“Hey, kid,” the man seated in front of him said, his voice soft yet menacing. “Shut yer whinin’ little punk mouth before I stuff my sweaty sock in there and duct-tape it. You’ll do just what yer told, or I’ll tear yer goddamn throat open and rip out yer tongue.” As he spoke, he leaned out and partially turned so that Matt got a first look at his face: dark skin, cheap shades, goatee, a silver-capped canine tooth, acne-scarred cheeks. He had the hulking, round, neckless shoulders of a body-builder. “We call it a corbata colombiana—Colombian necktie. Shit’s agony, and definitely calls for a closed-casket funeral.”
“That’s enough,” Rheese interrupted. “We’re not threatening anyone here, remember? Don’t make me speak to your boss about it.”
The man muttered a few Spanish vulgarities and settled back into his seat, out of sight.
“I will allow you a quick word with your lady friend when it’s convenient,” Rheese continued. “That was already planned. Your pilot is in the cockpit, where he belongs. I fired only the copilot (on your behalf), replacing him with this charming fellow’s partner. The pilot knows he’ll be set free in Australia. And by the way, he’s already activated the jet’s emergency distress beacon, in case you were wondering.”
Matt studied Rheese’s face, wondering what was so amusing about that. He could practically hear the drumroll as the man waited for his reaction, but Matt gave him only stone-faced silence.
Unable to hold out any longer, Rheese said, “Fortunately for us, my aide-de-camp is quite knowledgeable about such things—he secretly disabled it before the pilot stepped aboard.”
“You’re so pleased with yourself,” Matt said.
“True, I suppose,” Rheese admitted, returning his attention to the screen on his lap, “although genius is a heavy burden nonetheless.”
THREE
The Gulfstream landed at Brisbane International Airport in the early evening and taxied toward the private aircraft zone, where it passed a line of three other small jets waiting to unload. Pounding rain drummed on the roof and streamed down the windows. Matt watched out the window as a ground guide in rain gear and a reflective vest waved his conical red flashlights at the cockpit, trying to steer them into the line, then gave up as they continued taxiing toward some hangars at the end of the tarmac.
There the jet swung left and stopped between a hangar and a large stucco building. The man who had threatened Matt got up and stuck his head in the cockpit to talk to someone. A minute later, Matt’s new “copilot” came out of the cockpit. Also Latino, he had the same buzz-cut hair, broad shoulders, and ripped physique. But this one had the sort of bad-boy good looks that incited shallow women to leave their nice-guy boyfriends. Both men struck Matt as military types, right down to their lace-up commando boots.
Their introduction was less than ceremonious: “You gonna behave?” the handsome one asked Matt.
“Yeah, I’ll be good,” Matt said.
“You sure? ‘Cause we could always just ship you there. Wouldn’t have to interact with anybody at all.”
“I’m sure.”
“Good. Let’s go, then. Doctor, you got everything?”
“I believe so, Mr. G.” Rheese said it with an air of childish delight.
“Just ‘G,’ Doctor. And he’s just ‘Z.’ Now, let’s get moving before security gets here.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re running a little late, too.”
Matt half expected Rheese to ask if he could have a code name, too.
Duffel bags and packs were pulled out of the storage areas. Matt’s pilot, Vin Chiu, his wrist cuffed to the yoke, gave him a concerned good-luck nod from the cockpit. Walking down the steps, Matt hunched beneath the oppressive rain.
“Here,” Z yelled, giving Matt his rolling suitcase. Matt took the handle and followed Rheese and G along the walkway between the stucco building and the hangar. Z walked behind him, with a duffel slung over each shoulder. Lightning struck somewhere nearby, its flinch-inducing crack echoing between the buildings.
G stopped at a door, pulled a card from his hip pocket, and swiped it through the reader by the door handle. The lock clicked, and he held the door open as the other three walked in.
Inside, G handed Matt a stack of papers and a passport just before they reached security. Matt flipped open the passport to discover that he was, apparently, one Albert Apedaile, from New Orleans. They made it through without any problems or special attention from the affable Aussie guards. The gate attendant smiled, said “G’day,” tore off her piece of each ticket, and hurried them down the Jetway to their plane, which was almost done boarding.
“I’ll take your bag there, mate,” a young baggage handler said, reaching for Matt’s suitcase. “Have yourself a good time in Brizzy, didja?”
“Uh . . . yeah,” Matt replied, handing off the suitcase. “It was a blast.”
“Lovely town,” the handler said with a grin, and took the bag down the stairway to the cargo section.
G and Z took their seats in front of Matt and Rheese. Matt looked at his row and paused.
“Hurry in, Turner,” Rheese snapped. “You’re backing up the queue.”
Matt swallowed. He imagined the hundreds of people who had sat in this seat before him: people phobic about flying, colicky babies, businessmen in the throes of financial disaster, people flying home for an unexpected family funeral. He calmed himself with a deep breath and with the mental exercises he had been working on for the past year. Stick to the mechanics, he said to himself as he retucked his undershirt and pulled his wet sweater down over his jeans. Then he pulled up the collar of his turtleneck and tugged the knit cap down over it in back.
From the next row, Z hissed at him in the hushed but menacing tone of an angry parent in a public place. “Get in yer damned seat.”
Matt was ready, and he slid into the window seat as Rheese plopped down beside him to let the line of glaring passengers behind him proceed.
“I need to use the bathroom,” Matt said, and Rheese groaned.
Z’s nose suddenly appeared in the space between the seats. “If it can’t wait till we’re in the air, you’ll just have to piss yerself right there.”
Rheese murmured, “He’ll do no such thing, Sol—er, Z. You . . . you just worry about yourself. Now, is it urgent, Turner, or can it wait until after takeoff?”
“I guess it can wait.”
Rheese leaned forward and snapped at Z, “See? How hard was that—a small measure of civility?” He turned back to Matt. “Now, then, lad, after everyone is seated, I’ll need you to get to work on this artifact of mine.”
“What’s the artifact?”
Rheese glanced around. Behind them sat a small child and a woman wearing earbuds. Across the aisle to Rheese’s left, two long-haired, sporty-looking lads laughed and discussed something loudly in another language, presumably Ukrainian. No one else was close enough to hear what Rheese had to say, and the young men’s noisy banter would help ensure privacy. He turned back to Matt and spoke quietly.
“Well, you’ve already made its acquaintance. It’s a Bible. I need everything it’s been through.”
Matt frowned. “What Bible? The one you dropped on me? There wasn’t really anything of value in the imprints I got—just the usual Bible stuff.”
Rheese’s eyes fell to half-mast. “Indulge my ignorance.”
“People praying . . . So-and-so is sick, so-and-so didn’t return when they were supposed to, guilt, pleading, mourning, crying. Bible stuff. Trust me, if that thing is more than a hundred years old, it’s probably got a year or more of useless imprints—in reading time, that is.”
“I need to know when and where it was separated from its companion volume, and to whom the other volume went.”
The jet pushed back from the gate as flight attendants patrolled the aisles, inspecting seat backs, tray tables, and lap belts.
“Look, Rheese—sorry, Doctor Rheese—you let me talk to Tuni and I’ll help you with whatever, but you have to understand that
I know all about these things. This is what I’ve done for over fifteen years, and I can tell you, there would be so much time involved in reading this thing that it could never be worth it. Even on the tiny off-chance that I found some magical clue that tells you these other books are mortared into this wall in such-and-such castle, blah blah blah, how much could a book possibly be worth?”
“Twenty-five million American dollars.”
Matt turned and gaped.
“What I have is volume two of a Gutenberg Bible. You do know what that is.”
“Like a Jewish Bible?”
“Please do not clarify whether that was a joke, as I will assume that it was and move on. They are the rarest, most valuable books in the world. Fifteenth century, the first books ever printed on a printing press with movable type. Very few were produced, and every complete copy is accounted for—every orphaned volume, every individual leaf. A single page can fetch a hundred thousand at auction.”
“So why don’t you just sell the part you have? Wouldn’t that alone be worth millions?”
“It isn’t mine, you buffoon. Of course I would sell it. I need you to trace it back to when it was separated from its sibling volume. Volume two’s generous owner has offered me a whopping sum for finding its other half. I informed him that for me to deliver on this deal, I would need his copy for a week.”
“So you dropped an ancient, fabulously expensive book on my stomach?”
“It is not ancient, technically, and it was the only item I had that I knew for certain would have history in it. I can’t exactly check these things, you know.”
“And then you drugged me.”
Matt noticed that in front of them, Z was repeatedly stretching his neck and rotating his shoulders.
Rheese sighed. “To be honest, I thought that the most humane method. But if you wish to have your ability and yourself abused further, do let me know.”
“I see. So you were doing me a favor.”
Z suddenly turned around again. “Doc, for the love of God, just let me take this punk to the bathroom and . . .”
Rheese put up a hand, turned to Matt, and said, “Are you refusing to read the Bible . . . so to speak?”
“No, I’m just—”
“Lovely, then we have an accord!” Rheese leaned over and opened the attaché case between his feet.
“Well, I guess it’s a long flight,” Matt said. “But I can’t just go all the way through! Don’t make me do that. I need my timer.”
“The armband gadget? Certainly. Where is it?”
Matt groaned. “It was in my suitcase.”
“No problem. I’ll be your timer. How long would you like to go for?”
“Oh, uh . . . I don’t know. Maybe twenty, thirty minutes at the most.”
Rheese glanced at his knockoff Rolex. “Sure, let’s call it an even hour for simplicity’s sake. (We do have a fourteen-hour flight ahead of us).”
“Well, I still have to take a leak. Seriously.”
Rheese sighed. “Fine, thirty minutes for the first round!”
He pulled a heavy volume from its thick protective bag and placed it gingerly in his lap. It was bound in leather that had once been black, with a ribbed spine and brass adornments at the corners. Rheese unfolded an airline blanket and draped it over the book, holding it as if he were a magician about to reveal a platter full of doves.
“We need to be discreet with this, and you need to be careful with it. Do not touch the pages, do not hold it by only one cover, do not touch the print on the spine, do not—”
“What if I accidentally piss myself while it’s in my lap?”
Rheese frowned and returned the book to its soft vellum wrap, careful to avoid rubbing any edge or surface.
“I was half-joking,” Matt said.
“Yes, I recall you being quite the comic in Kenya.” He always pronounced it KEEN-yuh. “You can reach into the bag. Try to touch only the brass corner. I must stress that this cannot be returned in any condition other than the one in which it left home.”
“You weren’t this paranoid when you were plopping it onto my stomach—and it was heavy.”
Rheese redraped the book with the blanket and handed it carefully over.
Matt said, “Thirty minutes.”
“Yes, yes, thirty minutes. Carry on.”
The jet’s engines revved up to their takeoff-level wail, and the craft hurtled down the runway. Matt let the g-force nestle him into his seat, set his elbows on the padded armrests, and let his beanie-covered head sink back against the headrest. Sliding off his right glove, he wedged it between his legs so as not to lose it while unconscious.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“It is . . . nine twenty-two.”
“So at nine fifty-two you pull my hand off, yeah?”
“For certain.”
Matt didn’t trust Rheese to do what he said, but the threat of Matt urinating on himself—or, God forbid, on the book—should be leverage enough. Besides, he had already read the first twenty or thirty minutes of this book’s imprint, and there was nothing there that would traumatize him. If it turned bad, he could always rewind back to the beginning and re-experience the Austrian guy blubbering about his unfaithful wife. And he was beginning to feel the need to pee, so it wasn’t a complete lie. He let his hand drop onto the corner of the book.
* * *
“Turner?” Rheese said.
Matt’s eyelids were shut, but Rheese could see his eyeballs quivering behind them. His chest moved up and down at a slow, even pace. Rheese poked him in the ribs, to no avail.
“Can he hear us like that?” G said through the space in the seats.
“No,” Rheese replied. “It’s practically a coma. His mind and senses essentially shut down, replaced by those of another person.
“Then I have to tell you,” G went on, “you are far too good of a liar. The whole thing with the book? Makes me wonder about our past conversations.”
“I’ve been forthright in all our dealings, Garza. You just do your part, keep a leash on Solorzano there, and everyone will walk away from this rich and happy.”
“Right,” Garza said.
“What about the one back at Turner’s resort, with the woman?” Rheese asked. “Will he keep it together?”
Solorzano’s face appeared over the top of his seat back. “That’s my brother. You don’t need to worry about him.”
“If you say so. He appeared a bit twitchy.”
Garza and Solorzano shared a glance. Garza’s look said keep cool.
“Did you receive any more info on our transportation from Zaporizhzhya once we land?” Rheese asked.
“Yeah, he’s sending a car. We don’t need to worry about it.”
Rheese chewed his lower lip. “That might be rather a worry—not having our own vehicle when it comes time to depart. You’ll understand what I mean when you meet him. However you might imagine a Ukrainian billionaire to behave, take that and multiply it by ten.”
FOUR
After hanging her keys on the hook by the door, Beth Turner picked up the mail from the floor and started flipping through it on her way to the kitchen. Bill, junk, junk, bill, junk . . . Oh! And a postcard from Matty!
Before reading very far, she turned it over to the picture side. A glossy photograph shot from up high—probably from a helicopter—of a moon-shaped island surrounded by a ring of white sand, in the middle of a perfect turquoise ocean. At the top, in a very island-vacation typeface, it read, “Bons baisers de Bora Bora.”
“Rog, hon?” she called, then heard him come in from the garage.
“In here,” Roger answered before appearing in the kitchen. “How was it?”
She stepped over to him and they exchanged a quick kiss.
“Enh, nothing to report. The usual white-elephant gift exchange.”
“You get anything good this time?”
Beth lit up, “Oh, yes! I was shocked somebody gave this away. Have a look!”
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked. “I’m thinking the master bath.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Roger said. “Maybe the guest bath . . .”
“Well, I like it.” She rotated it ninety degrees, thinking he just hadn’t seen it from the right angle. “Anyway, there was no booze this time, because of Carolyne, and therefore no embarrassing outbursts from Vandersbock.”
Roger grabbed a diet soda from the fridge, popped it open, and slurped down a third of it. “Which one is that? The fat balding guy?”
“No, that was Perry.” She shook her head in good-humored exasperation. “His funeral was last year.” She dropped the other mail on the counter. “Oh, yes, a postcard from Matty! ‘Something-something Bora Bora.’ I thought he was going to Tahiti.”
“I think that’s part of it.” He tried to grab it from her, but she pulled it back out of reach.
“Hang on, Mr. Grabbyhands. I wanted us to read it together.”
“Just read it,” he growled. “What’s it say? Did he write it, or did she?”
She flipped it over and glanced at the writing, “It’s Tuni’s writing, but I’m sure they wrote it together.”
“Uh-huh.”
“‘Dear Mom and Dad, Tahiti is the most beautiful place we’ve ever seen on Earth. The water is warm, people friendly, and everything’—’everything’ is all in caps—’is relaxing. You simply must holiday here together some time!’”
“Oh, yeah, that’s got the boy written all over it,” Roger said drily.
“Quiet, Roger. Oh . . . there’s a little sideways note here, too.” She turned the postcard ninety degrees. “‘R and B, you will appreciate pics of M in shorts. —T.’”
Beth’s hand went to her mouth, and she looked up at her husband. He stared at nothing and nodded.
“Good for him,” he said, sounding as though he meant it. “That’s . . . that’s real good for him.”
The Opal (Book 2 of the Matt Turner Series) Page 3