The Columbus Affair: A Novel Read online

  Why had it been so tough on him?

  He made a decision.

  He wasn’t going to die today.

  Maybe tomorrow, but not today.

  Instead, it was time to do something he should have done long ago.

  ———

  ALLE ENTERED THE CAFÉ RAHOFER, A PLACE SHE’D DISCOVERED A couple of weeks ago, not far from her Viennese apartment. She’d showered and changed, dressed in tan chinos, a sweater, and flat-soled shoes. She was feeling a bit better and wondered what had happened in Florida, but assumed her father had cooperated since Rócha had made no further contact. They were all scheduled to meet again tomorrow, at 4:00 P.M., back where the video had originated, there while the grave was being opened, ready if needed for another show.

  She did not like the idea of exhuming her grandfather. He’d been a dear man who’d loved her unconditionally. He was the blood father she’d never had, and his death still affected her. She always hoped her conversion to Judaism compensated, at least a little, for the pain her father had caused him. Despite all that happened, his granddaughter still became a Jew.

  “Did your grandfather leave any papers or instructions to you that may have seemed unusual?” Zachariah asked her.

  She’d never spoken of it before, but it seemed okay, now, after three years, to discuss it with him. “He told me to bury a packet with him.”

  “Describe it.”

  She used her hands to outline something about afoot square. “It was one of those sealed vacuum bags sold for storage on television. It was thin and light.”

  “Could you see anything through the bag?”

  She shook her head. “I paid no attention to it. He left written instructions, as his estate representative, to make sure the packet was placed in his coffin. I did that myself, laying it on his chest, just before the lid was closed.”

  “That had to be difficult.”

  “I cried the whole time.”

  She recalled how Zachariah had held her hand and they’d prayed for Abiram Sagan. She adhered to the Jewish belief that soul and body would eventually be reunited. That meant the body had to be honored. Custom required someone to attend to the deceased, closing the eyes and mouth, covering the face, lighting candles.

  And she’d done all that.

  A late-blooming cancer had stolen her grandfather quickly. But at least he hadn’t suffered. The Torah commanded that a body must not go unburied overnight, and she’d made sure that her grandfather had been interred before sunset. She’d also not embalmed him, dressing him in a simple linen shroud inside a plain wooden coffin. She’d heard him say many times, “Wealthy or poor, nothing should distinguish us at death.” She’d even kept a window open where she sat with him, awaiting burial, so his soul could easily escape. She’d then followed all four stages of mourning, including avelut. Dutifully, she’d abstained from parties, celebrations, and all forms of entertainment for a full twelve months.

  Her grandfather would have been proud.

  She found a table and sat.

  She liked the Café Rahofer, with its marble tabletops, crystal chandeliers, and bentwood chairs. She’d learned this place came with some history, as both Stalin and Trotsky had played chess here. A piano in a far corner entertained a light crowd for after 9:00 P.M. on a Tuesday night. A glass of wine and a plate of schnitzel sounded great. She ordered both with some mineral water and began to relax.

  “Are you alone?”

  She turned to see a man standing a few feet away. He appeared a little older, maybe thirty, trim, extra fit, with a two-day stubble dusting his chin and neck. The hair that covered his head was thin and closely cropped, like a monk’s cap, his blue eyes alert and lively.

  “I’m alone,” she said, “and prefer to stay that way.”

  He threw her a smile and sat at her table.

  “I told you I wasn’t interested,” she made clear.

  “You will be.”

  She resented his forwardness. “How about you leave now, before I call someone over.”

  He leaned in close. “Then you won’t get to hear what I have to say about Zachariah Simon.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ZACHARIAH ENTERED THE ROOM AND CLOSED THE DOOR. HE’D driven straight back from Mount Dora to Orlando and his west side hotel. He quickly found his laptop and connected to the Internet, linking with a secured server in Austria, the same one used during the video transmission to Tom Sagan. He’d commissioned the system himself, equipped with an ultra-sophisticated encryption program. He checked in with his personal secretary in Austria, satisfied that nothing required his immediate attention. He then severed the link and ordered food from room service.

  Sagan was cooperating. He’d signed the papers and would be at the cemetery in the morning.

  He’d accomplished the first phase.

  But time was running short.

  He’d read the American press reports, lauding the coming summit. Danny Daniels, the president of the United States, in his final year in office, had staked his legacy on securing some sort of lasting Mideast peace. Thankfully, that summit was still four months away.

  Plenty of time for him to complete what he’d started.

  But what he sought had stayed hidden a long time.

  Could it all be myth?

  No. It existed. It had to. God would not have allowed anything less.

  Alle had confirmed that her grandfather ordered a packet buried with him, contrary to Orthodox tradition, where nothing save the body went into the grave. Even more convincing was the fact that she knew information that no one, short of the Levite, could possibly know.

  He was on the right path.

  He had to be.

  Surely the Levite had been cautious in what he shared with his granddaughter, given the task was exclusively for a male. Abiram Sagan could not pass ultimate responsibility to his granddaughter. So he solved his dilemma by taking the secret with him to his grave.

  Thankfully, he had Alle totally under his control. A willing partner with no knowledge of what was truly involved. She was an ideologue, consumed by her passion for her new religion and her grandfather’s memory. Her beliefs were sincere. All she required was careful handling.

  And that he would provide.

  Until she was no longer useful.

  Then he would kill Alle Becket.

  ———

  ALLE WAS INTRIGUED, SO SHE ASKED, “WHAT ABOUT ZACHARIAH Simon?”

  “He should be a concern of yours,” the man sitting across the table said.

  She wasn’t in the mood for more games. “Do you plan to explain yourself? Or do I leave?”

  “You met Simon in Spain. Didn’t you find it strange that he found you?”

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  He smiled. “Call me Brian.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I came to speak with you. Privately.”

  Cautionary flags rose. This stranger was frightening her to the point that she even wished Rócha and Midnight were around.

  Brian reached into his pocket and withdrew some folded sheets of glossy paper, which she recognized as her article from Minerva.

  “I read this,” he said. “Fascinating stuff. Let me guess, Simon wanted to know your sources.”

  It had been one of the first things they’d talked about, along with the fact that they were both Reform Jews. She’d immediately liked that about him. Unlike the Orthodox, Reform Jews believed the Torah, though divinely inspired, was actually written, edited, and revised by man. And while Reform Jews revered the Torah’s values and ethics, they were free to follow whatever they believed would enhance their personal relationship with God. Nothing was absolute. Everything was subject to interpretation. Even more important to her, Reform Jews treated the sexes equally.

  “You still haven’t said what you want.”

  The waiter returned with her wine.

  “No, thank you,” Brian said to her. “I wouldn’t care for anything.”r />
  To spite him, she savored a sip. “You won’t be here long.”

  “Zachariah Simon is not what he claims to be. He’s using you.”

  “For what?”

  “To find out what your grandfather knew.”

  She sipped more of the wine, trying to appreciate the smoky aftertaste. “How do you know this?”

  “I know that he’s in Florida, where your grandfather is buried. I know that he’s made contact with your father. I also know that you just lied to your father in a shameful charade.”

  “And the reason you’ve come here to insult me?”

  “To try and save your miserable life.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TOM STEPPED FROM THE CAR AND ENTERED THE CEMETERY BENEATH a cloudless afternoon. This was a place where the Jews of central Florida had long been laid to rest. Decades ago, Abiram had been instrumental in securing the land and having it consecrated. It sat away from almost everything, among rolling hills, oak hammocks, horse farms, and orange groves.

  He hated graveyards.

  They were places of the past, and his was best forgotten.

  He stared out at the matsevahs, the vertical slabs standing in ill-defined rows, most facing east, each a cut rectangle with modest decorative elements—circles, pitched corners, odd shapes. He recalled his training as a boy. Each stone evidenced the eternal essence of the person lying beneath. Since Alle had been in charge of burial and Abiram had been an uncompromising soul, he assumed she’d strictly adhered to ritual.

  Which meant the marker would not have been erected until a year after death. During that time Alle would have kept his memory alive with regular visits and studied other graves, deciding carefully what the epitaph should be. Once convinced, she would have commissioned a carver and erected the matsevah in a simple ceremony.

  None of which had involved him.

  All he’d received was the deed to the house with a curt explanation from a lawyer that the property now belonged to him. He’d finally visited here one dismal afternoon, six months after Abiram’s death, standing in the rain and remembering their last encounter.

  “I’m going to be baptized Christian,” he said.

  “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “Michele is Christian and she wants our children to be Christian.”

  “That doesn’t require you to leave our faith.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t believe in any of this. I never have. Judaism is important to you, not me.”

  “You were born to Jewish parents. You are a Jew, and always will be.”

  “I plan to be baptized Episcopalian. That’s Michele’s church.”

  Shock flooded Abiram’s eyes. “If you do that, you and I will be through.”

  “You and I were through a long time ago. I’m twenty-five years old, yet you treat me as if I were ten. I’m not one of your students. I’m your son. But if you no longer want me to be that, then that’s the way it’ll be.”

  So he’d ceased being a Jew, married, become a Christian, and fathered a child. He and Abiram barely spoke after that. Family gatherings and holidays were the worst. His mother, though devout and respectful of her husband, had not been able to stay away. She’d come to California, but always alone. Never had he and Michele, as a family, visited Florida. Alle stayed with her grandparents for a few weeks every summer, flying back and forth alone. After his mother died those visits became longer. Alle had loved being with her grandfather. Abiram’s resentment of Tom had spilled over to Michele, and their relationship had always been strained. The old man was a proud Jew, and only in the past couple of years had Tom come to understand some of that passion. As he lost the drive for nearly everything in life, he remembered more and more what Abiram had taught him in those years before he turned twenty-five.

  When they were still speaking.

  He stared at the grave.

  A lumpkin shrieked in the distance. The crying bird, one of his uncles had called them because of their humanlike tone.

  The first time he’d come the marker had not been here. Alle had done well with its creation. Tall and substantial, much like the man beneath. He bent down and studied its reliefs, running his fingers across the two elegant letters at the top.

  Po nikbar. Here lies.

  He noticed art at the bottom.

  A pitcher, tipped, as if pouring.

  More of his early training came to mind.

  A felled tree marked those who died young. Books evidenced a learned person. A saw and plane meant craftsman.

  Pitchers symbolized that the deceased had been a Levite.

  He’d never known that about his father.

  According to the Bible, Levites were descendants of the tribe of Levi, the third of Jacob’s twelve sons. Both Moses and Aaron had been Levites. They sang psalms at services during the time of the First and Second Temples and physically maintained those sanctuaries. The Torah specifically commanded that Levites should protect the Temple for the people of Israel. Their usefulness, though, essentially ended when the Temples were destroyed. Because one of their assigned duties had been to cleanse the rabbi’s hands before the service, the pitcher had evolved into their symbol. He knew that Jews still considered themselves divided into three groups. Cohanim, the priestly caste. Levi’im, the Levites. And the Israelim, everyone else. Observances and laws specific to Cohanim and Levi’im were still practiced. Levites existed in synagogues, though their role was little more than honorific.

  Was that why the symbol was here?

  A recognition of Abiram’s service?

  He glanced at his mother’s matsevah.

  He’d attended her funeral, and Abiram had been customarily silent toward him. He’d stood right here a year later when the stone was raised but again played no part in its creation. A menorah adorned hers, symbolic of a righteous woman.

  And that she’d been.

  He heard a sound and turned.

  A car eased to where he’d parked a couple of hundred feet away. A small sedan with tinted windows.

  No one emerged.

  Had Zachariah Simon followed him here?

  The drive from his father’s house was only a short few miles, and no one had been behind him.

  Yet someone was here.

  He faced the intruder and called out, “What do you want?”

  No reply.

  “I said, what do you want?”

  Silence.

  With the courage of a man who’d not planned on even being alive at this moment he started forward.

  The car wheeled from the graveled lot.

  He watched as it drove away.

  What in the world?

  He turned back to the grave and thought of Alle.

  “What in God’s name have you done, old man?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BÉNE HATED SPANISH TOWN. THOUGH FOR THREE HUNDRED years it had served as Jamaica’s capital, an architectural delight perched on the west bank of the Rio Cobre, it had evolved into a hard-edged, gang-infested urban center of nearly 200,000 impoverished people. He rarely visited since his business interests lay either to the east in Kingston, or into the mountains, or across the north shore. He was born and raised just outside Spanish Town, in a tough neighborhood his family had controlled until his father made the mistake of killing an American drug agent. The United States demanded justice, the Jamaican government finally obliged, but his father had the good sense to die in jail. His mother took his death hard. Since he was an only child—medically, she could have no more—she made him promise that he’d never follow in those footsteps. His mother was a spry seventy-one years old and, to this day, had no idea what Béne’s empire entailed. He hated lying to her but, thankfully, he owned a host of legitimate enterprises—coffee, hotels, mining—that he could point to with pride and assure her he was no criminal.

  Which, to his way of thinking, he wasn’t.

  In fact, he hated criminals.

  True, he supplied prostitution, gambling, or p
ornography to a willing buyer. But his customers were grown adults and he made sure none of his products involved children in any way. He once shot a man in Montego Bay who refused to stop supplying young boys to tourists. And he’d shoot a few more if need be.

  He might break society’s rules.

  But he followed his own.

  He rode in the rear seat of his Maybach 62 S, two of his men in front, both armed. The car cost him half a million U.S., but was worth every dollar. He loved the high-grade leather and the fact that the backseat reclined to nearly a flat position. He took advantage of that often with naps between destinations. The roof was his favorite. One push of a button and glass panels changed from opaque to clear.

  They eased through a conglomeration of neighborhoods, the boundaries clear only to those who lived there.

  And to him.

  He knew these places.

  Life spilled out from the stores and houses onto the streets, forming a sea of dark faces. His father had ruled here, but now a confederation of gangs, led by men who called themselves dons, fought with one another over control.

  Why?

  Probably because their lives offered little else in the way of satisfaction, which was sad. What he’d heard many times rang true. “Jamaica has a little of everything but not quite enough of anything.”

  They eased through the congestion, the buildings old, two to three stories high, packed so close that even a breath of fresh air would have difficulty squeezing through. When they turned onto a side street, two men appeared in front and signaled with outstretched arms for the car to stop. Both had ropelike hair and wild beards. They flanked the vehicle, one on either side. Shirttails hung out and low—shielding weapons.

  Béne shook his head and muttered, “Buguyagas.”

  And that’s what he thought.