The Book of Names (27 page)

“Yael, run! Get out of here,” he shouted, but she didn't. Instead, she darted several feet to the side, brandishing the knife, her face set. With blood spattered across her cheeks and clothes, she looked feral.

The Dark Angel's gaze shifted quickly, back and forth, between the two of them—the lithe woman with the bloody knife and the man who waited to turn his own weapon against him.

With a roar he charged Yael, and David's stomach dropped.
He's going to use her as a shield.

As the Dark Angel barreled toward her and David dove forward, Yael seemed frozen.

I
won't get there in time
, David realized in despair, but then he saw the steel in Yael's eyes.

She waited until the last possible instant, then dropped to a crouch and drove the knife straight into the Dark Angel's crotch.

His screams echoed in the courtyard until David ended them, slamming the pipe against his skull.

 

The air in the Gabrieli Kabbalah Center had changed. It was infused with urgency—a frantic electricity that hummed through the entire second floor as Rabbi Cardoza and his staff searched the world from their computer banks, searching for Jack Cherle and Guillermo Torres.

No one knew where Stacy was, but in just a few hours David was going to do his damnedest to find out.

The Mossad was searching full out for the three Lamed Vovniks as well, thanks to a single phone call from Avi Raz. Rabbi Cardoza's quick update to Avi an hour ago was all it had taken. Within fifteen minutes, Avi had slashed through weeks of red tape and paperwork to launch the largest manhunt in the Israeli intelligence agency's history.

David winced as he bent over yet another computer printout of a 240 ELS skip analysis of his journal. So far, nothing of the Gnoseos was concealed in the text. Only gibberish.

Bruised and bloodied, David had refused all but the most rudimentary first aid. There was no time to bother
with scrapes after he and Yael had limped back to the Center to summon the police. He'd merely slapped a bandage on the worst of the cuts and grappled with what he needed to do next.

David grimaced as he caught sight of Yael peering into the monitor across the table. A long welt burned angry across her neck where the rope had dug, bruising her larynx so badly it was painful for her to talk.

She'd very nearly died. They both had.

And Jack Cherle, Guillermo Torres, and Stacy would die, too, unless . . .

Unless the Mossad found them. Or Interpol, or the CIA—or any of the other international agencies the Mossad was contacting for help.

This ELS business is leading nowhere
, David thought in frustration. He checked his watch, impatience mounting inside his chest, almost as painful as his battered ribcage and swollen fingers. Less than an hour before a car arrived to take him to Tel Aviv. Before he could get on his way to tracking Stacy.

He was finished here. He'd done what he'd come to do. Yael and Yosef had been right—Safed
had
released the final names trapped inside his head. But now there was nothing left for him to accomplish in this mystical city. And staying here might bring more danger, more Dark Angels, right to the door of the Kabbalists.

Yet something still nagged at him. He couldn't dismiss the feeling of something missed or forgotten. But what? Maybe there
was
something more he had to do here. Something Rabbi Cardoza put his finger on. The names in his journal. Why had they come to him in that specific order? Was it random, or was there a pattern he couldn't yet see?

If it was a hidden message, the gematria of the word
“Amelek” had failed to reveal it.
What if I need to apply a different ELS to the journal. . . a different word. . . like “Gnoseos?”

Standing up quickly, he sought out Binyomin and asked him the gematria of the word Gnoseos. “Try a skip based on that,” David urged him.

As the computer pages were spit out, his discouragement deepened. Nothing new was materializing within these lines of text, only the same kind of gobbledygook “Amelek” had produced.

David groaned as he lifted his duffel—lighter now, because the rabbi's satchel and its contents were gone. Everything, including the gemstones.

At the thought of the agate he'd brought to Rabbi ben Moshe, he hesitated.

Crispin's taunt replayed itself in his mind.

You have something of mine. And I have something of yours.

Crispin wanted him to believe he'd trade the gemstone for Stacy. David knew it was a trick, but without the agate in hand, how could he call Crispin's bluff?

He saw Yael glance up from her monitor. Her gaze rested on him a moment, then she came around the table. To say good-bye, he thought.

“Is it time to leave already?” Her usually rich voice was painfully raspy and strange.

“The car should be here any minute. I've exhausted my usefulness here.”

The searching look she sent him gave him pause.

“Don't be so sure. I want to run an idea by you—about the tarot cards. Remember the notebook Rabbi ben Moshe gave us?” She touched her throat as she spoke, as if to lessen the pain. “He wrote about the Gnoseos' insistence on secret passwords and talismans. They went to
enough trouble to kill the printer for the plates. The cards must be extremely secret—and extremely important.”

David set his duffel on the chair beside him. “All the Gnoseos we've come across have them,” he agreed. “Hold on—maybe it's a Gnoseos identification card. Sort of like a driver's license—”

“Or.” Yael bit her lower lip. “A passport,” she said slowly.

A passport.

“A passport to where? For what? They want to destroy this world,” David countered, “not travel it.”

“True.” Her green eyes squinted in thought. “But what if they're all gathering someplace to celebrate the end of the world . . . all the Gnoseos together? . . .”

David's pulse quickened. “And how better to prove they belong there—that they're invited to the victory party—than to produce a secret passport?”

“Exactly.” Yael's eyes flashed. “Passport, invitation. Whatever. They'd need tangible proof. A ticket in.”

“Handy then that I have Gillis's.”

She raised her chin and held his gaze. “I'll need one, too. I'm going with you.”

“No, Yael.”

“My flight is booked. My seat is right behind yours. I'm not letting you search for Stacy alone.” She lowered her voice. The softness accentuated its strained quality. He could barely catch the words. “Wait here. I'll get Rabbi ben Moshe's tarot card. I saw where Rabbi Cardoza put it.”

David touched her arm as she turned toward the doorway.

“I need the gemstone, too, Yael. I need the agate.”

For a long moment she looked at him and he could read the uncertainty, the conflict, in her face. Without saying a word, she hurried from the library.

Yael was going with him to London.
David found himself surprisingly heartened. And if they were right about the purpose of the tarot cards, they'd have two passports to Gnoseosville—wherever that might be. Maybe the cards would get them to Stacy. Or to someone who knew where Crispin had her.

He pulled the mysterious card from his wallet and studied it again, trying to decipher its symbolism. People jumping from the shattered turret of the tower.

Suicide? No. Destruction, death, chaos
, the tarot reader had said.
And rebirth.
His gaze narrowed on the lightning slashing through the sky behind the tower—there'd been plenty of electrical wrath from Mother Nature lately.

And the drawbridge, the one that reminded him of the Tower Bridge in London.

London.
Where he'd just crossed paths with Crispin . . . where he was headed to find Stacy. . ..

Yael crossed the room toward him, her leather tote swinging at her hip. “I brought them both,” she murmured without flicking an eyelash. “They were exactly where I remembered.”

Suddenly David felt a needlelike tingle run up his spine. His ears buzzed as if the conversation in the library was magnified.

It was exactly where I remembered. Remembered. . .

“Zakhor.” He grabbed Yael's wrist. “Remember.”

She tilted her head, regarding him quizzically. “What else do I need to remember?” she asked, clearly puzzled.

“Not you. Me. They told
me
to remember. They kept shouting at me to remember. . . zakhor. Maybe that's what I'm supposed to remember now. The word zakhor.”

Yael's eyes went wide. She rushed to the nearest table
and scribbled numbers on a slip of paper. “Here's the gematria of zakhor—”

233.
David yanked out his journal and opened it to the first page, the first name.

“D,” he told Yael. With his finger he counted off a skip of 233 letters. “The next one is I,” he told her.

Counting furiously, he proceeded to give her a U, then an A, his mind and fingers flying at breakneck speed. Could this really be it? The key to the puzzle in his journal?

Yael scribbled the letters as he rattled them off: S, T, E, F, A, N, O, E, D, U, A, R, D, O . . .

Yael gasped. “Oh, my God, David . . . it spells DiStefano Eduardo—Eduardo DiStefano. The prime minister of Italy!”

“Rabbi Cardoza!” David shouted across the library. The rabbi wheeled toward him, startled by the excitement in David's voice. He hurried over, his leathery face worried.

“Run an ELS skip of zakhor through my entire journal, Rabbi. I think we'll find the names of the Gnoseos. Yael and I just pulled out the first one encoded there. There have to be more.”

“What name, David?”

His voice shook. “Eduardo DiStefano, the prime minister of Italy.”

Cardoza's jaw dropped. He was stunned, but only for an instant. “Binyomin, quickly!” he called over his shoulder.

When David phoned the Center from the car, as he and Yael sped to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport, Rabbi Cardoza read him the list the computer was spitting out.

When David heard him say “Mueller, Crispin” he felt as if someone had just thrown an electric switch while his
finger was in the socket.
This was it. The Gnoseos. A list of their names, written as a subtext within his journal.

Not only had he been given the names of the Lamed Vovniks, but also the names of their enemies. Through the phone he heard Rabbi Cardoza read off another name. “Wanamaker . . . ”

A buzzing filled his ears.
Judd?
That's how the Dark Angels found us at the tarot reader's shop—Judd called them the minute we left the restaurant. . .

“David, did you hear me? I said I've just called Avi.” Rabbi Cardoza's voice intruded on the clamor in his brain. “He's put all the agencies on alert. Interpol says DiStefano arrived in London yesterday.”

“Get MI6 involved,” David told him. “My hunch is that they'll find all of the Gnoseos descending on London.”

 

David's cell rang again as he and Yael stood in Ben Gurion Airport waiting for a shuttle to ferry them across the tarmac to their plane.

“The little girl isn't sleeping well, I'm afraid. She keeps crying out for you to come save her.”

“You son-of-a-bitch.” Red rage swirled before David's eyes. He didn't care that several heads had turned toward him. “Where is she?”

“She's with me, of course. Not far from where we last set eyes on each other.”

“London.” David met Yael's eyes.

“You get an A, Professor.” Crispin's voice mocked him.

“And you get an F for effort. Your two Dark Angels are flat on a slab in the coroner's office.”

Crispin laughed. “You flatter me, my friend. You think I sent them? No, it's others who give the Dark Angels their orders. This matter is between you and—”

“Let me talk to her, Mueller. Prove she's still alive.”

“Don't you trust me?” the other man taunted, his glee so transparent David was overwhelmed with the desire to throttle him.

“I want to hear her voice.”

“And so you shall. After you follow one more instruction. Then you can hear the sweet tones of your precious Stacy. And if you manage to follow directions correctly, and return what is mine—who knows? I just might spare her.”

“Where do I find you?” David bit out.

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” Mueller chided. “There is another matter that interests me. I hear you've written a book.”

“Several.”

“You know the one I mean. I hope for your daughter's sake you have it with you. I'd like to read it.”

David's words stung like ice. “Where . . . do . . . I. . . find . . . you?”

“Get yourself to Trinity Square Memorial Gardens. Then give the little girl a ring.”

Click.

David's gut burned so fiercely he could barely breathe.

He waited until they'd been cleared to board before he quietly briefed Yael.

“I'm supposed to call him from Trinity Square Memorial Gardens. Ever been there?”

She looked back at him as they made their way toward the plane. “A long time ago. It's near the Tower of London. A memorial to Britain's merchant seamen and navy who served in both World Wars—the ones who have no grave but the sea.”

She waited until the flight attendant had squeezed past them to assist an elderly passenger before continuing.
“I walked through it on my very first trip to London. There's a sunken garden and . . .” She broke off.

“What, Yael? What else?”

“Crispin Mueller has a sense of irony. There's a wall, David. A wall full of names.”

THE ARK

Crispin's muscles were locked in fury as DiStefano ripped into him. His father stood near the door of the computer alcove, looking as if he wouldn't lift a finger if DiStefano were to charge at his only son with a machete.