13th Apostle (27 page)

Sabbie's body lay sprawled on the floor.

Gil bent over her and searched desperately for any source of injury. There was nothing.

“You're okay,” Gil said. “He missed you.”

“I don't think so,” she replied softly.

Gil told her to straighten her leg. It was twisted at such an odd angle.

“That's the problem. I can't move.” She looked into his face, less than a foot away. “My head, that's all I can move,” she said in a hoarse voice. “I can't feel anything else.”

“But you haven't been shot!”

“See if there's an entry wound somewhere on my chest,” she whispered with eerie calm.

The small hole in the hollow above her collarbone was barely bleeding. Large enough for a bullet, it nevertheless looked like any benign injury that would heal on its own.

“George's bullet must have hit my spine,” she said hoarsely. “Just a bit below C4…I think. Breathing is okay…but difficult. Not able to move my…arms or legs.”

Instinctively, he started to reply, “I know, army training,” but the words died in his throat. Sabbie said it for him. Tears streamed from her eyes and pooled on the floor beside her neck.

Gil gently pulled her leg from under her. “Tell me…who's alive,” she said in a weak voice.

He ignored her question and answered the one he assumed she was asking. “Nobody can do anything to you now, don't worry. I'm going to call an ambulance. I'll be right back.”

“No!” she cried weakly and attempted to lift her head. “Tell me…who's dead.”

“The only thing that matters now is getting you help…”

She struggled to get the words out. “Tell me, Goddamn it!”

“Everybody,” he answered.

“How do you…know? Did you check them? Each…of them? Do it!” she ordered in a whisper.

Gil pushed and prodded his way through the bodies and reported as he went.

“Power Angel number one, dead.” Pull him aside. “Power Angel number two, dead. I'll need to flip him over to try and get to Aijaz. Okay, Aijaz bites the dust, too,” Gil said flippantly.

“It's not funny,” she whispered. “You're going too quickly. Take your time and make sure.”

Gil doubled the pulse-searching time he was spending at the neck and wrists. “Maluka, dead. For sure,” Gil added.

No need to check Peterson. The next was more difficult. “DeVris, dead,” Gil said.

“What about George?” Sabbie insisted. “Did you check him?”

George was the last and closest to Sabbie. He lay face up, his shirt, jacket, and pants covered in red. There was no way he could still be alive. He wouldn't have enough blood left.

Sabbie had turned her head and was watching George intently.

“I think he's still breathing,” she said.

“He's not sharing the ambulance with you, if that's what you're…”

Gil never got the last word out of his mouth. As he approached, George turned on his side like a beached whale and, as he held his firing arm up with the other arm, took direct aim at Gil's chest.

“Move!” she screamed with more breath than Gil thought possible.

And he did, just in time. In five strides, Gil was behind George and had wrested the gun from his hand. But somewhere between the first and the last of those strides, George had taken aim at Sabbie and fired.

“This one…hit higher,” she whispered. “Can hardly…breathe.”

Gil knelt beside her. He cradled her head in his hand.

Each of her breaths was more labored than the last.

“Where?” he asked desperately. “I don't see it.”

She stared into his eyes. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“I'll get the ambulance…” he said, laying her head gently back on the floor.

“Wait,” she said. It took everything she had.

His eyes met hers and followed her gaze to his hand. He knew what he would see before he let his eyes drop. The stickiness he felt there was already turning his stomach. A strange clear fluid and thick blood dripped from his hand to the floor. He fought to keep from wrenching.

“Sarkami…” she whispered.

Was she calling for him? Gil stared, not knowing what to do.

“Sar…kami,” she repeated.

“You want to know what happened to Sarkami, is that it?” Gil asked desperately.

“Gone,” she responded.

So, Maluka got Sarkami, too. Or did she mean that she was gone? Oh, God! These were her last words and he had no idea what she was saying.

“Scroll,” she whispered with less breath.

Gil shook his head helplessly.

“Sarkami…Don't kill him,” she said. Her words were barely audible.

“Who? Don't kill who? Sarkami?”

“Don't…kill…George,” she whispered.

Gil's heart pounded madly. George had just shot her. Twice! Why the hell was she worried about him?

“Best place…” she started.

“The best place to go is?” Gil said. He was trying desperately to imagine what she wanted to say.

“No, the best place…” Then there was no breath left, for words or for life.

She was gone and the silence was deafening.

For a moment, there was no sadness, nothing at all. Then a giant hand within him grabbed his chest and crushed it beneath its grip. Tears of rage poured from his eyes. He reached down, grabbed George, and with all his strength shook the huge flopping body.

“Why the fuck did you do it?” Gil screamed. “Why?”

George stared at him and said nothing. Gil released him in a heap.

“Why?” Gil cried. “Why? What good did it do to kill her?” he wailed to no one.

George's head, cocked oddly to one side, continued to stare, not at Gil, but at the nothingness of his own eternity.

Gil returned to his Sabbie, knelt beside her one last time, cradled her in his arms, and cried from the depths of his tortured soul.

A few hours later

It was like waking from a terrible dream. In the fading light of the day, what had been bloody bodies on the warehouse floor, now appeared as abstract shapes and shadows. Only Sabbie's pale face, cool and still, bore testimony to all that had happened only a few hours earlier.

Gil was filled with an emptiness he had never felt before. Still, his mind was clear and remarkably focused. There was nothing he could do here now and, sure as hell, Sabbie would have hated to see him wallow in the pain and loss.

She would have yelled at him that he had a job to do and to get the hell out of there. And she would have been right.

He needed food, a place to sleep, and a plane ticket home, in that order. The first two would have to be taken care of immediately. The third would have to wait until he completed the task that he and Sabbie had begun together.

For now, Sarkami's house would do. There should be something in the refrigerator and, if Gil traveled at night, he was less likely to be recognized by—how did Sabbie put it—the good people of London. He was still a fugitive, Gil reminded himself, and he needed to think like one.

Gil gathered up the strips of copper scroll littered across the table and around the floor. Though they were only copies, still he placed them gently within the old wooden box and wrapped it, once again, with the blanket. A strip or two of the faux scroll might still remain beneath the scattered bodies, he thought, but he had neither the time, strength, nor the stomach, to roll them over and search beneath. The police would be certain to unravel the whole matter in time. The removal of these key pieces of evidence, and hopefully leaving no others behind, might just buy him a few extra days.

Unless, of course, they conclude I was the one responsible for all of this.

Had Sabbie been alive, they would have joked about his growing list of criminal offenses. Now, suddenly, he was facing the very real charge of multiple homicide.

 

The back door to Sarkami's lay open. Broken locks still hung askew. Once inside, Gil wedged some furniture against the door. It offered only an illusion of protection, but he doubted that anyone was after him, at least for the moment. Besides, if somebody wanted him badly enough to knock down the pile of furniture at the door, they were welcome. He'd had enough.

The hummus was dried out, the pita bread was stale, and the iced tea was too sweet. He was starved so, all together, it was one of the best meals he had ever eaten. Gil wolfed it down in a few minutes and rested before his next foraging expedition into Sarkami's kitchen.

He glanced around the room. There was an order beneath the disorder, a logic to the placement of the lights, tools, notes, and books and an organization beneath the debris when you took the time to look past the obvious.

The best place to hide a tree is in the forest
.
And the best place to hide an organized counterfeiting
—
or rather, faux facsimile project
—
is in the midst of a…mess.

Suddenly, Gil straightened. “The best place…” Those had been Sabbie's last words. He rose with confidence, walked to the table neatly covered in white cloth, and placed his hands on the copper scroll that lay amid a mound of copper strips and facsimile scrolls. A familiar warmth greeted him. It had not been cut up after all! Gil's heart was filled with an unexpected joy.

This was the scroll, the one for which everyone was willing to kill or die, yet Maluka's men had been in this very room with Gil when they took him prisoner and had missed it. It had been there, right under their noses, but they had seen only what they expected to see; worthless faux facsimiles waiting to be sent to the Museum for display.

It was a brilliant and courageous plan. Sarkami knew his enemy and his enemy's limitations, and he had trusted what he knew to be true. Gil wondered if Sabbie had been part of the decision to leave the real scroll in full view. He got his answer more quickly than he would have guessed.

With an apartment full of possessions at his disposal, Gil prepared the scroll for transport. As he carefully wrapped the scroll in the bed sheet he had torn into quarters, Gil realized he had no idea where he was going. He had assumed that he would head back to the U.S.

On second thought, with McCullum still out there, going home didn't appear to be the wisest of choices. Besides, what would he do with the scroll? He couldn't exactly take out an ad in the
New York Times
for a High Tzaddik in need of a two-thousand-year-old piece of antiquity required for the salvation of mankind.

Gil slipped the scroll into their backpack that lay empty and waiting in the corner. The scroll would need cushioning, he thought. He pushed the faux facsimiles aside, added the strips he had taken from the warehouse to the pile, and slid the soft white cloth from the table. As he watched, a small envelope fall from its hiding place beneath the fabric. It landed at his feet. It bore the words “To Whom It May Concern” in Sabbie's distinctive script.

Inside, in her handwriting, once again, was the well-known Robert Frost verse. It contained a few strategically placed changes that told Gil all that he needed to know.

Gil gently laid the note on the scroll nestled safely in the backpack. Beside it, he slipped the passport that bore the name Arnold Ludlow beneath his own picture.

With anticipation, he raised the white cloth to his face. As he had hoped, it smelled of vanilla, like the sweater Sabbie wore in the chapel, only a few days earlier.

Gil held the white cloth to his chest and, with his free hand, pulled closed the backpack. Tomorrow, the soft fabric would cushion the precious cargo. But not now.

Tomorrow he would fly to Israel in hopes of discovering for whom the scroll was intended. Tonight, he desperately needed sleep and a reprieve from thought.

Gently, Gil laid the white cloth on the pillow next to him. Most of all, for just a few minutes more, he needed to close his eyes and to imagine that he was, once again, holding Sabbie.

Day Fifteen, late afternoon
Israel Museum Library, Jerusalem

The hand that grasped Gil's shoulder stopped him dead with his fingers poised on the computer keyboard.

You'd think I would have learned by now.

He had arrived in Israel only that morning and had headed straight for the Museum's library, glued to the mainframe computer for most of the day. By accessing their Aramaic program, Gil had hoped to double check Sabbie's translation in search of some clue she had overlooked. If the scroll was going to tell him how to proceed, he'd better be able to speak its language.

After eight hours, Gil had to admit he was no closer to interpreting the scroll than he had been at the start. Within each phrase he thought he had translated correctly, Gil discovered a discrepancy that put a previous section in doubt. Still, he couldn't bring himself to give up. Though he was making no real progress, the challenge, itself, had been immensely satisfying.

Now, the sudden clasp on the back of his neck sent a wave of electricity up Gil's back. He turned slowly. He half expected to see another pair of blond Power Angels behind him. Instead, he was greeted by the swarthy face of the man he assumed to be dead.

“Sarkami!”

“I've been expecting you,” the older man whispered. “Let's go in the other room where we can talk.”

The library conference room provided them with all the privacy they needed.

“I thought you were dead,” Gil began.

Sarkami looked surprised.

“Sabbie said you were gone,”

The older man laughed. “I am,” he said. “Gone…you know, gone away. Gone to Israel, to wait for you.”

Gil recounted the events he never wanted to think about again. Sarkami showed no surprise and made no comment. As Gil described George's unexpected second attack on Sabbie, Sarkami nodded sadly as if he had been anticipating the strange twist of events. Gil continued, then waited for Sarkami's response.

Sarkami hesitated, as if expecting Gil to add something beyond the finality of Sabbie's death.

Gil had no idea what else there was to say.

A single tear rolled down the old eagle's cheek. “She was well named, you know,” Sarkami said softly. “I got her out of Israel, you know, and brought her to Ludlow in London. Even though they knew everything, he and his wife, Sarah, took her in like the daughter they never had. They helped her establish a whole new identity. Actually, Ludlow was the one who gave her the name, Sabra.”

“It means someone who is born in Israel, doesn't it?” Gil asked. It seemed like an odd thing to do for someone who was trying to leave the past behind.

“Yes, it comes from the name of a type of cactus; a prickly pear that maintains a thorny tough exterior that protects the sweet, softness inside.” After the Second World War, the first Israeli settlers choose the word to describe the children born to their new homeland. To survive, these children would have to have qualities similar to their namesake. Ludlow had chosen the name as both a description and a reminder to his new charge.

Gil's throat tightened. “She let me in, you know,” he said.

“I hoped she would.”

“It was important for her,” Gil confirmed solemnly.

Sarkami laughed. “Oh, and not for you?”

Sarkami motioned toward Gil's notes. “So, you have the scroll, of course,” Sarkami asked.

“Yes, how did you know?”

“Sabbie and I figured you would be able to play connect the dots. Tell me, what have you learned?”

“Nothing,” Gil admitted. “Nothing Sabbie didn't already read to me from the back seat of the car. The translation is never going to tell me what to do with the scroll.”

“Of course it won't,” Sarkami said agreeably.

Gil looked at him blankly.

“You are like the man who dropped his keys in the street,” Sarkami continued.

Gil shook his head. He had no idea what the older man was talking about.

“There's a wonderful story about a man whose wife finds him on his hands and knees beneath a street lamp one night. He's searching desperately amid the debris and muck of the gutter. When asked what he is doing, the man explains that he is looking for his keys and requests his wife's help. ‘Exactly where did you drop the keys?' she asks. ‘Down the block,' he answers. ‘Then why are you looking here,' she asks. ‘Because the light's better here,' he explains.”

I've just turned the corner and entered the Twilight Zone.

“The point is,” Sarkami continued, “that you're looking for your keys where the light is good but not where you lost them. You're searching where it's easy to look but not where you'll find your answer. Surely, you must have realized that you're spending your time trying to confirm what Sabbie has already told you is written in the scroll because that's the easiest thing to do. After all, you have the scroll, you have the translation program, and you have a job to do that makes you feel like you're getting somewhere. The only problem is, the whole task is pointless and you know it. What you need to learn next cannot be found in any scroll.”

The anger that flashed through Gil was unreasonable. He knew it and he didn't care. Hadn't he been through enough? What did this man want from him?

“What's your point?” Gil asked coldly.

“That depends on your goal,” Sarkami responded calmly. “If you want to enjoy the diversion of going over what has already been translated, then continue your attempt at confirmation. If you'd like to discover how to get the scroll to the person for whom it was meant, then you need to explore a different path.”

Gil remained aloof. “And that would be…?”

“You're the cybersleuth,” Sarkami answered. “What have you been trying to tell yourself? Or rather, what thoughts have you been avoiding? What's that little voice inside trying to get you to hear?”

It was true and Gil knew it. Since he left the warehouse, he had carefully constructed a barrier within his own mind between the horror of what had happened and the clean, unmarred reality through which he was now navigating. He had been forcing himself to stay focused on what could honestly be called “busy work.”

Gil looked at Sarkami. The great eagle seemed to be waiting for something. A hundred scenes flashed across Gil's mind. He had been avoiding so much, for so long. When Lucy was dying, he had worked longer hours than ever before, which left her alone when she needed him most. At the time, Gil had blamed the doctor for offering the false hope that necessitated making more money. Now Gil could see that, in truth, he found it far easier to avoid dealing with Lucy's pain as well as his own. With Sabbie, as well, he had refused to take her fears seriously, until it was far too late.

But what was he avoiding now? That was the question. And where to find the answer.

“That would seem like the appropriate next step,” Sarkami said, as if he had been reading Gil's mind.

“But I have no idea where to go from here!” Gil protested.

“Well, that's a start,” Sarkami replied, and turned to leave.

“Just a thought,” the older man added before closing the door behind him. “When you discover the reason why Sabbie didn't want you to kill George, you'll have the answer you've been looking for.”