The Second Messiah

Lela got to her feet, still aiming at the man sprawled on his back on the floor. Jack joined her and flicked on a light. They stared down at the man.

He was dressed in dark pants and a jacket and black leather gloves and wore a black ski mask. An automatic pistol was clutched in one hand and blood oozed from wounds in his upper shoulder and in the back of his head. Jack knelt and felt the man’s neck through the bloodstained mask. “He’s dead. You did the right thing. He could have killed us both.”

Lela was gray with shock. “It’s the first time I’ve shot anyone.”

Jack leaned across and yanked up the dead man’s ski mask. “Well, what do you know.”

It was the Syrian, Pasha, his dark eyes glassy in death. As if to confirm it, Jack tore off the man’s left leather glove to reveal the withered hand. He was about to tell Lela when she tensed. “You hear that? Someone’s moving outside.”

She shifted toward the exit door just as Jack heard a rush of footsteps. He wrenched the automatic from Pasha’s fingers and hurried up the stairs after Lela.

They came out in a lit courtyard at the side of the villa. It was decorated with flower beds, tall palm trees, and fountains. Fifty yards away a black metal railing protected the villa’s perimeter and beyond it was a public street, the rain spilling down. A gate set in the middle of the railings yawned open. Jack spotted a figure climbing into a white van and tearing off a black ski mask.

He recognized the Syrian’s companion, Botwan. The van roared away with a squeal of tires. Botwan fired out the window, making Lela dive for the cover of some bushes. The van screeched round a corner and disappeared.

Jack reached Lela and helped her to her feet. “You could have got yourself killed.”

“I was going to try to shoot out their tires. Whoever they are, they came prepared.”

“What do you mean?”

Lela walked back toward the gate. A box of tools lay scattered on the grass, a selection of pliers and screwdrivers and an electronic digital meter. She kicked at the meter with the tip of her foot. “They probably used this stuff to disable the alarm.”

Lights sprang on in windows along the street. Raised Italian voices sounded irritated; people’s sleep had been disturbed by gunfire and squealing tires.

“Let’s get out of sight.” Jack led the way as they descended the steps into the basement.

Lela stared down at the dead Syrian. “Who is he?”

“The killer named Pasha I told you about.”

“What about the guy in the van?”

Jack looked down at Fonzi’s corpse and felt sickened. “His accomplice.” He moved over to the desk, held up a bundle of ripped-out wires, and said bitterly, “He grabbed the laptop, for whatever good it’ll do him.”

Lela knelt, searched in the Syrian’s pockets, and removed a cell phone and wallet. “We can check these out later, to see if they tell us anything.”

“I think I’d feel safer if I kept this.” Jack slipped Pasha’s firearm into his own pocket. Then he knelt, and using his finger and thumb he closed Fonzi’s eyes before he stood and stared down at the body. “May he rest in peace. I should never have got him involved.”

Police sirens shrieked in the distance. Lela put a hand on Jack’s arm. “We have to leave. What’s wrong?”

Jack stared at the blank projector screen, the empty whiteness blazing out at him. The black indelible marks that Lela had drawn on the side of the whiteboard were clearly illuminated.

Jack stared at the cruciform shapes as if the wheels of his mind were turning furiously. The sirens wailed closer.

“Jack, we better go, fast. Are you listening? What’s wrong?”

He turned from the screen and met her stare. “I know who robbed the scroll and killed Green.”

105

DEAD SEA,

NEAR THE JORDANIAN–ISRAELI BORDER

Dawn licked the horizon as Hassan sat grim-faced in the back of the black Mercedes S600. He stared out of the limo’s smoked glass windows. His insides felt hollow as the car drove through a ragged sprawl of whitewashed mud brick houses that passed for a village.

Not a soul stirred, the occupants still sleeping, the only sound a barking dog. As the cortege of three black Mercedes drove toward the burial ground, Hassan Malik’s eyes were fixed on the hearse in front of him. It carried Nidal’s body, wrapped inside a simple white cotton burial cloth. The hearse bumped and settled as it hit a rut.

The image of his brother’s body being tossed around made Hassan’s heart stutter and he wiped his eyes. We are all dust and to dust we will return.

He reflected on the last five hours. After the doctor had falsely signed the death certificate, Hassan had laid out his brother in the private prayer room at the back of the villa. There he had respectfully washed Nidal’s body with scented water before wrapping him in the simple white kafan shroud.

Then Hassan sat alone, praying over the body, grief like a dagger in his heart, his mind tormented, and then it came time to leave for Rome’s airport and the two-hour flight to Amman.