After the man had hit him and tied him up he had asked him questions about one of his contacts; Dave Clearwater from IntelliSoft. What did he usually call him on-line? Dave or David? Did he type in Spanish or English? How good was that English? How did he sign off? Too many questions to remember. Dave had answered each and every one with an honesty on which he had built his hopes of salvation. He had somehow hoped that his honesty would save his life.
He had been so very wrong.
The man had used Paulo’s computer to log on to ‘Netspagnol’. Paulo knew he had because he had heard the forum’s distinctive entry jingle, but he was not seated in a position where he could actually see the screen and he guessed that such positioning had been deliberate. Having logged on the man had done... well, nothing. He had just sat bolt upright and waited. And waited. Then, after almost an hour, it seemed as though he had read an incoming message on the screen. In response he had pulled a note from a red envelope and started to type it, word for word, onto the server.
He had then waited again, longer this time. Again he never moved from the chair or even looked in Paulo’s direction. It had lasted so long, this waiting game, that Paulo had eventually complained that he needed the lavatory, that he would wet himself soon. He had never felt such overwhelming embarrassment in his life. The man had said nothing and, in the end, wet himself was exactly what Paulo had done. He had begged and he had pleaded because now, with a dark patch clearly visible along the top of his left leg, he had been forced to accept that he was pathetic. Still nothing.
After two hours and thirteen minutes (according to the Mickey Mouse clock that Paulo had watched throughout, dancing with a strange absurdity on his shelving unit) the man had checked his watch. It seemed as though some deadline had been met and the man quickly copied a much shorter message on to the screen. It seemed as though this second message was designed to form some kind of timed response.
It had obviously been something to do with Dave Clearwater, the man who worked at IntelliSoft. Perhaps the man had been waiting for Dave to log on and had then responded to him? Is that why he had asked so many questions? Was this man actually pretending to be Paulo when he responded?
But that made no sense. There were a great many occasions when even Paulo did not want to pretend to be Paulo.
There was no way for him to fully understand just how well Dave Clearwater, waiting impatiently at the other side of the world, had been duped. Of course the information he needed did not come flooding back to him within the hour. Nobody who promised to get back in an hour actually did.
The Abraham’s instructions to Zebulun had been clear; do not offer the address straight away, that would look forced. Similarly, promise a response in one hour but deliver in two. That would also look more natural. He could not afford for Dave to be even mildly suspicious about the information he received so that his boss, Jack Bernstein, would also not have any reservations about its integrity when it was passed on. It all had to look as though Dave had done what Dave did best: checked his sources and delivered the goods. Naturally.
Two minutes after the keying-in of the second message Paulo had ceased to have any interest in Dave’s problems any more. He had his own to deal with now. He was suddenly being dragged from the rear of the house; out to the open hillside behind and propped unceremoniously against a rough stone wall. His whole face still hurt, the blood now dry and flaking but he had still been unable move his hands and attend to it. He had been too shocked to even make an attempt to speak and his brain now felt as though it were about to explode through his skull.
The bald man, meanwhile, had disappeared back into the house and started rummaging noisily through his drawers. He did not know what he hoped to find.
How the hell could he know?
Without another word the man had walked, very calmly, into Paulo’s garage. When he had returned a few minutes later he had brought with him a can of gasoline that Paulo used for his motorbike, given that the nearest gas station was over forty kilometres away. Calmly he had made three further trips, bringing more items and placing them on the ground a few feet from Paulo’s slumped body. He brought a ten-foot length of uncut fencepost, then a circular fence digger’s spade and a cast iron door knocker. Finally, he emerged with three rusty six-inch nails, a hammer and a length of red fabric.
It was only then that Paulo had made some attempt to ask what he was doing, his voice still tonally ruined by his broken nose and wet from the blood still feeding into his mouth. He had asked again and again. The man had resolutely offered him no explanations.
When he seemed to have all he needed, the man calmly picked up the fencing spade, threw it hard at Paulo’s feet and walked over to remove the handcuffs.
“Dig!” he said. Nothing more, nothing less.
Paulo could not move. The word had echoed through his head, short and sharp, with every rush of blood his heart had delivered. He was too scared for his body to react. He knew that he could not run because all his strength was gone. His legs felt as though they were made of soft rubber. He knew that he would ultimately stumble and the man would catch him.
Then he would kill him.
[anyway]
Paulo had five different spades in the garage and yet the man had selected a fencing spade. It cut a deep circular hole ten inches in diameter for the setting of a wooden post. As small mercies went this was undoubtedly one of the smallest, but at least it was not his own grave he was being asked to excavate. Though he could not believe that his mind had contemplated such a thing, he knew that he had much better spades when it came to digging graves.
If he could not run, then surely he should fight, he told himself, but yet he was painfully aware that in reality he could do neither. If he was too weak to stand, how on earth could he fight? The man delivered the order a second time, a sharp spike of insistence added to an already powerful voice and Paulo realised that there was probably only one thing he could do that might get him through this alive. If indeed he could find the strength.
Dig.
With the pain spreading out through his limbs, he made a slow attempt, the man waiting patiently to his right as though completely disinterested by the whole charade. When, finally, the spade had helped him create a hole three feet deep, the man then ordered him to stop and he slumped back to the ground with exhaustion. Sweat and blood now running thick along his entire body. He felt as though he should just close his eyes and go to sleep, hoping that the man might be gone before he opened them again. As his eyelids started to merge, he heard the man hammering something into the length of wood. Something that sounded like a nail. Then another. When he had finished he placed the door knocker adjacent to the nails and bent them over to hold it securely in place. Paulo knew at that moment that it was a restraint. A restraint meant for him.
The man then extracted a clear plastic bag from his pocket, removed a gold plaque from within and nailed it as close to the top of the stake as he could. Paulo could not see what the engraved lettering on the plaque said. He never would.
The length of wood was lifted and one end placed down the hole; the man holding the other end vertically.
“Pack the soil,” he ordered. He was calm again, as though this was something he did to people every day.
Paulo did not have the strength to stand again. He tried, but fell awkwardly back onto the dusty ground. Three times he tried and three times he failed. Eventually he started to cry like a child.
The man repeated the order, his voice regaining his earlier air of impatience. Paulo tried one more time but it was no use. He looked up to the man for compassion and received nothing in return. He simply curled his teeth and repeated the order for a third - and undoubtedly final - time.
Paulo did the only thing he could; he crawled to the hole and pushed the freshly dug earth in with his bare hands. It tumbled down the hole and settled around the stake. He packed it as firmly as he could with bloodied and dirty palms and continued until it formed a mound higher t
han the surrounding earth. The man tested the stake, checking its solidity and seemed to feel that it would be strong enough. But for what? Then he grabbed Paulo, span him onto his face again, cuffed one of his wrists and hauled him roughly to his feet. Pushing the other cuff through the firmly secured door knocker, he then clipped it around Paulo’s remaining wrist so that his arms were secured to the stake.
When he released his grip, Paulo slumped, kept from falling only by the chain now linking his wrists. The inability of his legs to support his own body weight made him look like a firing squad victim in the aftermath of the fatal shots. As he looked to his own feet he saw the man gathering dried leaves and wood and placing them around his ankles. Then he heard the metallic catch on the canister spring open and the air was filled with an ominous, heavy odour.
Gasoline.
He started at the bottom, the leaves and twigs, and worked his way right the way up Paulo’s body until the canister was almost empty. When he poured the last drops of the liquid over Paulo’s head it ran down through his hair, stinging his eyes and washing the blood down his face. It ate into the open flesh of his nose and burned as though it were already alight. The overpowering smell was making him feel sick; the relaxed attitude of the man who was ready to kill him made him feel even worse.
The man took a step backward and admired his work.
Then he began to quote.
Paulo was still mouthing too many questions and gaining too few answers, but he stopped immediately when he realised what the man was saying. At first he had thought he might be talking directly to him, telling him something important, then his opinion had change and he had thought that he was perhaps reading a Latin prayer.
When complete realisation had finally come it had struck him like a bolt of lightning; a surge of electricity that stiffened his entire body and lifted his head with a jerk.
Auto-da-fé.
The ‘Act of Faith’.
The public ceremony of execution for persons condemned to death by the Inquisition for heresy. It was the most feared of the judicial ceremonies of the Roman Catholic church. Its great pomp and solemnity had ensured that history had kept it well documented. The first recorded incident of an auto-da-fé had been in Seville in 1481 and was overseen by Tomás de Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisitor General. The ceremony consisted of a procession of the condemned man or woman to a public place and the delivery of a lengthy sermon. Between 1481 and 1808 more than 340,000 people suffered the ordeal of an auto-da-fé. In the complete history of the Inquisition, 32,498 people were burned at the stake.
Now Paulo Estadore was being tried and convicted for the same crime.
32,499.
He started screaming; a desperate, nasal spluttering of unintelligible sobs and protests.
He cried. He pleaded. He begged.
The man did not drop a beat.
Instead he took the red fabric and tore it into two distinct strips, attaching them to Paulo’s bloodied shirt with pins from the house. The sermon was at an end; the two tongues of red cloth symbolising that judgement had indeed been passed and that the stake was to be lit. He removed a gold lighter from his breast pocket and flicked it a few times until it broke into flame.
There was no breeze, indeed the air was as still as Paulo’s breathing. He widened his blackened eyes and looked at the wisping ribbon of light. He was going to die.
The man crouched down. The closer the lighter came to the brushwood, the louder he wanted to scream and the less it seemed he was able. In the end, as the petrol caught and the flames swept like grabbing hands up his body, all he had been able to mouth was, “God no.”
It took many minutes for the Spaniard to lose consciousness and for his screaming to reach an end, his thoughts through the pain directed solely, and almost serenely, at one recurring question.
Why?
* * * * *
By the time the man finally smiled and walked away, Paulo Estadore had been burning for over fifteen minutes and was long-since clinically dead.
It would be the following day before his body was discovered. He was a loner, his only friends being those at the other end of modem terminals. Few would have known his address even if they had started to wonder where he was.
Zebulun was pleased with his day’s work. He had watched the boy suffer; seen his eyes witness more life than they had ever done before and then die along with his body. That was always a bonus. He did not know who the boy was, or what relevance the messages he sent might have, but that was of no consequence to him. The Abraham knew, just as The Abraham knew that Paulo was one of Dave Clearwater’s most trusted contacts.
Zebulun simply did as he was instructed. He did not ask questions.
When Father Miguel Estadore did come to visit he would find no more than the charred remains of his only son laying on the scorched earth in a pile of ashes, many of which had once been parts of his body. The smell of his only child’s smouldering flesh would still be consuming the surrounding air. He would be so distraught that he would not even remember to offer his son the last rites, but as he knelt on the floor, crying and praying to God, he would catch sight of the gold plaque, still attached with a single nail to six inches of lightly charred wood. He would read the message, but would never truly know why it had been placed there or what it meant.
~ KNIGHT TAKES PAWN ~
Like Paulo before him, he would have no idea as to why any of this had happened.
when ye find him
Genesis 32:19
The world was - is - an immense place. Home to a little over six billion people, each living in their own unique environment. Incomprehensible diversity. Modern cities and ancient towns; towering mountains and fractured valleys; interminable deserts and impenetrable oceans.
Public places and very, very private places.
Dark, sinister places. Shadowy depths where items could be hidden. And yet appearances could be deceptive, because not all of them actually looked as dark and sinister as they might prove to be. Even the most heavily populated areas of the world had their broken corners; their unknowns.
And somewhere, hidden within the complex fabric of the earth was something that Jack had to find.
A child.
It was tiny, probably no more than a few months old. It might possess dark skin or light, a feature probably influenced by the identity of the father; as yet another unknown. Perhaps the child had been born with a full head of hair, or perhaps even the first thin strand had yet to develop. It could be that this child cried each and every night, yet similarly it might not yet be aware of the things it would need to fear and would sleep right through. Indeed, it was more likely this child, wherever it might prove to be, had yet to understand any of the consequences of where it had been born and the things that its guardians were capable of doing in its name.
Either way, the child would almost certainly have possessed one specific feature; a hereditary trait that had already survived two generations. Those eyes. Elizabeth’s eyes. Lara’s eyes.
Eyes which, in that one remaining family member, would still hold the ultimate spark.
The spark of life itself.
Wherever the child might be, whatever condition of health it might find itself in and whatever its appearance, it existed. Of all the questions that might be, or had been, posed, the reality of its entry into the world was no longer an unknown. In only a few lines of officious copy, the Email from Germany had put an end to all supposition:
EYES ONLY
f.a.o. J. Bernstein
From: Special Agent J. Kramer,
F.B.I. Temporary Field Office, Frankfurt, Germany.
RE: Clearance ref: JB02598/FL320/WWX/P#197
Enquiry: 32201
Mr. Bernstein, re: information requested. Apologies for delay but, as you will understand, your clearance code needed to be confirmed. I am assured that the server I am posting via is part of a secure network but I must still remind you that unauthorised publication of any information con
tained within this electronic document will render you liable for criminal prosecution under Federal Law statute 32/c.
Confirmation from forensic reports - passenger #197, unidentified female aged between 18-22 has indeed undergone childbirth in the months prior to death. Based on state of reduced puerperium, best estimates are that the child was born approximately four months pre-mortem. Natural childbirth; no evidence of Caesarean.
Further information unavailable until full release of forensic reports. Best estimates place that within a 4-5 month period from time of this memorandum.
I hope information of use to you.
Special Agent J. Kramer.
The fear of possibility was gone. With only the slightest digital beep and a few thousand blackened pixels the deeper, darker fear of reality had taken its place.
In the latter part of her three years away from her father, Lara Bernstein had given birth and the world had suddenly become the ultimate haystack. Now Jack had to start sifting through it to find the needle. He would recognise the eyes of that needle instantly.
“Shit,” MaryBeth said, throwing the most comforting arms she could around her friend. “I’m so sorry.”
She pulled back and saw the first strains of tears in his eyes. If only his overwhelming desire that this had all been a lie had been enough to actually make it so.
There was no room for further denial. Simon had been telling him the truth.
The message had arrived ten minutes after they had watched the third movie file. The ArtWorX ImageFind function was still searching for a match on the screen behind and so they had been waiting. Patiently. Silently. MaryBeth had watched the movies with Jack three times now and each time neither one had known exactly what to say in the interminable void of silence created when the third file had finished.
A dark new meaning had now been thrown like gasoline across that final movie, aggravating the flames. How could it not? On previous occasions Lara had simply ‘found religion’. Jack might not approve but there was no need to worry himself unduly. It was a phase that thousands of kids went through; the ultimate rebellion, based on conformity. It might last, it might not, but Lara would not come to any harm. Then Simon had suggested that Lara’s death had been related to her giving birth to a child. Even then there was a chance that it was all bullshit. A slim chance. A hope glimmering at the base of some very murky thoughts.
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