If you are reading this, son, then you have opened my grave. I am the last of the Levites. Not born of that house, but chosen. The first, Yosef Ben Ha Levy Haivri, Joseph, the son of Levi the Hebrew, was picked by Christopher Columbus. Yosef was known to others of his time as Luis de Torres. He was the first Jew to live in the New World. From de Torres the line has gone unbroken, each Levite selected by the one before. I was named by your Saki. He was chosen by his father. It was my wish that you succeed me. I worked hard when you were a boy to train you in our ways. I wanted you to become someone to whom this secret may be entrusted. When you told me of your decision to leave our faith I was devastated. I was about to reveal to you all that I knew, but your decision made that impossible. You thought me strong and unbending, but really I was fragile and weak. Even worse, pride would not allow me to repair the damage we did to each other. We mourned your baptism as if you had died, which, in a real way to me, you had. I wanted you to be like me, the Levite, but you had no such desire. There are so few Jews, son. We cannot afford to lose any. Alle is now one of us. You may or may not know that. Her conversion pleased me, though I can see how it would have upset her mother. She discovered our faith on her own and freely chose to convert. I never pressured her in any way. She is sincere and devout. But the Levite must be male and I failed to find anyone capable. So I took the secret entrusted to me to the grave. I’m assuming that only you or Alle could ever open my coffin. So now I pass to you what your Saki gave to me.
3. 74. 5. 86. 19
.
What this means I have no idea. Deciphering is not a Levite’s function. We are simply the keeper. Until your grandfather’s time the Levite also held another item. But that was hidden away after the Second World War. The key that is included with this note was given to me by Marc, but he never explained its significance. He lived during a time when Nazis threatened everything Jews hold dear. He told me that he made sure that the secret would never be breached. What we protect, son, is the location of the Jews’ Temple treasure: the golden menorah, the divine table, and the silver trumpets. They were brought to the New World by Columbus, who was a Jew, and hidden away by him. Marc lived when Jews were slaughtered by the millions. Part of a Levite’s duty is to adapt, so he chose to make changes to what had existed before him. He told me little about those changes, saying that it was better that way—only that the golem now protects our secret in a place long sacred to Jews. He also gave me a name. Rabbi Berlinger. Your Saki was a tough man to know. You probably say the same thing about me. But he chose me to keep what remained of the secret and I never questioned him. Son, do the same. Carry on the duty. Keep the line unbroken. You may ask, what does it matter anymore? That is not for the Levite to decide. Our duty is simply to keep the faith of all those who came before us. It is the least we can do considering their sacrifice. Jews have suffered so much for so long. And with what erupts by the day in the Middle East, perhaps your Saki was right in making those changes and keeping them to himself. Know one other thing, son. I meant what I wrote to you in the note with the deed to the house. I never once believed you did anything wrong. I don’t know what happened, but I know it wasn’t that you were a fraud. I’m sorry I could not say it while alive, but I love you.
He read the last line again.
That was the first time he could recall, since he was a little boy, that Abiram had said he loved him.
And the reference to his grandfather, Marc Eden Cross. Saki.
A mangling of Hebrew. Sabba, grandfather. Savta, grandmother. As a toddler he started calling his grandfather saki, and the name stuck to the day the old man died.
He examined the third item, a Michelin road map of Jamaica. He carefully opened its folds and saw the distinct outline of the island with all its topography and roadways. He noticed the copyright. 1952. Then he caught the writing that appeared across the face in faded blue ink. Individual numbers. He did a quick count. Maybe a hundred or more written from one coast to another.
He stared at everything from the packet.
The Temple treasure?
How could that be?
———
ALLE SAT WITH BRIAN. THE VIDEO FEED WAS OVER. THEY’D watched as the man on the other end had jumped a ditch and entered an orchard, driving down a rough lane between blooming orange trees. He’d then left the car, gone for about fifteen minutes before returning to report what happened.
He’d been about fifty yards away, but was able to hear Simon and Tom Sagan yell at each other. Sagan wanted his daughter and Simon made clear she was in Vienna.
“But I’m dead to him,” she said to Brian. “He’s bluffing?”
“A good play because there’s no way your father can know the truth.”
She’d listened while the eyes and ears in Florida reported the meeting place for tomorrow—5:00 P.M., inside St. Stephen’s.
“Your father thinks he’ll be safe there,” Brian said.
She’d visited the cathedral a couple of weeks ago. “There’re a lot of people there.”
“But you said it. You’re dead to Simon. He knows he can’t make a trade.”
Yet Zachariah had agreed to the exchange.
Her eyes betrayed her thoughts of concern.
“That’s right,” Brian said. “Your father’s going exactly where Simon wants him to go. The question is, do you give a damn?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
BÉNE FOLLOWED FRANK CLARKE UP THE RUGGED TRAIL through a carpet of ground ferns and across pebbles greased with mud. Luckily, he’d dressed for his trek to Charles Town, wearing old jeans and boots. The colonel was armed with a machet, which he used to hack low-lying limbs that blocked their way. The raucous call of a parrot drifted through the high forest, as did the incessant tapping of woodpeckers. No fear of poisonous snakes. Mongooses imported from India centuries ago to deal with rats had eliminated all of those.
He was three years shy of forty and in good shape, but this climb taxed him. His face was streaked in sweat, rivulets soaked his shirt. The colonel was thirty years his senior, yet the inclined trail seemed no problem, the older man’s steps slow and cautious, his breathing shallow. Every time he trekked into the mountains Béne thought of his ancestors. Eboes from the Bight of Benin. Mandingoes from Sierra Leone. Papaws stolen from the Congo and Angola. Coromantees captured on the Gold Coast.
They’d been the toughest.
Nearly all of the great Maroon leaders had been Coromantees, including his great-great-great-grandfather.
His mother had many times told him about the African’s tortuous path to the New World. First had come capture, then confinement at a fort or trade post. Next was a clustering with other captives, most strangers, some enemies. The fourth turmoil involved being packed onto overcrowded ships and sailed across the Atlantic. Many had not survived that trip, their corpses tossed overboard. Those who did formed bonds that would last for generations—shipbrothers and -sisters was what they would forever call one another. The fifth trauma happened on arrival when they were prepared like cattle, then sold. The final ordeal, known as seasoning, was when others, already there and accustomed to a yoke, taught them how to survive.
The Dutch, English, and Portuguese were all guilty.
And though the physical shackles were long gone, a form of mental slavery remained where some Jamaicans refused to embrace their African past.
Maroons were not in that category.
They’d not forgotten.
And never would.
They kept climbing. A rush of water could be heard ahead. Good. He was thirsty. The trees were ablaze with the Flame of the Forest. He’d learned about the red flowers as a child, his mother telling him how their stinky juice was good for eye infections. As a boy he’d imagined what it must have been like to be a Maroon warrior, wading up streams to mask his scent. Walking backward to create tracks to nowhere. Luring British soldiers to precipices from which there was no escape, or herding them into narrow passages and pelting them with boulders, logs, and arrows. Goats were used to test water supplies which the enemy liked to poison, but the animals were never allowed into settlements since baying would betray their location. Warriors were masters of ambush, wrapping their bodies from head to toe in cacoon vines. Not even the eyes were exposed. Even their lance, the jonga, was concealed under a dense blanket of leaves. Which made them totally invisible in the forest. A huge advantage. One never spoken about, one of those secrets that Maroons kept to themselves.