The Magdalene Cipher (41 page)

Dunphy looked around. It was three in the morning, and pitch-black
.

“Where are we?” Dunphy asked
.

“Next to a trail,” Gomelez told him. “We can follow it out to the road, and perhaps find a ride. Otherwise, Il Fuorn is only a few miles from here. You could get a car there, and come back for me.”

And so they walked out, with Dunphy carrying Gomelez the last two hundred yards. When they finally reached the road, the sun was up behind the mountains, lightening the darkness without actually dispelling it. Dunphy stood beside the road with his briefcase in one hand and his thumb out in the other, soliciting rides from the handful of cars and trucks that passed at this hour. He was cold and tired and worried that one of the people who worked at the Villa would pass that way and recognize him—in which case there would be a lot of shooting. Finally, Clem told him to sit down with Gomelez, whose back was up against a tree. “Let me try,” she suggested, and cocking her hip, stuck out her thumb
.

A minute later, a truck slammed on its air-brakes and came to a halt about fifty yards away. The driver was visibly disappointed to learn that Clem was one of three, but one hundred francs from Dunphy took the edge off
.

“Benvenuto al bordo!”
the driver exclaimed, and putting the truck into gear, lurched off in the general direction of Italy. Dunphy's worry that Gomelez might not be able to cross the border proved unfounded. The fact that he was ninety-two years old, and that his passport had expired fifty-seven years earlier, was a source of concern to the lone border guard at Glorenza, but that concern quickly turned to amusement when Dunphy helped him to a hundred-franc note. Moments later, they were on their way to Bolzano
.

In Bolzano, they bought a couple of suitcases and some clothes, then took the first train they could get to Trieste. Seated in the first-class sleeping compartment that he shared with Gomelez and Clem, Dunphy wondered aloud what the Magdalene Society was “
really
after.”

Gomelez gazed out the window at what seemed like an endless field of sunflowers. “They've changed,” he said. “There was a time when its goals were . . .”

“Noble?” Clem suggested
.

Gomelez nodded. “I think so, yes. They opposed the Inquisition. They fought the Terror. But, something happened, and what had begun as a religious struggle became a struggle for power. Which isn't surprising. The assets of the Magdalene Society are enormous.”

“What I don't understand,” Clem said, “is how they hoped to establish a monarchy. I mean, a
monarchy
a!
They're a bit passé, aren't they?”

Gomelez chuckled ruefully and shook his head. “I'm not sure they are, really, or ever will be. It's a powerful attraction. Look at what happened when Diana died. Europe lurched. So I don't think it would have been so very difficult—far less difficult, in fact, than uniting Europe in the first place. On the few occasions when I spoke to them about it, they took the position that it was, or would be, just another electoral campaign. Advertisements would be launched, lobbyists retained, and testimonials secured. And, in the end, a referendum would be held in every country of the European Union. It's a Christian continent for the most part, and the monarchy was supposed to be symbolic—a ‘constitutional monarchy' that would serve as a rallying point for the EU.”

“And you think they'd have succeeded?” Clem asked
.

Gomelez shrugged. “Their assets are tremendous, and they'd have used them all—including those they used to make the prophecies come true.”

“But what's their agenda?” Dunphy asked. “What do they really want?”

Gomelez looked at him. “They imagine the millennium arriving when the prophecies are met. Most of them haven't given a thought to the day after—just as no one ever really asks what they'll do once they get to Heaven. They'll be there. And that will be enough. But in the absence of the Rapture, or some such event, I think the Magdalene Society would turn Europe into a theocratic state—a pilgrimized version of Khomeini land, if you see what I mean. I think the Society would then take it upon itself to expand its authority to include all of the Americas, and that it would then act to purge the Merovingian dominion of sinners. In fact, I've heard them discuss it. They call it the Cauterization. No one would be spared.”

The train reached Trieste an hour later. And it was there, in a seaside hotel, that Dunphy learned what Gomelez had meant when he told them they would not be in any country on earth
.

The
Stencil
was a forty-five-foot wooden ketch whose red sails were questionable and whose hull badly needed paint. It was Chilean-built in the late '70s, with cabins fore and aft, and boasted an elegant salon trimmed in mahogany and teak. While its deficits were many, its advantages were two: it was wood, and it was for sale. They bought her for £60,000, cash, with Clem grumping that fiberglass would have been more practical. But Gomelez wouldn't have that: he insisted on wood
.

They sailed the same night on a broad reach into the Gulf of Venice, then came about at the end of the Istrian Peninsula. Turning to the southeast, they headed for the Dalmatian coast, where there were hundreds of islands and thousands of inlets that would hide them
.

There was no doubt in Dunphy's mind that the Agency would find them. The border guard at Glorenza would be questioned, and word would get around about the old guy in Trieste, and the young couple who were with him, who'd paid all that cash for the
Stencil
.
And then they'd look for them, tasking the overhead spy satellites for saturation coverage of the Adriatic
.

Which meant that most of their sailing was done by night, with layovers in crowded marinas and sheltered bays. And in the course of this, something strange began to happen
.

Gomelez found happiness
.

For what may have been the first time in his life, the old man experienced joy, the pure joy that a dog feels running free. “The last time I felt this way,” he told Clem, “was in '36—and then they blew me up!”

With Clem as captain, they sailed a zigzag route past hundreds of islands with strange-sounding names: Krk, Pag, Vis, and Brac˘. In a fishing village on the island of Hvar, they painted the hull black, but Dunphy knew that wouldn't be enough. The ship's silhouette and rigging were distinctive, and so were its sails. It was just a matter of time before someone in the Washington Navy Yard found the boat in a satellite photograph. Dunphy could see it: a nerdy image analyst who'd been told the Agency was looking for a terrorist, sitting behind a Fresnel screen at a long table in a warehouse with blacked-out windows, staring at pictures. And then: a photo of the Split marina, its waters carpeted with sailboats, and there—in the lower right-hand corner—a ketch whose red mainsail, while reefed, runs like a capillary down the boat's centerline. Bingo! An intelligence medal for the analyst, black helicopters for Dunphy and his friends
.

But there was nothing to be done about it. They were as safe at sea as anywhere else, and probably safer. The only other thing they might do was split up, and Dunphy wasn't about to suggest that. Gomelez needed them, and Clem wouldn't have heard of it
.

By now, she loved him like a father. And it was hard not to feel that way about him. He had a sly sense of humor and, for a man whose life had been a prison, an astonishing repertoire of stories. Night after night, as the
Stencil
slid across the waves, Gomelez kept them spellbound with a narrative that tacked through his life as if every person and event had brought with them a change in the wind
.

They might have gone on this way for quite a while. Dunphy was even becoming a decent sailor. But soon, the old man's anemia began to bring him down. Clem repeatedly urged him to let them put in to shore, so that she could get him the B12 injections he so badly needed
.

Gomelez shook off the idea. “I'll admit, I was just beginning to get interested in London again—thanks to you, my dear. But that's a very subversive development. And it's not why we're here.”

Dunphy disputed this with the old man as he helped him down to his cabin. “You can't be the last of them,” he said. “A line like that—there must be dozens of people who can claim Merovingian descent. Even if it
is
far removed, they're still—”

Gomelez shook his head. “There's only one line that matters,” he said, taking off his shirt in preparation for bed. “And it's by this sign that you'll know it.” Slowly, he turned toward Dunphy, so that the younger man could see the mark upon his chest—a red splash about the size of a hand, in the shape of a Maltese cross. “My birthmark,” Gomelez explained. “All of us have had it, going back . . . forever. So you see, it's not just a question of paperwork. And that brings me to something else, Jack. When I go, there's something I want you to do for me. Something I
need
a you to do.”

In the days that followed, Gomelez became progressively weaker, and as he did, the weather turned. A damp and unseasonable cold settled upon the coast. The sky grew overcast. And it began to rain
.

Dunphy welcomed the change. Cloudy skies would neutralize overhead surveillance and give them a chance to slip farther down the coast. Despite the forecasts, then, it was agreed that they should head out to sea as soon as night fell. And so they did, running parallel to the mountainous coast on a broad reach
.

The
Stencil
was moving faster than it ever had, heeling well to port, with the wind filling its sails from the west. Dunphy was at the tiller, holding a course for Dubrovnik, while Gomelez remained below, sleeping. Clem moved about the deck, with the confidence of one who'd grown up on boats, adjusting the rigging
.

The seas were high, but not so high as to seem dangerous. A bigger worry was the lack of visibility brought on by the darkness and the rain. While there were no rocks or spindles in their path, they knew they weren't the only ship at sea, and a collision could be disastrous
.

So they kept a close watch on the shifting darkness, screwing up their eyes to slits, blinking furiously against the rain. There was lightning, now, and more lightning, conjuring images that burned on the backs of their eyes, long after the light had gone. Again and again, the tumbling coast of Dalmatia flashed in front of them until, quite suddenly, Clem's voice rang out and Dunphy saw her pointing dead ahead
.

He squeezed up his eyes against the rain, but there was nothing to be seen—until a thread of lightning tore a hole in the sky and left it sizzling. It was then, with the ozone all around him, that he saw it—a pitch-black squall coming at them like a bowling ball the size of Manhattan. There was nothing to do but keep the bow of the boat heading into the wind, and Dunphy did this as well as he could. But the squall was pregnant with a wave that had no business in the Adriatic. Seeing it approach, growing taller and darker against the night, watching it assume a mortal inevitability, Dunphy shouted to Clem to tie herself off—but it was too late. The sea lifted them in its arms, dragging them out of the trough of the wave, pulling them higher and higher until, it seemed, they were higher than any wave could possibly be. And for a long moment, they balanced there, with the
Stencil
a's bowsprit pointing toward heaven like a lance. Then the wave rolled out from beneath them, and the little boat fell back into the sea and pitchpoled
.

It seemed as if everything had happened in a single second. One moment, Dunphy had been straining to see what lay ahead, then he was soaring toward heaven—then he was cast back down to drown. The water was so cold it ripped the air out of his lungs, and then he was under it, drowning in the darkness, his legs hopelessly tangled in the rigging. He swung his arms this way and that, as much to find Clem as to free himself, but there was no up, no down—and no way out. He was drowning. He was dying
.

And then, as suddenly as it had pitchpoled, the
Stencil
righted itself, so that its hull was once again in the water. In an instant, Gomelez came staggering out of the cabin, coughing, growling, the blazon on his chest bared to the wind. Rushing to Dunphy's side, he dragged the younger man on board and helped to free him from the ruined rigging
.

“Where's Clementine?” Gomelez shouted
.

Dunphy scrambled to his feet and looked wildly around. The air and the sea were at war with each other, and the boat's mast was in splinters, the mainsail hanging overboard. Dunphy took this in at a glance as he rushed from one side of the boat to the other, searching the water desperately for his Clementine. But there was nothing, and no one. Just the night and the angry air, and the limitless Adriatic. She was gone
.

And then he saw her, maybe twenty yards away, facedown in the water, rising and falling on the swells. He didn't think about it. He didn't even kick off his shoes. He just threw himself into the water and began windmilling through the waves as if they were enemy soldiers who stood between him and the woman he loved
.

The boat was in irons now, heading up into the wind, halyards clattering against the deck, slashing the air, but the boat was going nowhere. Even so, the seas were so bad it took Dunphy almost five minutes to get to her and bring her back
.