The Solomon Key

by Shawn Hopkins

  Scott thought about it for a second. He could feel his view of Canada begin to fade further into the distance, Mr. Smith’s words, And I doubt that you have finished exorcizing your demons anyway, flying in circles about his head.

  “You win,” he finally responded.

  “It is not a game that anyone can win, Mr. Scott. It is only an opportunity to be used as an instrument of good. There are but three categories in life. Those doing evil, those doing good, and those doing nothing. Nothing, as I suspect you have finally figured out, does not aid the forces of good as much as it does the forces of evil. Therefore, there are really only two categories.” He shook his head. “And it is not a game. It is life and death. It is light and darkness.”

  He felt like he was being manipulated into a situation he didn’t believe in, but what other choice did he really have? They were after him now, regardless of whether or not he had the ring. If he declined and walked out the front door, the facial recognition cameras would identify him before he made it to the curb. Besides, he had something to say to these monsters who were running the world, something on behalf of Edward. Jack. Melissa Strauss. Cindy. His wife. The three German Shepherds. For the countless millions who had suffered through all their wars. “Whatever,” he said.

  The agent looked him in the eyes, as if seeing what was taking place behind them, and smiled. “There is someone that Mr. Smith wants you to meet. Someone who can answer your questions. Someone you can trust. Once you speak with him, you will know what it is that you should do.”

  Scott had no long term intention of playing by their rules, but they would serve for now in helping him get out of here. “Fine.”

  The man reached into what had to be a rather large back pocket and pulled out the priest’s books. “Mr. Smith recommends that you read these on the way.”

  He took the books and flipped them over in his hands. The Book of Tobit and the Testament of Solomon. He’d already read enough of the one. “Can’t wait,” he muttered.

  Then the agent turned and walked back into the corridor, signaling for Scott to follow. And so he did, his conscious self a raging sea, every one of his thoughts contradicting the next. The priest and Mr. Smith, a Catholic and a Jew, both told him that God had plans for him in all this; but maybe they were wrong. Maybe he had his own plans. He certainly didn’t care about Jerusalem or the ring that could allegedly build its temples.

  Titus Mayhew was sitting at a desk waiting for him. There was a clock above his head that indicated half an hour had passed. He looked distressed, like something unseen was pressing down on him and crushing him. Scott knew what it was.

  “Cindy?” he asked as he walked into the room, the Mossad agent closing the big vault door behind them.

  Mayhew shook his head. “She didn’t make it.”

  A sorrow-laced spike plunged into Scott’s heart. He drug her into this mess. And now she was dead. Because of him. Because she helped him.

  Walking past him and toward a door deeper within the fake office, the Mossad agent said, “We leave in ten minutes.”

  Scott didn’t even know how to answer him. His head was spinning. Cindy was dead.

  Mayhew stood up. “She was conscious right at the end. I got to pray with her.”

  “Good,” he mumbled, not able to swallow the lump in his throat. He started walking to the door the Jewish agent had just disappeared through.

  “Wait,” Mayhew called.

  Scott took a breath, turned. “What?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “They want me to see someone who can explain things to me.”

  “You’re getting involved?”

  He shrugged. “Got nothing better to do, I guess.”

  “Can I go with you?”

  “Sure,” he said, hoping he wouldn’t regret it. He didn’t think it was his decision anyway. For the time being, he was following someone else’s set of rules.

  They walked out of the office together and entered another hallway. To their left were three men by the elevator. They stood to attention when they saw Scott and Mayhew exit the room and walk toward them.

  “Are we going with you?” asked Scott.

  “Yes, but we have to move fast,” one said. “The military is mobilizing, getting ready to descend on Columbus.” He pushed the button for the elevator and the doors opened. They filled the small box and pushed the button for the parking garage.

  Mayhew stood silently, watching the floors light up on their way down. He seemed to be concentrating hard, and Scott wondered what he was thinking, if they were thinking the same things. Like why the Mossad was willing to use precious fuel and risk the lives of their men for this little side-trip. Scott exchanged a quick glance with Mayhew just as the elevator’s decent came to a stop. It was a mutual look, one of understanding. A message communicated without words. As the doors slid open from the center, Scott stepped out into the same garage they had arrived in less than an hour ago — when Cindy was still alive.

  “Hurry,” said one of the agents as he walked toward a black Suburban with tinted windows and government plates. “We do not have much time.”

  And so the five of them loaded into the vehicle and took off to get some answers from yet another stranger. Because it was the least the Mossad could do for the people who brought them the ring.

  Scott didn’t buy it. Not for one second.

  28

  The empty streets of Columbus were roaring past them as the Mossad agent held the gas pedal against the floor through standing red lights. They were trying to get out of the city before the military came sweeping through the quiet streets, banging on doors, rounding people up, and establishing checkpoints. Scott wasn’t really looking forward to loudspeakers, barbed wire, vaccinations, and detention centers so he didn’t mind the ridiculous speed they were traveling. But though he was glad to be escaping Columbus, he still didn’t understand their situation. Were these Israelis secular Mossad agents or the trusted anti-Zionist Orthodox friends of Mr. Smith? Were they the ones who brought Smith the ring or the ones who took it from him? It would have been a nice piece of information to have before being pushed into the vehicle and sped out of town. Two of them were in the front seats, and the other was positioned in the back behind Scott and Mayhew.

  Turning in his seat, Mayhew was going to ask the agent behind them a question when he suddenly stopped, catching a reflection off the back window.

  Scott noticed, and he could feel Mayhew tense up beside him. Something was wrong.

  The Suburban flew down a one way street and passed straight through another red light and into an intersection that actually contained some activity. A bread truck slammed on its breaks, the driver hammering the horn in disgust as the agent at the wheel simply pressed the gas pedal even harder, transforming the nearby buildings into blurred streaks. They were pushing 90mph.

  Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Scott saw something so close that he barely had enough time to brace himself.

  The impact was enormous, like they had been struck by a meteor falling for light years from another galaxy. Crunching metal, exploding glass, screeching tires, the world spinning...

  No one had been wearing seatbelts, and they were whipped around inside the vehicle like rag dolls until another huge collision stopped all forward momentum in an instant. The Suburban rebounded up and backward a few feet, sending everyone flying forward.

  Scott found himself lying on the floor halfway beneath the seat he’d just been sitting in. His head throbbed, and when he moved, glass spilled off him. Managing to pull himself up onto the seat, he looked around, his world not quite coming into focus yet but understanding what happened nonetheless.

  The front of the Suburban was gone, pushed in and shoved up through the dashboard, a brick wall now where the driver had been sitting, the driver himself like a smashed insect against it. The agent in the passenger seat was at least still alive, though he was spraying blood everywhere. Mayhew was bent over the end of
the bench seat, his head on the floor by the door.

  “Mayhew,” he whispered, reaching for him. But before he could get a response, another black Suburban came to a screeching halt beside them, its front end smashed.

  The doors swung open on the other vehicle, and men in black suits stepped out into the silent morning with automatic weapons held tight against their shoulders. The sound of their footsteps tapped across the street as they neared the wreck. And then their weapons began firing.

  Crack. Crack. Crack.

  The blasts echoed off nearby buildings and charged down the vacant streets before returning, the empty casings bouncing off the asphalt.

  Scott didn’t move. He was afraid to even breathe. The first shot exploded the head of the agent still struggling for life in what was left of the front passenger seat. So far, however, none of the ensuing shots were being directed at him or Mayhew. Not wanting to give them a reason to fire at him, he slowly raised his hands into the air above his head, fingers spread apart.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the side doors opened, and more glass fell into the street. One of the men stepped close, checked Mayhew’s vitals, and then pulled him out of the wreckage. Scott could only stare ahead as another guy stepped close — a guy in a black silk shirt and gray slacks, an automatic rifle now slung over his shoulder with its barrel smoking.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Scott.

  Scott nodded while lowering his hands and tried to speak. He could taste blood in his mouth.

  “Come on then,” the guy from Mr. Smith’s office commanded.

  Scott struggled toward him, pain wracking his every step. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  The man helped him out onto the street and walked him around to the back of the disabled Suburban. Two more men in suits pulled open the rear doors. There, lying in the back, with a bullet hole in his head, was Mr. Smith. His eyes were frozen open and staring into nothingness.

  Scott cursed under his breath and turned away, a wave of dizziness leaving him off balance. That’s what Mayhew must have seen in the reflection, he realized. He needed to sit.

  Then another one of the suits came walking back around from the front of the vehicle.

  “Got it.”

  “Is it damaged?” asked the guy from the secret room.

  “No.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  They bent over to help Mayhew, who was just regaining consciousness, up into the working Suburban.

  “What’s your name?” Scott asked, climbing in next to Mayhew.

  As the sound of rotors suddenly materialized over Columbus, he answered, “Call me Malachi.” Then he said something in Hebrew and shut the door on Scott and Mayhew, ran around to the front passenger side, and climbed in. “Go,” he said to the driver.

  The driver needed no prodding. He slammed on the gas and pulled away from the wreckage protruding from the building’s side. And when they were twenty yards away, one of the two suits sitting in the back pulled out a device and pushed its red button.

  The mangled wreck disappeared into a massive fireball that brought half the building down on top of it, black smoke billowing upward into the morning sky and signaling the helicopters.

  “What’s happening?” asked Scott.

  “We were betrayed,” Malachi answered. “There was a mole. They were just waiting for us to get the ring. Using us.” He held the ring up in his hands, observing it as it gleamed in the morning sunlight.

  “What did they want with us?”

  “I cannot be certain, but I would assume they just wanted you out of their way. You interrupted their escape, so instead of allowing you to delay it, they just invited you along.”

  He then realized the three men had been waiting for the elevator and not for them. “But how did they get Mr. Smith down into the truck?”

  Malachi shook his head. “It was another man who murdered him and transported him to the vehicle. He used the gurney we brought your woman friend in on. We caught him coming back up in the service elevator. He was not planning on leaving with the other three.”

  Mayhew was coming back to his senses now, blinking more frequently and looking around. “Where are we?” he muttered.

  No one answered him.

  Instead, three black helicopters descended on them, soldiers in black uniforms firing at them from their seated positions on either side of the chopper’s belly, their feet perched against the landing skids.

  The driver swerved and punched the gas as Malachi leaned out the window and fired his assault rifle at the helicopters that were attempting to drop down and cut them off. He struck two of the soldiers, and they dropped to the street, one landing on a parked car and exploding its windows.

  “Turn right!” yelled Malachi.

  The agent pulled the wheel hard to the right, and they shot down an alley just as the hovering helicopters opened fire on them, sparks flying from prolonged brushes up against the alley’s sides.

  The black helicopters climbed back into the sky for a better view, and so the Mossad driver kept the Suburban roaring through more alleyways and small side streets, hiding between large buildings that would obstruct the helicopters’ view.

  “An underground parking garage,” Malachi instructed. Immediately, the driver shot out of their current alley and turned left onto a two-way street. They could see the helicopters circling in the air a few blocks to their right.

  “Were they Mossad?” Scott asked, referring to his previous captors.

  He nodded. “Zionists who will stop at nothing to have the ring.”

  “Even if it means killing their own?” Though he realized as the words came out of his mouth that the same could be said of Malachi.

  Malachi nodded, an all-serious look beaming from his eyes. “It is nothing new to the Jews, to be fighting amongst ourselves.”

  Mayhew coughed.

  Scott leaned forward. “The helicopters?”

  “NAU military. I doubt they know who we are or what we have.”

  “But this vehicle has government plates.”

  “No, not this one. Only fake plates meant to deter the curious, not fool the investigator.”

  Scott sighed and touched his aching head. “Where are we going?”

  “I told you, to meet someone who will help you.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. In Ohio.”

  He wasn’t about to object at this point. “What are you going to do with the ring?”

  Malachi looked back out the window as the helicopters spotted them and began swinging around in an approach pattern. “Take it to my boss.”

  They shot into a parking garage and followed the ramp down into its sublevels, passing parked cars on both sides. The driver slammed on the brakes and brought them to a stop in an empty parking slot. The question now was whether or not the men in the choppers would come after them.

  The four Mossad agents jumped out of the Suburban and ran back to where the ramp circled up to the street. They ran until they could see sunlight shining through the entrance above them. And, sure enough, ropes began dropping down in front of the opening, men in black uniforms descending and landing on their feet with weapons raised. But they couldn’t see into the darkness of the garage, couldn’t see the Mossad agents positioned four across and waiting for them.

  Operating from a silent count, the Jewish agents opened fire simultaneously, the two on the ends working from the outside in and the two in the middle from the inside out. The NAU soldiers didn’t stand a chance and went down instantly as the sound of machine gun fire rebounded throughout the concrete tomb and set off scores of car alarms.

  Before another, wiser, group of soldiers could start rolling grenades down the ramp toward them, Malachi led the men back to the Suburban. “Come on, Scott,” he called into the vehicle once he reached it. “We are getting a new ride.”

  Tires screeched, echoing loudly as the two sports cars flew forward, up and out the other side of the garage, leaving be
hind a group of black-uniformed soldiers to take out their frustration on the abandoned Suburban.

  Scott and Mayhew were in a black 2020 Mustang with Malachi behind the wheel while the other three agents traveled ahead of them in an older, red BMW. And though there were no black helicopters waiting for them on this side of the building, it was only a matter of time before the microchips in the E-plates signaled the theft of the two cars to the authorities.

  “Do you have the books I gave you?” Malachi asked Scott.

  “Yeah.”

  “Perhaps you should look through them. It will be about a two hour ride.”

  Scott didn’t feel like reading because his head felt like it was being jack-hammered, but he knew he wasn’t going to be sleeping anytime soon either. He decided to give it a try. Sliding Tobit out of his pocket, he opened to page one and tried to ignore the blood that was dripping down his head and onto his shirt.

  29

  Malachi drove the stolen Mustang down East Broad Street and then made a right onto South Grant Avenue. Three quarters of a mile later, the city was behind them.

  “Are you okay?” Scott asked Mayhew from the front.

  “I’m fine,” he answered, leaning back into the seat and tilting his head back. “I have a headache.” Then he opened his eyes and returned Scott’s stare. “The guy in the back of the Suburban… what happened? What’s going on?”

  And Scott remembered that Mayhew hadn’t been in the room with Mr. Smith, that he didn’t know about Texas or the President. Not any of it. So for the next twenty minutes, he brought Mayhew up to speed. After which Malachi ran through the conflicting agendas existing within the Mossad and the differing perspectives pertaining to the Holy Land — not that the Mossad itself was divided, but that some of its agents had higher allegiances to other religious dogmas than did the secular state.

  Mayhew seemed like he was trying to absorb it all.

  “So where are we going, exactly?” Scott inquired of their driver. Though Malachi had repeated pretty much the same summarization Mr. Smith had given him, Scott recognized a fatal flaw in the application of this Orthodox belief, a certain hypocrisy that seemed to undermine its said conviction — namely the refusal to use force in order to accomplish anything, something that Malachi and his three friends had just disregarded when executing their Jewish brethren. But Scott just tucked that unsettling thought away for now.