"He has his strengths."
"And his weaknesses too," Diggs whispered.
"Yes." He looked at Diggs. "You see what they are?"
"As clearly as I see the tomb where you hid it."
Andrew grinned.
They looked at each other, and a wordless communication happened at that moment. The two men would both try to take the Hacker. Andrew had seen the former CIA man in action; he was extremely efficient and lethal.
He glanced at Olivia and shook his head. It was most likely impossible to get to the tomb at that moment. After all, they need the last key to open it, and Emilio has by now disappeared like he always did.
Besides, the cops they called would soon come in here.
Olivia took the cue. The team would try to escape, and if the Hacker hears them and tries to stop them, which he would, he'd have him and Diggs to contend with.
"On my count," he whispered. "Go!"
—
His eyes flashed, and his gun went up instantly. He was walking towards the spot where Solomon's tomb was now invisible. He somehow missed this place. He was preoccupied with scouting the hall for clues as to the disappearance of the tomb.
Someone had stamped their feet.
He looked at the entrance and saw the shadow cast on the other side of the wall in the corridor there.
He heard the sound of more footfalls, more than one person, a lot of people escaping.
His gun out and his strides widening, he rushed forward, but a man stepped out of the corner and blocked his way.
The Hacker stopped.
He bent his head to the side. "You are the rabbi on the roof."
"Yes. Indeed."
The Hacker put his gun away when a second man joined the rabbi. His brows went up, amused. Diggs and Andrew stared at him.
"You happen to know what happened here?"
He gestured back at the hall.
"What are you talking about?" asked Andrew.
"Solomon's tomb is missing."
"It is, I see. And what's your business with the tomb?"
Diggs walked into the hall and started circling the Hacker. The assassin didn't flinch. His eyes were on Andrew, but his catlike ears were on the soft sounds Diggs's feet made on the marble floor.
His hands hung limply by his body; his fingers danced. His eyes narrowed. Andrew picked up on all the signs of the Hacker's violence; he stepped closer.
"You can walk away," said Andrew.
"Why?"
"We are two forces against each other. Light and dark."
The Hacker rolled his eyes. He said, "You religious folks never cease to amuse me. This place can't save you from me. With such violence, it was born, your religion."
"And on peace, it died and rose."
The Hacker turned slowly so that he faced the wall. Diggs was on his left and Andrew on his right.
"You will die too. But you will not rise."
Andrew stepped forward and bent his knee in a stance peculiar to a select group of monks on the mountains of Okinawa. Standing on the balls of his feet, his feet curved towards each other, his shoulders square, his abdomen rock hard and his breath deep, his fists lashed out. And the speed of it was as blinding as it was deadly.
The Hacker's right elbows curved out to block the first blow, and a dance of death began.
A pocket knife slipped down the sleeve of the Hacker's suit and into his left hand. He turned, and the blade shot out to fend and attack Lawrence Diggs's punch. Diggs blocked the deadly blow with the bump of his wrist to the Hacker's own. The knife dropped.
Diggs reached out to snatch it from the air but met the assassin's knee. He blocked the blow with the ball of his elbow. The contact was powerful, a crack as the assassin's knee cap fractured.
He threw his now aching feet in a round kick that Andrew wasn't expecting; it came out of a blind spot created by the Hacker's body. The heel of the Hacker's shoe came close to crushing Andrew's jaw, but he bent his body and raised his left forearm. The shoes scraped the skin on Andrew's hand.
And all of this time, the three men had not left the spot where it all began.
The men stopped suddenly, pivoted on their heels, and took another stance.
The Hacker grimaced; the blade of his knife shining from the side of his arm and legs spread wide in a fighting stance used by ninjas.
Diggs had his fists up like an MMA fighter. Andrew was back to the peculiar sitting stance many identify as Wing Chun. He stretched his left leg forward—when he saw the Hacker drop his left leg out—and marked a line with it.
The Hacker was confused for a moment.
It was an invitation to battle. It wasn't supposed to be that way, he had established himself in the role of defense. He was being invited into a trap in front of him and a likely attack from behind.
He switched his legs and faced away from both men. Then he lowered his body on his muscular thighs, widening his legs even more.
Andrew looked at Diggs. He nodded.
Diggs attacked first. The Hacker wasn't expecting that since he now perceived that Andrew was the better fighter of the two men. He was wrong.
He launched a brutal assault of fists and knees, but Diggs had the stronger bones in his extremities. For every punch and knee jab the Hacker brought, Diggs blocked with his callused hard knuckles.
Every contact resulted in cracking sounds.
The Hacker had had enough. He dropped low, so low that Diggs missed him twice. Those misses cost him before Andrew could come into the fray. The Hacker cut Diggs’s elbow from below in a fantastic twist of his body upward. Diggs grunted and tried to pull away, but the Hacker grabbed his shirt, sunk his blade in his thigh, and kicked him away. The force of the kick was so hard Diggs was flung against the far wall.
He fell on his face and coughed blood.
The Hacker went full force on Andrew, deflected all his blows and low kicks. Andrew switched to high kicks, from both sides, and blows from everywhere. But the Hacker was mad now, his teeth bared, his eyes flashing black embers.
He went through Andrew's play of hands with his knife, Andrew pinched it between his two palms and with a powerful pull and flung it away.
Now the Hacker was empty-handed.
Andrew raised his hands.
"Freeze! Freeze!"
Both men looked back. Two policemen were standing at the entrance of the hall. They were young men; their guns were aimed at both Andrew and the Hacker.
Diggs was back on his feet. He growled as he pulled the blade out of his thigh. He flung the knife into the corner of the hall and charged.
"I say freeze! Drop on your knees," one of the policemen said. "And then I want to see six hands up. I'm counting!"
Diggs stopped momentarily. He flew across the floor, grabbed the Hacker by the midsection, and picked him up like a wrestler. Both men did a pirouette in the air.
The cops shouted.
Andrew spun around, lowering his body to get out of the shooting range of the cops.
Meanwhile, Diggs spun the Hacker in the air and brought the man down on his neck. The Hacker let out a yell of pain and utter surprise. He was winded for a moment, but he quickly recovered, rolled onto one knee, and pulled his silenced gun on Diggs with lightning speed.
The cops screamed, "Drop your weapon, or we'll shoot!"
But the Hacker was already shooting, and Diggs was on the move. He dived out of the way and landed by the door leading to Sheba's hall.
Engravings on the wall exploded and sprayed the floor as the slugs sank into them. Then the Hacker was turning his aim over to Andrew.
The cops started shooting. The Hacker was on the move too. He rolled away to the corner of the hall and fell behind a pillar where he waited.
Andrew was the only exposed target now.
"On your knees, mister. We won't tell you twice!" they ordered.
Andrew raised his hands slowly, but he knew he was in danger of being shot from behind, so he took the chance. He dropp
ed to his knees and rolled away behind another pillar, a smaller one.
"What the hell—" The policeman caught a bullet in his throat.
The other cop gawked at his fellow officer clutch at his throat and leaked blood on the floor from the back of his neck. When he raised his face again, he looked into the dark hole of the Hacker's gun barrel.
The Hacker shot the man in the head.
He turned around to see that Andrew and Diggs had vanished.
"Fuckers…" he breathed.
—
8
The murder was on the news. There were pictures as well. Someone had taken those photos and leaked them to the media. The names of the slain men were announced as well.
Emilio Batolini watched the news on the wide flat-screen TV on the wall in his hotel with guaranteed satisfaction. He was sitting on the king-sized bed, half-naked in a large wooly white towel around his waist. His enormous belly spilled over the edge of the towel. He sipped green tea from a cup.
The reporter on the Keshet 12 network was a big-headed woman; her hair was packed and held to the side with a shiny pin. She spoke her English well. So, Emilio understood her without difficulty when she said, "A private citizen who saw it happen took the photos and posted it on social media…the name of a former cardinal Emilio Batolini been mentioned. He was one of the men of what they called the Table, a secret organization…"
His hand froze in the air with a cup of tea.
His face contorted in an ugly frown. The woman said, "The former cardinal was said to have left shortly before the man in the photo showed up and shot the four men dead—"
The screen switched to a still frame of the Hacker standing with his gun pointed down a corridor. A different photo showed the white flare leaving the muzzle of the weapon. And another showed Henderson and the others falling over, and they were gunned down.
Emilio rose slowly with his cup of tea. He went to the small kitchen and poured the tea in the sink. The TV sound came to him from the bedroom softly.
The woman reporter finished her story, and the broadcaster came on. He said it was time to go to a brief commercial.
Emilio gripped the edge of the basin. He felt his stomach squirm. The tea was either not good for him or the news had gotten to him.
There was a knock at the door.
The Hacker let himself in when Emilio would not open the door. He walked into the kitchen and said, "You are always on the news for the wrong reasons."
Emilio sighed and went back to the bedroom. He turned the TV off and picked up his phone.
In the kitchen, the Hacker put the kettle on and opened a sachet he took from his pocket. He made it into a brew. The Hacker drank it and went into the bathroom. He poured cold water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror.
The dark ring around his left eye was turning red. The blue blotch on his cheek remained so, and it hurt to touch. He wriggled his jaw and heard a click; something was broken there. His neck hurt too.
The worst off were his knuckles.
He walked into the bedroom, wriggling his fingers. He frowned with the pain. Emilio watched him. "You had some trouble?"
"Two troubles actually," the Hacker answered.
He put his back to the wall.
"The fake rabbi—"
"Andre."
"You know him…"
"Yes. And the other one, tell me about him."
The Hacker's face became blank. He cracked his knuckles. They hurt like hell, as though someone had inserted hot needles in the joints. Every touch caused searing heat of pain, lava-like, and igneous.
"Brown hair; strong. Blue eyes, piercing blue eyes."
"Lawrence Diggs. Former CIA operative. The best they had. Still, the best they'll ever have," Emilio said with his eyes closed.
"You know these people well. No one was there when I killed those men—"
"Olivia Newton. She was there—"
"I made sure I was alone with…"
Emilio flashed angry eyes at him. "Then how are you on the goddamn TV? How did the news guys have a photo of you doing it? How did they know I was there? Dammit, they know every single thing. How?"
Silence ate up the rest of his words. The Hacker said no more but waited.
"If those men hadn't been so stupid—" He looked at the assassin and said, "You have to find the tomb, today."
The Hacker asked a question he'd been thinking about since Emilio hired him. "What's inside that tomb that you want so bad?"
A cheer seemed to brighten the former cardinal's color. Although he attempted to hide it. Then he did try to conceal his interest in Solomon's tomb by getting off the bed and walked over to the only window in the room. He pulled the white curtain aside. Old Jerusalem spread from below to a point on the horizon where her roofs, domes, and turrets kissed the sky.
He could not see the Church of the Holy Sepulcher from here. But he knew by heart where it was. He has met with those men Hacker murdered in that chamber for ten years, had done business with them for that long.
"What do you think happened to all that wealth he had…"
"Who?" asked the Hacker.
"Solomon. What do you think happened to all his wealth? No one knows exactly. That's the point. How can we continue to hide it? When no one knows, no one truly cares. Hell, some don't even believe Solomon ever existed. History talks about these people like they were some comic book characters. But here we are…"
The Hacker continued to stare at him. Emilio looked at him and remembered that he didn't even know this young assassin's real name. Emiliano only called him the Hacker. Because in his early works, he charged at his targets with machetes. He went at them like a butcher. He changed his modus operandi, but the name stuck.
"Do you know how Solomon earned every year?" he asked the young man.
"I don't care about Solomon."
"Yeah. Six hundred sixty-six talents of gold annually. That's more than 256 million dollars in gold alone. Every year." Emilio spread his hands. He continued, "All the kings of his time brought tributes in gold, silver, balsam oil, armor, horses. The man had 4,000 stalls of horses. He did business all over the earth, all the continents. They say Sheba gave him 120 talents of gold too. She fancied the man for a husband, probably."
He was at the bed now. He sat in it; the springs creaked under his weight.
"It doesn't matter, though, because the truth was that Sheba gave Solomon more than was reported. There's an old tradition that said two royalties did more than talk about how wise Solomon was. Do you think it is a coincidence that both tombs are only a few meters from each other in that church?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Sheba gave Solomon half of all she had. Half of all her gold to make the wise king look her way, just to make him forget his seven hundred concubines for one night. They say Solomon loved women, but he was also a man of strange principles. He'd never touch the pagan queen. So, she gave him all she had instead."
"And the gold is in that tomb?" asked the Hacker. "Preposterous."
Emilio glanced at him and laughed. "Exactly what we worked hard to make the world think."
The Hacker said, "We don't have much time. You can't even go out in the street. You'd be arrested—"
"No, I won't."
Emilio picked up his phone, where it lay beside his robe that had been washed and iron-pressed by the hotel. He dialed a number on it.
"Hello, Talbot. I got a proposition for you."
He looked at the Hacker and said, "We are back in play."
—
So far, Olivia's plan had gone according to plan up until the moment when the Hacker showed up.
Seeing Andrew and Diggs all messed up, she started rethinking her confidence. She was wrapping up Andrew's fists with gauze. His hands had swollen, his left eye was shot. Other than that, he looked okay.
Diggs's right thigh was fixed with bandages. He had bruises on his chest and elbows. His scalp bled; he looked fit for another fight
. He was fuming and hadn't said a word since he and Andrew dragged themselves into the Lazarists' monastery.
And they came in without the last key, the one around Emilio's neck. Without that key, the others were useless, said the real remaining members of the table. Miller had those men hidden in a horse stable at the back of a mosque called Al Marwani in the Muslim quarter of the city.
Thomas Henderson had protested the "inhuman treatment" of the earth's most powerful men. Olivia had felt sorry for the man.
Once again, they were on the news. Only this time, they shared the media attention with Emilio Batolini, and a man they were yet to put a name on—the Hacker.
Emilio was right.
Olivia had taken the photos of the shooting. And she was the one who called the cops, giving them a wrong address at first to delay their arrival for them to take possession of the contents of the tomb.
That part of the plan hadn't worked out. And it was because of the Hacker.
After providing first aid to Diggs and Andrew, it was time to think of how to get back into the church.
"It's a crime scene now," said Anabia. "We can't just walk in there. The police are probably watching the place."
Liam glared at him; he hissed. "And you, my friend, just like to express the obvious. That's all you do."
"Well, why don't you come up with a suggestion," Anabia shot back.
"Because stating the obvious is much easier, I guess."
Miller sighed.
Olivia raised her hands. "Okay, alright, guys. We need to get ourselves together. I know this is getting complicated. I feel it too. But we bicker all day. We have a problem…"
She stepped into the middle of the room. It was semi-dark. There was a bulb shining on the wall a little below the low ceiling. It cast deep shadows. All the blinds were down.
"Now I have called Talbot about a thousand times in the past hour, but I can't reach him. We are on our own."
She looked around at the faces. Someone said something like "shit." Tami shut her eyes and bowed her head. She looked like a pretty schoolgirl with her short hair.
It had been an exhausting couple of hours for all of them.
"We have an advantage," she said.
Liam started. "What advantage could we possibly have in all of this?"
King Solomon's Tomb Page 12
