by By Jon Land
“That proves nothing. It’s just hearsay.”
“I’ve read three different testimonials of that same event. Does that prove anything? If you’re looking for a logical explanation, Inspector, you won’t find it here. Nostradamus had studied astrology extensively, and when the planets were aligned to his liking, he would lean over a bowl filled with steaming water and pungent herbs. Staring into a thin candle flame, he would empty his mind and slip into a trance. It was in this state that he claimed to see visions projected in the mist rising before the candlelight.
“His intention, Inspector, was to write a book of prophecy that would predict the future of mankind until the end of time. Ten volumes, The Centuries, were planned, each to contain one hundred quatrains.”
Danielle gazed down at the pages opened on the heavy wooden table before her. “And where does the manuscript found in Buchenwald fit in?”
“It doesn’t. That manuscript must represent some kind of addendum. It’s known that Nostradamus had begun writing two additional volumes but they were recovered in raw, unfinished form years ago.” Hauptman gazed down at the pages before him. “This manuscript represents, in effect, a thirteenth volume, written near the end of Nostradamus’s life as his mind became filled with visions he hadn’t seen before.”
“But as you see he left his final one incomplete, Herr Hauptman.”
“I’m sorry I cannot help you with your missing line, Inspector, but perhaps I can point you in the right direction.”
“Where?”
“Salon, France, where my father found this manuscript,” Hauptman told her. “The place of Nostradamus’s death.”
* * * *
Chapter 54
S
he’s upstairs,” the aide Ruth said, as soon as Franklin Winters stepped through the door. “I can’t do a thing with her today.”
Winters climbed the stairs and entered the spare bedroom that had been transformed into his wife’s domain, rife with the smell of Lysol to cover that of stale urine. His wife, Mary, spent many of her days just lying on the bed or rocking in the chair alongside it, always with the dreamy vacant expression of middle-stage Alzheimer’s, her mind in a place Winters would never understand.
But the hospital bed’s rails were down and Mary was nowhere to be seen. Winters tried his room next, where Mary sometimes went believing she still shared it with him. That didn’t happen much anymore, as if the retreat into the repressed world of her own making was becoming more complete.
He found his room empty as well, then heard a rustling sound down the hall. The only other room on this floor was Jason’s, and Mary never entered it. Most days, she seemed to have forgotten their son even existed, continually asking Winters who the person was in all the pictures.
Today, though, he found Mary hovering over Jason’s bed, smoothing the covers, seeming to mimic making a bed rather than actually doing it.
“Got to have the room ready now that Jason’s home,” she announced, noticing Winters standing in the doorway.
“Mary—”
“He likes his covers tucked in just a certain way. Three pillows, always three pillows. Sheets have to be cotton.” She stopped and looked at Winters again. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
“I’m going to make his favorite dinner tonight too,” Mary continued, even though it was clear she had no idea what that meal was. “He’s been away a long time, hasn’t he?”
Winters could only nod.
“I saw him yesterday, but he said he couldn’t stay.”
Somehow that piqued Winters’s interest. “You saw Jason?”
“He forgot his lunch box. Why else would he come home during school? I made him tuna fish, you know. His favorite. The kind in water, not oil.”
Mary moved to Jason’s credenza desk and began to dust it down with an edge of her nightgown, careful to avoid the computer that sat in the center. The room had not changed from the time Jason had graduated from high school and gone off to college. And it remained the same even after he had disappeared in Iraq.
“He looked sad when I saw him. I think it was the tuna fish. I should have made something else.” She drifted over to the window, tried to open it and failed, not remembering how to operate the lock. “He was standing right down there, near the swing set. I went outside, and he asked me to push him. He’s a good boy, Franklin.”
“Yes, Mary, he is.”
“He was gone for a long time, but he’s back now.”
“That’s good.”
“You missed him too.”
“I did.”
“It’ll be nice to have him home again,” Mary said, empty gaze drifting out the window.
“Yes,” Winters said stiffly, “it will.”
* * * *
Chapter 55
I
’m glad your Israeli friends have become so cooperative,” Colonel Nabril al-Asi greeted with a wry smile, after an Israeli military patrol dropped Ben off outside his headquarters in Ramallah.
“They have their own reasons, believe me,” Ben said, and recounted to al-Asi his recent adventures, especially what had transpired at the zoo and in the U.N. van.
The colonel listened without surprise. “What now, Inspector?” he asked simply, once Ben was finished.
“We go inside and take another look at the tape of the massacre made by that little girl.”
Al-Asi turned off the lights in the television room upstairs so both of them could focus more easily on the picture displayed on the twenty-seven-inch screen. Ben longed for the equipment he had grown used to while working for the private security firm in the United States and, sometimes, with the U.N. Computer-generated enhancement and digital printers that could turn any frame into an eight-by-ten photo in seconds. For now the best he could do was use a handheld magnifying glass and a Freeze button, which he pressed each time a face on the tape grew reasonably clear.
The distance from which the film had been shot provided only two clear images in total, still enough for Ben to be sure of what he had suspected last night.
“These are two of the men I killed at the zoo last night,” he told al-Asi, lowering the magnifying glass from the screen.
The colonel gazed over his shoulder. “Members of Iraq’s Special Republican Guard?”
“According to David Vordi.”
“And you believe him?”
“I believe my own eyes, Colonel. The question is how Iraqis thought to be killed by Americans during the war ended up in Israel and what’s the U.N.’s connection?”
“I know someone who might be able to help answer that question.”
“I was hoping you might say that.”
“Then get ready for a long journey.”
“Where are we going?”
“A place I’m afraid will bring back some unpleasant memories for you, Inspector. Baghdad.”
* * * *
* * * *
Chapter 56
D
anielle melded into the group of tourists halfway through the shattered Roman ruins known as the Temple de Diane in Nimes.
She had taken the first morning flight out of Berlin for Paris and then transferred onto a smaller commuter plane bound for Marseilles. From there she had rented a car and driven north along a beautiful road lined by cypress trees and manor homes adorned with red-tile roofs. The scents of lavender and thyme were heavy in the sun-drenched air and oleanders rose in full bloom.
Sixty-five years ago, Klaus Hauptman’s father Erich had come to a small town twenty miles farther to the north, having followed the trail of the lost prophecies of Nostradamus to an ancient stone abbey. According to Klaus Hauptman, his father had traced the manuscript to the abbey’s caretaker, a man named Henri Mathieu. Hauptman knew little more of how the manuscript that had ended up in Buchenwald had changed hands. In later years, though, he did know that Henri Mathieu’s son Jacques had become one of the world’s greatest Nostradamus scholars and
interpreters of his work.
Jacques Mathieu, Klaus Hauptman informed her, had settled in the southern area of Provence not far from the abbey that had fallen victim to German bombing at the outset of the war. He was one of the region’s foremost historians and gave regular tours of historical sites close to his home outside of Nimes.
Hauptman professed to know little else about him, other than by reputation. They had never met or even corresponded. But Mathieu had authored dozens of articles on Nostradamus and had been instrumental in debunking numerous misinterpretations of the prophet’s work as well as exposing a number of artful forgeries.
He had been a very young boy in 1939, so Danielle doubted he would be able to add anything to what Klaus Hauptman had already told her about the acquisition of the manuscript itself. Having joined the tour group, she listened to Mathieu chatter on with great enthusiasm about the Temple de Diane’s colorful history leading up to its ultimate destruction during the Wars of Religion. Numerous areas of the site were being freshly excavated by archaeological teams, rendering them off limits to tourists. But this did not stop Mathieu from bringing his small entourage up to the rope line and describing exactly what had once stood amidst the ruins.
Mathieu walked stiff-legged with the aid of a cane, every step over the uneven and rock-laden ground drawing a grimace from him. He was breathing hard and sweating through his shirt, neither of which detracted from the exuberant tones of his strong, baritone voice.
Danielle waited until the tour was over and Mathieu had returned to his car before approaching him. She watched him gulp down a bottled water from a cooler in his backseat and then twist the cap off a second.
“Monsieur Mathieu?”
“You joined the group late, mademoiselle,” he said, hardly regarding her.
“You noticed.”
“I’m a historian. It’s what I do. Notice things.” He took another hefty sip from his water bottle. “Along with the fact that you showed no interest in the temple ruins.”
“That’s not what brought me here.”
“And yet we are speaking.”
“I’d like to talk to you about Nostradamus.”
Mathieu smiled slightly, lengthening his bulbous jowls even more. “If you want your fortune told, there’s a gypsy camp a few kilometers up the road.”
He twisted the cap back onto his second water bottle and then turned back to his cooler dismissively.
“Your father was Henri Mathieu, caretaker of an ancient stone abbey in Salon and something else: the lost prophecies of Nostradamus.”
Mathieu stiffened and turned around slowly, putting the weight of his right side against his cane. “And where did you hear that?”
“From Klaus Hauptman, curator of the Jewish Museum in Berlin.”
“I’ve seen his name on eBay. Selling history to the highest bidder.
“His father—”
“I know who his father was, mademoiselle, and what he did. Better than you can possibly realize.”
Mathieu climbed awkwardly into the front seat, dragging his stiff leg in after him.
Danielle moved up to the open window and watched him fumbling with his keys. “I have with me the original manuscript Klaus Hauptman’s father Erich obtained from your father.”
Mathieu held the keys still. “Obtained. Is that the word Klaus Hauptman used?” Then, before Danielle could respond, “What is this about? If you expect me to pay you for this manuscript you say exists, I’d recommend you let Hauptman place it for sale for you on eBay.”
“This is about one of the lost prophecies, Monsieur Mathieu,” Danielle said flatly. “If it’s correct, a lot of people are about to die and I’m here to stop that from happening.”
Mathieu’s expression tightened as he continued to glare at her. Then he nodded slowly. “We should go somewhere and talk, mademoiselle.”
* * * *
Chapter 57
B
en and al-Asi left just after dawn, using the papers and identification badges David Vordi had provided to traverse checkpoints on their way to Jordan. Two miles beyond the border, they found the field where a helicopter was waiting to take them to a border crossing with Iraq. Air traffic over the still-occupied country was severely restricted, meaning they’d have to transfer to another car for the drive across the long stretch of desert road east toward Baghdad.
“Who is it we’re going to see exactly?” Ben had asked the colonel back at the Ministry of Interior’s headquarters before they set out.
“A man named Ibrahim al-Kursami.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Not by that name, anyway. Perhaps the one he’s better known as: Massoud Takran.”
“You’re acquainted with the former head of the Iraqi secret police?”
“Not exactly. He was still Ibrahim al-Kursami when I knew him.”
“Knew him how, Colonel?”
Al-Asi didn’t hesitate. “He was my mentor.”
The fact that Nabril al-Asi, almost certainly the closest friend Ben had in the world, had learned his trade from among the most violent and brutal men in modern history shocked and unsettled Ben. Then again, the colonel had always been full of surprises and this was just another in a long line.
They didn’t speak of the issue again until they were speeding across the desert on the all-but-abandoned highway that linked Jordan with Baghdad. It was al-Asi who brought it up again after they’d been cleared through the second American checkpoint and no longer had to concern themselves with the bandits who still plagued the earlier stretch of the route.
“You’re disappointed in me, Inspector.”
“Surprised, that’s all.”
The colonel smiled tightly, humorlessly. “What, did you think I became head of the Preventive Security Service using only my charm and wit? No, first I needed to learn how the game was played. In 1974, at the age of fifteen, I found myself exiled. I wasn’t alone; there were many of us. I was considered to be of no use to the resistance movement building in Jordan, so ultimately I made my way with a few others into Iraq. Ibrahim al-Kursami was a colonel in the Iraqi military back then, assigned to stop the flood of refugees streaming in from Jordan, of which I was a part. He ordered his men to fire into the crowd when his instructions to stop and turn around were disregarded.”
“What happened?” Ben asked.
“I threw myself over the body of a smaller boy. I thought I was dead until a powerful hand hoisted me upward and I looked into al-Kursami’s eyes for the first time. Black eyes. I had never seen a man with black eyes before. He smiled at me. Others around me were screaming, sobbing, and fleeing back toward the border. I could have fled too but something stopped me. Maybe it was the fact I had nowhere else to go or maybe it was the way he looked at me. But I stayed and spent the next decade in Iraq as one of al-Kursami’s protégés, then moved on to Lebanon, before returning to Palestine with Arafat as a member of his inner circle.”
“You’re telling me you learned your stock and trade from a man who had women and children raped in front of a husband or father for being disloyal to the state.”
Al-Asi frowned. “I had left Iraq before al-Kursami became Massoud Takran and sank to the levels of depravity of which you speak. I won’t tell you I didn’t see him do brutal things but I’ll tell you this, Inspector: I never once saw him enjoy it.”
“That doesn’t make his actions any more justifiable.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t. But a man in al-Kursami’s position, and mine, must learn to evoke fear in his enemies as well as his friends.”
“The fear you inspire has always been based on intimidation, not brutality.”
“I became what I had to, just as al-Kursami became what he had to, in order to survive. And that’s what he remains to this day: a survivor.”
“I thought the Americans captured him.”
“Actually, he turned himself in.”
“You’re telling me he’s not imprisoned?”
“Not after he proved himself an invaluable intelligence source. Al-Kursami was always a master at knowing how to close a deal. A survivor, as I said.”
“He gave up high-level Iraqi leaders and the Americans let him live,” Ben presumed.