by Jill Gregory
Then Judd inquired about Stacy, triggering a sudden tense silence.
“I haven’t spoken to her in a few days.” David tried to conceal his anxiety. “She’s a bit rattled since Meredith remarried.”
Judd was no fool. He caught the flash of uneasiness clouding David’s eyes for a brief millisecond before he regained control.
The furrows in Judd’s brow deepened. “There’s some trouble here, isn’t there, David?” he asked quietly. “I can read you like my own children. Is Stacy ill?”
“No. She’s fine,” he began, then as his chest filled with pain, he shook his head. “She’s in danger, Judd. And there’s a lot of it to go around.”
The ambassador set down his chopsticks and fixed David with the intent stare that had cowed many a witness in a congressional hearing. “What are you saying?”
“You don’t want to know. I don’t even understand it myself.”
“Try me. If there’s something I can do, anything, you know I will.”
David and Yael exchanged glances. The tiny shrug of her shoulders freed him to follow his own instincts.
He looked directly into Judd’s questioning face.
“Have you ever heard of a religious sect called the Gnoseos?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Two hundred fifty miles outside of Santa Monica, and Stacy was still shivering. The dark night enfolded the open road, lit only by the distant flare of wildfires in the hills as the rented Jeep Grand Cherokee barreled east on 1-40 beneath the shadow of the Black Mountains.
Hutch glanced in the rearview minor. In the backseat, Meredith cradled her daughter in her arms. Stacy’s sobs had subsided as they’d left city traffic behind and lost themselves in the hum of the highway. Now she was settled in against her mother, no longer jumping at every white minivan that sidled alongside them.
What kind of maniac went after this kid in her own backyard? Hutch wondered.
Or was David the one they were after—was someone trying to get to him through his stepdaughter?
It was like some kind of weird déjà vu. How many years ago had he guarded David—and now this girl, who meant as much to David as if she’d been his own blood, needed his protection, too.
Meredith stirred in the backseat. “How much longer to Flagstaff?” she whispered and he realized Stacy had fallen asleep against her shoulder.
“Three hours and counting. Need a bathroom break?”
She hesitated. “Not yet. Let’s get across the state border first.”
“Comin’ up.” Hutch glanced again in the rearview mirror but it was too dark to see Meredith’s expression. When they’d zoomed away from the house in Santa Monica it had been one of pure terror. “Why don’t you try to catch a few winks and I’ll wake you when we hit the first decent rest stop in Arizona.”
“No thanks. I doubt I’ll ever sleep again,” she muttered.
“You will, I promise. Where I’m taking you, no one’s going to find you.”
Hutch was a big man, tall, with the shoulders of a bull. He was a former Navy SEAL, trained to fight and protect. Quiet confidence oozed from him and she knew she ought to feel reassured. But she didn’t. The night held menace, and her enemy had no face.
Chills prickled her arms and she tightened their grip around Stacy.
Blearily Meredith stared into the flickering headlights on the other side of the interstate, praying Hutch was right, that no one would find them. Today had started off so unremarkably and now everything was changed. She felt like a different woman. Like a fugitive, filled with terror. Not for herself, for the one person who meant more to her than anything in the world.
“I’m going to try reaching David again.” Her hand slipped to her purse for her phone.
“Good luck.” Hutch accelerated to pass an eighteen-wheeler. “For some reason it keeps dumping into voice mail.”
“You’d think he’d be checking it.” Her voice held a waspish note.
“Something tells me David’s doing the best he can right now,” Hutch said calmly. “He’ll call.”
When he does, Meredith thought, her lips clenched with barely contained tension as she flipped open her phone, he’d better explain why someone is after my daughter.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Judd Wanamaker gave a low whistle when David stopped talking. He stared from David’s taut face to Yael’s pinched one and gathered his thoughts before breaking the silence.
“This sounds like science fiction, David. Lamed Vovniks, secret cults, superceding God.”
“Don’t forget annihilating the world.” Yael slanted an even glance his way.
Judd sighed. “If you weren’t Bob Shepherd’s son, I’d be hard-pressed not to laugh in your face and walk away. But under the circumstances . . .” His shrewd gray eyes pierced David’s. “I don’t know what to make of this.”
“Judd, I know it sounds insane, but the danger is very real. The Gnoseos and their Dark Angels are very real. We were nearly killed today.” David gripped the edge of the table.
“If you don’t believe the Gnoseos are trying to end the world,” Yael interjected, “why don’t you step outside and look at the streets. This is no normal rainstorm. Have you ever seen the streets flood like this? All around the world, everything is amiss. Off center. It’s not a coincidence.”
“Maybe I should phone the President,” Judd quipped. It was half-challenge, half-joke.
David pulled his journal from his duffel. “Maybe you should read him this.”
He pushed the red leather notebook across the table. Judd reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pair of reading glasses. Silently he opened the book and scanned the pages.
“It’s a list of names.”
“Special names, according to the rabbi,” David said. “Remember when I fell off that roof with Crispin Mueller and Abby Lewis? When I died for a moment in the hospital that afternoon, I had a mystical experience. I saw the owners of these names; they spoke to me and told me to remember them. They’re the people I told you about—the ones Yael insists the Gnoseos are trying to wipe out. Somehow I’ve been given their names, Judd. The rabbi told me these are the names of the Lamed Vovniks.”
David reached over and reclaimed his journal, his hands closing hard around it. “These names match up with those Yael and her father deciphered in ancient papyri found in the Middle East.”
Yael leaned forward. “The papyri have been authenticated. They’re fragments of the legendary Book of Names first recorded by Adam.”
Judd looked startled. “As in Adam and Eve?”
“Now you’re beginning to understand,” Yael said softly.
Judd frowned. “Do you realize what you’re saying?” He turned toward David, his gaze piercing. “What does this have to do with you leaving the country?”
“David needs to meet with the mystics in Safed,” Yael answered before David could speak. “He might hold the key to unraveling the Gnoseos’ plan. We believe David has special knowledge which no one else on earth possesses. Archaeologists are nowhere near assembling the complete text of Adam’s Book.”
She glanced over at David. “And if he stays here,” she said slowly, “the Gnoseos will find him and kill him.”
Find. Kill. Suddenly, David peered at his watch. Why hadn’t he heard from Hutch yet? Or Meredith or Stacy?
He checked his cell phone. He’d missed four calls. “Excuse me a second,” he muttered as he retrieved his messages.
“Oh God.” The words blurted hoarsely from his throat.
Yael and Judd both froze.
“Someone tried to grab Stacy. She got away—she’s with Hutch—Meredith, too.”
“David, no.” Judd pushed back his chair and stood up, his brow creasing in consternation. “Is she all right? Did they go to the police?”
“Hutch says she’s okay. The police came right away, before Hutch got there. He’s taking them to the cabin.” David pivoted toward Yael, his jaw clenched. “When will the team Avi sent g
et there?”
“Tomorrow. Give me their destination and I’ll call the team for an estimated time of arrival.”
She unfolded her legs and came smoothly to her feet, moving to a corner of the screened room.
“I’ll be at the UN first thing in the morning for the passport,” David said tightly. “Whether you buy any of this or not, Judd, I need it.” His gaze locked with the other man’s.
“You’ll have it. I. . . I don’t know what to make of this, David. I’m a man of faith. You know that. But. . .” Judd Wanamaker clasped his arm. “How can any of this be true? It seems to me—”
“No!” Yael’s cry interrupted him. “That’s impossible!”
Her fingers were clamped around the cell phone as she listened, and tears sprang into her eyes. When she clicked off, she moved woodenly toward them, her face white as the rice left on their plates.
“That was Avi. The team’s plane went down. Both engines exploded over the Atlantic.”
David’s stomach plunged.
“El Al engines don’t just explode,” she said raggedly. “Not on their own and not both at once.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
With their heads lowered against the downpour, Yael and David struggled up Parkside toward the Riverside Tower. Not an unoccupied cab in sight and the puddles were now ankle deep. A savage wind slapped at them as they dodged across intersections, ignoring the traffic signals, desperate only to escape the fury around them.
Other pedestrians likewise ran, fighting to win the battle against the buffeting winds so intent on making a mockery of their umbrellas. The few vehicles on the street sprayed water as their tires churned the rising puddles.
David and Yael had gone less than a block when he spotted signs for a flower shop and a Duane Reade drugstore and then—from a basement entrance—in flickering purple neon: TAROT READINGS.
He snagged Yael’s arm. “I have an idea,” he yelled over the rain. “This way.”
They dashed down the half-staircase and through the door painted with an unblinking crimson eye. A crystal wind chime pealed their arrival. The room in which they found themselves smelled oddly of vanilla and garlic. Several folding chairs surrounded a table centered in the room, a dusty chandelier gleaming dully above it. Pots of ferns, lucky bamboo, and sword-shaped sansevieria flanked the corner display case, where amulets twinkled beneath soft accent lights. A rickety bookcase on the opposite wall leaned to one side, crammed with a jumble of books.
Then a curtain of beaded gold threads shimmered and parted—an old woman appeared. She was tiny, in an ankle-length black skirt and embroidered purple tunic, and her graying hair hung down her back in a thick braid. David would have put her in her seventies, but her skin was smooth and dewey and her exceptionally small hands were unmarred by veins. The cataracts clouding her pale umber eyes betrayed her years though, as did her eyelids, thin and crinkled as crepe.
She moved toward the round table, which was draped with a long satin cloth. An unlit candle and matches huddled in its center. Without fanfare, she scooped up a deck of tarot cards.
“Welcome. I wasn’t expecting visitors on such a rainy night. Which of you would like a reading?”
Me. If only I believed you could tell me if Stacy is all right, David thought grimly. Not knowing was torture, but he had to push that worry aside for now.
“We’re here for information, actually.” David pulled out a chair for Yael and then took the one beside her.
“The cards contain a great deal of information,” the old woman said, offering the deck. “Who would like to shuffle?”
Instead of accepting them from her, David riffled through his duffel and yanked out the rabbi’s tarot card.
“I’m more interested in what you can tell us about this.”
With a look of annoyance, the woman set down her deck and settled into a chair across from them. She took the card from him with a shrug, studying the tower illustration for a moment before flipping the card over.
“It’s a Tower card. What else do you want to know?”
“Got ’em. I know the area.”
James Gillis snapped his fingers at Enrique, lying across one of the double beds in their Lower East Side motel room. At once, the Puerto Rican sprang off the bedspread, snatched the van keys from the bureau, and strode to the door. Gillis was still talking rapidly into his cell phone as the door thudded shut behind them.
“We’re on it.” Gillis raised his collar against the deluge. “Enroute as we speak.”
He briefed his partner as they hustled for the van.
“We got damn lucky. Got ourselves a second chance. They just left Yotsuba. Over near Riverside Park.”
Yael scooted her chair closer to the table. “We need to know what the images on this card mean.”
The tarot reader pushed the card at her and met Yael’s eyes.
“The Tower card is a message card from the higher arcana. It’s the most ominous card in the entire deck.”
“Ominous in what way?” David asked.
Her gaze shifted to his intent face. “It points to death, destruction, fear, and sacrifice. In other words, something’s about to change.”
She jabbed a ragged fingernail over the figures tumbling from the tower. “It’s spelled out right here—a mighty fall leading to the revelation of an ultimate truth.” She leaned back and out of nowhere a pure white cat leaped into her lap. David hadn’t even noticed it in the room until now.
Her fingers stroked its fur as she spoke. “Kabuki, you’ve come to inspect the visitors.”
David shifted in his seat. “Is there anything else?”
“How much time do you have?” she asked with a smirk. The cat sprang from her lap as she rose and shuffled to the bookcase. She scanned the shelves, then pulled out a fat volume and brought it back to the table.
Her fingers deftly found the page she sought. “Here.” She began to read, squinting, holding the book close to her clouded eyes.
“The warrior planet Mars rules the Tower card, which makes it a card about war.” Her lips pinched around the word.
She continued reading from the book in a singsong. “A war between structures built of lies. And”—she pointed to the lightning bolt shattering the turret on the card’s tower—“a blinding flash of truth.”
She set down the book and peered at them. “When someone gets this card in a reading, I warn them to expect a shocking revelation. Something powerful enough to bring down a king—or to shatter a system of long-held beliefs.”
A system of long-held beliefs. The sashimi churned in David’s stomach. Would you call the civilized world a system of long-held beliefs?
Don’t start buying into this woo-woo stuff, he told himself. As the old woman started to speak again, a crash of thunder reverberated. Sudden blackness clamped over the tiny room, leaving them breathless during the moment it took the tarot reader to strike a match and light the fat candle in the center of the table.
“That’s better,” she murmured calmly, as a wisp of vanilla scent trailed upward from the candle flame.
David glanced around, anxious for the power to come back on. It didn’t.
Beside him, Yael’s face shone ghostly and tense in the flickering candlelight. But her voice was strong as she abruptly changed the direction of the conversation.
“Does the book say anything about a connection between the tarot and Jewish mysticism?”
“Of course. Kabbalah.” The old woman nodded in the dimness. “Some sources say they’re related, and some say they’re not. There are numerous similarities, to be sure.”
She pushed the book toward David. “The power’s not coming back on so quickly. Your eyes will find it easier in the candlelight than mine.”
“We already know about the numerical connection between the cards and the Hebrew alphabet,” David told her as he flipped past illustrated pages to the index. “The twenty-two cards in the major arcana, the twenty-two letters in the alphabet.”
&
nbsp; He felt the cat slink around his leg, rubbing the length of its torso against him. “Kabbalah—here we go,” he said. Turning to the middle of the book he began to read aloud.
“The tarot deck mirrors the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Just as there are ten Sephirot, there are ten numbered cards in each suit of the tarot’s minor arcana. There is another fascinating connection—the four mystical worlds in which the Tree of Life exists—earth, air, water, and fire—are reflected in the tarot’s four suits—pentacles, swords, wands, and cups.” David glanced up to see the candle flame flickering in the old woman’s irises as she smiled.
“If you want even more connections, I’m sure you can find countless charts in the New York City Public Library,” she said. “On the other hand,” she added with a snort, “you’ll also find a plethora of books claiming the tarot has nothing at all to do with Kabbalah. That the Knights Templar took it from the Saracens.”
She tilted her head sideways. “Then again, there’s a strong contingent which insists that the world’s very first tarot deck was introduced in the mid-fifteenth century by the Gnostics.”
A jolt of electricity shot up David’s spine.
“Is that so?” He picked up the Tower card. “Can you see anything here that’s particularly relevant to either Kabbalah or the Gnostics?”
She snorted again. “Of course. One could hardly miss it.” The woman shot him a patronizing smile as she took the card and flipped it over, holding it closer to the candle’s wavering light.
“This—the double ouroboros.”
“That’s Greek, isn’t it?” Yael peered at the two serpents swallowing each other’s tails, their bodies forming a figure eight.
“Of course. Greek for tail-eater. To the Gnostics, a single wingless snake swallowing its tail represents the sun or the world. But a double snake like this is called the Great World Serpent—the gnostic symbol of the eternal cycle of death and rebirth.”
