The Vengeance of the Tau, page 24
“Yes,” the Old One said, showing a glimpse of a smile. “Yes.”
Across the room, Heydan Larroux moaned and stirred.
“My lady,” from the Old One.
Johnny lifted the corpse off the woman he sought. She was still groggy, but had recovered her senses in time to hear the Indian-looking figure call himself “Wareagle,” and recalled the Old One’s vision of a bird of prey painted with the colors of battle.
An eagle.
“Jesus Christ,” she muttered, accepting the giant’s help in getting to her feet.
Johnny then crouched alongside the figure he had killed with the cat-o’-nine-tails. After removing the goggles the Israelis had given him, he pulled the corpse’s strange-looking headpiece off and regarded the face curiously. He knew the face of a killer when he saw one; death could not take that look away.
Wareagle’s eyes scanned the man’s upper body where the cat had shredded his body armor and shirt. There was a mark on his left shoulder, partially covered by blood that Johnny wiped away.
The mark was a tattoo, a swirly line stretched across the top of a slanted one.
It was the Greek letter tau.
“His boot,” the old woman said from the corner, pointing. Wareagle realized that she was blind. “What you seek can be found in his right boot, warrior.”
Johnny crouched down next to it and ran his hand along the boot. He squeezed the thick heel and felt it move a little. A harder pull snapped it off and revealed a secret compartment containing a state-of-the-art pager complete with miniature LED screen. Johnny switched it on. The screen remained blank.
“Nothing,” he told the old woman.
“Its secrets remain within.”
“Told and gone.”
“No, warrior. Not for one who knows the box’s ways.”
Johnny almost handed it out toward her. “You?”
He watched the old blind woman smile. “No. Another we will meet soon.”
“Where?”
“Where we are going, warrior.”
“There could be more of them,” Johnny Wareagle told her, as he slid the sleek pager into his pocket. “We’d better be fast.”
The old woman turned Heydan Larroux’s way. “Tell him of the boat, child.”
Heydan couldn’t take her eyes off the giant Indian. “There’s a raised platform built onto the underside of this house. A boat is stored upon it. Not much, just a small outboard …”
“It will do,” said Johnny.
“You will make it do, warrior,” the blind woman said quite assuredly.
Heydan instructed Wareagle to pull up the throw carpet from the center of the floor. When he did so, a small hatchway was revealed. He yanked it open, and the black water of the bayou glistened beneath him. He could see the rigging holding the boat to the platform. A hand crank resting just to his right would lower it onto the water ten feet below.
It took a full minute of turning before the outboard’s bottom kissed the surface. The boat wobbled under Wareagle’s bulk when he dropped down into it. Steadying himself as best he could, he stood up and raised his hands toward the hatchway.
“Let me help you,” he said to Heydan.
She slid her feet over the edge and felt a pair of powerful hands lock on to her ankles and accept her weight. Then she watched as the warrior named Wareagle lowered the Old One into the swaying boat as well.
“The engine,” Heydan said, shifting toward it.
Wareagle had a guide pole already in hand. “We won’t be using it.”
“We’re miles from anywhere,” she protested. “Without the engine, it’ll take us hours, even—” She stopped when a feeling of incredible stupidity swept over her. “I’m sorry. If we use the engine, of course, they’ll know where we are.”
“They already know where we are,” Wareagle told her. “I want to hear them if they come.”
Johnny pushed off with the guide pole and eased the boat out from beneath the house and whatever security it provided. A sea of still, black glass, blistered by the overgrowth from the shore and draped by the overhanging foliage, welcomed them. Johnny’s motions were smooth, and the boat rode the currents easily, his rhythm broken only when his guide pole lodged in the soft bottom.
Heydan was transfixed by the subtle power of his motions. She tried to speak several times but didn’t until the big Indian’s eyes at last met hers.
“You came down here for me.”
“Because I knew they would be returning.” Wareagle paused. “Because they must be stopped.”
“Who are they?”
“I do not know.”
“Yes, you do, warrior,” the Old One said suddenly. “Back in the house you saw something that told you.”
“On the arm of one of the killers,” Johnny acknowledged. “A letter.”
“What letter?”
“Tau, from the Greek alphabet.”
The Old One squeezed her face up tight in consternation. “These men represent a cause, the true scope of which is not yet clear to me. But there are many, many more of them. And what they seek stretches far beyond these dark waters. That much, warrior, is clear.”
Wareagle stiffened his grip on the guide pole. “And what of our route to them?”
“Where we head now is the right direction, warrior. Partly over land. Known by few. My home long ago.” She turned her dead eyes on Johnny. “The first stop in a journey that will reveal to you the answers you seek.”
Part Five
The Tau
Nineteen: Saturday, eleven A.M.
Chapter 28
MELISSA FOUGHT FOR SLEEP during the long journey through Friday night and into Saturday morning. It came in fits and starts, brief moments of repose inevitably broken by the need to switch to another mode of transportation. Both speed and security were taken into consideration by the woman who had gone from savior to escort.
The woman had said virtually nothing through the trip’s duration. Her few words were mechanical, instructions given and warnings handed down without benefit of explanation. That would come later, she assured, once they reached Israel and this place called Nineteen.
The last leg of the journey was made in the back of a truck that had picked them up at a small military airfield in Israel. Melissa had not thought that civilian air traffic was permitted to use such fields under any circumstances, which made her wonder exactly who it was she was being taken to see.
Rich in archaeological treasures, Israel was a country Melissa knew well. Not only had she accompanied her father on a number of digs here over the years, but part of her own schooling had been an internship with some of the team that had unearthed Jerusalem’s Christian relics.
Their truck’s rear flap had been tied down, yet her escort did not seem to mind Melissa peering out through what chinks she could fashion for herself. A half hour into the ride she knew exactly where they were:
The Golan Heights.
She could see numerous guard stations and missile batteries dotting the landscape as they made their way through. There was no sign announcing their arrival at the place called Nineteen. The truck simply rumbled through a guarded gate and into what Melissa recognized as a kibbutz. The truck came to a halt, and the back flap was thrown open. Her escort helped Melissa climb down.
The scene around her in the bright sunlight was much as she would have expected it to be in the late morning. People went about their chores, limited on this day, the Jewish Sabbath. Most others she saw were out strolling or lounging. Children ran and played in a nearby field. The scene spelled normalcy, except for one thing:
Melissa could not find a single man in the kibbutz’s population.
“She wants to see her immediately,” an armed, uniformed woman said to Melissa’s escort tersely. “I will take her.”
The armed woman grasped Melissa’s arm.
“Thank you,” Melissa called to the big woman who had saved her life back at the nursing home when they started off.
The woman didn’t so much as turn to acknowledge her, and her armed replacement led Melissa through the large expanse of the kibbutz in silence. Structurally it was comparable to any of the many others she had visited over the years. But she continued to be dumbstruck by the total lack of males other than among the children.
A clearing appeared, in which a small cabin stood by itself in the shade. Before it, beneath a vast leafed tree, an old woman in a wheelchair sat behind a wrought-iron table. She turned slightly as Melissa approached, but did not acknowledge her. Not far into the clearing, her armed escort stopped.
“Go on,” she instructed, after Melissa had also come to a halt.
Melissa moved toward the old woman slowly. The pounding of her heart had slowed, anxiety giving way to exasperation. She had been hoping, expecting, an audience with someone who could explain everything she did not understand about Ephesus, about her father’s death. Could it be this woman? Had she been the one responsible for having her life saved?
Melissa stopped just to the side of the wheelchair.
“Sit down,” the old woman instructed. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t stand up to greet you.”
Melissa sat in the chair opposite her and pulled it farther under the table. She noticed that a second chair rested against the table between hers and the old woman’s.
“Are we expecting someone else?” Melissa wondered.
“Yes, we are. Any minute now, I trust.” She leaned forward. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
“Yes. Thirsty.”
“I have orange juice inside. Squeezed from our own oranges here.”
“Thank you.”
The old woman waved a hand back toward the small house. The wind blew, and patches of her scalp appeared when her hair parted. It settled so that the patches remained bare. Her skin was creased and wrinkled. Her legs were little more than withered sticks beneath her dress. Her hands trembled slightly on the sides of her wheelchair.
“Do you approve?” she asked. “Of this place, I mean.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do. You have a scholar’s eyes. You couldn’t possibly have missed the fact that our community is composed solely of women and children. War veterans or war widows. Women who are beaten and frustrated and want to withdraw. We let them withdraw here, where their lives can still be worth something, where they are never forced to prove anything to anyone, where they can rebuild themselves. Some leave after a time.” She looked down at her trembling, liver-spotted hands. “Some never leave.”
A young woman came with a tray containing a pitcher full of pulp-rich fresh-squeezed orange juice, a pair of tall glasses, and napkins. She left without saying a single word. Melissa poured herself a glass and then poured one for the old woman, which she placed within easy reach of her.
“You saved my life,” Melissa said after gulping some of the delicious juice.
The old woman nodded. “Yes, from Brandt. Wily devil he was. Doesn’t surprise me at all. We’ve been watching him for some time. We’ve been watching all those who bear any connection to the White Death.”
The now-empty glass nearly dropped from Melissa’s hand at the old woman’s mention of the deadly contents of the crates from Ephesus.
“You discovered it was missing,” she continued. “You discovered what I have feared would come to pass for forty-five years now, since we tried to bury it from the world forever.”
Melissa felt a chill slide up her spine, thinking back to the mummified remains of the three Jews inside the cavern. “My God, the first time the White Death was removed, you were part of it!”
The old woman did not bother to deny it. “So many years ago,” she said softly. “So much has changed since, and yet so little.” Her eyes sharpened, and she continued before Melissa could start up again. “I founded this place, you know. I founded it because I needed it for myself. I could never have children of my own.” A veil of sadness swept over her face. “The Nazis at Auschwitz took care of that. Auschwitz was where it all began for me. For others it started in different places, but the pain was always the same.”
“Who?” Melissa asked in exasperation. “What?”
“This is a tale I do not wish to tell twice. We must wait.”
“Wait for—”
“The wait is over,” the old woman said, casting her gaze beyond Melissa’s shoulder. “He is here.”
Melissa turned around, and the sight sent a joyous shock wave pounding against her. She couldn’t believe her eyes no matter how much she wanted to.
Blaine McCracken had stepped into the clearing.
As Blaine’s eyes met Melissa’s, he froze in his tracks. The next instant she was out of the chair, running his way. She leapt into his arms and hugged him with all her strength.
“The hotel, all the killings,” she muttered.
“I know,” he tried to soothe.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” She eased herself to arm’s length, still holding tight to him. “God, that sounds ridiculous.”
“Not to me.”
She dropped her arms away now. “The journal! I’ve got to tell you what I found in that journal!”
“The White Death …”
“You know,” she said, dumbfounded. “How could you know?”
“Same destination. Different route.”
And the last of that route had been traveled with the woman who had rescued him outside the old toymaker’s house. They had journeyed through the night—two planes, several cars, and even a bus—to reach here. The second plane had landed on a military airfield in Israel, and twenty minutes into the drive that followed he recognized the Golan Heights. The woman had told him the name of the kibbutz and nothing more when they approached it. Whatever else Blaine needed to know about Nineteen, he had learned from the flower-encased M-60 tank placed two hundred yards inside the gates. The symbolism was striking: where war had once reigned, a new life and world had bloomed over it.
“Come here, both of you,” the old woman called in as loud a voice as she could manage. “Since you are both present, the tale can be told.”
“She had me brought here,” Melissa explained.
“Me, too, it would seem. Saved my life, maybe.”
“No maybe in my case.”
They turned toward the old woman and, almost in unison, said, “Why?”
“Sit,” she told them after they had made their way back to the table. Then, as Blaine took the chair between her and Melissa, “You know what this place is?”
“That tank near the front makes things pretty clear in my mind.”
“It was one of the tanks used in the battle to take the Golan Heights. We had it restored, and then the children designed the monument it now has become. It was they who insisted that we leave it fully armed and functional. Every week when Friday brings the Sabbath, a different one of them starts it up at sundown. To make sure we remember …”
“And what do you remember about World War II, about a certain secret chamber in Ephesus, Turkey?”
The old woman looked at Blaine closely. “Plenty. And you need to hear it all. Everything.”
Melissa had retaken her seat. McCracken pulled his further away from the table so he could squeeze his legs beneath it.
“We have little time,” the old woman started. “Perhaps none at all.”
“Because of the White Death,” McCracken followed.
“Yes.”
“She was involved with the first shipment of crates that was removed from the chamber,” Melissa elaborated, eyeing the old woman.
“And now the time has come to finish something that should have been done with forty-five years ago. That task falls upon you.”
“Us,” McCracken echoed.
“I brought you here to aid you in this quest. To help you save the world from them.”
“From who?”
“The Tau.”
“We will begin the day they were born,” the old woman continued after introducing herself as Tovah. “A late winter day in 1942 at a Catholic boys’ school in France, a school where three Jewish boys were being sheltered from the Nazis.”
“Tessen,” Blaine muttered, speaking while his eyes shifted between Tovah and Melissa. “A Nazi who may have saved my life in the hotel. He was at the school that day, a member of the firing squad.”
The old woman flinched and shuddered. “Then you know what happened.”
“Three boys were shot, and then the priest.”
“The three Jewish boys.”
“Yes.”
“Edelstein, Sherman, and Grouche,” the old woman added as if she were calling the roll.
“How could you know?”
“Because my brother was one of them, except he didn’t die.”
“What?” Melissa raised.
“Another boy took his place. A friend he had made who had helped shelter him from the very beginning.” Tovah’s voice trailed off. “A friend who was dying of cancer. It was a pact they had made long before. The friend asked only that my brother take care of his family, make sure they were watched over when the cursed war was over. And my brother did as he was asked. To this day he continues to do just that.”
“Your brother’s still alive?”
Tovah nodded almost imperceptibly. “We found each other again after the war. I had survived Auschwitz. After the school was closed down, he became a youthful member of the French Resistance. The experience served him well in later years with the Haganah and the Irgun.”
“The founding of Israel …”
“He was one of its best soldiers. No one served this country better.” The old woman’s eyes filled with tears. Her lips trembled. “And he will serve it again, once he recovers.”
“Recovers?” asked Melissa.
“They tried to assassinate him three days ago. My brother is Arnold Rothstein.”
Chapter 29
“HE HELPED BUILD this place,” the old woman continued, as Blaine and Melissa exchanged shocked glances. “And he has helped maintain it, providing us with a brand-new irrigation system for our fields six months ago.”
“And what about fifty-one years ago?”
