Destiny

EIGHTY-NINE

The electrical power was still on at the hotel. They were told it had suffered minor damage. Marcus approached the desk clerk. “I’ve had a package in storage for me, Paul Marcus, room 719.”

“Yes, Mr. Marcus. I’ll check for you.” The clerk left the reception area. Two other clerks manned the front desk and checked guests in and out, the conversations anxious, all talking about the earthquake. Marcus scanned the lobby to see if the man had followed them inside. The clerk returned with a FedEx box. “Is this the package you’re referring to, Mr. Marcus? It has your name on the label, but there is no shipping address.”

Marcus smiled. “That’s it. Thanks.” He took the box and walked quickly with Alicia to the elevator. Marcus punched the button to the fourth floor.

“Paul, are we being followed?”

“I think so.”

“Maybe it’s the same people who killed the priest.”

“I don’t know.” Marcus tore the package open, reaching inside for the pistol.

Alicia looked at the pistol for a few seconds, and then her eyes met Marcus. The elevator stopped on the fourth floor. Marcus stood in front of Alicia, the pistol in his right hand, both hands behind his back. His heart hammered.

The elevator door opened. A maid entered, eyes red and wet, on her way out of the hotel, carrying a stack of white towels. Marcus said, “May I have a towel?”

“Yes.” She handed Marcus a towel and turned back to watch the numbers on the control panel, the elevator rising and then stopping on the seventh floor.

Marcus wrapped the towel around the gun and stepped out into the corridor. He nodded to Alicia and she followed. They entered the room, locked the door, and Marcus lifted a finger to his lips. He held the pistol and searched the room, the closets, under the beds, behind the curtains. He then searched for listening devices, turned on the television and said, “Maybe we’re safe for a while.”

Alicia looked up at the television, the images of emergency crews helping evacuate the injured from the wreckage of the Old City. She stepped to the window and watched the smoke and ash rise over Jerusalem, the flashing lights from police cars and ambulances, the helicopters circling, air-raid sirens wailing in the distance. “It’s surreal. Like some kind of Armageddon. Look, Marcus, there’s something else on the news.”

The video cut to a volcano, fire and lava belching from its top. The voice-over journalist said, “Officials don’t know if it will be a major eruption, but one of the most infamous volcanoes in the world, Mount Etna in Sicily, is erupting. Authorities say thus far the eruptions are minor. However, they caution that the eruptions could become catastrophic because thousands of people live in the shadow of the volcano.”

Marcus inserted the flash drive in the side of his laptop and read the words in Hebrew on the screen. “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of great distress among nations. At that time your people — everyone whose name is found written in the book — will be delivered. Michael returns as he did five decades and one year after the third horn was plucked away. Behold and seek the angel whose lance guards the passage to Michael. Know that the day of Michael’s return marks the season of the beast and the slaying by the prince. From the date of the holy order, from the time the third horn was plucked, ends with the 1260 days and the passage to Michael. The season of his return draws near, for he is the alpha and the omega. In this horn were eyes like the eyes of man and a voice speaking great things…for the things which are seen are sequential, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Marcus pulled the spearhead from his pocket and held it in the palm of his hand, lifting his eyes to the television and fiery plumes belching out of the ancient volcano. His mind cut to the evening in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Deliver its message and release the spear into the fire of Etna. Destroy it.” Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose, his scalp tightening. He remembered Taheera’s words before she committed suicide. “The disease, schizophrenia, makes voices sound very real in your head. It’s part of your DNA, Paul. Maybe it is a sad compromise of your genius.”

Alicia watched the television for a minute then looked at Marcus. “You know, all my life I’ve heard some people say, even when things got rough, that everything happens for a reason. I never really believed that until now.”

“I didn’t either.”

“But now I know that all of this is for a reason. Paul, how’d Bahir know what happened to me when I was a girl? I never told anyone, not my parents, not my sister — I told no one about being sexually molested by a close family friend. It’s an internal wound that often I thought was healed, but then something happens — a scent, an article of clothing that was like his…and the wound opens again. That buried rawness has kept me vulnerable at unexpected times in my life, catching me off guard. Now I know he’s dead.” Her eyes watered, she licked her lower lip and inhaled deeply. “And now, Paul, for the first time, I really believe the dark shadow from the fear, shame and hurt the rape instilled — has lifted. I feel free. When I was being raped, a weird thing happened. I was just a little girl, but I remember the pain was unbearable and the smell of alcohol on his breath was nauseating. All of a sudden, I felt as if I broke away from my body. My conscious mind went someplace beyond the physical pain. It was as if it was happening to someone else, and I was being held in a cocoon far away until it ended. But later, during dark times, the damage to my soul would open and consume me, and it has been a struggle for me to fully trust and heal.”

She walked over to Marcus. He reached out and held her, warm tears dampening his shoulder. He caressed her hair and kissed her closed eyes. Neither said anything for a minute. Alicia smiled, her face filled with buried thought. She stepped back and lowered herself to the edge of the bed and sat, her cheeks flushed. She looked back at Marcus. “I am free…and I’m grateful for Bahir’s kindness and happy to be here with you. What are you thinking?”

“Just how small, how insignificant we are in the whole of things, and yet, how much we’re really cared for in this narrow world.” He glanced out the window, the chaos palpable in the Old City. “For years, I felt like the only way to quantify, to calculate the worth of something was to measure it in terms of some subjective scale, or a linear focus, as Bahir said. Never stopping long enough to view and feel the whole painting — the bigger picture. Now I understand the real link is below the surface. It’s the human fountainhead of being — being connected in the passage of good and bad times together — the bridges of life we walk across as one. Alicia, we didn’t choose this…didn’t ask for it, but somehow we’re here. We have to finish it…wherever it takes us.”

Alicia smiled. “My father always used to say he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. We have to do the same…and we have to do it together.”

Marcus looked from the window, his eyes meeting Alicia. “We are back in Jerusalem…where it began. Something…or someone is coming. We’ll be able to share it when we learn it — a passage, a link, something that we haven’t found…but I think we will…and very soon.”

Alicia stood, used two hands to wipe her face. She looked steadfast, and walked to the small desk in the corner of the room. She opened her laptop and began culling in deep and far-reaching layers within the hidden empire of Jonathon Carlson.

“What are you doing?” Marcus asked. He opened the clip to the Beretta, counted the bullets and slapped the magazine back in the pistol.

“I’m boring farther into Jonathon Carlson’s world. For a man who’s supposed to be smart, he’s careless on his computer and his correspondence. After I spend hours in these sewers, I get the feel for how the rats really live. It’s easy to follow their shit.”

Marcus smiled and sat in a chair near the mini refrigerator. He closed his eyes and felt sleep creeping up around him.

Six hours later, Alicia was still staring at the laptop screen. She began to sense the Carlson kingdom was an amorphous, seething creature that could alter its shape in order to prevent detection. She peeled though the layers of bonds, partnerships, income interest, bank accounts, payment transfers and hundreds of other small moves on his global chessboard. She calculated his assets to be in the neighborhood of fifty billion dollars. She found land and building acquisitions and leases held all over the world tied to thousands of bank accounts and holdings listed under hundreds of names, most fictitious. She traced the electronic money trails from Paris to Gibraltar to Athens to Kenya, Libya and Egypt…and finally Syria. Carlson’s Consolidated Energy Services was a clearinghouse for money laundering and illegal weapons trade. Alicia’s eyes were like heat-seeking missiles, examining every detail, focusing on each nuance of each complex relationship, looking for correlations and blemishes.

Another two hours and she worked in a near self-induced, hypnotic trance-like state of mind. She understood the inner working of Carlson’s cyber world from the perspective of inside his computers. It was as if she were part of the electrons moving through Carlson’s empire — balance sheets — emails — money transfers from Luxembourg to a Cayman Islands’ bank. Percentages of almost every transaction funneled into the island through non-existent, post-office-box companies.

Something caught her eye. An email arriving while she moved with ease inside his computer, she read the encryption:

Marcus may be in a position to implicate us on the K jr situation. Increase reward by 10-mil. Leverage and maneuver Tel Aviv into capture if possible. Retrieve spear and flash-drive immediately!

“Screw you, asshole,” Alicia whispered. Click…click…click… “See if you can trace that.”

She stood from the small table where she’d sat for twelve straight hours. After going to the bathroom, she touched Marcus on the shoulder. He opened his eyes, and she said, “It’ll be morning soon. We can’t stay here. I have what we need to sink Jonathon Carlson.”