Oberov.'
'Did you sleep with him, too, Mother?' Jordan said bitterly. 'Have you slept with all the Knights of the Field?'
'You're not jealous, are you, darling?' Camille waggled the business end of the gun. 'Now do as I say. Untie him.'
'Really, Mother, it's unnecessary because, you see, I've already-'
'Now, you stupid child! And not another word!'
Blood rushed into Jordan's face in direct proportion to the amount that fled his heart. As he mechanically undid the knots he'd so painstakingly and lovingly tied, it seemed to him as if his heart had ceased to beat. He was still breathing, still moving, still thinking, but on another level whatever had been left of his heart had vanished beneath a shell as hard, as immovable as the black rock of this mountain. Cocooned within the organization of the Knights he'd always felt separate, apart from the rest of humanity-and grateful for it, too. But now, for the first time, he felt the chill of the space he occupied, as if his aloneness had taken on another, altogether baleful quality, as if he had misread it all along, hadn't realized until this moment that it was, in fact, a vacuum, greedily absorbing light, connection and emotion.
'There.' He stood back. 'It's done.' He turned to his mother, to the woman who he despised most in the world. 'But toward what end?' He held up the key for her to see. 'I already took it from him. I did what you dreamed of doing.'
'No, Jordan. I'm your mother, you will obey me.'
'My time of servitude to you has ended. And do you know why? I'm no longer willing to be bound by your secret.'
A look of horror marred Camille's beautiful face. 'Jordan, no! You can't!'
'But I can, Mother, and I will.' He turned to Bravo. 'Here it is in a nutshell, my friend-my very good and faithful friend-the short story of the lie your entire life has been. My mother was your father's mistress. That's right, he was shacking up with her for years, while you and your siblings were growing up and, in one case, dying. Your mother never suspected and you were too young. In any event, he was so good at keeping secrets, wasn't he? And then, when you were just past your fifth birthday, she became pregnant with his child.'
'Wait,' Bravo said.
Jordan laughed harshly. 'Oh, look at his expression, Mother, isn't that the look you've dreaded? Yes, yes, I think so! I, too, am your father's son, so that makes us, what, brothers, yes? Well, half-brothers, if you need to be technical. Not to worry, it's all relative under the skin.' He laughed again.
'Wait,' Bravo repeated. His head was pounding so hard, he felt as if his brain would explode at any minute. He turned to Camille, 'Is this true?'
Jordan continued, relentless. 'He betrayed your mother, he would have betrayed you, too, so Camille believes. She says he had agreed to leave you-leave his family-to live with her, with us. But then your brother Junior died, and he couldn't bring himself to make the break.'
Bravo stared into Camille's face and for the first time saw naked emotion. It was so raw, so devastating that he had the urge to turn away, as if from a terrible injury. And so the truth burst in on him with the force of a grenade blast.
Jordan shrugged. 'If it makes you feel any better, I don't believe that fairy tale. Your father never would have left his family. He didn't want my mother, he didn't want me, either. He proved that over and over when I tried to contact him.'
Camille's head swung around, her eyes open wide. 'You did what? I expressly forbade you to contact him.'
'Did you really think I'd listen to you? Jesus Christ, he was my father. Of course I tried. But he wouldn't see me, wouldn't even talk to me. You see, Mother, if he never wanted anything to do with me, why would he leave his family for you?' He laughed. 'Dexter Shaw played you just as you were playing him.'
'You're insane. Dexter never knew a thing.'
'You're right, Mother, I have no proof, except what was once in my heart, and now I can never reach it again. C'est la guerre.' He shrugged. 'It's of no matter now, is it? We planned Dexter Shaw's death and now he's dead. End of story.' He pointed. 'What matters is that we've succeeded. After we tortured Molko to no avail we knew Dexter wouldn't talk, no matter what we did to him, so we had to find another way to the cache. And that way was you, Bravo. We knew from our man inside the Order that Dexter had trained you to be his successor. We realized what we needed to do was take Dexter out. Difficult, almost impossible, but in the end we did it. We banked on you leading us to the cache; we knew we could control you, we'd had so much experience at it.
'And we were right. You solved every cipher your father threw at you. Because he had trained you, you knew him better than anyone. You had the knowledge he'd given you, locked away inside you. You see, Bravo, you've never stopped working for me. Don't you find that ironic?'
Bravo wanted to curl up and die, he wanted to lash out. An inchoate shrieking filled his mind so that he could not speak, could not think clearly. He could only listen to the horror that came pouring out of their mouths: the lie of his own abominable existence.
Jordan moved slightly, a twitch of long-held expectation. 'Now, finally, the time has come to open the cache; everything inside will be mine.'
'Alors, that was always what you longed for, wasn't it?' Camille fairly spat out the words. Her mind was still reeling at the possibility that Dexter had seen through her lies. No one else ever had, how could he? 'You didn't care about my revenge, about the destruction of the Order. You wanted their secrets for yourself.'
'Oh, yes. Especially the Quintessence. With it, I can rule the world.'
'No.' Jenny moved into one of the circles of sunlight, the Albanian's gun aimed at them. 'You'll never get the chance now.' All at once, chaos. Everything happened simultaneously, in the blink of an eye. Camille turned, aiming the Witness at Jenny, Jordan grabbed Bravo who had managed to get to his knees. Jenny squeezed off two shots, both of which struck Camille in the chest, taking her off her feet.
She slid across the floor, fetching up against the far rock wall. Not that she felt the impact; she was already dead. But by the time Jenny swung the Albanian's gun back to Jordan, he was standing behind Bravo, Lorenzo Fornarini's dagger poised across Bravo's throat.
'You have his life in your hands, Guardian,' Jordan said. 'What will you do, I wonder?'
Bravo called to her, but she had already thrown the gun aside.
'There's a good girl.' Jordan tossed the key at her. 'Pick it up.' When she did, he pointed to the altar where Bravo had begun to dig. 'There. Go on. You know what to do.'
Jenny began to cross to the altar.
'Not so close,' Jordan ordered. 'I'm not about to give you that chance.'
Obediently, she altered her course. As her position changed, Jordan swiveled, keeping Bravo's body between himself and Jenny. She knelt and began to dig with her hands. Within ten minutes she had come to a hard surface. She brushed away the dirt, revealing the top of a box.
'Go on,' Jordan said as he pushed closer, Bravo in front of him. 'Faster.'
The box, as Jenny uncovered it, was perhaps forty-five centimeters in length by about half that in width and depth.
'Now lift it out.'
'But I-'
'Do it!' Jordan shouted.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Jenny reached into the hole she had dug and with a grunt lifted it out. The effort cost her a great deal both in energy and in blood. She knew she was nearing the end of her rope, that she would have to get to a doctor sooner rather than later or the wound might turn fatal. At the very least, she was in danger of passing out from loss of blood.
'Now use the key,' Jordan said, his voice as avid as his eyes. 'Open the cache!'
Jenny did as she was told, sliding the key into the old-fashioned lock. She turned it to the left, heard the tumblers click. All at once, a wave of black despair inundated her. This can't be happening, she thought. I was supposed to help protect the cache, not help the Knights steal it.
With numb hands, she opened the lid. She peered inside, aware of Jordan bending over to get his first look at what he'd lusted after almost all his life.
