met. Of course, it had been . . .” She brushed a painful thought away and straightened up. “I still knew it was his.” She smiled through it at Matt. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, there wasn’t anything left of my brother, so I was just wondering if . . . I was just hoping maybe someone had made a mistake,” he obfuscated.
“You think your brother might still be alive?”
The way she cut to the heart of his thinking surprised him, and he couldn’t help but nod.
She gave him a warming, supportive smile. “I wish I could tell you something that would help clear it up for you one way or another, but all I can tell you is what I know about my Dom.”
Matt nodded, quietly grateful that he didn’t have to explain any further. He thought back to the main reason for their visit. “Do you know who Dom was working for?”
“He didn’t share that with me,” she told him thoughtfully. “Not that he wasn’t very excited about it. He was. But like the rest of them, he was cagey about details. And I’d seen it all before—every discovery of his had the potential to change the way we live. That’s how they all thought, it was what they were all chasing after. And I guess some of these things can end up changing our lives, whether it’s cell phones or the Internet or electric cars.” She leaned forward, frowning with concentration, trying to see through the cobwebs of her mind. “But with this project . . . it was different. Like I said, Dom didn’t say much about his work at the best of times, but with this one, he was particularly aloof. And I could see that this was different. It was the big one. Much as he tried to hide it, he had this burning enthusiasm about it, this optimism . . . he felt it could really change things, on a more fundamental level. I pressed him on it a couple of times, and he’d just say, ‘You’ll see.’ And the day he got the green light on the funding—it was usually a big night out for us, a big celebration in some fancy restaurant. This one wasn’t like that. He was delighted, don’t get me wrong. But it was more than that. It was like the next phase of his life had begun. Like he was on a mission. And he was being more secretive than ever after that. I hardly ever saw him. Until . . .” She looked away, shaking the memory away.
“You didn’t know anything about who was backing him? He must have said something about that,” Matt pressed.
Jenna eyed him hesitantly, then said, “I’m not sure I should be telling you this.”
“Please, Jenna,” Matt said, palms open. “I really need to know. My brother was part of it.”
Jenna studied him, then heaved out a sigh and nodded. “Well . . . I always assumed the money was coming from one of the big tech VCs he knew or maybe the government. He only let it slip once, and that was by accident,” she confided.
“What?” Matt asked, gently.
“The money. It was coming from Rydell.”
Matt looked at her, confused. Jabba took up the slack. “Larry Rydell?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “No one was supposed to know. I don’t know why, but that’s how they wanted it. Rydell has such a big public profile, and I guess he has his share price to worry about. Still, I was surprised—and more than a bit pissed off, to tell you the truth—when he didn’t even show up at Dom’s funeral. I mean, I can’t complain, they took good care of me, I didn’t have any trouble with their insurance people or anything, but still . . .”
Jabba looked at Matt pointedly. Matt knew the name—most people did—but didn’t quite grasp the significance it seemed to have for Jabba.
“You’re sure of this,” Jabba pressed.
“Yes,” Jenna Reece replied.
Jabba looked at Matt with an expression that said they had all they needed to know.
Chapter 49
Deir Al-Suryan Monastery, Wadi Natrun, Egypt
“So . . . you’ve got a satphone?” Finch found himself asking, rhetorically, as if he were in a trance.
Brother Ameen didn’t respond in any way.
“I didn’t think you had one out here,” Finch added, while trying to drain his tone of any hint of suspicion.
The monk still didn’t say anything. He just kept looking blankly at Finch.
“It’s funny,” Finch continued, “’cause I just thought the whole point of being here was to isolate yourself from the rest of the world, to allow you to, you know, concentrate on God and . . . and yet you’ve got a satphone,” he stated again, his attention traveling down to the phone in the monk’s hand and back to his eyes.
Finch’s forced smile dropped. It rose, fractionally, across Brother Ameen’s face.
“I do,” the monk finally said, almost regretfully. “And it’s got an encryption box.”
He held Finch’s probing gaze. Finch tried to dismiss the comment with a no-big-deal grimace, but the monk wasn’t buying.
“I know you recognized it when you saw it,” the monk added. “It was obvious from your expression. I expect you’ve seen them before, given your line of work, the kinds of places you’ve been.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Finch waved it away, mock-casually. “I see more and more of them these days. It’s safer, isn’t it? What with all the scanners and . . .” His voice trailed off as his mind went off on its own, rocketing back over all the events that had led to his being here, in this small, stuffy room; enlightening him with a barrage of revelations that he’d never imagined—and it suddenly hit him that he was in serious danger, an odd, instinctive reaction he didn’t quite understand but one that still made him take a hesitant step backward.
The monk mirrored him with a soft step forward.
Finch frowned. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” Brother Ameen said as he took another step toward him.
Finch’s instincts flared red-hot—and he bolted backward and turned to head back to the stairs, but he’d barely made it past the door’s threshold before the monk was right with him, moving lightning fast, slamming him back against the wall while driving a hard knee straight into his groin. Finch pitched forward, exhaling heavily from the kick. His glasses flew off his face as he bent over, and he pivoted around and raised his hands defensively, hoping to stave off another blow. For a split second, he caught sight of the monk’s fist. Without the spectacles, it was a bit out of focus, but it looked like the monk had it bunched tight, with its middle knuckle extended, and it recoiled before lunging at his head, fast as a rattlesnake’s strike. Its steely tap struck him on the side of his neck, just below his ear, pounding his carotid sinus with the force of a hammer blow. He felt his entire body tense up from the hit, before losing all motor control of his muscles and plummeting to the ground.
It was the oddest feeling—motionless, no control over his muscles, like a big lump of Jell-O dropped on the ground. Through groggy, hazy eyes, he saw the monk hover over him, look away and then back down, think for the briefest of moments, then bend down, grab him by the arm, lift him up, and sling him over his shoulder.
“WHERE IS HE?” Gracie asked, scanning the monastery’s courtyard.
She was standing with Dalton, ready to go. They’d been joined by the abbot and Father Jerome, and the other monks who’d be helping them carry their gear across.
Dalton tilted his head up at the top of the keep, cupped his hands around his mouth like a bullhorn, and yelled, “Finch. We’re all set here. Time to move out, pal.”
No answer.
Gracie looked around, then asked Dalton, “You sure he went up there?”
Dalton nodded. “It shouldn’t be that long. He’s just looking for his BlackBerry.”
Gracie glanced around again, impatiently, then frowned at the keep. “I’m gonna see what’s keeping him,” she said, and stepped away.
She’d almost reached the doorway when something inside her made her look up—the barely perceptible noise of a wind rush, a hardly noticeable darkening of the ground to her right—and she turned and looked up just in time
