Half-Past Dawn

CHAPTER 36

Joy drove up the West Side Highway toward Riverdale, nervously sipping her bottle of water. Frank watched the traffic silently, hoping they weren’t being followed.

Jack turned his attention to the canvas bag, the one that held the contents of Mia’s evidence case. It had been the desire of so many, yet it lay on his lap now. He looked at it, pondering the answers it held, the secrets that Cristos spoke of, the fear it created in Mia.

He dumped the contents into his lap. He wasn’t going for the slow reveal.

He looked at the objects, so simple, yet their meaning meant the difference between life and death. He pushed aside a credit card, money, a quill pen, and a room keycard and directed his attention to the more substantial objects.

There were two nearly identical prayer books, just as Jimmy had described. Red leather covers, one hundred fifty or so pages in each, pages torn out of the back of one.

“So, what the hell was in Mia’s evidence case that has everyone so interested?” Frank asked from the passenger seat as he looked back at Jack.

Jack ignored his friend as he continued examining the objects. He ran his thumb over a prayer necklace of marble-sized beads, simple polished wood with a glossy gemlike sheen. There was a bejeweled dagger looking to be of considerable value, but his focus was drawn to the passport.

He opened it and examined the picture. The man’s face was strong, free of wrinkles or blemish. His eyes were caring and warm under close-cropped black hair. Jack pondered the man and his untimely death, his last earthly possessions in Jack’s lap. He didn’t deserve to die.

And as Jack continued to look at his face, he felt a tugging on his memory, a familiarity with the man, yet he couldn’t place it. He was sure he had seen him before, but he wasn’t sure if it was just his mind playing tricks or wishful thinking, attributing the vileness to Cristos while assigning a purity to this man, as if they were night and day, good and evil. Jack thought it silly to think in such terms, like some philosopher or director from a 1940s movie.

He thumbed through the passport pages, looking at the visas, and saw the man’s recent worldly travels.

He finally flipped back to the first page and looked at the diplomat’s name. He did a double take before the confusion set in. Marijha Toulouse was the name of the member of the UN Peace Council who had sent him the blue necklace, the blue necklace that he gave to Mia the night before.

Jack’s mind was on fire as he realized that the man who was murdered early that week, whose murder Mia was investigating, whose belongings lay in his lap, was Toulouse.

But even more earth-shattering to Jack’s already fragile mind was the fact that the man known as Marijha Toulouse was Nowaji Cristos’s father.

• • •

“You and your team will continue to help him get that box,” FBI Director Lance Warren said in a measured tone of anger.

Warren sat at his desk inside his Park Avenue apartment, dressed in khakis and a polo shirt, the phone pressed to his ear at this late hour. He had changed out of the suit he had worn to the bridge earlier in the day when he escorted Sam Norris. He had played the part of the concerned friend, because despite everything, he still considered Sam his friend. It was unfortunate that Mia had become involved, but he valued his own life and freedom above anyone else’s, even the daughter of his closest friend.

“My team is growing weary,” the man on the other end said.

“With the money you are all paid, you can’t afford to be weary.”

“Six of our own are dead already.”

“A risk they all knew when they signed on.”

“What is in that box?”

“A book,” Warren said.

“A book?”

“A book containing everything, everything Cristos has ever done for us, foreign and domestic, every hit, every assassination, every plot, every coup. We don’t get that book, multiple agencies are going down. Do you understand me?”

“But he’s the enemy.”

“Not at this moment, and need I remind you that this enemy works for us?”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“We will have no more communication until that case is safe in our hands. Too many people are involved already. I don’t want you even to fart within a fifty-mile radius of me.” Warren slammed the phone down.

Cristos stepped out from the shadows.

“How the fuck did you lose that book?” Warren shouted.

“I never said I lost it,” Cristos said calmly. “It was stolen from me.”

“By a diplomat to the UN? Don’t bullshit me.”

“I don’t bullshit. ”

“You realize the shit storm you have created by killing that man?”

“You have no idea who that man was.”

“I don’t know who you really are, either.”

“That’s best for all concerned.”

“Why would you write such things down?”

“Accountability.”

“What?”

“Without leverage, what’s stopping you from killing me?”

“If we wanted you dead, you would have died in prison, on schedule.”

“You know what I found disturbing? While I was in prison, you checked out my bank accounts, tried to access them. You betrayed me.”

“That was not my department,” Warren said dismissively.

“What, were you looking for a refund? You traitors made me. That doesn’t mean you can unmake me.”

“You’d be amazed at what we can do to you.” Warren glared at Cristos as he sat forward in his chair.

“I’d be careful if I were you. You see, I’m dead. I don’t exist. Remember that?”

“Vividly,” Warren said with a scowl.

“And if I’m dead, then I can’t possibly be accused of murder.”

“What murder?”

“Yours.”

And Cristos raised his gun.