Nervous with anticipation, as cautious as if it were made of glass, the man carried the stone fragment to put it with the one he already had. The fragment from the Vatican lay inside an open suitcase on a sideboard in the center of the suite. He peeled apart the wrappings and put the cloth aside and, after gently examining the shimmering green stone, he placed it in the suitcase beside its twin. When the two stones touched, he could have sworn he felt an electrical discharge. The hair on his forearms bristled.
“Thank you for your assistance,” the man said, finally turning to Noah and extending his hand.
“Just remember our agreement,” Noah replied with a trace of bitterness.
“Don’t worry. I am a man of my word. You want to be able to walk again, and I promised you that,” the man replied, and he smiled at Noah. He closed the lid of the suitcase and snapped the clasps shut, then turned and handed the case to Ossana.
“Finish it.”
“Yes, Daddy.” She took the suitcase, gave her father another kiss on the cheek and turned away. Noah nodded to the man and rolled after her. She was already waiting for him in the elevator.
When they stepped out onto the rear helideck, four fully-equipped soldiers jumped into the helicopter’s cargo hold. Eight more boarded the chopper on the front helideck: twelve combat-ready soldiers in two choppers awaited Ossana’s orders. Two men from the ship’s crew hoisted Noah into the machine and secured the wheelchair in place. The rotors, already idling, began to turn faster.
Ossana, not yet on board, looked up one last time at her father, who watched her departure from the master deck. She waved at him, then made a circular movement with her left arm, signaling “GO” to the pilot. With catlike elegance, she sprang into the helicopter, took her place on the end of the bench seat and closed the door. Moments later, the two machines lifted off in perfect synchrony from their respective helidecks and turned toward the west.
67
Lalibela, Ethiopia
Riding in the De Havilland DHC-8-200 turboprop was a bone-rattling affair. Unfortunately, they had been forced to leave the Pope’s luxurious jet behind in Addis Ababa; machines like that could not land at airports as small as the one at Lalibela. To get to such a remote place, especially with a storm on their tail, took something of a spirit of adventure. Normally Tom would have been in his element, but the events of the last days had sucked all the joy out of the trip.
Tom stared out the window, lost in thought. Even in the worst patches of turbulence, his expression didn’t change. Hellen sat beside him. She felt sorry for everything he had been through, but for the moment had pushed aside whatever other feelings she might have for him. She wanted and needed to be there for him, but there was too much at stake. Right now only one thing mattered, and that was getting through this flight in one piece. Eyes closed, she sat with her seatbelt cinched tight and her fingers digging into the armrests.
Tom’s own emotions were stuck in a loop. He couldn’t think. Anger, vengefulness, disgust, desolation, disappointment—the feelings cycled every second or two. Uncle Scott was dead, and Noah was working with Ossana. He still couldn’t get his head around either fact. His best friend had switched allegiance, and was now working for the people who had killed not only Tom’s parents, but his beloved uncle and friend. He could understand that Noah was angry with him, even that he hated him. He was the reason Noah was in the wheelchair in the first place. But to turn into a terrorist and put the world in danger? Tom could not stand by and let that happen. He had to stop Noah.
When the plane finally landed safely on the remote runway in the middle of the barren landscape of Lalibela, Hellen literally had to slap Tom out of his maudlin thoughts. He hadn’t even realized they had landed. They took their few belongings from the overhead lockers and disembarked with the other passengers. The plane had come to a stop in a small service area directly in front of the terminal, beside the lone runway. Except for the air traffic control tower, the building looked more like a regional bus station than an airport terminal.
They left the building and were met immediately by their local contact, in an ancient vehicle reminiscent of a jeep. Abebe Abiye’s dark-tanned, leathery skin made it almost impossible to estimate his age, but there was a welcoming smile behind his black beard. Like most of the men around them, he wore light, sand-colored pants beneath a knee-length caftan and the traditional white scarf. On his head he wore a plain white turban.
Next to him stood a young woman, also wearing a white scarf: Vittoria Arcano.
“Thanks for coming,” Tom said as he greeted the athletic and attractive young woman. The former Interpol agent had literally bumped into Tom on her first day of work in Rome six months earlier, and he had turned her life upside down. A couple of hours later, she had saved his life. He could trust her.
“Nice to see you again,” Hellen said, shaking Vittoria’s hand and looking her up and down. She turned to a puzzled Tom and added, “We met at my parents’ house in Antwerp.”
“The pleasure’s mine,” Vittoria replied. She turned to Tom. “And thanks for calling. I really needed to get away.” She jumped enthusiastically into their transport.
“Mr. Wagner, Ms. de Mey, welcome to Lalibela,” said Abebe Abiye cheerfully. He held out his hand toward the car invitingly. Somewhat skeptically, Tom and Hellen took their seats in what Tom guessed was a mostly home-made car.
“You should put these on.” Vittoria handed Tom and Hellen the same kind of scarf that she was wearing. “We’ll blend into the crowds much better.”
“Thanks,” said Tom, accepting the scarf that all pilgrims wore when they visited the rock churches of Lalibela. “I hope we’re not too late,” he shouted as they roared away.
They had been driving for about twenty minutes through the harsh, hilly landscape when the small village appeared down below. Abebe Abiye stopped the car.
“Very strange,” he said. “There are never storms in the dry season.” He pointed away to the east, where dark clouds loomed. The massive thunderstorm was moving in their direction, and only minutes later the first fat drops began to fall. But rain was not all that the dark clouds brought with them. Two dark-gray helicopters rode in on the storm, thundering over the little village of Lalibela.
68
Lalibela, Ethiopia
The dark helicopters swooped in to land over the small clearing between the northern and eastern groups of churches, scattering hundreds of the visiting faithful. The soldiers leaped clear of the helicopters the instant they touched the ground. Pilgrims on their way to the churches turned and ran in fear, back along the road that led to the valley. Mothers grabbed their children and fled. Within minutes most of the people in the area had moved to safety, leaving the area around the churches all but empty.
The noise abated when the helicopters shut down their engines.
“Bring me the priests,” Ossana ordered. Followed by three soldiers, one of them pushing Noah’s wheelchair over the uneven ground, she headed for the eastern complex of churches.
Nine soldiers fanned out to carry out Ossana’s order.
* * *
Abiye’s “jeep” bumped down the main road into the village. Once they had seen the approaching helicopters, they were forced to make their arrival as covert as possible. Abebe Abiye parked the car behind some trees below the eastern churches, and the four of them crept through the bushes and up the red boulders, concealing themselves in a rocky niche a little off the track with a clear view of the Bet Amanuel church and what Ossana and her men were up to.
* * *
The twelve churches of Lalibela were divided into a northern and an eastern group about five hundred yards apart over an area of forty acres. However, Bet Giyorgis—the church consecrated to St. George—lay a little farther away, up the hill a short distance to the west. The soldiers worked their way methodically through the twelve churches. Some were no more than small holes carved into the rock, one had formerly been used as a prison, and others were impressive sculptures in
their own right. The soldiers dragged the peaceful priests, who normally spent their days at their desks reading from the ancient scriptures, away by force. They drove the priests in front of them, herding them together like cattle. Even now, some of the faithful were still trying to find their way to safety. Soon, all of the priests were crowded before Ossana beneath the artificial canopy that covered the church of Bet Amanuel and its surrounding chasm.
Abebe Abiye gasped when he saw the captive priests. “We have to help them,” he said, his voice filled with desperation.
“No, stay here,” Vittoria said, pulling him back. “There’s nothing you can do right now.”
From their hiding place they watched Noah, who seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He forced the priests to kneel side by side in a single line. Then he rolled from one to the next. Behind them stood three soldiers, covering the priests with their automatic weapons.
“What is your name?” Noah asked the first priest.
One of the soldiers translated his words.
“Tesfaye,” replied the fearful priest.
“Where is the Holy of Holies?” Noah said.
Tesfaye shrugged and shook his head. “Everything here is holy. It is a sacred site,” he replied. Noah slapped the man, knocking the turban from his head, but Tesfaye ignored the humiliation. The other priests had their eyes closed and murmured prayers to themselves. Noah’s impatience grew. He demanded a pistol from one of the soldiers, who hesitated and looked to Ossana. A small nod from her was enough: the man obeyed and handed Noah the gun. Noah cocked the weapon demonstratively in front of the second priest and pressed the pistol to his head. With fiery eyes, Noah glared at the man.
“Look at me. Open your goddamned eyes. Where is the Holy of Holies?” Noah bellowed, his question echoed instantly by the translator. The priest did not react. Like his brothers, he rocked back and forth, praying. The ear-splitting blast of the gun smashed through the monotonous drumming of the rain. Even Ossana flinched—she had not reckoned with this. The man’s head jerked back and then rocked forward again, and his lifeless body slumped sideways to the ground. Tesfaye, his face and clothes covered in his brother’s blood, looked at Noah in terror. For a moment Noah did not move. He gazed vacantly, maniacally, at nothing.
A silent scream escaped Hellen as she tried to process the horror of the crime committed by a man whom she had considered a friend until a few hours earlier. Fury coursed through Tom’s veins. Noah had gone completely out of his mind. All four of them were soaked to the skin, and yet the tears of anger welling in Hellen’s eyes were unmistakable.
“We have to do something,” said Vittoria with an edge of desperation. Abebe Abiye crossed himself.
“Yes, we do. We can’t let Noah shoot them one by one until he gets what he wants,” Tom whispered.
“The priests won’t say a word,” Abiye said bitterly. “They’ve sworn to protect the stone, even if it means their own death.”
“What do you suggest?” Hellen said to Tom.
“We have to get our hands on the third fragment. If we can destroy it, then all of this is over.”
“We can’t just destroy it! The Holy Father s—” Hellen protested, but Tom cut her off.
“No! What we can’t do is let a dangerous artifact fall into the hands of psychopaths who want to unleash a catastrophe that will make the seven biblical plagues and climate change look like a Teletubbies picnic.” Tom held his breath for a moment and looked Hellen in the eye. She knew he was right.
69
Lalibela Airport, Ethiopia
Cloutard passed through the arrivals hall at the small airport. The entire building was unadorned, and was painted a bland, ugly grayish-beige. Several tourists milled in the hall, there to visit the rock churches. Lalibela had not yet suffered the indignities of mass tourism, but even UNESCO was afraid that the internet and people’s insatiable urge for ever more exotic destinations would one day reduce this holy place to yet another backdrop for obligatory Instagram selfies.
Cloutard’s gaze wandered through the hall until he found something to admire: the artfully decorated ceiling. It was paneled in wood and depicted crosses in various shapes, calling to mind the rock churches of Lalibela. In the past, Cloutard had often been a frequent visitor to the village: the entire region had always been a lucrative site for a tomb raider and smuggler of historical relics. He deactivated the flight mode on his phone and a half-second later a message reached him: a picture of his contact. Cloutard memorized the face and eyes and scanned the none too spacious hall.
“Monsieur Cloutard?”
Cloutard turned to see the man whose picture he had just received.
Cloutard nodded. “Oui, c’est moi.”
“We have no time to lose. We have quite a bit to do, and the clock is ticking. Come, come.”
The man hurried him to the exit and out to an old, dented van covered with stickers of Bob Marley, Rastafarian motifs, and portraits of the last Emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie. Cloutard tossed his travel bag into the back seat and climbed in. Seconds later, the man was already stepping on the gas.
“We have to take a small detour to get to the entrance unseen.”
They left the airport grounds and drove north along a gravel road.
“Cela pourrait être une mauvaise tempête,” Cloutard murmured and pointed to the dark clouds that starting to gather over Lalibela.
“Pardon?”
“Sorry. I just said that I was surprised at the storm,” said Cloutard.
“Yes. So are we . . .” said the man, a trace of worry in his voice.
After about thirty minutes, they reached a hotel called the Old Abyssinia Lodge. As soon as they had passed by, the driver made an abrupt left turn and drove cross-country. The bus bumped down the hill past the hotel. Cloutard held on tight, afraid that the bouncing, bumping vehicle might break apart at any moment, but it stayed in one piece. At the bottom of the hill, something resembling a roadway reappeared and the drive continued in a more civilized manner. After another five minutes, the man braked and the vehicle rolled gently to a stop. Cloutard could see no reason for him to do so—all around was barren land, dried up trees, rocks and withered, prickly bushes.
“Here we are,” the man said, as if that must be obvious to anyone, and he climbed out of the van. Cloutard followed him, looking around in confusion.
70
The rock churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia
The storm was gradually growing to biblical proportions. Muddy rivulets splashed down the hillside and washed the priest’s blood away into the valley. The rain whipped mercilessly into Ossana’s face, but it did not bother her. She was a soldier.
She stood at the edge of the rocky plateau and looked down on the church of Bet Amanuel. Along with the famous Bet Giyorgis, it was one of the two churches of Lalibela whose rooflines were flush with the ground. Here, the tuff had been excavated to a depth of more than thirty feet to create an impressive, monolithic house of God. The muddy rainwater, inexorably following the pull of gravity, washed around Ossana’s military boots and plunged downward into the “churchyard”—a narrow, excavated area surrounding the structure and separating it from the rock face. The only entrance was on the upstream side, so the water had nowhere to run off. Instead it pooled there, filling it little by little. The water from the paths and the other churches higher up the hill joined it; the walkways, hand-cut ravines and churchyards carved into the volcanic rock were only equipped with rudimentary drains; they weren’t made to handle such an unprecedented downpour.
Ossana gazed out from under the canopy at the surrounding landscape and wondered where Tom Wagner was. He would not have given up. Was he already here? Was he watching? Had he perhaps already found the stone? I have to play this safe, she told herself and she made a barbaric decision.
“Stop this! Noah, you won’t get anywhere like this. They won’t talk.” Ossana went to Noah, who was about to send the priest Tesfaye to join his brother with a
bullet. “I have a better idea.” She turned to one of her soldiers and gave him an order in Afrikaans. He nodded.
“On your feet! Move!” the soldier barked cruelly, and they herded the priests down to the Bet Amanuel church. Ossana watched from a ledge above and Noah rolled to a stop beside her. They both looked down.
“This is your last chance,” Ossana shouted down as loudly as she could. Even so, the storm all but drowned her out. “Where is the Holy of Holies?” The priests, already standing knee-deep in muddy water, continued to ignore her and went on muttering their prayers. A small wave of Ossana’s hand was enough; the soldiers forced the distraught priests inside the church. One by one they were pushed through the narrow doorway, then the soldiers closed the rough wooden door and wedged it shut, leaving no way for the poor clergymen to escape. The water was rising relentlessly. Soon it would swallow the church completely.
The voices of the priests, resigning themselves to their fate with prayer, could no longer be heard. The din of the rain drowned out everything.
“Find me the Holy of Holies,” Ossana shouted at her men. She looked around, wondering if this would be enough to lure Tom out from wherever he was hiding.
* * *
“She’s going too far,” Tom growled. “When I get my hands on the stone, I’m going to find her and jam it somewhere the sun never, ever shines.”
“I’ll take care of the priests,” Vittoria said. Tom nodded and she slipped away.
“Tell us, where exactly is the stone?” Hellen asked Abebe Abiye. He hesitated. Could he really trust these two? They had come to rescue the stone and with it the legacy of his people, not to enrich themselves with it. And in the broadest sense, they had been sent by God, after all.
The Library of the Kings: A Tom Wagner Adventure Page 19
