by Steve Berry
Noon arrived and a carillon of bells pealed in the distance.
“That’s eerie,” Pam said. “Out here in the middle of nowhere.”
He agreed. “Sounds a ways off.” Like from heaven, he thought.
The sun blazed overhead. His body and fatigues were damp with perspiration.
He stared back through the openings.
Point after point, stretching down the backbone of the ridge, came into view. What may have been hermit caves dotted the rock wall like black eyes. Then he noticed something. A stony trail etched up one of the mounds. A camel track? He’d checked in Lisbon before they left and learned that the mountains of this region concealed fertile hollows the local Bedouins called farsh. Usually that meant a water source and drew whatever few inhabitants the land enjoyed. St. Catherine’s monastery to the south, near Moses Mountain, occupied a farsh. He’d assumed more surrounded him.
He watched as shadows disappeared and the color of the granite mountains transformed from pewter to beet red. The twisting course of the path up the hillside, now maroon, assumed the shape of a serpent. The two openings framed the view like a painting.
See the endless coil of the serpent red with anger.
“Anything?” Pam asked him.
“Everything.”
STEPHANIE GLARED AT LARRY DALEY. “YOU’RE TELLING ME that the vice president is planning to murder the president?”
“That’s exactly what I think is happening.”
“And how are you the only one on the planet who’s noticed this?”
“I don’t know, Stephanie. Maybe I’m just a smart guy. But I know something is happening.”
She needed to learn more. That’s why Daniels had sent her.
“Larry, you’re just trying to save your ass.”
“Stephanie, you’re like the fellow who’s searching for a lost quarter beneath a streetlight. A guy comes along and asks what’s he doing. He says, ‘I’m looking for my lost quarter.’ Guy says, ‘Where did you lose it?’ The fellow points off in the distance and says, ‘Over there.’ The guy’s puzzled, so he asks, ‘Why are you looking here?’ And the man says, ‘Because this is where the light is.’ That’s you, Stephanie. Quit looking where the light is and look where you need to.”
“Then give me something concrete.”
“Wish I could. It’s just the little things that all add up. Meetings the VP has avoided that a candidate would not. Pissing off people whom he’s going to need. Unconcerned with the party. Nothing overt. Little things that a political junkie like me would notice. There’s only a few of us on the inside who would even be privy to these things. These men keep things close.”
“Is Brent Green one of those men?”
“I have no idea. Brent’s a strange one. The outsider to everyone. I tried to push him yesterday. Threatened him. But he didn’t rattle. I wanted to see how he’d react. Then when you appeared in my house and found that book, I knew you had to be my ally.”
“You may have chosen wrong, Larry. I don’t believe a word you say. Killing a president is not easy.”
“I don’t know about that. Every presidential assassin, whether actual or would-be, was either deranged, loony, or lucky. Imagine what professionals could do.”
He had a point there.
“Where are those flash drives?” he asked.
“I have them.”
“I hope so, because if anyone else does we’re in trouble. They’ll know I’m on to them. Me recording those conversations with the VP’s chief of staff would be impossible to explain. I need those back, Stephanie.”
“Not going to happen. I have a suggestion, Larry. Why don’t you just turn yourself in, confess to bribing Congress, and ask for federal protection? Then you can spout all this bullshit to anyone who’ll listen.”
He sat back in his chair. “You know, I thought for once you and I might have a civil conversation. But no, you want to be a smug-ass. I did what I had to, Stephanie, because that’s what the president wanted.”
Now she was interested.
“He knew what you were doing with Congress?”
“How else do you think my stock rose so fast in the White House? He wanted things passed and I made sure that happened. This president has been successful in Congress, which also explains how he easily managed a second term.”
“You have proof of his involvement?”
“Like I taped Daniels? No. Just reality, Stephanie. Somebody has to make things happen. It’s the way of the world. I’m Daniels’s guy. I know it, and he knows it.”
She glanced over at Cassiopeia and recalled what the other woman had said on the way over. They truly did not know who to trust, including the president.
Daley stood from the table and tossed down a couple of dollars for the tip. “The other day you and Green thought this was all about Daniels’s legacy. I told you what you wanted to hear to rock you to sleep.” Daley shook his head. “This is about Daniels continuing to breathe. You’re a waste of time. I’ll handle this another way.”
MALONE LED THE WAY UP THE GAUNT ESCARPMENT. EAGLES and buzzards patrolled overhead. The golden sunlight penetrated his brain and suffused his sweaty body. A light wash of rock littered the trail, the parched topsoil a loamy deposit of sand and silt.
He followed the serpentine path to the top, where three massive boulders had long ago toppled and created a tunnel across the crown. Fine dust, sounding like water splashing, rained off the stones. Despite the sun, the corridor was cool. He welcomed the shade. The other side loomed thirty feet away.
Ahead, he suddenly spotted a flash of red.
“You see that?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Pam said.
They stopped and watched as it happened again.
Then he realized what was occurring. The noonday sun, as it found gaps between the three fallen stones, played itself off the red granite and colored the tunnel crimson.
Interesting phenomenon.
See the endless coil of the serpent red with anger.
“Apparently,” he said, “there’s lots of angry red serpents around here.”
Halfway through he noticed words etched into the granite. He stopped and read the Latin, translating out loud.
“Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” He knew the passage. “From Exodus. What God said to Moses from the Burning Bush.”
“Is this where that happened?” Pam asked.
“No one knows. The mountain about twenty miles south of here, Jebel Musa, is accepted by all three religions as the place. But who knows?”
At the tunnel’s end a sudden blaze of warmth embraced him, and he stared out into a curving farsh dotted with cypress trees. Soft white clouds chased one another, like tumbleweeds, across the clear sky. His eyes slit lizardlike against the glare.
Pressed against the face of the far mound, tucked into an angle of stupendous cliffs, arose walls and buildings that strained against one another as if they were part of the rock. Their colors—yellow, brown, and white—merged like camouflage. Watchtowers seemed to be floating. Slim green cones of cypresses added contrast to burnt-orange roof tiles. No real logic prevailed as to size and shape. The assemblage reminded Malone of the anarchic charm of a hillside Italian fishing village.
“A monastery?” Pam asked him.
“The map indicated that there are three in this region. None is a great secret.”
A path of boulder steps led the way down. The risers descended steeply, grouped three together between sloping stretches of smooth rock. At the bottom another path traversed the farsh, past a small lake nestled among the cypresses, and zigzagged up to the monastery’s entrance.
“This is the place.”
STEPHANIE WATCHED AS DALEY LEFT THE RESTAURANT. CASSIOPEIA came over, sat at the table, and asked, “Anything useful?”
“He says that Daniels knew everything he was doing.”
“What else could he say?”
> “Daley never mentioned that we were at Camp David last night.”
“Nobody saw us but those agents and Daniels.”
Which was right. They’d slept in the cabin alone with two agents outside. Food had been in the oven waiting when they’d awoken. Daniels himself had called and told them to arrange the meeting with Daley. So Daley either didn’t know or refused to say.
“Why would the president want us to meet with him, knowing Daley might contradict what he’s told us?” she asked, more to herself than Cassiopeia.
“Add that question to the list.”
She watched through the front glass as Daley trudged through the gravelly parking lot toward his Land Rover. She’d never liked the man. When she’d finally confirmed that he was dirty, nothing had pleased her more.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
Daley found his car at the far side of the lot and climbed inside.
They needed to leave, too. Time to find Brent Green and see what he’d learned. Daniels had not mentioned them talking with Green, but she thought it best.
Particularly now.
An explosion rocked the building.
Her initial shock was replaced with an awareness that the restaurant was intact. Loud voices and a few screams subsided as others, too, began to realize that the building was still there.
Everything was fine.
Except outside.
She stared through the glass and saw Larry Daley’s Land Rover being consumed by flames.
SEVENTY-TWO
SINAI PENINSULA
MALONE APPROACHED THE METAL-CLAD WOODEN GATE. SUNBAKED walls of red granite, their foundations resting on giant buttresses, sloped to a terraced foothold where cypress, orange, lemon, and olive trees stood guard. Grapevines protected the base. A warm wind kicked up sand.
No sign of anyone.
Above the gate, Malone spotted more Latin, this time Psalm 118, and he read the pronouncement.
THIS GATE OF THE LORD,
INTO WHICH THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL ENTER
“What do we do?” Pam asked. He’d noticed that the hostility of the terrain matched her rapidly deteriorating temperament.
“I assume that’s what the rope is for,” he said, motioning.
High above the gate, an iron bell rested inside an open tower. He walked over and yanked. The bell clanged several times. He was about to ring again when high up in the gate a window opened and a bearded young man sporting a straw hat leaned out.
“How may I assist you?” he asked in English.
“We’re here to visit the library,” McCollum said.
“This is but a monastery, a place of solitude. We have no library.”
Malone had wondered how the Guardians ensured that someone who appeared at the gate was an invitee. It could take a great deal of time to make the journey, and at no point in the quest had any constraints been imposed. So there must be a final challenge. One not stated in the quest.
“We’re invitees and have completed the quest,” he called out. “We seek entrance to the library.”
The door to the portal closed.
“That was rude,” Pam said.
Malone wiped the sweat from his brow. “They’re not just going to swing open the gates to anyone who shows up.”
The portal opened again and the young man asked, “Your name?”
McCollum was about to speak, but Malone grabbed his arm. “Let me,” he whispered. He stared up and said, “George Haddad.”
“Who are those with you?”
“My associates.”
The eyes that stared back were fixed, as if trying to determine if he was a man to be trusted.
“A question, if I may?”
“By all means.”
“Your route to here. Tell me.”
“First to Belém and the Jerónimos Monastery, then to Bethlehem.org, and finally here.”
The window closed.
Malone heard bars being removed from behind the gate, then the stout wooden panels inched open and the bearded young man strolled out. He wore baggy pants, tapered at the calf, a russet-colored cloak tucked into his waistband, and a rope belt. His feet were protected by sandals.
He stopped before Malone and bowed. “Welcome, George Haddad. You have completed your quest. Would you like to visit the library?”
“I would.”
The young man smiled. “Then enter and find what you seek.”
They followed him, single-file, through the gates into a dark corridor lined with towering stone that blocked the sun. Thirty paces, then around a right angle, and they again found daylight inside the walls, a flourishing space of greenery with cypress trees, palms, grapevines, flowers—even a peacock paraded about.
What sounded like a flute cast a soothing melody. Malone spotted the source, a musician perched on one of the balconies supported by thick wooden brackets. The buildings were crowded together, each one different in size and composition. He spotted courtyards, staircases, iron railings, vaulted arches, pointed roofs, and narrow walkways. A miniature aqueduct channeled water from one end to the other. Everything seemed to have sprung up by chance. He was reminded of a medieval village.
They followed Straw Hat.
Other than the flute player, Malone had seen no one, though the complex was clean and orderly. Sunbeams battled with curtains in the windows, but he spotted no movement beyond the panes. Terraced vegetable beds loaded with tomatoes stood hearty. One thing caught his attention. Solar panels discreetly fastened to the roofs and a number of dish antennae, each hidden behind either wooden or stone awnings that seemed to be parts of the buildings—like Disney World, Malone thought, where necessities went unnoticed in plain sight.
Straw Hat stopped before a wooden door and opened its lock with an oversized brass key. They entered a refectory, the cavernous dining hall decorated with religious murals of Moses. The air smelled of sausage and sour cabbage. Ceiling boards alternated between chocolate and butter yellow, interrupted by a diamond-shaped panel of powder blue dotted with gold stars.
“Your journey was surely long,” Straw Hat said. “We have food and drink.”
On one of the tables lay a tray of sand-brown loaves and bowls of tomatoes, onions, and oil. Dates were piled in another bowl. Still another held three huge pomegranates. A kettle emitted steam and he smelled tea.
“That’s kind of you,” Malone said.
“Real kind,” McCollum added. “But we’d like to see the library.”
The bony face betrayed the young man’s testiness, but only for an instant. “We prefer you to eat and rest. Also, you may want to clean yourselves before entering.”
McCollum stepped forward. “We’ve completed your quest. We’d like to see the library.”
“Actually, Mr. Haddad has completed his quest and has earned entry. There was no invitation extended to you or the woman.” Straw Hat faced Malone. “By involving these two, your invitation would normally be voided.”
“Then why am I here?”
“An exception has been made.”
“How do you know who I am?”
“You knew the route of your quest.”
Straw Hat offered no more and left the dining hall, closing the door behind him.
They stood in silence.
Finally Pam said, “I’m hungry.”
Malone was, too. He laid his rucksack on the table. “Then let’s accept their hospitality.”
SEVENTY-THREE
MARYLAND
STEPHANIE AND CASSIOPEIA RUSHED FROM THE RESTAURANT. Nothing could be done for Larry Daley. His vehicle was a charred mass, still burning. The explosion had been confined to the car, doing little damage to any of the other vehicles.
A targeted strike.
“We need to go,” Cassiopeia said.
She agreed.
They hustled to the Suburban and jumped in, Stephanie behind the wheel. She inserted the key, but hesitated and asked, “What do you think?”
“Unless the president wi
red this car with a bomb, we’re okay. No one went near it while we were in there.”
She turned the key. The engine roared to life. She drove away just as a police car rounded a corner and wheeled into the parking lot.
“What did he tell you?” Cassiopeia asked.
She summarized the conversation. “I thought he was full of crap. Conspiracies to kill Daniels. But now—”
An ambulance raced past them in the other lane.
“No need for them to be in a hurry,” she said. “He never knew what hit him.”
“A bit dramatic,” Cassiopeia said. “There are a lot quieter ways to kill him.”
“Unless you want attention drawn to the fact. The deputy national security adviser being car-bombed? It’s going to be a big deal.”
She was driving slow, keeping well below the speed limit, working her way out of town and back to the highway. She stopped at an intersection and turned south.
“Where to now?” Cassiopeia asked.
“We need to find Green.”
Five miles and a car appeared in her rearview mirror, closing fast. She expected it to pass and speed down the nearly empty two-lane highway. Instead the gray Ford coupe eased up close to the Suburban’s bumper. She spotted two figures in the front seats.
“We’ve got company.”
They were moving at sixty miles an hour, the road twisty through wooded countryside. Only a few farmhouses disturbed the fields and forest.
A gun appeared out of the front passenger-side window. A pop and the bullet pinged off the rear windshield but did not shatter the glass.
“God bless the Secret Service,” she said. “Bulletproof.”
“But the tires aren’t.”
Cassiopeia was right. She increased their speed and the Ford kept pace. She yanked the wheel left and swerved into the oncoming lane, slowing, allowing the Ford to pass. As it did, the man fired into the side of the Suburban, but the shots ricocheted off.
“We’ve got armor plating, too,” Cassiopeia said.