The Witch of Babylon

else was disconcerting, and I was annoyed with Tomas for failing to mention his brother when I’d called him. Nor did Tomas seem particularly welcoming. I felt like a moth fluttering into a hornet’s nest.

The lion gestured toward Tomas, signaling for him to give up his seat. He did so with an audible sigh. Whether Tomas didn’t want to move or just hated being ordered around wasn’t clear. I thought about the two boys I’d seen earlier at the beach.

I reluctantly sat down. What else could I do? It would have been rude for us to make an excuse and walk out again.

I’d never have guessed that Ari, with his caramel-colored mane, freckles, and profusion of curly hair on his arms and the back of his hands, was Tomas’s brother. He wore Levi’s and a jean shirt and had pale green eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled, which seemed to be almost constantly. Both in looks and temperament, the contrast between him and Tomas was striking. I took an instant liking to him.

“What may I offer you to drink?” Ari asked. “We have a whole cabinet full of things.” He flipped open a bar full of miniature bottles. I thanked him but said I’d pass. Laurel asked for a bottle of Poland Spring.

“Please, eat, eat, help yourselves,” he urged, beaming at us. “It is all from Khyber Pass. That’s where you met with Tomas, no?” I nodded.

“The best food there.” Ari pointed to the containers. “The mantoo is most delicious, we have two kinds of hummus, dumplings, yogurt with mint, ashak, baklava—it drips with honey and nuts. Please help yourself.”

We selected samples of food and munched away.

Twenty minutes or so. I would stay exactly that long, then make my excuses and go.

Ari turned to me. “Please may I say how terrible it is about Samuel. Our great friend. We cannot believe he’s gone.”

Every expression of sympathy still stung like an accusation, but I expressed my thanks.

We chatted about whether he liked the city and how long they were expecting to stay. Tomas said little, but I watched him steal the occasional glance Laurel’s way. We learned Ari was a photojournalist covering the Iraq war for the BBC. Despite Ari’s efforts to put us at ease, our conversation had a stilted, uneasy tone that mirrored an underlying tension in the room.

Finally, Tomas joined in. “John, you can feel free to talk. Ari and I share everything.”

It was perfectly reasonable he would take his family into his confidence, but it still bothered me.

“What happened to you?” he asked, indicating my lip.

“Eris Haines paid me a visit last night. She almost killed me.”

Ari walked over and rested his hand on my shoulder. I could feel the warmth spread from his palm through the thin fabric of my shirt. “Our friend, you are not alone now. Samuel would have done anything to protect you. We will take his place. Please honor us by believing me.”

He probably meant this sincerely, but I wondered whether his brother shared the sentiment. I got the feeling Tomas would rather throw me to the wolves than welcome me into the flock.

“Tomas has told you the story?” Ari affirmed this with a nod of his head. “I didn’t tell Haines anything because I don’t know where the engraving is. Hal left a kind of trail, a puzzle that needs to be solved in order to find it.”

Tomas spoke up. “Why would he do this? It makes no sense. First he steals it from Samuel, then he gives you a map to get it back?”

“A nasty trick he played on me. I think he told Eris Haines I knew where the engraving was hidden, then he created the game, believing I wouldn’t work it out in time to save my own life.”

“He deliberately set you up? Why would your friend do this?”

“Hal was damaged and abusing drugs. He turned on me. And now Laurel and I could use some help.” With a paper furnished from Laurel’s purse and my pen, I drew a perfect square, dividing it into four rows and four columns and writing in the numbers. I held it out so Ari could see. “Does this mean anything to you?”

Ari shook his head and beckoned to Tomas.

“That’s Durer’s magic square,” Tomas said. “But I can’t see any relevance to the Book of Nahum. Hal was a science professor, correct?”

“He taught the science of philosophy. A Durer expert told us the artist hid his name in the picture, perhaps by using the magic square.”

Laurel asked me to pull up Durer’s bio again. “There,” she said once the text came into view. “Halfway down the page it says his father changed the family name from Thurer to Durer.”

“That won’t do it either. Even if we substitute a th for the d and assign numbers to the letters and add them up, including his first name, we get one, five, and nine, and there are only two spaces.”

We spent some time concentrating on number–letter combinations. I found the whole exercise really frustrating and felt close to tearing my hair out when Laurel spoke up again. “Didn’t Phillip Anthony say Durer’s father moved to Nuremberg? Was he German or another nationality?”

“I don’t know; let me check it out.” The bio confirmed what Phillip had told us. “Hungarian.”

“And what was the name in Hungarian?”

“Another sec … Ajitos. It means doorway, like Durer.”

“Does that work?”

I added up the numeric values of the letters. “Ajitos without his first name would total seventy-four. Let’s give it a try.” When I entered the numbers the page failed to move.

I was just about to pack the whole thing in when I thought of something else. “Are we looking at the wrong alphabet? Durer might have used the old Latin alphabet. There’s no j.”

“That’s interesting. Think of the common roots: Dur and Tur both mean door, don’t they?” Laurel said. “So what would that be in the Hungarian using the old Latin alphabet?”

“Ajto means door in Hungarian. And in numbers, using the old Latin alphabet, without the j, that would be expressed as … thirty-four, Durer’s magic square constant.”

“That makes sense,” Tomas said. “I remember it now. I read somewhere that the square had eighty-six possible combinations of thirty-four.”

I recalled Phillip’s earlier challenge: There are actually eighty-six ways Durer signed his name, but I suspect anything deeper will elude you. Phillip had virtually given us the answer back in his gallery.

When I keyed the three and four into the two squares, the page flipped to reveal the United States Senate Seal. Beneath it were squares for an eight-letter word and a three-letter word.

I checked out the seal on the Web and found that it had been designed by Louis Dreka in 1866. It was circular with the words “United States Senate” around the exterior circumference. A shield with thirteen stars and stripes occupied the center, with the Latin words E pluribus unum across it. Above the shield was a strange-looking conical cap, and below, crossed fasces I recognized as Roman.

The quotation in Latin, E pluribus unum—“Out of many, one”— was far too long to fit the spaces. Neither the crossed Roman fasces at the bottom nor the cap at the top fit either. We had no idea what Hal was getting at.

Ari addressed a question to me. “Tomas and I appreciate your coming to see us. You could have kept this to yourself and then we would have no idea about the fate of the engraving. We appreciate that you are being honest. So I take it this means we’ll be working together?”

“More or less. Everyone gains that way, but I want full disclosure.”

Tomas knew right away what I was getting at. “That’s privileged information. I can’t divulge any more.”

I got up. “You’re giving me no choice. I’m leaving then.”

Ari walked over; his hand returned to my shoulder. “You should stay with us. You know now how dangerous those people are. We can’t help you if we don’t know where you are.”

“I’ll be okay if I can just get through this game. I’ll be in touch.”

He dropped his hand and made a plea to Tomas. “It makes no sense. Just tell him the rest of it.”

A heated discussion ensued between them in what I assumed was an Arabic dialect. Tomas finally gave in.