The Judas Strain sf-4

by James Rollins

  He searched the immediate vicinity, watching for any sign of threat or suspicious approach. Had they shaken Nasser? Having put half the world between them, Seichan seemed confident. But Gray refused to let his guard down. Below, in the hotel’s courtyard, a pair of men rose from beaded blankets, finished with their morning prayers, and vanished back into the hotel. Alone now, a child splashed absently in the lobby fountain.

  Satisfied, Gray allowed his gaze to shift momentarily higher. Hotel Ararat stood in the heart of Istanbul’s oldest district, the Sultanahmet. All the way to the sea, ancient structures rose like islands from the muddle of the lower streets. Right across from the hotel, the lofty domes of the Blue Mosque climbed into the sky. Farther down the street, a massive Byzantine church stood half swallowed by black scaffolding, as if the ironwork sought to clutch the structure to the earth’s bosom. And beyond the scaffolding, the Topkapi Palace sprawled amid courtyards and gardens.

  Gray felt the weight of ages in these grand architectural masterpieces, stone monuments of history. His fingers absently fingered the cross around his neck. Here was another piece of antiquity, its provenance ripe with historical significance. But what did it have to do with Seichan’s global threat? A cross that once belonged to Marco Polo’s priest?

  “Hey, Ali Baba,” Kowalski called out behind him. “One more of these licorice drinks.”

  Gray bit back a groan.

  “It is called raki,” a new voice corrected, full of professorial authority.

  Gray turned. A familiar and welcome figure stepped from the shadowed stairway onto the rooftop terrace. Monsignor Vigor Verona spoke in Turkish to the tea waiter, polite, apologetic. “Bir sise raki lütfen.”

  The waiter nodded with a smile and stepped away.

  Vigor approached their table. Gray noted the lack of Roman collar around the man’s neck. Plainly the monsignor was traveling incognito. Free of the collar, Vigor appeared a decade younger than his sixty years. Or maybe it was the casual manner of his dress: blue denim jeans, hiking boots, and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He also carried a weathered backpack over one shoulder. He looked ready to scale the mountain for which Hotel Ararat was named, off on a search for Noah’s Ark.

  And perhaps once upon a time, the monsignor had made that very trek.

  Before rising to prefect of the Vatican’s archives, Vigor had served the Holy See as a biblical archaeologist. Such a position had also allowed him to serve the Vatican in one other manner. As spy. Vigor’s cover as an archaeologist had permitted him to travel broadly and deeply, perfect for filtering intelligence and information back to the Holy See.

  Vigor had also helped Sigma in the past.

  And it seemed his expertise was needed once again.

  Vigor settled to the seat with a long sigh. The tea waiter returned and settled a steaming cup of tea in front of their new arrival.

  “Teşekkürler,” Vigor said, thanking the man.

  Kowalski shifted straighter as the waiter departed, staring between his empty glass and the back of the man’s embroidered vest. He slumped, swearing softly under his breath about the poor service.

  “Commander Pierce. Seichan,” Vigor began. “Thank you for honoring my request. And Seaman Joe Kowalski. Wonderful to make your acquaintance.”

  A few other pleasantries were passed around. Vigor haltingly mentioned his niece Rachel. It was an awkward subject. Rachel and Gray’s breakup had been a mutual understanding, but Vigor was still very protective of his niece. Not that she needed it. It seemed Rachel was faring well as a lieutenant with the Italian carabinieri, even gaining a pay grade.

  Still, Gray was happy when Seichan interrupted. “Monsignor Verona, why did you summon us all the way to Istanbul?”

  Vigor silenced her with a raised palm, sipped from his tea, then lowered his cup precisely to the tabletop. “Yes, we’ll get to that. But before that, I want two things settled at the start. First, wherever this leads, I’m coming with you.” He pinned Gray with a firm, unwavering stare — then swung his sights on Seichan. “Second, but no less important, I want to know what all this has to do with our illustrious Venetian explorer Marco Polo.”

  Seichan started. “How did you…I never mentioned anything about Marco Polo?”

  Before Vigor could respond, the waiter returned. Kowalski glanced up, hope in his eyes. Those same eyes widened further when the waiter produced a full bottle of raki and propped it in front of the former seaman.

  “I ordered you a half liter,” Vigor explained.

  Kowalski reached over and squeezed Vigor’s arm. “Padre, you’re all right in my book.”

  Gray turned his attention to Seichan. “So what does all this have to do with Marco Polo?”

  MIDNIGHT

  Washington, D.C.

  The black BMW sedan turned off Dupont Circle and glided through the darker streets. Its xenon headlights carved a bluish path down the elm-lined avenue. Rows of apartment buildings framed the street, creating an urban canyon.

  It was nothing like the canyons of Nasser’s own land, where only goats roamed and caves and tunnels served as homesteads for the wandering Afghani tribes. Yet even that land was not truly his home. His father had left Cairo when Nasser was eight years old, off to Afghanistan after its liberation from Russian forces, to join those who sought a purer Islam. Nasser’s younger brother and sister had been dragged there, too. They’d had no choice. On the eve of their departure, his father had strangled his mother, using Nasser’s own school scarf. His mother had not wanted to leave Egypt, to vanish forever beneath a burka. She had talked, complained in the wrong ears.

  The children had been forced to watch, kneeling in obeisance, as their mother’s eyes bulged, tongue swollen, punished by their father’s hand.

  It was a lesson Nasser learned well.

  To be cold. In all ways.

  The xenon lamps swept around a corner. From the passenger seat, Nasser motioned to the middle of the block. “Stop there.”

  The driver, his broken nose bandaged after the failed kidnapping, slid the sedan to the curb. Nasser twisted around to face the rear seat. Two figures huddled close together.

  Annishen, dressed all in shades of black, almost faded into the leather furniture. She even wore a hood over her shaved scalp, giving her a monkish appearance. Her eyes shone brightly out of the darkness. She had one arm around her companion, leaning close, intimate.

  He still mewled around the gag. Blood blackened one side of his face and throat. In his bound hands, clutched between his knees, he still held his own right ear. Nasser had discovered the man’s name in a Rolodex.

  A doctor.

  “Is this the place?” Nasser asked.

  The man nodded vigorously, squeezing his eyes shut after verifying the address.

  Nasser studied the building’s lobby. A night watchman was stationed behind a desk inside. A security camera protruded above the bulletproof glass doors. Full security. Nasser rubbed his thumb along the edge of the electronic key in his hand, a gift courtesy of their passenger.

  After a full day, Nasser was finally back on the trail of the American and the Guild traitor. Last night, he had searched the small home in the Takoma Park neighborhood. He had discovered Seichan’s damaged motorcycle in its garage, but little else. There had been no sign of the obelisk, except for a broken fragment of Egyptian marble in the driveway.

  But inside the house, Allah had smiled upon him.

  Nasser had discovered a Rolodex.

  With several doctors’ names.

  It had taken the rest of the day to find the right one.

  He turned around again.

  “Thank you, Dr. Corrin. You’ve provided the leverage I’ll need.”

  Nasser had no need to nod to Annishen. Her blade slipped between the man’s ribs and opened his heart. It was a Mossad technique that Nasser had taught Annishen. He had employed it himself only once before.

  As his father knelt in prayer.

  Not a child’s
vengeance. Only justice.

  Nasser shoved open the door to the sedan. He owed his father — if only for the lesson taught to an eight-year-old boy, kneeling before his strangled mother.

  Such a lesson would serve him again this night.

  To be cold. In all ways.

  Exiting the car, Nasser crossed and opened the rear door. Annishen unfolded out of the backseat, rising with a rustle of black leather, resplendent in an Italian-designed calfskin jacket and a dark suede outfit, a match to his Armani suit. There was not a drop of blood on her, proving again the artistry of her craft. He slipped his arm around her and closed the door.

  She leaned against him. “The night is just beginning,” she whispered with a contented sigh.

  He pulled her closer. Just two lovers returning from a late dinner.

  The summer night was still muggy, but the apartment lobby was air-conditioned. The doors sighed open to greet them with a swipe of Dr. Corrin’s key card. The guard glanced up from his desk.

  Nasser nodded to him, striding toward the neighboring elevator bank. Annishen offered a tinkling giggle, purring up against Nasser’s side, plainly anxious to get to their apartment. Her hand sidled to the holstered Glock at his waist.

  Just in case…

  But the guard merely nodded back, mumbled a “good evening,” and returned his attention to the magazine he was reading.

  Nasser shook his head as he reached the elevator bank. Typical. What passed for security here in America was more show than substance.

  He called the elevator with a press of a button.

  Shortly thereafter, Nasser and Annishen stood before apartment 512. He swiped the same key card across the door lock. The indicator light changed from red to green.

  He glanced to Annishen. He read the dance in her eyes, stirred from the earlier bloodshed.

  “We need at least one of them alive,” he warned.

  She feigned a pout and drew her weapon.

  Using one finger, Nasser pushed the door handle down. He edged the way open on well-oiled hinges. Not even a creak. He entered first, slipping into the marble foyer. A light flowed from a bedroom in back.

  Nasser paused just inside the door.

  One eye narrowed.

  There was something too still about the air. Too quiet. He needed to go no farther. He held his breath. He knew the apartment was empty.

  Still, he waved Annishen to one side. He took the other. In moments, they swept the apartment’s rooms, checking even closets.

  No one was here.

  Annishen stood in the master bedroom. The bed was made and looked untouched. “The doctor lied to us,” she said with clear irritation and a moderate note of respect. “They’re not here.”

  Nasser was in the master bathroom. Down on one knee. He had spotted something on the floor, rolled under the edge of the bathroom’s cherry vanity.

  He picked it up.

  A red prescription bottle. Empty.

  He read the label. The patient. Jackson Pierce.

  “They were here,” he muttered hard, and straightened up.

  Dr. Corrin had not lied. He had told them the truth — or at least, what he thought was the truth.

  “They’ve moved on,” Nasser said, and strode back to the bedroom.

  He clenched the empty pill bottle in his fist, swallowing his fury. Commander Pierce had tricked him yet again. First with the obelisk, now with this shuffle of his parents.

  “What now?” Annishen asked.

  He lifted the pill bottle.

  One last chance.

  7:30 A.M.

  Istanbul

  “To begin, Seichan said, “what do you know about Marco Polo?”

  She had donned a set of blue-tinted sunglasses. The sun had risen enough that the rooftop restaurant was a mix of shadows and glaring brightness. They had moved to a secluded corner table, sheltered under an umbrella.

  Gray heard the clear hesitation in her voice — and maybe a trace of relief. Her will teetered between a wary desire to control the flow of knowledge and a compulsion to release the burden of its weight.

  “Polo was a thirteenth-century explorer,” Gray answered. He had read up a bit on the man on the journey here. “Along with his father and uncle, Marco spent two decades in China as honored guests of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. And after returning to Italy in 1295, Marco narrated his travels to a French writer named Rustichello, who wrote it all down.”

  Marco’s book, The Description of the World, became an instant hit in Europe, sweeping the continent with its fantastic tales: of vast and lonely deserts in Persia, of China’s teeming cities, of far-off lands populated by naked idolaters and sorcerers, of islands fraught with cannibals and strange beasts. The book ignited the imagination of Europe. Even Christopher Columbus carried a copy on his voyage to the New World.

  “But what does any of this have to do with what’s going on today?” Gray finished.

  “Everything,” Seichan answered, glancing around the table.

  Vigor sipped his tea. Kowalski leaned his ear on a fist propped up by an elbow. While the man looked bored, Gray noted how his eyes clocked around, studying them all, tracking the interplay. Gray suspected there were depths to the man as yet unplumbed. Kowalski absently fed crumbs of tea cakes to scrabbling sparrows.

  Seichan continued, “Marco Polo’s tales were not as clear-cut as most people believe. No original text exists of Marco Polo’s book, only copies of copies. And in any such translations and reeditions, marked differences have cropped up.”

  “Yes, I read about that,” Gray said, trying to hurry her along. “So many disparities that some now wonder if Marco Polo ever really existed. Or if he was merely a fabrication of the French writer.”

  “He existed,” Seichan insisted.

  Vigor nodded his head in agreement. “I’ve heard the case against Marco Polo. Of the significant gaps in his descriptions of China.” The monsignor lifted his cup. “Like the Far East’s passion for drinking tea. A concoction unknown to Europeans at the time. Or the practice of foot binding or the use of chopsticks. Marco fails to even mention the Great Wall. Plainly these are glaring and suspicious omissions. Yet Marco also got many things right: the peculiar manufacture of porcelain, the burning of coal, even the first use of paper money.”

  Gray heard the certainty in the monsignor’s voice. Maybe it was just Vigor’s Italian pride, but Gray sensed a deeper confidence.

  “Either way,” Gray finally conceded, “what does this have to do with us?”

  “Because there was another serious omission in all the editions of Polo’s book,” Seichan said. “It concerns Marco’s return trip to Italy. Kublai Khan conscripted the Polos to escort a Mongol princess named Kokejin to her betrothed in Persia. For such a grand undertaking, the Khan supplied the group with fourteen giant galleys and over six hundred men. Yet when they reached port in Persia, only two ships had survived the journey and only eighteen men.”

  “What happened to the rest?” Kowalski mumbled.

  “Marco Polo never told. The French writer Rustichello hints at something in the preface to the famous book, a tragedy among the islands of Southeast Asia. But it was never written. Even on his deathbed, Marco Polo refused to tell of what happened.”

  “And this is true?” Gray asked.

  “It is a mystery that was never solved,” Vigor answered. “Most historians guessed disease or piracy beset the fleet. All that is known for certain is that Marco’s ships drifted among the Indonesian islands for five months, only escaping with a fraction of the Khan’s fleet intact.”

  “So,” Seichan asked, pressing the significance, “why would such a dramatic part of his journey be left out of Marco’s book? Why did he take it to his grave?”

  Gray had no answer. But the mystery stirred a nagging worry. He sat a bit straighter. In his head, he began to get an inkling of where this might be leading.

  Vigor’s countenance had also grown more shadowed. “You know what happened among
those islands, don’t you?”

  She dipped her head in acknowledgment. “The first edition of Marco Polo’s book was written in French. But there was a movement during Marco’s lifetime: to reproduce books in the Italian dialect. It was driven by a famous contemporary of Marco Polo.”

  “Dante Alighieri,” Vigor said.

  Gray glanced to the monsignor.

  Vigor explained, “Dante’s Divine Comedy, including the famous Inferno, were the first books written in Italian. Even the French came to nickname the Italian language la langue de Dante.”

  Seichan nodded. “And such a revolution did not pass by Marco. According to historical records, he translated a French copy of his book into his native language. For his countrymen to appreciate. But in the process, he made one secret copy for himself. In that one book, he finally related what befell the Khan’s fleet. Wrote that last story.”

  “Impossible,” Vigor mumbled. “How would such a book have remained hidden for so long? Where has it been?”

  “At first, at the Polos’ family estate. Then eventually in a place more secure.” Seichan stared at Vigor.

  “You can’t mean—”

  “The Polos were sent abroad by order of Pope Gregory. There are some who claim that Marco’s father and uncle were the first Vatican spies, sent as double agents into China to scout the strength of the Mongol forces. The veritable founders of the agency you once served, Monsignor Verona.”

  Vigor sank back into his seat, retreating into his own thoughts. “The secret diary was hidden in the archives,” he mumbled.

  “Buried away, unregistered. Just another edition of Marco’s book to all outside eyes. It would take a thorough reading to realize that there was an extra chapter woven near the end of the book.”

  “And the Guild got ahold of this edition?” Gray asked. “Learned something important.”

  Seichan nodded.

  Gray frowned. “But how did the Guild get their hands on this secret text in the first place?”