he could feel as strongly. “Come with we.” He motioned for her to follow.
“Where are we going?” she called after him, pacing behind him into the corridor.
Without stopping, he turned back to her. “I’ll explain in a minute. You’ll see.”
42
******
Phoenix
Evan Aldrich threaded his way past the workstations heaped with scientific gadgetry, making for the glass- paneled enclosure to the rear of BMS’s main laboratory.
Once inside, he closed the door, reached into his lab coat and removed a sealed glass vial, which he set down next to a high-powered microscope. The prototype scanner sat on an adjacent desk, looking like a streamlined photocopier. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves.
There was a brief knock and the door opened.
“Morning, Evan. What’s happening?”
Glancing over, he found Lydia Campbell, his managing technician for
genetic research, poking her head around the door frame. Aldrich’s hand reflexively moved to cover the vial. “Got some samples I need to look at.”
“The ones you were working on yesterday?” She looked down at the vial beneath his hand. “Thought you’d finished with them.”
“Yeah, I’m just having another look at something.”
“Well, you know where I am if you need anything. Coffee?”
He shook his head with a smile and the door closed behind her.
An hour later, he slipped the vial—now filled with a clear serum—back into his pocket. Feeling an overwhelming urgency to tell Charlotte what he’d found, he reached for the phone...but pulled back. This was something that needed to be done in person. What he needed to tell her was far too sensitive—far too astounding —for an open phone line or an unencrypted e-mail. He remembered her saying that she might extend her stay a few extra days. But this couldn’t wait until then.
Leaving the lab, Aldrich headed directly for his office and plunked himself down in front of his computer. Bringing up the web browser, he logged onto his Continental Airlines frequent-flier account page and booked a first-class ticket on the next flight to Rome.
43
******
Jerusalem
Farouq had just hung up his phone, in utter disbelief, his hands shaking. It was no coincidence that the call came mere hours after the early morning bombing at the Great Synagogue.
The caller had been a voice from the distant past—a dark past that still haunted him on many sleepless nights. The last time he’d heard that unmistakable baritone was just past six p.m. on November 11, 1995. That was the day the Shin Bet—Israel’s most secret and lethal intelligence branch—abducted him on a side street in Gaza, pulling him into the back of a van. They had bound his limbs and slipped a black hood over his head.
As the van sped off, the interrogation began, carried out by the man who now held the second highest position in the IDF power structure. Back then the ambitious Israeli had been assigned the impossible task of hunting down the Engineer—a Palestinian rebel named Yahya Ayyash who, assisted by militant groups, recruited suicide bombers to launch numerous attacks on Israeli civilians in the mid-nineties. The Israelis were closing in, thanks to information forcefully extracted from key informants. One of their prime suspects was Farouq, who had alleged ties to the Engineer’s primary supporter—Hamas.
By the time he’d been tossed from the van in a desolate location not far from the Israeli border, Farouq had suffered three broken ribs, four fractured fingers, cigarette burns to the chest, and seven missing teeth.
But he smiled, blood oozing through his broken mouth, knowing that he had not uttered one word about the whereabouts of the Engineer. No Israeli would ever break him.
He also took great pleasure in knowing that the blood on his face was not only his own. Even hooded and bound he had managed to bite Teleksen’s hand, clamping his teeth into the despicable Israeli flesh, harder, harder, cranking his head sideways until nerves severed and bones cracked. The Israeli had whimpered like a dog.
Shortly after the Engineer was assassinated in his Gaza safe house by a rigged explosive cell phone, Ari Teleksen was promoted to Aluf—Major General. Farouq had seen him a few times since then—news reports mostly—always identifiable by the hand the Keeper had disfigured that night long ago in Gaza.
Now Teleksen had the audacity to call with what initially seemed to be a request for a favor. But after a lengthy explanation, it had become clear that the request would benefit Farouq’s cause equally well.
“Akbar,” Farouq called out to the corridor, struggling to compose himself.
A moment later, the hulking bodyguard appeared in the doorway.
Farouq’s eyes briefly sized him up. “You’re a strong boy. I need you to do something for me.”
44
******
Vatican City
The two scientists rode the elevator up one level and the doors opened into the main gallery that stood above the lab—the Vatican Museum’s Pio Christian Gallery.
As they exited the elevator, Bersei quietly explained, “You see, Charlotte, for three centuries after Jesus’s death, early Christians did not portray his image. However, these early Christians did use other familiar images to depict Jesus.”
“How do you know that?”
“We have archaeological evidence. And much of it is here,” he said, motioning with his eyes to the art collection that spread out before them. “Let me show you something.”
As Charlotte strolled beside him, she eyed the Christian-themed marble reliefs that were mounted on the walls like massive stone canvases.
Bersei waved a hand at them. “Are you familiar with this collection?”
She shook her head.
