The Illumination (17 page)

“I'll never be able to put one foot in front of the other if I don't get a few hours sleep—in a bed,” Natalie said wearily. “But after that we should pay a visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome. The minute Ashton mentioned the Vatican Museums, I remembered—there's a small religious museum filled with rare antiquities and treasures right inside the synagogue.”

“I didn't know that. I've seen the building down by the Tiber, but I've never been inside.”

“It's a hidden gem. I spent a morning there about eight years ago when I stopped here in Rome. I treated myself—I needed a break after an especially grueling salvage excavation in Israel.”

“Didn't know there was any other kind,” he snorted. “I honestly don't know how you guys do it day in and day out. I've interviewed archaeologists in the field, and after only a few hours out there, I was ready to drop from the heat and the sun.”

“It wasn't the elements that made it tough,” Natalie replied quietly. “You protect yourself by drinking water and wearing hats and sunblock. But sometimes,” she added grimly, “you can't anticipate everything that might happen.” She was staring straight ahead, as if she was seeing something beyond the darkened
city. “I made a friend there, a good one. And . . . she was killed.”

As a journalist he knew that sometimes silence was the best way to elicit answers. Most people were uncomfortable with the sounds of silence.

“Her name was Maren Svendborg,” Natalie said at last. “We were part of an international team sifting through some Byzantine ruins in the southern part of the city. Maren got there early one morning and . . .” Natalie's voice was so low D'Amato had to strain to hear. “She surprised a looter who'd unearthed a clay jug of seventh-century gold coins. Some of us were coming up the back road and saw him knife her. I watched her fall. She was dead before we reached her.”

“I'm sorry,” D'Amato said with a quick glance at her. “I know what it's like to see a colleague killed on the job. One of our news producers was killed in the suicide bombing that nailed me. I hope they caught the bastard who killed your friend.”

“They did—within an hour. Not that it helped Maren—or her poor family in Denmark. The day after I returned to New York, I began training in Krav Maga. I couldn't stop thinking that if Maren had only known how to defend herself, she might be alive today.” She was quiet for a moment. “Now I'll be thinking the same thing about Dana.”

“Dana knew how to take care of herself,” D'Amato said gently. “She wasn't a big person physically, but she could outthink, outargue, outsmart most anybody. She just ran into a situation none of us have a handle on yet.” He slowed and turned right onto a road bumpy with cobblestones. “Have you kept it up? The Krav Maga?”

“Not regularly enough,” she answered ruefully. “But a lot of it has become instinctive. Like roller skating, I guess. I just hope I don't need to use it again any time.”

She shifted in her seat. “Getting back to what I started to say about the synagogue and the museum. It's possible someone there can help us with the Aramaic. Or at least direct us to someone else who can.”

“I like it.” D'Amato nodded in the darkness. “The synagogue's
across the river from Trastevere. Let's find a place to crash near there.”

As he merged into the light flow of traffic threading along the narrow warren of streets, Natalie noticed that D'Amato was checking the mirrors again. Warily she watched the headlights behind them in her side-view mirror. But the few other vehicles on the road either passed them or turned off onto other narrow cobbled streets, where cafés and shops sat dark and shuttered until dawn. Natalie's shoulders ached with accumulating tension. Her eyes burned with unshed tears and lack of sleep. The strain of the past thirty-six hours was taking its toll.

Crossing the courtyard of the Hotel Marcello di Mellini a half hour later, she was only dimly aware of its uneven cobbles, the ivy-covered old red bricks, the hotel's yellow mansard roof. Or of the three-story tenements hovering protectively around the ancient building.

“This place used to be a monastery,” D'Amato told her, as they stepped inside the narrow lobby. “I've stayed here several times. It's nothing fancy, but it has real beds, and we'll be away from the crowds. I don't think anyone will track us here—at least not for the next few hours.”

He wasn't kidding about the “nothing fancy.” The lobby was short and narrow, leading only to a utilitarian elevator. Its only charm was its open medieval brickwork and beamed ceilings. Two slim antique wood tables holding baskets of oranges hugged the wall opposite the chest-high reception counter.

This lobby had no place for guests to congregate, and at this hour it was completely deserted. The only sign of life was the clerk on duty, a sleepy young man with a short Vandyke beard encircling his mouth and chin and not a whisper of hair on his pate. Contained in a claustrophobic work area the size of a narrow bedroom closet, he barely had to shift his stance to reach the numbered cubbies crammed with room keys.
Ergonomic, these Italians,
Natalie thought.

“I need your passport, Natalie.” D'Amato already had his out. He reached for hers and then passed both sets of ID to the clerk.

“I noi documenti,”
D'Amato said in a beautifully accented
Italian. “On our honeymoon.” He grinned at the half-awake young man. “She didn't have time to change her passport.”

“Grazie, signore, signora.”
The clerk said something else that she didn't understand, just as she didn't understand why D'Amato had said they were on their honeymoon. But he seemed to comprehend Italian well as he handed over a credit card, and then accepted a single huge brass key with a heavy knob at its end.

It was a dozen steps to the minuscule cage that served as the elevator.
Good thing we're traveling light,
Natalie thought, squeezing beside D'Amato in a space not much bigger than a phone booth. Even a pair of suitcases wouldn't have fit inside its walls.

“Honeymoon?” Her brows lifted after the doors shut. “So that's our cover?”

“Partly. It also helps avoid any complications in sharing a room—and I think we need to stay together for safety's sake. But some of these Italian hotels still restrict unmarried couples from sharing a room, so . . .”

“In this day and age?” She shook her head as the doors clanked open two floors up, and she squeezed past him into the narrow corridor. “You've got to be kidding.”

Their room was not much bigger than the elevator and was white-tiled and immaculately clean.

“You want the window or the door?” D'Amato asked, and she glanced at the two double beds with the two-drawer oak nightstand between them.

“Door.” She tossed her shoulder bag onto the neatly turned-down floral coverlet and sank down on the edge of the bed.

“I was hoping you'd say that.” D'Amato dropped his duffel near the window with a smile. “Anyone comes through that door, Krav Maga them.”

“Don't think I couldn't,” Natalie shot back, but she found herself smiling, too. “You don't snore, do you, D'Amato?”

“You can tell me in the morning,” he said, taking off his shoes, easing onto the bed.

“If we're still alive in the morning.” She hugged her arms around herself as D'Amato propped his arms behind his head.

“Thanks, by the way.” She looked over at him with a small smile. “I'm actually glad you insisted on coming with me.”

He yawned as she headed toward the bathroom. “You'd better reserve judgment until I pass the snore test.”

By the time Natalie threw back her coverlet, and with the last of her energy slipped between the pressed sheets, D'Amato was watching CNN.

“Couldn't hurt to touch base with the outside world. Just for a few minutes. Do you mind?”

“Go for it,” she mumbled. Her eyes were already closed. The broadcast was a vague, slightly irritating blur of white noise. From far away she heard something about the flooding in Sri Lanka. The upcoming summit in Jerusalem. The latest weather delay for the space shuttle. This was the longest “minute” she'd ever endured, Natalie thought foggily.

Suddenly she heard D'Amato curse, and he turned up the volume, sending the newscaster's voice blaring through the room.

“. . . but New York authorities have ruled out terrorism in the car bombing that rocked the quiet Williamsburg section of Brooklyn last night . . .”

Eyes flying open, she heaved herself up on her elbows to squint at the screen.

“. . . leaving two dead and seven injured. Unable to answer questions, the survivors remain under guard in intensive care at Woodhull Hospital. And in Sydney—”

“Was that . . . my building?” Natalie sat fully upright, all vestiges of sleep driven away by the shock of that burned-out car on the screen.

“It sure looked like it, didn't it?” D'Amato's face was grim. “We'll check it out in the morning, once we pick up the world phones. I'll make some calls—hopefully there's a few people at MSNBC still speaking to me.”

Her heart still thumping, Natalie slumped back onto the pillow and folded an arm across her eyes. “They were after me. . . .”

“Someone knows a lot more about your pendant than we do.” D'Amato clicked off the television, and Natalie heard him turn over.

Natalie closed her eyes, but found no refuge in sleep. She punched her pillow and tried to doze off again, but she couldn't shake the feeling that tomorrow things would only get worse.

 

Pensacola, Florida

 

Ken Mundy clicked off the phone, smiling as he set it down on the long oak table in his empty boardroom. He was pleased that his banker in Panama had recognized his voice instantly, though it wasn't surprising. Over the past month Mundy had been speaking with him on a nearly weekly basis, transferring up to a million dollars at a time into the secret bank account only he and the Shomrei Kotel could access.

No mean accomplishment for a kid whose only Christmas presents were delivered by the Salvation Army,
he thought. His listless mother had received barely enough food stamps to keep bread and milk in the refrigerator and a few cans of beans and alphabet soup in the cupboard. There'd never been money for toys or books, although she'd always seemed to scare up enough spare change for a pack of cigarettes.

Sadness swept through him, not for himself, but for his mother. He'd forgiven her long ago, though she'd never forgiven him. From the earliest time he could remember he'd wondered why his mother almost never looked at him, not even when he threw his arms around her knees, crying because he'd hurt himself while playing outside.

It wasn't until he was fourteen that it hit him like a sucker punch why she didn't have even a single picture of his father. Why his last name was the same as hers and her parents. That day, he and Travis Wilson had come to blows in gym class. “Y'ain't nothin' but a common bastard,” Travis had taunted, as he danced around Mundy, throwing punches while the other kids laughed.

A bastard,
he'd thought, as he landed a solid right to bloody Travis's lip just before the gym teacher shoved himself between them.
Mamma lied. My parents were never married.

The idea shocked and shamed him, but the truth had been even uglier than that.

“Oh, you're a bastard, all right.” His mother's pinched face had flamed red when he'd explained to her why he'd come home with a detention note from the principal. “You really want the truth? Do you? Your father was some pervert who grabbed me on my way home from school and left me bleeding in a field,” she'd bit out, years of hatred for her attacker finally spewing across their tiny, grease-streaked kitchen. “I never seen him before, and I never seen the son-of-a-bitch again, unless I look at
you
.”

After that day Ken Mundy hadn't spent much time at home. He couldn't bear to burden his mother with having to look at him. He hung out at his friends' houses till bedtime, shared their families' simple meals and everyday conversations. He always kept a smile stretched across his face, belying how lost and worthless he felt inside—until he found his Savior.

Jesus had become his true parent, the one who loved him without reservation. And he had become a worthy son. Jesus had taught him how to hold his head up, how to become a man—and not just any man, but a leader. A visionary. That vision, a gift from the Lord, was guiding him still. Guiding him to the Light, guiding him to build the third and final Temple.

The funds he was transferring from the Sons of Babylon's offshore account in Panama to the Shomrei Kotel would soon purchase the precious cedar and stone needed to begin construction. He could only imagine all the souls he would save once that glorious edifice soared into the sky above Jerusalem, the Light glowing above its altar.

The Sentinel had been invaluable in teaching him the ins and outs of dummy foundations and corporations. The intricacies of offshore banking had become ridiculously complicated after 9/11. In an attempt to identify funds tied to terrorism, governments across the globe had agreed to cooperate, to assist each other in following money trails. Then the EU Savings Tax Directive of 2005 had limited the privacy of offshore bank accounts even further.

Switzerland and the Cayman Islands were no longer the safe havens they had once been, but with the Sentinel's guidance and personal introduction to a well-placed Panamanian attorney,
Mundy had managed to transfer his church's substantial assets from Switzerland to Panama—one of the few remaining places that took no interest in its foreign depositors' finances.

Mundy reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the invitation that would allow him entry to the upcoming summit. He traced his fingers across the raised lettering on the cream-colored paper.