The Book of Names (22 page)

No wonder Yael is strong-willed; she has to be.
David piled a handful of olives onto his plate.

They ate quickly and prepared to leave. As David thanked Eli for his hospitality, Yael's father riffled through his rucksack and shoved a small plastic box at David.

“Open it,” he ordered, “and put it on.”

Yael stepped closer to examine the gift.

David lifted the gold chain from the box and immediately recognized the pendant dangling from it. He'd received a similar one on his bar mitzvah years ago but had no idea where it was now.

“A
chai.”
He looked quizzically at Yosef, glancing up from the two joined gold letters—
chet
and
yud
—which spell chai, “life” in English.

“Life is the most important thing in Judaism,” Yael's father said.
“Everything
is about life. The here and now. The sages taught us that if you save one life, it is as if you've saved the entire world. And if you destroy a life, it is the same as destroying the entire world.”

Yosef's deep-set eyes locked with David's. A far deeper green than Yael's, they were somber in the morning light. “Now more than ever, that belief is true. For if the Gnoseos do succeed in snuffing out the lives of the remaining Lamed Vovniks, they end the world. Based upon what Rabbi ben Moshe and my daughter have told us, you can save them, David. But it must be soon.” With that, he turned abruptly and headed toward the stairs.

Nothing like a little pressure.
David's stomach clenched and the residual tang of olive burned bitter in his throat.

Yael sighed, watching her father's quick departure. She took the chain from David's fingers. “He's like that, don't take it personally.”

Deftly, she fastened the chai around David's neck. And then he felt a different kind of pressure—her fingers brushing featherlike against his skin. He tried to concentrate on the heft of the metal as the
chai
settled against his chest.

At that moment a memory flashed into his mind. Something from the recesses of his childhood. He couldn't have been more than seven or eight. Clearly he could see his mother's father handing David his own
chai
to examine.

Life. And death.
David felt the burden of both as, in silence, he and Yael hurried after Yosef down the wooden stairs.

The drive north took nearly three hours. The olive trick worked all too well. David was especially thirsty and a pile of water bottles mounted in the backseat.

But his tensions mounted as well as he tried repeatedly to reach Stacy, Meredith, or Hutch—to no avail.

The knot in his stomach began to ache as they trailed a tour bus snaking into Safed. It puttered up Jerusalem Street, which looped around the main hill of the three hills comprising the city. He knew little about Safed, only what Yael and Yosef had told him on the drive, but he'd been surprised to learn that along with Jerusalem, Tiberias, and Hebron, it was one of Israel's four holy cities.

Taking in the panorama of splendid hills rolling south toward the Kinneret—the Sea of Galilee—he marveled at the antiquity of Safed.
Founded in 70 A.D., a year before the Romans built the Coliseum
, David reflected.
A decade before Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii. And more than a century before the Mayans built their first temples.

That would put its origin at five centuries earlier than the fall of the Roman Empire
, he realized.

Yet, according to what Yael had told him, it wasn't until the sixteenth century that the Jewish mystics settled here. Many of them were refugees who'd been expelled from Spain during the Inquisition.

So while Shakespeare wrote
Macbeth,
Michaelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, and Henry VIII chopped off Anne Boleyn's head, the mystics of Safed established Israel's highest city as the world center for Kabbalah study.

“Think of it as the Israeli Sedona,” Yael had suggested. “Here we have the same kind of juxtaposition—a vital
artists' colony, waves of religious seekers, and the pull of unseen mystical forces.”

So, based on his visit to the red rocks of Sedona with Hutch years ago, David thought he knew what to expect. The Arizona rock formations were famous for their beauty and their mystical vortices. But as the car circled up the white-rocked city, that rose like graceful tiers on a wedding cake, he felt an entirely new sensation.

Unlike Sedona, earth-toned and grounded in the land and vortices shooting from deep within its core, Safed seemed to draw its aura from the heavens. Even the air seemed to glow with a pure light, resplendent as the heart of a diamond. He leaned toward the open window as they reached the summit, where Yael pointed out Citadel Park.

“That's the site of the Crusaders' first fortress. When they took the city, they drove the Jews from Safed. Later, others, including the Knights Templar, held the city until 1517, when Ottoman rule extended over all of Israel.”

In the city's center, Chasidic Jews hurried along the streets, dressed in frocked coats and wide-brimmed hats similar to those worn by their ancestors in nineteenth-century Poland. Tourists in walking shorts, t-shirts, and baseball caps strolled from one art gallery to the next, most of them bypassing the medieval synagogues dotting the cobbled streets between trendy shops and cafés.

“The Gabrieli Kaballah Center is there—just ahead on the left.” Yael pointed toward a curved driveway. At its crest sat a long stone building with arched windows, rising up behind a decorative fence. Flowering cacti and other blooms peeked from between the short metal spikes glinting bronze in the sunlight. With its umber-tiled roof, the Center might have been a Tuscan restaurant rather than an international center for mystical study.

As David passed through the gate after Yael and Yosef, his cell phone rang, startling him.

He stared at the caller ID.

“Thank God! It's Stacy!”

Yael whirled toward him as he answered the call.

“Stace! Are you all right? Is—”

His heart stopped.

 

Elizabeth Wakefield rose from her sumptuously appointed bed and gazed around the rented Bloomsbury flat with a satisfied smile.

The oversized cherrywood sleigh bed she'd dreamed of having since she was a child looked as sumptuous as a strawberry-laden chocolate rum torte in a bakery window, nothing at all like the boring, clean-lined bedroom suite in her home.

Her lover had admired every embellished pillow she'd chosen, every set of 800-count Egyptian sheets, even the cream and gold duvet, telling her that the bed in which they lay together was nearly as beautiful as she was.

Elizabeth knew she wasn't beautiful. Her chin was too pointed, her brown hair too bland, and her only distinguishing characteristics were her delicate long fingers and her dark hazelnut eyes. But
he
thought she was, and in this room she believed him.

He was married, of course. And rich. And powerful. And so was she. They'd met by chance at the Old Vic, both of them waiting for their spouses at the Pit Bar beneath the theater.

There'd been an instant spark between them. Up until that moment she'd never dreamed of having an affair. She was a serious woman, a senior partner in the law firm her grandfather had founded. Her marriage was solid and comfortable, her surgeon husband an easy companion.

So she'd surprised even herself when she'd accepted the debonair stranger's offer of a drink and, by the time they'd finished it, his invitation to dine with him a week later.

What could it hurt to have dinner with such a fascinating man? Her husband was lecturing at the university that night anyway.

It was supposed to be only one dinner, but one dinner had evolved into four years of stolen evenings, scintillating conversation, and this private retreat, where they shared the sort of electrifying sexual abandon only secret lovers can ignite.

Somewhere between the long weekend they'd snuck off to Lyon and their midnight strolls along the beach in San Tropez, when she was supposed to be attending an intellectual property conference, she'd fallen in love with him.

How could she not? He was giving, gentle, and brilliant, she thought, as she lit the slim gold tapers on the bedside table, and sprayed the bed linens with lavender.

Her heart thrummed when the doorbell buzzed only a few moments later, and she quickly checked her reflection in the mirror, adjusting the ruby pendant at her throat, smoothing the hem of her short black sheath. She was smiling as she opened the door, but one look at his face, and she knew something was amiss.

“What is it? You look sad.”

He shook his head. “Not at all. It's only that I've been called away to Geneva. I'm afraid I can't stay.”

Disappointment stabbed through her.

“Come in, tell me.” She took his hand and drew him inside, closing the door and leaning against it.

“Elizabeth, please. There's a car waiting downstairs. I only stopped here on my way to the airport to tell you in person.” He glanced at his watch, regret creasing his brows. “I'll be gone several weeks.”

“Several weeks?” For the first time, a sense of unease came over her. “That long?”

“I'm afraid it's out of my control.”

“I see.” And she did. He was hiding something. She knew him well enough to know that. “Well, then,” she said with a small shrug, “that should give me ample time to prepare my brief for the Penobscot case.”

He pulled her into his arms and pressed kisses all across her face. “I'm going to miss you, Elizabeth. Every moment.”

“And I, you.” She kissed him once more, then searched his eyes. “Safe travels, darling.”

He hesitated. “I'll call you.”

She knew in that instant he would not.

“Don't keep the driver waiting.” She steeled herself against the pain grinding through her chest, and took a step away from the door.

She stood in silence for a moment after the soft click of the door latch, then straightened her shoulders and went home.

 

Far beneath the city of London, far beneath the underground subway system first built in the 1800s, an intricate labyrinth of tunnels snakes its way through ancient bedrock. Forgotten by most, though once a vibrant part of the subway system, some of the shafts have slept silent and abandoned since the 1930s. Others are sealed off, still others are used today as giant storage bins. Many tunnels were reopened to serve as bomb shelters during World War II, then forgotten once more.

Few Londoners remembered the location of the steep spiral staircases corkscrewing down through the earth to the tunnels. And fewer still knew that beneath the Tower of London, beneath the River Thames, the tunnels' giant ventilation fans had begun to churn anew.

Eduardo DiStefano escorted his wife by the elbow down one of those winding staircases. He knew it was his duty to get her settled, yet he was seething to escape. He needed to find the Serpent. And quickly.

The Circle had gone to great pains to construct the underground chamber where he'd conduct the final stage of his research—but he was nowhere to be seen. The damn
computer ought to have been humming like a symphony finding the last of the names, but it had yet to be turned on. No one in the Ark had seen him and Erik still hadn't arrived.

“You will become acclimated to living underground,
bella.
We must hurry—get you settled. The Circle is convening in an hour.”

“Just show me the door,
caw
—I don't need your help unpacking, or getting acclimated.”

Flora's heels clacked confidently against the metal. In fascination she gazed about at the majestic, yet primitive surroundings. Though Eduardo had been here many times and had told her of it, this was her first glimpse of the Ark.

Her children and grandchildren would be here tonight, arriving from Milan just after dark. How clearly she recalled teaching them the songs when they were children, preparing them to begin their journey toward reunion with their Source. What an adventure lay before them.

She smiled as she reached the first landing, and paused to catch her breath. In the Ark there would be singing every night—for as many nights as it took for all of the Hidden Ones to die so that the souls of the Gnoseos could float free. Free from the constraints of the body, free to ascend to the Source.

She could hardly wait to hear the voices resonate in song, their secret words protected by the density of stone and rock.

Eduardo thought she was nervous about leaving their hilltop villa, but no, there was nothing to fear. This was a glorious moment. All of the Circle would be here soon with their families.

“Just think, Eduardo.” Her tone was breathless. “This is what we've aspired to for centuries.” The jubilation in
her voice echoed off the stones. “Finally—the Hidden Ones are on the verge of extinction. Our liberation is imminent.”

The warmth of his hand caressed her shoulder as carefully they traversed the steps. “I couldn't have accomplished so much without you, bella. Your fervor has nearly surpassed mine. You have been my joy.”

“There is more to come.” She smiled at him, thrilling more with each step that this triumphant day had arrived within her lifetime.

She felt no pang for those she was leaving behind. She had, at the last moment, spoken to her brother—wretched fool—phoning him this morning from the villa. Alfonso had had no idea it was the last time they would ever speak. He wasn't Gnoseos and was of no use—she'd never even entertained the notion of initiating him and his pious Protestant wife into the Order. No one in her large Milanese family knew of her conversion, or of the secret practices she'd adopted soon after she'd married Eduardo.

They all assumed she'd become an atheist. Nothing could be further from the truth. She knew God existed, but she didn't love or worship him. She knew the truth now—He had created a world of illusion and evil. The real world was spiritual and that was the realm her husband and the Circle had opened to her.