The Columbus Affair: A Novel (19 page)

But he felt a need to justify himself.

Were the duppies working on him?

“Be who you are, Béne. It’s all we can do.”

Normally he would never question himself, but this place was definitely affecting him.

“I believe that the hooked X is the mark of Columbus,” Frank said. “A sign to an important place. Perhaps even to the lost mine itself.”

“In this cave?”

The colonel shook his head. “This was not it. They marked here for a reason. What? Who knows. The real place is unknown.”

Simon had talked of Columbus, the lost mine, and the Levite, supposedly revealing all that he knew. But never had he mentioned Columbus’ signature, or anything else that Frank Clarke had just said.

Because he did not know?

No way.

Simon knew a lot. Enough to be in Florida doing something with some man and his daughter. A woman who wrote a magazine article about Columbus, which he’d not read.

Time to correct that mistake.

“Everyone wants to preserve us,” Frank said. “They talk of Maroon culture, and of us, as if we’re gone. But we’re still here.”

He agreed.

“If you find the lost mine, Béne, perhaps you’re right. That wealth can be used to change our situation. Money is always power, and we have neither. Unlike other Maroons, I never blamed the Jews for profiting from us. We needed supplies and ammunition. They provided it. The British needed the same and they provided. That’s the way of the world. Those Jews are gone, but we’re still here.”

He thought back to what Tre had told him about the Cohen brothers and the Jews’ hidden wealth from the time of the Spanish.

And the Levite.

Who knew it all.

“You think the Jews may have hid their wealth in the mine, too?”

Frank shrugged. “It’s possible. All the legends seemed to have merged. That’s the thing, Béne. Nobody knows anything.”

He was glad he’d come.

Finally. Answers.

And what Clarke said was true. Money was indeed power. He was deeply connected with the left and the People’s National Party, but he preferred the ruling center-right Labor Party. Never were his phone calls to government officials ignored. His requests shoved aside. He rarely asked for anything from any minister but, when he did, the answer was always yes.

Something the Maroons believed came to mind.

Di innocent an di fool could pass fi twin
.

He was neither.

“I’ll find the mine,” he told both his friend and the ancestors.

A
LLE RESENTED
B
RIAN
J
AMISON’S HOLIER-THAN-THOU ATTITUDE
. Two hours had gone by since the video from Florida ended, and Brian had stayed on the phone in another room with the door closed the entire time. She sat in the house’s small kitchen and nursed a cup of coffee. The scene outside the windows was rural and wooded, no roads or other houses in sight. It was after 7:00
P.M
. Czech time, which meant early afternoon in Florida. Her father was apparently coming to Vienna to make a deal for her release.

Which still surprised her.

A door opened and footsteps pounded the wooden floor. Brian walked into the room, still wearing a shoulder holster holding a weapon. He poured himself a cup from the coffeemaker.

“This is changing fast,” he said to her.

“I don’t like you.”

He laughed. “Like I care. If it were up to me, I would have let Simon kill you.”

His bravado was beginning to wear thin. “What happens now?”

“Aren’t you the least bit concerned about your father? He’s put his ass on the line for you. What do we do about that?”

She said nothing.

“He’s walking into a trap at that cathedral.”

“So stop him. Have your man in Florida tell him what’s going on.”

“How do you suggest I do that? We have no idea how he plans to get to Vienna. My man lost him after the orchard. He surely isn’t going to fly out of Orlando. I’m betting he drives to Tampa, or Jacksonville,
or Miami. And he’s not a dumb-ass, contrary to what you might think, he won’t fly straight to Vienna. He’ll come in another way. So there’s no way to deal with him until he gets to the cathedral.”

“You don’t give a damn about my father. You just want what he has.”

“Sure I do. But I still have the problem of him in Vienna. And so we’re clear, he’s not
my
father so, no, I don’t give a damn.”

“My father was one of the best reporters in the world,” she said. “He knows what he’s doing.”

She’d never said any of those words before.

“Is that how you convince yourself to feel better? I assure you, your father has never dealt with a man like Zachariah Simon.” He sipped his coffee. “I want to know what this is about. The least you can do is tell me what’s going on here.”

“I don’t know.”

“Then tell me what you told Simon.”

In 71
CE
,
after crushing the rebellious Jews and destroying Jerusalem, Titus returned to Rome. His father, Vespasian, was now emperor and welcomed his son back with the greatest celebration Rome had ever seen. Over one million had died in Judea, and now all of Rome came out to pay homage. Eight years later, after Titus himself rose to be emperor, he immortalized the day with a stone relief that showed him, as conqueror, parading the streets by chariot, the Jews’ Temple treasure—the golden Table of Divine Presence, the silver trumpets, and a seven-branched menorah—carted ahead of him
.

For 380 years those treasures stayed in Rome. Then in 455
CE
.
Vandals sacked the city. A Byzantine historiographer wrote that the Vandal leader, “with no one to stop him entered Rome and taking all the money and the ornaments of the city, he loaded them on his ships, among them the solid gold and bejeweled treasures of the Church and the Jewish vessels which Vespasian’s son Titus had brought to Rome after the capture of Jerusalem.”

The Temple treasure was taken south to the African city of Carthage, and there it remained from 455 to 533
CE
until the Byzantines conquered the Vandals. Another chronicler described the victor’s triumphant return to Constantinople in 534. “And there was also silver weighing many thousands of talents and all of the royal treasure and among these were the treasures of the Jews, which Titus, the son of Vespasian, had brought to Rome after the capture of Jerusalem.”

The Emperor Justinian displayed the Jewish treasure at various sites around the city. Though one of the greatest Byzantine leaders, Justinian was extremely unpopular, and that discontent finally fermented into open revolt. A contemporary from the time reported, “And one of the Jews, seeing these things, approached one of those known to the emperor and said, ‘These Temple treasures, I think it inexpedient to carry them into the palace in Byzantium. Indeed, it is not possible for them to be elsewhere than in the place where Solomon, the king of the Jews, formerly placed them. For it is because of these that the Vandals captured the palace of the Romans and how we captured the Vandals.’ When this had been brought to the ears of the emperor, Justinian became afraid and quickly sent everything to the sanctuaries of the Christians in Jerusalem.”

“Justinian was superstitious and paranoid,” Alle said to Brian. “He allowed an anonymous Jewish courtier to spook him with the fact that all of the civilizations that had possessed the Temple treasure since 70
CE
had crumbled. First the Jews, then Rome, then the Vandals. Would he be next? So sometime between 535 and 554
CE
he ordered the Temple treasure returned to the Holy Land.”

Brian cast a doubtful look. “Simon is after the Temple treasure?”

She nodded. “The three holiest objects in all of Judaism. They never made it to the Holy Land. History lost track of all three when they left Constantinople. Zachariah said my grandfather knew where they were hidden. That he was the Levite, the only person alive who knew the location. He said whatever I buried with him would lead us there.”

“For what? Not its worth. He’s a billionaire.”

“He wants to restore it to the Jews.”

“And you believed him?”

She wanted to know something. “What’s
your
interest?”

“Tell me the rest. How do
you
fit into this?”

After Rome sacked Jerusalem in 70
CE
and the Second Temple was razed, over 80,000 Jews were deported from Judea to the Iberian peninsula—which, at that time, lay at the extreme western reaches of the Roman Empire. More Jews immigrated there over time, until a thriving community formed that came to be known as Sephardim
.

Life for Jews there was tolerable since the emerging Catholic Church had difficulty establishing itself so far west. The Visigoths, who ruled the land, did not convert
until 587
CE
.
This began what became a recurring phenomenon in Iberian policy—Jews were ordered to either become Christians or be expelled. Many did convert, becoming the first
conversos,
maintaining their Jewish identity in secret while openly professing to be something else. Tens of thousands either left or were expelled. Periods of tolerance and intolerance followed. Property seizures occurred frequently, especially when Jewish assets were needed by monarchs. When the Moors invaded Iberia in 711, Jews welcomed them as liberators. Life under Moorish rule became the Golden Age for Sephardi Jews. Their numbers grew, as more immigrated
.

But the
Reconquista
changed everything
.

Christians slowly reclaimed Iberia and forced conversions, engaging in pogroms. By 1400 Jews had become a focus of Spanish hatred. To avoid death or persecution thousands more converted to Christianity, creating a new wave of
conversos.
Laws that restricted Jewish industry eventually brought commerce to a standstill. Soil was left uncultivated, finances were disturbed. Entire communities were destroyed, many more reduced to poverty. In order to restore the Spanish economy the Crown tried to draw Jews back to the country by offering them privileges
.

Which worked, but it also bred resentment from Christians
.

When Ferdinand and Isabella ascended the throne and completed the
Reconquista
in 1492, expelling the last of the Moors from Spanish soil, they issued an edict that all Jews must either convert or leave Spain
.

They also reinstituted the Inquisition to root out false
conversos.

165,000 Jews chose to leave
.

Many stayed and kept their secret
.

Many more were slaughtered
.

“How much of that is you and how much came from Simon?” Brian asked.

“I’m not ignorant of Jewish history,” she made clear. “It’s what I’ve studied.”

“I didn’t say that you were. I just need to know what that crazy man is trying to do.”

“He told me a story. I don’t know if it’s true. But it was quite amazing. About the Jews in Spain, at the time Columbus sailed.”

“Tell me.”

“Why should I?”

“Because your father’s life depends on it.”

T
OM DROVE INTO
O
RLANDO AND FOLLOWED A ROUNDABOUT
path to his house. He needed to retrieve his passport. He’d already stopped at a local library and used one of their computers to book a flight out of New York that would eventually land him in Bratislava, Slovakia. The overnight leg across the Atlantic departed New York at 8:00
P.M
. To get there he would have to take a plane from Jacksonville. He thought that safer than using the Orlando airport, which Simon might be watching. The drive north was all interstate highway, about two and a half hours. He’d have to change planes again in London, but should be on the ground in Slovakia in plenty of time. From there he would rent a car and drive across the Austrian border to Vienna, about forty miles away.

He parked a block over and approached his house from the rear. He kept an eye out for anything that might cause alarm, but the neighborhood was quiet. He entered through the back door and realized that the measure of comfort he’d always felt here was gone. This place now reeked of insecurity and all he wanted to do was leave. He quickly changed clothes, found his passport and a jacket, grabbed the few hundred dollars he always kept on hand, and left. He’d buy along the way whatever was necessary. It felt like the old days when he was chasing leads, piecing tendrils, hoping the dots would eventually connect into a story. He’d handled things right today, anticipating his adversary’s move, staying one step ahead. His daughter was counting on him and this time he was not going to let her down.

He also seemed privy to something extraordinary—a secret his family had apparently been part of for a long while.

Which, despite everything, excited him.

He stepped out the door and headed back toward his car.

One thing bothered him, though.

Zachariah Simon agreed to the terms far too easily.

Sources too cooperative had always made him nervous.

He wondered.

Had he made a mistake?

———

Z
ACHARIAH BOARDED THE CHARTERED JET
. H
E DID NOT OWN A
plane. Waste of money. Far cheaper to rent. This one had been waiting for him at Orlando’s Sanford International Airport, a smaller facility north of the city. He wondered from where Tom Sagan would leave America. Surely not from Orlando. The man was certainly smarter than that. But he didn’t care. He wanted the former reporter in Vienna, and he would do nothing to interfere with that journey.

He sat in one of the plush seats and fastened his seat belt. The jet’s engines were already humming. Cool air rushed from the overhead vents. Rócha, after stowing their bags, joined him.

“It’s too bad she’s dead,” he said, referring to Alle. “I may have been hasty there.”

Rócha shrugged. “Jamison knew right where to look.”