CHAPTER 62
It was just past midnight when the Boeing C-17 descended over the tops of the tall pine trees and touched down on the remote forest airstrip near the town of Foix. A sleepy-eyed Evita Vargas clung to Leo’s arm as they followed Diaz and Mendoza down the ramp at the back of the aircraft to a row of rental cars lined up alongside the runway.
Limping behind them with a cast on one arm, Alon had his other arm draped around Nava’s shoulder as they walked next to John and Ariella past Lev at the back of the plane.
Standing next to him, Ben Zamir watched the professor light his last Cuban cigar. “Are you sure you’ll be alright here, Professor?”
“We’ll be fine, Ben … as long as our location remains a secret. We’re all international fugitives now, so I probably won’t be seeing you again anytime soon.”
“I’m sorry for the way things turned out. My father said to tell you his people are working twenty-four hours a day to prove to the world that Acerbi orchestrated everything and that he’s the one behind the virus, but until then, you’ve got to lay low.”
“Danny is a good friend to have at a time like this. What’s the latest word on Acerbi? Was he on that big jet that took off during the attack?”
“No, he’s back at his chateau playing the part of the hero. It’s a good thing that fighter pilot held off, because that plane was full of Mexican families who lived in the area. It appears that Acerbi was treating them to a vacation in Cancun and had timed their departure to coincide with the attack he knew was coming. He must have loaded them all onboard and then ordered the pilots to wait for his permission to leave. As soon as the attack was underway, he gave the go ahead for them to take off. Apparently, he was counting on us to shoot them down thinking he was onboard, thus causing an even greater international outcry against us. It would have been disastrous.”
“What happened to them?”
“They landed in Cancun only to find that no reservations had been made for them at local hotels. Acerbi never planned on them arriving, something we are bringing to the attention of anyone who will listen as proof of his intentions.”
“And the American business woman … Dana Waters … what happened to her? She had some pretty interesting things to say about Acerbi when we questioned her the night of the attack.”
“She’s in Israel, a guest of the Mossad. We’re keeping her existence a closely guarded secret. We’re pretty sure Acerbi believes that she died with the others in the hangar explosion, and we want him to keep thinking that. Understandably, she’s having a hard time trusting anyone, but I heard she started opening up to one of our female operatives after we offered her immunity. From what we’ve gathered, she knows all the inner workings of his organization. Apparently they had been friends since childhood. That kind of betrayal creates the worst kind of enemies. It looks like his plan wasn’t so perfect after all. I only wish we could take you all back to Israel with us.”
“You and I both know Israel is the first place they’ll come looking for us. We’ll be safe here. Mendoza and his Cathar friends have made arrangements for us to stay in some old cabins that were built in the Pyrenees during World War II. The French Resistance used them to hide downed Allied airmen from the Nazis during the war.”
“Don’t tell me anything else, Professor. Operational security, remember.” Ben winked.
“If I can’t trust Danny Zamir’s son, then who can I trust?” Lev laughed and clapped the young soldier on the shoulder. “Tell your father that I said hello and that I’ll be seeing him again someday soon. We’ll defeat this Acerbi guy somehow … even if it’s the last thing I do.”
Ben turned and walked back up into the aircraft. He was waving as the ramp lifted into place and the big jet trundled into position before its shrieking engines pushed it down the runway and into a dark sky.
The little group shivered in the early morning darkness as they stood beside the cars.
“Has anyone spoken with Eduardo?” Mendoza asked.
“No, I didn’t think it would be a good idea,” Lev said. “I’m still not sure about him.”
“I hate to say it, Professor, but you’re probably right. When you think about it, we can’t afford to trust anyone right now. If they find us we’ll be locked away, and Acerbi’s people would undoubtedly be the ones holding the key. I have a feeling none of us would live long in jail.”
Mendoza turned to Leo. “What about your friend Morelli?”
“I used the satellite phone to speak with him before we left the states. He said that, publicly, I’ve been stripped of my title. I’m no longer a cardinal, but at least the pope is refusing to excommunicate me until a full investigation is completed. For now, it appears that I’m even cut off from my own church.”
Evita saw the lines of sadness etching Leo’s face. Here was a man who had always done the right thing at great cost to his personal life, and now he was being shunned and degraded by his own church. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight.
Ariella watched her father standing alone, staring off into the distance at the dark outlines of the mountains ringing their position. She was acutely aware that Lev was probably the one who was suffering the most. Cut off from his homeland and his beloved seaside villa, he was unable to sit by his wife’s gravesite every evening, something he had done every day for the past ten years when he was home. Behind her large brown eyes, a fire burned deep inside. Why had God deserted them? Weren’t they supposed to be the chosen-his lions-sent by Him to destroy this monster Acerbi?
“Let’s get moving,” Mendoza said. “The cabins are in a remote location, and we have to get there before the sun comes up.”
Slowly, the group spread out and divided themselves among the rental cars before heading up a nearby mountain road. An hour later, they turned off onto a little-used dirt road covered in moss that wound its way up a steep hillside beneath a grove of giant pines until they came to a clearing overlooking an isolated mountain gorge. There, in the middle of a peaceful glen, invisible to the outside world, they saw three rustic cabins built from thick logs. They had just arrived at their new home.
Their next few weeks would be spent going about the daily routine of cooking, cleaning, chopping wood-even making rudimentary tools from raw materials. Their lives had taken on a comfortable routine broken only by occasional forays deep into the forest to hunt for deer or fish for trout. Without the ability to use even a radio for communication, they had taken a giant step back in time to a simpler place, where the hours of the day were spent in idle talk around a fireplace instead of sitting in front of a computer screen that held the promise of instant response from a frantic world.
This must have been the way the Cathars had lived, Leo thought, after they had been persecuted by the Church and were in hiding from the evil men of the material world who had descended on their lands in search of even greater wealth. Apparently, life really hadn’t changed all that much in the past seven-hundred years. The only difference, it seemed, was that mankind had found quicker, more efficient means of killing large numbers of people, while employing more subtle ways for governments dominated by the rich to rob from the poor. The robbing and pillaging once conducted on horseback by men brandishing swords was now conducted in corporate boardrooms by men armed with nothing more fearsome than a Smartphone.
It was quickly becoming obvious to the others that Leo was beginning to enjoy their rustic existence. He had begun to reevaluate his life and his role in the world. Who needed a title to deliver God’s message of love to others? In the past year, he had actually found that the title of cardinal had separated him from the common man. He yearned for the days when he could rub elbows at the local watering hole with the working-class men and women of his hometown, hard-working people who sometimes worked two jobs just to pay their mortgages and send their kids to an overpriced college that offered no guarantee of a job after graduation.