The Illumination (19 page)

“You had company.” Her eyes challenged him in the alley. “You didn't mention you had a friend in Rome. You also neglected to mention that you're a man of many identities. So who are you today, D'Amato? Or is it Cassavetes? Or maybe Antonelli?”

He frowned at her. “This isn't the place for this.”

“You picked the place. I want to know what's going on.”

“Not here, Natalie. It's not safe. It's not smart. Let's head to the synagogue. I'll explain everything later.”

“No way.” She shoved him away as he tried to take her arm. His matter-of-fact tone was infuriating her. There was so much she didn't know, couldn't figure out, and here he stood, stone-walling
her about the one thing he
could
explain. “I want answers
now,
” she demanded. “I'm not budging another step until you level with me.”

A footfall sounded behind them, and they spun to face the noise.

A young man had entered their alley, a cell phone to his ear, and was heading toward them with a bouncy step.

D'Amato tensed.
Lanky, maybe twenty-three, twenty-four. Close-cropped dark hair, olive complexion. Jeans, sneakers—laces untied. Not a professional.

Just the same, D'Amato's left hand slipped into his pants pocket as the stranger neared. It remained there until the kid had sauntered around the corner, lost in his cell phone conversation.

“Natalie. Just listen to me. Let's go back to the hotel, get you a cup of coffee. And then we'll talk. It's not secure here.” He glanced purposefully at her shoulder bag. “You know that as well as I do.”

She hesitated, her feet still planted firmly on the smooth bricks beneath them. But she knew he was right about two things: It wasn't safe here and they damn well needed to talk.

 

Around the corner the olive-skinned young man waited to see where the pair in the alley went next. As they headed toward him, he quickened his pace and skimmed into the shadows of a leather-goods shop, waiting until they'd passed.

Then he knelt and quickly tied his sneakers.

 

 

 

The reception clerk set down the stack of fluffy white towels she was sending up to room 3D and stared uneasily at the two men across the counter.

“The Americans. We're looking for the Americans, you idiot! What room are they in?” As the woman shook her head and reached for the phone, Hasan Sabouri leaned across the slim reception counter and backhanded her. She gasped, recoiling in shock, and dropped the phone. One hand went to her swollen belly as tears of pain sprang from her eyes.

In panic, she glanced frantically toward the elevator, praying someone would come down. But the lobby was deserted. Most of the guests had already gone out, their heavy knobbed room keys dropped on the reception counter for her to shelve in their cubbies behind her.

“
Per favore, signore.
Please,” she gasped, blinking to clear the tears. Then she froze. The blue-eyed man had slid a gun from beneath his suit jacket. A gun with something stuck on the end of its barrel.

The young woman paled. She grabbed the registration book from its shelf below the counter and shoved it at him. “Look for yourself. I don't know these
Americani.
You find.”

The well-dressed man, the one wearing diamond cuff links
and dark sunglasses, yanked the book from the counter and scoured it. His finger paused at room 2C.

Landau—Brooklyn, New York. D'Amato—New York City.

Siddiq Aziz grinned with satisfaction. The clerk who'd checked them in had neatly copied the information from their passports. “It's right here. Room 2C.”

“Take the stairs,” Hasan ordered, his gun still trained on the petrified woman. “I'll follow in the elevator.”

Aziz loped toward the staircase. Hasan leaped over the registration counter, scattering the stack of towels to the floor. “Face down. On the ground.”

The young woman backed up in the tiny space, her liquid black eyes fixated on the gun.

“Now!” The ferocity of his tone sent her crashing to her knees.

“
Per favore, signore . . . il bambino
. . .”

“Now! Face down!”

Quivering, she obeyed him.

The silencer swallowed the explosions as he put two bullets in her head.

There was no time to clean her blood from his shoes. He grabbed the room key from cubby 2C and sprinted for the elevator. Aziz was waiting for him outside the Americans' room, only slightly breathless.

But when Hasan twisted the key and shoved open the door, they found themselves staring into an empty room, barren but for the twin beds, rumpled and unmade. No personal belongings in sight. Seething with disappointment, Hasan checked the bathroom. The floor mat was damp and the tub still speckled with water droplets.

“You worthless idiot!” He spun on Aziz, his arctic blue eyes sparking with wrath. “Watching the car and not the door!”

“Patience, Hasan—we can wait for them. The car is still here. They will come back.”

“
Might
come back!” Hasan spat. “The police might be here first.” He glanced down at his shoes with a cold smile. “I'll have to leave them a message.”

 

 

 

D'Amato held the hotel door open as Natalie gulped at a double espresso from her cardboard cup. As usual, the lobby was deserted. There wasn't even anyone manning the reception counter. Several room keys left by guests who'd gone out for the morning were scattered across it, theirs among them.

He palmed the heavy key with a frown. Not unusual for these small, understaffed, family-run hotels, but not ideal security either.

Neither spoke as they rode up in the elevator. Natalie had braced herself against the wall, away from him. Her face was tight with anger.

As the elevator jolted to a stop, D'Amato grimaced involuntarily. The pain he'd been trying to ignore all morning suddenly screamed through his left side: damned poisoned shrapnel, courtesy of the terrorists intent on reclaiming Jerusalem, who'd embedded it by design where no surgeon's knife could scrape it out. One minute he'd been scooping hummus onto pita bread and the next the café where he lunched most days had exploded into chaos, rubble, and body parts.

Sometimes the pain waited, dormant, merely a constant nagging ache. Other times it flared, searing without warning. On a scale of one to ten, right now it was soaring past seven. In days past at this point he'd be scrambling for a couple of Lortabs.

“What's wrong?” Frowning, Natalie followed him out of the elevator. “You're pale and drenched with sweat. Are you okay?”

“Never better.” He glanced at his watch. Eight fifteen. Forty-five minutes until the Great Synagogue opened its fortified doors.

“When are you going to tell me who that man was?” Natalie prodded as he shoved the key into the tumbler.

“He's just a guy who happens to deal in cell phones.” His voice was low as he pushed the door wide and glanced inside. He preceded her into the room, automatically scanning it. “He—”

D'Amato froze, and she nearly collided into his rigid back.

Smeared in red along the wall was a crudely drawn eye, staring out at them. In its center, like a bull's-eye, shone a bloody pupil the size of a basketball—pierced by a knife.

A scream froze in her throat. Seconds ticked past as thick silence sucked the air from the room.

“Let's go!” Suddenly, somehow, there was a gun in D'Amato's hand. With the other hand, he shoved her out the door.

 

Barnabas stopped abruptly in his tracks. He was opposite the Coliseum when it hit him.

Wrong pew.

Streams of people flowed around him as he remembered that the Landau woman was a Jew. He'd seen that Star of David in her jewelry case. How could he have forgotten?

He flipped through the pages of his tour guide. She would head to a synagogue. There was only one of any note listed. It had a museum. Right up her alley.

He memorized the address, folded the guide, and stuck it back in his hip pocket. In two quick strides he beat an elderly couple to a cab disgorging a trio of chattering college girls at the corner. And a moment later he was on his way to the Great Synagogue of Rome.

 

 

 

“Where did you get that gun?” Natalie demanded as they raced down the ancient stone stairs.

“Where do you think?” D'Amato shoved the Glock back into his windbreaker pocket as they reached the lobby. Not that anyone would have noticed he had it—the lobby was still deserted.

“And it's a good thing I got it this morning, since it looks like we'll need it. This way.”

She followed him into a corridor off the lobby that she hadn't noticed before. “Are we getting the car?”

“No. Sure as they've found us, they've got a tracker on it. Put this on.” He yanked off his baseball cap and shoved it at her. “Backward.”

“I was beginning to hope we were safe here,” she muttered, sweeping her long dark hair under the elastic band, her heart racing. She lengthened her strides to keep up with his. “How could someone have found us already?”

“A better question is, how do we keep them from finding us again. Especially if that pendant you've got is as special as a lot of people seem to think.” As they ran, D'Amato reached into his left jacket pocket, yanked out a cell phone, and thrust it at her. “World phone. Untraceable. I've already programmed my number into yours and vice versa.”

“My, you
were
busy this morning.”

“It helps to have friends—and people who trust me.”

“So the man you met—”

“Let's do this later, Natalie, okay? We need to concentrate on one thing at a time.”

She chose not to reply. She was still furious with him, but she knew he was right. The danger had found them, and she and D'Amato needed to work together—at least for now. Whatever he was up to with those fake IDs, she couldn't believe he meant her any harm. She noticed the tension that seemed to vibrate through his entire body. He seemed different somehow. The efficient, thoughtful reporter seemed colder, more brusque than she'd seen him. He guided her through a side door that led to the back of the courtyard, where elaborate cement planters with ferns cascading from them appeared to seal off the small yard. But he pulled her between the greenery and through a black wrought-iron gate, ivy rustling as they swept past. Natalie doubted she'd ever have spotted the gate on her own.

The alleyway they entered was narrow and winding, a mere ribbon of cold, cobbled stone threading between buildings just tall enough to block the sun. Brightly colored laundry blew gently overhead, pinned on the web of clotheslines stretching between opposite apartment building windows. Running to keep up with him, she wondered when and how he'd discovered this way out—and if she'd live long enough to ask him all the questions percolating through her head.

Moments later they emerged into the watery March sunshine bathing Via dei Salumi, two blocks south of the hotel's entrance.

“We'll need to backtrack some now,” D'Amato told her, slipping on sunglasses. “But once we hit Piazza in Piscinula, it's only a short walk to the bridge. We'll be able to spot the synagogue's dome from there. It's the only squared, aluminum one in all of Rome.”

Piscinula, Natalie knew, had been Trastevere's port until it was destroyed to make way for the current embankments.
The streets here near the old Jewish Ghetto were narrow and twisting. Hurrying through the congested heart of Trastevere, she found herself confused by the complicated maze of tight winding lanes lined with medieval buildings, restaurants, and shops. Without a map, without D'Amato, she'd have easily gotten lost trying to find her way. On her previous visit to the synagogue, she'd taken a cab from the Coliseum.

She glanced repeatedly over her shoulder as they charged past lesser piazzas scattered around the main piazza, past waiters already at work setting out starched linens and arranging plates, glasses, and flatware, even though
il pranzo,
lunchtime, wouldn't start until well after noon.

“The bridge—this way.” He slowed his pace now that they were out in the open and slipped an arm around her waist. “Pretend we're tourists,” he told her under his breath, as he bought them each a cup of coffee from a street vendor. “A normal couple on a walking tour of the medieval quarter.”

It was all she could do to paste on a carefree expression. As he made a show of pointing out the landmarks they passed, she responded mechanically, feeling none of the relaxed enjoyment of a tourist—let alone a lovey-dovey honeymooner. In fact, she barely heard D'Amato's voice and had to force herself to feign interest when all she could picture was that bloody eye on the wall.
With that knife plunged into its center.

Her pulse quickened as they left the heart of the Jewish Ghetto at last and stepped onto the Ponte Cestio, the bridge leading to the island in the bend of the Tiber. Isola Tiberina—Tiber Island—was in turn connected to the opposite side of the river by the Ponte Fabricio, the oldest bridge in all of Rome, built in 62
B.C
.

A wave of relief nearly buckled her knees as she saw the synagogue at last. Tall, imposing, and yet graceful, it stood at the corner of Lungotevere dei Cenci and via Portico d'Ottavia, opposite Julius Caesar's curved, ancient Theater of Marcellus—which had by now been morphed into an apartment building.

She fixed her gaze on the Great Synagogue of Rome. Built in 1904, after the emancipation of Italian Jews following Italy's
unification, its style was an eclectic mix of Roman, Greek, and Assyro-Babylonian.

II Tempio Maggiore di Roma. Guarded. Impregnable.
Safe.

 

“How many men do we have covering the airport?” Hasan stared out the car window, scouring the faces on the streets as Jalil circled back yet again through the intricate maze of the Jewish Ghetto.