Temple

by Matthew Reilly

  “But why?” Race said.

  “Because that is the currency he trades in. It is the currency he has always traded in—life and death. Ehrhardt is an old man, old and evil. He has no further use for the world.

  If he doesn’t get his money—and hence his new world order—he will just destroy the old one without even thinking twice.”

  “Wonderful,” Race said. “And we’re the only ones who can stop him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how do we do it?” Renée said, turning to Uli. “How do we stop the countdown?”

  “You have to enter the disarm code into the device’s arming computer,” Uli said. “But as I said before, only Weber knows the code.”

  ‘Then somehow,” Race said, “we’re going to have to get that code out of him.”

  Moments later, Race was running around the rim of the immense crater, heading for the southern cable bridge.

  The plan was simple.

  Renée would wait at the start of the northern bridge while Race ran around the crater to the southern bridge. Then, when he arrived there, they would both make a run for the control booth at the same time, from opposite ends.

  The logic of their plan was based on the fact that the two cable bridges that stretched out to the control booth were quite advanced and very sturdy—each bridge was constructed of high-tensile steel threads and to drop either of them would require someone to uncouple four separate pressure couplings. If Race and Renée bolted down the two bridges at the same time, one of them might make it to the booth before Ehrhardt and/or Weber managed to uncouple both bridges.

  After six-and-a-half minutes of running, Race arrived at the southern cable bridge.

  It stretched away from him, out over the mine. It was so monstrously long—a feature which was accentuated by its narrowness. While it was only wide enough for one person to travel down at a time, it was easily as long as four football fields stretched end on end.

  Oh God, Race thought.

  “Professor, are you ready?” Renée’s voice said suddenly in his earpiece. It had been so long since he’d used his radio gear, Race had almost forgotten he was wearing it.

  “As I’ll ever be,” he said.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Race stepped out onto the rope bridge.

  He saw the white box-shaped cabin at the far end of it, suspended high above the floor of the mine—saw the door sunk into its wall at the point where the bridge met it. At the moment, that door was closed.

  There was no movement inside the control booth’s long rectangular windows, either.

  No. The booth just sat there—silent—hovering perfectly in the air, seven hundred feet above the world.

  Race moved down the bridge.

  At that very same moment, Renée was moving quickly down the northern cable bridge.

  She moved with her eyes locked on the closed door at the end of her bridge—watched it with tense anticipation, waiting for it to burst open at any moment.

  But the door remained resolutely closed.

  Odilo Ehrhardt peered out from behind one of the windows of the control booth, saw Renée coming down the northern bridge.

  Out the opposite window, he saw Race mirroring her movement, coming down the southern cable bridge.

  Now Ehrhardt had to make a choice.

  He chose Race.

  The tiny figures of Race and Renée made their way down the two swooping suspension bridges, converging on the control booth.

  Renée was moving a little faster than Race, running quickly, her gun up. When she was about halfway down her walkway, however, the door at the end of it burst open and Odilo Ehrhardt stepped out onto the bridge.

  Renée stopped dead in her tracks, frozen.

  Ehrhardt was holding the tiny figure of Dr. Fritz Weber in front of him, shielding himself with the little scientist’s struggling body. Ehrhardt had one pudgy arm wrapped around Weber’s throat. In his other hand, he held a Glock-20 semiautomatic pistol leveled at the scientist’s head.

  Don’t do it, Renée’s mind pleaded, willing Ehrhardt not to kill the only man who knew the code to disarm the Supernova.

  She obviously wasn’t wishing hard enough. For at that moment—that singular, chilling moment—Odilo Ehrhardt gave Renée a final sinister smile and pulled the trigger.

  The gun in Ehrhardt’s hand went off—loud and hard, echoing throughout the crater.

  It sent a geyser of blood exploding out the side of Weber’s head, sent his brains spraying out over the handrail and down into the crater.

  Weber’s body went completely limp as Ehrhardt tipped it over the railing and Renée could do nothing but stare in stunned horror as the corpse dropped—dropped and dropped and dropped—seven hundred horrible feet before it hit the bottom of the mine with a muted distant thud.

  Race heard the gunshot too, and a second later, he caught sight of Weber’s body as it went sailing down into the crater.

  “Good God . . .”

  He started moving more quickly toward the control booth, started running . . .

  Back on the northern side of the control booth, Odilo Ehrhardt wasn’t finished.

  Having tossed Weber’s body off the bridge, he now hurriedly began uncoupling the pressure hoses that connected the cable bridge to the control booth.

  “Nor Renée yelled, gripping the handrail on either side of her.

  With a sharp snap-hiss! one of the pressure couplings came free, and the handrail to Renée’s left just dropped away.

  Renée did the calculations in her head. There was no way she could get to the control booth before Ehrhardt released the other three couplings.

  She turned around and ran, ran for all she was worth, back up the cable bridge.

  Snap-hiss!

  Another coupling broke free, and the other handrail dropped away.

  Two couplings to go.

  Renée was running hard—now on a rail-less bridge—seven hundred feet above the ground.

  A few seconds later, the third coupling went and the boards beneath her started to sag to the left.

  Then, with a final grin of satisfaction, Ehrhardt snapped open the last coupling and the massive suspension bridge—connected to the northern rim of the crater, but now no longer connected to the cabin in its center—fell into the abyss, with Renée Becker on it.

  Renée was only about fifty feet from the rim when the bridge dropped away beneath her. As soon as she felt it give way, she dived forward, clutching onto the steel floorboards with her fingers, holding onto them for dear life.

  The cable bridge fell flat against the slanted wall of the crater. Renée slammed into the mine’s earthen wall, bounced off it, but—somehow—managed to hold on.

  Race reached the door at the end of his cable bridge just as Renée’s voice came blasting in over his headset.

  “Professor, this is Renée. My bridge is down. I’m out of the equation. It’s up to you now.”

  Great, Race thought wryly. Just what I needed to hear.

  He took a deep breath and gripped his gun tightly. Then he grabbed the doorknob and turned it, and pushed open the door with the barrel of his G-11 . . .

  . . . tripping the wire.

  Beep!

  Race saw Ehrhardt before he saw the source of the high-pitched beep.

  The big Nazi general was standing on the other side of the control room, over by the northern door, with his Glock hanging lazily by his side. He was smiling at Race.

  To Ehrhardt’s left, Race saw the Supernova—its silver-and-glass surfaces gleaming, the cylindrical section of thyrium situated in its core, suspended inside its vacuum-sealed chamber in between the two thermonuclear warheads.

  Two Cray YMP supercomputers sat against the wall to the side of the Supernova. The two warhead capsules that had been used to transport the nukes sat on the floor beside the big device, and the idol—now with a hollowed-out section in its base—sat on a nearby bench, discarded.

  On the laptop compute
r attached to the front of the Supernova—the source of the beep—Race saw the countdown timer ticking down toward zero:

  00:05:00

  00:04:59

  00:04:58

  Underneath the countdown, he saw the words: “ALTERNATE DETONATION SEQUENCE INITTALIZED.”

  Alternate detonation sequence?

  “Thank you, Little Man Trying Desperately To Be Brave,” Ehrhardt sneered. “By entering this cabin, you have just condemned yourself to death.”

  Race frowned.

  Ehrhardt’s eyes flicked left.

  Race followed them, and saw—situated along the eastern wall of the control booth—eight yellow 200-gallon drums. The words “CAUTION!” and “DANGER: HYPERGOLIC FLUIDS”

  screamed out from their sides.

  Other words were stenciled across the front sections of the huge yellow drums:

  “HYDRAZINE.”

  “NITROGEN TETROXIDE.”

  There were four drums of hydrazine. Four of nitrogen tetroxide. A complex web of cables and hoses connected each plastic barrel to the next.

  Hypergolic fluids, Race recalled from his chemistry days, were fluids that exploded on contact with one another.

  A second countdown timer sat on top of one of the hydrazine drums. This timer, however, sat motionless, frozen at five seconds.

  00:00:05

  And then—just then—Race saw that the eight yellow drums were connected to the Supernova’s arming computer by a thick black cord that snaked its way across the floor of the cabin.

  00:04:00

  00:03:59

  00:03:58

  “How?” Race demanded, his G-11 pressed against his shoulder, trained on Ehrhardt’s chest. “How have I condemned myself to death?”

  “By opening that door, you just triggered a mechanism that will, in one way or another, end your life.”

  “How, goddamnit!”

  Ehrhardt smiled. “There are two incendiary devices in this room, Professor: the Supernova and the hypergolic fuels. One will blow up the entire planet, the other will only blow up this cabin. I know you wish to disarm the Supernova, but if you succeed in doing that you will do so at a price.”

  “What price?”

  “Your life in exchange for the world’s. By opening that door, Professor, you set off a mechanism that linked the Supernova’s arming computer to the hypergolic fluids. Now, if for any reason the Supernova’s countdown is terminated, the timer on the hypergolic fuels will be started. In five seconds, the fuels will mix and when they do they will detonate, destroying this cabin, destroying you.

  “So now you have a choice, Professor, a singular choice, unique in the history of mankind. You can the with the rest of the planet in exactly three-and-a-half minutes—or you can save the world. But in doing so, you must sacrifice your own life.”

  Race couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  A singular choice . . .

  You can save the world . . .

  But to do so, you must sacrifice your own life . . .

  The two men stood on either side of the control booth, Race standing in the southern doorway with his G-11 pressed against his shoulder, Ehrhardt over by the northern door, with his Glock by his side.

  00:03:21

  00:03:20

  00:03:19

  “The President has agreed to pay your ransom—” Race said quickly, trying a last-ditch ploy.

  “No he hasn’t,” Ehrhardt snapped, snatching a sheet of paper from the bench beside him and flinging it at Race.

  The sheet fluttered to the floor. It was a copy of the same fax Race had seen in the mine’s office earlier. Ehrhardt must have had a fax machine in here too.

  “And even if he had said that he would pay,” the Nazi spat, “I still wouldn’t be able to disarm the device. Only Weber knew the disarming code and he, my friend, is dead. No. Now, it is you or it is nothing. Now, whatever happens, at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that you will not be leaving this cabin alive.”

  “But what about you?” Race said defiantly. “You’ll the too.”

  “I am old, Professor Race. Old and decayed. Death means nothing to me. The fact that I can take the rest of the world with me, however, means everything . . .”

  And at that moment, quick as a rattlesnake, Ehrhardt whipped his Glock up, aimed it at Race and pulled the—

  Blam!

  Race’s G-11 bucked against his shoulder as he fired a single round.

  The caseless bullet smacked into Ehrhardt’s enormous chest, causing a gout of blood to explode out from it, the impact hurling the big man into the wall behind him.

  Ehrhardt slammed into the wall and—ba-blam!—his Glock went off, firing into the ceiling, smashing a smoke alarm to pieces, and suddenly a series of fire sprinklers in the ceiling of the cabin burst forth with showers of water.

  Ehrhardt sank to the floor in the teeming indoor rain—a dribbling, ugly mess—his mouth open, his eyes wide with shock.

  Race just stood there in his doorway, frozen in the firing position, water hammering against his face, stunned.

  He had never shot a man before. Not even during the river chase earlier. He felt ill. He swallowed back the bile welling in his throat.

  And then he saw the Supernova’s timer:

  00:03:00

  00:02:59

  00:02:58

  He snapped out of his trance, hurried over to examine the fallen Nazi leader.

  Ehrhardt was still alive, but barely. Blood dribbled out from his mouth, bubbled out from his chest.

  But his eyes still glimmered, glaring up at Race with a kind of mad delight, as if Ehrhardt were thrilled to have left him in this position—alone in a control booth in a foreign country, with nothing but a dying Nazi, a ticking Supernova, and eight drums of explosive hypergolic fuel that would kill him for certain even if he did manage to disarm the main bomb.

  All right, Will, stay calm.

  00:02:30

  00:02:29

  00:02:28

  Two and a half minutes to the end of the world Stay calm, my ass!

  Race scrambled across the floor to the Supernova, peered at the screen on its arming computer.

  YOU NOW HAVE

  00:02:27

  MINUTES TO ENTER DISARM CODE.

  ENTER DISARM CODE HERE

  --------

  Race stared in dismay at the timer. Sprinkler rain pounded against his head.

  What are you gonna do, Will?

  It wasn’t like he had a choice now, was it?

  He could the along with the rest of the world or he could try to figure out how to stop the Supernova—and the that way too.

  Damn it! he thought.

  He wasn’t a hero.

  People like Renco and Van Lewen were heroes. He was just a nobody. A guy. A university professor who was always late for work, who always missed his train. Jesus, he still had outstanding parking fines to pay, for God’s sake!

  He wasn’t a hero.

  And he didn’t want to the like one either.

  Besides, he wouldn’t know the first thing about cracking the code on the Supernova’s arming computer. He wasn’t a hacker. No, the simple fact of the matter was that Fritz Weber was dead, and he was the only one who knew the code that would disarm the Supernova.

  00:02:01

  00:02:00

  00:01:59

  Race shut his eyes, sighed.

  Might as well the like a hero.

  And so he sat up straight in front of the Supernova, and stared at its display screen with a fresh mind.

  All right, Will, deep breaths. Deep breaths.

  He looked at the screen, at the line that read:

  ENTER DISARM CODE HERE

  --------

  Okay.

  Eight spaces to fill. To fill with a code.

  Okay, so who knows the code?

  Weber knows the code.

  He was the only one who knew the code.

  Just then a voice exploded in Race’s e
ar and he almost jumped out of his skin.

  “Professor. What’s happening?”

  It was Renée.

  “Jesus, Renée. You scared the shit out of me. What’s happening? Well, Ehrhardt shot Weber and then I shot Ehrhardt and now I’m sitting in front of the Supernova trying to figure out how to disarm it. Where are you?”

  “I’m back in the office overlooking the crater. Ehrhardt cut my bridge.”

  “Got any ideas on how to disarm this thing?”

  “No. Weber was the only one—”

  “1 know that already. Listen, I’ve got eight spaces to fill and I need to fill “em fast.”

  “Okay. Let me think . . .”

  00:01:09

  00:01:08

  00:01:07

  “One minute, Renée.”

  “All right. All right. They said in that telephone transcript that their Supernova is based on the U.S. model, right? That means the code must be numerical.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I know that the American Supernova has a numerical code.” She must have heard his silence. “We have people inside your agencies.”

  “Oh, okay. Numerical code it is then. Eight-digit code. That leaves us with about a trillion possible combinations.”

  00:01:00

  00:00:59

  00:00:58

  “Weber was the only person who knew the code, right?” Renée said. “So it has to be something to do with him.”

  “Or it could be a number that’s completely random,” Race said dryly.

  “Unlikely,” Renée said. “People who use numerical codes rarely use random numbers. They use numbers that have significance to them, numbers that they can recall by thinking of a memorable event or date or something like that. So what do we know about Weber?”

  But Race wasn’t listening anymore.

  Something had twigged in the back of his mind as he’d been listening to Renée—something about what she had just said.

  “All right,” Renée was saying, thinking aloud. “He was a Nazi during the Second World War. He performed experiments on human subjects.”