Mal’akh and Zachary Solomon

Mal’akh and Zachary Solomon are connected not as allies but as victim and plotter: while both are imprisoned at Soganlik Prison near Istanbul, Mal’akh arranges Zachary’s death to steal his wealth and secure his own release. The scheme gives Mal’akh a new life, but it also leaves him with a grievance against Peter Solomon, whose refusal to buy Zachary’s freedom becomes, in Mal’akh’s telling, the original cause of his son’s death. Years later, a recollection of Zachary’s knowledge of a Masonic pyramid brings Mal’akh back to the Solomon family, turning a prison crime into part of a longer pursuit of hidden wisdom and revenge.

The Prison Scheme

Zachary is being held in Turkey when Peter Solomon visits him. A prison administrator hints that a payment could secure Zachary’s immediate release, clear the charges, and avoid prosecution at home. Peter refuses. He will not teach his son that money can erase accountability, and asks to speak with him instead. The administrator says access depends on accepting the offer; Peter leaves, warning that the State Department will seek Zachary’s return and insisting that he be kept safe.

Mal’akh, then known as Inmate 37, overhears the exchange. He sees Peter’s refusal not as a decision about how to raise his son but as an opening: if money is the barrier to freedom, Zachary’s fortune could buy Mal’akh’s. The distinction between the father’s resources and the son’s wealth makes the plan possible. Mal’akh approaches the administrator with an offer that promises both men what they want: Zachary will die, Mal’akh will take the fortune, and the administrator will be able to leave the prison behind.

The administrator accepts. Zachary is killed in his cell, and the Solomon family receives news of his death two days later. The account sent to them describes a violent killing and identifies the administrator as the principal suspect; by then, he has disappeared. Zachary’s funds, transferred to a private numbered account, are emptied after his death. Mal’akh has turned the prison’s corrupt offer into an escape route, while the family is left with a coffin and no clear way to trace the stolen wealth.

Death, Theft, and a New Identity

Peter travels to Turkey by private jet and returns with Zachary’s coffin, which the family buries in its cemetery. The administrator is never found. Mal’akh, meanwhile, escapes with the fortune and a future he can purchase: money provides new identities, new passports, and distance from the prison where the scheme began. He adopts a new name and settles on Syros Island, remaking himself outside the Solomon family’s reach.

The new life is more than a change of location. Mal’akh leaves the drug world, cultivates his appearance and strength, and turns to reading and physical training. For a time, wealth, cultural pursuits, and the admiration of others seem to offer the transformation he wants. Yet these gains do not resolve the emptiness he associates with his earlier imprisonment. That dissatisfaction matters to the relationship because it leaves Zachary’s old connection to the Solomon family available as a possible source of meaning—and as a route back to the family whose money and choices shaped Mal’akh’s escape.

A Grievance Recast as Destiny

A television program about Freemasonry introduces Mal’akh to stories of a mysterious stone pyramid said to conceal lost wisdom. The subject stirs a memory of something Zachary had heard from his father about such a pyramid. Mal’akh recognizes that, although Zachary is dead, what he learned may still be useful. The prison victim thus remains present in Mal’akh’s life not through any continuing relationship, but through knowledge that can reconnect him to Peter Solomon and the object he seeks.

When Mal’akh later confronts Peter at the Solomon estate, the history of the prison killing becomes an accusation. Peter has wounded the intruder, who is fleeing after failing to obtain the pyramid. At the ravine, Mal’akh tells Peter that he is responsible for Zachary’s death because he had the option of securing his release and chose not to pay. The claim reverses the roles established by the prison scheme: Mal’akh was the person who planned Zachary’s murder, yet he presents Peter’s refusal as the decisive act of violence. Peter answers from his own understanding of the past, insisting that Mal’akh knows nothing about him.

Mal’akh’s accusation gives their conflict a personal logic, but it does not erase his agency. His earlier decision to exploit Zachary’s wealth, arrange the killing, and disappear is the direct cause of Zachary’s death. By blaming Peter, he transforms a calculated crime into a story of injury and destiny, one that lets him cast his pursuit of the Solomons as a response to what was done to him.

The Relationship’s Afterlife

The connection between Mal’akh and Zachary continues after Zachary’s death through two inheritances: the fortune Mal’akh takes and the remembered clue about the pyramid. The money enables his new identity; the recollection directs him back toward the Solomon family and its guarded Masonic secret. In this way, the relationship links the practical mechanics of the prison plot to the novel’s larger contest over hidden knowledge.

The pyramid also gives the past a further consequence. Peter and Warren Bellamy treat the pyramid and its capstone as a secret that must be protected from unworthy hands, while Mal’akh pursues the knowledge he associates with it. Against that conflict, Zachary’s role is both absent and formative: he is the son whose death Mal’akh caused, the source of the fortune that freed him, and the remembered link through which Mal’akh finds a path back to Peter. Mal’akh’s later identity and ambitions grow out of that chain, but his repeated claim that Peter is to blame remains a self-serving reinterpretation of the crime he himself planned.