Comes a Horseman Read online

  “Now!” Randall proclaimed. “Gregory the Great’s Moralia . . .”

  Luco put a hand on his arm. “One sec, Father.” To the other twelve, he said, “Your own scholars have already reviewed this prophecy.”

  “John Stapleton knows about this?” asked Niklas Hüber, skeptical.

  “Oh, yes,” answered Father Randall. “I have . . .” He stuck his hand into the box, and this time it immediately returned, clutching several single sheets. “I have his statement right here, concurring with my conclusions. And one from Dr. Noyce. And Professor Inglehook.” He dropped each letter on the table as he announced its writer.

  “We should like copies, if you please.” This from Tirunih Wodajo, a tall Ethiopian seated beside Hüber.

  Randall patted the side of the box. “I have bound copies of my report, supporting documents, and these concurrences.”

  Several Watchers nodded appreciatively.

  See, not so odd at all. Luco felt like hugging the old man. He always came through.

  “Now!” Randall proclaimed once more. And starting with an incidental notation made in the margin of a manuscript by Gregory the Great in the year AD 598, he began a detailed accounting of the steps through ancient writings that ultimately brought him to this latest discovery. Pantomiming the retrieving, opening, and scrutiny of great codices, the unrolling of precious scrolls, the sneaking of glimpses at forbidden manuscripts, he described this arduous journey—with side comments about bibliotics and methods of exegesis.

  Listening to Randall’s impassioned recitation was excruciating. Randall always did it this way, as though a conclusion could not be appreciated without first comprehending the processes that derived it.

  At last he fell silent. His eyes darted from one floating face to another, expecting a word of praise or a question or at least a startled expression. When nothing responsive materialized, Koji Arakawa spoke up.

  “I’m sorry, Father Randall,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ve spoken over our heads. Could you tell us again, in layman’s terms, what the prophecy is?”

  Randall lowered his head and closed his eyes. Finally, he leaned back, drew in a deep breath, and said, “As a young boy, the Son of Perdition will murder, rather I should say, will have murdered ”—he looked at Luco; a great touch, Luco thought—“his mother.”

  That got the response he’d been looking for. Gasps and questions and calls for order. Many of the stares coming across the table fell not on Randall but on Luco. They all knew his history. A dark incident from his boyhood, long buried until the thorough background investigation they had initiated disinterred it, had now become . . . something else, something extraordinary.

  Luco could not help but smile. He had them.

  15

  With a sharp sound still ringing in her ears, Alicia Wagner woke. Her eyes snapped open, and her face came off the mattress. She was lying on her stomach in the bed she had crawled into at six that morning. The digital clock on the bedside table told her it was 10:27. Four and a half hours of sleep, if you could call the restlessness she had just experienced sleep. A sheet, moist with perspiration, entwined her torso like a boa constrictor. Her skin was clammy. The pillows and heavy hotel covers had fled the arena of her nightmares sometime during the morning. She turned her stiff neck toward the window. Light was stealing through the edges of closed curtains.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  She nearly flipped off the bed. Someone was knocking at the door. Probably had been knocking for some time.

  “What?” she tried to say, but her throat was too parched to make more than a raspy noise. She grabbed a quarter-filled glass of water off the table, swallowed painfully, and called out: “What is it!”

  Loud mumbling answered her.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She rolled off the bed, got a foot tangled in the clothes strewn on the floor, and stumbled for the door.

  The peephole framed the distorted face of Brady Moore. He had not landed by the time she had finished at the crime scene, loaded up her equipment, and headed for a hotel, so she had left a message on his cell phone, letting him know her hotel and room number. He was looking down the corridor one way, then the other. He squinted at the peephole, wiggled his tie, checked his watch.

  “Hold on a sec,” she said.

  The woman staring out at her from the bathroom mirror was not her, no way. That woman had Alicia’s blond hair, but Alicia wore it shoulder-length, styled back away from her face. This other’s hair was sticking out in spiky clumps, with one side perfectly flat and rising above her head a good four inches, the other side attacking her face with fingerlike protrusions. Her eyes were big and green, like Alicia’s—and not too bloodshot, she noticed. The bluish coloration under them, however, was a fashion Alicia never fancied. Too Goth.

  “Ohhh,” she moaned and began running her fingers through her hair. She had never been very concerned with appearances, but this was ridiculous. After fifteen frustrating seconds, she realized a brush was right before her on the counter. She reached for it, then stopped. “Oh, forget it.” She supposed putting on something other than the panties she’d slept in was the minimum required of her. She yanked the fluffy white hotel robe off the back of the bathroom door, cinched the belt tight around her waist, and pulled open the door.

  He looked perfect. Even needing a shave and with a trace of red in his eyes, he could have played an FBI agent in the movies. She instantly regretted not taking more time to spruce up.

  He gave her a halfhearted smile. She’d learned that was about the best he was capable of. Except around his son. The boy was the only thing she’d seen in the year they’d worked together that got Brady’s happy meter above “okay.”

  “Good morning, sunshine,” he said flatly. He made no attempt to enter the room.

  “What took you so long?” She pulled the robe tighter, making her muscles taut as she did, stretching.

  “First flight out was 6:40. How ’bout I meet you in the café downstairs, grab some breakfast?”

  She shook her head and looked over her shoulder into the room. The CSD cases were on the floor at the foot of the bed. “I’ll order room service. I want to review the CSD data from last night.”

  “How’d it go?”

  Thinking about it—the technology, not the victim—made her smile. She felt the last vestiges of grogginess fall away. “Good . . . great, really.” She shrugged. “Lead Dee’s a crotchety coot, didn’t like the Bureau stepping in, didn’t like my gender, and didn’t like me thinking I was going to tell him how to process his crime scene.”

  “So did you?” Brady asked. He stuck his hands in his pockets, looking casual and comfortable standing in the hotel corridor.

  “Oh yeah. You should have seen him. After going through the scene with him and a tech, I showed him the POA. He was just about stammering with excitement.” She laughed. “I spread the floor plan out on the hood of his car and started explaining the symbols—suspicious latents, blood spatter, a couple heel scuffs, what I’m pretty sure was dog hair—and this guy was like ‘Ooooh, ahhhh.’”

  Brady smiled appreciatively, and she was reminded of the disparity between his relative dapperness and her own dishevelment.

  “Look, I gotta make myself presentable. Come back in half an hour.”

  He took in her robe, her hair. “I think you’re going to need more time than that.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “I’m down the hall, in 422.” He cocked his head in the direction he meant. “Give me a ring when you’re ready.”

  She shut the door and pressed her back against it. Brady was a handsome man. Not movie-star handsome, but he could hold his own in a room full of former high school studs and the neighborhood hunks, whom housewives clucked about while stitching patches into a quilt or burning cookies for a school bake sale or whatever it was housewives did when they gathered. She wasn’t sure if his stoicism added to or detracted from his charm. He could be either mysteriously brooding or depressingly s
ulky. His usually successful efforts at humor—which Alicia interpreted as his way of either deflecting scrutiny or keeping others from being sucked into his void of depression—made his melancholy appear more like a personality trait than an emotional problem.

  There was also something utterly romantic about his sadness. His wife had died, what, a year and a half ago? And still, Alicia got the sense that if it weren’t for the sake of his son, Brady would plunge into that eternal darkness after her. In a heartbeat. He must have really loved her. Alicia knew couples who had claimed to have found their life mate but who insisted that if one died the other should try to find love again; each wanted only for the other to be happy. Alicia suspected it was all garbage. In reality, everyone wanted to be irreplaceable. Distill that desire to its core, and you’d behold a subconscious emotional death wish for your spouse; if you died, you wanted your lover’s heart to break so completely, nothing could ever grow there again. After all, how deep were all the professions of undying love if they could be shifted to another? What we all yearned for, Alicia decided, was a love so deep it could never reach the surface again.

  Unpleasant. Downright selfish. But true. And extremely romantic.

  Ironic too. Because someone who could love that deeply was very attractive to someone who desired to be loved that deeply.

  Alicia shook her head. What was she thinking? Romance with Brady? She pursed her lips. Okay, she’d thought about it before, once or twice. Female colleagues at the Bureau had described the old Brady to her. They’d used phrases like “full of life” and “spark in his step.” That was a cool Brady. Could he be like that again? If he could, would it negate the very romanticism Alicia found so appealing?

  Maybe she was different. Could she draw him up from the depths without the very act proving he wasn’t so far down to begin with? Then down he would go again, this time weighted with love for her.

  Aaaahhhhh! her mind screamed. I must really be tired. Brady was Brady. Her partner. Good looking but awfully moody. Nice guy but too selfish to understand how much of a bummer he could be. Besides, I’m not in the market. I’m not! Work is my lover, my spouse. That’s the way it has to be for now . . .

  Her hand rose and felt the hair exploding from her head. She laughed out loud, short and humorless. Even if she thought of Brady only as the partner he was, she didn’t want him holding in his head an image of her as a disheveled cow. Well, that wasn’t true. She knew that if Brady was just some other guy, she wouldn’t care less what image of her he possessed. Just get the job done.

  She pushed away from the door. Get your head on straight, Alicia, she thought. You got work to do, girl. No time for daydreams, especially about . . . about that. She padded into the bathroom, thinking she’d keep the shower cold today. Very cold.

  16

  Outside the Old City walls, in the Hasidic neighborhood of Me’a She’arim, boys played in the streets, their hands continually rising to make sure their kippots had not slipped from their heads. Men mingled in small groups or sat on benches reading saddur prayer books. Their uniformly long beards could have made them Haight-Ashbury princes or ZZ Top fanatics. They appeared almost regal in crisp black suits—black to symbolize the sect’s mourning of the destruction of King Solomon’s temple in AD 70—but no neckties, because they believed the garment represented the cross of Christ. Women were dressed more contemporarily but also in dark tones, with long sleeves and scarves that shielded their hair from lustful eyes. Attesting to the busyness of their days, the women scurried from one vendor to the next, procuring fresh ingredients for the evening meal. They spoke only briefly to one another, snapped at children to “play nice,” and left their male counterparts alone to ponder God.

  Through this idyllic streetscape clopped Pippino Farago, tugging on his left pant leg to move faster. He kept his head low and stayed close to the buildings. He pretended not to notice the frequent inhospitable glares—leveled at him, he knew, not because of his gimp leg, but because he was obviously not Hasidic. The residents here were fiercely protective of the garden of strict Judaic devotion they had managed to cultivate in the center of wild commercialism and tourism. They were like wolves, raising their hackles, growling at the sight of an intruder.

  The address he’d been given was in the heart of Me’a She’arim. It was an odd place to meet for non-Hasidics. But perhaps that’s what made it perfect for a clandestine meeting. The tranquillity and lack of outside encroachment, along with narrow, winding lanes, made spotting a tail especially easy in this district. Since parking his car in a hospital lot, Pip had taken the usual precautions: doubling back around entire blocks, crossing open spaces, frequently inspecting the area behind him. So far, he’d spotted no one suspicious.

  Anywhere else in the city, he would have worried about people he knew sitting at an outdoor table or browsing the markets, looking up to see if the clopping rhythm they recognized was indeed poor ol’ Pip. In Me’a She’arim, he knew no one and no one knew him.

  Still, he was uneasy. He had no business meeting with the person who’d phoned him earlier in the morning. If Luco found out . . . Pip didn’t want to think about the consequences. An image came unbidden to his mind, of Luco in a blind rage bludgeoning a head already so pulped that identification was impossible. He shook his head. Of course, that was no premonition—leave those to the nuts lurking around Luco these days. It was, rather, a memory, wicked and vivid.

  Without pausing, he turned into the open doorway of a bakery. Just inside he stopped, waited. The baker was behind a glass counter, busy with the only customer. The yeasty aroma of fresh hallah reminded him that he’d missed lunch; his stomach was too upset to eat now anyway. From a breast pocket he pulled a scrap of paper and again read the directions. He nodded to himself and put the scrap away. Figuring he’d given anyone following him enough time to reveal himself, he clopped back onto the sidewalk, boldly facing the way he had come. No one suddenly stopped; no one turned away.

  Pip turned and continued on. A few minutes later he was standing at the entrance of Yifhan Street. It was deserted but for an old woman, who sat in a chair on a second-story balcony, chewing on something—probably nothing more than her gums. She was stoically watching Pip. He pulled the paper from his pocket. Yifhan Street. Numbers on a metal plate over a nearby door indicated the address he wanted was on the right side, but he could see no other numbers. He had assumed the address would prove to be a café or some other public meeting place. Yifhan Street appeared completely residential. And all but deserted. He walked on cautiously. With each second step, he gently lowered to the ground the paperback books taped to the bottom of his left shoe.

  A door creaked and he stopped. In a narrow alley thirty yards on the right, a shadow stirred, then moved into the sunlight and became a man. He wore black pants and a long-sleeved black shirt. In front, a small white apron fell from his waist, making him look like a waiter from an upscale restaurant. He squinted at Pip.

  “Mr. Farago?” the man said.

  “Yes?”

  “This way, please.” He sidestepped away from the mouth of the alley and held an arm toward it, bidding Pip to enter.

  Pip hobbled slowly forward. At the mouth of the alley, he stopped. Too dark to see anything. He looked at the waiter, who smiled and nodded once. The man’s cologne was subtle and expensive. Something Luco would wear. Pip’s stomach twisted painfully. What if this was all a setup? A test of his loyalty? Was Luco waiting in the alley, knife in hand and a stinging indictment on his lips?

  As if understanding his mind, the waiter assured him, “Your host is waiting, sir.”

  Over his shoulder, the old woman gazed impassively from her perch.

  Pip moved into the alley and immediately saw an open door on his left. In the room, a faint red light glowed. He stepped through. As his eyes adjusted, his olfactory nerves took in the hearty and somehow comforting aroma of coffee, spices, and tobacco. He could see now that he was in a wood-paneled antechamber. The only light ca
me from three candles in red glass containers on three small tables. The door behind him closed, and the waiter stepped past.

  “This way, sir,” he said. He led Pip into a long, wide hallway, lined on both sides with heavy wood doors. Wall sconces cast soft light at the copper ceiling.

  He stopped at one of these doors and, without knocking, turned the knob and pushed it open. More candles flickered within. Pip could make out the muted walls of a room no larger than a coatroom. High-backed leather chairs faced a small, round table in the center. A teacup and saucer were set on the table. Steam rose from the cup. Just as Pip was beginning to believe the room was empty, a man leaned out of the darker shadows of one of the chairs.

  “Come in, Pip,” Niklas Hüber said pleasantly. His German accent was heavy and sharp, a linguistic broadsword. “I’m glad you could join me.”

  17

  The phone rang, and Brady looked at his watch. As usual, Alicia was early, this time by three minutes. He answered on the second ring.

  “The train’s leaving the station,” Alicia said.

  He heard the other phone clatter in its cradle, then disconnect. He nodded to himself. In a hurry and on the go. She had said they would review the CSD walk-through in her room; that’s why she didn’t want to meet in the restaurant. Now she sounded eager to split. She must figure they could view the walk-through in the car or at the crime scene.

  Alicia was something of a crime scene junkie. As impassioned as she was over the gadgets coming out of their division, and as proficient as she was with them, she never lost sight of their raison d’être: to solve—and possibly prevent—crimes. At heart, she was a trench warrior.

  Not a week went by that she didn’t appeal to their division chief, John Gilbreath, to combine field testing with field investigations. The result would be Alicia’s dream job: helping to develop cutting-edge investigative tools while being on the team charged with actually identifying and capturing the perps. With each appeal came Gilbreath’s shaking head, like a stone guardian’s refusal to grant admittance without the correct password.