Chapter 11
The Waters of Destiny and the Return to Madrid
The warm Egyptian night air struck Alejandro's face like a long-awaited relief.
They emerged from the dark crack in the rock, swimming silently, reaching the wide, calm banks of the Nile.
The full moon reflected on the water like a silver mirror, and the sound of crickets and wind in the palm trees finally replaced the roar of French explosives.
To the east, the silhouette of old Alexandria cut across the horizon, dotted by the bonfires of Napoleon Bonaparte's immense encampment.
Lieutenant Vance was the first to drag himself onto the muddy, reed-lined bank, collapsing onto his back, breathing heavily. Don Luiz helped Father Bartolomeu sit on a rough rock; the Jesuit still clutched the silver crucifix to his chest, eyes fixed on the stars, murmuring silent thanks.
Mateo "El Gato" wrung out the hem of his stolen French uniform, letting the water drain, but his gaze soon fixed on Alejandro.
"We did it, captain," Mateo whispered, indicating the waterproof leather satchel Alejandro carried firmly strapped to his shoulder. "The Corsican General and that traitor Mendoza are going to turn Taposiris upside down, find the box... and think they hold the power of the world in their hands."
"They have exactly what their ambition deserves to receive," Alejandro answered, his voice low and calculating.
Discreetly, while the others recovered, Alejandro brought his hand to the chest of his damp uniform. The metal of the two hidden rings seemed to pulse subtly against his skin, like a sleeping heart of iron. The other eight rings were locked in the bronze box inside the satchel.
The deception was set: the Spanish Crown and Mendoza's forces would receive the remaining eight rings, believing the relic complete, while the true key to the circuit would remain under the guard of the De La Vega line.
Samira Al-Saddik approached the group, emerging from the shadows of the reeds like a desert specter. She looked at Alejandro with a deep respect, quite different from the disdain she'd shown when receiving those "foreigners" hours earlier.
"The boat Moreau arranged is hidden in the fishermen's cove, half a kilometer from here," said Samira, pointing to a dark bend in the river.
"It will take you back to the British ship waiting offshore. My mission with you ends here, engineer. The desert belongs to my ancestors, and I'll stay to make sure the men in blue don't follow your trail."
Don Luiz stepped forward and extended his hand to the guide, in a gesture of deep military chivalry.
"Spain owes you a debt of honor, Samira. If the world survives Bonaparte, the desert's legends will sing your name."
Samira gave a proud half-smile, accepted the handshake, and, with a silent nod to Alejandro, turned on her heel and vanished into the dune's darkness, merging once more with the land she had sworn to protect.
"Very well, gentlemen," Don Luiz ordered, recovering his commanding bearing. "Vance, lead the way to the boat. Alejandro, keep that satchel close to your body. We're going home."
Three Weeks Later — The Walls of Madrid
Egypt's suffocating heat had given way to the cold breeze of the Spanish autumn.
After a clandestine and tense sea voyage, escaping the French naval blockades, the group finally set foot back on Madrid soil.
The mission had been completed in the eyes of the court.
The bronze box with the eight rings had been handed over to the colonial authorities and to Count Diego de Mendoza, who celebrated the "absolute victory" of diplomacy and espionage, blind in his own arrogance, believing he held in his hands the secret that would dictate the fate of nations.
However, the true story was moving in the shadows of the Madariaga mansion.
Mendoza had consolidated his political power and celebrated his forced marriage to Elena de Madariaga.
To all of Madrid's court, the count was the most powerful man in Spain, and his wife, a silent jewel who had accepted her fate.
But behind the closed doors of the Count's palace, a deeper mystery was growing.
Elena spent her days confined to her chambers, looking out at the gardens through the windowpanes.
Her belly already betrayed several months of pregnancy.
Mendoza displayed the coming heir with dynastic pride, puffing out his chest as he spoke of "the future of his name."
He could scarcely imagine that the blood growing in his wife's womb did not carry the treachery of his veins, but rather the rebellious, untamable lineage of the De La Vegas — the fruit of that passionate, furtive night right after the ball.
Far from there, in an isolated cabin in the hills surrounding the capital, Alejandro de La Vega studied a map of Spain spread across a wooden table.
He had left behind the uniform of the Corps of Engineers. He now wore the dark clothes of a peasant. His hands, burned by Egypt's sun and marked by mechanical labor, held the two rings of unknown metal he had pilfered from the Altar of Sheba.
"Mendoza thinks he's won," Alejandro murmured to the darkness of the room, his brown eyes shining with an implacable promise. "He has the dead stones. But we have the blood. And I will come back to reclaim what is mine. Every stone. Every promise."
The sea voyage back to Europe did not end at the busy docks of Cádiz or Barcelona, as Don Luiz had planned.
Following strict coordinates that Father Bartolomeu had insisted on providing to the British ship's captain, the group came ashore at a forgotten, rocky cove on the Andalusian coast, under the protection of a dense, cold morning fog.
"I don't like this, Colonel," whispered Lieutenant Vance, keeping his hand on the rifle's trigger as the boat scraped against the stones of the deserted beach. "This isn't the military rendezvous point. We're in no-man's-land."
"Father Bartolomeu assured me our court contacts would be waiting here to avoid the French spies infesting the main roads," Don Luiz answered, adjusting his coat while helping Alejandro carry the heavy leather bag with the bronze box.
Alejandro, however, kept his senses at maximum alert. He felt the weight of the two secret rings hidden against his chest. Something about the silence of that beach didn't smell like the army. It smelled of incense and wet earth.
When the group crossed the line of dunes and entered a gorge between tall rocks, the shadows moved.
Silently, without so much as the click of steel or the sound of boots, twelve figures emerged from the fog, blocking the exit and the flanks.
They did not wear the blue coats of the French, nor the red of the British.
They wore tunics of a dark gray, almost black, made of a heavy fabric that seemed to swallow the moonlight.
Instead of ordinary muskets, they carried tactical dark-metal crossbows and short infantry swords.
On the chest of their tunics gleamed an insignia embroidered in silver thread: the medal of Saint Benedict encircled by two crossed, inverted keys.
Don Luiz drew his rapier instantly. Vance dropped to one knee in the sand, aiming with his rifle.
"Halt!" the Spanish colonel roared. "Identify yourselves in the name of the Crown, or I'll give the order to fire!"
None of the gray men answered. They simply raised their crossbows, aiming with surgical precision at the heads of Don Luiz, Vance, and Mateo. The standoff was deadly.
"Lower your weapons, gentlemen," Father Bartolomeu's voice broke the silence. But it was no longer the tired, trembling voice of the desert Jesuit. It was a cold, firm voice, carrying an absolute command.
Alejandro turned and saw the priest step forward.
Bartolomeu let his worn Jesuit cassock fall onto the sand.
Beneath it, he already wore the dark gray uniform of that elite troop.
He pulled an iron chain from around his neck bearing an insignia identical to that of the armed men.
Father Bartolomeu was, in truth, a High Inquisitor of the Congregation of the Shadows, the secret division of the Catholic Church created in the fourteenth century to contain, catalogue, and isolate supernatural threats and mystical relics from the world of men.
"Father... what does this mean?" asked Don Luiz, his voice trembling not with fear, but with disbelief at the betrayal. "We saved you in Egypt! We fought together!"
"And the Church is eternally grateful for your sacrifice, Colonel," Bartolomeu answered, his eyes impassive.
"But the Rings of Sheba do not belong to Count Mendoza's greed, nor to Napoleon Bonaparte's imperial ambitions, much less to the Royal Treasury of Spain or England. Ordinary men do not have the spiritual geometry to handle what is locked in that box. If the Crown gets its hands on this,
the world will burn in a war steel cannot win."
Two of the elite guards stepped forward. Mateo "El Gato" moved his fingers toward his daggers, but the click of four crossbows aimed at his chest froze him, cursing under his breath.
The gray guards tore the leather satchel from Alejandro's hands. The engineer did not resist physically; his calculating mind was processing the scene.
Father Bartolomeu opened the satchel in front of everyone, broke the seal, and lifted the lid of the bronze box.
Under the moonlight, the gray tunics watched the eight gleaming rings.
A solemn silence fell over the beach. Bartolomeu shut the box with a dry clang and gave a nod to his men, who withdrew with the chest into the middle of the fog.
Then the priest took two steps toward Alejandro.
The young engineer kept his bearing firm, but his right hand discreetly tensed near his chest, where the two hidden rings rested beneath the fabric of his uniform. Alejandro knew that if the inquisitor ordered a search, the secret would fall.
Bartolomeu stopped less than a hand's width from Alejandro.
He did not look at the captain's face. His gaze dropped, fixing exactly on the inner pocket of his coat, where the fabric still bore a faint circular mark from the metal.
The priest extended a trembling hand and, instead of searching him, merely rested it firmly on Alejandro's shoulder.
Their eyes met. There was no fury or suspicion in that look; there was a weary wisdom, and a hidden complicity.
"In Egypt, when the demon advanced, I saw what your chest carried, captain," Bartolomeu whispered, in a voice so low that not even Don Luiz or Mateo could hear it. "I know the box is incomplete. And the Congregation would know too... if I decided to tell them."
Alejandro held his gaze, his heart pounding steadily, calculating his next move.
"And why didn't you?" Alejandro murmured through his teeth.
Father Bartolomeu gave an enigmatic half-smile, squeezing the engineer's shoulder lightly before withdrawing his hand.
"Because Rome's men trust too much in their walls of stone to protect the world, but they forget that walls can be scaled and men can be corrupted. Solomon divided the power for a reason.
I would rather entrust the key to the circuit to a man who rejected the use of evil when death stared him in the face. Guard them well, Alejandro de La Vega. The Church will have the eight for the record of history... but humanity will need a guardian in the shadows when tyrants rise."
The priest stepped back twice, adjusting the heavy gray cloak over his shoulders, and gave a signal to the escort.
"You will be escorted safely to Madrid," Bartolomeu announced, now in a loud voice for all to hear, resuming the Order's official tone.
"You will receive your honors and gold directly from the Crown. But Egypt never happened. The Altar of Sheba turned to dust and nothing was found. That will be the report. May the Lord be with you."
The gray men vanished into the fog like ghosts, carrying the eight rings toward the secret archives of the Vatican.
When silence returned to the beach, Don Luiz drove his rapier into the sand, snorting with fury.
"We were betrayed by our own faith. Mendoza will lynch us when he finds out we came back empty-handed."
Alejandro brought his hand to his chest, feeling the subtle warmth of the two original rings that now, with the priest's hidden blessing, were legitimately his.
The Vatican thought it had control. Mendoza thought the treasure was buried.
But the true gear of destiny was in the pocket of a De La Vega.
"Let the Church keep what it thinks is the whole, my colonel," Alejandro said, a cold, determined smile cutting across his face under the moonlight. "Mendoza won't lynch us, because we'll give him exactly what the priest wants: word that the temple collapsed. Let's go back to Madrid."