Destiny

ONE-HUNDRED-NINETEEN

John Gravina looked across the desk at the woman and asked, “Are you sure?”

The assistant bank manager leaned forward and nodded. Her dark hair was pinned up, a single strand of pearls around her slender neck. She lowered her voice. “Yes, Mr. Gravina. The deposit was wired into your account three days ago. Here is a printout of the statement. I almost forgot. She reached inside a drawer and handed John an envelope. This is addressed to you. It arrived yesterday by messenger.”

John nodded, looked at the sealed white envelope, and opened it. He took out a single page and read:

Marcus and Alicia stood at the dock on Panarea Island two hundred miles north of Sicily and watched the hydrofoil approach the harbor. Alicia wore a white cotton sundress, flip-flops, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her skin had tanned auburn, leaving a sprinkling of freckles across her bare shoulders. Marcus wore shorts, boat shoes and a T-shirt. He hadn’t shaved in a week. The breeze off the water tossed his thick hair.

“Are you just a little nervous?” Alicia asked.

“More anxious than nervous. Unless he broke his promise, Bill Gray is the only human left on planet earth who knows we’re still alive.”

Alicia smiled and touched Marcus’s hand. “Well, Bill is not alone on the trip over here. I’m sure they’ve talked.”

The hydrofoil shuttle boat slowed entering Panarea’s San Pietro harbor. The eighty-foot water taxi pulled up and docked parallel to the main pier. Porters and guides from nearby hotels helped passengers unload and carry their luggage to waiting golf carts. The only other form of transportation on the island were bicycles.

The last passenger to walk off the hydrofoil was the deputy director of NSA, Bill Gray. He carried a single file folder and no luggage. He smiled stepping up to Marcus and Alicia, kissing her on the cheek. “Alicia, the islands have been good to you. You look relaxed.”

“I am, Bill, finally. How have you been?”

“Good. Retiring in fifty-seven days.” He turned to Marcus. “Paul, it’s good to see you. Beautiful place you’ve picked.”

“We didn’t really pick it. It sort of chose us.”

Gray nodded. He glanced back at the boat. Two deckhands carried an animal kennel by its handles. Through the wire mesh, Marcus could see his dog Buddy. “Thank you,” Gray said to the deckhands. “Please, just set it there.”

“Buddy!” Marcus said, bending down to unlock the kennel. Buddy ran out, barked and almost climbed in Marcus’s lap trying to lick his face. “I’ve missed you so much. Have you been keeping an eye on the farm?” Buddy barked, wagging his tail in a blur.

Alicia squatted and petted the dog. “Hi, Buddy. Welcome to your new home. There’s plenty of water for you to splash in on an island. I think you’ll like it here.” He licked her cheek.

Gray said, “I imagine Buddy could use a patch of grass. It’s been a few hours since he saw land. Let’s take a walk.”

They walked up a winding cobblestone path that wound its way around white homes, purple and blood-red bougainvillea cascading over very old stone terraces, the scent of citrus in the gentle wind. Gray stopped and looked at the sea below them, the islands rising out of the sea like volcanic leviathans roosting on the edge of earth. “This beauty has a feel of antiquity here,” Gray said.

Marcus smiled. “Panarea is the smallest of the Aeolian Islands.

“You both look happy. Are you?”

Alicia said, “I’m sad I can’t tell my family where I am. I can’t even tell them I’m alive.”

“In time you will. Right now, it’s still too dangerous for them if they know where you can be found.”

“I worry about my mother. I don’t know how my niece is doing since she was released from Iran.”

Gray tilted his head. “All indications are she’s fine. Alicia, if you want to let them know you’re alive, I understand…that’s your choice. I just wouldn’t tell them where to find you. Not now. Not yet.” He looked at Marcus. “Paul, your farm, your horses are fine. We’ve been paying to maintain it. For the sake of legal discourse, we can mock-up a property sale to give the appearance that it has fallen into the hands of county government for a probate sale to a fictitious owner. The real deed, of course, will remain secured in your name when, and if, you choose to return home.”

“Thank you, Bill.”

He nodded. “I don’t know how well you’ve kept up out here with what you did, but you’ve sent the nearest thing to a human tsunami around the world that’s ever been seen in modern times. Charges ranging from murder to fraud, theft, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government, war crimes against humanity, and a whole list of charges have been leveled at most of the Circle of 13. The International Criminal Court is involved. Carlson blew his brains out. Some of the others are asking for plea bargains by turning into government witnesses, bartering for reduced time in jail and paying hefty fines. Fines so big they could almost offset the budget deficit. There’s something else I need to tell you?” Bill looked at the sapphire sea and deeply inhaled, searching for the right words.

“What?” Marcus asked.

“The man who murdered Jennifer and Tiffany was, as you know, the Lion. His real name was Heydar Kazim, and he’s been killed.”

Marcus said nothing, looking at the dark blue sea, his eyes cutting over to Gray.

“Before Jonathan Carlson put a bullet through his skull, he admitted to Van Airedale, one of the thirteen that Kazim — the Lion, was closing in on you. It was Kazim who was vaporized over Mount Etna. Another thing, Van Airedale admitted that the person who originally authorized the kill order on you and your family was Secretary Hanover. I’m so damn sorry, Paul.”

Marcus said nothing. He looked over to Buddy as a horn sounded from one of the boats in the harbor. Buddy raised his ears. Alicia took Marcus’s hand in hers and said, “Thank you, Bill, for telling us.”

Gray nodded. “What you two did has great historical consequences…and, in time we’ll learn the extent of the impact. It will be big. But you’ll have to stay in seclusion — in the ultimate witness protection program, right here, for the foreseeable future. We set up new identities for you — birth certificates, records, credit reports, passports. Everything you’ll need. It’s all in this file folder. ” He handed the folder to Alicia.

Marcus said, “It was worth it. I hope Israel isn’t too angry with me.”

Alicia shot Marcus a curious look.

Gray said, “They know what you did was to bring the Iranian nuclear effort to a screeching halt. It’ll take them years to rebuild, if ever. Too bad you had to go through such a charade to pull it off.”

“Charade?” asked Alicia. “What charade?”

Marcus said nothing, his eyes following Buddy.

Bill cleared his throat. “Paul agreed to take this on after he received the invitation from Professor Jacob Kogen to go to Israel. It was the perfect cover and opportunity.”

Alicia pulled a strand of hair behind her ears, her eyes incredulous. “So this whole thing was covert from the beginning…Paul used as a field agent to stop the Iranians?”

Marcus said, “It was to free Brandi and Adam, too, Alicia. After you told me about them, I contacted Bill and agreed to go to Jerusalem. Everything else became part of the cover — one that turned into a vortex no one could have predicted. And we, you and I, did the planet a lot of good by bringing down the Circle of 13.”

“How about the Bible codes? The prophecies? It all made perfect sense!”

Bill said, “That got the world’s attention more than anything. Everyone is wondering if it’s real. You have to admit, it certainly created a hell of a diversion to what was really going on. Also, the public’s outrage at what these billionaires did is what’s moving the prosecutions through the World Court.”

Alicia looked out to sea, her eyes following a gull over the marina. “Why didn’t you tell me, Paul?”

“To protect you. After Brandi and Adam were freed, I tried to keep you out of the rest of it. You wanted to stay, and by then I didn’t want to let you go.”

Bill smiled and said, “It can’t hurt if some people believe the world will end in 2024…it might propel change in the self-centered direction we’re heading. I have no illusions about mankind as a whole. But you have the world talking…and listening. If you two somehow stumbled upon some truths from Bible prophecies, even a hint that suggests a possibility the earth will end in 2024, issuing a warning to mankind to stop its greed, that’s a damn good thing. It would mean there’d be less need for guys in my line of work. And that’s just fine.” He cut his eyes from Alicia to Marcus. “You really didn’t, I assume, discover something concrete that I should know about, did you?”

Alicia glanced down at Buddy, and then met Gray’s eyes. She tilted her head, almost like she was trying to look into his mind. “What if everything Paul told you and the rest of the world is true, Bill? You know the dirty little secrets of millions, the places they try to hide their indiscretions, their greed. Would they change? Will they change? On a personal level, what would you do if you knew these prophecies were true?”

There was a second blast of a boat horn. Bill said, “I think I have changed, and I’d like to believe much of the world has taken notice, maybe become more tolerant and more compassionate of each other, and who knows…maybe a little more virtuous, too. We can only hope so. I guess I’d better be heading back. I don’t want to miss the boat.”

Marcus said, “Thank you for coming out here, and thank you for coming to my farm when you did. All of what we’ve been through was damn well worth it because what we’ve been given in life, I’ve learned is worth fighting for.”

Alicia bit her bottom lip. “Bill, I believe, no, I absolutely know what we discovered is very real — especially the big picture of it all. We were led to it. We may have discovered it in the context of performing something else, but that’s the way some things happen. The year 2024 isn’t that far away. It may not be the exact date, but who really knows? Perhaps we still have time to get things right.”

Bill nodded. “Maybe. Thank you, Alicia for all you did.”

Alicia smiled and unsnapped a gold-chain necklace that held a small gold cross. “Take this back to Virginia. Please, give this to my mother. That’s all you have to do. She’ll know.” Alicia dropped the necklace in the palm of Gray’s hand.

“Okay. I’d best be going. Oh, while I’m thinking of it, I was intrigued by something I read in the news recently.”

“What’s that?” Marcus asked.

“The Hebrew University Library where you spent time, Paul…that library received an anonymous gift for a half billion dollars to set up a foundation trust fund. The apparent benefactor had only a few stipulations. One, a professor in the university, Jacob Kogen, was to be the head trustee; the second condition was that the money is to be used solely for the purpose of war reparations. The reparations are to go to families of people killed or robbed of their fortunes and homes by Hitler and Stalin during the period before and through World War II.”

Marcus said nothing.

Alicia hid a smile and watched Buddy chase a leaf.

Gray said, “That was quite a gift. Do you know anything about that, Paul? Alicia? Never mind, I really don’t want to know the answer to that.”

There was a loud blast from the shuttle boat. “Marcus glanced down to the harbor. “Looks like your ride is about to leave.”

Gray released a deep breath from his lungs. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

Alicia leaned in and kissed Gray on his cheek. “Can’t you stay for dinner? Spend at least one night? It’ll do you some good.”

He shook his head, turning to leave. “I wish I could stay. I don’t know how you two did everything you did. Damn remarkable. Too bad you can’t take the credit for something truly good. Then again, maybe it’s a shared secret credit between you and Isaac Newton. Yeah, we really shouldn’t need people in our line of work.”

“Oh, that reminds me…I suppose I need to officially resign from my job,” Alicia said. “I quit.”

Gray smiled, buried his hands in the pockets of his trousers, turned, and walked back to the harbor.