anything, risk anything to get his hands on the cache of secrets and the Quintessence. The twisted vines of the Voire Dei had almost worked themselves into a recognizable pattern. Almost.
He closed his eyes for a moment, allowing the jouncing of the truck to lull him.
'Bravo, Bravo,' Jenny said with some urgency. 'Camille called Khalif. He said that in Macka there is a modern clinic for the increasing number of hikers and rock climbers who backpack into the Black Mountains at all times of the year, even winter. There's a trauma center there, we can stop-'
'No,' he said at once, his eyes snapping open. 'We must go on to Sumela.'
Their eyes locked, and at length she nodded, but he could tell she wasn't happy abut it.
He wished Khalif was with him. But now there was something he had to do on his own.
'Jenny-'
She stopped him with a hand on his cheek. 'We can talk about this later.'
'No, I have to tell you. I didn't trust you, I didn't believe you when Cornadoro hung Father Mosto's murder on you, I didn't understand when you shot Uncle Tony. There was no way then I could have believed-'
'Anthony fooled everyone, Bravo. Even, until the very end, your father.'
It was only now that he noticed the dark circles around her eyes, her hollow cheeks, the blue veins at her temples, as if her skin had thinned to parchment. But these marks of exhaustion and emotional pain did not mar her beauty. Rather, they allowed him to see the newfound steely quality she had acquired while they were apart. Very soon, he knew, he'd have to ask her what had happened to her, how this change had come about 'There's something else.'
Her fingertip brushed his lips. 'Can't you let it rest for now?'
'I've waited too long already. Father Mosto told me that you and my father were having an affair. I was so angry I couldn't see straight. That's what clouded my instinct, my judgment of you-'
'But, Bravo, I never had an affair with Dexter.'
Bravo felt a roaring in his head. 'I don't understand. The flat he set up for you in London…'
'Ah, you know about that.' She sat back, her eyes turned inward.
He took her hand in his. 'Don't lie to me about this, Jenny. Just the truth, only the truth.'
Her eyes were firmly focused on the past. 'The truth, okay.' She nodded, but she couldn't bring herself to begin. Then she took a deep breath, let it out. 'I had an affair, but it wasn't with your father.'
'Who, then?'
'Ronnie Kavanagh. He got me pregnant then browbeat me into having… having it taken care of. He threatened me, warned me that if I didn't it would be the end for me in the Order. I was young, devastated, confused. I did what he told me to do. But it nearly finished me, psychologically. It was your father who took care of me-he was so kind, so understanding-and here I was terrified he'd give me away to the Haute Cour and, like Ronnie said, I'd be out on my ass. But he kept my secret. He talked to me about the baby, about what it meant to lose a child, but I never knew until you told me about Junior.'
'He would never have told you himself, especially not in your state of mind.'
'No, of course not,' she said. 'Instead, he told me endearing stories of fairies and elves.'
'Did he tell you about the elf who could turn water into fire?'
Jenny's eyes lit up. 'Yes, and the one about the fairy who wasn't invited to the Midsummer Night banquet-'
'And in retaliation put a spell on the fireflies hired to illuminate the party so they turned into wasps.'
They both laughed softly.
Jenny sighed as she allowed the memories their due. 'On days when I was really bad, he would tell me jokes of talking animals-clever, sinister and loving-that made me laugh despite myself.'
'The zebra who bet his stripes, and lost-'
'The parrot who captained a pirate ship-'
'The greedy terrier who ran his company into the ground.'
She laughed again, delighted as a child, and Bravo could imagine how his father had been taken with her, how he might have seen her as a surrogate child that eased the misery of Junior's death.
'And then there were the books we read together,' Jenny continued, 'historical novels of unimaginable hardship, loss and ultimate triumph. I knew what he was doing, and it worked. He was so empathetic, so attuned to my depressions and black moods I should have known, or at least suspected, he'd gone through his own tragedy. Over the year he took care of me I came to love him. Not so surprising, I guess. But I loved him like a father, and he never had any designs on me. On the contrary, he was the only man who made me feel safe-up until you.'
'What if I have designs on you?' Bravo said.
Cheeks flaming, Jenny looked down at him. 'I'm different now, I'm counting on it.'
The Sumela Monastery, set into the bedrock of the sheer mountainside, rose into the cobalt sky like the fortified portal of a Roman citadel. They lacked delicacy and finesse, these golden buildings; defenders of the faith, they seemed built for war.
'A war is what we'll have now,' Camille said.
'There's no other way?' Bravo asked her.
'Sadly, my son has made his choice,' Camille said. 'With the pressures at play, the stakes so high, I doubt he could change his mind now, even if he had a mind to do so.'
The three of them stood in the arched shadows of the ancient aqueduct that long ago had provided water for the monastery. Nearby was Cornadoro's truck, which Camille had parked on the narrow, twisting street some distance from the rank of tour buses, disgorging flocks of people armed with name tags, water bottles and digital cameras. No one seemed interested in their presence, but now each of them, infected with paranoia, studied the horde with obsessive interest.
Bravo turned to Camille. 'I thought Jordan was my friend.' He had explained, in as bare-bones a way as possible, the history of the Knights of St. Clement and Jordan's involvement in it. 'How could he have betrayed me so callously?'
'He's a consummate actor, and for that I must take the blame.' Camille stared up at the series of arches that carried the aqueduct on their brawny shoulders up the sheer cliff. 'He never knew who his father was, but it's only in retrospect that I see how bitter he had become. I think now that it put a shell around him, turned him inward upon himself. But it would have done him no good had I told him; he'd have gone off on a futile and disappointing quest.' She bit her lower lip. 'Poor Jordan. We can't regain the past, much as we might want to.'
'No point in recriminations,' Bravo said.
'Yes, what's done is done, n'est-ce pas?' she said bitterly. All at once she fell into Bravo's arms. 'Ah, Bravo, my only child has betrayed me as unforgivably as he has you.'
'We should go on,' Jenny said as she urged them out from the shadow of the truck, 'as quickly as possible.'
'Yes, yes,' Camille said, coming back to herself, 'tell us what we must do, Bravo. We're both here to help you.'
Jordan Muhlmann had switched from the van to an air-conditioned car for the drive up into the mountains. Lucky for him, since the trip entailed three hours of jouncing as the snaking road became steeper, full of hair- raising switchbacks, and just past the town of Macka, when they'd turned off to the left, the road, steeper still, became a shambles. He had three Knights with him, few enough to be unobtrusive, sufficient, he judged, to get the job done.
He had been here before-irony of ironies, with Bravo himself. Three summers ago. They had taken what was to be a two-week vacation in Ibiza, but after six days of immersing themselves in nonstop hedonistic bliss they had decided to leave the two beautiful blondes who, like greedy remoras, opened their mouths on sweaty dancefloors, trendy all-night lounges, swampy hotel beds, damp sand dunes. They left the women without a word and had run away from the predatory island to the end of the earth, which, for them, had been decidedly nontrendy Trabzon. A depressing slum, whose only saving grace had been the Sumela Monastery.
Now here I am again, Jordan thought, back at Sumela with my old friend as he ends his journey in search of the Order's cache of secrets. Christ, it was here all along. Irony, indeed. But irony was hardly unknown to him. On the contrary, sometimes it seemed to him as if his entire life was one grotesque irony. Take his relationship
