The Second Messiah

Jack woke with a blinding headache. He felt a sinking sensation. He blinked open his eyes. He was covered with a blanket and seated in a large, comfortable leather seat in what appeared to be a private aircraft. The dimly lit cabin had similar plush seats on both sides of the narrow aisle. Darkness raced beyond the oval windows.

He had a faint recollection of telling Hassan everything, then the Serb jabbed him with a hypodermic before they had dragged him from Hassan’s mansion to a helicopter. After that he blacked out. He heard a sigh and turned his head.

Yasmin lay on the seat next to him, a blanket draped over her body. He could hear her breathing softly, her dark eyelashes closed, her beautiful face angelic in sleep. He smelled the almond scent of her. He couldn’t help but reach out to stroke her hair. She murmured in her sleep. He thought, Who is she?

Across the cabin, he recognized two of Hassan’s bodyguards, tough-looking men in suits who lounged in their seats. One slept, his arms folded and his head thrown back, mouth open as he snored. The other man was awake and watchful, and stared blankly at Jack.

A cabin door behind him opened. The Serb appeared. “So, you’ve decided to join us again. How do you feel, Cane?”

“Like I’ve been kicked by a camel.”

The Serb grinned and pulled away the blanket. “And the fun hasn’t even started yet.” He grabbed Jack viciously by the hair and dragged him up. “Move. Someone wants to talk with you.”

128

Jack was pushed into another cabin. Hassan sat in a leather seat, his expression blank. The Serb forced Jack into the seat opposite and withdrew, leaving them both alone.

Jack said to Hassan, “What’s happening? Where are you taking me?”

“Back to my homeland, Cane. We’ll be landing shortly.”

“You’ll be arrested. Mossad will find you. They’re not stupid—”

“I’m well aware of Mossad and their ways. We’re not landing in Israel. But over the border in Jordan, at a private airfield.”

“And the plan is?”

“To retrieve the scroll. The desert is the Bedu’s home, Cane, and always has been. No Israelis or border patrols will ever stop that. But we’ll remain near the border with Israel, for safety.” Hassan held up the satellite phone. “The call has already been made to have someone bring the scroll to us.”

Hassan snapped his fingers. Jack looked up. Behind him the Serb had reappeared in the cabin doorway, holding a savage-looking curved Arab blade. The Serb grabbed Jack by the hair, yanked back his head, and held the knife against his throat.

Hassan said, “Just a friendly warning. If you’ve lied to me about the location of the scroll, Bruno will slit your throat.”

“I told the truth.”

The Serb let go of Jack’s hair and stepped back.

Jack said to Hassan, “Why does the scroll still matter to you if the Vatican opens its archives?”

Hassan tossed the satellite phone on the seat opposite. “So you claim. But I wouldn’t count on that, Cane. The news I heard from Rome is that your friend Becket was stabbed by a knife-wielding madman and is not expected to live. Whoever succeeds Becket, I doubt that he’ll be willing to be assassinated for the sake of revealing the truth.”

Jack said in disbelief, “You’re lying—”

“I have no cause to. No doubt it’ll soon be in every newspaper in the world. Nothing will change in the Vatican now, not ever. You say you left the parchment hidden under the gravel at your parents’ grave. It makes sense.” Hassan nodded to the Serb, who disappeared a moment, then reappeared with Yasmin, who stepped into the cabin.

Hassan said to her, “Well? Has Cane told the truth about where he buried the parchment?”

Yasmin’s face was pale with torment as she stared over at Jack, then turned to answer Hassan. “I was with him at the gravesite. For a time he had his back to me, so he could have hid something under the gravel.”

“One good truth deserves another.” Hassan forced a smile, stood, and put his arm around Yasmin, whose brown eyes never left Jack’s face. “It’s time I introduced you to my sister.”

129

Monsignor Sean Ryan clutched his hands together in prayer and paced the corridor outside the emergency room in Rome’s Gemelli Polyclinic Hospital.

He prayed with every step.

Prayer was a habit with him: he prayed every single morning, afternoon, and night. But at that moment, the focus of his prayer was John Becket.

Ryan felt a sickness in the pit of his stomach and looked down at his clutched hands. They were shaking. He had killed Cassini. The team of paramedics and doctors who came to attend to the pope had pronounced the Sicilian cardinal dead.

“He was probably dead before his head even hit the marble altar,” a medic later observed, seeing the massive wounds the .40-caliber slugs had inflicted on Cassini’s skull and chest.

Ryan still felt shaken. He had taken a life. His cloud of depression was made only worse by his knowledge that the pope was not expected to live through the night.

Ryan was drawn to a blaze of light beyond the corridor windows and paced over to the glass. The world had gone raving mad.