Tree of Life

by J. F. Penn

  “Welcome to the historic center,” the taxi driver said as he pulled up near the Ruins of St Paul’s. The stacked arches loomed above them, the facade of what was originally the Church of Mater Dei and St Paul’s College, the first western-style university in the Far East. Built of granite in the early 1600s in a Baroque style, most of it had been destroyed by fire in 1835.

  Morgan paid for the taxi as Jake stretched his legs. As she turned to join him on the edge of the plaza, he spotted a pastry shop.

  “Oh yes.” Jake grinned. “I’m having some of those.”

  He jogged over and bought a bag of three pastéis de nata then sauntered back over, delving into the bag to pop a whole one into his mouth. Morgan couldn’t help but laugh as his cheeks bulged, and he swallowed the sweet pastry down. She pulled another out of the bag before he could finish them all and took a bite, allowing the delicious flavor to rejuvenate her after the long trip. Not quite as good as Belém, but tasty enough.

  Morgan looked up at the facade in front of them. At first glance, it was a Christian monument with Mater Dei, Mother of God, inscribed upon the lintel, bronze statues of the Jesuit saints and the Virgin Mary in alcoves, and Jesus with a dove, representing the Holy Spirit. But the mix of cultures made this monument starkly different to anything Morgan had seen before in ecclesiastical architecture. Seven-headed dragons danced amongst the angels next to Portuguese merchant ships. Chinese characters engraved in stone pronounced ‘Holy Mother tramples the heads of the dragon.’ A peony representing China and a chrysanthemum representing Japan completed the frieze, the latter symbol from the Japanese Christian exiles who worked on the church in the early 1600s.

  Jake pointed at the center of the third tier of columns. “Is that what I think it is?”

  To the right of the Virgin Mary was what looked like a Tree of Life, its roots delving down into stone, its branches neatly pruned, its wildness tamed into allegory.

  Morgan squinted up. It seemed too much of a coincidence, but yet, it was really there, carved by the faithful hundreds of years ago. History never ended, and symbols persisted through the ages, pointing the way to those who could read the signs.

  “You’re right, it’s definitely a tree. We must be on the right track.” She pulled out her phone and retrieved the information that Martin Klein, ARKANE’s archivist, had sent on their way over. “Three hundred converso families settled here in the first wave of immigration and in 1579, the Jesuit Francisco de Meneses wrote of the existence of a Jewish community.”

  Jake frowned. “The Jesuits didn’t have a great reputation for dealing with Jews.”

  Morgan shook her head. “No, but the closest inquisitors were in Goa, India, and it seems that this community managed to survive. In 1842, when Hong Kong was ceded to Great Britain, they moved over there and the first synagogue was established in 1857. But it’s far more likely that any manuscripts were retrieved by the Jesuits and held in their library. It’s not far from here.”

  They walked away from St Paul’s along the pedestrianized streets toward the Church of St Dominic. Morgan found herself fascinated by the cultural mix of the city. This part of the historic district had clear signs of its colonial past, now enshrined as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Signs were trilingual, with directions in English, Portuguese and Cantonese. There were even some traditional Portuguese azulejos, colorful ceramic tiles, along the side of government buildings. But it was also totally Asian, with Chinese lanterns hung above the pavements, the smell of delicious spicy Macanese food, and the sound of Chinese spoken by most of the surrounding tourists along with the blare of horns from the busy traffic.

  The nearby sixteenth-century Church of St Dominic sat on the edge of a plaza paved with the traditional hand-cut Portuguese stone in waves of black and white, the calçada portuguesa. The church had three tiers in an elaborate Baroque style, painted in shades of ivory and mustard yellow with forest green shutters and doors.

  Morgan and Jake walked inside and up into the bell tower, which now held the Museum of Sacred Art. It was a relatively small collection, arranged in groups of sacramental objects. Religious statues, chalices for Mass, liturgical vestments, and two large bells.

  Morgan frowned. “This is nothing special. We need to find the library or somewhere the Jesuits might have kept their manuscripts.”

  Jake waved her over to one cabinet. “Wait a minute, check this out.”

  Morgan walked closer to the glass case. There was a piece of a manuscript inside, similar to the image the Rabbi had shown them in Amsterdam, with part of a tree in hues of brown and green, a blue river and words etched in Hebrew and Portuguese.

  They had found the second fragment.

  Frik remained in the shadow of a palm tree on the edge of the plaza as Jake and the woman he now knew as Morgan Sierra disappeared into the darkness of the church. The Fidalgo wealth and contacts had bought him a private jet to Macau, and he had arrived a few hours before the ARKANE agents on their cargo flight.

  He had used the journey to fill in his knowledge with what he could find about the secretive agency and their public face in archaeological research and religious heritage. He had learned much from the young woman, Ines, before forcing that final burning coal through her neck. Frik smiled to himself as he remembered those last moments, the smell of smoke as it rose from her charred skin, her final breath choked into silence. It wouldn’t be long until he watched Jake Timber die the same way.

  Frik strode across the plaza toward the door of the church, clenching his fists as he readied himself for the confrontation he had dreamed of for so many years. As he reached the door, he typed a short code into his phone and began the countdown in his head.

  Jake bent to the glass to examine the piece more closely. It certainly looked like part of the Tree of Life, but it still made little sense as a map. They would need help to figure out what it meant and whether it led to an actual physical location.

  His own faith was rooted in the Christian tradition with the Bible as the literal word of God. But violence had shaken Jake’s belief after the massacre of his family in a drug-fueled frenzy by a gang in Walkerville near Johannesburg. He had spent years in the military as part of the struggles of the nations of Africa to escape their colonial past, but also to free themselves from internal rivalry, tribal allegiances and corruption.

  As a white South African, Jake understood the struggle of race. The color of his skin made many people dismiss his love of Africa. Yet his blood ran with the dust of the Great Karoo and the salt of the Cape, his lungs took their first breath in the rarefied air of the Drakensberg and he only felt truly at home when he touched the soil of his great continent.

  As Morgan leaned in closer to examine the fragment, he smelled the coconut scent of her shampoo and part of him longed to brush the curls from the nape of her neck. They were both a mixture of cultures, a blend of the religious and historical choices that their ancestors had made and still echoed down the generations. Perhaps that’s why they both felt at home within ARKANE’s view of the world, where reality and the supernatural collided.

  A deep boom roared up from outside.

  The church shuddered.

  The glass windows exploded inward with the force of the blast.

  Jake reached for Morgan as they both leaped away from the hail of shards, pulling her into his arms as they tumbled to the floor. Glass rained down around them and Jake took most of it on his back, his jacket shielding them both.

  A brief silence, then screams and the sound of sirens from outside.

  “What the hell?” Morgan scrambled up and shook herself free of broken glass.

  “We need to get out of here.” Jake was on full alert now. The display case had shattered in the explosion and he reached in for the Eden fragment, tucking it inside his jacket pocket.

  BOOM.

  The explosion came from directly below this time. A blast of hot air beneath their feet. The billowing of fire igniting.

  The old wooden fl
oor cracked and crumbled into burning timber. Morgan tumbled into the flames.

  6

  “No!” Jake reached out, his fingertips brushing hers as Morgan fell, disappearing into the billowing smoke.

  A crash from below. A crack of burning timbers.

  The floor beneath him crumbled in its turn, and Jake plummeted down after her.

  He had learned to fall at an early age and relaxed his body, bending his limbs and tucking chin to chest as he plunged down into the fiery church.

  The impact was hard and sharp against his ribs. Jake fell on his side onto an old wooden pew and rolled off into the embers of the burning floor, breath knocked from his lungs. Thick smoke rose up around him. He coughed, desperately trying to draw breath.

  Jake couldn’t see Morgan, couldn’t hear anything but the roar of the voracious blaze as it devoured the ancient wooden church. He rolled to one side and gathered his strength, trying to push himself up as pain flared in his side.

  An enormous man strode out of the smoke.

  A figure of nightmare, his neck burned into layers of scars and puckered skin, his features twisted with hate. He wore a heavy leather jacket and fireproof gloves, clearly prepared for the blaze. Embers whirled around him as he took two quick steps forward and kicked Jake hard in his damaged ribs with a steel-toe-capped boot.

  Jake saw it coming and tensed his stomach muscles, curling into the kick to absorb the blow. But it wasn’t enough. It knocked the remaining breath from his aching lungs and left him gasping as pain ricocheted through his body.

  He tried to get up.

  Another kick, harder his time. Jake couldn’t help but moan with the pain.

  “Stay down, Timber.”

  The man knew his name. How was that possible?

  The scarred man reached down and pulled Jake’s jacket open, tugging the fragment from his pocket. Flames roared around them, but the man showed no sense of urgency. He folded it carefully inside a metal tin and placed it inside his jacket. Then he picked up a piece of burning pew, a heavy chunk of wood, its end a glowing crimson.

  Jake struggled to pull himself away, still gasping for breath.

  The man stepped astride him, gaze fixed on his prey, the flaming wood held in one hand. He grinned and dropped his weight down onto Jake’s chest, his knees pinning either arm.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Jake shook his head, barely able to breathe with the weight on his chest, and the intense smoke.

  The man brought the burning wood close to Jake’s exposed throat. He leaned down, his voice barely audible over the crackle of flames. His eyes were the hard grey of flint, the color of stone mined from the deep earth.

  A flash of memory and Jake suddenly recognized him. Frik Versfeld. A man he thought long dead after a mining accident in South Africa.

  Frik smiled as recognition dawned in Jake’s eyes. “You’ll pay for what you did to me and my men that day, although your burning flesh won’t smell as sweet as that pretty girl in Lisbon. You’re responsible for her death, too.”

  Jake writhed and bucked his hips, trying to throw Frik off, but the man was huge, his weight immovable.

  Frik grabbed a handful of Jake’s hair and tugged his head back to expose his throat. He thrust the burning wood close to Jake’s neck in the place where his own scars ravaged the skin.

  Jake could feel the heat of it, smell Frik’s sweat and the burning church, and hear blood pounding in his head as the brand came closer. The burning end touched his skin, almost a caress, then the pain intensified, scorching, blistering —

  A heavy bronze candlestick swung out of the billowing smoke behind Frik, smashing against the side of his head, knocking him sideways.

  As his weight shifted, Jake bucked his hips again, throwing his attacker off. Morgan stepped out of the conflagration, swinging the candlestick in her hands. Frik collapsed on the ground under a burning pew, ash and embers rising up as smoke swirled around his prone body.

  Morgan leaned down to help Jake up as the sound of sirens came from outside. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Jake scrambled to his feet, every movement sending a shard of pain through his body. “We need… to… deal with him.”

  He turned to point to Frik, but the body was gone. The man had dragged himself away in the fiery church — along with the map fragment.

  Morgan and Jake stumbled outside. The fire brigade unrolled their hoses and soaked the church, evacuating the area and holding people back from the flames. Paramedics ran to the emerging survivors and helped them to an ambulance. As Jake sucked in oxygen and a medic tended to his burns, he drifted off into memory.

  It was the summer after his parents and sister had been murdered.

  The only way Jake could deal with their deaths was to join the military, but he had a few months before the next intake, so he took a job at one of the remote coal mines in South Africa as a security guard. The punishing heat, long hours and dangerous work meant that he fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep every night, thoughts of his family’s butchered bodies kept at bay by extreme fatigue.

  The camaraderie amongst the men helped too, a tough masculinity that allowed for no emotional breakdown, no sense of vulnerability, no chink of weakness. Jake was in peak physical condition that year, eating only to fuel his muscles, and in the hours he was off duty, he worked out at the gym on the edge of the veld, punishing his body into submission.

  Other men joined him during those sessions, their grunts and heavy exhalation punctuating the sounds of the mine site. Frik Versfeld was one of them. He had been at the mine for a year already when Jake arrived, and initially he had been friendly enough. But when Jake was promoted to run the team, Frik undermined him. In subtle ways at first, waiting a beat too long before following an order, then spreading rumors about Jake’s inability to make decisions.

  But when someone sabotaged the workout equipment and a heavy weight almost crushed Jake’s foot, he knew he had to have it out with Frik.

  The confrontation was loud and almost came to blows, but Jake clenched his fists and let the other man vent, before he ordered Frik to take his security team to the deepest part of the mine for an inspection.

  It was routine; it had to be done, but not on that day.

  It could have been left until the weather was cooler, when tempers were not so frayed. But truth be told, Jake wanted Frik and his men out of the way.

  They went to the bottom of the mine; they did their job, but while they were down there, a coal seam ignited.

  The fire spread quickly. The alarm rang out and the mine site activated emergency protocols. They fought back the flames and reached Frik’s team, pulling them back to the surface — but of the four who went down, only two were alive when they reached the hospital, both badly burned, both expected to die. One of those was Frik.

  Jake was cleared of responsibility but he still resigned his position, throwing himself into the military, salving his conscience with dangerous missions until he met Elias Marietti that fateful night in the Sudan and joined ARKANE.

  Since then, Jake had taken lives and seen many others die. He had also saved thousands of people and possibly altered the fate of humanity for the better with the recovery of powerful artifacts that could have been used for destruction. He had not thought of Frik or the mine in years — but now, a personal agenda threatened the mission.

  Jake thought of Ines. Was he responsible for her fate or would Frik have taken her life, regardless? And if he sought the other fragments, who did he work for? Frik Versfeld was not a man of deep faith or deep pockets. He had to be hired muscle for someone else. Jake also had no doubt that Frik was behind the fire at Ets Haim, which meant that now, whoever they were, they had two pieces of the map.

  Morgan put a hand on Jake’s arm and pulled off her oxygen mask with the other. “Are you OK? You look more than just dazed. Should the paramedics check you for concussion?”

  Ash smeared her features and highlighted t
he angles of her face. Dark curls hung loose from her ponytail, the ends singed, her clothes were disheveled and smelled of smoke. But despite her own condition, Morgan’s blue eyes were alive with concern, the slash of violet in the right one even more vivid against the dark smudges on her skin.

  Jake wanted to reach out and brush the ash gently from her cheek, but instead, he took a deep breath. While the oxygen refreshed his mind, the expansion of his lungs pushed against his damaged rib cage.

  He assessed the level of pain against years of experience with injury. “I think the bastard might have fractured my rib, but hopefully it’s just bruised.” He took another deep breath of the oxygen. “I know that man. He worked for me in a mine in South Africa. There was an accident…”

  His words trailed off. The fire had been an accident and he could never have controlled its path, but he had sent Frik and the other men down there for no good reason that day. Jake’s anger and frustration and inability to manage the situation had caused the death of two men and the brutalizing of another, who had now become a dangerous foe.

  He breathed in once more and slowly exhaled, relishing the pain in his ribs. He deserved it, and he welcomed it. Pain meant that he was still alive, and whatever their past entanglement, he would not let Frik derail this mission. In fact, the man may have helped them by revealing himself.

  He pulled up his mask. “Tell Martin to look into Frik Versfeld.” He spelled it out for Morgan as she tapped into her phone, sending the message back to Martin Klein, the head archivist back at ARKANE headquarters.

  Martin’s nickname was Spooky because of his uncanny ability to discover obscure secrets within the interlinked databases he had constructed from accessing the world’s knowledge — sometimes with permission and other times, through his alter ego as a white hat hacker. Now they knew who had stolen the fragments, Martin could trace Frik’s path and discover who he worked for.