So who had sent him the e-mail?
He would find out soon enough. As the first glow of dawn became visible on the horizon, he checked his Rolex and calculated the jet's arrival time in Zurich. A little before his blackmailer had demanded. Just a few more hours and they would be face-to-face. And he would discover just what the price of survival would be.
By the time the Gulfstream had taxied to a halt on an outlying runway near Zurich, Barrington had showered, shaved, and changed into a dark blue suit tailored to perfection to hint
23
at the athletic frame beneath. Surveying himself in the bathroom mirror, he saw a face too hard to be genuinely handsome, thin lips, and severe cheekbones lit by flint-gray eyes still burning with the intensity of youthful ambition. The softening touches of gray at his temples, he knew, were what saved him from looking like the coldhearted corporate warrior he was.
He had used the last hours to compose himself, drawing deeply from the well of self-belief at his inner core to concentrate his energies. As he stepped down onto the tarmac, he felt focused, alert, like a warrior about to do battle. One thing was certain, he wouldn't go down without a fight.
A gleaming black Mercedes was parked next to the plane. Beside it, a uniformed driver with sallow skin and blank eyes stood at attention in the frigid morning air, opening the rear door as Barrington approached, and wordlessly motioned him inside.
"So, where are we going?" Barrington asked as the Mercedes eased onto a twisting mountain road that seemed headed directly into the clouds. In the rearview mirror he saw only a tight-lipped smile from his driver.
"I asked you a question. And I expect an answer. I demand an answer." The icy threat in his voice was unmistakable, but the driver didn't flinch. He held Barrington's gaze for a moment with those blank eyes before turning his attention back to the road as it wound ever upward.
In an instant the rage Barrington had held in check for the last twenty-four hours burst to the surface. He leaned forward and gripped the driver's shoulder as he snarled, "Speak to me now, or I swear to God you'll live to regret it."
The driver smoothly brought the car to a halt in the
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middle of a hairpin bend that hugged the mountain. Slowly, he turned his face until he was looking directly into Barrington's eyes. He reached for the car's overhead light, flicking it on. Then he opened his mouth to reveal that he had no tongue.
As Barrington slumped back in his seat, his own mouth open in shock, the car accelerated once more, the only sounds the steady purr of its engine and the relentless thumping of his heart.
The castle seemed to grow out of the mountainside like a malevolent gargoyle clinging to a church steeple. Its massive granite walls, topped with spiked turrets, reached into the cloud-laden sky as if embracing the darkness, while a handful of ancient leaded windows emitted a flickering, sickly light.
It was nearly midday by Barrington's watch, but as the sky opened and the ram drummed on the car roof, it seemed like night. And in the gloom ahead of them, the castle seemed like something out of a nightmare.
While Barrington was still trying to adjust to this medieval apparition of ram-blackened towers, the driver was already opening the rear door, holding a large old-fashioned umbrella and beckoning him toward the castle's massive iron entry.
Taking a deep breath and silently telling himself that it was still day, that he was in a modern, civilized country in the twenty-first century--whatever his senses were telling him to the contrary--Barrington followed.
He was hardly surprised when the heavy door folded silently inward and he was ushered into a cavernous hall stretching into the shadows beyond. What startled him was
25
the sudden shaft of light illuminating a section of wall to his left that appeared to be gleaming steel. Was this where he was supposed to go? He turned toward the driver, but the gloom had swallowed him. Barrington was alone, and despite the unearthly chill, he felt a trickle of sweat run down his spine.
Willing himself forward, he walked toward the steel door, which opened at his approach with a gentle hiss. As he stepped into the elevator and the door whispered shut behind him, he came as close as he had ever been to uttering a prayer.
By the time the elevator disgorged him, Barrington felt as if he had sunk into the very bowels of the mountain, and the unearthly silence engendered a moment of breathless panic, as if he had been entombed alive.
The booming voice brought him to his senses.
"Welcome, Mr. Barrington. We're so glad that you could make it. Please be seated."
Stumbling like a zombie, Barrington felt his way through the shadows toward the ornately carved wooden chair to his right. Easing himself gently into it, as if it were an electric chair that would take his life, he raised his head, hoping to lock eyes with his tormentor at last.
Instead, he saw the stark silhouettes of seven people seated at a massive obsidian table that seemed to draw the remaining light out of the chamber.
Illuminated from behind, each figure remained black and two-dimensional, like the moon during a solar eclipse, betraying no features he could discern.
The voice spoke again. It seemed to come from the figure seated in the middle of the seven. It no longer boomed, but
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beneath the smoothly articulated vowels was a grating harshness that made Barrington think of fingernails scraped down a chalkboard.
"Your presence here indicates that you understand the gravity of your position, Mr. Barrington. There is hope for you, then. But only if you do exactly as we command from this moment on."
Barrington felt light-headed, like a frog mesmerized by a viper, but this was too much.
"'Command'? I don't know who you people are--I'm not even sure where I am anymore--but one thing I do know: Nobody commands Shane Barrington."
His words echoed in the darkness, and for a moment he wondered if he had scored a victory, altered the balance of power a little. Okay, let's go on the offensive , he thought.
Then the laughter started. Softly at first, then gaming momentum until it cascaded through the chamber like a tumbling brook. It was a woman's laughter, and it came from the last figure seated on the left.
"Oh, Mr. Barrington. We knew you had no morals. But we did think you had brains. Don't you understand? You belong to us now. Lock, stock , and barrel. And we would use the barrel to carry off your soul as well--if you had one."
She was clearly enjoying herself as she paused to let her words sink in. "The information we have about Barrington Communications's business practices over the past two decades would be enough to send you to jail for the rest of your life--if it were all to be made public."
Again, she paused for effect. "That is, if your angry shareholders,
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whom you have cheated so thoroughly, did not storm your corporate offices and beat you to a bloody pulp first."
A new voice rang out of the shadows, a voice with deep tone and a distinct British accent. "Make no mistake, Mr. Barrington, our invitation to you was brief by necessity, only the very tip of a massive accumulation of your business transgressions. Like an iceberg, an iceberg of financial wrongs, sir, which could sink you so horribly, it would make the Titanic look like a tub toy."
Barrington rose out of his chair, mustering the last shred of his arrogance. "Impossible. You bought off some people to get a little dirt, I can see that, but you could not possibly have more than a few embarrassing manipulations of funds that I can make--"
The British voice cut him short. "Do not take us for fools, Mr. Barrington. We have it all--the capital expenditures that have been listed as profits, the offshore companies set up to look like assets when they really concealed liabilities. Not to mention the threats to your competitors, the intimidation. Why, even in these impressive times of ill-gotten gains, you, sir, have been a Guinness Book-caliber corporate sinner."
So this is it, at last , Barrington thought. Payback . He'd alw
ays thought he was too smart, too ruthless, for any of his sins to catch up with him. Now, despite himself, the faces of people he had ruined on the way to becoming one of the world's richest and most powerful men began to flash into his mind. The grieving widow of a former business partner he had driven to suicide. The old folks whose pension funds he had decimated to cover his debts.
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"So, you're going to turn me in?" Barrington croaked weakly.
A new voice answered. It was a male voice, Hispanic, with a sharp edge like the squawk of a bird of prey. "We did not summon you here to give you a Better Business Award from your chamber of commerce, Señor Barrington, but, no, we have no interest in exposing you to the authorities."
A gleam of understanding flashed in Barrington's eyes. "Oh, I get it. This is all about your getting a taste for yourselves."
His mouth snapped shut at the sound of a powerful hand clap, which was all the more startling when Barrington realized it had come from the woman. "Sit down, and stop your jabbering."
Barrington sank back down into the chair.
"A taste? This is no Mafia shakedown. Don't you get it yet? We own you, Barrington."
There was a throat-clearing cough, and then the British voice spoke again.
"Now that I see you understand your position, let me offer you an alternative to a life behind bars--short as that life would no doubt be."
Barrington could almost see the sneer on the darkened face. "We have chosen you, Mr. Barrington, because of what you can do for us. How you can help us in our ... endeavors. We are prepared to inject a minimum of five billion dollars into Barrington Communications, enough to wipe out the debts you have so cunningly concealed, enough for you to continue to swallow up your remaining competitors.
"Enough to make you ... numero uno in the business of
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global communications. Except, of course, that you will be working for us . The Seven."
Barrington was suddenly dizzy He felt like a condemned man who had been counting out the final seconds and then the governor had come through with a reprieve-- and a check for billions of dollars. With a smile, he realized he'd do anything-- anything --that was asked of him.
"Well, I think I'll go with option two," Shane Barrington said, his composure quickly restored as a hot buzz of adrenaline flooded his veins. "Just tell me what it is you want me to do."
Outside, the clouds seemed to embrace the castle walls even more tightly as a biting wind danced around the ramparts. Amid the keening of the elements, the castle lay cold and black and silent.
In the impenetrable silence of the subterranean vault, the thud of the castle's iron door as it clanged shut could not be heard. Nor could the Seven hear the subdued roar as the Mercedes began its journey back to the airport. But they knew Barrington was on his way, his mind afire with his new mission, their choice vindicated.
Soft lighting from hidden spotlights restored the Seven from their shadowed specters to a normal human appearance. However, even as they allowed themselves a measure of relaxation in their complete privacy, each of them exuded a fearsome aura. Third from the right, a round-faced man with a silvery mane of thinning hair adjusted his half-moon glasses and turned, smiling, to the man whose booming voice had first broken the silence.
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"Well, John. I must offer my apologies. Barrington was indeed an excellent choice. I'm almost surprised he hadn't volunteered for the cause before now. He seems to positively relish his new duties." His lilting English cadences dwindled into a soft chuckle.
Unsmiling, without turning his gaze from the chair where Barrington had moments before been sitting, John Bartholomew spoke, and his tone remained chilling. "The time for self-congratulation lies far ahead of us, I think. Our great project is just beginning, and there is much yet to be done."
"But, John, John! Surely what we have started cannot now be stopped. Is it not written?" continued the Englishman. "I bow to your superior wisdom in the realms of finance. But as a man of the cloth, I think I can claim some special understanding of, let us say, the spiritual dimension. Think of Daniel, think of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Think of what it means!" In his excitement he gripped Bartholomew's arm. "Surely with the plans of us Seven, the true power of Babylon--the dark power of Babylon-- will rise, again!"
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FOUR
MURPHY WASN'T SURE which was worse, the red-hot streaks of pain that crisscrossed his shoulder or the fiery blast of anger his wife was directing at him. At least the anger would burn itself out eventually. He hoped.
"So, Michael"--it was always Michael when he was in the doghouse--"tell me why I'm so special."
He grunted as she swabbed his shoulder with antiseptic. A little harder than was strictly necessary, he thought.
"Other wives come home unexpectedly in the early hours of the morning to find their husbands in bed with another woman, or betting the kids' college fund in a poker game, or just plain old dead drunk." She paused to shake out some more of the antiseptic liquid onto a fresh cotton pad. "But me , lucky old me, I come home to find my husband has been half killed by a lion!" She stopped working on his shoulder for a
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moment and smiled sweetly at him. "Please explain exactly what have I done to be so blessed."
Not for the first time, Murphy said a silent prayer of thanks that he'd managed to find such a wonderful woman, and that miraculously, or so it seemed to him, she had agreed to be his wife. He was taking a verbal beating from her now--and that wasn't a first either--but he knew that was only because she cared. And, as ever, it was well deserved.
It was also providential, to say the least, that she'd arrived home when she did. The last day of her conference on mapping lost cities had been canceled when the star of the show, Professor Delgado from the Mexican Archaeological Institute, was taken ill, and with a mix of disappointment at missing out on the great man's legendary stories and excitement at cutting short the time spent away from Murphy, she had hopped on the first plane out of Atlanta.
"I was hoping to surprise you," she'd said wryly. "But I guess I should have known. I'm the one who gets the surprises around here, right?"
She finished taping the sterile pads in place, and Murphy could see her in the bathroom mirror, nodding at her handiwork, before she helped him ease a clean T-shirt over his head. They both knew he couldn't have fixed himself up alone.
Downstairs she settled him in one of the rockers, then went into the small kitchen. She came back with two steaming mugs of tea.
"Okay, Professor Murphy, it seems you're not going to die of your wounds. Your wonderful, long-suffering wife has therefore calmed down sufficiently to listen to whatever cockamamie
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nonsense you're about to tell her. So sit there and try not to go off your rocker for the second time tonight and let me hear your sorry story."
Murphy sighed. She wasn't going to like it.
"It was him. Methusaleh. I got a message while I was in my office. Very attention-getting."
"And you just dropped everything and went wherever this madman told you to go?" She rolled her eyes. "Oh, but I was forgetting, you're Michael Murphy, the world-famous archaeological adventurer. No assignment too dangerous. And the crazier the better."
She was just shaking her head. He waited until he was certain she was done. She finally took a sip of tea. The signal for him to go on.
"He said Daniel . The Book of Daniel. How could I not be interested?"
"Ah, hence the lion's den. I get it."
"Exactly." Murphy put down his mug on the little coffee table between the rockers and leaned toward her. "One of the most important books of the entire Bible. The mother lode of prophecy. It's all there, Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the statue, everything." In his excitement, the throbbing in his shoulder was forgotten. "Methusaleh was offering me an artifact that related to the Book of Daniel. Such hard evidence would certainly cause skeptics to think twice before dismissing Daniel as mere fictio
n. Imagine!"
Laura sat back in her rocker, out of reach. "And all you had to do to get it was to go three rounds with a man-eating lion." Her tone was icy.
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"Now, sweetheart, it could have been worse," Murphy said with a grin. "If it had been the Book of Revelation, I could have been going head-to-head with the Beast himself."
The look she gave him was icier still. Not funny. Not funny at all.
Murphy tried a different tack. "Honey, the point is, Methusaleh may be crazier than a bucket of snakes, but he always plays by the rules--"
"His rules," Laura interrupted. "The rules of a crazy mystery man who has nothing better to do with his money than to lure you into risking your life. And you've fallen for it each time!"
"Yes, because his rules say," Murphy continued, unfazed, "that if I win his game, I get the prize. Look, we've talked this over before, Laura. I know this sounds insane, but it's true. I'm just not a half-measure kind of man. I love my work full tilt, I try to love God full tilt, and above all else, I love you full tilt. It's a package deal, sweetheart, even on nights like this, when you feel the prize package you're stuck with is the booby prize."
Laura frowned in defeat. She'd said her piece. She knew Murphy could no more resist the lure of Methusaleh's artifacts than decide not to breathe. And though she was not about to tell him, Murphy's fearless passion for bringing the truth of the Bible to light was a big part of why she loved him.
She dragged it out for ten more seconds and gave in, reaching around to hug him. "Michael Impossible Murphy," she whispered, calling him by the middle name she had given him several years earlier, "you know too well that the most impossible thing about you is still the fact that I can't stay angry