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  Praise for Comes a Horseman

  “Read this book with the lights on! Gory and ghastly, yet with a gripping plot, these pages will literally tremble in the hands of readers! Comes a Horseman is a chilling ride into a horrifying possibility!”

  —www.inthelibraryreview.com

  “. . . Comes A Well-Crafted Page Turner Mindful Of The Da Vinci Code.”

  —Tampa Bay Tribune

  “Frightening and fiendishly smart, Comes a Horseman is a must-read! Robert Liparulo’s intense thrill ride will keep your nerves frayed and your lights on.”

  —David Morrell, author of Creepers and

  The Brotherhood of the Rose

  “Not for the faint of heart, this is quality writing that deserves a lofty niche within the action/suspense genre. It is well-researched and meticulously detailed, and the characters are fascinating and ‘real,’ the dialogue clever and altogether human, the plot compelling. What I’m trying to say is, I love it!”

  —Frank Peretti, author of Monster and

  This Present Darkness

  “Take The DaVinci Code, throw in a dash of Left Behind, pair it with the intrigue of a Tom Clancy thriller, and you’ve got this chilling debut thriller from journalist Robert Liparulo.”

  —Christianity Today

  “Liparulo has crafted a diabolical thrill ride of a novel that makes the roller coaster at Magic Mountain seem like a speed bump. Part serial killer procedural, part global techno-thriller, part spiritual suspense epic, Comes a Horseman has enough plot twists and action to decode Da Vinci! Highly recommended!”

  — Jay Bonansinga, author of Frozen,

  The Killer’s Game, and The Sinking of the Eastland

  “A riveting thriller that spins effortlessly off great writing and a demonic villain real enough to have you looking over your own shoulder.”

  —David H. Dun, author of

  The Black Silent

  “Comes a Horseman is an ambitious and original debut thriller by a fine new writer. Robert Liparulo deserves an audience, because he has something meaningful to say.”

  —C. J. Box, Anthony Award-winning author of Out of Range

  “Robert Liparulo is one of the best writers to hit the block in a long time. Comes a Horseman is brilliantly conceived and executed. It will leave readers desperately wanting more.”

  — Ted Dekker, author of the number one

  best-seller Obsessed

  “Prophecy and murder run roughshod through Comes a Horseman. From the mountain peaks of Colorado down to a labyrinth beneath Jerusalem, mystery and adventure abound in a read that will keep you up to the wee hours of the morning. Not to be missed!”

  —James Rollins, New York Times best-selling author of Sandstorm

  and Map of Bones

  “Robert Liparulo starts off with a bang and then lulls us momentarily with well-modeled and sympathetic characters before he drops those same totally likeable characters into a series of harrowing confrontations. Some of the fights involving razor-edged weapons manage to be excruciatingly wince-inducing while remaining truly entertaining. This is what is meant by guilty fun.”

  —Larry Hama, writer, Marvel Comics’

  G.I. Joe and Wolverine

  “High-octane action and devilish conspiracies worthy of The Da Vinci Code or Left Behind. What’s not to like?”

  —Joseph R. Garber, author of Vertical Run

  and Whirlwind

  “Robert Liparulo writes the kind of thriller other authors write in their dreams, and readers devour until the wee hours of the morning! Make way for a new master of the genre and a can’t-put-down knockout with Comes a Horseman.”

  —Mark Andrew Olsen, author of

  The Assignment and co author of

  Hadassah

  “Comes a Horseman is stunningly brilliant. It’s a story of epic conflict, despair, courage, and the power of faith and strength and endurance . . . Liparulo has clearly proven himself to be one of the best writers of our generation. I will anxiously await his next work.”

  —James Byron Huggins, best-selling author of Wolf Story, The

  Reckoning, and Nightbringer

  “This book is a true page-turner, with wonderfully developed characters who have all-too-human strengths and weaknesses. This story is frighteningly real and insidious in a way that makes me hope our two FBI agents really are on the job. Robert Liparulo’s writing is refreshingly good, especially for a first-time novelist. I hope there’s a sequel!”

  —Terri Lubaroff, Senior Vice President,

  Humble Journey Films

  “Come a Horseman is chalk-full of unbelievable excitement and credible research. My nails got shorter with each page—I could not put it down. This incredibly real-to-life thriller envelops the epic battle of good versus evil with a new depth. It is the thriller of thrillers! I can’t wait for the next book.”

  —Dwight Cenac, President, Welcome

  Home Care and HCMC Properties

  “Liparulo’s book takes the reader across the globe in a riveting story of murder and Church intrigue. A quick, compelling read.”

  —W. H. Watford, Edgar-nominated

  author of Mortal Strain and Lethal Risk

  “Robert Liparulo has burst onto the thriller scene with a ferociously original page-turner. Comes a Horseman takes religious conspiracy to the next, frightening level. Cutting-edge forensics, horrifying villains, and a slam-bang race to the finish all come together to make one of the most exciting and satisfying reads of the year”

  —J. A. Konrath, author of Bloody Mary

  “Fasten your seat belt; Comes a Horseman is a wild ride! With great skill and prophetic clarity, Robert Liparulo knows how to tell an exciting story and boost a reader’s adrenaline level. You won’t want to put this one down!”

  —Angela Hunt, author of

  The Novelist and Unspoken

  “Comes a Horseman has a powerful sense of doom from the first pages on. Though the story is global, some of its best writing is surprisingly intimate: a boy and his father besieged in their house, two good people, a man in the middle, and one very bad man in a dark room on an empty floor in a hotel. There’s some fresh role-reversal in the two leads. The sense of doom yields to a downhill, no brakes, runaway pace, an inevitable clash of complicated Good and uncomplicated Evil. Liparulo knows more than you and I do about some dark corners of history.”

  —Dan Vining, author of The Quick

  “Horseman is easily one of this year’s best novels.”

  —New Man magazine

  “Comes a Horseman grabs you from page one. The story has everything a fiction fan could want: an ancient conspiracy, a thrilling mystery, an everyman hero and a sinister villain—all crafted without a hint of cliché. Be warned: Your heart will race, your head will spin, and your palms will sweat as you read this gruesome tale.”

  —Robert Andrescik, editor of

  New Man magazine

  “As a long-time Stephen King fan, I’ve finally found another author who can measure up—Robert Liparulo. Comes a Horseman is a taut blend of suspense with a splash of horror and edge-of-your-seat writing that keep me riveted.”

  —Colleen Coble, author of Distant Echoes

  and Black Sands

  “This book has everything—murder, suspense, history, intrigue . . . Comes a Horseman grabs you and won’t let go. It may be the most ambitious, most abundant first novel I’ve ever read. We’ll be hearing from Robert Liparulo for a long time to come.”

  —Steve Hamilton, Edgar Award-winning

  author of Ice Run

  “If you like thrillers that are spine chilling and just won’t let go of the reader, this book is for you. It is loaded with suspense and moves at a very fast pace. As you sit down to r
ead this book, make sure your doors are locked.”

  —Nancy Eaton, mysteriesgalore.com

  “Dan Brown fans take note: you’ll like this one.”

  —www.book-blog.com

  “This is a book that you’ll lose sleep over—during and after the reading.”

  —Joe Hartlaub, BookReporter.com

  “Comes a Horseman is a phenomenal, almost flawless debut by an experienced author poised to becomes the Christian answer to Dan Brown.”

  —Mary Lynn Mercer, Why Books Work

  Copyright © 2005 by Robert Liparulo

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, TN, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Liparulo, Robert.

  Comes a horseman / by Robert Liparulo.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-10: 0-7852-6176-1 (hard cover)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7852-6176-6 (hard cover)

  ISBN-10: 1-5955-4179-9 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5955-4179-6 (trade paper)

  ISBN-10: 1-59554-229-9 (mmpb)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-59554-229-8 (mmpb)

  1. Government investigators—Fiction. 2. Americans—Jerusalem—Fiction.

  3. Serial murders—Fiction. 4. Jerusalem—Fiction.

  5. Colorado—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3612.I63C66 2005

  813' .6—dc22

  2004026692

  Printed in the United States of America

  07 08 09 10 11 QWB 7 6 5 4 3

  CONTENTS

  PART I: COLORADO

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  PART II: VIRGINIA AND NEW YORK

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  PART III: ITALY AND ISRAEL

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For the ladies who have always made my life

  sweeter:

  My wife, Jodi;

  My daughter, Melanie;

  My mother, Mae Gannon;

  And my sister Lynda, who went Home way

  too early.

  PART I

  COLORADO

  To die will be an awfully big adventure.

  —J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

  Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist!

  —Percy Bysshe Shelley

  1

  Five years ago

  Asia House, Tel Aviv, Israel

  He waited with his face pressed against the warm metal and his pistol gouging the skin at his lower back. He thought about pulling the weapon from his waistband, setting it beside him or even holding it in his hand, but when the time came, he’d have to move fast, and he didn’t want it getting in his way. He’d been there a long time, since well before the first party guests started arriving. Now it sounded as though quite a crowd had gathered on the third floor of the big building. Their voices drifted to him through the ventilation shaft, reverberating off its metal walls, reaching his ears as a jumble of undulating tones, punctuated at times by shrill laughter. He would close his eyes for long periods and try to discern the conversations, but whether by distortion or foreign tongue, even single words eluded him.

  Luco Scaramuzzi lifted his cheek out of a pool of perspiration and peered for the hundredth time through the two-foot-square grille below him. He could still see the small spot on the marble floor where a bead of sweat had dropped from the tip of his nose before he could stop it. If that spot were the center point of a clock face, the toilet was at noon, the sink and vanity at two o’clock, and the door—just beyond Luco’s view—at three. Despite the large room’s intended function as a lavatory for one, modesty or tact had prompted the mounting of walnut partitions on the two unwalled sides of the toilet. It was these partitions that would allow him to descend from the air shaft without being seen by a person standing at the sink—by his target.

  A gust of pungent wind blew past him, turning his stomach and forcing him to gasp for air through the grille. The building was home to several embassies, an art gallery, and a restaurant—enough people, food, and trash to generate some really awful effluvia. When the cooling system was idle, the temperature in the ventilation shafts quickly soared into summer-sun temperatures, despite the nighttime hour, and all sorts of odors roamed the ducts like rabid dogs. Then the air conditioner would kick in, chasing away the smells and freezing the perspiration to his body.

  Arjan had warned him about such things. He had explained that covert operations necessitated subjecting the body and senses to elements sane men avoided: extreme heat and cold; long stretches of immobility in the most uncomfortable places and positions; contact with insects, rodents, decay. He had advised him to focus on a single object and think pleasant thoughts until equilibrium returned.

  Luco shifted his eyes to a perfume bottle on the vanity. He imagined its fragrance, then thought of himself breathing it in as his fingers lifted hair away from the curve of an olive-skinned neck and felt the pulse with his lips.

  He heard the bathroom door open and pulled his face back into the darkness. He held his breath, then exhaled when he heard the click of a woman’s heels. Her shoes came into view, then her legs and body. Of course she was elegantly dressed. Not only did the nature of the gathering demand it, but this room was reserved for special guests—the target, his family, and his entourage: people who were expected to look their best. The woman stopped in front of the vanity mirror, glanced at herself, and continued into the stall. Turning, she yanked up her dress. Hooked by two thumbs, her hosiery came down as she sat.

  The top of the partition’s door obstructed Luco’s view of her lap, and during the bathroom visits of two other lovely ladies, he had found that no amount of craning would
change that fact. So he lay still and watched her face. She was model-beautiful, with big green eyes, sculpted cheekbones, and lips too full to be natural. She finished, flushed, and walked to the sink, where she was completely out of view. This reassured him that the plan had been well thought through. She fiddled at the sink for a minute after washing her hands—applying makeup, he guessed—and left.

  He waited for the click of a latch as the door settled into its jamb. It didn’t come . . . Someone was holding the door open. Masculine shoes and pant legs stepped silently into view. Luco’s breath stopped.

  Watch for a bodyguard, Arjan had told him. He’ll come in for a look. He may flush the toilet and run the water in the sink, but he won’t use anything himself. The next man in is your guy.

  He would recognize his target, of course, but getting these few seconds of warning allowed his mind to shift from vigilance to readiness.

  He could see the bodyguard in the bathroom now, a square-jawed brute packed into an Armani. The guard stepped up to the vanity to examine each of the bottles and brushes in turn. He dropped to one knee, with more grace than seemed possible, and examined under the countertop and sink. The bathroom had been thoroughly checked once already, earlier in the day, but nobody liked surprises. Luco smiled at the thought.

  Standing again, the guard glanced around, his eyes sweeping toward the grille. Luco pulled back farther, fighting the urge to move fast, which might cause the metal he was on to pop, or the gypsum boards that formed the bathroom’s ceiling to creak. He imagined the guard’s eyes taking in the screws that seemed to hold the grille firmly in place. In reality, they were screw heads only, glued in place after Luco had removed the actual screws. Now, a solitary wire held up the grille on the unhinged side.

  The guard inspected the toilet, the padded bench opposite the sink, and the thin closet by the door, bare but for a few hand towels and extra tissue rolls. Every move he made was quick and efficient. He had done this countless times before—probably even did it in his dreams—and never expected to find anything that would validate his existence. He didn’t this time either. After all, his boss was the benign prime minister of a democratic country with few enemies. A grudge would almost have to be personal, not political.

  Or preordained, thought Luco. Preordained.

  The guard spoke softly to someone in the hall.

  The door closed, latching firmly. Someone set the lock. The target walked into view. He drained a crystal glass of amber fluid, almost missed the top of the vanity as he set down the glass, and belched loudly. He fumbled with his pants, and Luco saw that his belly had grown too round to let him see his own zipper, which could present a problem with the superfluous hooks and buttons common to finely tailored slacks. The target left the stall door open. He stood before the toilet with his pants and boxers crumpled around his ankles, his hips thrust forward for better aim, the way a child pees.