Death of a Pharaoh (12 page)

The problem was
that up until a week ago, Dmitri had never explained to his employers that all
of his success depended on following the lead of a retired office manager from
Philadelphia who seemed to have a direct link with the powers of the universe.
Call her whatever you may: clairvoyant, an angel or God’s CEO on earth! All he
knew was that she had never been wrong. Every five years or so she would travel
to Senegal for a month, always preceded by a sustained period of economic
instability coupled with an increasingly accelerated occurrence of natural
disasters that only exacerbated the underlying economic weakness. The last
earthquake in California only killed a few hundred but it put the world's stock
markets on life support.

Whenever
the planet was on the brink of natural and
economic meltdown, this tiny frail woman disappeared for a month to Africa and
then as if by magic the earthquakes, droughts and tsunamis abated and the
economies of the world soon entered a period of sustained and bullish growth.
Dmitri Sonkin had no idea how this phenomena occurred. His mathematical mind
refused to contemplate the possibility of divine intervention. All he knew was
that someone was screwing with the laws of the universe and it wasn’t fair to
people like him who worked so hard to do the same thing but failed.

Five days ago, he
lunched with Stevenson and revealed the full extent of the dilemma. If the
Consortium’s pit-bull attorney was surprised by the knowledge that Sonkin
cribbed all of his success he didn’t mentioned it. It was no secret that he
never had been a big fan of Dmitri’s. Still he was surprisingly understanding
and supportive. As usual he ordered an absurdly expensive wine, in this case a
bottle of Romanée-Conti 1990 from Burgundy that didn’t even make the maitre d’
blink despite the almost $7,000 price. Dmitri had grown accustomed to
Stevenson’s vulgar excesses. This one galled him even more since he offered to
pick up the tab just a few minutes earlier in order to ingratiate himself with
his lunch companion.

It took the
sommelier more than five maddening minutes to decant the wine then offer a
taste for Stevenson’s approval. The lawyer merely waved his hand dismissively
and waited for the man to leave.

“Do you have all
the information?” Stevenson asked as he swirled the wine in his glass before
taking a deep whiff of the bouquet.

Dmitri nodded yes.

Stevenson slowly
replaced the wine glass on the table and scrutinized Dmitri’s face carefully.
“Are you certain that she is the problem?” he quizzed the professor.

Dmitri didn’t even
hesitate, “Of course! I’d bet my life on it.” He instantly regretted using the
phrase. He knew that Stevenson would take full advantage of the slip.

Stevenson remained
silent for a moment before posing a question.

“My dear Dmitri
have you ever tried a bottle of Romanée-Conti 1990? He didn’t wait for an
answer before continuing, “Some connoisseurs suggest that if you can only have
one more glass of wine before you die then it should be this one.”

A wave of nausea
hit Dmitri and he started to sweat profusely.

“May I pour you a
glass while you tell me what my employers want to hear?” Stevenson added with
an unctuous smile.

Dmitri knew only
too well what they wanted. In previous meetings, Stevenson outlined in
exquisite detail the staggering sums of money that the Consortium had invested
based on his predictions. Their strategists needed at least twelve more months
under current market conditions to complete the takeover of global petroleum
production and refining capabilities. Currently, the group manufactured over
70% of the world’s steel and refined almost 60% of its aluminum. They
controlled all of the major sources of such vital commodities as copper, zinc,
nickel and silver. Although no one could prove it, the consortium counted on a
majority of the voting shares at more than half of the Fortune 500 companies.
Lately, they focused their interest on nuclear power plants and promising
diamond plays in the Canadian Arctic.

In ten short
years, the consortium became the largest multinational in the history of the
world but only a handful of people even knew it existed. Economists around the
world began to warn of dangerous levels of corporate concentration in key
sectors and watch-dog agencies fretted that they could no longer guarantee that
the world’s major commodity and stock markets traded under free market
conditions. If anyone asked the experts who was behind it all, they only shook
their heads and rambled on about the need to strengthen anti-trust legislation.

Dmitri chose his
next words carefully. He took a sip of the wine. It truly was magnificent he
thought to himself as he turned and looked Stevenson directly in the eye. “As I
reiterated in our telephone conversation yesterday, I have studied this woman
for over ten years. If we delay her trip to Senegal there is no threat to your
plans,” he stated with great conviction.

"Most
interesting, indeed, Professor, I am certain that someday it will make a
fascinating book. But for your sake there had better not be anything else you
have failed to tell me."

Stevenson reached
into the left breast pocket of his impeccable silk blend suit and removed a
white business card. He slid it across the table toward Dmitri who put on his
reading glasses before picking it up. It had two telephone numbers printed on
the front, both with New Jersey area codes. There was no name on the card.
Dmitri looked up at Stevenson and waited for the explanation that he knew was coming.

“When you get back
to the office, fax the contact information and a photograph of the woman to the
first number. Wait exactly one hour then call the second number to confirm
receipt and to relay your instructions.”

The rest of the
lunch consisted of remarkable food in frustratingly small portions and equally
parsimonious snippets of banal conversation that belied the momentous events
that they were both about to set into motion. The bill with a second bottle of
a more modest vintage and with the tip included was $11,000.

Dmitri still fumed over the expense two hours later when he sat at his
desk and dialed the second number. Someone answered on the third ring.

"Yeah?"

"Did you get
the fax with the picture and contact information?"

"Yeah."

Not a very talkative
fellow, Sonkin thought. "Make it look like a mugging, maybe a broken hip
or a badly fractured leg. I need her out of commission for at least a
year."

The person on the
other end hung up without saying goodbye. Sonkin replaced the receiver like he
suspected it of harboring bubonic plague then sat staring at the phone. He felt
sordid like when you wake up with a terrible hangover and discover that the
whore you hired was much uglier than either of the two women you rejected in
the bar hours earlier, had cigarette burns on her butt and smelled like the bum
you almost tripped over on the way to the car. Dmitri felt an overwhelming urge
to wash his hands.

Stevenson told him
that it might take several days for the right opportunity to arise.

“One can’t rush
these things,” he assured him.

He advised him to
be patience, to lay low and most of all to keep monitoring the trading activity
to make certain that nothing changed. With all the waiting, Dmitri’s paranoia
got the best of him. He poured through the newspapers every day looking for any
reports about a mugging while he waited for a call from Stevenson. Today was no
different. Somehow he managed to pull it together long enough to brush his
teeth then called the concierge desk to ask them to bring him the morning
papers.

“Just leave them
at the front door,” he snapped. He hated how they were always holding out their
hands expecting a tip. For what he paid in condo fees every month they should
suck his dick for free. He fixed himself a coffee with his fancy espresso
machine while he waited.

He heard the thump
of the bundle four minutes later. He sipped on his coffee for a moment so that
whoever was outside would have enough time to give up. There was no one in the
hallway when he bent down to retrieve the packet but he thought he heard a door
close a few yards along the corridor. Dmitri believed his neighbors spied on
him.

He was still
trying to figure out who it might have been when he started to flip through the
morning edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. He spotted a short article buried
deep in the local section that chilled his blood. It mentioned the death of a
senior citizen in the Cedar Park neighborhood at the hands of an unidentified
assailant. Even though the motive appeared to be robbery, investigators were
baffled since there had been few indications of a struggle and the murder had
all the hallmarks of a professional hit, rather than a robbery gone awry. The
report identified the victim as Fannie Carter, 75 years of age and a retired
office manager.

Dmitri’s face
turned as white as the milk in the jug just to the left of his shaking hand.
How could she be dead? He specifically told the contact he only wanted her out
of commission for a few months. He started to feel sick to his stomach when the
telephone rang suddenly. His jangled nerves made him jump enough to spill half
his cup of coffee on his expensive beige carpet. The caller ID indicated it was
Stevenson.

“Seen the papers
yet?” the lawyer inquired with a chill in his voice.

Dmitri was right,
they were watching him. Fuelled by caffeine, fear and anger, he exploded at the
lawyer. “That was not our deal. It was supposed to be a broken leg or a
fractured hip. Murder was never on the table. I have my limits.”

“So do I Professor
and your self-righteous indignation is testing them. Be very careful what you
say because no one is indispensable,” he threatened. “Did you think that I
would be willing to risk a rapid recovery? Get real, Professor. This is the big
time. No room for the tender-hearted.”

It suddenly dawned
on Dmitri that he used the phone at his office to call the murderer.

“What if the
police start nosing around?” he sniffed.

“Pray that they
don’t. But just in case, I have a recording of your incriminating conversation
with our mutual friend.”

“You son of a
bitch!” Dmitri screamed.

“Tusk, tusk
Professor; no use dragging my dear dead mother into this. Just hunker down for
a few weeks and keep a close watch on the trading activity of the fund. We
won’t tolerate any more surprises. Is that understood?”

Palace of the Holy Office, Vatican City: 17:28 CEST September 13,
2016

Father Marco Degl’innocenti, OP sat hunched in his crowded dank office
deep in the basement of the Palace of the Holy Office in the Vatican. The only
natural light came from a small half window at street level protected with two
iron bars in the shape of a cross and set high in the wall across from his
desk. For only a brief moment each morning, during two weeks in September, the
late summer sun managed to clear the imposing dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica at
the perfect angle to shine through the clouded glass and etch his face with the
shadow of the cross.

Today was such a
day. As much as possible, he tried to be in residence during this period,
sitting in his chair at the prescribed time and praying the Holy Rosary when
the crepuscular rays illuminated his face. He always closed his eyes and
imagined that he could feel the outline of the cross on his skin. It was a
moment of true ecstasy that he had cherished every year since they chose him,
more than a decade ago, to be Director of the Office of Sanctus Verum, a
secretive branch of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formally
known as the Holy Inquisition.

Although the
official Vatican organization chart showed he reported to the Cardinal Prefect,
in reality Father Marco only took orders from God. At the time of his
appointment, he was a recently ordained Dominican Priest and had proven his
dedication to defending the Holy Mother Church against heresy by causing the
death of the Antipope’s daughter, Eshe Carter, and her bastard infant son.

Since that moment
he had devoted his life to ridding the world of the blasphemy detailed in an
ancient document hidden deep in the secret Vatican Archives; a story almost as
old as the miracle of Christ’s passion itself. Only he possessed the code to
open the special lead lined box that protected the leather bound codex,
consisting of some ten sheets of vellum, from the eyes of the world. Only a
handful of people among the living knew of its existence, himself as Director
of Sanctus Verum, the reigning Pope if Father Marco deigned it necessary and a
few top members of the satanic organization known as the Servants of Ma’at.
Father Marco’s sacred mission was to ensure that all but the first two were
eradicated in his lifetime.

Today he was a
step closer to the realization of his God given task although he had no idea
how it had been accomplished. In his hands, he held a copy of a short newspaper
article forwarded to him through the Office of the Archbishop of Philadelphia
in the United States. The extensive information gathering capability of the
Church picked up a name highlighted in confidential orders that he updated
frequently as more intelligence on the Servants of Ma’at became available. The
devoted diocesan clerk dutifully copied the article and included it the
Cardinal’s daily communications briefing but remained blissfully ignorant as to
the import of the obscure news item. Father Marco received the information in
an email three hours later.

Although overjoyed
to learn of the death of the so-called True Pharaoh, an instrument of the Devil
himself and the greatest threat to Christianity in the world, he was perplexed.
Despite his most fervent prayers begging for just such a glorious result he
felt positive that he had nothing to do with her blessed demise. It generated
great consternation. It meant there might be others who knew of her blasphemous
work and any meddling in the affairs of the Servants of Ma’at presented a grave
danger to his Holy Crusade. As the reporter noted, the possibility existed that
her death was merely a common robbery that went wonderfully wrong. Still, he
could not be certain and he would need to monitor the situation closely to see
who might step up from within the ranks of her acolytes to take the reins of
power now that she and all her issue burned in hell.

Father Marco
remembered the first time he ever read the deeply disturbing report describing
the theft of Christ’s body from the tomb and its subsequent transfer to Egypt
for further preparation and burial.

In the past fifty
years, only a very limited group of people in the Church had been privy to the
contents and only he was still alive. Of course, they included his predecessor
as Director of Sanctus Verum, Monsignor Alberto, a Spaniard and a member of
Opus Dei, as well as two Pontiffs. The first, elected in 1978, demanded to see
the document and mysteriously died a week later after serving as Holy Father
less than two months. Some feared that he had shared the terrible truth with
his closest confidants and advisors. None of them survived more than a year and
their deaths were equally enigmatic. Several were obviously murdered, one
struck by a speeding car just outside the walls of the Vatican, while the
others including the dangerously ambitious new Pope, perished suddenly of
natural causes that could never be confirmed since their bodies were embalmed
with almost obscene haste. Any scandal with the press over the destruction of
forensic evidence was far preferable to the world knowing the truth.

Much like the
legends surrounding the discovery of the tomb of King Tut, almost everyone who
touched or read the document over the centuries suffered a mysterious death.
Father Marco was not worried about himself. He was not a superstitious man and
he actually welcomed martyrdom.

From what he knew
of its history, the codex transcribed in Latin was stolen from a caravan
crossing the Sahara in the 14
^th
century. The destination of the
convoy was Gao in what is now known as Mali. A bundle of documents including
the report eventually made its way into the hands of a wealthy Moorish slave
trader living in the Caliphate of Granada around the time of the discovery of
America. Where they had been for almost two hundred years, no one would ever
know.

The Moor had an
affinity for antiques, especially ancient documents. It was doubtful that he
understood Latin and he might have been completely unaware of the historical
importance of the ten modestly illuminated pages of vellum. After his death,
they passed from father to son over three generations until they formed part of
an impressive private library in a grand home in Seville; arguably the
wealthiest city in the world at the beginning of the 17
^th
century.

Many in that
parochial and conservative society were jealous of the success of the owner of
such a fine residence and with a surname that invited much speculation as to
the pureness of his bloodline. His wife, much younger than he, liked to dress
in the latest fashions from Paris and made the mistake of wearing a new frock
as they rode a carriage around the Alameda of Hercules on a sultry Friday
afternoon. A neighbor betrayed her to the Inquisition.

On the basis that
she had exhibited with foolish pride a new garment on the day held holy by the
followers of Mohammed, they accused the entire family of being false converts.
They tortured the husband, a devote Catholic his whole life and a pious member
of the Brotherhood of the True Cross, until he confessed then burned him at the
stake. In their mercy, they gave his wife and children 48 hours to abandon the
realm. They could take nothing with them but the clothes they wore on their
backs. The elegant palace on Sierpes Street, along with all of its contents,
became the property of the Inquisition to be auctioned off in benefit of its
holy efforts against heresy.

One of the clerks
working for the Inquisition at the time was a young Dominican monk named,
Isidoro. His family immigrated to Seville from Zamora in Old Castille after the
conquest of the city from the Moors by King Ferdinand III in the middle of the
13
^th
century. Another branch of the family moved to Valencia and
much to his regret became far wealthier.

Isidoro,
well-hailed as a diligent albeit timid functionary, received orders to make an
accounting of the property of the unfortunate victim who although very dead was
ironically considered to be now in a state of God’s grace. He found many gold
coins, bolts of the finest silk, exquisite jewelry and an extensive library
that he feared would take much effort to convert into reales.

A great lover of
books, he took time doing the inventory of the collection to marvel at the many
titles that were in themselves enough to warrant any good Christian a summons
from the dreaded Castle of Triana, headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition.
Several parchments with strange symbols that he imagined to be the form of
writing once used by the ancient Egyptians piqued his curiosity. Among them, he
discovered a very old document in Latin. He settled into a large wooden chair
with a comfortable seat of tooled Cordovan leather and began to read.

Isidoro never
returned to the small damp office he shared with the other clerks in the
imposing castle on the banks of the Guadalquivir River. That evening with
nothing but a loaf of bread, fifty gold coins that he assumed no one would ever
miss and a packet of securely wrapped documents in his saddlebag, he led his
horse through the
Puerta de la Carne
or Meat Gate, so named because it
led to a large municipal slaughterhouse just outside the walls of the city. It
was the only gate still open at that late hour.

He pulled his
cloak tighter around his neck and prayed for the protection of the Holy Virgin
Mary from bandits and other demons of the night. He steered his mount in a
westerly direction along the ancient Roman road leading to the Mediterranean
coast. A fortnight later, he booked passage on a small vessel departing the
port of Alicante for Sicily, then a vassal state of the Kingdom of Castille and
Aragon. In the end it took him more than a month to arrive in Rome at the
doorstep of his distant cousin, Gaspar de Borja y de Velasco, only recently
elected to the Cardinalate by Pope Paul V and at the time the Ambassador of
Spain before the Holy See.

The Cardinal
looked surprised when his cousin so many times removed that only his surname
hinted at their shared parentage, covered with a patina of dust walked into his
luxurious study a few steps behind a page. He remained in his chair as if
uncertain whether he should rise to embrace him or order him to take a bath
first. Isidoro’s hands trembled. It was the first time he had ever stood in the
presence of a Prince of the Church, a great-grandson of St. Francis de Borja
and a close relative of two previous Popes. He could barely speak out of fear
and in his state of near exhaustion, he only managed to hand the pages in Latin
to his cousin.

His Eminence began
to read them more out of politeness than any conviction that they might be
worthy of even a thumb of the wax on the candle he moved closer to compensate
for the late hour. He had never been more mistaken in his life.

The young Cardinal
was at times alarmed and at others moments deeply moved by the extraordinary
account of the Egyptian embalmer, Rahotep. A politician as much as an
ecclesiastic, he had no difficulty imagining the power he now held in his
hands. Intrigue was part of his bloodline and even though the period of the
family’s greatest influence had long waned, perhaps with these documents the
era of the Borgias would rise again. He ordered the page to take his cousin to
a suite of apartments where he might rest from his long and doubtless tiring
journey. According to the deathbed confession of his manservant years later,
when the ill-fated Isidoro enquired what he should do with the documents the
Cardinal insisted that they would remain with him for safekeeping while he
prayed to the Holy Spirit for guidance.

Isidoro died an
agonizing death less than a week after his arrival. The Cardinal’s private
physician attributed his demise to the cholera that was sweeping Italy at the
time. Only a cynic would note that the symptoms were remarkably similar to
acute arsenic poisoning. A technique employed to perfection by his ancestor
Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI, only a century before. As a
precaution, the Cardinal’s household moved to a villa in the country for
several months.

Father Marco had
no problem imagining what Cardinal Borja planned to do with the explosive
document in his possession. He participated as an elector in the conclave of
1621. The proceedings were of course secret and elected Pope Gregory XV; within
months, he decreed the establishment of two new congregations. One was the
Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith and the other, in pectore,
was the Office of Sanctus Verum. He also issued a Papal Bull changing the
manner of electing a Pope; perhaps in response to Cardinal Borja’s maneuvers.

 Less than a year
later the Holy Father died. The conclave of 1623 chose Maffeo Barberini, who
became Pope Urban VIII. The twice-thwarted Spaniard served as Camerlengo of the
Sacred College of Cardinals for the year ending January 10, 1628. During the
preceding twelve months, three members of the Holy Father’s private household
died under mysterious circumstances. Although some in the Curia suspected
arsenic poisoning and many fingers secretly pointed at Cardinal Borja, nobody
could prove it. The Camerlengo was the person responsible for certifying the
death of a Pope and had he succeeded, his position would have made his
treachery so much easier to hide.

At a secret
consistory held in March of 1632, Borja openly challenged the Pope in front of
the other Cardinals. Father Marco wondered if that was when Borja finally knew
he was defeated. Three years later the Pope effectively banned him from Italy.
Forced to return to Spain as Bishop of Seville, Cardinal Borja abandoned Naples
in 1635. After an ignominious wait, he finally obtained transport in two ships
belonging to the Duke of Tuscany. During the voyage, a large trunk containing
the private papers of the Cardinal mysteriously disappeared, never to be found
again. He died ten years later of natural causes.