Solomon's Throne

by Jennings Wright

  Gideon got off the bed and came to stand behind her. He leaned down over her shoulder and looked at her scribbled notes. “How can you read that?”

  She reached back and slapped his leg. “Shush! Really, our only other options are one of these surrounding hills or Table Mountain itself.”

  Gideon groaned.

  “I know. But it’s not as bad as you think. When he landed here first, he was a Jesuit. The Dutch hated the Catholics, and didn’t allow any mass to be said on land. So Eduardo might have sought out somewhere he could go to worship in private, and there was only one place he could have gone…” She pulled up a Google Earth satellite image on her computer screen.

  “Cape Town was originally called the Cape of Storms, the Cabo Tormentosa. Great name, huh? Anyway, it was renamed the Cape of Good Hope, Cabo da Boa Esperanca. Much better. In 1503 Antonio de Saldanha, a Portuguese sailor, was the first European to land here, and he is the one who named Table Mountain. Not a lot of imagination there, but I guess it was a pretty obvious choice. So he climbed up to the top of that other mountain, the one with the funny top we saw coming in, between Table Mountain and Signal Hill. Lions Head. And he carved a great big cross up there. It’s still visible today…”

  “That must be some cross…” Gideon said.

  “Yep. So. I think those are our only choices. Nothing else is old enough. The Castle is not far from our hotel, so we could go check that out first just because it’s probably easiest. But I have a feeling it’s up at Lions Head.” Rei closed her laptop and stood up. “Now I need food.”

  The Quinns enjoyed a lovely dinner at the Planet Restaurant in the hotel. The monochromatic color scheme and crystal studded entrance was soothing, and the ambiance of the quiet gardens and cool breeze had relaxed the couple. They shared a bottle of South African wine, and Gideon chose the smoked crocodile for his main course, with an avocado salad. Rei, with a look of disgust at his taste, ordered a roasted kabeljou, after determining that this exotic sounding creature was actually a fairly common fish. She added a spring salad, and corrected the waiter when he thought she said the springbok. Her Southern accent was causing a bit of confusion, but she explained with a laugh that she wanted a salad and not an antelope.

  “I don’t feel like I’m working,” Rei said, sipping her perfectly chilled chenin blanc. “This is pretty darn fabulous.”

  “Don’t get used to it…” He winked at her. “But we might as well enjoy it.” They clicked glasses and laughed.

  As they walked slowly back to their cottage in the cool evening, Gideon abruptly stopped and grabbed Rei’s arm. “Shh!”

  “What…” He clamped his hand over her mouth. Rei’s eyes went wide, but she could see the still seriousness on her husband’s face. He shook his head, and removed his hand. He put his fingers to his lips and gestured for her to stay. She shook her head and grabbed his hand. He put his hands on her shoulders and leaned in to her ear.

  “Someone is in the cottage. Stay here!” he hissed.

  “It’s housekeeping!” she whispered back.

  “No, it’s not. Two men. Only penlights. Stay!” He moved off the Syndenham Terrace pathway and disappeared in the shadows. Rei stood stock still on the path for two seconds then quietly followed him.

  Gideon slowly moved through the shadows, and Rei could only see him because she was concentrating so intently. He had on dark slacks and a lightweight black sweater, and he moved slowly enough that the movement itself was unremarkable to the casual observer. She tried to mimic his movements, and was thankful for the burgundy dress and black wrap she’d packed. Her high heels weren’t doing her any favors, though, so she slipped them off and carried one in each hand. She didn’t know about snakes in South Africa, but she figured no self respecting snake was in the middle of the city and left it at that.

  Gideon had reached the side of the little cottage, and looked quickly in the window. He glanced back up the path, where his wife was supposed to be, and grimaced when he realized she wasn’t there. Of course she’s not there, he thought. He shook his head. Not time to ponder his independent wife. He looked in the window quickly again, then pressed back against the wall.

  Two men. Black hair, dressed in black, with pen lights. They were working at Rei’s laptop, but he’d set up a pretty good password system on it, so they probably wouldn’t get far. The danger was them taking it away. Rei had put a digital copy of the artifacts on another thumb drive, and stored it in the hotel’s main safe on special request from Mr. Luis Xavier. Since Xavier International supplied all the artwork for the hotel, the management was happy to accommodate him in any way possible. But it would be time consuming to have to find and purchase a new laptop, and install all the programs and safeguards they needed; time they apparently didn’t have. How did they find us? Obviously, his first course of action was to protect the computer.

  A hand clamped on his arm, and he almost gave a shout.

  “Shhhh!” Rei hissed.

  Gideon shook his head in disgust, then pointed in the window. He held up two fingers, and mimed typing on a keyboard. Rei vehemently shook her head. He patted her arm and signaled her, once again, to stay put. Fat chance, he thought. But one had to try.

  He crept slowly around to the enclosed patio. He knew that they had left the door open to catch the cool evening breeze, and unless housekeeping actually had come to their room while they were at dinner and closed it, it should still be open. He put his hands on the top of the wall and quietly vaulted over. At least she can’t do that… He smiled a little to himself. He landed silently on the grass verge surrounding the patio, and determined that the door was still open. The gauzy curtain was billowing slightly inwards with the evening air. He crouched low and stopped to listen just outside. The noise of fingers on a keyboard, clicking a few times, punching a button, and waiting. A whispered invective. Obviously trying to break the password. Most people used ridiculous things for passwords… but Gideon wasn’t most people.

  Thinking about the layout of the room, he realized that the patio door was in the bedroom. The desk was through a large doorway between the bedroom and the living area, which could be closed with two pocket doors. Those doors were open, and the desk was at a three quarters angle away from the opening. Gideon risked a quick look. One of the men was sitting in the desk chair, the other looking much as he himself had looked earlier in the day when he had been reading over Rei’s shoulder. He rolled into the room and stood up beside the armoire, which blocked any view the intruders might have of him.

  He looked around the room. He had no weapon. One couldn’t bring weapons on planes anymore, unless it was a private jet, and they certainly hadn’t thought that necessary. On the dresser to his right was a dark wooden tray with a bottle of water on it. Thank God, San Pelligrino. Glass. He eased over slowly, keeping his eye on the men. He grabbed the neck of the full bottle and turned it, making a heavy, and effective, club. It would be sufficient, if he could sneak up behind the men. If either of the men had a gun, however…Well, he’d seen Indiana Jones, and knew what happened when you brought a knife—or a bludgeon—to a gun fight.

  He took a deep breath. He could hear his heart beating, but tried to tune it out so that he could hear any changes in the cottage. What he heard was someone fumbling with the lock. Rei. The men looked up from the computer, panicked. They had become immersed in the problem of cracking the password, and had let their watchfulness lapse. In that moment, Gideon rushed forward and swung the bottle at the man standing. The man heard or felt him at the last minute and began to turn, but the bottle still cracked on his skull behind his ear. He fell to the ground, and Gideon turned to the man who was seated. With the desk in front of him, and his fallen comrade beside, he had very little room to maneuver, but he jumped up and over the desk in a quick, acrobatic movement.

  “Stop!” yelled Gideon. Just then Rei managed to open the door. The man swerved to the open patio door in the bedroom, and sprinted. He put his hands on the top of the wall
as Gideon had done, and vaulted. Gideon swung his bottle and let it fly just as the man’s feet came off the ground. The bottle hit his leg and then shattered on the wall, and the man fell awkwardly over the top of the wall, momentum carrying him. Gideon ran for the door and vaulted the wall again, a few feet to the left of where the man fell. He fully expected him to be laying on the ground in the grass, but no one was there. He looked around but saw no movement. He held his breath and listened. Nothing. Damn. After standing still for several minutes, he gave up and walked around to the front of the cottage.

  Rei was on the phone when he came in. “Yes, he went over the patio wall! I don’t know—wait, hold on a sec,” she put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Which way did he go?” she asked Gideon.

  “I don’t know—he was gone. Bastard was quick. The other one still here?” He had forgotten about the other man, unconscious in the suite with Rei, and had a moment of panic. She nodded and went back to the phone.

  “We don’t know… I think he’s hurt, because my husband beaned him with a glass bottle in the leg, and he fell over the top of the wall. But he’s gone. The other one’s still here, though.” She cut her eyes to the man on the floor, and then to Gideon. “Yeah, we’ll manage.” And she hung up.

  “The front desk is appropriately horrified, and has already called the police. They should be here any minute, and would we be pleased to make sure this man doesn’t go anywhere until they arrive…” She smiled at him. “That’s your department, hon.”

  The police had come and gone. Gideon gave them a modest explanation, explaining about the burglary in Lisbon, and the monk with the tattoo that the police there had in custody. While he was tying the intruder up with strips of the high quality hotel towels, he had seen the tattoo on his forearm, identical to the one that Brother Petros had. That should keep the cops busy for a bit, and add a bit of excitement to Interpol’s data collection department. No one knew who these people were yet, but they had more information now than a week ago, and now they had another man in custody. It was a pretty good bet that the South African police knew how to conduct an interrogation, especially when they were armed with the information from Petros. Gideon would check in with them in the afternoon.

  The management apologized profusely, and offered to move them to the Presidential suite. Rei really liked the small row of cottages, however, and Gideon thought that the odds of another break in that night were slim, so they opted instead to move to a different garden cottage under an assumed name.

  London was two hours earlier than Cape Town, so Gideon decided to call Mr. Xavier on his cell.

  “Alo?”

  “Mr. Xavier, it’s Gideon. I’m sorry to call so late, but I wanted to give you an update.”

  “Yes, Gideon. Have you found something?”

  “No sir, but I would say that we’re on the right track. Two men from the same order as our Brother Petros broke into our room tonight. The police have one in custody, but the other escaped. They were unable to get into Rei’s computer, and fortunately didn’t think to—or maybe didn’t want to—steal it.”

  “What do you mean, didn’t want to?”

  “Well, I was thinking. If they didn’t want us to know they’d followed us, or found us, or whatever they did, they might not want to steal it. We’d be bound to be suspicious, and report it to the local police. Of course, we might see it as a random crime, but with all that’s gone on, that wouldn’t be my first guess, and I think they’d been told to avoid stealing it if at all possible. They weren’t exactly computer geniuses… I think they were counting on the fact that most people use pretty simple passwords. From that, I’m assuming they don’t know who I am yet. If they’d known I was your head of security, they could have guessed it would be a bit more complicated than Rei’s birthday.”

  Mr. Xavier grunted. “Sim, I see that. So we are learning more about them, as they are learning about us. But why would they care what is on the laptop? They have the original items.”

  “They’ve always known about the letter, and we are speculating that they at least suspected a treasure. But it’s doubtful that they’re flush with cryptographers or intel specialists, especially since it appears that only the abbot knows there’s more than a letter out there. These are monks. Maybe militant monks… A few obviously have some skills, and they know how to get information. But I don’t think they’re a big worldwide group… so we’re going to be stretching them thin, and they’re probably thinking it’s easier to follow us, or steal Rei’s work, than to try to take guys out of the field to do it themselves.”

  “I am worried about that word ‘militant,’ Gideon,” Xavier said.

  “Yeah… me too. I’ll keep you posted, boss. Good night.” He rung off and looked at Rei. Yeah, me too.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The taxi dropped the Quinns at the entrance to the Castle of Good Hope, off Strand Street, at exactly 9:00. The plan was to get there when it opened, take the first guided tour offered in order to get an overall picture of the huge fort, and then explore anything they saw as a potential hiding place. Arriving at the enormous structure, however, was quite discouraging.

  “Holy cow… We are never going to be able to look at all of this place! It would take weeks!” Rei stood with her arms stretched out sideways and her head tilted back to look at the flags flying over the entrance.

  “Yeah. It’s… wow.” Gideon just shook his head. “It didn’t look so big on Google Earth.”

  “Okay. Deep breath.” Rei closed her eyes for a few moments. “So we need some kind of map, like one that shows where things were when the castle was first built. We’ll have to try to eliminate. Or use logic, anyway.”

  Gideon took her hand and led the way to the ticket booth. They looked up at the pediment over the entrance.

  “Are those Greek gods?” asked Gideon.

  “Sure looks like it…Or the Roman equivalent. I can never tell them apart. That would be Poseidon—or Neptune—with the trident. And, hmm. Who had that thing with the snakes around it? Hermes? I think that’s it. So that would be Mercury. Not sure what the deal is with all that stuff in the middle, though.” She pointed to another figure, smaller and flatter than the two gods, who was surrounded by weapons and baskets and what looked like drums. “I don’t know if that’s old enough anyway, but I’m sure Father Eduardo wouldn’t use pagan gods for his landmark.”

  They kept going, purchasing their tickets for twenty-eight rand, and getting a map of the layout of the castle. After studying it, they decided they would try the church first, but would need a plan B.

  “The de Kat balcony has a lot of carvings and reliefs, but it wasn’t built until 1695. So that’s out.” Rei pointed to the map. “There are five bastions—those five points of the star. They were named for William of Orange’s titles—I guess that was one way to come up with names. So we have Leerdam, Buuren, Catzengellenbogen—wow, that’s a mouthful! Then Nassau and Oranje. This one on the right is Leerdam… This part we’re standing in was a courtyard to protect the citizens if there was a disaster or invasion or something.” She sat down cross legged on the green lawn and spread the map on her lap. Gideon joined her and adjusted his sunglasses.

  Rei skimmed the historical section of the brochure. “The entrance was moved just before Father Eduardo came—or maybe in between his visits. It used to be over there, between Burren and Catzengellenbogen. So let’s figure we can rule out both of those sections of wall… And I don’t see him being able to gain entrance into any of the military fortifications or the town’s administrative sections. The forge has been redone and is working now, with demonstrations… But when would he have had access to a forge when the blacksmith wasn’t there? No, the more I think about it, the more I think it would have to be the church. It was a Protestant church, of course, but I think that’s our best shot.” She folded the brochure.

  Gideon said, “I say we check out the church, every square inch, inside and out. If we don’t find anything, we go to Li
ons Head. If we strike out there… well, I think we’ll have to come back here and start looking again. You have your stuff?”

  Rei nodded. She opened her backpack and took out a sketch pad, a box of watercolors, and a bunch of pencils held together by a rubber band. “I’ll move around and do quick studies while you play the bored husband and look around. I’ll call you back to me every once in awhile, so you have a reason not to go too far afield in the castle. You know what you’re looking for?”

  “An X.” He laughed.

  “Scoffer…” She stood up and wiped the back of her jeans. “Yes, an X. I think we look first at areas that had original carvings, because it would be easier to hide his mark where there were already things on the stone. Also, it would have to be near something that could be moved, so if it’s a huge sheet of solid rock, I don’t think that’ll be it. Smaller stonework, ledges, stone benches, a dirt floor, that kind of thing…”

  She and Gideon had the same thought at that moment. Gideon said, “How are we going to start chiseling the bits out with all these tourists around?”

  Rei looked around her, at the two or three dozen people already milling about, and the school groups filing in. “That’s a problem… But Gid, it would have been Father Eduardo’s problem, too. This was a working fort when he was here—it was the hub of the whole town! There were stores, and the church, and the governmental stuff, and the offices of the…” She consulted her brochure. “The Vereenighde Oost-Indische Compagnie.”