Текст книги "Black Sun"
Автор книги: Graham Brown
Соавторы: Graham Brown
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 24 страниц)
CHAPTER 21
Standing on the weather-beaten deck of a rusted, aging freighter, Danielle watched over the port rail as Hong Kong disappeared behind them. They’d bribed their way onto the vessel and sailed with it in the early hours of the morning. The ship, laden to the brim with small-engine parts and other manufactured goods, was headed on a southeasterly course toward its home port in Manila. Danielle’s own home lay much farther away and if she was right it would be a long time before she saw it again.
While Hawker minded Yuri, she attempted to contact Arnold Moore on the satellite phone.
“Thank God you’re alive,” Moore exclaimed. “I honestly feared the worst. The explosion at Kang’s tower was all over the news. Back channels are reporting Kang’s security killing a number of people who they’re calling terrorists.”
She thought about Petrov. “I think some people were killed, but they weren’t terrorists. And we’re okay. But I’m worried about McCarter—Hawker said you’d heard from him.”
“He reached us shortly after you were taken,” Moore said to her. “But no contact since. He said he was injured, but insisted it was manageable, so I have no explanations for his silence. I have several teams looking for him. But Mexico’s a big country.”
“He’d run even if he saw them,” she said, thinking about how little McCarter trusted the NRI. “You don’t think Kang has gotten to him?”
“Doubtful,” Moore said. “Our data shows his people swarming all over the Yucatan. But nothing to suggest he’s found McCarter. So wherever the good professor is hiding, let’s hope he maintains the sense to stay there. Perhaps he’ll listen to you, if we can reestablish contact.”
After a moment of contemplation Danielle decided that was unlikely. Once upon a time she had dragged McCarter into things, but in this case he was a fellow zealot, all but possessed by the need to push on. The fact that he would not fly back to the States after what had happened was only the latest proof.
“Is Hawker with you?” Moore asked.
She looked ahead on the deck to where Hawker was watching Yuri, showing the boy how to use his hand like a wing and let it ride on the wind. Yuri didn’t speak often but as he copied Hawker’s actions his face beamed with joy.
She’d felt a similar wave of happiness at seeing Hawker again, mostly because he was rescuing her, but also because he was a friend. That was a precious commodity she’d pretty much run out of.
“He is,” she said.
“And what’s your situation?”
“I think our departure went unnoticed, but we’re not without problems.”
“Kang.” Moore guessed.
“To begin with,” she replied. “But it goes beyond that now. Do you know a Russian named Saravich?”
“Ivan Saravich?” Moore said, clearly recognizing the name. “I know of him. What the hell’s he got to do with this?”
“Tell me who he is first,” she said.
“Saravich is an old KGB hound. Back a few years he was listed as an enforcer, a problem solver for them. I’d have guessed he’d been put out to pasture by now.”
“Not unless his pasture is the south coast of China,” she said. “Apparently he bribed or removed your contact there and took a meeting with Hawker in his place.”
“To what end?”
“It seems Kang stole something from mother Russia as well: a twelve-year-old boy named Yuri.”
“Why?” Moore said, surprised.
“Saravich fed Hawker some line about the kid being used to extort information out of a Russian scientist. But I think the real reason has to do with his being a subject of experiments at the Russian Science Directorate.”
She glanced at Yuri. “He seems a little restrained, almost autistic or something. He also seems to have a sixth sense regarding energy fields, electricity, and magnetism.”
“Odd,” Moore said. “You think it’s connected with the search for the stones.”
“Kang is after them,” she said. “God knows why or even how he heard about them but a person who could sense varying degrees of electromagnetism might be very helpful in such an event.”
“I guess it makes sense,” Moore said. “The Russians have been known to experiment with psychics, clairvoyance, and things like that for years. It doesn’t surprise me that they had this kid in some type of program. But as far as I know it’s always been a big joke to them, their version of the four hundred dollar hammers and the bridge to nowhere. Certainly nothing has ever come of it that I’m aware of. But if Saravich is involved, they must feel differently about this boy.”
“The thing is,” she said, “Hawker made a deal with Saravich regarding the kid. A deal I broke.”
Moore was silent for a moment, a fact that concerned her.
“I’m guessing that’s a problem,” she said.
“Saravich will come after you,” Moore explained. “And Hawker especially. He’s a prideful son of a bitch. Even if he could let it go, he wouldn’t.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said. “See if you can leak some misdirection, buy us some time. Otherwise I think Hawker is going to go after him, try to take him head-on.”
It was something she didn’t want to see happen, not just because she feared for Hawker but because she didn’t want any more blood on her hands.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Moore said. “Where are you, now?”
“You know the proverbial slow boat to China?” she asked. “We’re on the return trip. We’ll be in Manila in a few days. How are things going on your end?”
“Not well,” Moore said. “The CIA is involved now. A sense of fear has begun to develop about the stone. Even in the president’s mind.”
“That’s not good news,” she noted.
“No,” he said, “it’s not. The president wants two separate teams studying it. So we’re getting joint custody, it seems. And he wants the stone moved out of Washington. We’re taking it to Nevada. A lab is being set up inside Yucca Mountain, at the unfinished nuclear waste depository.”
She realized there could be only one reason for that. “The energy pulse is still growing.”
“Our containment building was in danger of a breach, but the bigger fear is detonation. We’ve pinpointed the parameters of the countdown and the zero state will be reached on December twenty-first, at 5:32 in the evening, Pacific time.”
Danielle listened to the date. McCarter had recounted the story to her several times. At the end of this epoch, which had begun 5,114 years before, the Mayan Long Count Calendar rolled over, resetting its digits to zero. The prophecy spoke of the world ending in a flood of darkness. Dark sky, dark waters pouring from the heavens, dark earth. By itself the legend was just mythology, but when connected with the stone they’d found and its pending countdown and McCarter’s theory that there were at least three others like it, the myth had taken on a disconcerting reality.
“When are you moving it?” she asked.
“End of the week. And if we can’t figure out what this thing is supposed to do, or find the other stones in Mexico that might be doing the same thing, they’re going to destroy this one, bury what’s left, and hope for the best.”
Since the day he’d seen it, Moore had treated the stone almost like a divine gift of some kind. He saw purpose in it. Danielle felt the same way, but sometimes she wondered if she could trust those feelings.
They’d sought to keep it hidden from the CIA and military because the first question from those organizations would undoubtedly be how to use it as a weapon. And now two years later, with the stone generating more and more energy and counting down to something, it seemed as if that might be exactly what it was.
“Do you want me to bring you home?” Moore asked. “You’re entitled. And I’m sure Marcus would be thrilled to have you back.”
She smiled at the mention of the name and felt a sudden wave of anxiety, all at the same time.
“You sure about that?” she asked. “I think the neighbors called D.C. Metro after our last fight.”
“Pride does strange things to people. He’s angry, but you know he wants you back.”
She wondered. It had been a painful departure. “Does he know I’m okay?”
“Of course,” Moore said. “I contacted him as soon as I got word. And I’ll confirm it to him once we’re done here. Unless you want to tell him yourself.”
The offer caught her by surprise. She was an operative on a mission. It was a position that didn’t allow call-ins to home. Still, she liked the idea. She wanted to hear his voice, to tell him she was okay. But something held her back.
“You’d be bending the rules for me,” she said.
“Marcus was one of us once,” he said. “I can bend them for both of you, or I can bring you home.”
That offer sounded like a godsend. A huge part of her wanted to be done with the madness. She was drained emotionally and physically from everything that had happened. How nice it would feel to go home, sleep in her own bed, and wake up to Marcus making coffee for her. And even if their relationship was ruined, even if he’d moved on, or was still too angry to forgive her, she wanted to get home, to see him, even if just to explain more calmly why she’d made her particular choice. Yet as the thought crossed her mind she wondered why she should have to explain herself.
It seemed like the same old fight was already brewing. And McCarter was still out there, missing. She’d taken up the baton to protect him and she wasn’t ready to relinquish it until he was safe.
Feeling a sick sense of déjà vu she decided. “If you’re right, something catastrophic is about to happen,” she said. “What good is coming back home, if I arrive on the wings of disaster? Unless you have someone better in mind, the best thing I can do for everyone is to press on.”
She told herself it was cold logic, but she knew there was more to it. She knew herself well enough to sense the avoidance in her decision. She was ducking something: not the fight that would likely flare up once again, that came all too easily, but something else, something deeper. It was as if some truth waited there for her and she wasn’t ready to see it yet.
Moore remained silent, but Danielle sensed that he approved and perhaps had even expected this. “You sure?” he asked finally.
“I finish what I start,” she said. “Please ask Marcus to forgive me.”
“I will,” Moore said. “Do you think you can find McCarter?”
Danielle thought about what had taken place in Mexico. The work she and McCarter had done. The discussions they’d had. It had been only eight days earlier, but she found it was like trying to recall what one had done a year or two ago. Still, something came to her.
“I have an idea where to start,” she said.
“Good,” Moore said, sounding proud of her. “What about Hawker? It might be helpful if he came with you. It’ll keep him from going after Saravich.”
“I’ll ask,” she said. “What do you want me to do with Yuri? I’m not sure bringing him along is a good idea.”
Moore hesitated. “If you send him here, I can’t promise you he won’t end up with State or the CIA. Either way he could be sent right back in Russia. If you keep him close he might be able to help.”
She didn’t like that idea, didn’t like the concept of using the young boy to aid in the search, but the thought of him being returned to Russia was unacceptable. “You’d better arrange travel for three.”
“Where to?”
“Just get us to Campeche,” she said. “I’ll take it from there.”
CHAPTER 22
Professor McCarter stepped out of a cramped, aging apartment building and limped into the heart of a tiny fishing village called Puerto Azul. He’d chosen this particular place to stay because it was not a hotel or motel, and because unlike most guesthouses in the area it had only an inside entrance that led to a set of steep, creaky stairs and a hallway with five doors, facts that he hoped would enhance his security.
But mostly he’d chosen it because it reminded him of the apartment he and his wife had stayed in on their honeymoon, which they’d spent in this very town, while McCarter had worked on a dig an hour inland.
He couldn’t be sure if it was the familiar confines or the strange vision he’d had in the sweat lodge in the Chiapas village, but he had a sense now that his wife was with him. She was helping him. Watching over him.
He’d had several vivid dreams of her, some pleasant and others closer to nightmares. And at times both in public and in the privacy of his room, he found himself speaking out loud to her without thinking, as if she were right beside him.
He’d been in Puerto Azul for three days, after a week in the mountain village recuperating. Oco’s return with a bottle of antibiotics had saved him, both from the bacterial plague spreading through his body and the care of the shaman. And though the infection was not quite gone, he’d left the village as soon as he was strong enough to walk.
At the time McCarter hadn’t known where to go. He guessed that the men who’d attacked him thought he was dead; otherwise they wouldn’t have left him. But he considered the possibility that his reporting in to Moore would be leaked, or that Moore’s subsequent actions on Danielle’s behalf would lead their enemy to believe he might be alive.
So he’d hid and let his beard grow and returned, not to the town and hotel where he and Danielle had been based (and had left many belongings), but to Puerto Azul, eighty miles from Cancun on the northern coast of the Yucatan.
The town drew only a smattering of tourists, though enough that his presence would not be conspicuous. And though it was a long way from the interior and even the coastal Mayan sites, it remained within reach of the area where he and Danielle expected to find the next of the power-generating stones.
He stepped out onto the dusty street and began his daily walk, passing the street kids who’d taken to calling him Moses Negro: Black Moses. With the overlarge walking stick he used to support himself, a notebook in the crook of his arm, and the emergent bushiness of his graying beard, he must have looked the part. In some ways he felt the part, trying to lead the NRI to a promised land of sorts. He hoped it would not be forty years of wrong turns before they got there.
To find the Island of the Shroud, he’d combined what he’d learned from the cave in Brazil with Mayan writings found in Mexico and Belize. He’d used satellite imagery, infrared aerial photography, and the whispers of villagers who still lived in the old ways. It had brought them to the crater lake on Mount Pulimundo, to the monument of Ahau Balam, the Jaguar King. McCarter had expected to find the key to his search there. But the information they’d discovered was a blur, incomprehensible at the time, and only slightly more sensible after he’d transcribed the barely readable smudges from his linen shirt.
What he’d found prior to the Island of the Shroud told him this: The path begins with spirit guide Ahau Balam. The tip of the spear reaches out from the great city to the temple of the warrior. There will be found the Sacrifice of the Soul. From there to the shining path, the footsteps of the gods and the Sacrifice of the Body. With these shall rise the Shield of the Jaguar.
What it meant he, couldn’t say. The king depicted on the stolen monolith had held no shield, and no spear. The only glyphs they’d found on it were numbers. Even if he was the king or Ahau that the legend spoke of, McCarter could not see how that would lead them anywhere else. It was like finding directions that said: “Take the road to the other road and then turn on the third road.” Frustrated at his inability to come up with a meaning to this, he’d ventured out of his sanctuary. He needed more information.
He limped down the street, leaning heavily on the staff. Halfway between the apartment and the beach he found an Internet café. After paying his money and settling into a rickety chair, McCarter logged on.
He wanted to tap into his university’s system, where he would have access to data stored on its mainframe, data that included satellite surveys of the Yucatan. He rested, waiting for the connection to go through. He had no way of knowing if his account was being monitored by anyone but Danielle had warned him against any such actions on an insecure network. The people they were dealing with were extremely sophisticated and if they were monitoring the university somehow, tapping into his account would be like broadcasting to the world that he was alive and well in Mexico.
The thought of taking a bus to another town, to another Internet café somewhere, had crossed his mind. But he was too damned tired. He remained in recovery, weakened by the injury. The heat of the day sapped his energy and night sweats and chills kept him from sleeping.
Nervously he typed in his password.
As his finger hovered over the ENTER key, another thought went through his head. Let someone else do this. Simple enough, except others had more to lose than he did and he’d begun to think he might have something to gain.
He tapped the key. The hourglass flipped a few times and then he had access.
Zooming in close he could see some of the major ruins of the area and even some of the smaller ones. But he doubted anything they found in a tourist-ready environment would be helpful. McCarter was after older ruins, structures swallowed up by the jungle long before the great cities of Chichen Itza and Palenque were even built.
Modern theory said that Mayan civilization stretched back two thousand years or so. What McCarter and Danielle had found in the Brazilian rain forest suggested it had a precursor that existed long before that, and that the people who’d lived there had abandoned the site and moved north, journeying through the Andes and up through the isthmus of Central America, eventually settling in the highlands and the jungles of the Yucatan, Guatemala, and Belize.
The descendants of those travelers eventually became the Maya. And if McCarter and the NRI were right, the story of their exodus became part of Mayan prehistory, the departure from their place of origin, a place they called Tulan Zuyua, carrying with them the absolute essence of power: the spirit forms of their gods contained in special glowing stones, items eerily similar to the one that the NRI now possessed.
McCarter guessed that any similar stones would be found among the oldest ruins of the culture. And to find such ancient ruins he needed photos that showed more than the naked eye could see.
While the first set of visual images printed, he opened a second directory, this one filled with infrared images. The IR images peeled away the green of the foliage and showed heat. And the heat of different types of vegetation told him what he needed to know. The lowland Maya used limestone to build their structures and even when the forests had consumed those structures the heat they emitted was different than that of the regular ground.
As the image resolved on the screen McCarter felt hope growing quickly, followed by fear and a certain sense of hopelessness. There were hundreds of unexplored ruins in the Yucatan, two dozen or more within a twenty-mile radius. How the hell would he decide where to start?
A phone rang behind him, a cellphone in the pocket of another customer. It was a familiar ring, the same ringtone as his own, and it sent him into a moment of reflection. He recalled a conversation with Arnold Moore several months before.
“Hope I’m not bothering you,” Moore had said. The tone in his voice was that of a salesman who knew he was in fact bothering someone and didn’t really care.
“Do we have to do another hearing?” McCarter had asked, referencing the series of congressional inquiries that had focused on his few moments with the NRI.
“No,” Moore had said, “nothing like that.” A brief pause and then, “I understand you’ve been asking for access to the stone. I think I can arrange it.”
That had surprised McCarter. “Terrific,” he said.
“First I have some questions,” Moore replied. “What do you know about December twenty-first, 2012?”
Two thousand twelve: the supposed end date of the Mayan calendar. For the next ten minutes McCarter tried to explain that the date did not mean the end of times to the Maya, which so many people perceived it to mean. At least not universally.
“How’s that?” Moore asked.
“First off,” McCarter said, “there are monuments with inscriptions predicting events, often very mundane events that are supposed to happen well after that date. Second, the number of Mayan references to that particular date are relatively few given the overall hieroglyphic record. And third, because the Mayan Long Count was written like an odometer of sorts, some of the current theory suggested that even those apocalyptic descriptions were really references to things that happened on the previous rollover, 5,114 years ago.”
He tried to use an analogy that Moore would be familiar with. “It’s similar to the Revelation of John. Many biblical scholars would tell you that Revelation was not a prophecy of the end of times but a hidden description of contemporaneous events in Rome and the persecution of Christians in the first century.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Moore said, or something like that. It sounded as if he wasn’t really listening. Then, serious again, he asked, “Do you know of anything that would suggest otherwise, something reliable?”
McCarter racked his brain. “There is a monument, called Tortugero Monument Six. It’s heavily damaged, but the glyphs that remain reference an event at the end of the calendar, the folding of the Thirteenth Baktun, the end of the thirteenth period of 144,000 days, which occurs on December twenty-first of 2012. They tell us that the god of change, Bolon Yokte, will descend from the Black something and carry out … something.”
Stunned silence followed. “Something,” Moore said. “What do you mean, something?”
McCarter shrugged. “No one knows. The glyphs that describe what those somethings are have been destroyed. Much like some of the glyphs we found in Brazil. Almost as if they had been smashed deliberately.”
“So not the ever-present concern for the Maya that we’ve been led to believe,” Moore noted dejectedly.
“No,” McCarter said. “More like one strand of thought. Perhaps an outcast strand. Like most apocalyptic beliefs it was not really considered valid or worthwhile to the greater culture itself.”
“And yet it persisted throughout, unbowed,” Moore said. “What does that tell you?”
McCarter considered Moore’s words. What was Moore looking for? A strand of truth that could not be proved? All that could be proved by such persistence is that some group would not let the story die. A group within a group. A group with knowledge. The priests, perhaps. Or even a subset of them, making sure the date and the prophecy lived on despite its actual dismissal and unpopularity among the greater culture and its leaders.
“Keepers of the flame,” McCarter said. “But still just a fanatical devotion.”
“What if I told you I had something that might explain their fanaticism, something to indicate that an event of great importance will in fact occur on that day?”
McCarter knew what Moore was suggesting: the very subject of their call, the Brazil stone. “Then I’d tell you there may be others,” McCarter said.
Silence followed once again, long enough that it almost seemed the call had been dropped. This time McCarter sensed calculation behind the quiet. Deliberation, even concern. Finally Moore spoke again, asking, “Have you been sleeping well, Professor?”
It was an odd question, and odder still because McCarter had been suffering terrible insomnia for months. “No, I haven’t,” he said.
“Neither have any of us,” Moore replied. “You’d better come to Washington.”
“Book me a ticket,” McCarter said, “then we can talk.”
A loud bang startled McCarter back to the present. He whipped around defensively. Another patron had stood up and accidentally knocked over a chair.
McCarter found his heart pounding and his hands shaking. The young man and his female friend were laughing. She was urging him to be more careful.
They were Americans. Several buttons adorned her jacket. One read, 2012, PARTY LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW. The second was a reference to Dick Clark’s long-term stint as official Times Square New Year’s host. It read, 2012, KUKULCAN’S NEW YEAR’S ROCKIN’ EVE.
They just had no idea.
The pending date had brought thousands of extra tourists to Mexico for this moment. Most were from America, but large numbers had come from Europe and Asia, too. A few were there with legitimate interest, but the vast majority had come to enjoy the weather and another excuse to party.
Certainly McCarter couldn’t blame them, and their presence had made it easier to hide among the crowds while he and Danielle conducted their research. But now he worried who else might be hiding among those crowds.
The American couple looked his way; the man stared at him. Suddenly McCarter needed to get out of there.
He gathered his papers, logged off the computer, and handed ten dollars to the clerk. Hobbling out into the street he glanced back at the shop. The clerk and the other patron were watching him and for a moment a wave of paranoia swept uncontrollably over him.
Getting into a rhythm with his walking staff, McCarter moved quickly, albeit awkwardly, down the edge of the street. So what if they were watching him. They were nobodies, university-age tourists. They’re not with the enemy, he told himself. They’re not with the enemy.
He could hear the thoughts reverberating through his mind, thoughts that seemed to grow stronger the harder he fought against them.
“Help me,” he whispered to the air around him, in search of the spirit of his deceased wife. “Olivia, if you can, please help me.”
Hearing no reply, he rushed forward, seeking the only place he felt marginally safe: his small room at the guesthouse. He needed to get there and sit down and study the printouts and the data. There he could make notes undisturbed and try once again to make sense of the inscription he’d seen on the Island of the Shroud.
But as he hobbled along a new thought occurred to him. His notes would be extremely valuable to their competitor. A treasure that could be found or stolen. Of course the very act of making notes and conclusions in the first place would endanger him, perhaps even make him superfluous if he were caught.
If they had my notes, my very thoughts, what would they need me for?
He tried to calm down. Needing his mind to stop whirling, he considered finding a bar and drinking himself into oblivion. But instead he slowed his pace and deliberately slowed his breathing. Somewhat calmer, he changed direction, heading down a random alley.
What he really needed was a way to make notes and then destroy them instantly: a shredder or a fire, or something he could scribble on and erase over and over again without leaving any evidence of his conclusions.
He needed a chalkboard. It was so simple but it was perfect. That would protect both himself and the mission. But unless he broke into a school somewhere, he wasn’t likely to find a chalkboard in the sleepy fishing village of Puerto Azul.
The thought loomed like a giant roadblock. And then he looked up and found himself at the end of the alley, one narrow street from the edge of the sandy beach. With the tide going out, the sand was still smooth and flat and packed hard enough to draw in with ease.
McCarter had found his chalkboard.
