The Golden City Read Online Free PDF

world.”
    “What are you talking about? Is she okay?”
    “Maya is not a Traveler. An ordinary person can only cross over through one of the few access points around the world. The Ancients knew where they were. Now most of them are lost.”
    “So what happened to her?”
    “No one knows. Simon Lumbroso is still at the Mary of Zion church in Ethiopia.”
    Hollis nodded. “That’s where she crossed over.”
    “C’est correct . Six days have passed, but Maya has not reappeared in the sanctuary.”
    “Is there a plan to save her?”
    “All we can do is wait.” Linden took a sip of wine. “I got your email about what happened in Berlin. Did you leave Mother Blessing’s body in the computer center?”
    “I drove north and buried her in the countryside. But I didn’t put up a headstone or any kind of marker. “
    “Mother Blessing would not care about that. Did she have a Proud Death?”
    Hollis was startled for a second. He remembered Maya using the phrase. “She killed six men and then someone shot her. You decide if that was a Proud Death.” He opened the metal carrying tube, took out Mother Blessing’s sword, and placed it on the kitchen table. “At the last moment, she handed me this.”
    “Please be precise, Mr. Wilson. Mother Blessing gave you her sword or you took it from her body?”
    “She gave it to me, I guess. So I’m returning it.”
    “Perhaps she wanted you to accept her obligation.”
    “That’s not going to happen. I didn’t grow up in a Harlequin family.”
    “Nor did I,” Linden said. “I was a soldier with the First Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment until I had a disagreement with a senior officer. For two years, I worked as a bodyguard in Moscow and then Thorn hired me as a mercenary. Right away, I knew this was what I was meant to do. We Harlequins do not defend the rich and the powerful. We protect the prophets and visionaries, those Travelers that push history in a new direction.”
    “You do what you want, Linden. I’ve got my own objectives.”
    Linden waited a few seconds, as if he wanted to confirm what he had just heard, and then seemed to shut down one of the compartments in his mind. He flicked his fingers and that was it. Hollis left the room.
    —
    Feeling conscious of the hidden rifle, he turned right onto Ludgate Hill and took the first left onto Limeburner Lane. The Evergreen Foundation occupied a large glass-and-steel building about a hundred yards down the street. Black support beams and black granite panels framed the building’s tinted windows. From a distance, it looked as if a massive vertical grid had been dropped into the middle of London.
    The building was guarded by an armed security staff. Pretending to be a bicycle messenger, Hollis had entered the building a few days ago and asked for directions. Anyone visiting the Foundation had to pass through a short “L” shaped corridor made of green glass which allowed a backscatter x-ray machine to look beneath their clothes.
    A Victorian-era office building was on the other side of street. An international architectural firm was the sole tenant and photographs of buildings in Dubai and Saudi Arabia had been placed in the ground floor window. Hollis had studied the photographs and decided that thearchitects had simply taken the designs for a prison and had added palm trees, fountains and a pool.
    He rang the doorbell at the architectural firm and waited to see if anybody would come to the door. When no one responded, he stood directly in front of the entrance door and unbuttoned his overcoat. A crowbar hung from a cord around his neck. He forced the edge of the bar between the door and the lock and then pushed sideways with all his strength. The screws holding the drop-bolt lock were ripped away and the door popped open.
    When Hollis got inside the building, he took a steel wedge out of his pocket and kicked it into the crack beneath the door, jamming it shut. He decided to avoid the elevator and climbed