by Joseph Nagle
Michael looked at the colonel. He nodded and pushed the door fully open.
Walking inside, Sonia was nearly robbed of her breath as her eyes darted around. The walls of the room towered thirty feet over them and were covered nearly completely from top to bottom by brilliant and rich frescos of landscapes, the sky, angels and apostles—dense imagery and detailed moments from the Bible.
The Tower of Winds.
The colors were dramatic, vibrant, and alive.
The room seemed to move.
Overhead, the vaulted arches of the Tower of Winds were covered with the Allegories of the Seasons: magnificent and meticulously detailed depictions of summer, autumn, winter, and spring. Sonia was struck by the feeling of movement and had to catch herself from nearly losing her balance as her mind played with vertigo.
Sonia focused on a spot overhead to counter the slight dizziness she felt. It was a mistake. The ceiling was painted with a sky so realistic the clouds gave the faux appearance of depth and circular movement. She stumbled from the effect.
Sonia exhaled quickly and shot her eyes toward the floor. Latching onto a spot that obviously was steadfast, she regained her balance.
Colonel Camini leaned in and whispered, “That happened to me, too, the first time I was here. It’ll pass.”
Sonia offered a weak smile.
Michael looked up at the ceiling; adorning the bulbous clouds, he saw, were the pale bodies of celestial figures that circumambulated in the center of the ceiling a simple but odd-looking device.
In the middle of the bold blue of the densely painted ceiling, which was split by the high rising arches, was a metal wind rose, its points capped with stars. It looked at least three feet long and punctuated the high center of the room; its long iron hand was frozen in time—just as the parchment had said: the wind no longer blows.
Sonia pointed upward, and all eyes followed.
“The anemoscope?” asked York.
“It is,” answered Michael without emotion.
The anemoscope.
While all eyes stared upward, Michael retraced his downward glance to the tiled floor. The symmetry of stone was laid out in mosaic fashion. To most, the floor would come across as unremarkable in contrast to the near confusion of brilliant artwork splashed across every other part of the room.
Michael followed the length of the room with a slow stare; the middle of the room was split by a narrow but long white marble line that ran north and south.
The meridian line.
Surrounding the meridian line were outlines of concentric circles of dark stone; each subsequent outline reduced in size as each made its way toward the room’s center. There, an eight-pointed circular rosette was carved in white marble.
Michael walked to the round piece of white marble and stood over it, studying its features. Nothing stood out, and he furrowed his brow.
While Michael stared at the circular disc on the floor, Sonia and the colonel walked nearly side by side around the room. York was close behind. As they moved, the colonel pointed out and named the artwork. At the south wall, he said, “The Shipwreck of St. Paul in Malta.”
They continued walking clockwise around the room from the west wall to north, east, and finally the south wall. The colonel continued to name the frescoes, “The Allegory of the North Wind, the Oriental Heresies, and finally, one of my favorites: The Calming of the Storm and Epileptic Demoniac.”
“That’s some name, Colonel,” Sonia proclaimed as she moved closer to the wall to inspect the richly detailed fresco.
“It’s from the Book of Mark and depicts two of Jesus’s miracles. Here,” the colonel pointed to a man being held by another; nearby, a third man looks ready to strike the held man with a heavy club but was being restrained by another from doing so. “That is the Epileptic Demoniac—a boy plagued with the evil spirit has it driven out by Jesus. And in the background, on the water, you can see a vessel where Jesus sat as he calmed the torrent of the Sea of Galilee.”
“They’re just heavenly,” Sonia proclaimed. It was the only thing that she could think to say.
York had been listening and interrupted, “Miracles and demons; controlling the weather? It looks like just another self-serving, flamboyant painting to me. You know what I see?” York’s question was meant to be rhetorical, and he continued, “I see a couple years’ worth of work that made one guy richer while letting a couple thousand families go without food, proper clothing, or adequate shelter, so that this church could boast about some over-the-top brushstrokes of a man and time that are both irrelevant. Yeah,” York blurted as he shoved roughly past the colonel, “that’s what I see: a reminder that those of us without any power or wealth are insignificant and unimportant, nothing more than pests or pawns. Take your pick.”
The colonel remained collected and turned to the young Green Beret; his words echoed across the stone and plaster of the room, “They are allegories, Staff Sergeant.” And then the colonel did something that surprised all of them, Michael included. He put a paternal hand on the shoulder of York and calmly said, “Young man, the painting tells of the need to have faith, even when we are feeling our darkest pains of despair, when we are tormented with no end in sight to the fury. It is a reminder that it is faith that will heal us.”
York didn’t say a word. He thought of his dead men, of his wife. He wanted to hate the colonel, but couldn’t, try as he might. There was something genuine in his nature and a commitment in his tone. He hated that he knew the colonel was a good man; he wanted to despise him. York’s eyes glanced away. He didn’t want to look at the colonel; instead, glancing over the man’s shoulder, what he saw quickly, and thankfully, snapped his attention elsewhere.
In the corner of the room and adorning the cutout of the door they had used to enter the Tower of Winds was another painting, one the colonel hadn’t yet told them about.
The Angel Marks the Forehead of the Chosen.
“Doc,” York called out, shaking the colonel’s hand from his shoulder, “take a look.” York pointed toward the door that they had walked through, over which was the painting.
Sonia caught the colonel’s eye and silently acknowledged what he had tried to do.
Michael moved toward where York now stood rigid; Sonia and the colonel joined in the movement toward the fresco. All gazed upon it. It was identical to the one in the colonel’s castle, although much larger.
There was one slight difference, however, and it immediately caught Michael’s attention. The angel towered prominently in the center of the painting and was painted much more brightly than the other figures. Around the angel’s head was a very large, and even brighter, halo that looked quite solar.
“Now what?” York asked.
It was a question that all had been thinking.
Michael couldn’t help but to lock his eyes on the angel and the halo. Inexplicably, he looked back at the meridian line and the white marble disc, and then back to the halo surrounding the angel.
“Colonel, what time is it?”
The colonel looked at his watch and replied, “Less than ten minutes shy of noon, Michael—why?”
Michael didn’t respond and anxiously moved back to the circle and the meridian line; he was facing the south wall and staring intently. But it wasn’t the painting that he studied.
Michael’s mind was running like the raging current of a flooded Colorado river. He snapped his head left and right and then up to the ceiling. He paced quickly around the round white marble disc on the floor.
And then he walked around it again—this time in the opposite direction.
“What is it, Michael?” Sonia asked as she moved closer to Michael and the center of the room.
“I’m not sure,” replied Michael. “Colonel, the medallion—please give it to me.”
The colonel walked toward Michael with his hand in his pocket. He was pulling out the round medallion, but before he could give it to Michael, a long, shrill scream spilled from Sonia’s lips.
Across the colonel’s face was an interesting mix of surprise and fear where there should have been pain.
The large, capable man fell slowly to both knees with little drama, given what just had occurred.
In the middle of the room, Michael stood in front of the colonel, who was now fully on his knees and barely able to maintain his balance. His hands were draped loosely at his sides. A slow trickle of blood dripped from the right corner of his mouth. He looked curiously at Michael. The colonel slowly uncurled his fingers, and the medallion fell quietly from his palm to where his fingertips met the stone.
Michael’s return stare was without emotion; instead, his eyes were firmly latched onto another man.
Behind the fallen colonel, a stocky man stood with his right arm outstretched. In it, his silenced Glock had a slow-rising stream of blue smoke.
Sonia was wrapped strongly in his left arm.
York was frozen but sizing up the man.
It didn’t matter.
With a snap of his wrist, the end of the gun was aimed at York. Gerald pulled the trigger.
Another silenced shot.
York fell, only able to spill out a quiet grunt.
Sonia tried to scream but was met with sound of nothing; her voice failed her.
Michael calculated the scene.
Two men were down; his wife was a captive.
He waited for the man to speak.
“Pick it up, Dr. Sterling,” Gerald commanded as he nodded toward the medallion that had fallen from the colonel’s limp hand.
Michael did as he was told. He shared a moment with Sonia as their eyes locked. His glance spoke of the need to be calm; hers said that she would comply, understanding his request. Instantly, she relaxed her muscles and let the fear-driven tension melt away.
She trusted her husband.
Michael bent down to one knee in front of the colonel and picked up the medallion. The colonel pushed himself onto one hand, smiled at Michael, and weakly said, “I’m sorry, Michael. I wish you luck.”
And then he grunted oddly; a bit of bloody sputum gurgled atop his lip, and he fell into Michael’s arms. Michael gently laid the colonel to his side and wiped away the blood. Cupping the back of his old friend’s head, Michael replied, “I am sorry, too, Colonel.”
The colonel’s eyes were closed, but he whispered words that only Michael could hear, “The medallion is the key: ein gift.”
And then the colonel’s last breath passed over his already ashen lips.
Michael silently mourned, the emotion quickly turning to anger. He bore a stare into the armed man that promised vengeance and matter-of-factly growled, “Let her go; you and I can manage this from here.”
“And if I don’t, Dr. Sterling?” Gerald answered.
Michael was pithy and snarled evenly; there was an icy sincerity in his stare: “I will kill you.”
This caused Gerald to smile. “Your reputation certainly is spot-on, Dr. Sterling. I’ve heard that you don’t beat around the bush. So let me respond in kind. Take me to the king’s body, or she dies.” Gerald turned the silenced weapon toward Sonia’s temple. It was the second time in less than a day that Michael had seen his wife in the grips of death; it didn’t make it any easier.
Michael squeezed the medallion while frantically dissecting the colonel’s last words: the medallion is the key—ein gift. “The king’s body? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Michael lied, trying to buy some time.
Gerald screamed back; his carotid artery bulged in tandem with each escalating syllable. “Don’t fucking toy with me! You know very well that Sebastian’s body is here! Now finish your job and find him!”
“Not until you let her go!” Michael shouted as he stood and faced the man squarely.
His voice still laced with ire, Gerald yelled, “Dr. Sterling, this is not a negotiation. Your men are dead; your wife will be, too, if you don’t get to work!”
Michael knew that they were finished with their volleys; there would be no further discussion. Instead, he acquiesced. He stole another glance at his wife; he could see that she was calm. She continued to surprise him with her strength.
The medallion was heavy in his hand. Michael squeezed it until it hurt. He looked at it intensely: the medallion is the key—ein gift.
The room at one time had appeared voluminous, but now the walls felt as if they were collapsing in on him. Michael felt the breath being robbed from his lungs. The frescos rained upon him from every angle: above, to the left and right, to his back, and directly in front. They were everywhere. Michael’s eyes went to the only place in the room where there was no artwork—they went to the floor.
Michael could feel his heart beating hard as the seconds ticked slowly by; he squeezed the medallion even harder.
He looked up at his wife. She was beautiful, even when in the grips of an armed man; he couldn’t help but be taken by the outline of her symmetry. Her voice echoed inside of his mind. He thought of how she had described the artwork: they’re just heavenly.
Sonia had been remarking to the colonel her thoughts on the beauty of the tower’s frescos.
They’re just heavenly.
Her words repeated incessantly in his mind as loud as a beacon is bright.
They’re just heavenly.
Michael looked to the ceiling and studied the anemoscope. Then he spun around on his heels and did the same with each fresco, starting with the north wall and then to the south, east, and west walls. And then he looked at the one that York had found: The Angel Marks the Forehead of the Chosen.
The angel was painted brightly, brighter than the rest. Around its head was a detailed, golden halo.
But a halo it wasn’t, thought Michael; it was the sun, a solar symbol and a symbol used by many gods—Osiris, Sol Invictus, Helios, Apollo; the list went on. All were solar deities and sun gods; all were intertwined in history as they were with this room—reincarnations, reinventions, or amalgamations of one another.
His mind was a blur of thoughts; he fought to find a connection, and then he looked at the floor. His eyes were drawn again to the white marble disc. He traced the meridian line that split it in half.
A solar calendar.
A loud crack echoed suddenly in the room as a bullet ricocheted at Michael’s feet.
Michael jumped instinctively to the side; his heart pounded in his ears.
Sonia let out a muffled shriek.
A new stream of smoke drizzled upward from Gerald’s weapon. “I’m losing my patience, Dr. Sterling,” he yelled. Moving the weapon toward Sonia, he pressed the barrel of it firmly into her temple.
She winced, and it was the first time that Michael saw a sliver of true fear drape over her face.
“Wait, goddamn it! Just wait!” Michael screamed, holding his hand out at the armed man. “The king’s body is here, in this room. I think I know how to find him!”
Gerald let the bore of the pistol fall away from Sonia’s temple. He said, “It’d be better to know than to think, Dr. Sterling—explain.”
“This room is one big celestial allegory,” Michael began as he gestured upward with his hand. “Above, the ceiling represents the winds of the sky, the stars, the sun, and the moon. You can see them clear as day.” Michael’s voice rose as he continued. “Each of the frescoed walls in this tower represents the story of a season.”
Gerald yelled out, “I’m not here for a lesson in art history; get to your point!”
“Above, on the ceiling, is heaven; around us, on these walls, is the earth.”
Gerald interrupted, “And beneath us, Dr. Sterling? Are you trying to say that the king’s body is beneath us?”
“No.” Michael’s answer confused Gerald and Sonia both.
Gerald shook his weapon at Michael. He was clearly agitated. “I’m tired of chasing you around. I’ve got as much patience as a teenager with a fistful of dollars in a whorehouse! You’ve ten seconds to explain, or I end all of this and tell my people that
you couldn’t finish the job!” Gerald re-aimed the weapon at Sonia’s temple.
“Ten, nine, eight…,” Gerald counted down. “Seven, six…”
Beethoven’s Fur Elise interrupted the countdown. The colonel’s outstretched arm had pulled his shirt taut, exposing his wrist upon which was his chrome Tag Heuer. The lively bit of piano play from the colonel’s watch rhythmically announced that noon had arrived.
“I’ll only need five,” Michael dryly stated and pointed. “Watch.”
It was five seconds later, indeed, when a very curious event occurred. From a hole in the south wall, previously invisible, a bright line of thin sunlight shot through and down to the floor.
It rested directly atop the meridian line and in the center of the white disc. The agitated dust in the room sparkled around the beam of light as it erratically and slowly floated in all directions.
Normally such an event wouldn’t have made most people think twice: in the Tower of Winds, it happened every day of each passing year and precisely at noon.
It marked the passage of time and was the Tower of Winds’ main responsibility beginning from the time Pope Gregory XIII had declared that the Julian calendar was no longer valid.
Gerald stared mesmerizingly at the beam of light; Sonia did, too.
Michael squeezed the medallion between his palms and twisted. It grated noisily as it split apart. In a moment, it was in two halves; in the middle of each half, on their insides, was an oddly shaped protrusion. Michael knelt to where the beam of light met the floor.
In the center of the small circle of light was an otherwise nondescript hole, which was now brightly illuminated by the beam’s end. No different than any of the other numerous and irregular but naturally porous markings of the old stone, it wouldn’t have warranted a second glance under any other circumstance.
Circumstances, however, had changed.
Michael pushed one half of the medallion into the hole; the protrusion on the medallion’s innards fit perfectly, offering no resistance. The medallion soaked up the rays of the sun, and then an even more curious thing occurred: the beam of light that penetrated the small hole of the south wall refracted off of the medallion. It splashed across the door of the room.
