Page 85 of The Lost Symbol

I’ve got to get off the road, he thought. If Katherine hadn’t yet phoned the police, the explosion would certainly draw their attention. And a shirtless man driving a limousine would be hard to miss.

After years of preparation, Mal’akh could scarcely believe the night was now upon him. The journey to this moment had been a long, difficult one. What began years ago in misery . . . will end tonight in glory.

On the night it all began, he had not had the name Mal’akh. In fact, on the night it all began, he had not had any name at all. Inmate 37. Like most of the prisoners at the brutal Soganlik Prison outside of Istanbul, Inmate 37 was here because of drugs.

He had been lying on his bunk in a cement cell, hungry and cold in the darkness, wondering how long he would be incarcerated. His new cellmate, whom he’d met only twenty-four hours ago, was sleeping in the bunk above him. The prison administrator, an obese alcoholic who hated his job and took it out on the inmates, had just killed all the lights for the night.

It was almost ten o’clock when Inmate 37 heard the conversation filtering in through the ventilation shaft. The first voice was unmistakably clear—the piercing, belligerent accent of the prison administrator, who clearly did not appreciate being woken up by a late-night visitor.

“Yes, yes, you’ve come a long way,” he was saying, “but there are no visitors for the first month. State regulations. No exceptions.”

The voice that replied was soft and refined, filled with pain. “Is my son safe?”

“He is a drug addict.”

“Is he being treated well?”

“Well enough,” the administrator said. “This is not a hotel.”

There was a pained pause. “You do realize the U.S. State Department will request extradition.”

“Yes, yes, they always do. It will be granted, although the paperwork might take us a couple of weeks . . . or even a month . . . depending.”

“Depending on what?”

“Well,” the administrator said, “we are understaffed.” He paused. “Of course, sometimes concerned parties like yourself make donations to the prison staff to help us push things through more quickly.”

The visitor did not reply.

“Mr. Solomon,” the administrator continued, lowering his voice, “for a man like yourself, for whom money is no object, there are always options. I know people in government. If you and I work together, we may be able to get your son out of here . . . tomorrow, with all the charges dropped. He would not even have to face prosecution at home.”

The response was immediate. “Forgetting the legal ramifications of your suggestion, I refuse to teach my son that money solves all problems or that there is no accountability in life, especially in a serious matter like this.”

“You’d like to leave him here?”

“I’d like to speak to him. Right now.”

“As I said, we have rules. Your son is unavailable to you . . . unless you would like to negotiate his immediate release.”

A cold silence hung for several moments. “The State Department will be contacting you. Keep Zachary safe. I expect him on a plane home within the week. Good night.”

The door slammed.

Inmate 37 could not believe his ears. What kind of father leaves his son in this hellhole in order to teach him a lesson? Peter Solomon had even rejected an offer to clear Zachary’s record.

It was later that night, lying awake in his bunk, that Inmate 37 had realized how he would free himself. If money was the only thing separating a prisoner from freedom, then Inmate 37 was as good as free. Peter Solomon might not be willing to part with money, but as anyone who read the tabloids knew, his son, Zachary, had plenty of money, too. The next day, Inmate 37 spoke privately to the administrator and suggested a plan—a bold, ingenious scheme that would give them both exactly what they wanted.

“Zachary Solomon would have to die for this to work,” explained Inmate 37. “But we could both disappear immediately. You could retire to the Greek Islands. You would never see this place again.”

After some discussion, the two men shook hands. Soon Zachary Solomon will be dead, Inmate 37 thought, smiling to think how easy it would be.

It was two days later that the State Department contacted the Solomon family with the horrific news. The prison snapshots showed their son’s brutally bludgeoned body, lying curled and lifeless on the floor of his prison cell. His head had been bashed in by a steel bar, and the rest of him was battered and twisted beyond what was humanly imaginable. He appeared to have been tortured and finally killed. The prime suspect was the prison administrator himself, who had disappeared, probably with all of the murdered boy’s money. Zachary had signed papers moving his vast fortune into a private numbered account, which had been emptied immediately following his death. There was no telling where the money was now.

Peter Solomon flew to Turkey on a private jet and returned with their son’s casket, which they buried in the Solomon family cemetery. The prison administrator was never found. Nor would he be, Inmate 37 knew. The Turk’s rotund body was now resting at the bottom of the Sea of Marmara, feeding the blue manna crabs that migrated in through the Bosporus Strait. The vast fortune belonging to Zachary Solomon had all been moved to an untraceable numbered account. Inmate 37 was a free man again—a free man with a massive fortune.

The Greek Islands were like heaven. The light. The water. The women.

There was nothing money couldn’t buy—new identities, new passports, new hope. He chose a Greek name—Andros Dareios—Andros meaning “warrior,” and Dareios meaning “wealthy.” The dark nights in prison had frightened him, and Andros vowed never to go back. He shaved off his shaggy hair and shunned the drug world entirely. He began life anew—exploring never-before-imagined sensual pleasures. The serenity of sailing alone on the ink-blue Aegean Sea became his new heroin trance; the sensuality of sucking moist arni souvlakia right off the skewer became his new Ecstasy; and the rush of cliff diving into the foam-filled ravines of Mykonos became his new cocaine.