The GoldenCity

He paced out three steps from a starting point to the edge. One deep breath, and then he was running, jumping, flailing his arms as he fell through the darkness and landed on the church’s red tile roof. He slipped, started to fall, and then held onto the tiles and lay flat. Everyone heard me, he thought. Everyone knows I’m here. His brain conjured up scenes of monks jumping out of bed and running downstairs to sound the alarm.

But nothing happened. All he could hear was his own breathing and the faint scratching sound of his fingernails on the tiles. Gabriel crawled across the roof to the bell tower and climbed inside. Once again, he waited a minute or so to see if anyone was coming, and then he climbed down the steps to the foyer. The inner door squeaked faintly as he turned the handle.

Votive candles in red glass holders burned like coals in a dying fire. The faces of the icons were absorbed by the darkness, but the candlelight was reflected by the gold frames and brass chandeliers. When Gabriel walked over to the left aisle of the church, he saw one of the monks in front of the altar screen. He was an old man-very short with hunched shoulders-and he held a length of prayer beads with a spindle at one end. As he prayed and paced, he manipulated the chain with his thumb and forefinger. The spindle turned clockwise like a miniature prayer wheel while the monk’s sandals scuffled across the stone floor.

Gabriel stood on one side of a pillar and wondered what to do. If he moved forward, the monk would see him immediately; if he tried to leave the church, the outer door might be locked. He waited in the shadows for over twenty minutes until the inner door swung open and a second monk entered the church. The two men spoke to each other in Greek, and Gabriel wondered if someone had heard his footsteps on the roof. The old monk headed toward the side aisle, then changed his mind and followed the younger man out of the church.

Were they gone for the rest of the night or just a few minutes? Gabriel grabbed one of the candles and hurried past the altar screen to the tapestry. Pulling back the dust-covered fabric, he found an oak door with cast-iron door handle and keyhole lock. Quickly, he tied back the tapestry. The lock looked fairly new, but the monks hadn’t installed a new door. Standing sideways, Gabriel kicked above the lock. He kept kicking until a section of the wooden frame cracked off and the door popped open.

The chapel was smaller than he had imagined-about twelve feet long and six feet wide. A white stone altar displayed a gold cross and two candle holders. Directly above the cross was a murky looking painting of Moses standing beside the burning bush. There was a three-legged stool in one corner next to an embroidered pillow, but no other furniture was in the room.

Gabriel circled the small space again and again until he noticed a marble slab resting on the floor below the altar. It was a rectangular piece of stone that looked like the top of a sarcophagus. A cross and Greek letters were carved into the surface.

Kneeling on the floor, he pushed the slab back a few inches and saw darkness surging and flowing like black oil in a white stone box. The Traveler reached out his hand and moved his fingers. No burning bush. No voice of God. He was in this world, this particular reality, but that was only one thin layer of a far more intricate system. Then he lowered his hand into the darkness and watched it disappear.

10

Hollis met Linden in the storeroom above the falafel shop a few days before the Harlequin escorted Gabriel to Egypt. Linden sat by the window dropping shreds of black tobacco into a square of cigarette paper. He rolled the cylinder between his stained fingers and then nodded in Hollis’s direction. Go ahead. Talk.

“Gabriel said you could help me get to Japan.”

The big Frenchman lit the cigarette and flicked the dead match through a crack in the window. The tobacco gave off a faint odor of burnt sugar. “I bought you a plane ticket using one of my Luxembourg corporations.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out an airline ticket and a packet of British pounds. Both gifts were tossed onto the table.

“Thank you.”

“Ne tracassez pas. This was not my idea.”

“Then thank Gabriel.”

“You are not connected to us any longer, Mr. Wilson. But remember this fact: you will be punished if you mention the Traveler to anyone.”

A stack of newspapers were on the table and Hollis assumed that a handgun was concealed beneath Le Monde. If there was a confrontation, he wondered if he would have enough time to draw his knife and drive it into the center of Linden’s chest.

“I respect Gabriel,” Hollis said. “And that’s never going to change. I keep my promises. You know that.”

Linden appeared to be calculating an equation with a half-dozen factors that related to Hollis’s death. Apparently, there was some advantage to letting him live. The Harlequin shrugged his shoulders.