Steve Berry - The Columbus Affair - A Novel

Alle waited, watching what was happening a hundred feet away with Simon.

He hopped out of the water.

They both stared across.

“I appreciate you being right,” she said to him.

“Thanks for trusting me.”

“I didn’t have a whole lot of choice.”

“That’s not our problem anymore,” he said to her, motioning to the far side. “Time for you and me to see what your grandfather spent his life protecting.”

She nodded, but he could read her thoughts. She’d trusted Simon, believed in him, done his bidding. All for nothing. In the end, he tossed her away as meaningless.

He touched her shoulder. “Everyone makes those kind of mistakes. Don’t sweat it.”

“I was an idiot. Look what I did to you.”

No anger. No resentment. Just a daughter speaking to her father.

He switched on the light. “That’s history. Let’s do this.”

He led the way into the crack, which opened to a narrow corridor that wound a path through a natural fissure cut at tall, odd angles. Absolute blackness consumed them. If not for the flashlight, they would not have been able to see their fingers touching their noses.

The treasures Saki had secreted here were created 2,500 years ago according to directions provided from God. The Ark of the Covenant was long gone, destroyed when the Babylonians torched the First Temple. Or at least that’s what most historians believed. But the golden menorah, the divine table, and the silver trumpets could still exist. He knew about the Arch of Titus, on the summit of the Sacred Way in the Forum, upon which was a relief showing the menorah and trumpets being paraded through Rome in 71 CE. The Israeli government had asked and the Italians obliged, forbidding anyone from passing through the arch. The last dignitaries to have formally walked under it were Mussolini and Hitler. Tour guides actually allowed visiting Jews to spit on the walls. He’d written a story about that, long ago. He recalled how every Jew he interviewed spoke with reverence about the Temple treasure.

On one thing Simon had been right.

Finding it would mean something significant.

They kept walking, the flashlight illuminating the rocky floor ahead. No moisture here. Dry as a desert. The brittle sand crunching with every step.

Ahead, the corridor ended.

———

BÉNE STOOD SILENT AND WATCHED ZACHARIAH SIMON STANDING perfectly still, not a muscle moving.

“What are you going to do?” Frank asked him.

“So-so cross deh pon mi from him.”

He felt more comfortable speaking with Simon not being able to understand.

“A wa you a say?”

A good question. He’d told Frank that there’d been nothing but trouble from Simon. Now his adversary, who’d lied to him from the start and tried to kill him in Cuba, was helpless. All he had to do was jostle the mud and the man would sink to his death.

But that was too damn easy.

“You were testing me,” he said to Frank. “And testing Sagan.”

“We promised that only the Levite would make it across, according to the instructions. I had to make sure that happened. I had to trust the quest. I was sure this man”—Frank pointed at Simon—“was not the Levite, but I had to know that the other one was.”

“Maroons want to trust, don’t they?”

“For all the fighting we were, at heart, a peaceful people who simply wanted to exist. Even when we made peace, we trusted that the British would be fair.”

“But they weren’t.”

“Which was to their detriment, not ours. They lost more than we did. History will always remember their lies.”

He saw the point.

“What happened here today was important for the Jews,” Frank said. “I’m glad we could play a part in it.”

“What’s back there?”

Frank shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“I didn’t come here for any treasure.” He pointed at Simon in the water. “I came for him.”

“And he’s yours.”

Béne extended a hand, which Simon grabbed.

He pulled his nemesis onto the bank.

“That’s right,” he said. “He’s mine.”

———

TOM STARED AT THE OPENING, A JAGGED SLIT NOT MUCH TALLER than him, where the dry passage ended at a choke point. He shone the light and saw more sandy floor on the other side.

He approached, Alle behind him, and they entered.

A quick survey with the light revealed a room about twenty feet deep and that much wide, with an uncomfortably low ceiling. In the flashlight’s beam during the sweep he’d spotted a glitter where the light reflected back toward them.

Once satisfied that the chamber was no threat, he aimed the beam and counted three stone pedestals. Rocks, about three feet high, their tops and bottoms chiseled flat, stood upright. To his left, atop the first, was the seven-branched menorah, its golden hue dulled only slightly. Next the divine table, the golden patina brighter, its jewels twinkling like stars. Two silver trumpets lay on the third dais, their silver exteriors dotted with more gold, the rest tarnished black but still intact.

The Temple treasure.

Here.

Found.

“It’s real,” she said.

That it was.

He imagined all those who’d died protecting it. Thousands were slaughtered when the Romans sacked Jerusalem. After that, only cleverness had assured that the treasure survived. For two thousand years it had stayed hidden, safe from the world, safe from the Zachariah Simon. It even made it across the Atlantic, on a voyage whose chances of success had been deemed minimal.

Yet here it was.

And his family.

The secret they’d kept for at least two generations, and who knows how many before that.

Now that duty had passed.

To him.

He heard Alle utter a prayer. Had there been a religious bone in his body, he’d have joined her. But all he could think about was the past eight years.

His life. Its ruin.

And what the woman in Prague had said.

Find the treasure. Then we will talk .

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

BÉNE TOOK STOCK OF THE TWO WOMEN WHO STOOD ON HIS VERANDA. One was petite, in her early sixties, dark hair streaked with waves of silver. She was dressed in a stylish blouse and skirt, low-heeled pumps, and introduced herself as Stephanie Nelle, head of the Magellan Billet, United States Justice Department.

“Brian Jamison worked for me,” she said. “So let’s not play games with each other. Okay?”

He’d smiled at her forwardness, confident that the rules, which once favored her, had changed completely.

The other woman was taller, stouter, a few years younger, and similarly dressed. She introduced herself as the Israeli ambassador to Austria.

“You’re a long way from home,” he said to her.

“We came to see you,” the ambassador said.

He offered both women drinks, but they refused. He poured himself some fresh-squeezed lemonade, one of his favorites, sweetened with honey from bees kept here on the estate. A fickle March sun tried to break through in patches from rising afternoon clouds. Rain was coming, but not for a few hours. A little over twelve hours had passed since he’d emerged from Darby’s Hole.

“What happened last night?” Nelle asked.

He sipped his lemonade and listened in the distance.

He heard the dogs.

Barking.

He’d opened the pens over an hour ago, his pets grateful for the release. Big Nanny led and he’d watched them disappear into the familiar territory of the high forest.

Their wail was slow and steady.

Businesslike.

As with the Maroon’s abeng , he’d learned the meanings of their call.

“Last night?” he asked, referring to the question. “I slept well.”

Nelle shook her head. “I told you we didn’t have time for games.”