The Columbus Code

by mike Evans

  “Then,” Sophia said, “the ‘time of tears and tribulation’ would be the Spanish Inquisition, correct?”

  “I think so. But the tetrad merely releases the thing announced in the prophecy. It’s a point of beginning.”

  “Well, yeah,” Winters agreed. “Since the persecution of the Jews definitely didn’t end there.”

  “Correct,” Hirsch said quietly. “It did not.” He scratched absently between his dog’s ears.

  Winters suddenly wished the conversation would end. A shiver was working its way up his spine.

  “And the second tetrad?” Sophia asked, oblivious to Winters’ discomfort.

  “That one happened between 1949 and 1950. Right after the founding of the Jewish state of Israel.”

  “Which part of the prophecy was that?”

  “The close of the prior age and the beginning of a time of blessing and triumph,” Hirsch explained. “For the following twenty years Israel prospered beyond all expectations.”

  “And the third age?”

  “Between 1967 and 1968. That tetrad coincided with the Six-Day War, which marked the complete restoration of Jerusalem to the Jewish people. Until then Arabs still controlled East Jerusalem.”

  Winters was afraid to ask the obvious next question. “What about the fourth tetrad?”

  Hirsch looked directly at him. “That one was set to occur between 2014 and 2015.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “It will announce the end of the age.”

  Winters tried not to roll his eyes. “Forgive me, Professor, but how many times have we heard people predicting the end of the world?”

  “Not the end of the world,” Hirsch corrected. “It will note the time when the end will begin.” He moved to the edge of the chair. “Remember, tetrads announce the beginning of something. In the past they have ushered in an era, but the dawning of those earlier ages were not cataclysmic events.”

  Sophia put a hand on Hirsch’s arm. “So, Jacob, the set of four would have been completed sometime between 2014 and 2015. What does that mean?”

  “It means, my dear, that the age of the end will have arrived.”

  “Everything will be in place?”

  “Everything necessary for the end to begin, but the dawn of the age will not be that ending point.”

  Sophia gently turned the pages of the journal. “This signature,” she said, pointing to the page, “could it be a key to who the Antichrist is today?”

  “I don’t think so,” Hirsch responded. “Signatures are personal. This has the feel of something between Columbus and his descendants. An inside communication.” Hirsch smiled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if his sons knew precisely what it meant. Maybe a message that reached back into their family history.”

  Sophia glanced at Winters with a knowing look. “And into yours, John.”

  Hirsch gestured toward the journal. “But I still think the prophecy of Jacob ben Isaac is the most important part of what he has written here. And it can be correctly understood only by properly applying the principles of Kabbalah.” He looked at Winters and Sophia in turn. “Think of it this way. The prophecy is an encoded message. Kabbalah is the key.”

  Winters grinned. “The Columbus Code.”

  “Excellent,” Hirsch said. “You take my meaning perfectly.” He leaned toward Winters. “Deciphering the message of that prophecy will be a lifelong task for you.”

  “For me?” Winters seemed surprised. “No, Professor, I’m leaving that part to you.”

  “The journal was not put into my hands, but yours,” Hirsch said. “Beginning with your mother and carried out by all the people who led you to it.” He nodded to Sophia. “I am sure you’ve told him that the kind of information that was given to him by Vespucci and old Jacobo and our unfortunate monk is not easily passed, especially to ‘foreigners.’”

  “I have tried, Jacob,” she said. “I have tried.”

  “I don’t think so.” Winters backpedaled. “You’re talking about deciphering this code and figuring out who is the evil one, the person opposed to the fulfillment of the prophecy.”

  “I am,” Hirsch said, nodding once more. “I believe that the two are tied together. Find one and you will find the other.” He continued even though Winters was shaking his head and already backing toward the door. “I would begin with this group of businessmen in Barcelona, the ones who opposed Columbus.”

  “That was over five hundred years ago.”

  “Then seek out organizations that have been around that long.”

  “Come on—”

  “Spain is not the United States,” Sophia explained. “Our history goes back more than two centuries.”

  Fine, Winters wanted to say. Let somebody in Spain figure it out. But Aasim was suddenly on his feet. He circled Hirsch’s chair and then placed his paw on his knee. “Will you excuse us?” he said and followed Aasim out of the room.

  When the door closed behind them, Winters came to Sophia’s side, a troubled look on his face. “I don’t see him being able to protect you.”

  “He is in worse condition than the last time I saw him. I see other signs of failure.” Her eyes were wet. “I cannot be responsible for another man’s death. This was a mistake, John. I am sorry.”

  “No, you’re right. And I can’t leave you here.” Winters looked away, thinking.

  The more Hirsch had talked about an Antichrist, the higher the sense of dread Winters felt. He’d never thought about it much—perhaps Episcopalians didn’t—but the attachment to the troubled history of the Jews and the power this journal seemed to have . . . it was too concrete to ignore now. And as over-the-top as all this prophecy stuff sounded, the fact remained that someone desperately wanted the journal. They needed a plan—preferably one that kept Sophia and the journal safe. But if staying with Hirsch wasn’t going to work for Sophia, it wasn’t going to protect the journal either. As much as he wanted to be rid of it, leaving it here was no longer an option.

  “All right,” he said, turning back to her. “Let’s have the driver take us back to the hotel. We’ll regroup there.”

  “I’ll tell Jacob,” she said. “And John?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think we must take the journal with us.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “I think you’re right.”

  Hirsch protested their departure but Winters was sure he saw relief on his tired face. As they made their way back toward the center of the city, Sophia looked over at him. “Jacob is a good man,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah,” Winters replied. “He seems okay. How do you know him?”

  He meant it as a casual question, but he felt Sophia stiffen in the seat beside him. “Am I poking in where I don’t belong?” he said.

  “No,” she said. “I poked into your life.”

  “Yeah.” Winters grinned at her. “But if you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to.”

  “I think you should know.” She glanced out the window. “Jacob and I did postgraduate work together at Stanford University in California. You know it?”

  “Yeah,” Winters said. “I know it. Impressive school.”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “The education was excellent. My personal choices were not.”

  Winters couldn’t imagine her making a bad choice but he nodded her on.

  “I met and married an American. A very charming man. Handsome. Smart.”

  “But manipulative, unfaithful—”

  “I will save you the list,” she said, looking at him again. “He was abusive. In every way.”

  Winters twisted in the seat. “Did you call the cops? Get protection?”

  “No. I called Jacob Hirsch. I was in a trap with my husband. Jacob knew people and he helped me escape back to Spain.”

  “This guy never came after you?”

  Sophia shook her head. “He died not long after I left.”

  “You don’t think Jacob’s ‘people’—”

  “No, n
o, no,” Sophia responded. “Nothing like that. We were living apart by then but still were married. A woman my husband was seeing found out that he had a wife and . . . she killed him. Shot him in cold blood.”

  “Will you think I’m a jerk if I say he deserved it?”

  “I thought that a few times myself.” Sophia attempted a smile, but the pain was obvious. “I told you that because when I first saw you on Skype, I almost said that I could not work with you.”

  “Don’t tell me I look like this loser.”

  “No.” Her hand touched his arm. “He became to me the ugliest man alive. You are far from that. I was simply afraid to trust an American man ever again, even in a business arrangement.” Sophia looked down at her hand still on his sleeve. “But you have shown me that I was wrong. Not all Americans are like that.”

  Winters even leaned toward her, eyes already beginning to close as he leaned in to kiss her. But at the last possible moment something caught his eyes. He glanced out the front windshield in time to see a white van swerve in front of them. Their driver slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting it and the car screeched to a halt in the center of an intersection. Seconds later, a faded black BMW squealed to a halt behind them.

  Winters banged his fist against the door lock button and shouted to Sophia, “Do exactly what I tell you.”

  “Why? John, what’s happening?”

  “Exactly what we were afraid of.”

  In less time than seemed possible, men from the van and BMW were at the car. One opened the driver’s door and placed the muzzle of a pistol to the driver’s head. Two shots rang out, and Sophia screamed. Blood spat across the windshield and Hirsch’s young driver lurched forward against the steering wheel. The car horn blared in response.

  At the same time, a second gunman jerked on the handle of the door next to Winters. Finding it locked, he shouted to the others for help. A moment later, the window on Winters’ side cracked into a mosaic of glass.

  But before the gunman could break through with the butt of his gun, Winters reached across Sophia and shoved open the door on the opposite side. “Run,” he said. “Run as fast and as far as you can.” And he shoved her toward the open doorway.

  With Sophia on her way, Winters reached for the door lock and flipped it off, then lunged toward the door with all his might shoving it back against the gunman. The force of the collision sent the man backward and he stumbled to the pavement.

  As Winters climbed out from the backseat, the man who shot the driver came around the open door. By then, the first man was off the pavement and both of them grappled for Winters to wrestle him under control. Winters struck the one nearest him with a fist to the side of the face and felt the jaw crush beneath the force of his blow. As the first one writhed in pain, the second brought his pistol around to end the fight once and for all. Winters threw an elbow to his gut and the man doubled over, gasping for breath. Winters pounded him on the jaw, too, and the pistol clattered to the street. Winters reached for it, scooped it up with one hand, and ran toward the opposite side of the street in the direction Sophia had gone.

  Maria spent more time in front of the mirror than usual that morning. Not because the setup in this guest bath—one of many in Tejada’s mansion—was beyond luxurious, but because she wanted to hide the fact that she hadn’t slept one moment in the sumptuous bed. All through the night she lay awake, certain that at any moment Molina would burst into the room holding the listening device she’d stuck to the underside of the bar in Tejada’s study the evening before.

  Did guys like Molina make regular sweeps to make sure Tejada wasn’t being bugged? Why hadn’t she asked Donleavy that question?

  Maria leaned closer to the mirror and dabbed concealer at the dark circles beneath her eyes. Makeup wasn’t going to help her with the next step, which was to stay long enough to convince Tejada that she was revived by her twelve hours in his home and was ready to face the world again. She wanted to go back to her apartment, set up her laptop, and listen for incriminating conversations.

  She padded back into the bedroom and checked her briefcase for the thousandth time. If she could have carried it around the house with her she would have, but that was sure to raise Tejada’s suspicions.

  Assured that her laptop was still in place, Maria slid the briefcase under the bed and checked the gold Chelsea clock on the bedside table. She should stay until midafternoon, then she had to leave. Suddenly there was a sense of sadness to that. Despite her nervousness over planting the bug, her evening with Tejada had been . . . lovely.

  He had been more of a gentleman than any guy she’d ever dated. The fact that he was twenty years older might account for some of that, but still . . . he was polite without being stiff and charming without seeming phony.

  Their conversation had been surprisingly genuine too. Over a light dinner on the east portico and later in his study—which she had requested to see—he’d asked her questions about her family, her education, her rise at Gump, Snowden and Meir—all with a keen interest that gave no hint he was really waiting his turn to expound on himself as most men did. She’d been guarded, especially when he gently probed about her parents, but she’d told him more than she did most people.

  “I blamed my father for my mother’s death,” Maria had said as they stood on the balcony overlooking the Barcelona lights. “It was stupid. I wanted her to come to my school that day because I was presenting a science project and getting an award. How big can it be in fifth grade, right?”

  “It was big to you,” Tejada noted.

  “She said she couldn’t—she had an important case and she needed to be at work.” Maria brushed back the hair the breeze swept into her face. “That was always the way it was with her—the cases came before me. I guess at ten you have no concept of the importance of work.”

  “But you had a concept of the importance of family.”

  “It wasn’t like we didn’t have a family life, though.” Maria gave him a wry look. “I was just being a brat.”

  “I can’t imagine it.”

  “Really.”

  “All right.” His smile was wide. “Perhaps I can.”

  “My father volunteered to go with me that day.”

  “Now, your father,” Tejada said. “What did he do?”

  “He worked for the government,” Maria said—and hurried on with the story, though she suddenly doubted the wisdom of telling it. Things always got hairy when anyone questioned her about her father’s work. “I told him, no, that he should tell Mom she needed to go with me. I wanted him to be on my side.”

  “Was he?”

  “They usually didn’t take sides. That was the problem that day. I knew I wasn’t going to win and I was mad at both of them.”

  “And now?”

  “It haunted me that my last words to her were angry. I know I was just being a kid, but sometimes I would give anything to take it back.”

  “And your father?”

  “Like I said, I blamed him—for years, until I was old enough to realize that he was doing the right thing that day. But by then, we were miles apart.”

  She’d stopped there. It had always been hard to talk to anyone, except Abuela, about her father’s emotional distance after 9/11. But she’d never even admitted to Abuela that she felt he didn’t love her as much after her mother died, that maybe he’d only put up with her before because Mom wanted her. She wasn’t going to tell Tejada that, either—even though he was looking at her with fathomless compassion.

  But beyond that, something seemed not quite right with the conversation. Tejada had been listening, but perhaps too hard and too attentively, as if searching for hidden meaning in her words. Maybe she was being paranoid again. She had, after all, bugged the man’s office and his home. Maybe it was just his natural intensity that made her feel as if she’d told him more than she realized.

  All the more reason to get out of here soon, she thought now. That and the fact that, as much as it set her off balance, sh
e liked the light in his eyes when he looked at her. That couldn’t happen right now. Not as long as there was the smallest chance that Tejada knew what Molina was into. If he didn’t, maybe they could revisit this sometime. If he did, she had to run as fast as she could and not look back.

  When Maria reached the breakfast room, Tejada was nowhere in sight, but the food was there and ready. Eggs Benedict. Mozzarella cheese and tomatoes. Steaming croissants oozing with butter. A sweet-looking woman who spoke in delightfully broken English told her to get started, that Señor Tejada would be there soon.

  As Maria took a seat at the table, the woman gestured to a television in the corner. “You would like to turn it off?”

  “No,” Maria replied. “You can leave it on.”

  While she waited for Tejada, Maria poured herself a cup of tea and focused on the news.

  On the screen she saw images from Jerusalem and the announcer droned on about an incident that occurred overnight. Another issue in Jerusalem. Wasn’t there always trouble there of one sort or another? What was it this time?

  “Two tourists were attacked early this morning in Old City Jerusalem,” the anchorwoman said. She seemed about as interested in the story as Maria. “While their names remain unknown, witnesses reported the victims were a man and a woman. Both victims escaped the attack but authorities have not been able to locate them. We turn now to our CNN correspondent in Jerusalem.”

  The screen shifted to a Jerusalem street clogged with traffic and pedestrians. Three vehicles sat in the middle of an intersection. A young man’s body was draped over the steering wheel of the larger car. Maria grimaced at the sight of it. Why did they show that?

  “The intended victims still have not been located,” the young Israeli reporter was saying, “nor have the perpetrators, although witnesses said all three assailants were reportedly injured. A Jordanian group called the Army of the Mahdi, which is known to target Western tourists, has released a statement claiming responsibility and demanding that Israel lift the Gaza embargo.”