26

AS ROUSSEAU ESCORTED THEM from his office, Jack had no preconceived notions regarding the area that would hold the bones. He was certain they would be close by, within the Rousseau estate. The man led them to the stairs, one of his bodyguards trailing. They descended to the first floor, where Rousseau preceded them down a long hallway.

“You have them here?” Jack said.

Rousseau nodded. “The business in Australia has caused us to rethink one of our last surviving customs.”

“The subcontracting,” Jack said. “To people like George Manheim.”

“At the time, that arrangement was the best way to ensure the safety of the relics through political and social upheaval,” Rousseau said. “But in an age when the entire world’s information is available to everyone on the planet, and where explorers such as you and your wife can crisscross the globe sifting through clues, it may be time to find a more permanent resting place.”

Arriving at the end of the hall, Rousseau opened a door into what looked like a library. Before entering, he told his associate to wait in the hall.

Two walls were lined with bookshelves, each crammed with antique volumes. A pair of plush chairs positioned on either side of a small fireplace provided places in which to peruse the books, with an assortment of lamps offering subdued but adequate lighting.

Rousseau walked across the room and stopped before one of the bookshelves, and Jack knew right away what the man was about to do. When the shelf slid out on concealed hinges, revealing a dark opening and a flight of narrow steps, Jack shook his head. Rousseau then turned and gestured for Jack and Espy to lead the way.

Jack stepped through first. The air took on a different quality, mustier, and had the smell of cedar. The steps were hard to make out, but there was a light at the bottom and Jack advanced toward it. When he reached the last step, he saw a large, open area dominated by stone walls and a tiled floor. The impression Jack had was of a mansion basement. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see a water heater in the corner, or a washer and dryer. Instead there was a single wooden door, such as might have opened into a utility closet.

A moment later, Rousseau had joined Jack and Espy at the foot of the stairs. The man saw the question on Jack’s face.

“Believe me,” Rousseau said with a chuckle, “the bones have been held in places far more humble than this.”

He walked over and put his hand on the doorknob. Jack and Espy reached Rousseau’s side just as the man opened the door. It opened into a hallway that led to the right, the walls and floor made of the same material as the room to which it was connected. Rousseau went first, Jack and Espy following close behind.

Jack saw that it was a narrow passage, not very long, and at the end of it was another door. The door stood open.

Alain Rousseau froze.

Near the open doorway, two bodies lay sprawled on the floor. From a dozen feet away, Jack could see a small hole in one man’s temple, a line of blood running to the tile floor.

Rousseau hadn’t moved, and Jack thought he saw the same expression on the man’s face that he’d witnessed on Olivia’s only hours before—that of a great lord unable to comprehend that an enemy had breached his inner sanctum.

Jack took the lead, stepping around Rousseau and making his way to the open door. Beyond it, he saw a small, round room, brightly lit. In the center was a pedestal, a short column of black stone with intricate carvings on its surface. To Jack, the pedestal seemed a nod to the old priesthood charged with the care of the relics, a last tie to the religious affiliations of the Priests of Osiris. An iconic pedestal surrounded by white walls and track lighting.

But the pedestal was empty, the relics that should have topped it held under the arm of a man now turning toward the door. In his other hand, the man held a gun. Cold, dark eyes found Jack in the doorway, and the gun came up. Jack didn’t have time to react; he could only watch as the thief raised the weapon.

But a flurry of movement behind Jack broke into his consciousness and he found himself being yanked from the doorway, wrenched backward even as the man pulled the trigger. Jack registered the sound of the shot before he felt the pain in his arm. Then he was on the tile, lying next to one of Rousseau’s dead guards, Espy on the floor next to him. They’d taken shelter behind the open door, and as Jack raised himself up, he caught sight of something black in the shadows. He reached for it, feeling the cold metal of the fallen guard’s gun.

Espy was struggling to a knee, pinned between Jack and the wall. Jack looked over his shoulder and saw Rousseau, the man’s anger taking hold, reaching beneath his jacket. He never got the weapon out. With the door blocking his view, Jack didn’t see the shooter, but he saw the bullets strike Rousseau’s chest. The rest seemed to happen in slow motion. Rousseau flinched under the impacts, then looked down and saw blood, disbelief in his eyes. He crumpled to the floor, his hand still tucked under his jacket.

What tore Jack’s eyes from the scene was movement at the door, the thief exiting. The man led with his weapon, bringing it around to get an angle on Jack and Espy. Jack threw his shoulder at the door with all the force he could muster. The door slammed into the thief, kept him from shooting. From his knees, Jack raised the guard’s gun, leaning out from behind the door and touching the weapon to the other man’s stomach. He squeezed off a shot.

At his precarious angle, the recoil sent Jack to the floor. He came down hard on his elbow. In front of him, the thief was bleeding out, the close-range shot fatal. As the man slid down the doorframe, the bundle in his arms fell to the floor.

Breathing heavily, Jack struggled to his feet. He looked to his left and found Espy, standing now. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Only after she nodded did he look at his arm. His jacket was stained with blood, but he didn’t have to remove his clothes to know it was only a graze. That meant he could concentrate on what was truly important.

He recognized the bones from the wrappings, the same ones that secured the relics when he’d found them in Australia. They were tightly bound, not a hint of the aged bone showing. He went to the bundle and gathered it up, and the feel of them in his arms took him back a decade—to the first time he’d seen them, the moment that had validated all the trials he and Espy had walked through. He felt something of the same exultation now.

He took hold of a corner of the wrappings, but before he removed the fabric, he turned and motioned for Espy to join him. Years ago they’d found the bones together and had dealt with the ramifications of that event together as well. There was no way he could look upon Elisha’s bones again without his wife at his side. When Espy reached him, he took her hand and brought it to the wrapping, and together they lifted the fabric.

When the cloth fell away and Jack saw the relics he’d once interred in the Australian desert, he found it curious how little they seemed to differ from the bones beneath Trubetskoy Bastion, or the ones in the Catacombs. They appeared as dead things that, long ago, gave up their claim to any life they once had. And yet he knew that within them coursed the power of God. It was a revelation that, surprisingly, left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Rousseau’s words came back to him, the question of who got to decide how this power was used. It was something Jack couldn’t help but ponder, even though he knew that much wiser people than he had wrestled with it throughout human history.

He knew about the goodness of God. His power had saved Espy, and it had saved him. It brought them two children he couldn’t imagine not having met. It had given him friends far better and more loyal than he deserved. Yet it was that very goodness that made him angry at the apparent limits of God’s kindness, that caused him to question why a God powerful enough that his leftover energy could bring people back to life thousands of years later would allow a boy to progressively weaken, to eventually die well before his parents.

It was the kind of puzzle Jack hated, because it was the kind he couldn’t solve. But he supposed that one of the evidences of spiritual maturity was that he didn’t always have to solve the puzzle.

Espy put her hand on his, and Jack looked up. She was smiling. It took a moment before Jack identified it as contentment. He let the cloth fall back down.

Bundle in hand, Jack stared down at the man he’d killed. As he studied the man’s face, the dark military clothing, Jack knew he’d killed a member of the Mossad. The Israelis had followed him. Through all the twists and turns over the last week, he hadn’t shaken them. After all, they had come for what they felt belonged to them.

With a sigh, Jack and Espy started back down the hallway. Jack paused when he came to Rousseau’s body. He knelt next to him and placed the wrapped relics on the floor. He took hold of the man’s shoulders and rolled him over. He checked for a pulse and found none. Jack leaned back, looking on the face of the leader of the Priests of Osiris, a man among the most powerful men in the world. He considered the irony that mere feet away were the relics he had protected for so long, relics that had the power to restore his life.

Espy placed a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “We have to go,” she said.

After a moment, Jack stood. He and Espy reentered the mansion basement, retracing their steps, heading back the way they’d come. At the top of the stairs, the door to the library was still open. Once they passed into the room, Jack didn’t bother covering the secret entrance. He stopped at the door, remembering that Rousseau had left a guard in the hall. Jack had no way of knowing how many more awaited between this room and the exit. Worse, he didn’t know if more Israelis were in the house or perhaps circling the grounds. Sometimes, he decided, there was little a person could do but take a leap of faith.

He pushed the door open and stepped quickly into the hall. The guard Rousseau had left behind was still there, his back to the library. As the man began to turn, Jack brought the gun down hard on the back of his head. The guard collapsed to the carpet with hardly a sound.

Jack led the way down the hallway, pausing when he reached the stairs leading back to the room in which they’d been held. To the right was a door, and since the only other choice was to return to the second floor, Jack chose the unknown.

When the door swung open, Jack and Espy stood in an enormous foyer of marble floors and white columns. It was nighttime, and there was no one in sight. With the ancient bundle in hand, Jack started for the front door. He waited for Espy to join him, and after securing the bundle at his side, they headed out.