by Layton Green
“As attractive as that sounds, I might as well give you my gun.”
She took her bottom lip between her teeth and looked away. “I trusted you.”
“And I, you. Circumstances change.”
“I should have changed my code.”
“You should have, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Drink the tea, Juma.”
After stroking the ceramic cup with a fingernail, she lifted the mug and took a sip of the tepid beverage. It would taste like peppermint, he knew.
She pursed her lips and drank the entire contents, then showed him the empty bottom of the cup.
“Good,” he said. “Thank you.”
“What do you want? You know I don’t have access to anything more than you once did.”
“I don’t think that’s true. In fact, I think you’re slated for Ascension.”
Juma laughed. “You think so much of me? I don’t know where the target is, Omer. I swear it.”
“Whether or not you’re telling the truth, I have a different strategy. Where is the Archon?”
“What? The Archon? I’ve no idea.”
“Do you not? I have a feeling something very important is underway, and security will be heightened. There’s a packed suitcase in your bedroom. Where are you going?”
“New York. A mission.”
“To do what?”
“You know I can’t say.”
“Where is your phone?”
After a brief hesitation, she started to reach into her yellow leather handbag.
“Give me the whole purse.”
After she complied, Omer pulled out a silver cell phone identical to his own. He slid it across the tile floor. “Unlock it.” When she didn’t respond, Omer kept the gun trained on her and slid a serrated knife out of the side of his boot. He asked again.
“What are you hoping to accomplish, Omer? Are you on a suicide mission?”
“On the contrary. I aim to get my life back.”
“My God, you’re still trying to deliver the target. Do you actually think they’d take you back? That will make it worse!”
“They’ll reconsider once I stage an attack on whoever is holding her, blame that bitch Zawadi, and emerge the hero.”
“If the Archon even suspects you have done this and questions you—”
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take,” he said evenly.
“You’ll kill me either way, won’t you? They know of our past, and if there’s any doubt, I’ll be interrogated as well.”
“As I said, what happens next depends on you. Now, I’ll ask again: Where is the Archon?”
Juma sat mute on the couch. With a sigh, Omer took the knife and stood. “You don’t have to give me a location; I wouldn’t have trusted you anyway. But you do have to unlock your phone.”
After another long pause, Juma reached down to pick up her phone, then used the retina scanner to unlock it. She passed it across the floor. Omer searched through the phone with one eye trained on Juma, then looked up in satisfaction.
“Venice,” he murmured. “Yes, I’ve heard rumors.”
She didn’t respond.
“I can see it in your eyes, Juma. Maybe someone without our history could not, but I know you too well. You’re getting sleepy, aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered.
“Nor do you have to.”
“But I haven’t given you anything.”
“I never planned for you to. But the only way I can let you live is if you leave them. Tell the Ascendants you’re disappearing, Juma. Forever.”
“You—you can’t ask that of me.”
“Call them. Tell them right now.” He tossed the phone on her lap as her eyelids grew heavy. “Do you want to live or not?”
“That is not a life, is it? It’s why you’re here in the first place. I’m so tired, Omer.”
“Do this before you sleep.”
“Look at me, my love. Both of us have yearned for the same thing for so long! When I lose consciousness, remember what we have and find another way. I beg you. We can do this together. I will help you. No one ever has to know. We’ll be as we once were and join them together.”
She refused to take the phone, pleading with her eyes until her body sagged and her breathing became full and steady. Once sure she was asleep, he laid her gently on her back, kissed her on each eyelid, and held a pillow over her face.
Venice, Italy
26
Mainland Italy receded from view as the vaporetto left Marco Polo Airport and chugged through the lagoon toward the famous floating city. The cramped interior of the water taxi, combined with the roll of the waves and the stifling humidity, was starting to nauseate Andie. She fought her way to the railing of the uncovered section near the front of the boat and took deep draughts of air, ignoring the flustered stares of two Versace-clad women she had displaced to get there.
Cal stayed put. They had spoken very little since Andie had declared she was going to Venice, brushing aside his heated objections.
Trust no one, Dr. Corwin had told her. Not even your own family.
Andie knew it was a trap and didn’t care. It was her mother. She was going to the damn ball.
Cal’s most stringent argument was that her mother may not have actually written the note. Despite the use of the nickname Little Mouse, Andie had harbored this exact concern when reading the email for the first time, thinking the language was stilted. Though what did one say under the circumstances? How did you explain a twenty-year absence? Yes, she’d had her doubts as she read it—right until she encountered that telltale line near the end.
I’ll never forget how lovely you looked carrying father’s crystal angel.
When Andie was very young, five or six at most, she had accidentally broken an angel figurine her father had inherited from his grandmother. It was very expensive, a prized possession he kept on a display shelf in the dining room. One weekend morning, when her father was on a long walk, Andie had gotten a little rambunctious and crashed into the bottom of the shelf. The crystal angel had toppled over and shattered. Andie was mortified and couldn’t stop crying, knowing how upset he would be.
When her mother found out, she gathered Andie in her arms and said it was better if she took the blame instead. Andie cringed in her bedroom when her father returned and shouted at her mother. As far as Andie knew, he had never discovered the truth.
This one line, incongruent with the rest of the message, had erased all doubt in Andie’s mind. Not just that, but she was sure the line harbored a hidden message. All those years ago, when her mother had diverted her father’s wrath, she had been protecting Andie—and now she was trying to do so again.
Everything that had happened between those two points in time was a mystery Andie desperately wanted to solve. She could only assume her mother was a member of this shadowy organization. But at the moment, the mystery was secondary to the present reality: her mother knew she was in trouble and had reached out.
And nothing had ever felt quite so good.
“Fine,” Cal had said, as they retrieved two tickets at the Alexandria airport, just as the email had promised. Somehow, Andie’s mother knew about their false passports, because their tickets were issued under those names. “Maybe only your mother knows about the crystal angel, but someone could have tortured her for the information.”
“In that case,” Andie had replied, “I really have to go.”
After throwing up his hands, Cal gave up trying to dissuade her. She knew he was just as terrified as she was, and almost as motivated.
Well, he didn’t have to come to Venice.
None of this meant Andie didn’t intend to take precautions. It was already four in the afternoon on Friday, eight hours before the appointed meeting time. Just enough time to recoup over dinner, establish what safeguards they could—and find a place to hide the Star Phone.
Andie’s first impression of Venice, under a searing blue sky as the vaporetto appro
ached the fabled city from a distance, was of a smear of pastel chalk. But as the buildings clarified and the water taxi pulled into Piazza San Marco, her breath caught in her throat and she stared slack-jawed at the sight. Despite heaving with tourists and vendors, the massive seaside plaza ringed by domes and spires and multitiered arcades, sprinkled with elegant green lampposts and soaring columns, was a fantasy made real. Backed by the turquoise expanse of the Grand Canal—much wider than she had imagined—the splendor of San Marco was overwhelming, the wealth of centuries compressed onto a dollop of land that had been the most powerful real estate in the world for over four hundred years.
Andie couldn’t stop gawking at the view. Piazza San Marco was a snowflake cast in marble by Bernini, an outdoor chapel to art and beauty and the genius of humankind, and one which still, as far as she could tell, set the gold standard.
As the vaporetto pulled away and entered the Grand Canal, the Doge’s Palace and Saint Mark’s Basilica receding gracefully from view, she wrenched her mind to the task at hand. The message had said to wait atop the Ponte dell’Accademia at midnight. The Ponte dell’Accademia was a footbridge—one of four spanning the Grand Canal—that linked the tourist mecca of San Marco with the quieter neighborhood of Dorsoduro. Soon, after a glimpse of the sumptuous old mansions lining the Grand Canal like a succession of Renaissance paintings, the water taxi crossed to the Dorsoduro side and pulled right up to the Ponte dell’Accademia—also a vaporetto stop.
Andie and Cal shouldered their backpacks and exited the boat with a crush of other tourists as the canal water lapped against the barnacle-encrusted pilings supporting the city. Seagulls whirled in the sultry air, an accordion player dueled with a violinist by a public waterspout, and the heady smell of jasmine competed with the sweet stench of the canal.
While quieter than San Marco, the modest plaza fronting the bridge was still a beehive of activity. A signpost guided the way to the Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, and other sights. There were no roads or new construction in Venice, not a hint of blacktop in sight. Change the clothing and take away the tourist trinkets, and it could have been the fifteenth century.
They were both starving. After taking some time to orient themselves, wandering the narrow lanes and tight campi between the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal, they found a quiet little pizzeria down an alley with white mortar showing through the bricks.
A waiter led them to a courtyard table beside a wall covered in blooming star jasmine. Andie ordered a glass of wine to calm her nerves, Cal ordered a beer, and they decided to split a gorgonzola-and-onion pizza and a caprese salad.
As Andie fiddled with a coaster, Cal leaned toward the table. “You ready for this?”
“Of course not.”
“Yeah. Bad question. As ready as you’re gonna be?”
“At this point, I don’t see an advantage to overthinking it.”
In truth, they had already installed what precautions they could. Cal’s friend Dane had sent Cal a link to install remote tracking software on both their cell phones. Cal was not going to the ball, and they had developed special distress signals for each other in case they were forced to text or call under duress. While she was at the ball, Cal planned to roam the back streets of the city and find a place to stay out of sight. If things went south, he would alert the authorities and try to reach Andie.
When they parted ways after dinner, the soft dusk sky streaked with lavender, Andie disappeared into as many dark alleys and hidden courtyards as she could. She did this partly because such unexpected perambulations were inevitable in Venice, but mostly to throw off anyone watching her as she looked for a safe place to stash the Star Phone.
Dorsoduro was a maze of twisting cobblestone lanes, footbridges spanning tiny canals, hidden steps and archways, courtyards, secret gardens, saints peering down from alcoves, and masses of purple and crimson bougainvillea framing wooden shutters. She felt as if she were walking through an impressionist painting weeping tears of grime, a floating city of stone and flowers, a watery journey into the imagination. Yet as she delved into the quieter sections of the neighborhood, far from the madding crowd, she saw a different side to the city, one held together by spit and grit and history. Everything fading and peeling, shirtless men hanging out of windows to drape clothes on wires that stretched across the canals, children licking gelato and playing soccer in ruined plazas, balconies with striped canvas window sheets, the lilt of Italian and the clang of dishes, the smell of tobacco and shellfish.
Night descended on the city. As Andie walked the lamplit streets alone, the city dreamy and inchoate after dark, her long-repressed emotions bubbled over, filling her with so much nervous energy she felt electrified. She was about to see her mother for the first time in twenty years! It took an act of willpower to remind herself of the kind of people she was dealing with.
Half an hour before midnight, the claustrophobic streets hemmed in by canals and lagoons started to feel oppressive. There was no park or forest to run to, no easy way to stretch her long legs if she needed to escape. Andie was distressed she still had not found a good place to hide the Star Phone. If she took it with her, she would have no leverage.
After passing by the Ponte dell’Accademia for the umpteenth time, she stepped inside the public restroom near the bridge. There were plenty of people around. When she finished using the facilities, she paused before she opened the stall door, then turned to inspect the toilet. Moving as quietly as she could, she gently removed the lid of the tank and set it on the closed seat. It looked the same as any other on the inside: two valves and a rubber ball floating atop the water. Just to be sure, she flushed the toilet again and noticed the water level did not exceed the top of the cylindrical valve.
With a furtive glance behind her, she took out the Star Phone and wrapped it in a shirt from her backpack, then set it atop the flat surface of the valve. She carefully tapped the device on either side to ensure it would not slide off. It was a ridiculous place to hide something, but she hoped that would work in her favor. Who would suspect a public restroom? Plus, it closed at midnight. With any luck, Andie could retrieve it first thing in the morning, before anyone else went inside.
She exited the restroom and acted as normal as she could. If her pursuers wanted to trace her route in Venice and search every single place she might have hidden the Star Phone, they had a huge task in front of them.
Like a disappearing childhood, the appointed hour arrived before she knew it. At five minutes to midnight, panic surged through her. What if her mother hadn’t sent the message after all? Or worse: What if she had sent it to lure Andie to Venice, but wouldn’t be there to meet her?
What if she was abandoning her just like before?
That thought caused a sharp pang in her stomach. Andie shook it off with a snarl, striding up the steps to the long footbridge arching over the Grand Canal. To either side, a corridor of darkened buildings pressed against the glossy surface of the water. She was wearing her jeans, running sneakers, and the same military-green hoodie she had worn for most of the journey. She might be acceding to her mother’s request, but Andie wasn’t about to play little princess and dress up for the ball. She didn’t care if she stood out, or embarrassed her mother’s friends.
Andie was going as herself.
Despite the late hour, a steady flow of people passed across the Ponte dell’Accademia. Andie waited at the apex of the bridge with folded arms, trying not to look conspicuous as she eyed everyone who passed, feeling very awkward standing alone amid the throngs of young Venetians and nighttime tour groups and couples strolling arm in arm across the canal. Precisely at the stroke of midnight, she was startled when a mustachioed gondolier—dressed in the classic black pants and navy-blue-and-white striped shirt—touched her elbow as he passed her on the bridge. “Come with me,” he murmured.
After pausing a beat, Andie followed him to the Dorsoduro side of the bridge, then down a short flight of concrete steps to
where a few gondolas were moored along the canal. No one paid them any mind as the gondolier extended a hand to help Andie aboard his vessel, a black-lacquered gondola with silver trim and an iron feather at the head of the prow.
When she was young and searching for answers to her visions, Andie had studied a number of ancient symbols. To the Native Americans and other cultures, a feather represented freedom, inspiration, and travel, not just with the body but with the mind and spirit. A symbol of evolution to a higher plane.
An ascension.
She took a seat on a red-upholstered bench strewn with cushions. The gondolier untied the boat and poled away from the wooden pilings jutting out of the water.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He did not answer or even glance her way. Instead he stood atop a platform at the rear of the boat and pushed the gondola through the Grand Canal with slow, even strokes. They were headed away from the lagoon, deeper into the city. A shadowy tunnel of palatial buildings hovered on either side. The silence was broken only by the water lapping against the sides of the boat, the creak of wooden vessels moored along the canal, and the whisper of the gondolier’s oar as it dipped in and out of the water. Besides the moon, the only sources of illumination were the oily glow of the streetlamps reflecting on the edges of the water, and every now and then a wink of light from another gondola slithering past in the darkness.
As the Grand Canal inscribed the beginning of its S curve, Andie suspected the gondolier would take her down one of the labyrinthine side channels and disappear into the bowels of the city. After passing beneath the golden glow of the Rialto Bridge, her guide did veer left into a narrow waterway, but he surprised her by pulling alongside one of the lavish estates lining the Grand Canal, and mooring beside an arched loggia that stretched for half a block.
Andie looked up and caught her breath at the sight of the pale marble facade illuminated by the moon. Each of the four stories had different styles of balustrades and ornamental pillars, rising to a flat roof topped with a field of delicate sphere-tipped spires, which belonged more to a wedding cake than to a building.