The Golden City fr-3

by John Twelve Hawks

  They passed through two sets of doors and entered the church. Frayed carpets covered the marble floor and muffled their footsteps. The bright desert sky disappeared and the only light came from oil lamps and candleholders hanging from chains attached to the blue-green ceiling. The most striking feature of the church was an elaborate gold and silver screen between the public area and the altar. A monk wearing black robes stood in front of the screen and hissed at anyone who tried to take a photograph.

  Gabriel and Simon inspected a reliquary for St. Catherine that held a section of her leg; it looked like an old chicken bone found in the backyard. Then Simon paced out the interior dimensions of the church while Gabriel sat in one of the wooden pews. A massive brass chandelier hung overhead, and he realized that it was in the shape of a dragon. Icons of saints and martyrs covered the walls. They stared at him with large black eyes and Gabriel felt like he was being judged by some heavenly tribunal.

  A chattering group of Christians from Goa left the church, followed by a crowd of Russians and third group of Poles. At that moment, the church became silent, peaceful, extraordinarily holy. Even the monk seemed to relax. He stared at Simon and Gabriel-decided they were harmless-and left through the main entrance.

  “Follow me,” Simon told Gabriel. “I think I found the chapel entrance.”

  Gabriel left the pew and hurried down the aisle. A tapestry hung on the wall at the front of the church. It was a murky image of Moses parting the Red Sea. Touching outside of the dusty cloth, Gabriel felt a door handle.

  “Is it the right location?”

  “Yes. It matches Youssif’s map…”

  Before they could pull back the tapestry, the main door squeaked open and the monk reappeared with a new group of tourists. Gabriel and Simon left the church, crossed the courtyard and passed through the gate in the monastery wall.

  “I paced the length of the church when we were inside,” Simon said. “Factoring in the thickness of the wall, I think there is just enough space for a hidden room.”

  “Do you think Linden can make a deal with the monks?”

  “Who knows? I’m sure he is prepared to offer a bribe.”

  The two men circled around to the eastern side of the monastery. During the modern era, the monks had decided to install running water and a sewage system. Instead of drilling through the wall, they had bolted a four-inch water pipe to the outside of the sandstone. Gabriel touched the rough surface of the pipe and looked up.

  “I could climb this to the roof. Once I was up there, there’s a gap between the monk’s living quarters and the church. I could jump onto the roof of the church and get inside through the bell tower.”

  “That sounds like a good way to break your neck,” Simon said. “Let us go back to the guesthouse and see if our friend had any success.”

  They found Linden sitting on the terrace near the guesthouse restaurant. The French Harlequin looked out of place among the pilgrims. Most of them were women wearing black dresses with white scarves covering their hair and heavy silver crosses hanging from their necks. The few men in the group wore frayed suit coats and white shirts buttoned up at the collar. They chained smoked cigarettes while chatting with the Greek Orthodox priest who led the group.

  Gabriel sat down at the white plastic table. “What happened?”

  “I distributed some money to the staff, then went to the monastery and talked to the abbot.” Linden tossed a fake business card on the table. “I said I was a film producer who wanted full access to the church to take photographs. The abbot said that it would take at least six months to negotiate permission from the Patriarchate of Alexandra. I offered him a small amount of money, then a much larger amount. He looked tempted, but he still said no.”

  Simon wiped the sweat off his forehead with handkerchief. “Gabriel thinks he found a way in.”

  “If I were you, I would go tonight. Visitors only stay here for one or two days. They climb Mount Sinai, see the sunrise, then buy a T-shirt and get back on the tour bus. If we stay here any longer, someone will get suspicious.”

  The three men went inside the restaurant for dinner. When they returned to the terrace, the mountains were black silhouettes while the sky held onto the fading light. A figure passed through the shadows and stepped onto the terrace. It was the teenage boy with the crippled leg who had carried their luggage to the rooms. Looking nervous, he approached Linden and whispered something in French. Linden slipped some money into the boy’s hand, and then motioned him away.

  “We should take our walk now. The boy’s cousin works at the guard station. He says that men in a silver pickup truck just arrived and they are talking to the captain.”

  Gabriel and Simon stood up immediately. They followed Linden off the terrace and hiked a few hundred yards into the darkness

  “Are they from the Tabula?” Gabriel asked.

  “I doubt it. The boy said that they are military policeman. If they find us, they will ask some questions and make sure we are not Israeli spies.”

  “”Let’s make them work hard for their bribe,” Simon said to Linden. “I will only speak Italian. You can speak French.”

  “What if they ask about me?” Gabriel said.

  “I will explain that you hiked up Mount Sinai to pray.”

  “Yes. You are very religious.” Simon laughed softly. “We won’t tell them that you’re breaking into the chapel.”

  Trying not to trip over stones, the three men headed up the canyon to the monastery. Gabriel could hear camels grumbling in the darkness as the Bedouin got them ready for the pilgrims that would appear a few hours before dawn. The night landscape and the dark shapes of the mountains made him feel tired and lonely. This wasn’t heaven or hell-just an odd sort of purgatory.

  After ten minutes of walking, they found the drainpipe Gabriel had noticed earlier that day. The monastery wall appeared more formidable in the darkness-a massive stone barrier.

  “Stay here,” Linden whispered. “I will see if anyone is in the area.” He passed through the shadows and vanished around the southeast corner of the wall.

  Simon Lumbroso sat down on a boulder and contemplated the moon rising over Mount Sinai. “I am starting to understand why Moses led the Israelis to this awful place. It is about as spare and simple as an empty room. You do not want distractions from the word of the Lord.”

  Gabriel looked upward at the night sky and found no beauty in the stars. Some of them had perished billions of years ago, but their light still traveled through the universe.

  “Linden thinks that Maya is dead.”

  “No one knows what happened to her. Anything is possible.”

  “She crossed over into First Realm and sacrificed herself…”

  “That was her choice, Gabriel. We talked it over when she came to Rome.”

  Linden came around the corner of the wall. “The outer doors are locked and no one is in the area. Start climbing. Let us hope that the monks are asleep.”

  Gabriel grabbed the water pipe and began to climb upward, using both his hands and feet. Even in the dim light, he was aware of the different layers of the wall. The first forty feet consisted of massive sandstone blocks, quarried and dragged to the site by the Emperor Justinian’s soldiers. The stone blocks in the second layer were much smaller-about a foot square-and held together by mortar. As his arms and shoulders began to ache, he reached the top of the wall: a three foot layer of irregular stones and pebbles that the monks had picked up on their walks. Gabriel looked down and saw that Linden and Simon were moving away from the monastery. He reached out to the edge of the flat roof and pulled himself up.

  The roof was a dumping place for broken bricks and rusty pipes. Be careful, he thought. You’re right above someone’s bedroom. Trying not to make any noise, he crossed the roof and looked at the gap between the monks’ living quarters and the roof of the church. It was too dark to see the courtyard below. It felt like he was about to throw himself into a bottomless pit. He remembered what one
of the Free Runners told him before he ran across the roofs of Smithfield Market. Watch your feet, but don’t look farther down.

  He paced out three steps from a starting point to the edge. One deep breath, and then he was running, jumping, flailing his arms as he fell through the darkness and landed on the church’s red tile roof. He slipped, started to fall, and then held onto the tiles and lay flat. Everyone heard me, he thought. Everyone knows I’m here. His brain conjured up scenes of monks jumping out of bed and running downstairs to sound the alarm.

  But nothing happened. All he could hear was his own breathing and the faint scratching sound of his fingernails on the tiles. Gabriel crawled across the roof to the bell tower and climbed inside. Once again, he waited a minute or so to see if anyone was coming, and then he climbed down the steps to the foyer. The inner door squeaked faintly as he turned the handle.

  Votive candles in red glass holders burned like coals in a dying fire. The faces of the icons were absorbed by the darkness, but the candlelight was reflected by the gold frames and brass chandeliers. When Gabriel walked over to the left aisle of the church, he saw one of the monks in front of the altar screen. He was an old man-very short with hunched shoulders-and he held a length of prayer beads with a spindle at one end. As he prayed and paced, he manipulated the chain with his thumb and forefinger. The spindle turned clockwise like a miniature prayer wheel while the monk’s sandals scuffled across the stone floor.

  Gabriel stood on one side of a pillar and wondered what to do. If he moved forward, the monk would see him immediately; if he tried to leave the church, the outer door might be locked. He waited in the shadows for over twenty minutes until the inner door swung open and a second monk entered the church. The two men spoke to each other in Greek, and Gabriel wondered if someone had heard his footsteps on the roof. The old monk headed toward the side aisle, then changed his mind and followed the younger man out of the church.

  Were they gone for the rest of the night or just a few minutes? Gabriel grabbed one of the candles and hurried past the altar screen to the tapestry. Pulling back the dust-covered fabric, he found an oak door with cast-iron door handle and keyhole lock. Quickly, he tied back the tapestry. The lock looked fairly new, but the monks hadn’t installed a new door. Standing sideways, Gabriel kicked above the lock. He kept kicking until a section of the wooden frame cracked off and the door popped open.

  The chapel was smaller than he had imagined-about twelve feet long and six feet wide. A white stone altar displayed a gold cross and two candle holders. Directly above the cross was a murky looking painting of Moses standing beside the burning bush. There was a three-legged stool in one corner next to an embroidered pillow, but no other furniture was in the room.

  Gabriel circled the small space again and again until he noticed a marble slab resting on the floor below the altar. It was a rectangular piece of stone that looked like the top of a sarcophagus. A cross and Greek letters were carved into the surface.

  Kneeling on the floor, he pushed the slab back a few inches and saw darkness surging and flowing like black oil in a white stone box. The Traveler reached out his hand and moved his fingers. No burning bush. No voice of God. He was in this world, this particular reality, but that was only one thin layer of a far more intricate system. Then he lowered his hand into the darkness and watched it disappear.

  10

  Hollis met Linden in the storeroom above the falafel shop a few days before the Harlequin escorted Gabriel to Egypt. Linden sat by the window dropping shreds of black tobacco into a square of cigarette paper. He rolled the cylinder between his stained fingers and then nodded in Hollis’s direction. Go ahead. Talk.

  “Gabriel said you could help me get to Japan.”

  The big Frenchman lit the cigarette and flicked the dead match through a crack in the window. The tobacco gave off a faint odor of burnt sugar. “I bought you a plane ticket using one of my Luxembourg corporations.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out an airline ticket and a packet of British pounds. Both gifts were tossed onto the table.

  “Thank you.”

  “Ne tracassez pas. This was not my idea.”

  “Then thank Gabriel.”

  “You are not connected to us any longer, Mr. Wilson. But remember this fact: you will be punished if you mention the Traveler to anyone.”

  A stack of newspapers were on the table and Hollis assumed that a handgun was concealed beneath Le Monde. If there was a confrontation, he wondered if he would have enough time to draw his knife and drive it into the center of Linden’s chest.

  “I respect Gabriel,” Hollis said. “And that’s never going to change. I keep my promises. You know that.”

  Linden appeared to be calculating an equation with a half-dozen factors that related to Hollis’s death. Apparently, there was some advantage to letting him live. The Harlequin shrugged his shoulders.

  “Au revoir, Mr. Wilson.”

  “Not yet. I want to meet this Japanese woman that Gabriel told me about-the one who speaks to the dead. He said you’d know how to find her.”

  “She is called an Itako. You should speak to Sparrow’s old friend-a high school teacher named Akihido Kotani. After Sparrow was killed at the Osaka Hotel, Kotani claimed the body and helped get Sparrow’s pregnant fiancée out of the country. I was in contact with Kotani for a few years, and then he stopped answering email. But he sent me some books once, and I still have his card.”

  “That’s all? Just his card?”

  “This is your problem, Mr. Wilson. You have to solve it on your own.” Linden pulled out a dog-eared business card and placed it on the table. A name was given in Japanese, French and English.

  Akihido Kotani-White Crane Books-Jimbocho- Tokyo .

  ***

  Hollis’s plane arrived at Narita Airport early in the afternoon. It took an hour to get through passport control. After a series of polite questions, the immigration officer ordered the foreigner to open his suitcase. The atmosphere was tense and slightly hostile until Hollis held up a karate uniform and two books on Japanese martial arts that he had purchased in London. The immigration officer nodded as if this answered all his questions, and Hollis was allowed to leave the detention area.

  He exchanged his money and took a train into Tokyo, passing through suburbs crammed with two and three-story concrete block buildings. Each residential apartment had a little balcony with a hibachi, a few plastic chairs and a potted bush that offered a splash of green. Winter had passed, but it was still cold. Little chunks of ice clung to the blue tile roofs beneath a pearl gray sky.

  The conductor was neatly dressed and very efficient. He stared at Hollis when he punched his ticket, then relaxed when the foreigner took out the martial arts book. “You are student?” the conductor asked in English.

  “Yes. I’ve come to Japan to study karate.”

  “Good. Karate is very good. Always obey your sensei.” At Ueno train station, Hollis went into a cubicle in the men’s toilet. He opened up the back of his notebook computer, took out a ceramic knife blade and handle, then joined them together with epoxy glue. The eight-inch long ceramic knife was light, durable and very sharp. Hollis slipped the weapon into a nylon sheath strapped to his arm and then threw away what remained of the computer.

  As far as the Japanese were concerned he was a gaijin: an “outside person” who would never fit in. Hollis left his bag in the checkroom and stepped out onto the street. Everyone was staring at him; he fumbled through his canvas shoulder bag, found his sunglasses, and put them on to conceal his eyes.

  ***

  It took him three hours to reach Jimbõchõ-a Tokyo neighborhood comprised of small buildings and shops near Nihon University. Hollis quickly discovered that most of the streets and alleyways in Tokyo were unnamed and that addresses didn’t follow the western system. Usually, a small plate was attached to each building. It showed something called a banchi number that indicated the district and lot. But the numbers weren’t always
consecutive, and he saw a few Japanese men wandering through the area with an address on a slip of paper.

  He searched through his phrase book, learned how to say sumi-masen-”excuse me” in Japanese-and began to ask directions to the White Crane bookstore. No one in Jimbõchõ had ever heard of the place. Gomennasai, everyone answered-”I’m sorry”-as if their lack of knowledge had caused his confusion. Hollis followed side streets that wandered left and then right like ancient pathways. There were very few children or teenagers on the streets. The city felt like the Kingdom of the Old, a land occupied by short elderly women who wore running shoes and pushed portable shopping carts.

  Hollis had grown up in cities and didn’t particularly care about nature. But in Tokyo he became aware of the crows, large black birds with jabbing beaks. Everywhere he walked, they were watching him, perched on telephone poles or strutting down the middle of alleyways like little potentates of darkness. A few of them made a screeching sound when he waved his hands or kicked a piece of trash in their direction. It sounded like they had their own crow language they expected him to understand: we see you, gaijin. We’re watching you.

  He stopped at every bookstore he could find and asked if they had ever heard of White Crane Books. After two hours of searching, he saw a bookstore that looked like a hole burrowed into a shabby apartment building. Two bookshelves on wheels were out on the street with plastic tarps attached in case of snow or rain.

  Hollis looked inside the shop. It was a dark tunnel lined with books-some of the volumes were arranged on shelves, but most of them were stacked on top of each other or dumped into cardboard boxes. An older Japanese man wearing a tweed jacket sat at the end of the tunnel and read a book stuffed with pieces of paper. A wad of tape held his eyeglass frames together.

  “Good afternoon, sir. Can I help you?”

  “Just looking…” Hollis entered and found a wall of books in various foreign languages. “You got a hell of a lot of books here.”