Eric Lustbader - The Testament

Jenny's expression was bleak. "He said he'd kill me if he saw me again."

"You let me take care of Bravo, darling."

Jenny shook her head. "Camille, I'm so grateful for your help. This trip has turned into a nightmare."

"I understand, your friend-"

"No, you don't understand. I was assigned to protect Bravo, and now I've failed."

"Assigned? By whom?"

Jenny bit her lip. All her training cautioned her to keep her mouth shut. But under these circumstances, cut off from everyone and everything that had been her support system, she saw Camille as her only chance to redeem herself, to succeed in the vital mission Dex had assigned her, to stay close enough to Bravo to keep him safe from those who would kill him. In halting sentences, she told Camille a basic outline of the Order, and of their mortal enemies, the Knights of St. Clement.

"I knew there was more to this than Bravo was willing to tell me." Camille briefly gripped Jenny's hand. "I'm grateful you've confided in me, darling. Now I'll have a better idea of how to proceed."

How well she deceived Jenny, she mused, just as she had deceived Dexter-at least as well as she had deceived Anthony Rule. It was simply that Dexter had proved the tougher man to crack-too tough for her. He had melted, but only for a little while. She'd had hopes-real hopes-that the plan she had conceived would work, that she would seduce Dexter from his marital bed and from the Order, that he would divorce them both, Stefana and the Gnostic Observatines, that he would marry her, that he would turn over the cache of secrets. And she had come within a hairsbreadth of keeping him. Only the untimely death of his younger son, Junior, had turned him back to his wife and his two remaining children. If not for a crack in the ice, Dexter Shaw would have been hers.

"I see what I've done," he'd told her three months after Junior's death.

They lounged on a bench in Pare Monceau, amid the expensive landscaping that would soon turn lush. He had bought her chocolates, as if they were sweethearts, young as she felt in her mind. Spring was coming, she recalled, the cherry blossoms in first pale pink blush. But not for long; in a matter of days they, like Dexter, would be gone.

"Anthony took me hunting in Norway." His voice contained an odd note, she remembered, as if strained. "One day we came across the track of a wolverine-very damn rare creature. We tracked him all day in the snow, I couldn't let him go, I was half-crazed with the need to find him. But was it to kill him? No.

"I saw him, and in the same instant he saw me, and we recognized each other. And it was as if someone had held up a mirror to my face, I knew that an intimate connection existed between us. I knew that we were both dangerous, both capable of rending flesh, of inflicting enormous pain, and I knew that this was what would happen if we went on, Camille."

"What about me?" she'd cried. Now she knew, she'd heard it coming-that strained note in his voice-but she hadn't wanted to acknowledge it. She hadn't wanted to entertain the notion of failure. "What about the plans we've made together? The life-what about Jordan?"

"It was a risk, Camille. You knew it and I knew it."

When she had begged him to reconsider, he had landed his most stinging blow: "You're dangerous to me, like poison. Stay away from me, Camille. I mean it."

In retrospect, she recognized the studied coolness, with each word spoken the intimacy draining out of him like sand through an hourglass. With the confidence offered, he was already distancing himself from her. It was an old trick, one she'd used many times, and so later she cursed herself for letting him blindside her, because he was the one, the one for whom she might have given up everything-abandoned the Knights, her ambition, all that had sustained her. For him, and only him, would she have deviated from her meticulously designed plan. Only for you, Dexter…

She had told Jordan how Dexter had cruelly abandoned her as soon as he was old enough to understand. She had him trained, sometimes by her own iron hand, and together they had schemed. Unsurprisingly, he was a clever boy-more clever, by far, than any of his classmates. He had outshone them like the sun outshines the moon.

After Dexter left it was Anthony Rule who became the object of her rage. If only Rule hadn't taken Dexter hunting, if only Dexter hadn't seen the wolverine… All she wanted was to turn back time, to return to the moment before the ice cracked, before Junior dropped through and never reappeared.

And so with her mind fixed, Anthony Rule became her next target, and what a sweet prize he turned out to be! She'd had to go slowly-so slowly, in fact, that more than once Jordan lost patience with her. But then Jordan was always impatient. Where did that trait come from? she wondered. Surely not from her and not from his father, either.

Camille once again turned her formidable attention on Jenny.

"Don't worry now. We'll be like the angels," she said, "watching out for him and guarding him from harm."

On the other side of the canal the police launch had begun to move off, the investigators had finished their business. The tiny cafe had become more crowded. It was very hot. Twilight had come to Venice.

It wasn't by chance that Bravo found Father Damaskinos; he saw the priest flee the church, as if having seen a ghost. Bravo couldn't blame him. There was a bloodbath on the checkered marble floor of his house of God. And it had been the priest who had given the gun to Anthony Rule.

Bravo stalked him as he would a petty criminal-a pickpocket or sneak thief. With his mind rattled by shock and grief, it was all he could think of to do. Much like a wounded animal, he was running on pure instinct. His higher functions, torn apart by what they had witnessed-Jenny's unimaginable betrayal, the life spurting out of Uncle Tony, the light going out of his eyes, the power and the solace he represented dimmed to ash-now ceded control of his movements and thoughts. Terror, disbelief, rage, revenge all bowed down before the necessity for survival.

Keeping the hurrying figure of Father Damaskinos in sight, he staggered through a small campo, where a clutch of old men leaned against the ancient stone wellhead in the center, a monstrous Cyclopean eye clouded by their cigarette smoke; over a severely arched bridge, reflections moving in mysterious and vaguely ominous ripples across the surface of the canal; down a narrow, crooked alley through which wafted unseen voices, a brief twist of an aria, an abrupt, harsh laugh, the gods of Venice commenting on his plight.

As he proceeded, he clutched Lorenzo Fornarini's dagger in a death grip. He felt marooned on an ocean from which there was no sight of land in any direction. A blind man in the Voire Dei, he had only this dagger and his father's last coded message to guide him, all else was deceit and lies, questions he couldn't answer.

He needed to leave Venice as quickly as possible, this was an imperative that stuck in his mind like a declaration of war. And he needed to take Lorenzo Fornarini's dagger with him. He had an idea, but he required the services of Father Damaskinos.

The hiding place Father Damaskinos chose was the Scuola San Nicolo`. Founded at the end of the fifteenth century to protect the rights of the Greek community in Venice, it had latterly become a museum. Bravo followed the priest inside and was immediately surrounded by hundreds of religious icons, displayed on the walls in tiers and in glass cases.

Father Damaskinos was standing in front of a vitrine housing the icon of a twelfth-century saint. The gold-leaf halo shimmered above a long, heavily bearded face. Father Damaskinos's hands rose and clasped at his breastbone, and his bloodless lips moved in silent prayer so that, save for the halo, there was little to differentiate between the priest and the saint.