Sparkles (5 page)

“Starved. Let’s go see what Zan and Amal have cooked up for us. Then I have to pack. The rental car will be expecting us.”

Philadelphia

MORNING BROKE
into Jan’s bedroom with that kind of wet glow only possible at sunrise after a rain. Soon its softness would give way to the steel light of the coming winter.

Jan threw back the silk duvet and pulled his naked body up and out of the big bed. The bed he and Tim had made love in, the bed where they had spent their last night together, and the room where it all ended.
I was bought and paid for, Tim. Remember? Just like one of your expensive knickknacks, I was an ornament of your pride. You have no idea how many people tried to handle me. Some tried to buy me away from you. Did you know that? You were so busy being proud of your creation that you ignored fingerprints strangers left all over your precious possession!
Jan shook the memory away.

Crossing to the bathroom, he looked at himself in the cheval mirror leaning against the wall. He was still relatively young, with strong legs and arms. From neck to groin was a flat, straight plane. His balls and flaccid cock hung low, and straight down.
Hmm,
I’ve got to do something about that.
Jan ran his fingers through his hair before moving on to the shower.

AMAL WAS
finishing his morning tea when Jan padded into the kitchen. “May I prepare your breakfast now,
Effendi
?”

“Do we have any donuts?”

“No. We do not. They are bad for you, anyway.”

“I like donuts.”

“Shall I order some to be delivered?”

Jan let out a frustrated sigh. “No, I suppose not.”

“What would you like, then?”

“Nothing. I’ll be in the study.”

“Very well,
Effendi
. I will have donuts for you tomorrow.”

Jan smiled and headed for the study.

“They are still bad for you,” Amal muttered to Jan’s back.

Jan entered the art deco room and sat at the desk made of thick black acrylic. Flaming with swirling colors, Gustave Klimt’s huge painting
The Kiss
dominated the wall behind the polished slab. Jan had spent many hours in this room. When he first came to the Saint Roi with Tim, it had seemed a friendly place. Its bookshelves, heavy with the journals of past Mundus masters, were to a young mind a source of mystery and power. Later, after Tim died and Jan was living in the sprawling penthouse alone, the study felt neutral, neither comforting nor depressing, just a room in which he worked on the issues Mundus and its members deemed vital. Now, though, a sense of confinement, of nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, pressed down on him.

Jan logged on to his computer. He typed “Philadelphia houses for sale.” He narrowed his search to Center City.
If I stay here, I’ll go mad!

Philadelphia

Early Morning

PILOT ALICE
Glass waited by the Hawker 400 jet plane while Jan parked his car. She studied this man who rarely spoke and wondered just who he was, besides being a renowned lawyer. He was a man of secrets, of that she was certain. She wondered too about the quiet handsome Arab who was never far from him.

As he and Amal approached the plane’s stairs, Jan handed Alice a small leather bag.

“All set, Alice?”

“Ready to go, sir.”

“Weather?”

“There’s a storm over the Atlantic. We’ll be on the ground before it hits the French coast.”

Jan nodded. “Then let’s get going.”

Arles, France

JAN HURRIED
down the plane’s stairs, crossed a few feet of tarmac, and climbed into the waiting Land Rover. Amal took the rear seat. He tapped Jan on his shoulder. “
Effendi
, your seat belt.”

At the wheel was Jan’s estate manager, Kevin Andrews. The three men rode in silence as the light fog that smothered the tree-lined Rhône River valley dissolved into mists, and then finally into a steady rain. Kevin whistled a tuneless melody in time with the windshield wipers as they slung the water off with a dull rhythm. Turning at the stone monument honoring the World War II dead of Arles, Kevin drove into the town’s narrow main street, past the cathedral, and, a while later past, the Roman amphitheater.

“Kevin?”

“Yes?”

“Anything I should know about at the château?”

“We had a flood. Those lavender fields along the river were wiped out.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“No, just the crop.”

Jan thought a moment, and then said, “We’ll take the loss. Make sure all the farmers get paid.”

“Will do. Oh, by the way, your guests have arrived.”

Jan stared out over the rain-soaked landscape.
It’s been a good year for Mundus. I wish I felt like celebrating. Something’s going on with Iran. The word revenge keeps popping up in their e-mail chatter. I wish we had more intel on it, or at least a clue.

Kevin broke into Jan’s thoughts. “There’s one other thing. Saint Sebastian would like to see you.”

Saint Sebastian was code for Jacques Malreve, Abbot of Saint Sebastian Monastery.

Jan took in the request with a frown. He wanted to be back in Philadelphia by midweek. The townhouse he’d bought on Camac Street was painted, furnished, and waiting for its new owner, and the abbot had a habit of dumping problems on Jan when he was least expecting them. Still, if the abbot had asked for a meeting, Jan would certainly go.
I guess I better see what Père Jacques wants.

“All right, Kevin, drop me off at the monastery. I’ll phone you when I’m finished. Amal, would you make sure my guests don’t drink too much before dinner?”

Amal smiled wickedly. “
Effendi
, it will be a pleasure.”

Kevin chuckled. “Amal, have you ever had alcohol?”

“Never!”

Saint Sebastian Monastery

SEVERAL WEEKS
of banked embers glowed like hellfire in the study’s massive fireplace. Jan finished warming his hands and then sat down on a hard wooden chair.
If I ran this place, there’d be cushions on these things.

As was their custom when Jan first began coming to the monastery, Jan spoke in Latin while the old monk spoke in French. Jan enjoyed these opportunities to speak in the rare language he had learned to love as a boy. Jacques, for his part, appreciated the opportunity to converse in, as he put it, “the language of my ordination.” Over the years the two had become close friends. Jacques, the liberal Catholic theologian who saw mankind not as a sin-riven race, but as one created “a little less than the angels,” while Jan viewed the church as a community that had lost its core mission—to love and to serve.

Jacques Malreve held out a silver cup. “Here, drink this. It’s from our 1950 vintage. I think you will like it.”

Jan sipped the wine. Eyeing the old abbot, he said, “Jacques, this is a treat, but you didn’t ask me here to sample vintage wine. So, what’s up? Please don’t tell me you have another church you want me to buy!”

Jacques smiled for the first time since Jan arrived.

“No. No churches, but I do have a request.”

“Am I going to like this?”

“Do you know Claude Bonnet?”

“Bonnet…. Bonnet…. If we’re talking about the same man, he owns
Banque
République
. Jacques, please don’t tell me you want me to buy his bank!”

The monk shook his head. He drew up a small wooden chair opposite Jan and sat down. “No, my friend. I want you to find his son. His father has reason, apparently good reason, to believe that his son has been taken somewhere along the Iranian border, by whom he is not certain—the Iranians or perhaps worse. Rescue him if you can.”

Jan carefully placed his wineglass on a nearby stand and looked at the stone floor. In a very real sense, he had been rescued—bought, literally and figuratively, by a man. Tim Morris had given him a life beyond the dreams of most people, but at a terrible cost—his mother murdered, an ill-conceived marriage that ended in shattered lives. Tim had given him Mundus, too, with all its noble aims, its immense influence, and yet an organization entirely susceptible to human flaws. And wealth—wealth so large that Jan didn’t even know how much was there.

The reasons for denying such a ridiculous request were so obvious that Jan was surprised Jacques hadn’t come to them. Yet all Jan could say was “Did Bonnet ask for my help?”

“Not directly. His son has disappeared. He is frantic with worry. He asked me to help find him. He thinks I have connections.”

Jan watched as Jacques rose to lay another log into the fireplace. The dry wood burst into ravenous flame. After a long pause Jan said, “Jacques, does Bonnet know about me, or more to the point, does he know about Mundus?”

“He doesn’t know about Mundus. He believes the Vatican can help, or at least I can get the Curia’s secretariat to use its influence.”

Jan stared at Jacques in disbelief. “The Vatican! You can’t be serious.
He
can’t be serious. It’s true there’s a Catholic community in Iran. However, it is not true that the Vatican has a particle of power there. My friend, you know that as well as I do.”

“Bonnet is a religious man. He thought if I approached the right people with sufficient incentives, I might get his son back.”

“Incentives? You mean money.”

The monk shrugged a yes. “I didn’t call Rome. Such a request from a man who wants the Latin liturgy returned to Sunday Masses would get little response, if any at all. That’s why I’m asking you to do something.”

“I’m not Interpol. Finding people is their job.”

The old man reached out. Grasping Jan’s shoulder with a strong hand, he looked into his eyes. “
They
may have him. You of all people know what that means.”

“By
they
I take it you mean al-Qaida, or any of its spawn. Even so, it’s still an Interpol job.”

“Jan, you know that no law organization will do what needs to be done to get the boy out.”

“Boy! He’s a boy?”

“No, he’s not a child. He’s around twenty-five.”

“So who exactly has him—does anyone know for sure? You know the Iranians pick up people all over the country and accuse them of spying.”

“He was hiking in Kazakhstan. We’re not sure about Iran.”

“Let me get this straight. He was in Kazakhstan hiking?”

“Not exactly,” said Jacques. “He was hiking but he was looking for a grave also.”

Jan leaned forward. “A grave. He was hiking in a foreign country looking for a grave, and he was, what? Arrested? Pinched? Kidnapped? What?”

Jacques shrugged. “All Bonnet knows is Armande—oh, his name is Armande. He e-mailed his father from a cyber cafe saying that some local man offered to help him.”

“And?”

“He has not been heard from since.”

“And so, Jacques, you believe all I have to do is make a phone call, and all will be well—right?”

“You have done it before. You and your Mundus companions tracked down a human trafficker in the middle of the desert. You chased the men who kidnapped your own son to the top of a glacier and brought him back unharmed. You and your people have stopped terror attacks all over the world, and yes, I know others get the credit… but credit is not what you are after. Mundus is a wonderful group of people, and you, my friend, know that without them this world of ours would be a much more dangerous place than it is.”

“What you say about Mundus is true, all of it… and you only know a small part. But in eliminating the pasha and the slave ring, I caused the deaths of innocent men as well. I’ll never be able to get that out of my mind. Sometimes, Jacques, the cost is so high my soul quivers.”

The two men shared a tense moment.

“Will you do it?” Jacques asked at last.

“Jacques,” Jan said, “we’ve got a G-7 summit coming up, and Mundus is scrambling to get Spain and Germany on the same page. Yemen is teetering toward civil war. We’re negotiating with the rebels for a settlement there. The United States is becoming more politically radicalized. Trouble is brewing from the North Sea to the Pacific Rim, with only seven Mundus masters covering emerging events. Six, Jacques—hell, even the Lord had twelve men working for him! Do you want me to go on? We could be here all day!”

Jacques stood and went to the statue of the archangel Michael. “Will you do it?” he asked again.

Jan got up and paced the room that had become so familiar to him. He ran his fingers over the smooth stone wall—walls that were built when Imperial Rome still ruled this land. He turned as the monk lit a candle.

“Who’s that for?” Jan said.

“It is for whoever needs it.”

Jan went to the old man and embraced him, and then whispered, “Better light two.”

Jan’s château on the River Rhône

Meeting of the Mundus Society Masters

THREE WOMEN
and four men sat on sofas with deep cushions covered in pale rose-colored damask silk. They were Mundus Society Masters, representing the world’s continents. Together they organized and managed hundreds upon hundreds of dedicated agents who fanned out across every nation on the globe. Their goal was summed in three words: Peace. Balance. Tolerance.

A wall of floor-to-ceiling windows of thick glass reflected the brilliant light radiating from the ancient fireplace across the room. On this cool night, the deep embers warmed their faces as they reviewed once more the world status, a status that was as stable as volcanic lava.

Still, Osama bin Laden was dead. Mundus agents in Pakistan found him, and then leaked their information to highly placed sources in the American CIA. No one would ever know of their efforts on behalf of the US. Justice and the stability of nations was the aim, not glory. This night, the leaders of this powerful clique, who quietly shaped the course of nations, were relieved, but not cheerful. They were hopeful, yet haunted with an unspoken dread of what might come next. Would the Arab Spring, as the geopolitical analysts called it, bring fresh cleansing rains, or a torrent of fire? Would North Korea’s new “Dear Leader” bow and scrape before the military that kept him in precarious power, or would he move his starving country into the life of nations? It was the kind of challenge Mundus had met head-on, and prevailed. There was Bosnia, Albania, as well as Croatia, which would soon join the EU. These could be put in the win column. Iraq and Afghanistan were yet to be settled. There was more work to do, but for now this gathering of Mundus Masters was ended.