destiny.'
He rose and Spagna with him. Together, they threw open the double doors to an enormous conference room. As they crossed the threshold, the thirty-five individuals-businessmen, politicians, economists, financial managers, currency and commodity traders, think-tank members from twenty different countries-rose as one from their seats around the rosewood table and stood beneath a banner embroidered with the seven-pointed purple cross, the emblem of the Knights of St. Clement.
'Gentlemen,' Jordan said, 'I come with the momentous news all of us have been waiting for.' He circled them until he was directly beneath the banner. In an instant, he had tugged at a corner. The banner fluttered down, piled around his feet. Beneath it was revealed a new banner: one which depicted a Gyronny shield: lines radiated from the central point outward, dividing the field into six triangular sections. At its center was a guardant Gryllus, a mythical beast, a monstrous grasshopper with the head of a snarling lion. This was the emblem of the Muhlmanns.
Jordan, his face flushed with victory, turned to the assembled. 'The Knights of St. Clement, as we have known them, are dead,' he said. 'Long live the Knights of our own making!'
A glorious destiny, he thought amid the rising clamor, made possible by the death of Dexter Shaw, by the slow dismantling of Braverman Shaw. Because when Bravo finally found the cache of the Gnostic Observatines, Jordan would take possession of it all, including the Testament of Jesus Christ and the Quintessence, which he never had any intention of turning over to Canesi. No, they would be his to do with as he wished. Even Camille did not know that he planned to anoint himself with the Quintessence and so become as close to immortal as Methuselah himself.
But he was not thinking of godhood now-that was for the future. For now, he contented himself with imagining the endgame, when Bravo would be on his knees, when he would tell him the truth. He wanted to see the shock and betrayal in Bravo's face just before he ended his life.
Chapter 17
Bravo was in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. He was sitting across from his father. Between them was a square stone-and-concrete table in which was set a chessboard. He had chosen the Giuoco Piano/Two Knights Defense as his opening because it gave him two options instead of one. But after the sixth move he could see that it was no good-slowly but surely, as always happened, his father was getting the best of him.
Dappled sunlight filtered through the plane trees and the sounds of kids skating or throwing a Frisbee floated like balloons through the soft late spring air. Pigeons-the flying rats of New York-strutted across the hexagonal pavers, greedily searching for the stray crumb.
As Bravo was moving his knight to c3, Dexter said, 'What would happen, do you think, if you chose not to gambit your e-pawn?'
Bravo thought about this for a moment. He now knew the knight to c3 was a tactical mistake-his father had in his way said as much. Following the strategy out, he saw the flaw, then he turned his mind to alternatives, finally pushing his bishop to d2.
Dexter sat back, pleased. This was his standard methodology of teaching his son. He never told Bravo what to do, but rather nudged him to rethink his strategy, find the flaw himself and then, armed with that knowledge, come up with a better solution.
After the game, they packed up the pieces, according to custom the kings and queens first, the pawns last. Dexter said, 'Remember when you soapbox-raced around the fountain?'
'That was some racer you made me, Dad. It let me beat everybody.'
'That was you, Bravo. You were born with the desire to win.'
'I lost, though, that one time.'
Dexter nodded. 'To Donovan Bateman, I remember it vividly.'
'He shoved me and I fell.'
'You came home with that knee of yours all bloody-and when you took off your clothes and your mother saw your whole side black and blue she almost passed out.'
'But you patched me up, Dad, good as new. You said you were proud of me.'
'I was.' Dexter slid home the top of the black and white box that held the chess pieces. 'You didn't cry, or even flinch while I was cleaning the gravel out of your kneecap, even though it must've hurt like hell.'
'I knew as long as you were there everything would be all right.'
Dexter put the box under his arm and they stood up. 'I'd like you to come back home and stay for a while.'
'Are you all right, Dad?'
They had cremated Steffi less than a week before, Dexter standing silent, head bowed, Bravo on one side of him, Emma on the other, as the coffin entered the massive retort. Dexter had wanted-perhaps needed-to see the process through from beginning to end, and they wanted what he wanted. The fire would be on, they were told, for two hours, so they went out to an old-fashioned luncheonette. It had a soda fountain with chromium stools along one side and vinyl-clad booths on the other. The old waitress wore black, as if in mourning, and the tiny black and white floor tiles were hexagonal like the machine in the crematorium that crushed the bones. They saw their gray, shocked faces in a mirrored strip that ran above the soda fountain. Strange to say, for that two- hour span the family was the closest it had ever been. They ate turkey sandwiches, which came with dressing and a tiny paper cup of cranberry sauce, and drank chocolate ice cream sodas and remembered Steffi. There was something about the reduction of the human body to its basic carbon form that was liberating. This was, at least, what Dexter told his children both then and later, when they scattered the two pounds of ashes into the fallow ground of the small garden at the back of their brownstone where, months later, irises, dahlias and roses would spring up in delight.
'It wouldn't be for long.' His father looked at him and, for the first time, revealed all the pain Steffi's suffering and death had unleashed on him. 'It's only that when I pass by your room at night I want to see your head on the pillow, that's all. Just for a while, okay?'
'Sure.'
Dexter stopped beside a plane tree, his hand running across the sun-splashed bark, pied as the coat of their neighbor's mutt. 'Sometimes, Bravo, late at night when I walk through the house I see her, or hear her coming through the door, her voice calling to me, so warm and tender, you know, like this sunlight…'
In the twilight that lay between unconsciousness and consciousness Bravo was reluctant to let his father go. As Dexter's face threatened to dissolve in the mist, Bravo thought of the Quintessence and his heart leapt at finding it, of applying it to his father's body, of seeing him resurrected. But almost immediately, he knew it was not to be. Resurrection was not what his father would have wanted. How could he know that so absolutely? Because he knew that his father must have had these selfsame thoughts after Steffi had died. He'd had access to the cache of secrets and, therefore, the Quintessence. Why not use it to bring his beloved Steffi back to life? Because he agreed with Uncle Tony, the Quintessence was not for humans. It went against the natural laws of life; using it would upset the careful balance of nature, resulting in unknowable, and possibly disastrous, consequences. This was why the Order had so zealously guarded it for so many centuries, this was why he must not fail in the task his father had given him. He knew this in a visceral way now, a way he could not have understood before. Because even though he knew it was wrong, he could feel the powerful lure, the possibility, improbable though it might seem, of having his father resurrected, returned to life. They could complete all the hesitating conversations that, as adults, they had left dangling, they could let down their guard, produce for each other explanations for their thoughts and actions. They could at last begin to understand each other fully, and in each other's presence reach the serene state of forgiveness.
Rising at last into full consciousness, he rolled over and groaned. He felt that something basic was different and it took him a moment to realize the rocking of the water was absent, he was no longer in the motoscafo. Opening his eyes, he discovered that the hood had been removed. He was in a small, cramped room with a simple cot and bedding, on which he was lying, an unadorned scarred wooden chest atop which sat a utilitarian white porcelain pitcher and bowl. On the wall above the cot was a wooden crucifix. He was in a monastic cell.
