Tree of Life

by J. F. Penn

  Guram gently laid the professor down on the floor, resting her head on one of her many books. It was important to keep her in a good condition. She needed to be perfect when she entered the Garden. A flawless sacrifice.

  He looked down at the bodies of the two men. The professor’s next appointment was only minutes away, so he didn’t have enough time to deal with them properly. Guram dragged them behind the huge desk. They would be found, but not immediately, and by then, it would be too late.

  He went inside one of the glass labs and wheeled out a trolley used to transport samples and equipment. It was easy enough to fold the professor’s petite frame into the bottom and cover her with a tarpaulin before placing several small bushes on top.

  Guram opened the door and wheeled the trolley out into the busy corridors. No one gave him a second glance as he pushed his precious cargo out into the loading dock at the back of the building.

  Brother Hadiq stood tapping his foot nervously at the rear of a van, the doors open and ready to go. Guram wheeled the trolley up the ramp and into the back, securing it for the journey ahead. Brother Hadiq closed the doors behind him, slamming them shut with a sound of finality.

  14

  Recife, Brazil

  Jake received a text message as the plane began to circle in descent. The buzzing woke Morgan from a light sleep and she turned to see his expression darken as he read.

  “What is it?”

  Jake bit his lip, knuckles tightening around his phone as he summarized the message. “Professor Camara Mbaye has been kidnapped from her lab in Paris. Martin and Sebastian were drugged but they’re recovering.”

  Morgan sat up, her mind whirling as she processed the news. Once again, ARKANE had endangered those who should be safe, and after what happened to Ines, it was surely only a matter of time before they heard more bad news.

  She shifted a little to loosen her muscles. They’d been on way too many flights in the last few days. “You think it was Frik?”

  Jake frowned. “It’s not really his style. Not enough obvious destruction.” He continued to read from the message. “Security cameras show a young man wheeling a trolley out of Professor Mbaye’s office to a van. ARKANE’s preliminary analysis matched him with photos provided by Turkish intelligence. He’s connected to an agricultural complex in the east of Turkey owned by a holding company suspected to be part of a disavowed Catholic Order of monks, the Ignis Flammae.”

  “The flaming sword,” Morgan said. “Genesis, chapter three says that God placed ‘cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.’ Metaphors perhaps, symbols, or—”

  “Something altogether more real,” Jake finished for her. “If this Order have taken the professor, it implies she knows too much about the location of Eden.”

  Morgan gazed out the window to the edge of the city below as the plane banked over the Atlantic Ocean. “Then if we find the Garden, we’ll find the professor. We have to locate the next piece as fast as we can.”

  The taxi crawled from the airport into the city of Recife through dense traffic, apparently normal enough as the chatty taxi driver informed them. Morgan tuned him out and watched the world go by.

  These moments of movement between locations were a welcome pause, enforced time when they could do nothing. Their missions focused on action, always taking the next step, but it was in these pauses that both she and Jake did a lot of their thinking. This assignment had many puzzling aspects, and the professor’s abduction by a mysterious Order added a new dimension. If the monks went to such lengths to keep it hidden, perhaps the Garden was real after all.

  The taxi finally reached the inner city. Sprawling skyscrapers reflected a thriving modern culture, and the architecture of the Old Town had elements that reminded Morgan of Lisbon. European-style facades in rich colors of mustard yellow, sky blue and peach with white trim, and decorative archways leading to spacious plazas.

  Recife was sometimes called the Venice of Brazil for its waterways, rivers and bridges, but most tourists headed for the adjoining community of Olinda, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with preserved colonial architecture, winding stone streets and picturesque churches. While Morgan wished they had time to stop for a caipirinha overlooking the ocean, time ticked away and Professor Mbaye’s abduction remained at the forefront of her mind.

  The taxi driver dropped them on the Praça do Marco Zero, an open square with a colorful mosaic pavement popular with locals for promenading and street entertainment. With views out to the reefs that gave the city its name, it hosted a market with local produce and artisan goods. As Jake paid the driver, a trickle of sweat ran down Morgan’s spine in the intense humidity, the air heavy even here on the coast.

  They meandered along the edge of the plaza, enjoying the lively atmosphere as the beat of the maracatu drums drifted across the hubbub of the market. The enticing smell of smoky barbecue meat, the tang of citrus, and sweet chocolate with a hint of chili hung in the air.

  As they passed the edge of the stalls, Morgan noticed an old woman sitting on a blanket behind rows of pottery figurines, each set representing different aspects of Brazilian history. There were Portuguese explorers, a native tribal group and a modern Carnival parade. One portrayed a group of black men joined in a slave gang, arms chained together, their faces carefully etched in suffering.

  Morgan had been surprised to find out about the history of the slave trade from Martin’s notes about the country. Brazil was initially named Terra de Vera Cruz, Land of the True Cross, and it seemed incredible that such a tiny state as Portugal could claim a land as large as Western Europe. There were so many riches to harvest and yet, the Portuguese did not have enough people to colonize and do the work.

  So they brought slaves.

  Over three hundred years, the Portuguese transported four million slaves from Africa to Brazil in what some considered to be the largest forced migration in history, ten times the number taken to North America by other countries. The slaves worked the gold and diamond mines as well as sugar plantations, cattle ranches and coffee fields. Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery in 1888, many years after England in 1807 and the US in 1865. Racial tensions and socio-economic inequality still remained in the country today.

  As Morgan bent to examine the pottery figures more closely, the rhythmic beat of percussion drifted across the square. Jake walked toward the sound and joined a gathering circle. Morgan went to stand with him, watching as a group of young people warmed up with flowing movements.

  Musicians began to play on one edge of the circle. One held a berimbau, a single-stringed percussion instrument with a gourd at the bottom, another tapped on the pandeiro hand drum while two more sat with larger wooden atabaque drums. As they struck up a rhythm, two of the young people moved opposite each other in low rocking steps, as others clapped and sang around them.

  As the music speeded up, the movements became more aggressive with rolling and sweeping, spinning kicks and cartwheels. Somehow, the pair avoided touching even though their limbs passed within millimeters of each other in graceful acrobatic moves.

  “It’s capoeira,” Jake explained. “A martial art developed here in Brazil by enslaved Africans. They practiced it like a dance or a game to avoid detection, but it could also be used to defend themselves.”

  As the capoeiristas finished playing, the crowd erupted with applause. Morgan and Jake weaved their way back through the crowd and into the streets behind the plaza, eventually emerging outside the modest Kahal Zur Israel. With its cream facade and terracotta-red shutters, it looked like any other building on the block except for the prominent name on the side.

  Sinagoga Kahal Zur Israel had been established in 1636, the first synagogue erected in the Americas, even though Jews had been living in Brazil since the Portuguese arrived in 1500. Recife was the first slave port in the Americas and experienced a rare period of religious freedom when the Dutch took the city between 1630 and
1654 — but it didn’t last long.

  When Portugal reconquered the area, many of the Jews left, some heading for Amsterdam in Holland, some for New Amsterdam, later called New York, and others for Jamaica, where Port Royal fell under British protection. Morgan marveled at how the routes of the Diaspora wove their way back and forth across the world, following trade and religious freedom, tying cultures together in unusual ways. This intermingling was both a blessing and a curse, a way for people to understand those they considered ‘Other,’ but also provoking conflict.

  Jake knocked at the door of the synagogue and a homely woman opened it, her ample curves hidden under an oversized t-shirt and jeans, her gaze piercingly intelligent.

  “I’m Fernanda,” she said warmly. “Custodian of the synagogue museum. Desomond called me to vouch for you both. Our congregations are linked on some Jewish Diaspora online communities and he and I share an interest in ancient manuscripts.” She raised an eyebrow. “I hear we have that interest in common?”

  Jake nodded and pulled the fragment encased in glass from his pack. “We’re looking for something similar to this.”

  Fernanda took it from him and inspected it with the enthusiasm of a scholar. A moment later, she frowned and gave it back, taking a step away as if it held some terrible disease.

  “You recognize the curse?” Morgan asked.

  Fernanda shook her head. “It’s not that.” She sighed. “We have something similar and it marks a dark time in our history. Come. I’ll show you.”

  She led them through the synagogue. It was stark with plain timber flooring, hard wooden benches, and stone walls, a functional house of worship designed to keep the place cool. The museum section beyond was well laid-out with informative panels about Portuguese Jewish history, and ritual objects in glass cases.

  Fernanda stopped at a nondescript door at the end of the gallery. “This leads to another museum, accessible to the public through a different entrance. We like to keep some separation. It’s no good to dwell on the past, but this is truly a cruel history.”

  She pushed open the door into the Museu da História da Inquisição, the Museum of the History of the Inquisition. As they stepped over the threshold, Morgan felt a sense of heaviness descend, as if the very air thickened around her. She understood why the synagogue would want to keep this place separate. It was important to remember, but the past did not define everything about the present and the Jewish community thrived in the Diaspora now, despite every attempt to stamp them out.

  “New Christians, also known as Esperandos, Hopeful Ones, came to Brazil, seeking a new life,” Fernanda explained as she led them through the gallery. “They became traders and shipowners, a merchant class who set up sugar factories and cultivated tea and coffee plantations. They traded with New Christians on the Iberian Peninsula and later with Amsterdam and London. But the Jews were not safe in the New World either. The Inquisition arrived in 1591, their primary role to seek out the New Christians who hid their true faith, and forcibly convert any Jews who dared to live openly. Many people have heard of the violent excesses of the Spanish Inquisition but the Portuguese were just as bad.”

  They walked past panels with historical information and engravings of torture and broken bodies burning at the stake. A list of names etched into marble hung on the wall nearby, dedicated to the victims of the Jewish Inquisition. Yosef Bemvenist, Isaque Gabal, Moseh de Azeuedo, and so many more.

  Morgan recited the names in her mind, sounding out the syllables of lives ended in agony. The screams and the crackle of flames had been silenced by the years but still resonated in the memories of those who remained.

  A plain wooden table made of thick planks stood in the middle of one room with shackles at either end to hold a body down, and a central winding handle to stretch the victim. At the foot of the rack, a double-ended saw with wicked teeth, next to neck screws and blades for flaying flesh. Just a few of the replica torture instruments held in the museum.

  “The Inquisition was finally abolished in Brazil in 1824.” Fernanda shook her head. “It’s hard to believe that they dominated for several hundred years of misery. Of course, anti-Semitism has not gone away, but at least we don’t face the auto-da-fé anymore.”

  “You said you recognized the fragment?” Jake said, a gentle attempt to bring the conversation back to their mission.

  Morgan understood the need for haste, but part of her wanted to learn more about the Jews of this part of the world. Her own heritage was Sephardic with the Sierra family part of the Spanish Diaspora. Her father had been a Kabbalah scholar, always fascinated by history. She imagined his enthusiasm for learning about something new, and a little of the heaviness lifted as she thought of his smiling face. He had passed on like all these dead around her, but a part of them lived on in their descendants. So it had always been. So it would ever be.

  Fernanda walked on into a small annex off the main gallery. “We keep documents here.”

  Hand-written letters in white frames lined the walls alongside tax and financial records written in Portuguese and Hebrew. A wide chest of drawers took up most of the space with a glass display case on top containing illustrations of Inquisition torture. Fernanda pulled open one drawer to reveal a manuscript fragment, the brown of the tree trunk faded to a light sepia, the surrounding text obscured by the grime of years. But the piece was recognizably part of the Eden map.

  “That’s it,” Jake said. “Can we look at it more closely? Maybe borrow it for a while?”

  Fernanda shook her head. “I’m sorry, but we don’t let any of these items out of the museum. So much has been lost over the history of the Jews in Brazil, and we are now the sacred keepers of what’s left. It is precious little, so I’m sure you can understand why I can’t let you take it.”

  Her steely gaze matched the note of finality in her voice. There was no way they were taking the fragment.

  15

  “Of course.” Jake smiled, but Morgan noticed that it didn’t crinkle the corkscrew at the corner of his eyebrow. She knew his tells, but she couldn’t see how they were going to get the fragment out of here and to be honest, Morgan wanted to respect the community’s wishes. But if they left the fragment here, Frik Versfeld might come and take it — and he wouldn’t be so polite. The community was not safe while it remained in the museum.

  “Could we at least take some photographs?” she asked.

  Fernanda nodded. “That would be fine.” She pulled out the fragment and laid it on the glass.

  Both Morgan and Jake took pictures on their phones from all kinds of different angles. It would have to be enough for now.

  They had one physical piece and pictures of two more. That just left the final quarter, stolen by Frik in Macau. It might be enough, but then again, it might not be, and they were running out of time.

  As they walked out of the synagogue, Morgan considered the photos Martin had sent previously. Aurelia dos Santos Fidalgo covertly photographed at an eco-terrorist event and evidence that the heiress had siphoned funds from the mining empire to those who wanted to destroy it. Despite their differences, they both sought a common goal. Perhaps together, they could find Eden — and rescue the professor.

  It was time to reach out to their enemy.

  En route to Turkey

  Camara drifted in and out of unconsciousness, slowly becoming aware of a continuous droning sound and an occasional jolt beneath her. She could smell oil, the tang of metal and stale sweat. Her hands were bound in front, her legs tied together at the ankles, and as she opened her eyes, she realized that she was strapped to a side bench in a cargo plane surrounded by what looked like military equipment. She couldn’t move.

  Nausea rose within, her stomach spasming as the stink of the aircraft, her own fear and whatever drug the man had used mingled together in her system.

  Sebastian.

  Camara remembered how he had looked on the floor of her lab in those last moments, his dear face pale, a cold sweat on his skin.
She could only hope that he and his colleague had been found soon enough. Sebastian had been tough in his youth, seemingly immune to the rigors of life in West Africa, but that was many years ago — and they weren’t young anymore.

  She didn’t know what these people wanted, but it had to be about Eden. Perhaps she had located it correctly after all. Perhaps she would even see it before they… Camara pushed the dark thoughts aside. Whoever they were, they were keeping her alive for now, and that was something.

  As the plane rocked a little, she closed her eyes again, retreating into the haven of memory.

  It was a decade after independence, and Senegal was working out how to amplify its role in Africa while retaining links to the French Republic. Like much of colonial history throughout the continent, there had been atrocities and human rights abuses — but there had also been a positive side to its ties with the former ruling country. Camara had been a botanist at the University of Dakar in her first years of post-graduate study with a grant to research the survival aspects of plant species in the Sahel, a transitory region between the Sahara Desert and the savannah.

  It had taken weeks to put together a support team and gather the right gear to survive in the harsh terrain. The day before they were due to leave, Camara repacked the Land Rover for the third time, checking items against her list once more. Could she possibly move things around to fit in a few more sample test tubes?

  “Bonjour.” The deep voice startled her, and Camara spun around, dropping her clipboard into the dust.

  The man stepped forward and picked it up, his hand brushing hers as he handed it back. The sun caught his blonde hair, turning it to gold, and beneath his khaki shirt, Camara could see he was slim and tanned. His eyes were a piercing blue with a hint of mischief, and he had a lively smile.

  “Forgive me for disturbing you, Miss Mbaye. I’m Sebastian Northbrook. I hear you’re going into the Sahel?”