The Testament, page 49
The first face Bravo saw when he opened his eyes was Jenny's.
"Where am I?"
"In the back of Damon Cornadoro's truck." Jenny held a cool towel to his forehead.
"What happened?"
"Cornadoro's dead-Camille shot him and he fell from the scaffold."
"I saw that." When he moved he could feel the deep ache in every muscle of his body. "Where were you?"
"I was going hand-to-hand with someone Camille told me works for Jordan, but that makes no sense, does it? It's why she insisted we get out of there before he knew what was happening, why I stole the truck." She grinned. "I hot-wired the ignition."
They were pushed together as Camille took a turn at speed.
"But about this thing with Jordan," Jenny said, "Camille must be devastated. I don't know how she's going to get over it. You'd better have a talk with her as soon as you feel up to it. Anyway, you passed out as we were bringing you down. We just dropped Khalif off at the hospital; he's got a dislocated shoulder for sure, but there also may be a break in his right ulna."
"Camille's driving?"
She gave him a small smile. "Isn't she always?"
"Where to?"
"The Sumela Monastery. Khalif told us that's where you were headed, right?"
He closed his eyes. It was happening just as his father had predicted in his last cipher: he was not going alone to Sumela. All at once, he felt as if the puzzle his father had left him had gotten the better of him. He felt the urge to stop running, to give his brain a rest. Most of all, he wanted to sleep, not get up for a week or two.
He fought the unnatural lassitude, struggling to clear his mind and marshal his thoughts. He felt sure he could trust Camille. If she had been working with Jordan she never would have shot Cornadoro. Besides, now it appeared as if Jordan had sent someone to spy on her and him-the man Jenny grappled with. Which meant Jordan was growing ever more powerful, ever more willing to take risks. The pope lay on his deathbed, only the Quintessence could save him. Meanwhile, Bravo was feeling the tightening of the vise the Knights and the Vatican had prepared for him. He was nearing the end of his journey, and now he held no illusions. Jordan would do anything, risk anything to get his hands on the cache of secrets and the Quintessence. The twisted vines of the Voire Dei had almost worked themselves into a recognizable pattern. Almost.
He closed his eyes for a moment, allowing the jouncing of the truck to lull him.
"Bravo, Bravo," Jenny said with some urgency. "Camille called Khalif. He said that in Macka there is a modern clinic for the increasing number of hikers and rock climbers who backpack into the Black Mountains at all times of the year, even winter. There's a trauma center there, we can stop-"
"No," he said at once, his eyes snapping open. "We must go on to Sumela."
Their eyes locked, and at length she nodded, but he could tell she wasn't happy abut it.
He wished Khalif was with him. But now there was something he had to do on his own.
"Jenny-"
She stopped him with a hand on his cheek. "We can talk about this later."
"No, I have to tell you. I didn't trust you, I didn't believe you when Cornadoro hung Father Mosto's murder on you, I didn't understand when you shot Uncle Tony. There was no way then I could have believed-"
"Anthony fooled everyone, Bravo. Even, until the very end, your father."
It was only now that he noticed the dark circles around her eyes, her hollow cheeks, the blue veins at her temples, as if her skin had thinned to parchment. But these marks of exhaustion and emotional pain did not mar her beauty. Rather, they allowed him to see the newfound steely quality she had acquired while they were apart. Very soon, he knew, he'd have to ask her what had happened to her, how this change had come about "There's something else."
Her fingertip brushed his lips. "Can't you let it rest for now?"
"I've waited too long already. Father Mosto told me that you and my father were having an affair. I was so angry I couldn't see straight. That's what clouded my instinct, my judgment of you-"
"But, Bravo, I never had an affair with Dexter."
Bravo felt a roaring in his head. "I don't understand. The flat he set up for you in London…"
"Ah, you know about that." She sat back, her eyes turned inward.
He took her hand in his. "Don't lie to me about this, Jenny. Just the truth, only the truth."
Her eyes were firmly focused on the past. "The truth, okay." She nodded, but she couldn't bring herself to begin. Then she took a deep breath, let it out. "I had an affair, but it wasn't with your father."
"Who, then?"
"Ronnie Kavanagh. He got me pregnant then browbeat me into having… having it taken care of. He threatened me, warned me that if I didn't it would be the end for me in the Order. I was young, devastated, confused. I did what he told me to do. But it nearly finished me, psychologically. It was your father who took care of me-he was so kind, so understanding-and here I was terrified he'd give me away to the Haute Cour and, like Ronnie said, I'd be out on my ass. But he kept my secret. He talked to me about the baby, about what it meant to lose a child, but I never knew until you told me about Junior."
"He would never have told you himself, especially not in your state of mind."
"No, of course not," she said. "Instead, he told me endearing stories of fairies and elves."
"Did he tell you about the elf who could turn water into fire?"
Jenny's eyes lit up. "Yes, and the one about the fairy who wasn't invited to the Midsummer Night banquet-"
"And in retaliation put a spell on the fireflies hired to illuminate the party so they turned into wasps."
They both laughed softly.
Jenny sighed as she allowed the memories their due. "On days when I was really bad, he would tell me jokes of talking animals-clever, sinister and loving-that made me laugh despite myself."
"The zebra who bet his stripes, and lost-"
"The parrot who captained a pirate ship-"
"The greedy terrier who ran his company into the ground."
She laughed again, delighted as a child, and Bravo could imagine how his father had been taken with her, how he might have seen her as a surrogate child that eased the misery of Junior's death.
"And then there were the books we read together," Jenny continued, "historical novels of unimaginable hardship, loss and ultimate triumph. I knew what he was doing, and it worked. He was so empathetic, so attuned to my depressions and black moods I should have known, or at least suspected, he'd gone through his own tragedy. Over the year he took care of me I came to love him. Not so surprising, I guess. But I loved him like a father, and he never had any designs on me. On the contrary, he was the only man who made me feel safe-up until you."
"What if I have designs on you?" Bravo said.
Cheeks flaming, Jenny looked down at him. "I'm different now, I'm counting on it."
The Sumela Monastery, set into the bedrock of the sheer mountainside, rose into the cobalt sky like the fortified portal of a Roman citadel. They lacked delicacy and finesse, these golden buildings; defenders of the faith, they seemed built for war.
"A war is what we'll have now," Camille said.
"There's no other way?" Bravo asked her.
"Sadly, my son has made his choice," Camille said. "With the pressures at play, the stakes so high, I doubt he could change his mind now, even if he had a mind to do so."
The three of them stood in the arched shadows of the ancient aqueduct that long ago had provided water for the monastery. Nearby was Cornadoro's truck, which Camille had parked on the narrow, twisting street some distance from the rank of tour buses, disgorging flocks of people armed with name tags, water bottles and digital cameras. No one seemed interested in their presence, but now each of them, infected with paranoia, studied the horde with obsessive interest.
Bravo turned to Camille. "I thought Jordan was my friend." He had explained, in as bare-bones a way as possible, the history of the Knights of St. Clement and Jordan's involvement in it. "How could he have betrayed me so callously?"
"He's a consummate actor, and for that I must take the blame." Camille stared up at the series of arches that carried the aqueduct on their brawny shoulders up the sheer cliff. "He never knew who his father was, but it's only in retrospect that I see how bitter he had become. I think now that it put a shell around him, turned him inward upon himself. But it would have done him no good had I told him; he'd have gone off on a futile and disappointing quest." She bit her lower lip. "Poor Jordan. We can't regain the past, much as we might want to."
"No point in recriminations," Bravo said.
"Yes, what's done is done, n'est-ce pas?" she said bitterly. All at once she fell into Bravo's arms. "Ah, Bravo, my only child has betrayed me as unforgivably as he has you."
"We should go on," Jenny said as she urged them out from the shadow of the truck, "as quickly as possible."
"Yes, yes," Camille said, coming back to herself, "tell us what we must do, Bravo. We're both here to help you."
Jordan Muhlmann had switched from the van to an air-conditioned car for the drive up into the mountains. Lucky for him, since the trip entailed three hours of jouncing as the snaking road became steeper, full of hair-raising switchbacks, and just past the town of Macka, when they'd turned off to the left, the road, steeper still, became a shambles. He had three Knights with him, few enough to be unobtrusive, sufficient, he judged, to get the job done.
He had been here before-irony of ironies, with Bravo himself. Three summers ago. They had taken what was to be a two-week vacation in Ibiza, but after six days of immersing themselves in nonstop hedonistic bliss they had decided to leave the two beautiful blondes who, like greedy remoras, opened their mouths on sweaty dancefloors, trendy all-night lounges, swampy hotel beds, damp sand dunes. They left the women without a word and had run away from the predatory island to the end of the earth, which, for them, had been decidedly nontrendy Trabzon. A depressing slum, whose only saving grace had been the Sumela Monastery.
Now here I am again, Jordan thought, back at Sumela with my old friend as he ends his journey in search of the Order's cache of secrets. Christ, it was here all along. Irony, indeed. But irony was hardly unknown to him. On the contrary, sometimes it seemed to him as if his entire life was one grotesque irony. Take his relationship with Bravo, for instance-what could be more ironic than that? Friends, they had been friends: shared secrets, intimacies, close encounters with the opposite sex in Ibiza, Paris, Stockholm, Cologne and elsewhere. However, everything he had shared with Bravo had been a lie-even the girls. Jordan had a penchant for having two at once, something someone as straight-laced as Bravo would never understand or condone. Besides, his mandate with Bravo had been to get as close to him as he possibly could. What was the phrase his mother had used? "You have to get under his skin in order to know him, and you need to know him in order to manipulate him."
The precarious trip proved beneficial, though Jordan felt as if he were moving through a minefield laced with hidden trip wires. Everything they said to each other contained the possibility of disaster. Everything had to be withheld from Bravo. Everything…
His cell phone burped. He knew who it was even before he looked at the caller ID.
"Mother," he said with a smirk he was happy to conceal from her.
"What are you doing, darling, having me followed?" Her voice was as rich as butter. "Your man almost ruined everything."
"I should think it was Damon Cornadoro who holds that dubious distinction."
Silence on the other end of the line; he'd rarely been able to cause her to miss a beat.
"Admit it," he continued. "I was right about Cornadoro. In the end, he could not keep to discipline."
"It was the Quintessence that corrupted him."
She said it as an admonition-not in retrospect about Cornadoro, but to him. He knew it, and it infuriated him further.
"You and Cornadoro…" His voice clotted with emotion.
"What about me and Cornadoro?" his mother said blithely.
"I know he was your lover. What kind of pillow talk-"
"My pillow talk only goes in one direction, darling, you know that." But her voice had grown steely. "You're not becoming suspicious of me, are you? Because that would be a waste of your precious time-"
"My man was on surveillance because I was suspicious of Cornadoro," Jordan said. It was a half truth, anyway. He had gotten a firm grip on his emotions; no more stupid outbursts from him that would give her a clue to his current frame of mind. "You can't blame me for that."
"Certainly not, darling. On the contrary, I applaud your prudence."
"And I applaud your clear-eyed ability to shoot your lover."
"It was hardly difficult, there was never any emotion involved. Cornadoro served a purpose-when it came to an end, so did he." There was a brief pause. "But I do resent being spied upon, and especially by that horrid Albanian."
Jordan glanced over at the driver. "That horrid Albanian is sitting right here beside me."
"What are you saying? Jordan, are you in Trabzon?"
"No, I'm in Sumela, Camille." With three Knights of the Field: the Albanian, the German and the Russian, formerly of the FSB, but he wasn't about to tell her that. Now his voice turned steely. "I'm here to pick up the pieces, to make the corrections you have been unable to make."
"Idiot!" she said in his ear. "Everything has gone precisely according to plan. Bravo trusts me completely, as does Jenny. I'll be in on the end when he opens the Order's cache."
"No, Mother, that honor is mine." He signaled to his Knights, got out of the car.
"If you show yourself now, all will be lost," she said. "The minute he sees you he'll understand everything."
Jordan signed for his Knights to fan out. "Don't concern yourself, Mother. I'll make my appearance at the right moment." He watched his Knights moving up toward the monastery. "Shock tactics, something I learned on my own." He began to walk toward the steep stone stairs that led to the buildings themselves.
"Even your being here-you're making a mistake, Jordan."
"You let me worry about that."
"Dammit, I've spent decades orchestrating this-"
"The last four years I've nurtured Bravo because you told me to, because of what I never had, because of what you promised me."
"Don't be a child, darling."
He felt as if he had been stuck with a cattle prod and, with an animal growl, leapt up the stairs.
"I'll have my revenge, Jordan." The steel reappeared, like the claws on a cat. "Don't spoil it."
"Is that a threat? I sincerely hope not, because I hold the ace of spades, the information you've gone out of your way to keep from Bravo. The one-"
Her gasp produced a little thrill that ran right through him.
"So, enough of this posturing," he concluded. "Get out of my way, Mother, get out of my way now."
Chapter 31
The Sumela Monastery was ancient, dating back to the fourth century after Christ. Founded in honor of the Virgin Mary by two Athenian priests, it was named Sumela, from the Greek melas, meaning black. Whether the founders were influenced by the Karadaglar-the Black Mountains-in which they built their monastery or by the color of the icon of the Virgin Mary they brought with them remained an unanswered question.
Bravo had cause to think on this enigma as he and the two women moved past the complex, which housed the Rock Church, several chapels, kitchens, student rooms, a guesthouse and library. After renovation in the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries, the monastery was finally abandoned in 1923, following the three-year Russian occupation of Trabzon.
Now it was nothing more than a tourist attraction. But through Khalif Bravo knew the Order had been here. Through the twelfth century, King Alexius III and his son Manuel III had contributed to the wealth of Sumela, had used it as one of their eyes in the Levant.
The mystery of Sumela's name mirrored the mystery of his father's last cipher: a long set of instructions, unambiguous and yet mysterious-the most mysterious of all of them raising more questions than it answered.
Beside him, Camille hiked silently, tirelessly. If Bravo hadn't been shown evidence of them already, he would have marveled at her physical competence and stamina. Behind them both came Jenny, backtracking, quartering through the trees and underbrush as they made their way up the mountainside, farther and farther from the tour groups.
Just past a particularly rocky stretch, she called them to a halt in a small copse of pines.
"I saw something," she said softly. "I think it was the man who tackled me on the grounds of the high-rise."
Keeping his father's last message in mind, which he needed to do at all times now, Bravo was unsurprised. "Circle back," he told Jenny. "See if you can get around him."
"He's Jordan's man," Camille said. "I'll go with you."
"I think that's unwise," Jenny said.
"Why? Don't you think I can be of help?"
"It's not that."
"What, then? He's unlikely to be alone. I know Jordan better than either of you."
"She's right." Bravo kept his gaze on Jenny. "I need both of you at my back now, all right?"
Jenny nodded.
"Meanwhile, I'll continue on," he said. "According to my father's instructions the cavern where the cache is buried is about a kilometer northeast of here. Come as quickly as you can."
The Albanian had a long memory. He could resurrect every man who had ever attacked him, every man he had killed or maimed. The number was more than a few, less than a shitload, as he liked to joke with his fellow Knights of the Field when he was half drunk. But in all that time he'd never come up against a woman, let alone been bested by one-until he'd attacked Jenny. Furious, he was out for blood-her blood. Before this day was done, he'd hold her bloody head in his hands, this he had vowed to himself.
He moved through the forest without sound, as he had been taught. He could smell the pine sap, the leaf mold, the must of mushrooms, the sweetness of ferns and wildflowers. He listened, automatically filtering out the small sighs of his own breathing, the inner sound of the blood pumping behind his ears. He was scenting for Jenny as a bloodhound hunts a body-the quick or the dead, it made no matter to the bloodhound, but it mattered plenty to the Albanian. The scent of his quarry had not left his nostrils; it lingered there, as if mocking the surprise she had delivered to him. Her smell had become the smell of his own defeat.
