2:00 P.M. CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA.
Café Verona was busy, even at this time of afternoon. Martin walked through the bar, glancing at the numerous big-screen TVs that lined the walls, and out to the sunlit tables situated in the garden behind the restaurant. The chef grew his own herbs, so it always smelled fresh and green back here. Colorful pots of basil, oregano, thyme, and other delights bordered the dining area, which added a lovely contrast to the bright red tablecloths. Sitting there alone, beneath the vine-shrouded canopy, Anna Asher reminded him of a muscular version of those sad-eyed Renaissance paintings of the Madonna. Her face held such suffering. Until she saw him. Then it vanished, replaced by a steely expression. She lifted a hand in greeting.
Martin gave her a nod.
The canopy section was the only area of the outdoor patio that was roofed, which meant it was the most-coveted spot, impossible to book, unless you reserved it days in advance or got lucky. Had she?
He wound through the tables, absently noting the other diners. Businessmen in suits and ties. The local bankers and real estate agents loved to close deals here. Café Verona had a high-end cachet. He caught snippets of conversation about interest rates, and the downturn in the stock market. One man in a boring brown suit spoke in clipped tones about the virus in France: “Pharmaceutical companies are working twenty-four hours a day to create a vaccine…”
As he approached the table, he noticed Asher had her head cocked, clearly listening to the men’s discussion, though her gaze was on Martin.
Instinctively, he used his fingers to comb blond hair out of his hazel eyes. He liked his hair a little shaggy, collar length. At thirty-two, he was almost twice the age of some of his freshmen students. Longer hair made his students think he was one of them. Besides, he despised corporate America and actively did everything possible to make it clear he loathed The Suits.
When he reached Asher’s table, he shrugged out of his gray tweed jacket and hung it over the chair back. As he sat down, he said, “Are you hungry?”
“I ate earlier. I’m just having coffee.” She reached for the cup on the table and took a sip.
“Well, I’m famished. Students take a lot of energy.”
She gave him a polite smile, as though tolerating his inanities until they could get down to business. In the midday heat, she’d unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blue shirt, and Martin could see the deep scars that cut across her chest like white worms. He almost asked about them, but thought better of it. Over the years, she’d probably grown weary of such questions.
As the waiter walked toward them, Martin called, “I’ll have the Forza Italia sandwich, Doug, and a glass of Merlot.”
“Yes, sir, Dr. Nadai.” The waiter headed back into the restaurant.
“One of your students?” Asher asked.
“Yes, a mediocre one, but he’s a mathematician and not much interested in religious studies. I’m sure he’s brilliant at calculus.”
“I see.”
As he rolled up his sleeves, he looked at her. “So … how did you find out the name of the secret cave? It only exists in one text, and I just discovered it. I haven’t published a word about—”
“Textual research is inconsequential at this point, Professor.”
He sat back in his chair. “Since that’s mostly what I do, I’m slightly offended.”
“First, that’s not all you do. You’ve spent years traipsing around the world hunting for it: Italy, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, and others. Second, you shouldn’t be offended. I’m sitting here because in the past two months, you’ve discovered three new texts that you’ve never written about. I was intrigued that you left them out of your latest article. They would have lent more credence to your hypothesis that—”
“How do you know those things?”
She couldn’t possibly know about his trips abroad. And there were only two people in the world who knew about the new textual discoveries.
“I was an intelligence officer, remember?”
“Is this some weird NSA bullshit? Have you been watching me?”
“I’m particularly concerned about the phone call you made to your coauthor, Allama Shirazi. That was unwise, Professor.”
Speechless for ten thunderous heartbeats, he finally said, “Are you saying that you tapped my phones?”
“Key words, Professor. No one has to tap your phone. Our metadata computer programs can track key words. In your case, the words were Marham-i-Isa. The federal government monitors everyone all the time. Get used to it, and don’t quote me laws that say we can’t. They’re just for show. A week ago, you told Shirazi that you believed the Cave of the Treasure of Light, which hides the sacred ointment, was located near the Kharga Oasis in Egypt. You did not tell him, however, that your palindrome names the village on the canyon rim near the cave. It does, doesn’t it?”
Martin swallowed his indignation and forced a deep breath. His emotions were gradually shifting away from anger and more toward fear. “What interest could the government possibly have in an ancient mythical cure?”
Anna Asher opened her mouth to respond, but closed it when the waiter brought Martin’s wine and set it before him. “There you go, Dr. Nadai. Your sandwich won’t be long.”
“Thanks, Doug.” Martin took a long drink of his wine.
Somebody must have turned up the TV news in the bar. He heard the news anchor say, “The president has stepped up construction of the new wall across the Canadian border, and expects it to be completed by…”
When Doug was far beyond earshot, Asher said, “I’m going to tell you a story, a story you won’t believe, but that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you understand the stakes. America’s national security is at risk.”
Martin blinked in disbelief. “Are you really saying the legendary cure invented by Jesus is related to the border wall?”
“It is, yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.” She laced her fingers on the red tablecloth and gave him stare for stare. “This story starts five years ago in California. I was a student of a legendary geneticist named Hakari. We called him the Maze Master because every exam was an intricate geometric maze that had to be negotiated to find the answer to the question. He used geometry to teach lessons about basic DNA structure—”
“Oh. Wait a minute. Good God,” Martin interrupted. He squinted as though in pain. “James Hakari? The creator of genomic bibliomancy? The guy who believed God spoke to human beings through the genetic code?”
“Let me explain what he meant—”
“Is that what this is about?” Martin rolled his eyes. “I don’t believe it. I’m having a conversation with someone who believes in genomic bibliomancy. This is too bizarre.”
Bibliomancy was a very old method of speaking to God. The bibliomancer would ask God a question, then close his eyes, open the Bible, and blindly lower his fingertip to touch the page. He believed God had guided his finger to the passage that would answer his question. Hakari had modernized the bibliomancer’s handbook by eliminating the Bible and substituting the human genome in its place.
“I didn’t say I believed, Professor. But Hakari did. He believed that climate change would inevitably result in a viral mutation that would be devastating to humanity, but that God had inscribed the cure in the genome. In fact, he went to Washington to warn the president, and the government had him locked up.”
“I would certainly hope so.” Martin took a healthy sip of wine.
“You need to pay attention, Professor. Hakari said God hid everything in plain sight, and all we had to do was find the words of God written in the genome to survive.”
“He was a lunatic. Why would I care?”
She paused for a couple of seconds, listening to the businessmen again: “… diverted all planes coming in from French airports. Guess they think the small region of France they had quarantined wasn’t enough. Expanding the zone to encompass all of France is just a precaution, they claim, but…”
“The president thinks the new border wall will give us enough time to find the cure. It won’t.”
“It won’t?”
She shook her head. “James Hakari was the most brilliant man I’ve ever known. He invented the first handheld quantum computer. And, yes, he was also mad. Far more than anyone knows. After the government started harassing him, his paranoid delusions became extreme. He went into hiding. But he took his equipment with him so he could continue working out God’s word. God’s word, he believed, was the cure.”
Martin made an airy gesture with his hand. “So, he was searching for his cure using genomic bibliomancy? How did he do it? Did he print out sections of the DNA alphabet, close his eyes, drop his finger to the page, and see if it spelled anything?”
She gave him an unblinking stare. “Something like that.”
“Since DNA consists of adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine, or the letters A, T, G, and C, the message couldn’t have been too interesting.”
“He thought it was. He saw himself as the savior of the world, the reborn Jesus.”
“Well, he can join thousands of other madmen who also believed that genetics were the key to saving the world. What was Hakari’s version of the Aryan race?”
“Exactly the opposite of what you think, Professor.”
“So the impure would inherit the earth? Oh, I like that much better. At least it has a ring to it.”
This discussion was downright horrifying. When he looked back at her, he found Asher staring over her shoulder at the businessmen, concentrating on their conversation in deadly earnest. Perspiration shone across her nose and cheeks.
The man in the brown suit said, “Centers for Disease Control says it’s a novel new retrovirus. They’ve named it LucentB. So far, three different strains have emerged—”
“Yeah, I read that the mullahs in Iran are cheering the Beast slouching through France.”
Both men laughed.
Asher waited until the businessmen’s conversation shifted to the news that Russia was building new gulags at a furious pace—whole villages had been emptied to fill them—then she turned back to Martin. “Professor, I don’t have much time, which means I have to be more direct than I ordinarily would. The palindrome you found in the Coptic text is in the Sahidic dialect, isn’t it?”
Martin’s smile faded. “I did not mention that to Shirazi.”
“I believe that palindrome is the key to finding the Marham-i-Isa. It is hidden in Black Canyon, near the Kharga Oasis.”
“If you know where it is, why do you need my palindrome?”
“I know the general location, but not the exact location, and I’m out of time. The authors of that Coptic text knew the name of the village that sits on the canyon rim near the cave. Or I think they did.”
He took another drink of wine. “And, if you knew, you’d go after it?”
“Absolutely.” In a low voice, she asked, “What’s the name of the village identified in the palindrome? It’s the last clue I need to find the cave.”
Sunlight fell through a gap in the vine canopy and glared in Martin’s right eye. While he shifted in his seat to avoid it, his mind raced. “After that, you won’t need me, correct?”
“Afraid I won’t take you with me?”
“Didn’t say that.”
“Professor, you’re far more versed in the intricacies of the Marham-i-Isa story than I am, and you speak many ancient languages that I do not. I guarantee you I’ll take you with me.”
He paused. “Let’s get back to the border wall. If it’s not going to hold back the plague, then the disease is going to escape quarantine soon. What if it escapes while we’re out there? We may be exposed.”
“And we may not. Life is full of risks. Come with me.”
He gave her an exaggerated shake of his head. “I—I need to think about this.”
She smiled, finished her coffee, and rose to her feet. As she did, she pulled a card from her blue shirt pocket and handed it to him. It had only an email address written on it. “If you change your mind, contact me at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. At 8:03 this email will no longer exist.”
As she walked away, the eye of every man in the restaurant followed her.
When she disappeared from sight, Martin flopped back in his chair and sucked a deep breath into his lungs. He’d give anything to know the location of the Cave of the Treasure of Light. Unfortunately, he’d studied every geological report, every map, historical and modern, and it was nowhere to be found. He’d spent a decade of his life searching for the legendary Marham-i-Isa. The ancient name of the village that guarded the ointment was Batatab, but at some point in history, the name must have changed, as so many place names had over the centuries. Or maybe the desert had just swallowed the village. If he gave her the name, did her intelligence sources have a way of finding the modern village built upon the ruins of Batatab?
“Here you go, Dr. Nadai,” Doug said as he set Martin’s sandwich in front of him.
“Thanks, Doug.”
“Would you like another glass of wine?”
“Yes, and the sooner the better.”
“On its way.” Doug smiled and jogged back into the restaurant.
Martin picked up his almost empty glass and chugged the last swallow while he considered the ramifications of what had just happened.
The only way anyone, anyone, could know about the palindrome was if they could hear through the walls of the study in his home. Or maybe see through the walls. He thought about the window that flooded his desk with sunlight. Was she using some kind of telescopic device to scan the documents spread over his desk?
A chill started at the bottom of his spine and worked its way up into his brain where it brought him wide awake. More awake than he had ever been in his life.