The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Templars in America Series Book 5)

by David S. Brody

  Cam was pretty sure today was Wednesday. “I see.” It made no sense that she was going to pressure them to attend, but it seemed to be angling that way.

  “Zuberi’s son is a student at Brandeis University, and we will be sending a private jet to bring him home tomorrow. I plan to be on that plane. I was hoping to meet with you when it lands.”

  “Um, we’re out of town right now.”

  Carrington’s voice dropped an octave. “Cameron, please make every effort to make yourselves available. I’m going to email you the meeting particulars. As I think you know, there are things we need to discuss.” She paused. “Including a certain excavation. I see no reason to delay that excavation merely because of Zuberi’s death.”

  Rachel rummaged around Amon’s apartment, dressed only in his t-shirt and a pair of socks, searching for a coffee filter. The sound of the shower muffled the morning news on the television, but somehow her subconscious homed in on the name as if it had been a siren—Zuberi Youssef.

  She dropped into an easy chair, forgetting the coffee, and turned up the volume. Her shoulders slumped as she processed the news, imagining the devastating effect it would have on Amon. With a loud, long sigh she clicked off the TV and padded toward the bathroom. Standing at the door, she waited. There was no reason to rush the news—Amon could hear it just as well with his hair rinsed as with a head full of shampoo.

  Waiting, she considered the ramifications. Would Amon need to return to Scotland to run the family business? Would it change his upbeat personality? One thing seemed certain: Her brief career as a spy was over, since the person she was supposed to be spying on was now dead.

  The water stopped. She took a deep breath and knocked.

  His laugh answered her. “You are too late, I am out. Why did you not join me?”

  She grimaced. They had spent the past day enveloped in a flowery cocoon of young love. Now the ugly world had sliced through their little paradise like an angry chainsaw. “Um, I have some bad news, Amon. Some really bad news.”

  Carrington puttered around in her garden, yanking tiny weeds and breathing in the rich smell of the dark soil—the soil of her ancestors, going back dozens of generations. She loved to grow things, to tease life out of nothingness. As a teenager she had looked on with fascination as a Roslin Institute team of scientists (which included her mother, albeit in a minor role) produced Dolly the sheep out of nothing but an adult cell. Talk about teasing life out of nothingness. And, from what her mother told her, huge advances in the science of cloning had been made over the past twenty years…

  Last night she had shared with her mother the news of Zuberi’s death.

  “Everything went as expected?” came the simple response.

  “Yes. Just as you said it would.” In fact, the poison had worked even more efficiently than Carrington anticipated.

  “Well, thank God it’s over then,” her mother said. “A man can buy a castle, but that doesn’t make him a prince. Good riddance.”

  Carrington repeated the utterance in a whisper. “Yes, good riddance.” She was more than happy to delegate the funeral details to a local funeral director. The tyrant was dead, that was all that mattered. And she had more important things to focus on.

  The game was nearing its end. Some of the players had served their purposes and had been eliminated or neutralized—Randall Sid, Khaled, Zuberi of course. Others she still needed, some to be sacrificed like pawns and others to champion her cause. It was this latter group she planned to meet with in Boston. Amon, as Zuberi’s son and heir, still was useful. Thorne and Amanda had continuing roles to play. As did Duncan Sinclair. And, of course, the Mossad would insist on a seat at the table.

  She thought back to October, to when they had first visited Westford, Massachusetts. The encounter had set into motion a series of events that even she could not have foreseen. Her original plan had simply been to enhance the reputation and standing of her clan, of the Sinclair name. Zuberi’s obsession with proving the Egyptian origins of the Scots had not concerned her—his fixation had been merely a way to convince him to fund Thorne’s research. But, ironically, Thorne’s research into the Egyptian history had become a key part of her grand plan.

  Zuberi’s dream of proving the Egyptian origin of Scotland would come true. But, by a matter of a few days, she had denied him the satisfaction of seeing those dreams become reality. She yanked a weed and tossed it aside. In many ways, that had been her ultimate revenge.

  Cam and Amanda sat on opposite sides of an aging picnic table a few feet from their tent while Astarte threw sticks for Venus to fetch. Many campers had not arisen yet for breakfast, but Cam felt lifeless from the morning’s events. The tension from fleeing trained and presumably dangerous operatives, the exhaustion of writing all night, the euphoria at having finally completed the manuscript—all combined with the shock of Zuberi’s murder to numb him. Each event, by itself, provoked a rich, emotional reaction. But collectively they pooled into a nondescript brown bog of … nothingness.

  “I feel like someone shot up my whole body with Novocain,” he said.

  Amanda studied him. “I can’t imagine why. There’s been nothing on your plate this month.”

  He smiled weakly in return. Zuberi was not a close friend, but the two of them shared a passion for history and Cam had a certain fondness for the gruff businessman. Beneath his numbness, he felt a dull sense of despair at the man’s death.

  “You know, Cam, they say things come in threes.”

  “What are you referring to?”

  She held up three fingers. “There’ve been three deaths: Randall Sid, then Bartol, now Zuberi.” She shrugged. “Under the rule of threes, that means we’re safe.”

  “I’m not sure it works that way. Besides, you forgot the Mossad agent, Raptor. That makes four.”

  “He doesn’t count; we didn’t know him.”

  A few seconds passed. Amanda broke the silence. “Three deaths or four, my point is still the same: This game is coming to an end, if for no other reason than it is running out of players. Someone deeded you the property. Someone killed Randall Sid. Someone killed the Mossad agent. Someone killed Zuberi. Someone has been following us. Someone sent those photos. Those ‘someones’ are either dead or, if I’m right, will be sitting around a conference room table at the airport tomorrow.”

  “Yes, just waiting to make us dead body number five and six.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s too public a setting—these people may be killers, but they’re not reckless.”

  “So you think we should attend?” Attending the meeting would, of course, mean coming out of hiding.

  She nodded. “Like I said, the gang will all be there. And you can tell Lieutenant Poulos where we’ll be. It might be our only chance to get some answers.”

  “Okay. But how do we get to the airport without being seen? We don’t have a car, and there’s a hundred miles between us and Boston. We might be safe once we get to the meeting, but getting there’s a different story.”

  She smiled. “Go take a nap. I’ll handle the logistics.”

  Cam had slept most of the day after hearing of Zuberi’s death, woke to share a meal of take-out Chinese with Amanda and Astarte and slogged his way through a late evening jog before showering and finally feeling human again. He and Amanda then stayed up late to plan for the next day’s meeting in Boston. Now, on the morning of that meeting, they woke early, packed, settled their bill at the Portland campground using an American Express gift card, and grabbed a taxi.

  “Airport, please,” Cam said.

  “What airline?”

  Amanda replied. “Private jet.” She gave him directions.

  Cam smiled. It was a good plan. By the time their name showed up on a flight manifest, the plane would be landing in Bedford’s Hanscom Field, the small airport not far from Brandeis that Carrington had chosen for their meeting. Instead of arriving at their destination via car or bus, they would be dropping in fro
m the sky, presumably beyond anyone’s reach. And Cam’s parents had agreed to meet them at the Portland airport and take Astarte and Venus with them to their vacation house in New Hampshire for a few days.

  At the airport, Astarte seemed nervous to leave Cam and Amanda, and Amanda had almost made the decision to leave Cam and stay instead with Astarte at his parents’ home. But the girl took a deep breath and announced that she thought it best Amanda stayed with Cam. “You guys are a good team,” she said. “And every time Campadre goes off on his own, he gets in trouble.”

  They said their goodbyes and entered the charter terminal. Amanda completed some paperwork and handed over the last of their American Express gift cards. “How much is this costing us?” Cam whispered.

  “Just over two thousand.” She smiled. “But your second bag is free.”

  Carrying the bags they had brought off the ferry, they strolled across the tarmac to a turbo-prop twin-engine Cessna 310. Amanda pointed at the propellers. “You and I will need to take turns pedaling. The good news is that the flight is less than an hour to Bedford.”

  He rolled his eyes. But at least Amanda’s playful nature had returned. “Did you specify that we need the plane to pull right up to the terminal?”

  She nodded. “In fact, I found a map of the airport and told them which door I wanted them to use. I’m fairly certain we’ll march into this meeting room without incident.”

  He smiled warily. “It’s marching out that I’m worried about.”

  Amanda took Cam’s arm as they disembarked, crossed the tarmac, and approached the meeting room tucked into the corner of the office-park-like airport terminal. “Ready?” she asked. Zuberi’s death had convinced her that she and Cam were mere pawns in some international game of intrigue—a game that included murder. And if it included murder, it was highly likely it included doctoring some photos as well.

  He smiled in response to her taking his arm, his eyes on hers. “Not quite.” Leaning in, he kissed her full on the mouth, lingering for a few seconds. She melted into him, her eyes closing. “Now I’m ready,” he breathed.

  She had been worried about him yesterday, about his lethargy and lack of vitality. But he was his old self today. She touched his cheek with her fingertips. “Me too.”

  Amanda pushed the door open without knocking. Someone in the room—probably multiple someones—was a killer. They’d get over her lack of decorum. They entered a square, white-walled room with a rectangular table in the middle, a couple of cheap prints on the walls, and a drooping houseplant in one corner. Other than the view of the tarmac below, they could have been in any of a hundred strip-malls in suburban Boston.

  Amanda’s eyes swept across the table. A horsey-looking woman who nodded at Cam, her presence at the table a clear indication that her Brandeis job was merely a cover. Carrington, of course. An older gentleman, tall and erect, wearing a plaid kilt. A lithe, handsome young man, his eyes pink and swollen. Hardly an intimidating lot. The two alpha males, if you could call them that, could not have been less menacing, one in a skirt and the other red-eyed from sobbing.

  Carrington did the introductions. Amanda and Cam nodded at the others, all eyes in the room alert and wary, before taking a seat side-by-side next to the horse-faced woman Amanda assumed worked for the Mossad. The kilted Duncan Sinclair and Zuberi’s son Amon sat opposite them, the young man glaring at the Mossad agent. Carrington sat at the head.

  “Before we begin,” Carrington said, “I want Cameron and Amanda to know that this room has been swept, by two separate security firms, for any recording devices.” She spoke with confidence, an air of aristocratic gravitas in her bearing and a custom-cut olive suit hanging gracefully from her shoulders. Amanda had trouble believing this was the same woman who had worn an outdated pantsuit and let her husband order her dinner last fall. “Cameron and Amanda, I will need you to place your phones on the table and power them off. In this way we can all be certain that none of what will be said here can be transmitted or recorded.”

  “Why two different security firms?” Cam asked as he and Amanda relinquished their phones. Amanda guessed he knew the answer but was testing his opponents.

  Duncan Sinclair spoke. “Because, frankly, nobody in this room trusts each other.” He smiled at Amanda, a smile conveying both old-world charm and modern-day savvy. “And you two have more reason to be distrustful than anyone.”

  “This distrust is why,” Carrington said, “I have invited you all to this meeting. We all want different things, and for the past month many of us have been wrestling each other for them. But I believe there is a way for all of us to walk away today having secured for themselves a victory.” She scanned the room. “To do that, I feel we need to put that distrust aside.” She straightened her back. “I believe there is no better way to earn someone’s trust than to tell them a damning secret about oneself. I will begin.” She paused dramatically. “I ordered the murder of Randall Sid. There is not a shred of evidence to prove it, and I will deny it outside this room, but I hired a professional assassin and had him killed.”

  “Wait, what?” Cam blurted. “Why?”

  “That, I will explain later,” Carrington said.

  Duncan lifted his chin. “I suppose this is a good time for me to show my cards as well. I am a thirty-third degree Freemason, part of a group working to prevent ISIS from taking over the Middle East. As part of these efforts, Randall Sid befriended Cameron, hoping to gain access to Mr. Youssef. Randall, unfortunately, became a bit too zealous.” He looked at Cam. “At some point he was planning to blackmail you. He possessed evidence proving the photos Amanda received had been doctored.”

  A wave of relief flooded over Amanda. Doctored. What a wonderful word. Here, finally, the evidence she needed. The evidence they needed. Under the table, she squeezed Cam’s hand.

  “Let me guess,” Cam said, keeping her hand in his. “To get this evidence, all I had to do was change my research conclusions.”

  Duncan nodded. “Or perhaps feed us information about Mr. Youssef. I don’t believe Randall knew exactly how he was going to use this particular hammer … only that he had it if needed.”

  Cam exhaled. “So it was blackmail after all, but sort of reverse. Instead of threatening to reveal something, he would make the revelation go away if I did what he wanted.”

  The Scotsman sat back, his liver-spotted hands on the table in front of him. “That was his plan.”

  “So it was Randall who sent the photos,” Amanda said. She never had liked the man.

  “Yes,” Duncan responded. “And they were, I can assure you, altered.”

  In her head, she had already reached that conclusion. But her heart still hurt when the photos flashed in her mind’s eye. The Scotsman’s assurances swept those images away, allowed her finally to relegate those memories to some deep dark part of her subconscious.

  Carrington addressed Cam. “At a time when Zuberi and I needed Amanda by your side, assisting you with your research, Randall Sid was trying to drive a wedge between you. In short, he was pushing while we were pulling.” She shrugged. “When he refused to stop … we gave him a push of our own.”

  Cam flinched. “That seems a little excessive.”

  “Perhaps,” she responded. “But the stakes were high. Are high.”

  Amanda studied Carrington. The stakes were high because she had invested so much in her plan—marrying a man she hadn’t loved, kowtowing to him for years, obsessing over her ascent up the social ladder. And she had played her part well.

  Cam exhaled and turned to the Mossad agent. “Are you next in this little game of Truth or Dare?”

  She smiled, not unkindly. “I don’t suppose I can pass?”

  “No,” Cam replied. “And I don’t suppose when you told me you were helping the Mossad that you were understating things a bit?”

  “More than a bit,” she said matter-of-factly. “My position at Brandeis is a cover, obviously.” She took a deep breath. “Our interest in this or
iginally was merely to monitor things. We obviously are concerned about arms sales to ISIS. But then we lost a field agent, Raptor.” She gritted her teeth. “That tends to get our attention.”

  “That was the work of Bartol, my supposed guardian angel,” Cam responded. He looked around the room. “Anyone want to take responsibility for him?” He waited a few seconds, blank faces looking back at him. “So he really was just an idealistic soldier without an army,” Cam said, shaking his head. “He saw the Mossad agent following me and took him out.”

  “And we returned the favor,” the Brandeis woman said. “But other than that, and following you, our hands are clean.” She smiled. “That doesn’t happen very often.”

  “That is a lie,” Amon snarled. “You killed my father.”

  The Mossad agent shook her head. “That is what we want the world to believe but, no, we are innocent of that particular crime.”

  Carrington turned to her stepson. “I wanted to tell you alone, Amon. What she says is true. Your father died of natural causes, a sudden stroke.” She smiled. “I think he would have been proud of our ploy to turn his death into a profitable venture. One last piece of good business on his way out of this world.”

  Amon’s face turned pale. Amanda eyed him—what a horrible few days for such a young man.

  “You claim your hands are clean,” Cam challenged, “but what about the Superfund site?”

  The Mossad agent looked back at him blankly. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

  Carrington cleared her throat. “That was Zuberi’s work, I am sorry to say. I found notes in his office after his death. He acquired the property soon after meeting you in October, on the off chance he might need to pressure you to work for him.”

  Another mystery solved. Amanda glared at her, wondering whether the grieving widow was as innocent as she claimed. Cam must have shared her suspicions. His upper jaw pulsated—this ‘on the off chance’ contingency plan of Zuberi’s had nearly bankrupted him.