was tossed into the lake and the others watched as he sank in the mud. After that, answers to our questions came easy.”
“The person who came here,” Sagan said. “The one who told you about the treasure. Was it Marc Eden Cross?”
Frank nodded. “I’m told he was a remarkable man. The colonels at the time had great respect for him. He asked for our help with a great duty imposed on him, and we provided it. This place was changed … for him.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
ALLE WAS WET, SORE, AND PISSED. AT SIMON. AT HERSELF. SHE’D been an idiot, allowing her anger, her whims, and her fantasies to be exploited.
“Who are you?” she blurted out to the older man who’d tossed the gun in the water.
“My name is Frank Clarke. I’m colonel of the local Maroons. This land is ours by treaty. That means I’m in charge. Who are you?”
“Alle Becket.”
“That man,” her father said, “who came here sixty years ago. That was my grandfather, Marc Eden Cross. Her great-grandfather. He told you the truth. He was fulfilling a special duty given to him.”
“I am told he spent a lot of time in Jamaica and came to know Maroons in ways outsiders rarely do. We offered him this place as sanctuary and he accepted.” Clarke pointed to the lake. “This pit filled with mud long ago. It’s a thick soupy mixture. You see the many stones scattered beneath the water. Some have numbers etched into them. Cross did that himself. His addition to this place. This water, this mud has served Maroons for centuries. Now it serves the Jews. It is for the Levite to take the next step.”
Alle was unsure what the man meant.
As, apparently, were the others.
“You saw how the gun rested on the bottom. The mud will support weight, so long as it’s not disturbed. The stones beneath the surface with no numbers rest on solid rock and will never sink. The others, with numbers, float on mud. The only way to the ledge on the far side is to step on the right stones.”
“And what prevents us from floating across?” Zachariah asked.
“It’s too shallow to do without a raft, and there’s none here. If anyone tries to cross this lake, except through the prescribed method, they die. That was our promise to the Levite. Three have tried over the past sixty years. Their bodies are in the mud. None has attempted it in a long time.”
“This is nuts,” she said.
“It is what your great-grandfather wanted. He created this challenge.”
“How do we know that?” she asked.
Clarke shrugged. “You have only my word. But he told us that another Levite would arrive one day and know exactly how to get across.”
“And what’s over there?” Rowe asked.
She wanted to know that, too.
“What the Levite seeks.”
She saw that Simon was thinking. In Prague she’d told him everything she could remember about the message her grandfather left in his grave. Including five numbers: 3, 74, 5, 86, 19.
Her father also knew those numbers.
“I know the way,” Simon said. “I accept the challenge.”
Clarke stepped away from the lake’s edge and casually motioned with the second gun. “Your success will tell us if you’re the Levite.”
———
ZACHARIAH WAS SURE HE WAS RIGHT.
The five numbers Alle had told him had to be the way.
3, 74, 5, 86, 19.
He’d noticed something about them while thinking on the plane. The first three together, 374, were the number of years the First Temple had stood until the Babylonians razed it. The second three, 586, the number of years the Second Temple had stood until the Romans wreaked havoc.
That was not coincidental.
Cross had obviously picked his numbers with care.
The last number—19?
He had no idea.
But he was certain they led the way across the lake.
Why else include them?
And there was something else Cross had done.
“Remember the message from Abiram Sagan,” he said. “
