Authors: Michael Byrnes
“All right, smart guy. So do you have any idea what he was planning to put in the empty room?” she added.
He shot her a confused glance.
“The Sanctuary? The Holy of Holies?” She was thinking back to the Temple Society’s last exhibit. “I doubt Jesus would have planned on leaving it empty, right?”
Amit’s face went ghost white. “That’s right.” He checked his watch. “There’s a phone in the back office. Let me make a quick call to Enoch, see what else he’s got for us.”
Charlotte’s numbed senses responded sluggishly as consciousness returned once more. Slowly her eyes opened, eyelids fluttering spasmodically against the intrusive overhead lighting.
Something was covering her mouth, straining her breathing. When she tried to touch her face, she found that her hands were still immobilized. Looking down, she saw a thick silver strap
—duct tape?
—digging so tightly against her wrists that her fingers felt nothing but pins and needles. Her forearms were pinned to the armrests of a metal chair. The tight pressure around her chest and shoulders was another thick wrapping of silver tape that kept her snug against the chair back. Testing her feet confirmed that each of her ankles had been bound to a leg of the chair. Her cracked lips barely moved against the tape wrapped tight over her mouth.
What the hell . . . ?
Her eyes darted back and forth. Definitely not a plane. This time she was in a cramped, windowless room. She was facing a metal door and it was shut tight.
No sign of Donovan.
The room’s storage shelves, stacked with cleaning utensils, brought to mind Salvatore Conte’s makeshift surveillance room in the basement of the Vatican Museums. Could these bastards have hurt Donovan . . . or done something worse? God, the idea of it was torturous. They’d already killed Evan.
What wack-job is behind all this?
she wondered.
Wriggling her fingers, she tried to get some blood back to her milk-white hands.
Panic began to set in, making it even harder to breathe. Nothing good could come from being terrified. She had to keep her wits.
Calm down,
she repeated in a loop.
Breathe... use that yoga
.
She meditated deeply to ease the cramping that was quickly setting into her tight muscles. This would be the point in the movie, she mused, where the crafty heroine would produce a hidden blade, a nail clipper, or a rough-edged fingernail to cut the bindings. Nothing doing here. Wrong script, wrong heroine. Even her nails were nonexistent—snipped as short as short could be. Prissy nails had no place in the clinical confines of a laboratory.
Now she wished she had the whole package—half-inch talons with perfect
cuticles and a French manicure.
Helpless. Utterly helpless.
Just to spice things up a bit, the place was like a sauna too. Charlotte was drenched in sweat. Not that that was having any effect on the integrity of the damn duct tape.
What a great product testimonial this would make,
she thought. She could picture the thirty-second spot featuring her taped to this stupid chair. Rolls of the stuff would be flying off stores’ shelves.
Now she turned her attention to the room, her eyes poring over its contents. That’s when she realized something peculiar. On a shelf just over her right shoulder, there were dried food containers, stacked canned goods, and juice bottles. The awkward sight angle made the labels tough to read, but the ones she could make out had both English and Hebrew writing. And there was a common symbol on the packages that she could swear certified the goods as being Kosher.
First the Yiddish, now this?
That’s when a tiny red light blinking high up near the ceiling caught her eye. Craning her neck to the limit, she was able to glimpse the circular lens glaring down at her.
Not for the first time, someone was watching.
The nausea was threatening an encore. She needed food. Water.
Then came sounds from outside the door. Cocking her head sideways, Charlotte watched the lit crack beneath the door as a heavy shadow swept into view.
She heard the tinging sounds of a key ring.
Then there was the scratchy metal-on-metal sound of a key being pushed into the lock.
The doorknob slowly turned until the bolt disengaged with a
clunk.
Last, the door swung open in three clumsy stages, revealing the person on the other side.
Charlotte was completely taken aback. It was a young Jewish man, plain looking, wearing a crisp white shirt, black trousers, black shoes. And he was confined to a wheelchair.
Tempted to lash out at her invalid captor—not that she could have if she wanted to, thanks to the tenacity of her bindings—Charlotte merely watched in puzzlement as the frail young man rolled into the room. Clearly someone in such a condition couldn’t possess the physical stamina to perpetrate an abduction. So how could
he
be involved in all of this?
The man’s sallow complexion looked ghostly beneath the fluorescent bulbs. At first he appeared to be much older than she was.
Much
older. But upon closer examination, Charlotte thought that he actually appeared more boy than man.
“Are you all right?” he asked in a hushed tone. “Nod if you are.”
All right? Is he kidding?
Eyes tightening with frustration, Charlotte shook her head.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” he confessed in a whisper. His paranoid gaze went back to the door. “I’ll take the tape off your mouth if you promise not to scream.” Another glance at the door. “They will hear you,” he confided.
Unsure what to make of the situation, Charlotte nodded.
“Okay.”
Working the hand rims, the boy maneuvered the wheelchair closer. Reaching out, he worked his spidery fingertips under the edges of the tape strip covering Charlotte’s mouth.
Charlotte noticed the kid’s front teeth gnawed incessantly at a callus on his lower lip. There were raw calluses on the fingers too—some almost bleeding.
Obviously some type of compulsion disorder.
The kid was a wreck.
“This might hurt,” he said apologetically. Digging his fingertips in deeper, he squeezed the tape and tugged it free.
Charlotte immediately drew some fresh air into her lungs and exhaled. Though her breath was one notch below toxic, she wasn’t making any apologies. Her throat felt like a sandbox. With an unblinking stare steeped in resentment, she remained silent, waiting to see what the boy would say.
Slouching in the wheelchair, the boy dropped his eyes to his lap, where he wiped Charlotte’s sweat onto his pants. He began neatly folding the tape. “You’re very pretty,” he muttered, glancing up.
Unlike most people, who were usually fascinated by Charlotte’s emerald eyes, this guy was fixating on her long, shiny chestnut curls.
Give the kid a chance,
she told herself, fighting like hell to curb her tongue. “Why am I here?”
The boy’s timid eyes retreated to the tape folding. “I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
“The man who was with me . . . Is he okay?” Adrenaline rushed into her. He’d
better
be okay.
Without looking up, he mulled the question for a five-count before responding. “I don’t know,” he replied.
“Is there someone else here with me?” she clarified. “A man . . . a bald man?”
Looking confused, he shook his head.
Charlotte fought against despair. It was too early to assume the worst. Time to get down to business. “You—those men. Are you terrorists?” she asked matter-of-factly.
The boy flashed her a surprised glance, then giggled.
“It’s not funny,” Charlotte chastised him. “Taking people hostage is
not
funny.”
Curling into himself, he raised a trembling finger to massage a twitch that flicked his eyelid. “Sorry,” he said.
“Who did this? Who
are
you? Who are those men?”
Unwilling to respond, he shook his head.
“I have a right to know.”
More shaking.
“God, this is ridiculous,” Charlotte grumbled.
The kid’s head snapped up, eyes wide. “You can’t say that,” he said in a hushed tone, eyelid pulsating. “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.”
You’ve
got
to be kidding me.
“I don’t recall the Lord endorsing kidnapping,” Charlotte curtly retorted. “Why am I here?” she repeated succinctly.
He cowered and dropped his eyes back down to his hands. The tape was now wrapped into a tight square, his chewed fingernails picking at its frayed ends. Two reluctant words emanated from the boy’s lips: “The bones.”
A jolt shot through Charlotte. This was definitely the time to play stupid. “What bones?”
His expression hardened as he confidently looked up. “The Messiah’s bones. You touched them. You know where they are. They need to be returned. You shouldn’t have touched the bones,” he coldly added.
No answer.
The kid’s head was shaking again. That damn head just kept shaking. Her frustration was building fast. “Listen, I don’t know who you are, but you need to help me. This is all one big mistake. I don’t know where the bones are.”
“Joshua!” a voice blasted from the doorway.
Startled, both Charlotte and the boy jumped at the same time.
An older woman of medium height and build with a stern face, wearing a wig and a black ankle-length dress, stormed into the room like a raging bull.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the woman roared, grabbing the boy’s wrist and squeezing so hard that her fingertips turned white.
“Owww . . . you’re hurting me, Mother,” the boy whined.
“If your father ever heard what you just said . . . ,” she gravely warned him.
Mother? Father?
Charlotte couldn’t believe what was happening. So this was some kind of family affair?
Really
creepy.
The woman’s bitter stare swung to Charlotte. “It’s best for you not to say anything more.”
Sensing that the mother wasn’t on board with whatever was happening—judging from her wavering tone, rapid breathing, and guilty eyes— Charlotte nodded and kept her mouth shut.
Relinquishing her crushing grip, the mother clasped the wheelchair’s handles while the boy rubbed at the red marks she’d left behind. Pulling her son out of the room, she parked the wheelchair in the corridor. Then she came back in clenching and unclenching her hands, pacing around Charlotte’s chair.
“I’ll free your hands and feet,” she offered. “Only if you realize that should you try to escape, they will kill you.” Her eyes motioned to the corridor.
“I understand,” Charlotte softly replied, now realizing the woman was equally terrified.
From a shelf situated behind Charlotte, the mother retrieved a pair of scissors and began cutting into the bindings. “Listen to what I say. This is very serious, what is happening to you—to everyone. I’ll bring you food, water. He is coming back shortly to speak with you.”
“Who?”
“My husband.”
Thank heavens the woman cut away the bindings,
Charlotte thought. Not that any great debt was owed to a woman who took part in an abduction. Luckily she’d kept her promise to bring food and water, though the food was predominantly matzo and some mushy, bland cheese that would no doubt bring her bowels to a screeching halt. That wasn’t a bad thing, she thought, considering the “bathroom” was a metal bucket in a corner, well within the surveillance camera’s range.
The sound of a key turning in the knob broke the room’s dead silence. Charlotte sat up as the door eased open.
A morose Orthodox Jewish man came into the room, looking like he’d walked straight out of Manhattan’s Diamond District, where she and Evan had ventured after a pharmaceutical convention and dared to window-shop for an engagement ring only two months ago.
“Dr. Charlotte Hennesey,” the rabbi said accusatorily, claiming a second folding chair beside hers.
The way he sat immediately annoyed Charlotte: his shoulders were pulled back and his chin was tipped up as if he’d just reclaimed his throne.
Her lack of response brought a smirk to his face. “Let me make this very easy. Your coercion with the Vatican has caused me great difficulty. What they stole belongs to me and to this nation—”
“What nation?”
“Israel, of course.”
“Israel?” This rendered her mute for a three-count. “I don’t know what—”
But he held up a hand to silence her, shaking his head. “We recovered your laptop. I’ve seen everything. So let’s not waste time playing games. You’ve witnessed many things, Dr. Hennesey. Many marvelous things. Your PowerPoint presentation was most impressive. But how little you know, child. Those were no ordinary bones you so unceremoniously unpacked from that ossuary. Then again, you know that better than anyone, don’t you? I must admit that even
I
was surprised to learn about the physical secrets Yeshua possessed. You
,
a
geneticist,
must have been astounded.”
To this she didn’t respond. The answer would be obvious.
Charlotte pulled her arms tight across her chest. Could this lunatic be after the DNA codes, the formula for the viral serum? No doubt, its commercial potential was incalculable. And in the hands of an unscrupulous opportunist . . .
If she could just figure out what was charging this guy’s batteries.
Then the Hasid’s expression registered something very odd: admiration? His guarded posture—arms drawn protectively over the chest, shoulders rounded, hands overlapping in a tight clasp—showed vulnerability.
“You’ve acquired the gift. That’s a critical omission on your part.”
“Gift?”
“Come now, Dr. Hennesey. I
am
smarter than that. So I ask you this: how is it a woman who was in contact with the bones of the Messiah just so happens to have acquired His most precious gift?”
“I’m still not following.”
“‘Hennesey’ is an Irish name. Safe to assume you’re a Catholic, yes?”
“I was raised Catholic, although I haven’t been to church in quite some time.” Over a decade ago, cancer had stolen her mother away. It was tough to find solace in scripture after seeing someone die so mercilessly.