No matter.
Until yesterday, he’d planned on accomplishing his goal without any help.
He’d stick to that plan.
They stood before the ceremonial hall, part of which jutted into the cemetery grounds, shaded by ash trees. More people were entering from the far side, admiring the graves, some offering stones to markers in remembrance. They all wore yarmulkes, which he knew were given to them with their admission tickets.
“Our heads should be covered, too,” he said.
“Not to worry, Zachariah. The dead will forgive us.”
———
TOM LEFT THE SECURITY ROOM AND FOUND A DOOR THAT LED outside.
But it was locked, no way to open it without a key.
He rushed to the interior stairway and leaped the short risers two at a time up to the first floor where visitors were entering the exhibits, showing their tickets to one of the female attendants.
This was too much.
Here he was in the Czech Republic, eight years after the fact, about to be confronted with someone who knew the truth.
He told himself to calm down. Think. Be rational.
Calmly, he left the stairs and excused himself past the visitors and out the door to the exterior staircase. The landing was enclosed on three sides, periodic openings offering views down to the cemetery. Through one of those he spied Simon and the woman, standing on a graveled path among the graves, talking. He watched them from the safety of his perch, no way for them to see him. To his left the stairway right-angled to ground level, the view open to a street that led down a short incline, past the vendor stalls, to the Old-New Synagogue.
He spotted Alle.
Fifty yards away.
Marching toward the hall.
———
ALLE IGNORED THE VENDOR STALLS TO HER LEFT, BUSY WITH tourists, and concentrated on the iron gate fifty yards away. More people were negotiating the exterior staircase for the ceremonial hall, heading up to the exhibits on the first and second floors, where she had been an hour ago.
Berlinger’s rebuke still stung.
As did her grandfather’s.
In the final years of his life she’d been there for him, pleasing him beyond measure with her conversion. He’d never thought his grandchild would practice his faith. He’d resigned himself to the fact that since his son had abandoned the religion, all would be abandoned.
“But you, my dear, are so special. You chose on your own to become what your birthright entitled you to be. It must be God’s will.”
They’d many times talked of life and the Jews, in the abstract, him responding to her questions.
“I may not agree with your mother’s beliefs,” he told her. “But I respect them. As much as I wanted my son to be a Jew I understand how she would want you to be a Christian. So I would never violate that.”
And he never had.
But in the end, he still hadn’t thought her worthy.
Or at least her new religion had not.
The Levite must be male and I failed to find anyone capable. So I took the secret entrusted to the grave.
She kept walking up the street, stepping around several tour groups. She was worthy. She could be the Levite. And do a better job than her father, who seemed not to care about anyone or anything. And where was he? Still inside the ceremonial hall? Her gaze focused ahead and she spotted two people beyond the iron gate, up another inclined path.
A man and a woman.
One was a stranger.
The other was Zachariah.
Here?
———
ZACHARIAH SPOTTED ALLE.
Too late for a retreat.
She’d clearly seen him.
“Time to deal with her,” the ambassador said.
And he watched as the woman walked away, back toward the cemetery’s main entrance.
He headed for the iron gate and the exit.
———
TOM WATCHED AS SIMON LEFT THE CEMETERY GROUNDS, WALKING down the street toward Alle.
The woman.
That’s who he wanted.
From his vantage point he saw her follow a path through the graves, going against the grain of tourists entering in a steady pace.
He turned back toward Alle. Simon approached her, grasped her arm, and they headed away from the ceremonial hall, on the street that led back toward the house where they’d been held.
More visitors were climbing the stairs around him.
He quickly descended and rushed toward a glass-enclosed placard that detailed the quarter. He located the cemetery and saw that the entrance point was a block over.
Where the woman was headed.
A quick glance and he saw Alle and Simon, their backs to him, still moving away.
If he hurried, he could catch his one chance to right the wrong.
CHAPTER SIXTY
BÉNE RAISED THE BLOODIED KNIFE TO FRANK CLARKE. “I SHOULD slit your lying throat, too.”
“Don’t you find it odd, Béne, how you so detest lying, but don’t mind doing it to your own mother?”
Not what he expected Frank to say.
“And the point?”
“Only that you did exactly what I knew you’d do.”
Not a hint of fear laced Clarke’s words. In the light from the remaining lamp and the glow of the dimming fire from the broken one, he saw no concern in the hard eyes.
“The gang came,” Frank said, “offered money, and some of the colonels took it. When you called earlier and told me that you had found the mine, I had to report that information.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I’m Maroon, Béne. I take my oath of allegiance to my brothers in a serious way. Is their don dead?”
“He’s scum. My dogs hunted him down.”
“You killed both of them?” Tre asked, pointing at the bleeding bodies.
He raised the knife. “They got what they deserved, too.” He turned to Frank. “And why shouldn’t I kill you?”
“This had to happen. You know that, Béne.”
The voice never rose above a whisper.
“And what will the colonels say when I emerge from this cave?”
“That you’re a man to be feared.”
He liked that. “And there will be debts to be paid. By them.”
And he meant it.
“Why did you come back?” he asked Clarke.
“You need to see why this place was special to the Spanish.” Frank pointed to the upper portion of the chamber. “We have to climb up there.”
“Lead the way.”
He was going to keep this man in his sights and he wasn’t about to discard the knife. Halliburton was still shaken by the corpses.
“Forget them,” he told Tre.
“It’s not easy.”
“Welcome to my world.”
He motioned for them to follow Frank up rough boulders that acted as a makeshift stairway to the next level. There he spotted three exits from the chamber, each a dark yawn in the rock wall.
“Which one?” Béne asked Clarke.
“You choose.”
He assumed it was some sort of test, but he was not in the mood. “You do it. We’ll get there faster.”
“You tell me all the time that you’re Maroon. That you’re part of us. Time to start acting like one.”
He resented the implications.
“They call you B’rer Anansi,” Frank said to him.
“Who does?”
He hated the mythical reference. Anansi was often depicted as a short, small man or, worse, a spider with human qualities whose most notable characteristic was greed. He survived by cunning and a glibness of speech. Béne’s mother used to tell him how the slaves told tales of Anansi.
“I don’t think they mean to insult you,” Frank said. “It’s just their way of describing you. Anansi, for all his faults, is loved. We’ve told his stories ever since being brought here.”
He wasn’t interested in what others thought. Not anymore. He was here, finally, in the lost mine. “Which tunnel?”