Shadow Ritual (14 page)

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. That was obscene. Really, I find it unbearable too.”

“Stop!”

Her eyes hardened as quickly as they had softened. “No, you listen! I’m fed up with this stupid war between us. I have a friend’s murder to avenge.”

“And I, a sister’s,” Marcas said.

“I know. I’m tired. I can’t sleep. Sophie, she was—”

The pressure Zewinski had felt since Sophie’s murder was finally causing cracks in her veneer.

“More than a friend?” Marcas suggested.

The blood drained from Zewinski’s face.

“Don’t ever talk to me about before—”

“Before what?”

Zewinski jumped to her feet. “We’re not focused. You want the documents?”

She walked over to a shelf and grabbed a pile of papers. “Here they are. And please, stop looking at my legs. Every man I meet does that.”

Zewinski brushed past Marcas and spread the photocopies on the leather-topped desk. Marcas didn’t say anything. He sat down at the desk, noticing that his heart was beating much faster. Was it because of what he was about to see, or was it something else?

There were fifty or so sheets filled with signatures, seals, and diagrams. They meant nothing to a profane, but were a treasure for him. And for someone else: Sophie’s murderer.

Zewinski seemed to sense his excitement. “That’s not all,” she said. “Sophie wrote a commentary on these documents. I… Well, I didn’t give these to my superiors. Here they are, for you.”

She waved the papers in front of him so he’d take them.

“This is the last thing Sophie wrote.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and then Zewinski said, “I’ll leave you alone. I’m going to hit the gun range and blow off some steam.”

Marcas watched her leave. He felt thrown off by so much complexity. She was as solid as a rock—as tough as jade. The name fit—and she had a hard, unrelenting job. Yet was sensitive to details like men looking at her legs. He shook himself. He’d been staring at them too.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

Zewinski smiled, and for an instant she looked shy. She walked away, closing the door behind her. Marcas settled into his chair, hoping to mentally distance himself from the nightmarish ghosts in the room and focus on the papers in front of him.

29

The train was at a standstill, having arrived at the Brussels station. The three Jews were staring at Bashir, their eyes filled with condescension, as if he were some boy caught in the act. The compartment door was closed, the curtains drawn. He was alone among potential enemies. How had these three gotten their hands on his client’s code name?

Bashir’s mind was reeling. Had Sol sent them? If they were Israeli agents, then they knew about Sol. Would they take the stone and kill him? But why were they dressed as Orthodox Jews, who stood out like imams in a crowded marketplace?

The only certainty was that he was more vulnerable than he’d ever been. The stone brought bad luck.

The eldest spoke. “We’re here to take care of your problems. So you’ll obey us calmly and quietly. You’ll stay here until we reach Paris. We’ll keep you safe.”

Bashir didn’t like the man’s tone.

“Who are you? Mossad? Shin Bet?”

The three men looked at each other and laughed. The eldest spoke again, sounding more affable this time. “Do we look like Jews, my friend?”

The Palestinian looked them up and down. These guys were crazy.

“Stop jerking me around. I asked you a question.”

The youngest stopped chuckling and spoke up. “Enough. We had our fun, but we’ve got work to do. Hans, show him.”

The man closest to the door of the compartment glanced into the aisle and turned to Bashir. He removed his hat and ran his hand through his hair, taking off a nearly invisible net with sidelocks attached. He used his other hand to pull off his beard. In less than a minute, he had morphed into a smooth-faced, ordinary-looking man, were it not for his piercing eyes.

Fake Jews. At least they weren’t the enemy.

One of the three spoke up. “You see, my friend, there’s no need to worry. Sol sent us. When you informed him that you would be late, he told us that you were in Amsterdam. We were assigned to your security.”

“I don’t need your help.”

The youngest turned to the others and said, “The problem with Arabs is arrogance. In the end, they get screwed by everyone. It’s no surprise the Jews have been crushing them for decades.”

Then he turned to Bashir, making a fist.

“Listen to me. Two pros started tailing you in Amsterdam, and one of them is on this train. He’s no friend of Palestine, I can tell you that. He’s probably an Israeli agent. We’ll take care of him. That’s why we’re wearing this shit disguise.”

The man sitting next to Bashir added, “Fifteen minutes before we arrive in Paris, we’ll get rid of him, and you’ll continue on to your meeting.”

“Will I be seeing you in Paris?”

Hans was conscientiously putting his beard and sidelocks back on. “No, our assignment stops here. We’ll take the next train out—in getups that are more civilized.”

The two others laughed again. Hans interrupted. “Now let’s play some cards to find out which of us is going to bump off the real Jew and help our oppressed Arab friend. We’ve got a good ninety minutes before we get there.”

Bashir felt the artery in his temple pulsing. Here he was, stuck in a train compartment with three fanatical racists. He was crazy with rage over the way they uttered the words “Jew” and “Arab.” Bashir was someone who made his enemies tremble, who had killed men the world over. Now he was obliged to put up with these pigs. Once he got paid for this gig, he’d avenge his humiliation.

What bothered him the most was that they had played him. And even though he had spotted the agent in the other car, he hadn’t picked up the slightest scent of the team following him in Amsterdam. His senses were dulling, and he had committed unforgivable errors.

His three helpmates seemed to have completely forgotten him as they slapped down their cards and exclaimed in Dutch.

30

Missed. Zewinski lined up her Glock, planted her feet, and distributed her weight. She held her breath and pulled the trigger. The bullet shot out of the barrel at more than sixty miles an hour, piercing the bicep of the human form on the paper target. Missed. She had targeted the elbow.

Her time was up. What a crappy session. She’d hit twelve out of twenty. She was getting sloppy. She kept seeing Sophie’s smashed face. And worse, she didn’t believe for a minute that they would find her friend’s murderer. How could they identify a killer in Rome when they were in Paris? Jade set her weapon and ear muffs on the small counter to her right and signaled to the shooting-range manager that she was finished.

On her way out, she saw a former lover, a special ops commander.

“Jade? How are you?”

“Fine. Just back from Rome, and you?”

“Shh, state secret.”

“You can cut the act. I know what happened in the Ivory Coast last year. I heard you were there. It wouldn’t have been you who took out those two Sukhoi planes at the Abidjan airport?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, right before the Ivorians bombed one of our bases, killing nine French soldiers.”

“Really?”

“Too bad for you. I could have told you who took out the two Belarusians who piloted the planes. It happened in a Budapest whorehouse.”

“You can’t get me to talk.”

“Go to hell. But give me a call if you’re in Paris for a while.”

“Promise. Later.”

Jade watched him walk off. She missed special ops, and the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if making the switch to security had been the right decision. It had seemed like a good idea, but now she was back in Paris and couldn’t get her bearings. Too many years on the road, running from her past. Her sinister offices made her stir-crazy, and her apartment felt too small.

And then there was Marcas. Every time she saw him, she wanted to slap him, just for fun. He acted so superior, and his sententious Freemason history lessons were seriously getting on her nerves. She had pulled up his file—and was sure he’d pulled up hers. He was divorced, lived alone, and appeared to be interested in only his job and Freemason history, although she did note that he wasn’t averse to an occasional one-nighter.

Definitely not her type. He was pleasant enough to look at, but not boy candy. He seemed so steadfast, in a soothing kind of way. But he was a damned Freemason. Her first reaction was to run.

He brought back memories of that horrible day, seventeen years earlier.

She had skipped school to stay home and listen to the new Cure album. Her mother was a doctor and was away on a weeklong conference. Her father, a chemical-products trader who ran his own business, left early every morning.

The day had started off beautifully. Sunlight was filtering through the trees in the heavily wooded yard. She opened the door of the large, silent house to let some air in and started heading up to her room. She stopped when she heard a noise in her parents’ room at the end of the hallway. She was paralyzed. She had assumed that her father was gone, but what if he was running late and was still in the house? She would be in huge trouble if he found her. He would ground her, and she’d miss that weekend trip to Normandy with her friends.

But what if it wasn’t her dad? Maybe it was thieves. She panicked, ran into her room, and hid under her bed. She heard someone walking in the hallway, past her bedroom and down the stairs, toward her father’s office. One person. She crept farther under the bed and tried to make herself tiny. She heard the steps again. It was her father. She was sure from the way he was walking. But then again, maybe not. She hoped he would leave soon. Things hadn’t been going so well for him. Some people had come twice to take things away, and she had overheard her parents talking about closing the business.

Jade waited twenty minutes. Then a shot broke the silence. She slid out from under her bed, rushed down the stairs, and opened the office door.

Paul Zewinski lay in his old leather chair, his head to one side, his eyes wide open, blood pooling on the floor. She screamed and ran out of the house. She ran and ran until she collapsed. If only she had forced herself to crawl out from under the bed instead of hiding. If only she hadn’t been so afraid. She could have saved him.

The family attorney had explained that a competitor had conspired against the family, and the court had liquidated the business to pay off its debts. The attorney added that the two people behind all of this were Freemasons. At the time, Jade didn’t know who Freemasons were, but the word sounded like an insult. As far as she was concerned, her own cowardice had played as much a role in her father’s suicide as the Freemasons. She dealt with her lack of courage by choosing a high-risk profession. But she still needed to take care of the Freemasons. She had a score to settle.

31

Sophie Dawes had been an excellent archivist. Each document was identified, numbered, and described in detail.

Her analysis was systematic and thorough. She had followed every lead and had run all her theories through to the finish. She was clearly passionate about the subject.

In any case, he understood why these documents had intrigued her. The first papers were ordinary: archives dating from 1801 and 1802 that had belonged to a lodge in the provinces, near Châteauroux. There were presentations, architectural plans, and internal letters, all by the same person: Alphonse du Breuil, the worshipful master of the very respectable Les Amis Retrouvés de la Parfaite Union lodge.

Sophie Dawes had done a comparative study of the lodge’s name without finding anything unusual. From the beginning of the empire, lodges were founded with names related to the virtues of fraternal friendship. It was a way to move past the rifts of the revolution and celebrate a new era.

Worshipful Master Alphonse du Breuil was an archetypal Freemason of his times. He had been initiated before the revolution and in 1793 had joined the army of the French Republic. He participated in the Italian campaign in 1796 and was promoted to lieutenant after being wounded in the leg. In 1799, he took part in the Egyptian expedition as a military attaché with Napoleon Bonaparte’s scientific corps. He reappeared in France at the end of 1800, having left the army as a captain. He purchased land in the Brenne region in central France and declared his support for the new constitution and the first consul, Napoleon Bonaparte.

When the Napoleonic Empire was established four years later, he sought to establish a lodge and requested approval from the Grand Orient of France, the only official Masonic authority in the country.

Marcas could see that this was where things had gotten complicated for Sophie. She had transcribed all the letters between Alphonse de Breuil and the heads of the Grand Orient de France, who were responsible for verifying every lodge. It was clear that neither side was listening to the other.

Breuil wanted to use his own rituals and create his own temple on his land in a hamlet called Plaincourault. That sounded reasonable enough, but the blueprints for the temple had shocked the Grand Orient. Breuil wanted a temple shaped like a screw—at least that was what came to Marcas’s mind when he saw the drawing.

When the Grand Orient expressed its doubts, Breuil asserted that the temple was inspired by religious buildings he had seen in Egypt. Sophie had added “incoherent” in the margin.

Breuil mentioned the design in only one other letter, where he specified that the center of the temple, where there was usually a mosaic, would have “a pit with a bush and exposed roots.” This pit was a key symbol, he said, because it was only in the birth of life underground that the seven heavens could be attained.

According to Sophie’s research, there were no other traces of the ritual envisioned by Breuil, even though it evidently existed, because several letters from the Grand Orient mentioned the rite. In one letter, an official expressed surprise at the importance Breuil gave to the traditional bitter drink initiates were required to consume as a symbol of the difficulty of following the true Masonic path.