Standing silhouetted against the window was Obsidian Hall, who took a moment to raise his hand to check his watch. The play was about to begin.
Montario prattled off numbers, which were loaded into the search engine.
This time the location was somewhere in Africa.
Hall clicked his tongue in disappointment. “Either you’re lying to me, Mr. Montario, or you really don’t know the coordinates, as you say.”
“I swear,” he said, “I can’t recall the exact numbers. There’re so many.”
“That’s a shame,” he said. “Then I’m afraid I’ll just have to get them from Ms. Moore.”
“Please don’t hurt her.”
“Then give me the numbers.”
“I can’t.”
“So sad,” he said.
Montario lowered his head until it was inches above the floor. The man’s grip remained steady around the back of his neck. “I really can’t remember,” he said. So what will you do now? Cripple me by snapping my neck?
“Remember when I said that I had complete and absolute control? That I had dominion over the lives of two people and not just one?”
Montario treated his questions as rhetorical.
“I meant every word.” The silhouette of Obsidian Hall raised a hand and pointed to the far end of the apartment, toward the balcony door.
The large man hoisted Montario effortlessly to his feet and ushered him to the balcony. Montario tried to fight against the man’s strength, found it futile, like a child against a grown adult, and found himself on the balcony ten flights up.
The air was cool and mild; a slight breeze softly caressed his skin as the city beneath him seemed to crawl with a surreal slowness. He was lifted off his feet and over the man’s head; as the stars above him came closer, he was then tossed outward, the world becoming a terrifying spiral as he pin-wheeled his arms and legs to the surface below.
From where Obsidian Hall was standing, he was surprised that the young man did not cry out. And for that he earned a measure of his respect right up until the moment when Montario landed with the sound of a melon hitting the pavement.
The large man returned to the living area, brushing off imaginary dust from his suit as if the deed cast him in filth.
Obsidian looked at the little black book, then tucked it away in the inner pocket of his suit. “It looks like we’ll get to see the opening act, after all,” he said. And though it appeared his thoughts were hanging by the brief moment of his hesitation, he finally said, “Tomorrow I’ll fly to Turkey to meet with Ms. Moore.”
With his two colleagues in tow, Obsidian Hall closed the door behind him and immersed the apartment in complete and total darkness.
CHAPTER FIVE
The world of Göbekli Tepe mattered little to Alyssa Moore as she sat inside a tent that was hot and dry with little to no wind providing any comfort. Drawings and glossy photos of the carved bas-reliefs lay haphazardly across her desktop and some on the ground, as if tossed about in a fit of rage. Her computer monitors were blank, the system shut down. And the single blanket of her cot remained unmade after a restless night in bed, which was unregimented of her.
Her entire world was becoming disheveled. She heard the tent flap pull back and someone enter.
She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw. She really wanted to be alone. And then, with such gentle softness: “Ms. Alyssa?”
It was Noah, so she relaxed. Right now, he was the closest thing to a father she had. “Yes, Noah.”
He crossed the tent, grabbed an empty chair, placed it beside her, and straddled it. He then reached out and grabbed her hand, feeling the calluses of a laborer, but looked into the face of someone who should have been a model on the runway. “I know this is a difficult time,” he told her, stroking the back of her hand gently. “But I’m afraid there’s been another tragedy.”
She looked at him, her mouth hanging. She wasn’t sure she could take much more. Not now.
“It’s Montario,” he said. “There’s been word from the AIAA that he’s met with a most unfortunate accident.” She sat upright, her spine as rigid as rebar. “It appears that Mr. Montario fell from his balcony in New York.” And then: “I’m sorry.”
Her chin became gelatinous as her eyes moistened. This time she was unable to choke back the emotions as she fell into Noah’s arms and wept. In return, he pulled her close and kissed the crown of her head. “I’m so sorry, my dear. He was a good man.”
Suddenly her world began to spin kaleidoscopically out of control, the pieces of a once orderly world becoming fragmented and displaced, her mind wheeling with confusion. She had always known that he loved her, cared for her, tried to see her more than what she was, a scientist. But she saw him as a brother, someone she could trust in matters of privacy that she could never share with her father.
“He was a good man,” Noah repeated, patting her lightly on the back. “A good man.”
And then she broke, sobbing into Noah’s shirt as her world was falling apart around her by the inches.
CHAPTER SIX
The Vatican’s Intelligence Service, the Servizio Informazione del Vaticano, or the SIV, was created to counter early 19th century efforts to subvert the secular power of the Vatican. So as a necessity, the Church saw the need in creating an unofficial security agency to solve problems by developing a system of confidential communication and information gathering. In 1870, when the Papacy was forced to give up some of its territories and cutbacks were ordered, the diplomatic service remained but its intelligence and security functions were truncated. As the Vatican adapted to periodic threats over time, they saw an immediate need to develop the SIV into a service that rivaled most intelligence agencies, including Mossad and the CIA.
With diplomatic ties with more than ninety percent of the world’s countries, the SIV was now a staple of Vatican life that protected the sovereignty of the Church, its interests, and the welfare of its citizenry.
Today, however, provided them with a critical challenge.
Inside the Papal Chamber, Pope Leo XIV sat behind his desk, an ornate piece made of mahogany with raised carvings of cherubs playing harpsichords as its corner pieces. From the open doors that led to the balcony, a mild wind blew in from the east, causing the drapes with scalloped hemming to billow softly. But it brought little comfort to the room as Leo sat across from John Savage, the top administrator and team leader of the SIV, who carried the look of a solemn man who had been weighed down by atrocities.
In Savage’s possession was a leather portfolio. Inside the folder were several sheets of intercepted data taken from agencies on both sides of the pond regarding the alleged discovery of Eden.
“Do you believe it to be true?” asked the pope.
Savage placed a single sheet on top of the pontiff’s desk. “This was taken from the AIAA’s data base.”
“The AIAA?”
“The Archaeological Institute of Ancient Antiquities,” he answered. “It was Professor Moore’s venue. Their transmissions confirm that the professor and his team have disappeared. And according to the sole survivor, Mr. Montario, the site was discovered.”
“And Mr. Montario’s take on the matter is what?”
“He claims that Eden is not what religious texts make it out to be.”
“And what does he make it out to be?”
“He said it was a cold, dark place. At least that’s what he told the Turkish authorities.”
The pontiff lifted the sheet of paper from his desktop. It was a short dossier on Montario, a quick summary of the man’s life. There was nothing special about him, only that he was a student of archeological studies at NYU and little else. He placed the paper back down. “And the expedition team?”