by Linda Stasi
“I will fix this. I will make it right. You know that.”
I looked at him, pressed my lips together, and nodded my head. I finally said, “I know that. And I know I can’t talk you out of doing it your way.”
“No, you can’t. It won’t be right while that son of a bitch is walking this Earth.”
“I know that, too.”
We just sat there for a few more minutes in silence until Pantera finally said, “Let me go settle up with Frankie in the back.”
“How did you know that’s what you do at Rao’s?” I laughed miserably at him. “And besides, it’s my treat tonight.”
“It’s never your treat. Old school, remember?” He kissed me lightly on the forehead and got up from the booth. I watched his lean and gorgeous frame saunter into the back room to settle the bill.
I stood up, grabbed my coat, and started walking—I passed the jukebox, the bar, the kitchen, and finally made it to the front door. It had started to rain so I put my collar up and my head down, opened the door, and climbed the few steps up and out to the sidewalk.
My cell phone rang. I thought it was him, but when I looked at the screen it read: “Councilman Alonzo Curry.” I let it go to voice mail.
I stood in the rain for a moment on the sidewalk, just thinking. Then I turned on my heel and began walking up Pleasant Avenue past the school.
I raised my hand. “Taxi!”
41
EPILOGUE
Bin Jawwād, Libya
The man in the fedora made his way along the broken city street. The city, which lay on the former front line between Libya’s two rival governments, didn’t look like the bustling area he remembered from days past. Many of the villagers, fishermen, oil workers, shepherds, clerics, and shopkeepers had fled—some to encampments in the desert, some to join ISIS, others had died in the fighting, and still others had simply disappeared.
The man, however, was unafraid as he stood in the broken archway of partially destroyed building, his suit and fedora covered in dust. He knew he was being watched, but he wasn’t afraid because he had a big connection there—the biggest.
The sun blazing down, he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe his forehead and looked around. He was surprised that his friend Sheik Abu Ali al-Turkmani hadn’t sent an armed escort to greet him. What nerve! The two men had agreed that he’d be at this secret location at this precise time.
Feral dogs roamed freely looking for food and the man was beginning to get nervous. Nothing to worry about, he told himself. After all, he had all the power in the world, and he was about to have all the riches, too, once he shared the secret he had inside his briefcase with al-Turkmani.
Minutes ticked by slowly and it seemed to be getting hotter. About forty-five minutes after he’d arrived, however, he finally heard the sound of motors. He could see a huge amount of dust billowing in the distance. Ah! Armoured vehicles were heading his way. The escorts!
The man patted his battered briefcase the way people do when they pat their pockets to make sure they still have their wallets. He’d traveled across continents with his treasure and wasn’t about to lose it now. Some—well, the two people who knew what he carried at any rate—would call him a thief. Say it wasn’t his by right; that he’d stolen it.
But they were lowlifes who didn’t deserve to have it, never did, and couldn’t even comprehend that it rightly belonged in the possession of a man who truly understood the power and beauty of it.
Not that he wasn’t willing to share that which he’d nearly died to protect—he was a man of principles and great understanding, after all. But this secret, he knew, was almost too great for one man alone. So he had decided to share it—for the right price, that is. He was a generous man, a holy man, but he wasn’t a foolish man, as he liked to say. He’d never made money in his lifetime, but it never mattered—until now.
The right price he had in mind had so many zeroes he could hardly count them. But he and his old friend Sheik al-Turkmani would work it out.
More importantly, the other thing that the oil-rich sheik could provide aside from cold, hard cash for him personally—was the ability and the funds to actually extract the precise formula he knew was coded in there somewhere.
And they say ISIS can’t be trusted, he thought to himself even as he shooed away ragged children who popped up out of nowhere begging for money or a piece of bread.
Some might question why he’d share this secret with the likes of al-Turkmani—a known terrorist. But “some” would be unsophisticated peasants who didn’t understand the ways of the world.
He and al-Turkmani had been friends for decades. They both believed in God, albeit different concepts of God. But when allied together? They could bring world peace—by threatening Armageddon. Armies of men who could never die led by two men with eternal life!
As he saw it, one man in the East and one in the West could control the world.
As he was musing and thinking about zeroes, two armored vehicles and a jeep finally made their way to where he stood—a stretch of what was once a nice street.
The bearded man being driven in the jeep was wearing a checked keffiyeh wrapped turban-style, sunglasses, fatigues, and was armed with two Uzis and an AK-47.
“Get in. We take you to al-Turkmani,” he barked in broken English.
“But sirs! How do I know you are who you say you are?” the dour man inquired.
“Get in,” the bearded man snapped in response.
When he didn’t budge, two men from the armored vehicle got out and grabbed him and physically threw him into the jeep—and got in with him, rifles at the ready.
“Well, I never,” he protested. “Wait until Sheik al-Turkmani hears of your rough treatment!”
“Shut up,” the driver said.
“Are you really taking me to the sheik?” the now terrified man screamed.
No one answered as they kept driving deep into the desolate desert for nearly an hour, finally arriving in front of what looked to be the only intact house in the area.
There! Relief settled over him as he spotted his old friend on the broken concrete porch. The man in the fedora stood up, waved, and shouted, “Tahiat ya sdyqy! Allah yakun maeakum!” He hoped he’d gotten it right as what he’d meant to say was, “Greetings my friend! God be with you!”
Al-Turkmani waved back and then waved toward the men in the vehicles.
Before he realized what was happening, two of the men grabbed him and dragged him out of the jeep. All the while he held on to his bag for dear life. The men knocked the bag out of his hands and onto the ground, bound his hands and feet in zip ties, and threw him down on his knees in the dust, the rosary that was still around his waist dragging on the ground.
Al-Turkmani approached him, and much to his shame, the man in the fedora soiled himself, crying, “Why have you done this to me, my friend?”
The sheik, a tall, handsome man in his seventies, stood in front of him. He had a long beard, his white thobe (robe) impeccably tailored, his white keffiyeh worn loose and secured with a black cord.
“You not a friend, but a traitor to Allah!”
“No! No! I want to share with you a great treasure!”
“I paid you ten million American dollars,” the sheik shouted.
The man was confused. “No, we never even discussed price. I know not of what you speak!”
“Liar! I wired ten million dollars to the bank account of your Jew lawyer, Rosenberg, and it was received and withdrawn. Now my informant tells me that in exchange you have brought Iblīs to me—not the secret to eternal life! You bring Iblīs!” The sheik was referring to the Muslim word for “devil.”
“I bless?” the man repeated incorrectly, then thinking he was on the right track, added, “Yes, yes, that’s right: I bless you!” misunderstanding the word entirely.
Even the sheik was taken aback at the lack of respect.
“You filth! You are the great liar. You bring Iblīs disguised as the secret powe
r of the Son of the Holy Mother Mary, a woman beloved and respected by the Prophet Muhammad, himself!”
“Yes, Christ was born from the Holy Mother Mary,” the confused man answered. What is he talking about? he thought to himself. “I bring you the secret of the Son. The secret to resurrection! Life everlasting!”
“Liar! You wage war against Allah,” the sheik raged. “My sources confirmed that you have betrayed me—who you called ‘friend.’ You are the handmaiden of the Americans—trying to bring this filth into our land. Allah will never fail in his promise to the righteous, and you have betrayed the righteous!”
The sheik’s men first took the Voynich Manuscript from the bag, then the tube, and finally the small bag containing the “keys.” The sheik carefully inserted the little cross into one minuscule hole in the cap of the tube, which was clearly visible in the bright sun, and then screwed the post of the ruby earring into the other hole. As soon as he heard the tiny sound of the locks unlocking, he unscrewed the brass cap on the end and tossed it to the ground.
The terrified, hog-tied man pleaded, “My friend, we made a pact—remember? Inna Al Alam Yamloukohou Al Montasar—the world belongs to the victor! You are the victor. I am the victor.”
The sheik spat on him and then took a long, curved knife out from under his thobe. “You are a thief and the prophet of a false god.” Bn el Metanaka!”
Al-Turkmani sat on the back of the hogged-tied man as if he were a donkey, grabbed his head, and put the knife to his throat, causing the fedora to fall to the ground. When al-Turkmani yanked his head back with great force, the now-hatless prisoner started to weep again. The sheik leaned down and whispered in his ear, “Inna Al Alam Yamloukohou Al Montasar, my friend.”
Was this a test of his loyalty, the man wondered? He said, “Yes, yes, I am your loyal friend. Together we have the secret of resurrection!” The sheik moved his mouth away from the man’s ear, and the man visibly relaxed.
The sheik then bent the man’s head back as far as it would go and began methodically sawing his head off like a butcher would a lamb’s. The blood spurted with the force of water from a split hose. It splayed out over the sand and splattered the man’s body and clothes, his hat, as he struggled to breathe against the pain and the inevitable. With what he had left, he gurgled, “Jesus save my soul” as his head came off.
As the headless body of the man who’d called himself Father Arturo Elias slumped forward, al-Turkmani reached down, picked up the head, and held the trophy proudly to the wild cheering of his men.
Al-Turkmani plopped Elias’s head face forward on the corpse’s raised buttocks. Rifles raised, the men shouted, “Allahu akbar!”
The sheik ordered the men to hand him the open brass tube. “Iblīs!” he spat, dropping the ancient pages out like they were feces in the sand. His crazed men stomped on the pile before al-Turkmani himself lit a match and threw it onto the crumpled papyri that were the missing pages of the Gospel of Judas—the pages that contained the greatest power in the universe: Jesus’ secret teachings for resurrection and eternal life.
He then took what may have been the last remaining authentic copy of the Voynich Manuscript and lit it, too, on fire. It caught very quickly in the arid climate. Despite the magnitude of the words each had contained, the book and the ancient papyri made for a surprisingly small pyre.
The wind, as though the breath of God himself, suddenly blew strong, causing the ashes to fly up and scatter wildly across the desert sands.
On a nearby rooftop, a sandy-haired man with three days’ growth of beard—was he American, English, French, what?—remained flattened, observing the spectacle through his S1240 D/N Stabiscope binoculars. He’d wait until dark to make his way back to Tripoli, where there was a big money backgammon game waiting for him in a backstreet café favored by gunrunners and mercenaries.
He smiled to himself. It had worked as smoothly as a clean shot between the eyes—without his having to raise his own rifle once. His woman would have been pleased. Not that she’d ever know that a terrorist had unknowingly paid her friend’s bail, or that both the pages and the cursed book were forever destroyed.
It had been a good day. It had been a very good day.
Five Months Later
New York City
Alessandra Russo put Terry (who was back to being a regular, age-appropriate baby boy) down for the night, and picked up her phone to check for messages. It had rung earlier, but she’d been knee-deep in kids and family—at Terry’s first birthday party!
One voice mail.
“Hey, it’s your favorite councilman. Shamelessly I’m leaving you message one hundred forty-eight or maybe it’s message one hundred forty-nine by now. I hoped I might help you to exorcise the ghosts of last year past. What I mean is, would you like to be my date, yes as in a real date, to the governor’s New Year’s Eve party? It’s the inaugural for the Second Avenue Subway opening, at, I’m going to say it now, the Ninety-Sixth Street Station. Come on, Ali, take that first ride with me. Kick the crap out of those damned ghosts.”
She shook her head and laughed.
Gee-zis! The guy really is shameless. Flattering—but shameless.
And then for reasons she refused to acknowledge, Alessandra Russo didn’t do what she’d done one hundred and forty-eight or maybe one hundred and forty-nine times before: she didn’t hit “delete.”
Forge Books by Linda Stasi
The Sixth Station
Book of Judas
About the Author
LINDA STASI is an author, celebrated columnist for the New York Daily News, and cohost of What a Week on NY1 News for the last eighteen years. She has appeared on the Today Show, The View, Hardball with Chris Matthews, CBS This Morning, Good Day New York, and The O’Reilly Factor. An award-winning columnist, she was named one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in New York by the New York Post. The author of the The Sixth Station and five nonfiction books, Stasi resides in New York City with her husband, Sid Davidoff. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Forge Books by Linda Stasi
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BOOK OF JUDAS
&nbs
p; Copyright © 2017 by Linda Stasi
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Getty Images
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-7875-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-6336-1 (ebook)
eISBN 9781466863361
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: September 2017
