The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (70 page)

His voice still laced with ire, Gerald yelled, “Dr. Sterling, this is not a negotiation. Your men are dead; your wife will be, too, if you don’t get to work!”

Michael knew that they were finished with their volleys; there would be no further discussion. Instead, he acquiesced. He stole another glance at his wife; he could see that she was calm. She continued to surprise him with her strength.

The medallion was heavy in his hand. Michael squeezed it until it hurt. He looked at it intensely:
the medallion is the key—ein gift.

The room at one time had appeared voluminous, but now the walls felt as if they were collapsing in on him. Michael felt the breath being robbed from his lungs. The frescos rained upon him from every angle: above, to the left and right, to his back, and directly in front. They were everywhere. Michael’s eyes went to the only place in the room where there was no artwork—they went to the floor.

Michael could feel his heart beating hard as the seconds ticked slowly by; he squeezed the medallion even harder.

He looked up at his wife. She was beautiful, even when in the grips of an armed man; he couldn’t help but be taken by the outline of her symmetry. Her voice echoed inside of his mind. He thought of how she had described the artwork:
they’re just heavenly.

Sonia had been remarking to the colonel her thoughts on the beauty of the tower’s frescos.

They’re just heavenly.

Her words repeated incessantly in his mind as loud as a beacon is bright.

They’re just heavenly.

Michael looked to the ceiling and studied the anemoscope. Then he spun around on his heels and did the same with each fresco, starting with the north wall and then to the south, east, and west walls. And then he looked at the one that York had found:
The Angel Marks the Forehead of the Chosen.

The angel was painted brightly, brighter than the rest. Around its head was a detailed, golden halo.

But a halo it wasn’t, thought Michael; it was the sun, a solar symbol and a symbol used by many gods—Osiris, Sol Invictus, Helios, Apollo; the list went on. All were solar deities and sun gods; all were intertwined in history as they were with this room—reincarnations, reinventions, or amalgamations of one another.

His mind was a blur of thoughts; he fought to find a connection, and then he looked at the floor. His eyes were drawn again to the white marble disc. He traced the meridian line that split it in half.

A solar calendar.

A loud crack echoed suddenly in the room as a bullet ricocheted at Michael’s feet.

Michael jumped instinctively to the side; his heart pounded in his ears.

Sonia let out a muffled shriek.

A new stream of smoke drizzled upward from Gerald’s weapon. “I’m losing my patience, Dr. Sterling,” he yelled. Moving the weapon toward Sonia, he pressed the barrel of it firmly into her temple.

She winced, and it was the first time that Michael saw a sliver of true fear drape over her face.

“Wait, goddamn it! Just wait!” Michael screamed, holding his hand out at the armed man. “The king’s body is here, in this room. I think I know how to find him!”

Gerald let the bore of the pistol fall away from Sonia’s temple. He said, “It’d be better to know than to think, Dr. Sterling—explain.”

“This room is one big celestial allegory,” Michael began as he gestured upward with his hand. “Above, the ceiling represents the winds of the sky, the stars, the sun, and the moon. You can see them clear as day.” Michael’s voice rose as he continued. “Each of the frescoed walls in this tower represents the story of a season.”

Gerald yelled out, “I’m not here for a lesson in art history; get to your point!”

“Above, on the ceiling, is heaven; around us, on these walls, is the earth.”

Gerald interrupted, “And beneath us, Dr. Sterling? Are you trying to say that the king’s body is beneath us?”

“No.” Michael’s answer confused Gerald and Sonia both.

Gerald shook his weapon at Michael. He was clearly agitated. “I’m tired of chasing you around. I’ve got as much patience as a teenager with a fistful of dollars in a whorehouse! You’ve ten seconds to explain, or I end all of this and tell my people that you couldn’t finish the job!” Gerald re-aimed the weapon at Sonia’s temple.

“Ten, nine, eight…,” Gerald counted down. “Seven, six…”

Beethoven’s
Fur Elise
interrupted the countdown. The colonel’s outstretched arm had pulled his shirt taut, exposing his wrist upon which was his chrome Tag Heuer. The lively bit of piano play from the colonel’s watch rhythmically announced that noon had arrived.

“I’ll only need five,” Michael dryly stated and pointed. “Watch.”

It was five seconds later, indeed, when a very curious event occurred. From a hole in the south wall, previously invisible, a bright line of thin sunlight shot through and down to the floor.

It rested directly atop the meridian line and in the center of the white disc. The agitated dust in the room sparkled around the beam of light as it erratically and slowly floated in all directions.

Normally such an event wouldn’t have made most people think twice: in the Tower of Winds, it happened every day of each passing year and precisely at noon.

It marked the passage of time and was the Tower of Winds’ main responsibility beginning from the time Pope Gregory XIII had declared that the Julian calendar was no longer valid.

Gerald stared mesmerizingly at the beam of light; Sonia did, too.

Michael squeezed the medallion between his palms and twisted. It grated noisily as it split apart. In a moment, it was in two halves; in the middle of each half, on their insides, was an oddly shaped protrusion. Michael knelt to where the beam of light met the floor.

In the center of the small circle of light was an otherwise nondescript hole, which was now brightly illuminated by the beam’s end. No different than any of the other numerous and irregular but naturally porous markings of the old stone, it wouldn’t have warranted a second glance under any other circumstance.

Circumstances, however, had changed.

Michael pushed one half of the medallion into the hole; the protrusion on the medallion’s innards fit perfectly, offering no resistance. The medallion soaked up the rays of the sun, and then an even more curious thing occurred: the beam of light that penetrated the small hole of the south wall refracted off of the medallion. It splashed across the door of the room.

Michael furrowed his brow and leaned in to the medallion for a closer look.

The outlines of the stone tiles seemed randomly chiseled with no symmetry in their shapes. Michael traced his fingers over the stone and then the medallion.

Slowly, he turned the medallion; it grated against the floor. The beam of light began to move.

Within moments, the outline of the medallion mated with the once seemingly random shapes of the tiles’ edges.

Michael stopped.

One of the medallion’s purple stones now absorbed the light and spewed it at a sharp angle toward the fresco that adorned the room’s door.

The medallion is the key—ein gift.

The refracted beam of light found the center of the angel’s halo—the center of the sun symbol.

The halo’s glow had turned into a very dull brown, the result of mixing the two complementary colors.

Odd, thought Michael.

And then Michael snatched the medallion from the floor.

“No!” Gerald screamed. “You fool! I’ll crush every ounce of breath from her; put that medallion back!”

Michael stood and saw that Gerald was on edge. He was squeezing Sonia so tightly that she had trouble breathing. Dragging her easily, he moved quickly toward Michael and thrust his weapon toward Michael’s face.

“You’re trying to toy with me, you son of a bitch! I said put the medallion back in the floor!”

“Easy,” Michael screamed back, “just take it easy.” Michael held out the medallion half. “We can make a trade. I’ll give you the medallion, but you let her go. I figure the ray of light will be gone in about four minutes; what’s it going to be?”

“Dr. Sterling, what if I just pull this trigger and kill you both, eh? I’ll put the medallion back myself! How’s that for a deal?” Gerald replied.

Michael raised the medallion high over his head and threatened, “You wouldn’t know where the beam of light is supposed to go—only I do! Now release my wife, or I’ll smash this thing into two dozen pieces!”

Gerald’s face was red with anger and his nostrils were flared. Sonia struggled as she tried to gulp some air.

The two men stared at one another.

Sonia felt the world fading to black.

Michael saw his wife’s eyes begin to roll backward. He was out of threats; his bluff had been called.

Gerald saw the well-trained special operations officer give in. “Find me some fucking bones real quick, or the two of you are going to be added to the pile of corpses in this room!”

Michael looked at Sonia and gave her the most reassuring look that he could muster.

And then he winked.

It didn’t have much effect.

“Find them yourself,” Michael calmly stated as he threw the medallion half to Gerald.

Gerald pushed Sonia away. She collapsed to the stone floor as he caught the medallion; a sharp barb on the inside of the medallion nicked his finger. Instinctively, he put the finger to his mouth and spat a small drop of blood mixed with spit.

Michael went to his wife, but Gerald ordered, “Don’t move, Dr. Sterling. She’s fine.” He took aim with his pistol at Michael and knelt to the floor to reinsert the medallion into the hole.

As his knee reached the floor, Gerald stumbled somewhat. The white marble disc spun wildly, but only in his head.

Michael silently thanked the colonel.

“What…what’s happening to me?” Gerald’s words were a bit slurred as he fell to all fours.

Taking a breath, Michael exhaled slowly to gain some control over the adrenaline flowing through his body. And then he stated, “As I said earlier, this room is one big allegory. Above are the heavens and around us the earth.” And then he pointed to the floor. “Below us is hell.”

“And the king’s… the k-king’s body is there?” Gerald felt his tongue thickening and his throat going dry.

“No.” Michael had fully intended to be pithy.

“Then…th-th-then he’s in the wall; where the l-l-light pointed?” It was getting worse.

Again, Michael was terse and to the point: “No.”

Michael waited for a moment. He stared at Gerald with eyes that told of a man ready to kill. He tightened his hands into fists and readied to spring at the once-armed man. But, instead of attacking, he thought of Sun Tzu—
supreme excellence is breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting
. He didn’t need to attack.

Instead, Michael unclenched his fists and with his foot, he pushed Gerald onto his back. He knelt next to the man, grabbing his face with both hands. He physically twisted his head until his eyes stared upward and into his own.

“I’ve given you a
gift
,” Michael nastily spat as he repeated the word that the colonel had used.

Indeed, a gift it was. The colonel had been fully aware of Michael’s linguistic background. Michael spoke a number of languages, including German.

It had been a code, a simple code from the mouth of a dying friend.

Explaining to the downed man, Michael said, “In German, the word
gift
means poison.”

Ein gift.

Gerald’s eyes shook.

Michael’s voice was filled with anger, and he forcibly twisted Gerald’s head even further so that he now stared straight upward at the ceiling, “That’s an anemoscope; wind and stars, the sun and the moon, and the four seasons. This room tells of Christianity’s pagan roots. This room connects the preaching of the ancient cosmology and the sun worship that happened for more than three millennia before Christianity—it connects the sun, the moon, and star worship—all of which defined nearly every religion before Christianity absorbed, edited, or outright stole the teachings and turned them into versions of their own.”

Then Michael yanked Gerald’s face in the opposite direction until it was smashed painfully into the floor; Gerald’s nose flattened against the white marble line. “And that’s a meridian line. We are standing on circles tiled into the floor, which are held together by a single one. They represent the soul of the universe, and this line is more than a calendar: it represents Gehenna.”

“Ge-ge-ge-henna, wh-what is…” Gerald stammered but couldn’t finish the sentence. He tried to push himself to his feet, but Michael pushed back. He fell heavily against the stone with an odd grunt.

“I didn’t think you would know,” Michael retorted. “Most people haven’t the fortitude to pursue, much less trust, the primary sources that legitimately provide evidence and answers to questions, or to understand the history of the cult to which they lay prostrate with their hands clasped together in prayer each
Sun
-day. Most people are lazy and flat-out credulous. Instead, they rely upon storytellers than to do the work for them. Gehenna is hell, the place where the soul will go for spiritual purification before being worthy of heaven. From the looks of it, you must feel like you’re at Gehenna’s door right now.”