Beloved Enemy (42 page)

But at some point, the resistance on the other end of the line began to alarm her, and she could no longer reel in the line. The rod was bent almost double. And, now, with a terrible strength, whatever creature was on the other end began to drag her into the lake.

The water rose above her ankles, then to her thighs. When it reached her waist, she began to panic. She tried to throw the rod away, to free herself, but somehow she was unable to let go, as if it were she who had been hooked.

She was into the lake to the level of her breasts when she grabbed the line and, drawing it to her, began to gnaw on it with her teeth. Every second brought another slip, as she was dragged farther and farther into the lake by the unknown creature, which now seemed monstrously huge to her.

A jerk, more powerful than the others, almost wrenched her off her feet, and she dug in her heels with a desperate strength she didn’t know she had. Then she bit through the line and the rod snapped back to its normal shape. The line whipped away from her, vanishing beneath the surface. But now something dark and menacing seemed to coalesce in the deepest part of the lake, rising up, coming toward her …

And she woke with a gasp and a shout that brought Lale at a run.

“What is it?” She stood naked, hands on hips, her dusky skin burnished in dawn’s rosy light. “What happened?”

“I dreamed I never met you. I dreamed I never loved you.” She turned. “Lale, there’s so much I can’t tell you.”

“Your job, I know.” Lale perched on the edge of a chair. “But I wonder what it’s doing to you, what it’s turning you into.”

She held out her hand, aware that it was trembling slightly. “It’s you I love, Lale. Only you.”

Lale rose and began to walk away. Jonatha felt a terrible sadness grip her, and a terror of the dream lake whose inhabitant wanted to draw her into it, drowning her.

At the doorway to their bedroom, Lale turned, looked at Jonatha, and said, “I know.”

Jonatha watched her disappear into the shadows of the bedroom, a tightness in her throat. But her anxiety was not simply for her relationship with Lale.

She punched in a number on her mobile and waited, a hole widening in the pit of her stomach, until her call was answered.

“Thank God you’re okay.”

On the other end, Nona laughed. “Of course I’m okay. All in a day’s work.”

“Almost being burned to a crisp is definitely not in a day’s work. I owe you—big time.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Nona said. “I couldn’t find out who was killed at the house, nor could I discover a thing about Longformz, Ltd.”

“But you did scrape up something of note. My contacts tell me that SouthEast Fashion is a legit business in Bangkok that Leroy Connaston used as a drop. He must have sent that package to Longformz, perhaps on the day he died.”

“But we don’t know what was in the package or who was murdered at the Longformz address.”

“Just a matter of time now,” Jonatha said. “The fact of the fire means we’re getting close.”

“Speaking of that fire, I’ve been working with the local fire department. We’ve confirmed that the fire at Longformz was deliberately set. Traces of butane and bits of foam, which would spread the fire in a heartbeat, were found in the rubble. I’m following up with the arson squad.”

“So you’re still willing to help me?”

Nona laughed again and said in her best street accent, “Sistahs gotsta stick togethah.”

*   *   *

“So you’re Jack McClure.”

Dr. Karalian studied Jack’s face as if he were a student trying to work out the complex formula chalked onto a blackboard. Then he pushed back his chair and crossed to the window of his office, staring out at the steep cliffs of Melá mountain and the ancient ruins carved into them.

“Tell me, Mr. McClure, have you ever been to the Sümela Monastery?”

“This is my first visit to the national park,” Jack said, “and I came directly here.”

“Pity.” Karalian stood with his hands behind his back. “It’s a remarkable place, not only historically. It’s a power spot. Do you believe there are places in the world that radiate great power?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I’ve never encountered one.”

“Then you must go up the mountainside and stand inside Sümela.”

Jack said nothing, waiting.

“I’ve been here over thirty years,” Karalian said. “Apart from the renewed influx of tourists and Greek Orthodox clergy, the place is much the same as I imagine it’s always been.

“It was founded in 386 AD, but it wasn’t until nearly a thousand years later that it gained its present size and shape. Since then, the monastery has been overrun many times; the last time was in 1916 by the Russian Empire. The monks of Sümela were entrusted with a sacred icon, which they buried for safekeeping under the vaults of St. Barbara Chapel. It was smuggled out in 1930 by an intrepid monk. I’ve never seen it, but I wish I had.”

Karalian turned from his contemplation of the past. Jack, expecting to see his eyes glazed over with the memories, was startled to see the doctor’s keen, piercing gaze leveled at him.

“How do I know you’re Jack McClure? These days, anyone can claim virtually any identity.”

“I could show you my passport.”

“It could be forged, as can any other piece of ID you might have on your person.”

Jack spread his hands helplessly. “I am who I say I am.”

Karalian grunted. “Tell me, why did you come here?”

Jack inclined his head toward the chessboard. “You were Gourdjiev’s playing opponent, as well as his friend.”

“There weren’t too many things he was passionate about.”

“Chess was one of them.”

Karalian continued to study Jack. “So you came on a hunch.”

“My mind told me that you would be the one person Gourdjiev would trust, that this place would be the one he deemed safest.”

“Illyusha.” Karalian shook his head. “He said you’d come.” The doctor walked over to his desk and sat down. “He left something for you.” His eyes did not waver. “If you are Jack McClure.”

“How shall I prove it? A DNA test?”

Karalian ignored him. “Give me the number.”

“Come again?”

“There is a number—a code, I suppose Illyusha would call it—you must give me. Without it, I cannot hand over the envelope.”

Jack had no idea what he was talking about. Gourdjiev—or Illyusha, as Karalian called him—had never given Jack a number. Jack was certain of this. Or was he? Unbidden, from the depths of his subconscious returned a portion of the last conversation he had had with Illyusha.

“This is the depth of my trust in you, Jack,”
Gourdjiev had confided.
“Words—words mean nothing, an actor’s lines. I want you to remember that. No matter what may occur, you must remember that you love each other, that that love will never change, that it is your true strength, your only salvation.

“You don’t understand this now, but I have faith that one day you will.”

Perhaps, Jack thought, this was the day.

Making a rapid calculation, he said, “Twelve, fifteen, twenty-two, five.”

L-O-V-E.

Dr. Karalian’s face broke out into a smile. From a locked drawer he drew out an envelope sealed with red wax, which he handed over.

“You must be a very special man, Mr. McClure.”

Jack held the envelope in both hands, as if it weighed far more than it actually did. “Why do you say that?”

Karalian nodded toward the envelope. “Illyusha trusted you absolutely.”

“I didn’t believe him when he told me that.”

“And yet”—Karalian spread his hands—“here is the proof.”

“‘Words mean nothing—an actor’s lines.’”

Karalian leaned forward. “I beg your pardon?”

Jack shook his head. “Nothing.” He looked over at the chessboard. “May I?”

Karalian lifted an arm. “Be my guest.”

As Jack stepped over to the chessboard, Karalian rose and followed him.

“Do you play chess, Mr. McClure?”

“Some. I’ve read the books of the grand masters.”

Dr. Karalian produced an indulgent smile. “Not the same, I’m afraid.”

“Whose turn is it?”

“I play against myself now. I like to imagine Illyusha to be the black, however.”

Thirty seconds after surveying the board, Jack moved the black king’s knight.

“Have you suckered me?” Karalian said as he moved his knight.

They played six more moves until Jack moved his queen.

“Checkmate,” he said, and Karalian laughed like a delighted child.

*   *   *

Annika was waiting for him outside. She sat in the car’s passenger seat, studiously ignoring the building where her husband had been incarcerated for so long, where he had died and been born again as someone both less and more than he had been, a terrifying being without a soul.

“Was it there?” she asked when Jack slid behind the wheel.

When he nodded, she said, “So it’s real—it isn’t a hoax. My God.”

He put the car in gear and drove off.

*   *   *

Jack could smell the eons of history the moment he stepped into the Sümela Monastery, could see it, as well, briefly held in the bright flashes of sunlight that filtered in through the roofless outer chambers.

He and Annika ignored the troupes of tourists, their respective leaders holding up small flags as if they were the standard bearers of the various armies that had conquered Sümela, only to be themselves conquered. In the end, only Sümela survived, mostly intact and now in the process of being restored to its thirteenth-century glory.

Taking her by the hand, he threaded their way through the hordes. He did not stop until they were in the St. Barbara Chapel. Its hand-hewn stone walls were covered with religious paintings of saints, crosses, and God on high, clutching what appeared to be the tablets of the Ten Commandments.

The doorway down to the vault had nothing to commend it, being small, of plain wood, cracked in places. It was almost invisible, hidden in deep shadows, and, therefore, bypassed by the tour guides and ignored by singleton tourists. The moment they slipped through, he was greeted by a waft of frigid air, sharply redolent of minerals, stone that had never been warmed by the sun. He switched on the flashlight Karalian had given him. He had asked for it after reading the letter Illyusha Gourdjiev had left for him.

He was still somewhat stunned that the old boy had been so genuinely fond of him. Given Jack’s history with him, that he had been genuine about anything except his love for Annika was, frankly, surprising. And that was another thing. He hadn’t trusted his beloved granddaughter with his legacy. Why? Perhaps because he feared that in the end she wouldn’t have the strength to stand up to the Syrian?

Shivering in the semidark, Jack turned the flashlight’s beam to the craggy walls of the vault beneath the chapel. Unlike those of the chapel itself, the vault’s walls were composed of separate rocks and, at some sections, ancient brick, mortared together. This led Jack to believe that the vault, as it appeared to him, was far smaller than the cavern out of which it had been hewn. The walls seemed to be weeping the tears of the Virgin, whose face adorned the central section of the wall opposite the one beneath which the monastery’s icon had been hidden and retrieved.

Following the instructions in Gourdjiev’s letter, he knelt down and, at the base of the wall, measured off the requisite distance from the corner. This brought him to a roughly square stone approximately the size of a large man’s shoulders. He laid out the other implements Karalian had given him and began to etch away at the surrounding mortar. This proved easier than he had imagined. Beneath the layer of “aged” mortar was mostly air.

Sitting down to give himself the proper leverage, he pulled at the stone, which, again, was easier than he had imagined. When he shone the beam on the sides, he saw why. The stone had been set on smooth stainless-steel tracks, which did most of the work.

The stone set aside, he shone the beam into the cavity. He’d been right. Beyond the vault’s wall was another space, vast, shadowed, beckoning. Without another thought, he crawled through, Annika just behind him.

Soon enough, they found themselves in the true vault. It looked like a cathedral, with its double line of carved stone pillars that held up nothing. They walked down the center aisle between the pillars. There were six pillars on each side. At the center point, he stopped and shone the beam at his feet onto a circle cut into the floor.

“What is it?” Annika whispered.

In the center of the circle was a stainless-steel ring. Reaching down, he pulled on the ring, and the circle came away.

Inside was the repository of Illyusha Gourdjiev’s legacy, wrapped in waterproof cloth. Jack pulled it out and unwrapped it. There was a brass key with a number on it to a Swiss bank account, what appeared to be an ancient icon of the Virgin, and then there were the documents, hundreds of documents detailing the misdeeds of a bewildering array of business leaders, military contractors, government officials, federal officers—the beat went on across borders and continents. But one document grabbed Jack’s immediate and undivided attention.

A dossier on G. Robert Krofft, director of the CIA, whose attachment to Gourdjiev was assured through Illyusha’s intermediaries, Iraj Namazi and a person whose ghost Jack had been chasing over thousands of miles: Leroy Connaston.

“According to this file,” he said to Annika, “Connaston had been a freelance mercenary Krofft had recruited for off-the-radar wet work. Six years ago, Connaston had expanded his work to freelance terrorism, funded by Krofft’s sizable stash of black ops money.” The irony was mind-bending. “Gourdjiev had Iraj contact Krofft with the evidence of what his pet dog was up to and, from that moment on, he had Krofft in his pocket.”

Senses reeling, Jack took a moment to catch his breath. He made a mental note to get this file to Nona as soon as possible. It would both exonerate him and indict Krofft.

But, of course, that wasn’t the end of it. This tale had a far darker end. Yes, Krofft was the mole, but he wasn’t Iraj’s mole, as Dennis Paull and Jack himself had figured. As usual, Illyusha had bought himself a world-class stalking horse. While everyone was running around trying to bring down the Syrian, it was Gourdjiev they all had had to worry about.