him peace. Amen.”
Gabriel’s thoughts swirled with no pattern or boundaries. He struggled to remain conscious and regain control of his mind, for he had left something unsaid.
Ezana announced, “Let it be known that Gabriel of Arabia has sacrificed his life to protect his king and the Aksumite people and has proven himself to be an instrument of God. His faith did not waver, even in the face of his own death. That is a symbol of his holiness.” Ezana removed the heavy golden cross that hung around his neck and slipped it over Gabriel’s head. “For this reason and by the power granted me by God, I proclaim Gabriel a saint of the Aksumite kingdom and pledge to bury him with the highest honors alongside the great fathers of this land.”
“My king.” Gabriel gasped for air, unsure he would get the words out. “I have one last wish.”
“Then it will be granted,” Ezana roared.
“I wish to be buried as a humble man, for that is what I am. I make my home on the foothills of Dabra Damo, high up the cliffs.” Gabriel choked on the w
ords and succumbed to another coughing fit. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth and from his nose, but he pressed on. “Bury me inside the cave where I have inscribed my story in the stone.” He tried to utter more but could not.
“Very well, then. So be it.” Ezana turned to his lieutenants. “See that Saint Gabriel’s body is laid in an acacia coffin and interred in Dabra Damo. Find the cave he speaks of and let him be buried there for all eternity.”
As Abuna Salama chanted the psalm of the dying, Gabriel closed his eyes and drifted to a realm unknown to him until that moment. He regarded the visions silently and without judgment, for nothing could torment him now. There was his father teaching him how to swim in the river behind the family farm. The two of them on long walks across the fields, talking with reverence about the land. The overwhelming joy of holding his son for the first time. The boy’s bumbling first steps to him. The pride he felt at beating his professor and mentor at chess that one and only time. The tall columns of flame on the last day he saw his family. The integrity in the deep furrows of Hairan’s face. The Bedouins dancing with abandon by the fire. His own trembling hands as he cast in stone the message he hoped would be found by a worthy emissary. Calcedony. The way her lower lip trembled when she laughed. Her eyes that shone with the intensity of a thousand ancient stars. Her long locks falling around his neck as they made love. In the pure white brilliance of his mind’s eye, a hand reached toward him, and he grasped it.
Twenty-Seven
For the next twenty-four hours, Sarah did not sleep. She was glued to her phone, checking every few minutes for word from Daniel’s abductors. Nothing came. She was so fraught with nervousness that her stomach seemed to be crushed in a vise and her mouth tasted of acid. You have something we want. Calcedony’s letter. Someone was determined to erase every mention of the impending doom. The questions swirled in her sleepless mind, making her crazy. She had to clear her head.
She walked out of her flat and breathed in the cool night air, laced with bus exhaust, soot, and urine emanating from the bowels of the Tube. The smell of London. She had come to love it. Though long ago she had chosen the life of a nomad, the familiar scent was as close to home as she would allow herself to feel.
Constantly glancing over her shoulder, she walked north toward a familiar destination: Hyde Park. The spooky outline of the beech trees in the dark, the moonlight reflecting on the Serpentine, the benches full of lovers on clandestine rendezvous— all were icons from her youth. Before the divorce and their move to America, Sarah and her mother used to walk there and talk endlessly about adventures and books, ideas and ideals.
But tonight, nothing could bring her comfort. She walked the entire width of the park from Knights-bridge to Bayswater Road, then turned west toward Kensington Gardens. On the way back, she took the Kensington High Street route to Knightsbridge, walking past storefronts displaying cacophonous get-ups in what seemed to her a conspiracy to make a woman look ridiculous. In that way, she did not mirror her mother at all. Whereas her mother had been a slave to fashion and looked the part of the Hollywood star even when having cocktails at home alone, Sarah eschewed fancy frocks and good manicures. She didn’t see the point in it. To avoid the spectacle of wanton consumerism, she took a turn on Sloane Street and cut through quiet residential streets on her way to the embankment.
By the time she returned to her own address, she was tired but her thoughts were in focus. She took the stairs to the first floor and slowly walked the length of the corridor to the southernmost tip of the building, the side facing the Thames. She entered the flat, put her bag down, and stood in the darkness by the sliding glass door, taking in the river and city lights across the water in Battersea.
Her thoughts traveled to Daniel. Damn her ambition for leading them here. She had never felt so powerless.
In the inky water, she saw movement, but no boats went by at that hour. She focused on the spot. With a skipped heartbeat, she realized the movement wasn’t on the water at all. Reflected on the glass was something stirring behind her.
She dared not move.
She could open the glass door and jump down the one floor, or she could grab the heavy marble lamp on the table behind her and swing at the intruder’s head. She scanned the glass again for signs of motion. The figure emerged from the dark hallway.
The door, she decided, but suddenly her fingers weren’t working. She tried to open the door, and in that blurred moment the intruder was upon her.
Instinctively she swung around and jabbed her elbow hard toward his chest. He intercepted and twisted her arm behind her back, pinning her to the glass.
Sarah wailed with pain.
“Don’t scream. Don’t scream,” he ordered as she tried to break free, her protests overpowered by the full strength of his body.
”What do you want?” she said, her voice strained from the pain and shock.
“Listen to me very carefully. I will let you go, but you must not fear me. Understand?”
She nodded tentatively. He released her, and she slowly turned to face him.
He wore a hood, his face shrouded in darkness. He stepped toward the window, and the city lights illuminated the insignia on his hooded fleece: IEHO—the International Ethiopian Help Organization, a charity based in London. Then she saw his face.
“Dear God,” she whispered as the sight of his charred and tortured flesh came into full view.
His visage, no longer covered by a mask, was horrific. One eye was sealed shut with swollen eggplant-colored flesh; the other practically floated in its socket with no eyelid to protect it. Streaks of skin on his cheeks and forehead were still raw and pink against his black skin. His hair had been singed away save for a few errant wisps that clung like parasites to his scarred scalp.
She winced in disgust, and he stepped away from the light, hiding his face.
“Brehan. What are you doing here?” She tried to appear calm, though fear gripped her.
“The English let me go. I gave them what they wanted, and they said I was free.” Though his accent was thick, he obviously had been educated in English.
“But what are you doing here? In my apartment.”
He put his hands together in the universal sign of prayer. “There are things you don’t know. I am not the assassin you believe me to be. True, I have done things that can never be forgiven.” He looked in the direction of the water, bitterness in his gaze. “I had to kill Apostolos to gain their trust. If I did not, the mission of the brotherhood would have been jeopardized.”
Sarah lashed out. “How could the brotherhood be more important than a man’s life? The life of your own flesh and blood?”
“Apostolos denounced his own flesh in service to Apocryphon. But he never knew that I did the same. Some years ago, when the brothers suspected Matakala was after the tomb of the tenth saint, the high priest of Apocryphon asked me to leave the church to become a spy in Matakala’s organization. I was sworn to secrecy. No one else knew. Not even Apostolos. He thought I had betrayed Apocryphon and that was the way we wanted it. If he knew the truth, he would have tried to protect me, for that was his nature, and everything we worked for would have been for naught.”
Sarah heard him out. Too many unresolved questions remained—questions perhaps this man, whatever his true identity, could answer.
“Right. And who killed Matakala, then?”
He did not flinch. “I did. After I left you on the mountain, I went to his house and told him I had killed you and your partner. Matakala said, ‘Your work here is done,’ and pointed his handgun at me. I ran. He shot me in the leg as I slipped outside, then shot at me again but missed. I kept running, but my leg was bleeding a lot, and I grew weak. I collapsed by the well. He jumped on top of me, and we struggled.” He stopped short. “It was self-defense.”
Sarah stood there stone-faced, piecing it all together. Brehan’s story was plausible. If he was who he claimed to be, it would explain why he had let her and Daniel go free in the
Simien Mountains. And why he had helped her father’s emissaries find them.
“You don’t believe me. Perhaps this will convince you.”
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a package wrapped in dirty white sailcloth. He unwrapped it carefully to reveal another package, this one swaddled in a bloodred textile embroidered with gold thread. He handed it to her.
She looked at him, baffled. “What is this?”
“Open it.”
She pulled back the corners of the textile and laid the contents of the package bare. The golden cross gleamed with a light seemingly of its own. With trembling hands, she cradled the cross and bowed in reverence. An intensity she had never felt before filled her, moving through her like an electric current. She placed the cross down carefully, afraid of its power.
Brehan reached into the sailcloth and handed her another package wrapped in silk. She didn’t have to open it to know it was the codex. She clutched it to her chest like a friend reunited after long years and looked at Brehan.
“Apostolos gave you the key and some instructions. You know what you must do.”
Sarah did indeed know what to do with the relics, but would she get the chance? Being in possession of the tenth saint’s cross and the codex and Calcedony’s letter set her in the power seat—and in the path of peril.
“Look, my partner is in danger, and I am running out of time to help him. Do you know where he is?”
“I don’t know. That is the truth.”
She exhaled in frustration. “What do you know about these people? Who was paying Matakala?”