The Seventh Stone (31 page)

Contreras uncrossed his legs. Jared noticed beads of perspiration on the man’s pasty brow. “I asked if you had them,” Contreras said. “You did replace them with our reproductions.”

“
Yes, three weeks ago, during the cleaning and restoration of the crown jewels, as planned.” Jared recognized the irony that it was the trust he evoked in his staff and the security guards that allowed him the treasonous deception. He had been at once thrilled and repulsed when he committed the act.

“
Any problems?”

“
Everything went just as you said it would,” said Jared. If truth be told, it was Jared’s masterful skill, not Contreras’s bold plan, which was vital to their success. He had supervised every detail of the clandestine reproduction of the sapphire and diamond. The forgeries were exact replicas, down to their mineral composition, weight, color, cut and clarity. The technology to create these amazing synthetics still amazed him. The forgery was exactly the stone it emulated. The only aspect it lacked was the history. And yet, it was this storied past that gave the authentic stone its undeniable energy. He was beginning to believe in curses.

“
Then give the gems to me,” Contreras said.

Jared’s heart pounded in his chest. He had to keep both his voice and gaze steady. Baltasar had taught him that. And he taught him to start a lie with an indisputable truth. “I was entrusted with the care of the Crown Jewels,” he said.

“
And you have gone beyond the call of duty.”

Followed by a second truth. “The Crown Jewels are the symbol of the continuation of the empire.”

“
Which is why you did what you did.”

And a third. “It is my duty to keep them in my care.”

Contreras pursed his lips. “And so you have.”

So he would believe the fourth. “I must keep them in my protection until they are placed in the Breastplate. You can trust nobody else,” he said, “to have the expertise and skill to mount them properly.” There, he said it. Now he would see if Contreras would believe the reason he had hastily cooked up for not simply delivering the gems into his custody. After all, he had been one of the very few that Contreras had entrusted with his entire plan. That’s what it had taken to convince him to be part of it.

The gems he had now in his possession were two of the most famous, the most infamous, in history. The world knew that before he had even met Baltasar Contreras. The world, and Baltasar Contreras, did not know that Jared was a guardian of one of these gems. He was one of the Circle of Seven. For five hundred years, the Circle had vowed to keep the seven legendary gemstones ripped from the Biblical Breastplate of Aaron hidden from man. When Contreras finally revealed his plan to restore the Breastplate, Jared became drunk with the idea that his destiny lay not in preventing the Breastplate from being restored, but in using his elite position to once again open this blessed lifeline to God. He could only pray that he had sobered up in time.

Contreras tented his fingers. “I admire your courage, Jared. The way to the Breastplate is perilous.”

“
Courage I would never have known I possessed, Baltasar, without you. Replacing the diamond and sapphire with our manmade replicas was nerve-wracking, certainly, but actually taking the gems out of England–” Even now, the thought of successfully smuggling two of the world’s most important gems into the United States shot Jared through with an unequalled excitement and perverse pride. He had thought of himself as a modern Sir Walter Raleigh, who had emboldened himself with Queen Elizabeth I. Jared had always admired Raleigh’s flamboyant story-telling and penchant for ambition and risk. He couldn’t help but prefer Raleigh’s tall tales that transformed El Dorado into a fabled city of gold over the doom and gloom of Raleigh’s contemporary, Salvatierra, the priest who founded the Circle of Seven to keep man from wielding the power of God. He did not want to remind himself that Raleigh was imprisoned at the Tower of London and beheaded. Jared, as a commoner, would have been hung, drawn and quartered. He swallowed, hard, and wondered if even Raleigh, despite his bravado, had, in the privacy of his cell, dreaded death.

Contreras narrowed his eyes. “It is true that I will need the expertise of a master jeweler as I acquire the other sacred stones and to mount them in the Breastplate,” he said. “I would be honored to have you at my side.” Contreras held out his gray, gloved hand and opened it wide. “Now, let’s see the gems.”

Jared could hardly believe it. Contreras had agreed that he still needed him. He would not be killed, not yet. He was prepared to reveal the stones. His deception was playing out perfectly. He loosened his cravat and pulled the neck pouch from beneath his shirt. He had kept the diamond and sapphire next to his heart the whole time they were in his possession, from his workshop in the Tower of London, on the flight across the Atlantic, here in the Waldorf Hotel. He even wore it when making love with Zoe. He told her jokingly that the pouch was given to him by a medicine man for prowess in bed.
It’s working!
She would laugh, knowing not to ask more. With the gems in his possession, he’d been as randy as Raleigh.

He opened the drawstrings of the black velvet pouch. He spilled them onto his palm, first the white diamond, then the blue sapphire. Created by violent forces of nature in the dawn of history, rulers throughout the centuries had sought to possess the Kohinoor diamond and Edward’s Sapphire. It was said that he who possessed the Kohinoor would rule the world. And the sapphire had been pivotal in the life of a king who would become a saint. Jared found them mesmerizing, a thing created more in the heights of heaven than the depths of the Earth. And though these gems had caused and again threatened the deaths of many, Jared had never felt so alive.

The blue of the sapphire glowed with such intensity it was as if the sky had been sucked into its heart, leaving behind only gray and gloom for the rest of the world. “Saint Edward’s Sapphire,” he whispered, his breath suddenly short, “named for Edward the Confessor, King of England from 1042 until 1066. It was originally set in his coronation ring.”

Contreras stretched his gloved palm, his fingers wriggling in anticipation, towards Jared. “Nearly a millennium ago,” he acknowledged, “but as I’ve told you, its history is far greater and older than that. The sapphire was gestated deep in the Earth a billion years ago. Thrust to the surface in the extreme heat of magma by the power of nature. Found by man in the alluvial deposits of what is now Sri Lanka.”

Jared knew well the magnificent sapphires that had been mined in the Ratnapura region of that country since King Solomon’s time, ten centuries before Christ walked the Earth. He knew that legendary stones, although often temporarily lost in history, inevitably resurface, heavy with stories of conquest, murder and empires. He could easily accept that Edward’s Sapphire was the one mentioned in the Bible as being set in the Breastplate of Aaron. He had felt it. “King Edward once gave away the sapphire.”

“
And so shall you,” Contreras said.

“
He was traveling along the road and happened upon a beggar. King Edward had no money, but did not hesitate to take the sapphire ring from his finger and give it to the poor man,” recounted Jared. “Many years later, two English pilgrims had journeyed to the Holy Land. In Syria, they were lost in a violent storm. An old man guided them to shelter. He gave them a sapphire ring to deliver to King Edward. The old man said that he was Saint John the Evangelist and that the King had given him the ring when he had come to Earth disguised as a beggar. He told the men that with the sapphire, they should deliver a message. In six months time, the King would be with God in Heaven. The pilgrims delivered the sapphire to King Edward. Six months later, he died of natural causes.” Jared turned towards Contreras. “Edward gave away this sapphire and received it back with promise of his heavenly reward.”

Contreras frowned and thrust his open palm closer. “And so shall you,” he repeated through clenched teeth. He wriggled his fingers again, as if to spirit the sapphire into them through sheer force of will. Torrino, behind him, stepped forward. Jared doubted it was just to get a closer look. Jared could clearly see the butt of a nasty-looking pistol in Torrino’s shoulder holster. He plucked the sapphire from his palm and placed it into Contreras’s.

Contreras’s thin lips curled up into a smile. He did not remove his gaze from the sapphire as he fished a jeweler’s loupe from his coat pocket and brought it up to his left eye. Jared’s knees weakened. Contreras was no gem expert, but he was no fool either. As he examined the gem, the man’s cheeks flushed. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. Jared half hoped his patron was having a heart attack. He tried to slow his breathing so he wouldn’t suffer the same fate.

Contreras scrutinized the stone’s every facet, turning it this way and that. “You say that even an expert could not divine the difference between the real and synthetic sapphire, Mister Sadler,” he said, “but I would know. Edward’s Sapphire would emit an energy. I am a Contreras. My ancestor before me held the Sapphire. He would reach for me through the ages.”

God help him, he had not fooled Contreras. He couldn’t pull off this last masterstroke of deception. “I, too, felt the Sapphire’s energy,” he ventured, his voice weak, hoping this truth would hide his lie. No matter what, he couldn’t let Contreras have the sacred stones. He’d be responsible for the death of millions, beginning with his own. He had one last, desperate move to make.

CHAPTER
38

“
The seventh commandment,” Christa called after Conroy as she hurried to catch up to him. He had already made it out of his basement office and halfway down the dim hallway past the history classrooms to the even gloomier far end. For an old man, he was surprisingly quick and agile. Years of physically demanding field work had paid off. “Thou shall not steal.”

“
It is not quite thievery,” said Conroy. “The object did belong to me, once. I donated it, afraid I’d misplace it, you know. Still, it will probably give the dean the last nail for my retirement coffin. No matter. I remember its connection now, after what you said, Christa.”

Daniel tugged at her shoulder. “We’ve got the map and a copy of Salvatierra’s letter,” he said. “We don’t have time for some wild goose chase.”

“
If it were wild geese we were chasing,” said Conroy, “then you could lead us.”

It was Christa’s turn to pull Daniel back. He looked as if he might strike the professor. Conroy led them to a utilitarian gray door. A sign on it read,
This door to remain closed at all times
. “You know I absolutely had to open it once I’d read that sign,” said Conroy, “if only for the punchline.” He turned the chrome knob and heaved it open with a groan, both from him and the door. He flicked on a switch just inside the door. With a series of bangs, three banks of lights turned on. Bulbs caged in metal sconces lined the walls. They illuminated a wide hallway, hemmed with metal bunkbeds that were stripped bare and pitted with rust. Further on, built-in metal shelves were empty but for three stray boxes of Arm and Hammer baking soda, which looked like they’d been left behind decades ago.

“
A bomb shelter,” Christa said. “Then again, if this was survival, I’d consider death a reasonable option. I could never live underground.”

“
It’s from a time when people feared that our enemy would take us over by destroying our cities and towns,” said Conroy. “That would have as much value as a door that must remain closed at all times. The next war will be won by infiltration, not annihilation.”

“
You’re talking about a bio-weapon,” Daniel said.

“
A poison is much more elegant,” said Conroy.

Christa picked up a box of baking soda. It could have dated from the early nineteen-sixties. The label hadn’t changed much, like man’s lust for world domination. “I wonder what Einstein would think of this fallout shelter. He spent his last years here at Princeton. It was his letter to Roosevelt that inspired the Manhattan Project’s race to invent the atomic bomb before the Nazis.”

“
The world would be very different if we had lost that race,” said Conroy. He did not need to add what she knew. They, too, had to win the race with evil.

“
Einstein’s letter turned into one of his biggest regrets after we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima,” she said.

“
But we are racing for the cure, not the weapon,” Conroy said. “And Einstein would have appreciated the fallout shelter’s ultimate use.” He pointed to a folding table surrounded by four metal folding chairs. “The custodians sneak down here for their weekly poker game.” He opened the door at the far end. “And I use it for my private nighttime excursions into the Hershey Room.”

The Hershey Room, one of her favorite escapes. It housed an historian’s dream collection of artifacts from around the world, collected initially by Bonnie Hershey, the adventurous, young widow to the railroad tycoon, Harold Hershey, a Princeton grad from the class of 1865.