“Not all Muslims are extremists,” she said.
Ellen touched Riley’s arm. “Dear, if you don’t know who your enemy is, you are in mortal danger.”
Wes seemed to swell beside her. “I hope to hell in the next election we get a new president with the balls to go over there and stick the sick bastards in the ground.”
Riley looked from one to the other, struggling to make sure they were serious. She said, “Excuse me,” stepped around them, and opened the door to the boatyard office. As she stepped inside, she wondered if Wes and Ellen understood that they were spending the winter in a Muslim country.
The young woman behind the desk looked up and smiled when she saw Riley come in.
“Good morning. I’m so sorry to hear about the trouble you had on your boat.”
“Hi, Nejma.” Riley shook her head to clear it. “That, in fact, is what I’m here about. The yard’s got all those CCTV cameras around. I assume you are recording?”
“Yes, the video is recorded on a hard drive and stored for about one week before it is written over with new video.”
“Could I take a look at it?”
“When the policeman left, he told me to prepare to hand over the drive to the police technicians when they arrive.”
“Until they get here, could I review the video? I’ll see if I recognize the guy. And if not, then at least I’ll know what he looks like in case he tries it again.”
Nejma looked over at the closed door to the manager’s office. “I guess that would be okay.” She pointed to a chair and said, “Bring that around behind the desk here, and we’ll look together.”
The office desk was L-shaped, and there was a second computer monitor there that showed a grid of views from the different security cameras. Riley sat down, and Nejma showed her how the boatyard’s security system had a proprietary app for viewing the camera feeds. The quality wasn’t very good, and it was difficult to navigate through the folders and hours of video stored on the drive.
“Geez,” Riley said, “this is going to take forever.”
“I have to get back to work,” Nejma said, turning her chair to face the other computer. “Just let me know if you need help.”
In the first hour, Riley found nothing. The nighttime video was terribly boring to scroll through. Little changed as the cameras moved and panned across the yard. Riley was running through it at 3X speed when she saw something odd in the last couple of seconds before one camera moved.
She stopped the video, then hit the reverse arrow for a few seconds. She tried the pull-down menus until she saw how to run it in slow motion. When she saw what had caught her attention, she tapped the space bar and the picture froze. The figure of a man dressed all in black stepped out from behind the corner of a building. On his head he wore infrared night-vision goggles. Everything from his build to the clothes he was wearing screamed military.
Riley turned around and spoke to the young woman over her shoulder. “Is this guy familiar to you, Nejma?”
“I cannot really see his face. I don’t think so.”
“He screwed up, getting caught on the video. We could search through the rest of the footage here, but I don’t think this guy screws up very much.” Riley tapped her fingers against her lips as she thought. “Is this connected to a printer?”
“Certainly. Just select ‘Print.’”
Riley did just that, and, as she waited for the laser printer to spit out the photo, she worked out the dates in her head. It was Monday, and Nejma said there should be a week’s worth of video on the drive. That meant there should still be footage on the hard drive from Tuesday. They got rear-ended last Wednesday.
Nejma handed her the paper printout.
“Thanks. I’m just going to try one more thing.” Riley went back through the folders until she found the footage from the camera in the parking lot. First, she looked at the footage for the night before. There were no bright lights in the parking lot like there were in the yard, so everything was deep in the shadows. She had to look very hard before she spotted him in the front seat of a dark sedan. He moved, shifting his position to flip up the goggles when their taxi showed up.
She watched the video as she and Cole got out of the cab, and she saw the white of his teeth. He was smiling.
He waited an hour or longer until he got out of the car and went to the gate. He had taken the headset off. His hair was short, white-blond, and gelled into spikes. She printed several more shots of him walking. When she’d got all the prints she needed there, she ran the video back to the beginning and skimmed through the comings and goings from the parking lot on Tuesday. She was disappointed she didn’t see anything. It wasn’t until dawn on Wednesday that she saw a familiar Renault pull into the boatyard parking lot. It was the car that rear-ended them. The driver’s-side door opened, and a man climbed out.
She recognized the long coat and the stringy hair. The skin on his face was badly scarred. Riley froze the video and printed the screen. This time she started it up in slow motion. The man stared at their Hyundai. Another car appeared at the edge of the screen, and the man’s face started to turn toward the other car.
Riley inhaled with a gasp and slammed her fingertips onto the space bar. The screen froze. The man’s face had just passed the midpoint of his turn. She could still see both sides of the face, and they looked like two entirely different faces. On the left side his skin was pinched and scarred; on the other it was unblemished. Riley recognized the scars now. They were like hers on her shoulder: burn scars. She bounced her fingers on the space bar a couple of times, and his head slowly turned, like a stop-motion film. When he had turned all the way around, she selected the “Print Screen” command again. He’d certainly not aged well, but she would know that face anywhere.
Cole was right all along.
When she spoke, her voice was a harsh whisper. “Goddammit, Diggory Priest. How the hell did you survive?”
The Silversmith Shop
Vittoriosa, Malta
April 30, 1798
“Papa, please,” Arzella said, holding a spoon in front of her father’s mouth. “This is a fish soup I am very proud of. You will hurt my feelings if you don’t taste it.”
She had been sitting on top of his blanket, trying to coerce him into eating, for the last ten minutes. The soup bowl had grown cold on the bedside table. Her father was propped up on a pile of pillows, but his head lolled off to one side. She couldn’t get him to take a single taste. He had no interest in food, and thus no strength left. The wrists protruding from the cuffs of his pajamas could have belonged to a starvation victim.
She watched his chest rise and fall with each labored breath. Every time, she was afraid that breath would be his last. After placing the spoon back in the bowl, her hands fell slack in her lap. Her whole body hurt. The morning sickness and the growing child inside her had sapped what strength she had. Her eyelids felt so heavy that it was a pleasure to let them close.
“Arzella.” Her father’s voice was no more than a whisper.
She pulled her eyelids open. “Yes, Papa?”
“I will leave you soon.”
“Don’t say that. You are just tired.”
The corners of his mouth lifted. “Yes, and I am ready for a long rest.”
“It cannot be time. I’m not ready to give you up.”
His thin hand slid across the blanket toward hers. She met him halfway and grasped the fingers gently. His skin was cool, almost cold.
“You are stronger than you know, my daughter. I am so proud of you.”
“Even with this?” She indicated her stomach—which was still flat, but they both knew what grew there.
“Yes. I’m going, but because of what grows inside there, you won’t be alone.”
From the front room of their shop, Arzella heard the sound of the door opening.
“Arzella?” It was Alonso.
Her father’s head turned away.
“I won’t be long. I’ll tell him
to leave.”
Her father didn’t say anything.
As soon as she stepped through the door into the shop, Alonso wrapped his arms around her and held her tight to his chest. “You must come away with me. Now.”
She pushed him away. “Alonso, I can’t do that. I have to take care of my father.”
“Please, Arzella.”
He appeared changed. Something was contorting that face she loved. She had never seen fright there before.
“It’s the grand inquisitor.”
“But they say he favors the Knights.”
“Some gossip told him that you are carrying a Knight’s child. He intends to make a point with you.”
Arzella glanced up at the beams that supported the floor of the upstairs apartment and shook her head. Then she reached up and placed her hand on Alonso’s reddish-brown hair. Her heart ached, seeing him so distraught. “And what of you? Do they know you are the father?”
He shook his head. “But I cannot stand by and let them take you.”
“We can’t be certain what the inquisitor will do. And I will not willingly leave my father’s side. Papa has little time left now.”
“They are not far behind me, I fear.” He put his hand on the sword at his waist and started to draw it out. “They will have to get by me.”
She placed her hand on his and stopped him. “Alonso, please, go and live to fight another day.”
He withdrew his hand from the sword and stared at her. “I cannot stand by. You are here because of me.”
She pulled him to her and kissed his mouth. “Do you not remember that day in Saint Julian’s Bay?”
“I think of it with every breath I breathe.”
“It was I who built the boat that brought me here.” She indicated her belly. “And I have no regrets.”
“Arzella?” Alonso’s voice was hoarse, and his eyes shone.
“Even if they take me to Gozo tonight, it cannot be as bad as seeing you die.”
“I would gladly die for you.”
“And that would be utterly senseless. We cannot stop them all. In the end, they will do what they want with me.”
He pressed his forehead to hers and took a deep breath.
She placed her small hand on the cross at the center of his tunic and began to push him toward the door. “Go, my love. Let me return to my father’s bedside. I may have little time left to be with him. We shall see what comes to pass.”
“But—”
“Go!”
Her father’s eyes were open. “I heard what he said.”
“Alonso is a good man.”
“Yes, I see that now.”
“Perhaps they will simply try to frighten me. They are well aware I need to be here to take care of you.”
“They won’t care.” His breathing grew more arduous.
“Surely the inquisitor does not want to be seen as a monster, taking away your only source of care?” She wanted to help him breathe, the one thing she could not do. What she could do was give him dignity. Treat him with intelligence and respect. “Papa, you are renowned on the island. There would be a backlash.”
She could barely understand him now. His voice was weak and his chest rumbled with the fluid that was attacking his lungs. “This is political. The church wants the shop, the silver.”
“What do you mean?”
“They excommunicate you, and then I die? All this will go to them.”
“Shhhh.” She smoothed back a few hairs on his head. She wanted him to rest, but to stay with her.
“Be brave, my child.” Her father coughed several times, and, deep in his chest, she heard the bubbling liquid.
“Always, Papa.” Arzella climbed into the narrow bed and lay next to her father. She rested his head against her shoulder.
“Cherish the new life,” he said.
“I will love your grandchild fiercely.” She felt hot tears on her cheeks, and she was surprised. She had not thought she would cry. “They will not take my child from me.”
This time he did not answer her. She held him, listening, certain that her own heart slowed to his rhythm, waiting with fear as the gaps grew longer between each burbling inhale and exhale.
“I love you so much, Papa,” she whispered. She was not certain he could hear her. She didn’t know if he was even there anymore.
She had lost count of his breaths when it all went silent.
Breathe, she thought. Please, Papa. Don’t leave me now.
She had fallen into something more like a numb trance than sleep when she was brought back to the present by the sound of boots in the shop.
Her father’s mouth was open, his eyes half-closed, but this thing, this body was no longer the man she loved, the man she had known before any other. That man—her family, her father—was gone. This thing in the bed merely bore a close resemblance. But it was growing cool.
The boots came into the back room. No one ever came into the back room, which was now their home. These men didn’t care.
“Are you Mademoiselle Arzella Brun?” It was a Knight with a very deep voice.
She swung her legs off the bed, stood, and acknowledged that she was the woman they sought.
Most of the men before her were Knights of Saint John, the Hospitallers. They wore the same eight-point cross as her beloved Alonso. But one of them stood apart. He wore the robes of the church. He unrolled a parchment and handed it to a handsome young Knight, who began to read aloud.
“By proclamation of the church, the grand inquisitor has decreed that you, Mademoiselle Arzella Brun, are to be transported to the Convent of the Holy Sisters in Gozo, where you shall remain for a period of three years.”
“I cannot leave my father.” The calm she felt stemmed from the numbness. She could not conceive of a world without her father in it.
The man in the robes went over to her father’s bed. “It appears he has already left you.”
“Yes, but there are arrangements to be made. The funeral . . .”
The man walked over to her workbench and picked up the silver pilgrim flask she had just finished for a Maltese nobleman. “Hmm. That is not possible. The church will see to your father.” The flask disappeared inside his robes.
The numbness burst like a soap bubble, and pain washed over her. She threw herself across her father’s body. “No, you’ll not touch him.”
The man in the robes walked to the door, then turned and pointed to one of the Knights. “Take her to the boat. Carry her if you must, but see to it she makes no noise.” He pointed to a pair of Knights across the room. “You two, get rid of the body and put a lock on the shop door. Bring the key to me.”
On the Road to Marmaris
Adakoy, Turkey
April 14, 2014
Riley stared out the car window as Cole drove them toward Marmaris. They had not said a word to each other since they’d left the yard. She was trying to figure out a way to tell him about what she had discovered on the tape, and how sorry she was for not believing him, but the car didn’t seem like the time or the place. They had so much more to accomplish before they could leave.
The phone in her pocket made a soft ping, indicating she had a text message. She pulled the phone out and checked it.
CELESTE VILLENEUVE: How was your weekend in Malta?
Riley groaned.
“What is it?”
“It’s my mother. She wants to know about our weekend in Malta. She thinks we went there on wedding business.”
Riley typed: We had a great time.
Did you choose a florist?
We were there 1.5 days. Played tourist.
Have you found a dress yet?
No.
This is important! You can’t keep putting it off.
Got to go Mom.
Riley turned off the phone, slipped it into her pocket, and crossed her arms. She stared out the window.
Cole’s voice was very soft when he finally spoke. “You know, I decided I wanted to be a maritim
e archeologist when I was in the eighth grade. I never wavered on that.”
She turned to look at him, then reached over and ran her fingers up the side of his neck and into his hair. “I know,” she said. “You told me all about that one night when we were anchored in Raja Ampat. Remember?”
He took his eyes off the road for a few seconds and looked at her. Working in the boatyard, he had kept his tropical tan, and his green eyes appeared to glow in contrast to his sun-browned skin. Looking into those eyes still gave her whole being a jolt.
“I know I’ve been a pain these past weeks,” he said.
I’m the one who should be apologizing, she thought. “I guess we both have.”
He made a little noise that was almost a laugh. “We had a great time in Indonesia, didn’t we, Magee?”
Riley smiled. “Sure did.”
“I’ve been thinking about all the wonderful people we met there, and in Malaysia, and here in Turkey. They’re Muslims, not Islamists, like Captain Pamuk said.”
“I liked him.” She thought about the conversation she’d had earlier with the xenophobic American cruising couple, Wes and Ellen.
“Me, too.” He was quiet for a while as he negotiated the traffic on the outskirts of the city.
“Going to Malta and learning about the old-world fight between the Christians and the Muslims for control of the Med,” Riley said. “It sometimes makes me wonder if we’ve learned anything in the last few thousand years.”
“Wars, terrorism. I understand that it’s all scary stuff. Taking the life of another human being should not be taken lightly by anyone.”
“Cole,” she said, “you’re not suggesting you really thought it was an Islamist terrorist who tried to blow up the boat?”
“No, not at all. My father’s journal directs me to look into the Knights of Malta, and the next thing I know you’re getting shot at, and Theo’s almost killed by a bomb.” He braked for a red light and turned to face her. “Part of me wants to forget about this message from my dead father. I’m so afraid that either you or Theo is going to get hurt as a result. But then I think about the man, James Thatcher. He knew what I was going to university to study. Even though I was just an eighteen-year-old kid when he wrote that in the journal, he trusted that one day I would find this thing, whatever it is, that we now think might be on the Upholder. And I trust him to be sending me on a search for something that matters. I know this sounds crazy, but I don’t want to disappoint him.”
Knight's Cross (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 3) Page 16
