She had questions, but they were all about events to come.
“Harnesh’s man, the one with the white hair, he’s dead,” she said.
“Madeline Villeneuve wrote about it. You were quite the woman of mystery for a while there, babe,” he said and turned to smile at her. “You did good.”
“It was for Stephen. I’d die for him, you know that.”
He said nothing. His smile faded and he looked away. The chill from earlier returned deeper than before.
They stayed to the shadowed side of a broad boulevard. Tramping feet echoed toward them and Dwayne pulled them into the deeper darkness under a tattered storefront awning.
They watched a troop of soldiers tread by in formation, an officer striding before them with a sword on his shoulder. They wore Uhlan-style helmets and trousers with the stripe down the leg, cavalry who’d been reduced to infantry after their horses went to the butcher.
Dwayne and Caroline waited until they were out of sight around a turn in the avenue before continuing on. A building in their pathway had collapsed in the recent shelling to block a street. Dwayne took the baby and helped her climb over the hill of rubble. They came down the slope of bricks and broken mortar to the garden area and the alley where she and Samuel had entered only a bit more than a week ago. They stopped at the mouth of the narrow passage and he gently returned Stephen to her arms.
He took a slim black case from his pocket and placed it in the carpetbag.
“Everything you need is in here. A throwaway cell phone, an American Express black card, passports, visas, and driver’s license.”
“Who am I now?”
“Mrs. Sydney Jean Hochheiser of Calgary, Alberta,” he said and smiled at her wince.
“Well, I’ve been pretending to be Canadian anyway. What about the clothes?” she said, glancing down at her voluminous brocaded skirts.
“There’s plenty of period reenactors walking around Paris these days. No Frenchman is going to risk losing his cool by reacting to you. Use the card to buy some casual clothes and whatever else you need and take the train to London. There’s already a suite there in your name at the Marleybone. It’s a four-star. When you get there, call me.”
“And say what exactly?”
“That you and the baby are fine unless...”
“What?”
“You might get there a little sooner than anticipated.”
“Like our six-month vacation from the world?” she said.
“It shouldn’t be that far off.”
“I hope not. I wouldn’t want Stephen to be walking the next time you see him.”
Dwayne laughed then started to say something. He bit off the words as well as the laughter. He looked past her with hard eyes. She turned to see the first tendrils of white mist forming.
“Wait until it fills the alley,” he said.
“Once more,” she said and stepped to him. He took her and their child to him and held them as though they contained a healing power to make his world right again. Her tears came then, and he crushed her closer.
“One thing,” he said, no louder than a breath in her ear. “Tell Hammond, ‘the oracle at Joppa.’ Just that. He’ll know what it means.”
“The Oracle at Joppa,” she whispered back against his neck.
“You have to go. Now,” he said, releasing her. The baby in her arm and the carpetbag in hand, she walked away from him into the engulfing mist. “Don’t look back,” she heard him say. It sounded like a warning he’d often repeated or even a statement of philosophy rather than a timely thought of the moment.
Caroline did not look back. She only walked into the alley back toward her own present and his past.
47
Caesarea Redux
“We’re exposed here. We can’t keep waiting,” Bat Jaffe said.
Lee Hammond said nothing in reply. They were hiding in plain sight on a terrace above the walled harbor. It was the oldest part of the city. The pillars were green with age, the tiles cracked and weed-choked. For three days they’d been living like the rest of the town’s homeless in whatever nook or niche they could find to get out of the weather. They were starting to draw attention from the locals. Lee stood with a foot on a curtain wall, watching the boats coming and going over the sun-dappled water.
“Boats needs real medical care, antibiotics, surgery,” she said.
Lee spat. His eyes were locked on the broad stone pier where their raft lay concealed in ten feet of water.
“We can come back, Lee.”
He turned to her then back to where Chaz sat by the wounded SEAL in the shade of a tattered awning. Boats was conscious but in pain, even if he’d never admit it. They were keeping him hydrated and doing their best to drain the pus from the swollen wound in his thigh. There was nothing they could do to stop the fevers he was spiking more and more frequently.
“We can come back,” Chaz said.
“And where do we look?” Lee said.
“Jimbo will make it to the exfil point. He might have to take his time, but he’ll make it. He’ll leave a sign. You know he will,” Chaz said.
Lee scanned the pier again.
“Are we in range of the field?” he said.
“For a text message,” Chaz said.
“Text Mo Tauber,” Lee said. “Give him the date. We leave tonight.”
Chaz retrieved the transponder from his pack and booted it up.
Lee walked away down the terrace. Seabirds parked there fluttered and skittered from his path. Bat followed.
“It’s the only option,” she said.
“It’s still fucked up.”
“No argument there.”
“Jimbo will make it. That Indian can make it out of any tight spot. He made it out of one carrying me on his back once.” Lee looked away from her.
“We get Boats away safely and come back,” Bat said.
“And sit and watch this shithole? For how long?”
“Maybe we can get a timeline. Some kind of fix on when Jimmy might make it here.”
“How’s that work?”
“I have to think that the contact we had with the Romans will
