The Columbus Code (29 page)

“Okay, I get that,” Winters said. “Opposition arose to Columbus' efforts to discover the New World—that land—because he was this ‘righteous one.'”

Sophia nodded. “I think that is what he is saying.”

“Huh,” Winters grunted. “The man had an ego the size of Montana. Did he think the group in Barcelona—the ones who resisted him—did he think they were the Antichrist?”

“I do not know. That was all he wrote except for some symbols at the end that I cannot decipher.”

Winters moved from the chair and took a seat at the edge of the bed beside her. “This is all great,” he said, “but we need to figure out where to go next and what to do with the journal before pseudo-monk in the junk car tracks us down.”

“I think I have the answer to both of those problems,” she said. “I had to give you the background first.”

“Sophia—”

“We must go to Jerusalem,” she interrupted.

Winters' chin dropped. “You mean
now?
”

“Yes.”

“I don't—”

“I have a friend there.”

“Of course you do, but—”

“His name is Jacob Hirsch. He is a professor at Hebrew University. His specialty is the history of Judaism.”

“I'm not following you, Sophia.”

She placed a hand on his arm. “We can find shelter with Jacob and we can turn the journal over to him for safekeeping. Now that I've
been able to think it through, I realize it belongs to the Jewish people, John. It is part of their heritage, not ours.”

It made a bizarre kind of sense, but Winters still shook his head. “I've taken you as far as I can on this,” he said. “It's too dangerous. There are too many unknowns.”

“I told you last night that I will not hold you responsible for my safety.”

“And I told
you
it doesn't work that way. I won't watch another woman I care about be destroyed by some terrorist with a fanatical religious agenda. I won't do it!”

Sophia's eyes were wide, as well they should be. He had just shouted into her face something he'd never said to another human being. But she didn't step back and instead said quietly, “No, John, you did not tell me that.”

Winters turned away but she tugged at his arm.

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me what happened to your wife.”

“It doesn't have anything to do with this.”

“I think it has everything to do with it. And I think if you do not let it out, you will be in more danger than I will ever be.”

Winters forced a grin. “That's it,” he said. “You've been lying to me all this time. You
are
a psychiatrist.”

“Do not do that,” she said. “Do not make a joke of it. Not this time.”

He pulled away from her and stumbled to the door—where he stopped. He could run away. Or he could face the thing that was tearing him up inside.

Winters looked back at her. “My wife died in the 9/11 attacks,” he said. “In New York.” Sophia didn't flinch. He kept going. “She was in the second tower, trapped above the crash site. I kept my old flip phone—the one she left the message on.”

“From the tower? That day?”

“Yeah.”

“You have kept a piece of her.”

Tears filled his eyes and ran down his cheeks. “A voice message,” he said shaking his head. “That's all I have left of her.”

He placed his arm on the door and pressed his forehead against it. This was a bad idea, digging this up now—no matter how compassionate Sophia might be. It felt as raw as it did back then, as torturous as it was the day she died. That's why he'd buried it deep inside.

“I am sorry, John,” Sophia said softly.

“Me, too,” he replied.

He pulled himself from the door, ready to get Sophia out of there before he lost her too. But when he turned to face her he saw she was weeping too.

“How did you survive?”

“I had a daughter to raise,” he explained. “That's how I survived. That and not thinking about it.”

“Except for her phone message.”

“Yeah. There's that. I listen to it every September eleventh, just to hear her voice.”

“Do you want to tell me what she—”

“She said, ‘I'm sure you've heard the news.' She was trying to sound so calm, but I could hear in her voice how scared she was. The plane had hit a number of floors below them and they'd tried to go down the stairs but the heat and smoke were too much.” Winters' own voice broke. “She was still—I mean, she was sitting there at her desk, hoping firefighters could get the fire out and they could get down—and she was saying, ‘Maybe you should get Maria from school so she doesn't hear about this from someone else.'”

“Maria is your daughter.”

Winters nodded. “She was ten then.”

“Your wife's last thoughts were of her.”

Winters tried to smile. “No, her last thoughts were that she'd forgotten to take something out of the freezer for dinner so we were going to have to eat out again. She said she was sorry about that.”

Sophia pressed her hand to her mouth and wept even harder.

“We'd been talking about money the night before and I was going on about how much we were spending in restaurants. The next morning I was sitting at our dining room table without her and wishing we had eaten out every night.”

Sophia pulled her fingers from her lips. “Guilt is such a painful part of grief.”

“My office was in the same building, but I was out in the field that day.” He looked at Sophia. “Why did she die and not me?” Winters clenched his fists. “That's why I don't talk about this . . . because I can't stand it.”

“If you had both died, what would have happened to your daughter?”

“She might have been better off living with my mother. I botched the whole thing after Anne was gone. I'm not much of a father.” Winters bent his head toward Sophia. “I really can't go there. My daughter—I can't—”

“You do not have to. But thank you.”

“For dragging you through my stuff?”

“For trusting me with your grief.”

“My grief,” Winters said. “This all happened fourteen years ago—you'd think I'd be over it by now.”

“No,” Sophia said. “Some things go so deep they become a part of who you are. I know this.” She put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close. “But that is for another time.”

Winters pulled away and looked her in the eye. ““That's the thing. I want there to
be
another time, which is why I'm going to get you to a safe place and then figure out what to do with the journal.”

“Well, my safe place is with Jacob Hirsch. In Jerusalem.”

Winters sighed. “I don't think you can use ‘safe' and ‘Jerusalem' in the same sentence.”

She just looked at him.

“And if we start calling up airlines, making plane reservations, using credit cards, and going through customs we'll—”

“I can make that simple.”

“How?”

“I have a friend.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Why am I not surprised?”

“He works for a company. They make frequent trips to Jerusalem in the company's cargo plane. I know he will take us, without entanglements.”

Winters looked skeptical. “We're going to stow away on a cargo plane? This is just too risky, Sophia.”

“It is not as risky as sitting here arguing. Let me ask you this again, Agent Winters. Do you have a better plan?”

“I don't know. I just—”

“As I thought,” she said as she reached for the phone. “I'll make some calls.”

As Donleavy instructed, Maria activated the bug in Tejada's office, then spent the next several hours listening to conversations from the office. Finally, though, she pulled the earbud from her ear in frustration. Why hadn't she worked on her Spanish when Snowden first told her she was coming to Barcelona? And why did it surprise her that Tejada and everyone else who came into his office never spoke English?

She turned off the laptop and tucked it into her briefcase. The one thing she'd been able to translate was that Molina was meeting someone for dinner at Restaurante Barceloneta. Seemed like a great place for her to eat too.

Just off the waterfront, the Barceloneta was a typical beach café with an odd assortment of tables and chairs with fishnets and glass buoys hanging on the walls for decoration. Windows along the back wall overlooked the water and afforded a view of the coastline. Maria had been there once for lunch with Elena on a Saturday afternoon when it was crowded with camera-toting tourists and sunbathers brushing sand from their skin. The food made up for the lack of ambience.

At night, however, it felt sinister. The interior lighting was dimmed
and the men—there didn't seem to be any women—were unsavory characters.

As Maria lingered near the hostess station letting her eyes adjust to the light, she noticed Molina was not there. That didn't surprise her. She couldn't imagine him trolling a place like this.

The hostess asked her in Spanish if she would like a table. Maria had practiced saying
I'm waiting for a friend
, though from the condescending smile on the woman's face, she knew she'd mangled it somehow. The woman apparently understood enough to lead Maria to a table several rows from the windows, which was perfect. She was out of sight from the doorway but had a view of the entire room.

A man at the bar seemed to size her up, so she concentrated on the menu. She was reading the shrimp options for the fifth time when she caught sight of the hostess leading Molina to a table in the opposite corner.

Please sit with your back to me
, Maria thought to herself. If he didn't, she would have to pretend she'd come to check out the guys at the bar and they were only slightly less revolting than he was.

But Molina didn't sit down at all. He stood talking to an olive-skinned man who had apparently been waiting for him. Maria slipped her smartphone from her bag and turned off the camera flash. The man looked up as he listened to Molina and Maria quickly snapped his picture.

They talked a while longer, then the man at the table stood and followed Molina toward the kitchen. Okay,
that
was weird. So weird, in fact, that Maria dropped her phone in her bag and left the table. The leech at the bar muttered something in Spanish as she passed by, but the leering look told her she didn't really want to know what he said. She ignored him and caught the hostess' attention to ask for a cab.

When Tejada's cell phone rang, he glanced at the screen to check the number, then forced himself not to answer. He took a drag from his cigar and exhaled smoke in a long, winding curl above his head. All day he had denied to himself that he was waiting for Maria's call, despite the fact that every time the phone rang he looked eagerly at the screen, hoping to see the number he had memorized. Now that she was reaching out, he wouldn't answer. He couldn't. Not after Molina had brought him the news Tejada would give his life not to know.

Molina was good at what he did and so was his staff. Working around the clock, they had located Sophia Conte via her cell phone signal, but by the time they reached her location, she was boarding a private cargo plane at Pamplona Airport with the same man who'd accompanied her to the museum. Too late to stop the flight, they had determined the destination—Jerusalem—and they were able to photograph the man's face.

“We have an ID for him,” Molina had said. “His name is John Winters. He's an agent with the American Secret Service.”

“Winters,” Tejada said slowly. “Not—”

“Yes,” Molina nodded. “The same.”

“Husband?”

“Father.”

Tejada felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach. Moments later, however, that sense of betrayal turned to anger. “Why are we just now learning of this?”

Molina had an indignant look, which made Tejada even angrier.