From the Ashes (32 page)

“What?”

“Gimme your camera,” Jon said suddenly as he bent over the rail for another trip down.

“Jon, be careful, already. You fall, and you crack your skull open.”

“I know,” he said, taking the camera from her and shining the light in the hole. What if the cross wasn’t the secret, but it guarded the secret? What if...

He set the penlight in the hole, its beam aimed at the box. Sliding his fingers into the metal enclosure, he felt along the tin walls until... there it was. On the side of the box opposite the cross-adorned lid, the side set into the left wall, Jon’s fingers found the scratches he had glanced over before. Tracing some of them with a fingertip, he realized they were not just scratches, but
letters.
Letters etched into this secret hiding place decades earlier by Rockefeller himself. He pushed the camera into the opening, aimed it as best as he could, and took a series of photos, some with flash, some without. Different angles, different lighting.
That should cover it,
he figured, withdrawing the camera and scanning through the pictures he had taken. Without taking the time to register
what
the message said, the pulse of blood in his head making it difficult to concentrate, he realized that he had in fact captured the entire message of the box in the shots. Pulling the flashlight from the hole, he shoved the floodlight back into position, and secured the glass facing as well as he could. And then, just as he was turning the final screw, twisting his body to properly angle the screwdriver, he slipped down the ledge.

He gave a startled cry, but Mara had already grabbed his belt and was attempting to haul him back topside. After a few seconds of pulling and wriggling, Jon found himself safely back on top. Mara smacked him on the chest.

“Don’t
do
that,” she admonished him.

“Do what?”

“Scare me like that,” she answered, gathering the tool belt and tools from the ledge.

“Sorry. I think it was worth it though,” he said, holding up the camera and tilting it back and forth, its illuminated display of the box from below dancing back and forth in the night.

“You got it?”

“Yeah, but it’s not the Dossiers, obviously. I think it’s some sort of a clue or some—” Jon cut off midsentence and grabbed Mara’s arm, pulling her into the shadows.

“What?” she asked in a hushed tone.

Jon pointed at another security guard approaching from a different direction, this one looking less haggard and pliable than the first.

“Let’s not press our luck,” Jon whispered. “Continue this at the hotel?”

Mara nodded and the pair snuck off through the Plaza under cover of night and onto the street, headed southwest toward the safety of their hotel.

***

Hiding in the shadows of a nearby alcove, the earbud of a longdistance listening device stuck in one ear, Enrique Ramirez shook his head. He was proud of himself for letting his hunter instinct bow to calculating patience, waiting for the bigger kill. Chasing the pair the day before had initially been a gut reaction, spurred on by his indignation at leaving Jonathan Rickner as a witness, which at face value was the biggest mistake of his career. Tonight though, he was patient, purposeful. For if what he had heard was true, something truly disturbing was going on. He would follow, verify, and take the necessary actions.

Which, ultimately, would result in the two things he had been going for all along:

The successful completion of the most important mission in the Division’s history. And equally important for Ramirez: revenge against Jonathan Rickner.

The small monitor in the elevator showed a talking head and a reporter in the field discussing the latest development in the Middle East, another dustup between Hamas and Israeli forces that left civilians on both sides devastated and neither side any further in promoting their cause. The news ticker underneath ran off headlines about North Korean missile launches, Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s perpetual rhetoric about his country’s nuclear program, another dip in the stock market, unemployment and foreclosure comparisons, further unrest in yet another Middle Eastern country, alleged corruption in the latest election in South Africa, a school shooting in Germany. Dire news, gripping news, news that sold. But news that happened in the world in which Jon and Mara, who watched the ticker and listened to the anchor’s banter on the sixteen-floor ride up to their hotel room, lived. News that might have been different, for better or worse, had Operation Phoenix never come about. News that might be different, or at least, be looked at in a different light, after – God willing – the two of them found the Dossiers and exposed to the nation – and the world – the truth behind Operation Phoenix and the cover-up that followed.

Jon wondered if they really understood all the consequences of what they were about to do. He was lost in thought as he and Mara disembarked from the elevator and padded down the hallway to their room, both of them silent from the occupation of their minds and the fatigue of their bodies. Did they really know what all might happen after this missing piece in one of the critical moments of the twentieth century was finally put into place? Would there be public backlash? From their own people? From abroad? Who, besides them and the Division members, already knew what was going on, the killings of innocent Americans by their own government? How high up, and how far-reaching, did this conspiracy stretch its tendrils? They would, for all intents and purposes, be implicating their government in bringing to power one of the worst villains in recent memory, a man responsible for the deaths of over 10 million civilians, countless casualties of war, and the devastation of a continent. Given, America had also been instrumental in bringing about Hitler’s downfall, but its cover-up of the facts for the past seventy years, and the loathsome way in which it had kept the truth a secret from its own people would surely complete its guilt in the eyes of the public. Might they be bringing revolution down onto their own country’s heads by revealing the truth to the public? Might their cause, however noble, ultimately do more damage than it sought to prevent?

Jon slid his keycard into the slot on the door. A small green light, a whirr, a click, and the door unlocked, Jon turning the handle and leading the way into the room. With a flip of the switch, the room was instantly bathed in illumination, a comforting sight after the ardors of the day. A safe haven from the cold and dangers of the outside world, but not from the thoughts that haunted Jon’s mind.

“Let’s see the pics,” Mara said, tossing her bag onto the bed and inching up to Jon’s side.

Jon sat down on the foot of her bed, camera in hand, and flipped through the photos, Mara looking on. Some were too bright, some too dark. Some had been taken at such an angle that half of the message was out of the frame, while the angles of others had failed to capture the shape of the letters engraved in the metal. Two pictures in the middle of the inverted photo shoot were perfect – the message could be read loud and clear. Its meaning, however, was less obvious.

“What the heck?” Mara blurted. “Some sort of poem?”

“Some sort of clue it looks like.”

“Well, these certainly aren’t the Dossiers.”

“No, it’s... hang on a sec,” Jon said as he pulled out Rockefeller’s journal page. “‘
He points to the source of my anguish, the first of five.
’ Maybe ‘the first of five’ doesn’t refer to five different sources of anguish, but five different markers, the first of which was the Prometheus statue?”

“Like some sort of treasure hunt or something? A clue leading to another clue and so on?”

“And so on five times, until—”

“The Dossiers.”

“Exactly,” Jon said, a contented grin on his face. “Five clues, five locations. The Rockefeller journal entry gave us the first clue, and here’s the second.” He waved the camera in the air. “The question is, where is location number two?”

“And with it, clue number three?”

“That’s how I figure it.” He suddenly looked wistful, staring off into space with a look of nostalgic satisfaction dancing in his eyes.

“What?”

“Huh?” he asked, yanked back from somewhere in the past and turning his attention to Mara.

“What were you just thinking about?” she pressed.

“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about me and Michael growing up. We used to devise treasure hunts with puzzles and clues for each other. Be they around the house or the neighborhood, or in temple ruins near where Dad was working. One of us would find something cool, an ancient idol or something, then work backward, identifying key points, engravings on walls, a copse of three palm trees, whatever, and leading the other one of us from the starting point to the ‘treasure’ via encoded waypoints.”

Mara smiled a tight-lipped but genuine smile, torn between happy memories and the knowledge that no new memories of Michael would ever be formed. “Then this should be right up your alley.”

“Yeah, it should.” Jon allowed himself one last sentimental smile, then turned back to the image on the camera’s display screen. “Alright then, let’s pick this puppy apart.
‘Her great bells toll.’”

“Her. Like a boat or something?”

Jon kneaded his bottom lip between his teeth, scratching at the stubble on his chin with his thumb.

“Could be a boat. Or maybe a church.”

“Something big and impressive. It’d have to be to be personified as a
she,
right?”

Jon chuckled. “Yeah sure. But then this is a port city. And churches are ubiquitous here.”

“Well, he would have wanted it to still be here whenever ‘somebody’ looked for the clues years down the road, right?”

“Yeah, someplace permanent, someplace safe.”

“Kinda rules out boats then, doesn’t it?” Mara concluded.

“Good point. Churches then.”

“But most of the churches in the city have been around at
least
since Rockefeller’s time, if not decades before. Which one would he have used?”

“Well it would have had to be some place that A: he had access to, and B: he felt some special connection to...”

“Wait a second. We’ve been looking at this all wrong.”

Jon raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Okay, we’ve been thinking that “her” is a personification of a great building or vessel or something.” Mara smiled. “But what if it belongs to an actual person.”

“An actual person? Like someone important to Rockefeller?”

“Like his mom,” Mara said with a triumphant grin. “The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Carillon is the largest of its kind in the world. We learned about it in my Ecclesiastical Music course back in college. The carillon was donated by Rockefeller, in memory of his beloved mother, to Riverside Church here in Manhattan.”

“Holy crap, why didn’t I think of that?” Jon said, mentally kicking himself. “Rockefeller was a member at Riverside. It’s where he attended services and everything while here in the city.”

“It fits,” Mara said. “It was important to Rockefeller for multiple reasons. And his donations and membership there would open doors for him to hide something there if he felt so inclined.”

“Nice work, Mara,” Jon said, giving her a fist bump. His face turned a little more somber before he added, “Michael would have been proud.”

Mara took a deep breath as her eyes lifted briefly toward the ceiling. “Thus far, yeah, I think he would. Of both of us.”

Jon allowed himself a quick smile before he returned the conversation to the task at hand. “Okay, Riverside Church is a big Baptist church up in Momingside Heights. I went there a few years back on one of my trips down from Harvard. Beautiful sanctuary. It’s a little ways north of the cathedral we met ‘Wayne’ at this afternoon.”

“Okay, we’ve figured out the first line,” Mara said, shifting her gaze back toward the camera’s display screen. “But what about:
‘Chapel of Christ; Read right of saints and then shift thrice’?”

“Well, I guess the church has a chapel called the ‘Chapel of Christ,’ or something similar.” He pointed at the words on the screen. “‘
Right of saints,
’ maybe some sort of sculpture or painting or something.
‘Shift thrice’
might be referring to moving your vantage point to see something hidden. Honestly, I don’t know without seeing it. Which I guess we’ll do first thing tomorrow?”

“Sound like a plan.” Mara glanced at her watch. “Oh, crap, it’s after two in the morning.”

Jon automatically looked at his watch.
Well
after two, at that. “Alright then, let’s get some shut-eye. You feel good about tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Well, I guess it’s later today, but whatever. You?”

“Yup. We’re gonna do this,” he said, squeezing her shoulder in his hand as he stood up from her bed and started to move to his side of the room.

“Hey,” she called with a quiver in her voice. He stopped, looked back at her. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For everything. Michael always thought the world of you, spoke so highly and hopefully of you. He would be proud of you.”

Jon’s face twisted into something between a smile and a wince, moisture that portended tears glimmering in the corners of his eyes.

“Wow,” he said, biting his lip. “Well, you’re welcome. And if I couldn’t have Michael by my side on this adventure, I’m glad I’ve got you here with me.”

She smiled and nodded quietly. Then they shuffled about their late-night rituals of teeth-brushing and pajama-changing, too overwhelmed by tiredness and consumed by thoughts of the fast-approaching morning to talk any further.

Minutes later, as they both lay in their respective beds, the only light the dull illumination the moon cast underneath the curtains, Jon stared at the ceiling, his mind a pinball machine, too occupied with the thoughts bouncing around in his head to make sleep come easily. After about fifteen minutes of restlessness, listening to the soft slow breathing of Mara from across the room, Jon finally succumbed to an exhausted, dreamless sleep, praying that he would be prepared for what lay ahead.