The Solomon Key (4 page)

“We can’t stay here,” Joe whispered into her ear.

Melissa threw the cabinet door open just as the beam from Mark’s flashlight swept across the room and revealed two men in black shooting at him. He was hiding behind some metal crates, firing aimlessly over their tops while trying to focus the light on a glimmering object resting on the floor. The artifact. He had dropped it in his haste to find cover.

She lunged for the object, grabbing it in her hand and running toward the corridor, skirting the room’s perimeter and going around the gunfight. She heard Mark scream out in pain and knew he was either dead or dying. She hoped Joe was right behind her.

But once the firing stopped, her movement could clearly be heard clamoring through the darkness, toward the exit.

The two remaining men turned, raising their weapons and searching for the person trying to escape. Their triggers were almost pressed when a voice came at them from another direction.

“Hey, you pieces of—” Joe never finished. The automatic fire threw him awkwardly across a countertop, his blood spraying across the wall behind him. “Melissa…” he rasped, eyes frozen wide with shock.

Melissa made it into the corridor, running as fast as she could, tears flowing freely from her eyes. A shot rang out and sparks flew off the walls around her, but she made it through the other door and to the elevator.

With the power out, the elevator showed no sign of being operational, so she threw herself into the door next to it, entering the stairwell instead. Her heart was racing out of control, her feet trying desperately to move her body up the stairs, the knowledge that guns behind her could sound at any moment and end her life pushing her even faster. And before she knew it, she was leaning into the panic bar of a large steel door, throwing herself into a hallway within the main building. She was topside.

As the door closed behind her, she could hear footsteps echoing through the stairwell. She took off running again, looking for someone who could help, but there was no one around. It was a restricted level, only personnel with top security clearance were allowed on the floor. She needed to go up one more level to get to the main doors and the steps that led down to the street. Once there, she would find a way to lose her pursuers in the crowd. But even with the emergency lights shining above her, she was having a hard time figuring out which way to go. She saw nothing but doors lining both sides of the hallway before it dead-ended a hundred feet in front of her.

There was no time.

She picked a random door just as the stairwell burst open behind her.

Hoping she closed the door fast enough, she made her way through the emergency-lit office, going around a big oak desk and crawling underneath it. She pulled her knees to her chest and tried to keep from convulsing. Her mind was racing through a million incomplete thoughts, her heart a drumbeat threatening to give away her location. She held her breath, praying the men would just walk past the room.

They did.

She heard them open another door, not too far away from the office she was hiding in, and start walking up some other steps.

As salty tears ran down her face, she fought the urge to go back to the secret laboratory and check on Joe. She wanted to believe that he was still alive but knew that going back there would only guarantee her death.

She had the relic they wanted in her hand, and she wasn’t about to make it easy for them to get. She realized that her whole team had been set up from the beginning, and it infuriated her. Crawling out from beneath the desk, she quickly set about searching for an envelope. She found one in the second side drawer, a pen already lying on the top of the desk. Hoping she had enough time, she scribbled a name and address onto the front of the envelope, then wrote a quick note on the underside of the flap by the crease in the paper. There was a tissue box on the desk that she borrowed from in order to wrap the object. She dropped it in, licked the envelope, and sealed it.

Without allowing herself time to think, she rummaged through the desk looking for stamps. But, of course, there were none. Hardly anyone used stamps anymore.

She swore, ran to the door, and made her way into the hallway. The stairs were just two doors down. She climbed them as silently as she could, at one point stepping over a black mask. The main floor was empty, the big glass doors that led to the street within sight.

“Yes, sir, we’re turning the power back on now.”

The words were spoken by a man coming toward her, but they’d come from around a corner and so she couldn’t see him. Knowing that the big doors would lock as soon as the power was back online, she moved her legs as fast as she could, covering the empty floor with a speed she hadn’t known since her high school track days. If the doors locked before she hit them, she’d break her shoulder. Instead, they flew open, and she descended down the steps and into the street, the man with the radio staring after her, confused.

Police cars. Roadblocks. Fire trucks.

One officer came running over to her as she reached the street.

“Miss, are you alright? You weren’t supposed to be in there…”

She ignored him and continued running.

She rounded the corner and ran into the small crowd being ushered away by police in black battle gear. She needed to get rid of the envelope. Reaching into her loose-fitting pants, she pulled out whatever money she had. Just a few ameros. Then she ran into the street, traffic screeching to a halt as the twilight faded behind her.

Melissa spun around just in time to see a black SUV turning to join another that was coming from the opposite direction, both now converging on her.

A cramp was gnawing at her side, but she couldn’t slow down. If she did, she knew she was dead. She couldn’t get rid of the envelope here on the street… there were cameras and scanners everywhere. If they knew about the letter, they’d find it before it reached its recipient. She had to get back indoors.

The SUVs raced down the street, their headlights picking up the escapee as she turned down an alley. One SUV screeched to a halt, and a man in a suit jumped out, while the other SUV made a sharp turn around the block, hoping to head her off.

Melissa turned to see the man running after her. He was fast. She wasn’t going to make it.

There was an open door.

It was just up ahead, on the right. A restaurant. She ran through just as the man came within arm’s reach. “Help me!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Help me, he’s trying to kill me!”

The stunned cooks turned to see her attacker behind her, and they moved into his path, intent on defending her.

Melissa ran out of the kitchen and into the restaurant. Approaching a table, she excused herself to the couple sitting there eating, and handed the young man the envelope. “Will you do me the biggest favor in the world?” she asked, tears starting to flow again.

“Uh… sure,” the young man stammered, looking around the room and steeling a nervous glance at his girlfriend. He reluctantly took the envelope, wondering if it was a joke. But her desperation must have seemed genuine enough.

“Would you send that for me?” She looked back at the kitchen doors, waiting for them to burst open. Then she threw all the money she had onto the table. “Please,” she begged. “It’s important.” Then she turned and ran out the front door of the restaurant and into the arms of another huge man wearing a suit. She started screaming and kicking, but he was strong and didn’t loosen his grip. He carried her to the SUV. Just as he got her in the back seat, the other guy came out of the restaurant and joined them.

“Come on, let’s go,” one of them said. The SUV took off, speeding down a road in what had formerly been the capitol of the constitutional republic known as the United States of America.

Before Melissa knew what was going on, or could even ask, a plastic bag was put over her head. She inhaled, and the plastic filled her mouth. The other man beside her held her tight, keeping her from flailing.

Just then a ring pierced the air.

“Yes? Right.” Another man in the front seat hung up. “Let her go.”

They obeyed without question, removing the bag from her head, leaving her struggling for air.

The voice from the front seat explained, “It’s not there. They think she took it.”

As Melissa was catching her breath, her mind inadvertently began connecting dots, figuring that Mark was supposed to kill her and Joe, the men in black entering just in time to keep the object from being “stolen” by him.

“Ms. Strauss, you have something that we want.” They stripped her but found nothing.

She was still crying when they threw her from the vehicle and off the bridge.

3

A
lifetime of service to his country was etched into the same fingers that were now gracefully sweeping over the ivory keys. His hands were large, masculine. But the piano had no quarrel with them. The melody was sad. The empty house in which it was being played could almost cry, its walls shrinking, the ceiling drooping. With eyes closed, the house and the world itself just melted into a pool of sorrow. The sun outside pulled clouds over its face, dropping the world into shadow. Creation groaned, birds pouring out their broken hearts in seeming perfect harmony with the pitiful melody that resounded off the walls, through the open window, and into the world beyond.

Edward Cairns sat at the grand piano, his bare feet pressing the pedals, his hands orchestrating a symphony of emotion. His soul was singing, though not with words. A heart like this couldn’t be understood by words, couldn’t be grasped with the appreciation such music allowed. And in that transition, where the brain comes so close yet fails to grasp the reality of another unseen world, there is understanding — though unexplainable. The tears that escaped from the corners of his closed eyes streaked down his old and hardened face, pooling under his square chin, falling onto the keys. Perhaps, in the end, it was his tears that were playing and not his hands at all.

In the other room, a recording was playing on the TV screen. A younger man, though with strikingly similar features, was standing behind a pulpit, pouring out his own heart. But, unlike his father’s, his heart was full of words, a reason that could be understood by an inspired and emotional arrangement of the alphabet. The younger man, who appeared to be in his early forties, was found, not only on the TV screen, but also within framed walls, staring far away from the top of the piano.

Edward opened his red eyes so that he could see the picture of his son resting on the piano before him. He stopped playing, the melody coming to a sudden, almost violent stop. The birds stopped singing. It was quiet, yet not completely. Now that the music had ended, the sound of the preacher’s voice could be faintly heard coming from the other room. Edward listened, just as he had a hundred times before.

Finally, he pushed his sixty-seven year old frame away from the piano, wiped the tears away with the back of his hand. Walking into the other room where his son was preaching, he sat down on the couch, facing the screen. The German Shepherd that was lying on the floor beside the TV looked up at him.

“Come here, Calvin.” Edward slapped the empty cushion next to him, and the dog jumped to its feet and climbed up beside him, lying down and resting its head in his lap. Edward scratched its head affectionately. “I know, boy. I miss him, too.” Calvin was Jack’s dog. The poor thing still didn’t get it and could never understand. When hearing Jack’s voice, Calvin would sprint into the room the television was in, look all over for Jack, and then, in repeated anguish, surrender his search by sadly curling up in front of his master’s image, eyes filled with painful uncertainty.

Edward folded his arms, setting his attention again on the sermon that got his son killed.

…We fell for every simple trick, evil men laughing at us as we marched to the beat of their drums, our faith so watered down that it has become more than faith — it has become idolatry! We’ve trusted man, put our faith in man. And in so doing we’ve turned the church of Christ into a political tool. For years we assumed the tool was being used by God, but now that we’ve seen the end game, we know that what has been guiding the political transformation of the church was certainly not the Holy Spirit
.
We joined this political agenda, salivating at the thought of another Crusade. We prayed for our soldiers instead of missionaries. We put up pictures of presidents and forgot about the afflicted. We turned against everything Christianity is supposed to stand for, and we became blasphemers of God, using His name in vain with every breath of political dialogue.

Edward Cairns leaned back against the couch, tilted his head back so that he was staring at the ceiling, and thought about his son. The faith Jack had espoused was for a long time a source of conflict within their relationship, and even after Edward had finally succumbed and found God for himself, the particular loathing Jack had toward “patriotic Christianity” was something the two had never been able to resolve. Edward had given his life to the country and considered himself a “great American” — a patriot. He believed in the Constitution and the Christian heritage of the nation. But Jack had insisted that there was no New Testament blueprint for building a Christian nation, that it was simply impossible. And after taking his father through many of the founders’ own words — the very men many Christian speakers liked to paint as great Christian men obeying the voice of God — revealing how much they actually
hated
Christianity, mocking it outright, he would simply ask, “Is this nation a Republic or a Christocracy?” To which, of course, Edward had no real answer. After all, even he knew that “turn the other cheek” had failed to make it into any of the land’s sacred documents. First he had claimed a moral standing on his philosophy, “Country and no God.” Then it became “God and Country.” But Jack insisted that the two presented a conflict of interest. Which would start the arguments… Edward accusing his son of letting Hitlers roam free on the earth, and Jack accusing his father of simply trying to justify the last sixty years of his life. And, as Edward watched the US slowly dissolve into the North American Union, his frustration always found its explosive release at his son’s seeming indifference to it all.