“And the targets?”
He weighed the advantages and disadvantages. While the profits to be gained by the pair were considerable, their deaths could also serve as an important lesson. It would demonstrate Ju-long’s willingness to sacrifice profit in order to maintain his authority and position. Among the Chinese, honor and saving face were as important as breathing.
He allowed the anger to drain out of him, reconciling himself to the reality of the situation. What’s done is done.
Besides, in the end, their bodies could still fetch a tidy sum.
And a little profit was better than none.
“Kill them,” he ordered. “Kill them all.”
3
November 17, 9:46 A.M. PST
Los Angeles AFB
El Segundo, California
Chaos still ruled the floor of the Space and Missile Systems Center.
It had been almost two hours since the satellite image of the smoldering Eastern Seaboard had glowed on its giant monitor. Base personnel had immediately confirmed that New York, Boston, and D.C. were all safe and unharmed. Life continued on out there without mishap.
The relief in the room had been palpable. Painter’s reaction was no exception. He had friends and colleagues across the Northeast. Still, he was glad his fiancée was in New Mexico. He pictured Lisa’s face, framed in a fall of blond hair, grinning at him with a trace of mischief that always set his heart pounding harder. If anything had happened to her . . .
But in the end, nothing was amiss out east.
So what the hell had the satellite transmitted as it crashed?
That had been the critical question of the past two hours. Theories had flashed across the floor of the control room. Was the picture some extrapolation? Some computer simulation of a nuclear strike? But all the engineers claimed such calculations were beyond the scope of the spacecraft’s original programming.
So what had happened?
Painter stood with Dr. Jada Shaw in front of the giant screens, along with a handful of engineers and military brass.
A satellite image of the island of Manhattan glowed before them. A young technician stood with a laser pointer in hand. He passed its glowing red dot across the breadth of the island.
“This is an image obtained from an NRO satellite at the exact same time that IoG-1 burned past the Eastern Seaboard. Here you can make out the grid of streets, the lakes dotting Central Park. Now here is the same fractional picture taken by IoG-1.”
He clicked a handheld button, and another image appeared beside the first. The new picture was a blown-up section of the photo snapped by the satellite as it crashed, featuring the identical chunk of Manhattan.
“If we overlay, one atop the other . . .”
The technician worked his magic to superimpose the second over the first. Through the smoke and the flames, the grid of streets lined up perfectly. Even the lakes of Central Park matched in every dimension.
Murmurs spread through the crowd.
Dr. Shaw took a step forward to look more closely. She wore a frown of distaste.
“As you can see,” the tech continued, “this is New York City, not some facsimile. The destruction depicted is not some digital noise that inadvertently looks like the East Coast is burning. Not at this level of detail.”
To prove his point, the tech zoomed upon key locations of the island. Though the resolution became grainy, it appeared Manhattan was correct down to its tiniest details. Except now, the Empire State Building was a blazing torch, the financial district a cratered ruin, and the Queensboro Bridge a shattered twist of steel girders. It looked like some exquisite digital matte painting for a disaster film.
Boston and D.C. fared no better.
Questions flared among the audience, but Dr. Shaw simply moved closer, resting a hand on her chin, staring between the two images as they were split apart again.
General Metcalf called to Painter from a few yards away, irritation piquing in his voice. “Director Crowe, a moment of your time.”
Painter moved to join his boss in front of the world map.
“This is the latest and most refined telemetry data,” Metcalf said, pointing to the crash path of the falling satellite on the map. “The impact site is likely here, in a remote region of northern Mongolia. As you can see, it’s not far from the borders of both Russia and China. So far, there have been no rumblings from either country about this crash.”
“What about eyes on the ground out there?”
Metcalf shook his head. “This region of Mongolia is mountainous and remote. Populated only by nomadic tribesmen.”
Painter understood. “In that case, we’ve got a small window to get out there and find that burned piece of military space hardware before either Russia or China catches wind of it.”
“Precisely.”
Painter glanced over to the other screen. No one understood what had happened to generate that disturbing image, but they all knew any answers lay amid the crashed ruins of the Eye of God. Secondarily, it was vital that the satellite’s advanced technology not be lost to a foreign nation.
“I’ve already got Captain Kat Bryant over at Sigma command working on the logistics for a search team.”
“Very good. I want you on the first plane back to D.C. There’s a jet being fueled for you. That’s your top priority. Find and secure that wreckage.”
Metcalf turned his back, dismissing him.
Off to the side, Dr. Shaw had her head bowed next to the technician. The man kept nodding his head, glancing at the screen, then finished with a scared look on his face.
What’s that all about?
The technician stepped away from Dr. Shaw and crossed to an engineering station, waving others to join him.
Curious, Painter stepped to the young astrophysicist’s side as she continued to study the screen.
She noted his attention. “I still say it’s the comet.”
Painter had heard her earlier theories. “Dr. Shaw, you still believe all this is a consequence of dark energy?”
“Call me Jada. And, yes, from the last spool of data from the satellite, the geodetic effect registered a misalignment of 5.4 degrees.”
From the ardent look in her eyes as she glanced at him, he saw she expected this to strike him as significant.
It didn’t.
“That means precisely what?” he asked.
She sighed with frustration. She had spent the last two hours arguing with the brass at the base, trying to get them to listen to her, and clearly she was losing patience with them all.
“Picture a bowling ball resting on a thin stretch of trampoline,” she said. “The mass of the ball would create a depression in the surface. That’s what the earth does to the geography around it. It curves space and time. This is proven by both theory and experiment, and the geodetic effect is a measuring rod for that curvature. So when the data reports a misalignment, it’s registering a wrinkle in that space-time. Something my theory posited could happen if IoG-1 collected an influx of dark energy. But I never expected such a deep wrinkle.”
A worried crinkle of her own formed between her brows.
“So what has you looking so concerned?” he asked.
“At best, I had hoped to see merely a twitch in the geodetic effect. Something less than 0.1 percent, and something brief, on the nano-scale level of time. A twist of alignment of over five percent and sustained for almost a full minute . . .” She gave her head a slight shake.
“Earlier, you theorized that the massive burst of dark energy might have torn a small hole in space-time, possibly opening a brief window into an alternate universe, one parallel to our own, one where the Eastern Seaboard was destroyed.”
She studied the screen. “Or it may be a peek into our own future.”
That was a disturbing possibility she hadn’t previously voiced.
“Time is not a linear function,” she continued, almost as if she were working something out in her head. “Time is just another dimension. Like up
-down or left-right. The flow of time can also be affected by gravity or by velocity. So when space-time got ripped or wrinkled, it could have made time skip a beat, like the needle of a record player hitting a scratch in the vinyl.”
The fear in her eyes brightened.
Painter tried to stave off that panic. “Since when do you kids still listen to vinyl?”
She turned to him, the anxiety pushed back by indignation. “I’ll have you know I have a vintage jazz collection that rivals the best in the world. B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Miles Davis, Hans Koller.”
“Okay.” He held up a placating palm.
“Nothing compares to old vinyl,” she finished with a righteous huff.
He didn’t disagree with her.
He was saved from any further diatribe by the return of the technician.
“You were right,” he said to her, looking even more scared.
“Right about what?” Painter asked.
“Show me,” she said, ignoring him.
The technician crossed back to the giant screen and once again brought up the NRO satellite image and superimposed it over the photo taken by IoG-1. He flickered them back and forth, one atop the other.
“The shadows don’t match, like you thought. Not just here, but we tested some spots in Boston, with the same anomaly registering.” He pointed to the clutch of engineers and techs by his workstation. “We’re zeroing in on different points along the Eastern Seaboard and calculating the degree of variance.”
She nodded. “We need the time differential calculated.”
“We’re on it.”
Painter didn’t follow. “What’s wrong?”
She pointed to the giant screen. “The shadows don’t match between the two images. They are fractionally off from one another.”
“Which means what?”
“The two images were taken at the same time, so the shadows should match. Like two pictures of the same sundial taken at the same moment.” She stared hard at them. “But they don’t. The shadows don’t line up, which means—”
“The sun’s position in the sky is different between the two photos.”
A sense of dread drew his spine straighter.
She took a worried breath. “The Eye of God snapped a picture of Manhattan at a different time, not the one registered by our clocks as it crashed.”
Painter pictured that needle skipping over a scratch in a vinyl record.
Jada continued, “The technicians are trying to figure out what date and time correspond to the position of the sun captured in the satellite image. They’re triangulating spots up and down the Eastern Seaboard to pinpoint that exact time.”
By now the growing commotion at the engineering console had drawn others.
The lead tech straightened and stared at Jada.
“The variance is eighty-eight . . . !” Someone tugged his sleeve. He ducked to the screen, then back up again. “Make that ninety hours from now.”
That was less than four days.
General Metcalf joined him. “What’s this all about?”
Painter’s gaze fell upon Jada’s face, where he found certainty shining.
“That image.” Painter nodded to the destruction. “That’s not a glitch. That’s how the world will look in four days.”
6:54 P.M. CET
Rome, Italy
Rachel Verona woke out of a dream of drowning to the ringing of the phone. She struggled up, gasping a breath, taking a moment to realize she was not in her bed, but on the overstuffed sofa in Uncle Vigor’s office. She had dozed off while reading a text about St. Thomas.
The smell of garlic and pesto still hung in the air from the take-out meal she had fetched earlier for them both. The cartons still rested on her uncle’s desk, by his elbow.
“Can you get the phone?” Vigor asked.
With his reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, he was bent studiously over the old skull. He held a measuring compass open and poised across the length of the nasal bone. He scribbled a note on a sheet of graph paper.
As the phone rang loudly, Rachel rolled to her feet and stepped to his desk. She stared at the sliver of moon through the arrow-slit of a window accented by the arc of the comet’s long tail.
“It’s getting late, Uncle. We can finish this in the morning.”
He waved the compass dismissively. “I only sleep a few hours. And when it’s quiet like this, I get my best work done.”
She picked up the ringing phone on his desk. “Pronto?”
A tired masculine voice answered, “Sono Bruno Conti, dottore di recerco da Centro Studi Microcitemia.”
Rachel covered the receiver. “Uncle, it’s Dr. Conti from the DNA lab.”
He waved for the phone. “Took them long enough.”
Rachel stared over at the skull as Vigor spoke rapidly with the research geneticist. She recognized the source of her uncle’s impatience, noting the faint writing on the crown of the skull, marking a fateful date. She felt no misgivings at the prediction etched in bone. People had been predicting the end of the world since the beginning of time—from the ancient Maya with their prophetic calendar to the turn-of-the-millennial doomsayers back in 2000.
How is this any different?
Vigor’s conversation became more heated—then he promptly hung up.
Rachel noted the dark circles under her uncle’s eyes. “What’s the news from the lab?” she asked.
“They’ve confirmed my estimates of the age of the skull and the book.”
He gestured to the copy of the Gospel of Thomas bound in human skin. For the hundredth time, she wondered why anyone would do that. Yes, the book was considered heretical during its time. It dismissed religious orthodoxy as the only way to salvation, claiming instead that the path to God lay inside anyone, if they’d only open their eyes and follow it.
Seek and you shall find.
Still, heresy or not, why bind such a copy in human skin?
“So how old are the book and skull?” she asked.
“The lab has dated them to the thirteenth century.”
“So not the third century as the Aramaic writing suggested? That means it can’t be an authentic Jewish magical talisman, like those found by archaeologists in the past.”
“No. It’s just as I surmised. It’s likely a copy of an original. In fact, the skull itself is not even Jewish.”
“How do you know that?”
He motioned for her to join him. “While you were napping, I was studying the cranial structures and conformational anatomy. First of all, this skull is mesocranic.”
“Which means?”
“That the skull is broad and of intermediate height. Additionally note how these cheekbones are thick, the eye sockets rounded, and the nasal bones are flat and wide.” He picked up the skull and flipped it over. “And look at the teeth. The incisors are shovel shaped, very different from Mediterranean stock.”
“Then where did this skull come from?”
He turned to her, tapping his measuring compass on his notepad. “From my calculations of the various cranial dimensions—eye width, the depth of the prenasal fossa, the degree of prognathism—I’d say this skull is East Asian in origin, what used to be called Mongoloid.”
A measure of respect flashed through her as she was reminded yet again that her uncle was far more than a man of the cloth. “So the skull came from somewhere out in the Far East?”
“As did the book,” he added.
“The book?”
He looked over the edge of his reading glasses at her. “I thought you heard, when I was speaking to Dr. Conti.”
She shook her head.
He hovered a palm over the wrinkled leather binding with the macabre eye sewn on the cover. “According to Dr. Conti’s analysis, the skin of the book and the skull share identical DNA. They’re from the same source.”
As the implication struck her, Rachel swallowed back bile.
Whoever had made these talismans, they’d cr
afted them from a single body. They used some man’s skin to bind the book, then his skull to make this relic.
Vigor continued, “I’m having the lab continue to build a racial profile using both autosomal and mitochondrial DNA to see if we can narrow down the origin of these relics. When Father Josip sent them to me, he must have done so for a reason. Time was running out. He knew I could help and that I had access to resources he didn’t.”
“Like the DNA lab.”
He nodded.
“So why didn’t Father Josip simply write you a note?”
Vigor offered a coy wink. “Who says he didn’t?”
Rachel scowled at this revelation. “Then why didn’t you tell—?”
“I only discovered it a quarter hour ago. While I was examining the skull. I wanted to finish my measurements, and you needed your sleep. Then the phone rang, and I got distracted with the news from the DNA lab.”
Rachel stared at the skull. “Show me.”
Vigor flipped the relic over and pointed to the hole where the spinal cord enters the skull. He lifted a penlight and shone it inside. “Where else would someone hide secret knowledge?”
Rachel leaned closer and peered into the cranium’s interior. A dollop of crimson wax had been affixed to the inner surface of the skull, like the seal on a papal letter. Tiny letters, written in Latin, had been meticulously carved into the wax. She pictured Josip inscribing each letter with some sharp, long-handled instrument through the skull’s narrow fossa.
Why such a degree of secrecy? How paranoid was this man?
She stared at the message.
She translated the Latin aloud. “Help. Come to the Aral Sea.”
She frowned. The Aral Sea straddled the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. It was a desolate area. She also remembered her uncle’s morphological determination of the skull’s origin as East Asian. Had Father Josip determined the same? Had the racial heritage of the relic drawn him from Hungary out east to continue his search? But if so, what was he searching for and why such secrecy?
Squinting, she also made out a faint series of Arabic numbers inscribed under the Latin inscription.
Vigor guessed what had drawn her attention. “Longitude and latitude markings.”