coffee that tasted like it had been boiled all day. I hoped that had concentrated the caffeine and indeed it took away most of the tiredness, even though it set my nerves more on edge. My ship was sailing again and ready to plow the rough seas.
I went to check my watch, forgetting for a moment it had been confiscated by Rapunzel. My phone told me it was almost 11 P.M. I walked away, uncertain what my next move should be. In a rage over missing out twice, Eris would be setting the dogs loose now. My life had taken such a bizarre turn. To be hunted in my own city, unable to stay in my own home, my life run by Hal’s game. I hated the whole situation but could see no way to extricate myself.
I called Laurel. The message center came on, indicating she wasn’t in her room. After a few moments of quaking alarm I tried her again. This time she answered.
“Where did you go? You promised to stay in your room; don’t scare me like that.”
She laughed in that loose way people have when they’ve been drinking for the better part of the evening. “I couldn’t bear staring at four walls. The Zakars and I went to the bar. A couple of drinks drowned my boredom beautifully.”
Male voices spoke in the background. “Is that Ari and Tomas?”
“One moment. Tomas is saying goodbye now.” I could hear Laurel’s higher-pitched tones blending with theirs. A minute or so ticked by.
Laurel came back on the line. “I feel totally dumb now, suspecting them. They’re Assyrian.”
“Oh?”
A rush of words followed. “Ari’s won tons of awards for his photography. And Tomas once planned to become a priest. He’d entered a seminary before he went to Oxford.”
“Why the change?”
“He fell in love but the woman ended up with someone else. Kind of bittersweet romantic, actually.”
“Well, I’m glad you feel reassured.” I didn’t mean this sarcastically but she took it that way.
“Is there no way to please you? I thought you wanted me to like them.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I’m just on edge. The guy we saw in Washington Square, the jester, tracked me down.”
I could hear her sharp intake of breath. “Oh shit. John, you’ve got to get away from this. You’ve used up your quota of narrow misses.”
“That’s a good idea—for you. I wanted you to do that before, remember? For me, there’s only one way out I can see. Find what they’re after and get it over with.”
The line fell silent and for a minute I thought she’d hung up. “You’re right,” she finally said. “I’m going to put in a few calls to friends, see if I can find somewhere else to stay.”
“Laurel, if you’re still here tomorrow I’m going to try to get all of us an appointment with Claire Talbot at MoMA.”
“You want to see her after all?”
“I’m not getting anywhere with working out the meaning of the Senate Seal. May as well give an art expert a try. And I’d rather not talk to Phillip again.”
“Tomas wants to see a professor, Jacob Ward, tomorrow morning. He’s a biblical scholar at Columbia who knows Hanna Jaffrey. He’s an expert on the Minor Prophets.”
His name wasn’t familiar, so he must have begun teaching at Columbia after I left. “Does he have any idea where Jaffrey is?”
“Apparently not.”
“I thought Tomas wanted to keep a low profile. Does he trust this Ward guy?”
“Yes, he does. I’ll tell him to change the time. Ward in the afternoon and Claire in the morning.”
I said goodnight to her and hung up feeling a bit cheated. While I’d been the knight errant out doing battle, Laurel and the Zakars had gone partying.
Back in my hotel room I ran a washcloth under hot water and dabbed at the cut where the wire had bitten into my shoulder. I lay down on the bed but sleep eluded me. I was restless and on edge.
I checked out Jacob Ward on my cell and found that he was quite the star in his particular scholastic universe, with academic credits up the yinyang, articles published in all the best journals, and ringing endorsements from his students. Some of his colleagues disputed his views, but other than that, I couldn’t find one negative comment about him. It would be interesting to actually meet the guy and see for myself. No one was that perfect.
Next, I leafed through Samuel’s journal, as much for the comfort of reading his handwriting as for finding clues. I hoped something might pop out. And something did.
Samuel had pasted in a picture of the Durer woodcut
Woman of Babylon by Albrecht Durer, 1498
Note Durer’s portrayal of the Whore of Babylon, lower right-hand corner of the picture. She is the cupbearer and originally the goddess Ishtar—prototype for Aphrodite, Venus, and Ashtoreth. The Bible converts her from a goddess to a witch and a whore. Durer’s beast does not match the Book of Revelation’s description.
A few more pages on, another image had been pasted in with a further note.
Like the Seal of Solomon (the six-pointed star), Ishtar’s eight-pointed star represents the conjoining of heaven and earth—the symbol for transmutation.
I’d never known my brother to have much interest in religion. Yet here was direct evidence, in Samuel’s own hand, linking alchemy with an Assyrian deity. What did Ishtar’s eight-pointed star and the Whore of Babylon have in common? How was a hidden Assyrian treasure connected to this?
I closed the journal and sat back, mulling it over. All I had right now was fragments. I felt deeply frustrated at my inability to knit the whole picture together. Was Tomas still holding information back, or had all the talk about treasure simply been a decoy to steer me away from the truth? Samuel had referred to transmutation. Perhaps the final destination my brother had in mind was not treasure at all but a formula to convert base metals into gold.
Nineteen
As it turned out, on Tuesdays MoMA was closed to the public. I reached Claire at home. She said she could meet us around noon at MoMA’s temporary site in Queens.
I put in a quick call to Laurel, who said she’d barely been able to sleep after talking to me last night. She hadn’t made a connection with any friends yet so would remain in town. She assured me she’d spend the morning with Tomas and Ari, and we agreed to regroup at MoMA.
While I dressed I turned on NY1. An intro about the Iraq war reported that bodies of civilians were being found at a rate of twenty per day and the kidnappings and executions were expected to get a lot worse. A few items later, I caught a story about gunfire erupting near Penn Station. The camera zoomed in to a catering truck with bullet holes scored into its aluminum panels, panning out to show Rapunzel being led toward a police van, a chain criss-crossed around his back pinning his arms to his waist. As I’d hoped, Eris and the jester had tracked the transmitter to Rapunzel’s van. The news piece reported that Rap was charged with sale of a controlled substance and criminal possession of a weapon. No mention of Eris or her thugs.
Finally a piece of good news.
I had a debate with myself about whether to take the pistol with me. I’d gained a certain measure of comfort knowing that Eris had probably lost me, and unlicensed guns were illegal in New York—I couldn’t afford to be caught with it. Even if they did pick up my trail again, I could hardly stage a shootout and run the risk of harming innocent people. I reluctantly wrapped the gun in a towel and shoved it in my suitcase before heading down to the lobby.
