Alexandria Link (30 page)

“How long was I out?”

“An hour.”

He could not see her face. Total darkness engulfed them. He recalled their situation. “Everything okay up there?” he said quietly to McCollum.

“Nice and quiet.”

They’d left the church just before five and hustled to the upper choir, where another doorway led out into the cloister. Visitors had been slow in leaving, taking advantage of the late-afternoon sun for a few last photos of the opulent Moorish-style decorations. The upper gallery had offered no safe refuges, but running along the church’s north wall at ground level they’d found eleven wooden doors. A placard explained that the compact spaces had once served as confessionals.

Though the doors to ten confessionals had been locked, McCollum had managed to open one thanks to a hole drilled beneath the locking bolt. Apparently the lock was faulty, and the hole was how the staff gained entrance. McCollum had used an impressive knife from his pocket to slide the bolt, relocking it after they’d entered. Malone had not known the man was armed. No way he’d carried the knife on the airplane, but McCollum had checked a small bag at the London airport, now stored in a locker at the Lisbon airport. Malone, too, had stored the satchel from Haddad’s apartment in a Lisbon locker. McCollum’s not mentioning the knife only raised Malone’s level of suspicion.

Inside the confessional, a screened iron grate opened into another dark cubbyhole. A door in the second chamber led into the church, allowing the penitent to enter. The screen separated the two so that penance could be administered.

Malone had grown up Catholic and recalled a similar arrangement, though simpler in construction, at his church. He’d never understood why he couldn’t see the priest who was absolving him of sin. When he’d asked, the nuns who’d taught him had simply said separation was required. He came to learn that the Catholic Church was big on what to do, but didn’t particularly like to explain why. Which partly explained why he no longer practiced the religion.

He glanced at the luminous dial of Pam’s TAG watch. Nearly eight PM. Early, but the site had now been closed three hours.

“Any movement outside?” he asked McCollum softly.

“Not a sound.”

“Let’s do it,” he whispered through the dark. “No use sitting here any longer.”

He heard McCollum’s knife again snap into place, then the scraping of metal on metal.

The confessional’s door creaked open.

He came to his feet but had to crouch against the low ceiling.

McCollum swung the door inward. They stepped out into the lower gallery, the cool night air welcome after three hours in what amounted to a closet. Across the open cloister, in the upper and lower galleries, incandescent fixtures burned softly, the elaborate tracery between the arches more shadow than detail. Malone stepped into the nearest arch and stared up at the night sky. The gloom of the shadowy cloister seemed accented by a starless night.

He headed straight for the stairway that led to the upper choir. He hoped the door that opened into the church—the one he’d earlier used to find the choir from the nave—remained unlocked.

He was glad to discover that it stood open.

The nave was cemetery-quiet.

Light from the exterior floods that bathed the outer façade backlit the stained-glass windows. A handful of weak bulbs broke the thick darkness only in the lower choir.

“This place is different at night,” Pam said.

He agreed, and his guard was up.

He headed straight for the chancel and hopped over the velvet ropes. At the high altar, he climbed five risers and stood before the sacrarium.

He turned and focused back toward the upper choir at the far end.

The pale gray iris of the rose window stared back at him, no longer alive with the sun.

McCollum seemed to have anticipated what he’d need and appeared beside him holding a candle and matches. “Offering rack, back near the baptismal font. I saw it earlier.”

He grabbed the candle and McCollum lit the wick. He brought the dim glow close to the sacrarium and studied the image molded into the door.

Mary sat with the infant in her lap, Joseph behind her, all three crowned by halos. Three bearded men, one kneeling before the child, paid homage. Three other men—one strangely wearing what appeared to be a military helmet—gazed on. Above the scene, with clouds parted, a five-pointed star shone down.

“It’s the Nativity,” Pam said from behind him.

He agreed. “Sure looks like it. The three Magi following the star, coming to praise the newborn king.”

He recalled the quest and what they should be looking for here, where silver turned to gold. Find the place that forms an address with no place, where is found another place.

A challenging riddle.

“We need to get out of here, but we also need a picture of this. Since none of us has a camera, any ideas?”

“After I bought the tickets,” McCollum said, “I walked upstairs. There’s a gift shop. Full of books and postcards. Bound to be a picture there.”

“Good thought,” he said. “Lead the way.”

SABRE CLIMBED THE STAIRS TO THE UPPER GALLERY, PLEASED that he’d made the right choice. When Alfred Hermann had tasked him with finding the library, his ultimate plan had quickly formed in his mind, and the Israeli surveillance team’s elimination in Germany had cemented his course.

Hermann would never have sanctioned deliberately provoking the Jews, and it would have been impossible to explain why those murders had been necessary, which was simply to throw the other side off balance for the few days he’d need to accomplish his goal.

If it were even possible.

But it just might be.

He would never have deciphered the hero’s quest alone, and involving anyone other than Malone would have done nothing except escalate his chances of exposure. Making Malone his supposed ally was the only viable course.

Risky, but the move had proven productive. Half the quest seemed solved.

He crested the stairs and entered the upper gallery, turning left and walking straight for a set of glass doors, out of place in this medieval setting. His cell phone, stuffed inside his trouser pocket, had already silently recorded four calls from Alfred Hermann. He’d debated whether to make contact and soothe the old man’s anxiety, but decided that would be foolish. Too many questions—and he could provide few answers. He’d long studied the Order, especially Alfred Hermann, and believed he understood their strengths and weaknesses.

Above all, the members were dealers.

And before the Israelis or the Saudis or the Americans could be squeezed, the Order of the Golden Fleece was going to have to deal with him.

And he would not come cheap.

MALONE FOLLOWED PAM AND MCCOLLUM INTO THE RIB-VAULTED upper gallery, admiring the workmanship. From the bits and pieces he’d heard from the tour guides earlier, the Jeronymite Order, which took possession of the monastery in 1500, was a closed group devoted to prayer, contemplation, and reformist thinking. They’d possessed no direct evangelical or pastoral mission. Instead they’d focused on living an exemplary Christian life through divine worship—much like their patron saint, Jerome himself, whom he’d read about in the book from Bainbridge Hall.

They stopped before glass doors custom-fit into one of the elaborate arches. Beyond was the gift shop.

“Couldn’t be alarmed,” McCollum said. “What’s to steal? Souvenirs?”

The doors were thick sheets of glass adorned with black metal hinges and chrome handles.

“They open outward,” Malone said. “We can’t kick ‘em in. That glass is half an inch thick.”

“Why don’t you see if they’re locked?” Pam said.

He grasped one of the handles and pulled.

The door swung open.

“I can see why your clients value your opinion.”

“Why would they lock them?” she said. “This place is a fortress. And he’s right, what is there to steal? The doors themselves are worth more than the merchandise.”

He smiled at her logic. Some of her surly attitude had returned, but he was glad. Kept him sharp.

They stepped inside. The dark, musty space reminded him of the confessional. So he swung the door out ninety degrees and locked it into position, as it would be when visitors milled in and out all day.

A quick survey told him that the shop was about twenty feet square, with three tall display cases abutting one wall, book racks on the other two, and a counter and a cash register lining the fourth. A freestanding counter loaded with books filled the center.

“We need light,” he said.

McCollum approached another pair of glass doors that led out to a blackened stairway. A set of three switches poked from the wall.

“We’re inside the monastery,” Malone said. “The light’s not going to be visible outside the walls. Still, on and off quick and let’s see what happens.”

McCollum flicked one of the switches. Four tiny halogen floods that illuminated the glass cases sprang to life. Their light was directed in tight beams downward. More than enough illumination.

“That’ll do,” he said. “Now let’s find something with pictures.”

Atop the center counter lay a stack of hardcover volumes in Portuguese and English, all titled Jerónimos Abbey of Santa Maria. Glossy pages, lots of text. Photos, too. Two thinner books stacked beside them were more pictures than words. He thumbed through the first stack, while Pam scanned the other. McCollum examined the other shelves. Three-quarters of the way through one of the books, Malone found a section on the chancel and a color image of the sacrarium’s silver door.

He walked the book over to the light. The photograph was close-up and detailed. “This is it.”

He read more about the sacrarium, trying to see if any of the information would be useful, and learned that it was crafted of wood sheathed in silver. Its placement in the chancel required that the central painting of the lower row be removed, which subsequently disappeared. The image of that lost painting had been carved on the sacrarium’s door, completing the iconographic cycle of the paintings—all of which dealt with the Epiphany. The door showed Gaspar, one of the wise men, worshiping the newborn child. The book noted that the Epiphany was regarded as the submission of the secular to the divine, the three wise men symbolic of the world as it was then known—Europe, Asia, Africa.

Then he found an interesting passage.

A strange phenomenon is reported to occur at certain times of the year, when the sun’s rays penetrate the church in an extraordinary way. For twenty days before the spring equinox, and for thirty days after the autumnal equinox, the sun’s golden rays, from the hour of Vespers until sunset, entering from the west and covering a distance of 450 paces, pass in a straight line through the choir and the church to the sacrarium, turning its silver into gold. One of Belém’s parish priests, a devoted student of the history, observed long ago that, “The sun seems to be asking its Creator for leave of absence from such an illustrious duty for a few hours of the night, promising to return again and shine at dawn.”

He read them the paragraph, then said, “The Guardians are apparently well versed.”

“And have good timing,” Pam said. “It’s two weeks since the autumnal equinox.”

He tore the picture from the book and thought about the remainder of the clue. “Find the place that forms an address with no place, where is found an other place. That’s next. And tougher.”

“Cotton, surely you’ve already seen the connection.”

He had and was pleased that her mind was working, too.

“Where a retreating star finds a rose, pierces a wooden cross, and converts silver to gold. Find the place.” She motioned at the photo from the book. “The sacrarium door. Bethlehem. The Nativity. This is Belém. Remember what we read this morning in London. Portuguese for ”Bethlehem.“ And what did Haddad write? Great journeys often start with an epiphany.”

“I think you’re going to make it to Final Jeopardy,” he said.

Glass shattered in the distance.

“That came from inside the cloister,” McCollum said.

Malone darted for the light switch and killed the halogens. Darkness again engulfed them and his eyes needed a moment to adjust.

Another crash.

He crept to the open door and identified the sound’s direction. Catty-corner across the cloister, on the far side, lower level.

He saw movement in the semi-darkness and spotted three men emerging from another set of glass doors.

Each carried a weapon.

The three fanned out into the lower gallery.

WASHINGTON, DC

2:45 PM

STEPHANIE HANDED THE ATTENDANT HER TICKET AND ENTERED the National Air and Space Museum. Green had not come with them, because the attorney general’s presence in such a public place would not have gone unnoticed. Stephanie had chosen the locale for the building’s many transparent walls, reputation as the world’s most visited museum, abundance of security staff, and metal detectors. She doubted Daley would, at this point, invoke anything official that might lead to uncomfortable questions, but he could bring Heather Dixon and her new Arab associates.

They pushed through the crowds and glanced around at the museum’s three-block-long interior composed of steel, marble, and glass. Ceilings soared at nearly a hundred feet, creating a hangarlike effect, and displayed a history of flight from the Wright Brothers’ flier, to Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, to the Apollo 11 moon ship.

“Lots of people,” Cassiopeia muttered.

They passed an IMAX theater with a thick line of patrons and entered the busy Space Hall. Daley stood near a full-sized, spiderlike Lunar Module, displayed as it would have appeared on the moon, with an astronaut balanced on its landing leg ladder.

Daley looked calm, considering. Not a hair on his head had escaped its usual brilliantine hold.

“Got your clothes back on,” she said as they approached.

“I underestimated you, Stephanie. My mistake. I won’t make it again.”

“You leave all your escorts at home?” She knew Daley rarely went anywhere without bodyguards.