by James Barney
Frustrated, he reached into his pocket and retrieved the small piece of paper and pen that he’d taken from the Huntsman Motel yesterday morning. Since then, he’d added a few more items to his list—random thoughts that seemed to carry some special significance, and which had popped into his mind during his hike. The paper now had four items scrawled in uneven handwriting:
Jasher
White House
Opal
Ellipse
Malachi added a fifth: “Time.” He had no idea what any of this meant, aside from the obvious fact that the White House was the home of the president, opal was a type of stone, and an ellipse was a geometric shape. He certainly had no idea about “Jasher.” He slowly shook his head, desperately trying to piece it all together. This was maddening.
For a long while, he just stared out the window into the woods, doing his best to push his emotions aside and focus on logic. Concentrate, he told himself. Let logic be your guide. He drew a deep drag from his cigarette and once again began methodically ticking through the things he could deduce based on the facts he knew.
First and foremost, he knew it was no longer 1972. According to the magazines he’d bought the other night, the year was now 2013. Malachi tilted his head back and blew out a long stream of smoke. Jesus. How could he have lost four decades of his life? No doubt, this had something to do with the experiments taking place in Thurmond. Something about time.
Malachi felt the same feelings of confusion and bewilderment that he’d experienced last night starting to well up inside him again. Where had he been all this time? In a coma? Or was he simply crazy? With effort, he pushed these thoughts aside and forced himself, once again, to focus on logic. What else did he know?
He knew that someone had been expecting him in Thurmond. His contacts. A man and a woman. They had left clues for him that only he could solve. And apparently he’d had some type of training or preparation that allowed him to solve those clues. In other words, all of this had been prearranged, and Malachi himself had been a part of it. But why? What was he supposed to have accomplished?
His contacts had certainly not left him much to go on. A cryptic note with instructions to go to the “Third Church.” Meaningless drivel. He had no idea who Elijah was. And where was this “Third Church” he was supposed to go to?
Malachi retrieved the sheet of stationery from his pocket and studied the strange arrangement of symbols in the middle of the page, which appeared to consist of two numbers and two letters arranged around an octagon with a cross in the middle:
What did this mean? He noted that the numbers 17 and 16 were in reverse numerical order. Was this significant? Did this have something to do with going backward? Perhaps time was going backward.
Putting the numbers aside for a moment, Malachi next considered the letters K and I. Unlike the numbers, these letters were not consecutive in the alphabet. The letter J should have been between them, but it was missing. Or, more precisely, the letter J had been replaced with a cross in this puzzle. But why? Or was “KI” an acronym for something? Malachi had already mulled over those two letters endlessly, trying in vain to trigger some meaningful memory. King Isaac? King’s Island? Nothing seemed to fit. Nor did his knowledge of chemistry offer any logical answers. As he knew, K was the chemical symbol for potassium, and I was the symbol for iodine. Two elements on nearly opposite sides of the periodic table. Potassium, far to the left, had a single valence electron that it wanted to get rid of. Iodine, nearly on the far right of the periodic table, had seven valence electrons and desperately wanted one more to complete its valence shell. Therefore, chemically speaking, these two elements were nearly a perfect match to form an ionic compound. Which they often did. Potassium iodide, or KI, was a common, naturally occurring salt, and an important component of iodized table salt, usually sold in supermarkets. But what did potassium iodide have to do with anything?
Malachi took a last puff of his cigarette and dropped it on the floor, grinding it out with his shoe. He glanced at his own notes again, which seemed to be pointing him toward Washington, D.C. But to do what? Knock on the door of the White House and announce his presence? Actually, he entertained that idea for quite some time before finally dismissing it. No, he decided. There had to be a better plan.
He felt his stomach growl and was reminded once again of how terribly hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten in more than thirty hours, and his body was desperately craving food. This was why he did not trust his senses at first when he began to smell something delicious in the air. When you’re starving, everything starts to look and smell like food. After a couple of minutes, though, he simply could not ignore the unmistakable aroma of . . . bacon. It seemed to be seeping through the cracks in the cabin.
Malachi slowly unlatched the front door and eased it open a few inches. As he did, the tantalizing smell of sizzling bacon suddenly wafted inside. Someone was cooking breakfast nearby.
He immediately drew his pistol and ventured out the front door and into the woods. He stopped for a moment and took note of the light breeze that was blowing from the southwest. He turned in that direction and began making his way stealthily through the dense forest. The smell of frying bacon grew steadily stronger until, finally, he saw its source—a neighboring cabin in the woods, about seventy yards away. A thin stream of smoke was twirling out of the cabin’s river-stone chimney.
Malachi continued creeping toward the back of the neighboring cabin with his pistol drawn, until he was close enough to see through one of the windows. For a while, he saw nothing at all. Then, suddenly, he saw movement. A man in a red flannel shirt and boxer shorts, then an attractive woman in a pink robe. She was cradling a coffee cup, and the man seemed to be carrying something . . . a spatula. Now they were kissing and smiling.
Malachi moved quickly around the side of the cabin toward the front door, ducking low to avoid being seen through the windows. As he rounded the corner to the front, he saw a forest-green Land Rover parked in the dirt driveway that led away from the cabin and disappeared into the woods. Perfect. He quickly approached the front door, clicked off the safety of his pistol, and prepared to enter.
Five seconds later, Malachi pounded open the front door with a rapid series of powerful kicks. The door splintered on the third kick and flew wide open, into the cabin. He burst in with his weapon drawn and shouted, “On the floor!”
The woman in the pink robe dropped her coffee and shrieked in terror. She backed away quickly and shrank to the floor until she was huddled in a tight ball against the wall.
The man in the red flannel shirt, however, proved much more brazen than Malachi had expected. He was a brutish man with a square jaw and a massive chest. He stood his ground in the middle of the cabin with a large cast-iron skillet held in both hands above his head like a baseball bat. He appeared poised to charge at Malachi.
Malachi leveled his pistol directly at the man’s chest. “It’ll be the last thing you do,” he warned.
The man stood motionless, seething and breathing heavily for several seconds. Then, slowly, he returned the skillet to the hearth with a loud clank.
“On the floor,” Malachi ordered, motioning with his pistol for the man to join the woman in the pink robe, who was now whimpering uncontrollably near the back wall.
The man in flannel reluctantly obeyed. “What do you want?” he asked gruffly as he sat down next to the woman.
“Car keys,” said Malachi.
“Shit,” the man huffed. “Are you serious?”
“Where are they?” Malachi demanded.
The man shook his head and let out an incredulous laugh. “In my jeans pocket. Over there.” He pointed toward a pile of clothes next to a rustic pine bed on the far side of the cabin.
Malachi slowly backed away from the couple, keeping his weapon trained on them at all times.
“You’re making a big fucking mistake, buddy,” said the man in flannel.
The woman next to him piped up, her voice squeaky with
fear. “Dave, please . . . just . . . just shut up. Please . . .”
“Good advice,” said Malachi, still inching his way toward the pile of clothes on the floor. When he got there, he bent down and retrieved a set of keys from the front pocket of a pair of faded jeans on the floor. He glanced down and saw that the leather key chain was embossed with the words RANGE ROVER.
“Take it,” said the woman in a shaky voice. “Please . . . just go.”
Malachi felt genuinely sorry for this woman, who was obviously terrified. He was about to say “Sorry” when her male companion decided to add one last macho comment.
“You’re going to regret this, asshole.”
Malachi had had enough of this guy’s mouth. He took three quick steps toward him and trained his pistol directly between his eyes. He turned to the woman in the pink robe and said, “Your boyfriend’s not very smart.”
The woman broke down in sobs. “Oh God, please don’t do this. Please . . . don’t.” She closed her eyes tightly, apparently waiting for Malachi to pull the trigger.
As for the man in flannel, he had suddenly lost his voice. He was now staring silently at the gun, mouth agape, eyes wide open. His face seemed to be getting paler by the second.
Malachi maintained his firing stance for several seconds, then he began backing away slowly. When he reached the front door, he turned and quickly made his way to the vehicle.
Twenty seconds later, the Range Rover roared to life and tore away from the cabin at high speed.
A single question now occupied Malachi’s mind. How do I get to Washington, D.C., from here?
24
SATELLITE BEACH, FLORIDA
Ana Thorne rang the doorbell of 131 Montecito Drive in Satellite Beach and stepped back, awaiting a response. The house, located in an upscale golf community, was part of a tasteful, Mediterranean-style duplex with cream-colored stucco exterior walls and a brown tiled roof. The doormat on the front stoop read:
As for me and my house,
we will serve the Lord.
—Joshua 24:15.
As she waited, Ana reminded herself of her fake identity for this meeting. Today she was “Ana Griffin,” a freelance writer from Baltimore.
After a few seconds, the door swung open slowly, and an elderly man in khaki slacks and a bright yellow golf shirt appeared. He was a tall, birdlike man with sagging jowls, black-rimmed glasses, and patches of white hair on either side of an otherwise bald head. “Hello,” he said in a voice that sounded much younger than he looked. “Are you Ana?”
“Yes,” said Ana. “I’m Ana Griffin. Thanks for meeting with me on such short notice.”
“Oh, it was no trouble,” said the man, extending his hand. “I’m Tom Reynolds. Come on in.”
Ana followed the man inside to a tastefully furnished living room, where they both sat down on a chocolate-brown leather couch. “This is a lovely home,” she said.
“Thanks. We like it down here. Moved down about ten years ago from Boston after I retired from the ministry. My wife, Betty, does all the decorating, so I really can’t take credit for anything.”
“Is she here?”
“Uh, no. Today’s one of her golf days, so she’s out with her friends.” Reynolds pointed to a framed photograph on the table behind the couch, showing four smiling, gray-haired women in golf attire holding a trophy. “She never misses golf.”
“Which one’s your wife?”
“Betty’s on the left in the blue sweater. Believe it or not, she never golfed a day in her life until we moved down here. Now she can’t get enough of it. She’s darn good, too. Better than me, anyway.”
“She’s lovely.”
“Yep. I’m a lucky man.”
After several more minutes of small talk, Ana finally got to the point. “As I explained on the phone,” she said, “I’m working on a book about Franz Holzberg. I understand you were friends with him at Princeton, is that right?”
“Friends?” Reynolds pondered that word for a moment. “I’d say we were more like acquaintances. He was at the Institute of Advanced Studies. I was in the Department of Religion at Princeton, working on my doctorate. But yes, some of our interests, shall we say . . . intersected.”
“How so?” Ana removed a notepad and pen from her purse and prepared to take notes.
Reynolds cleared his throat. “Well . . . if you’re writing a book about him, I assume you’re familiar with how Franz Holzberg came to the United States in the first place?”
In fact, Ana knew all about Dr. Holzberg’s entry into the United States in 1948, but much of what she knew was highly classified. So she had to be careful not to reveal anything that would have been beyond the knowledge of a diligent scholar using publicly available sources. “You mean Project Paperclip?” she said, referring to the once-secret OSS program in which hundreds of German scientists, mathematicians, and engineers were funneled into the United States in the aftermath of World War II. The existence of Project Paperclip had been well known for decades, although many of its details remained highly secret.
“Yes, exactly,” said Reynolds. “Franz Holzberg was recruited fairly late in that program, sometime around 1948 or ’49. Since his background was in physics, they parked him at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, where he overlapped for several years with Einstein and Oppenheimer and others of that ilk. It was quite a concentration of brainpower in those days. A lot of interesting things going on.”
“So you were explaining how the two of you had similar interests . . .”
“Yes. I met Franz in the fall of 1955. As I said, I was pursuing my doctorate in religious studies. And it turned out that Franz had an interest in the Bible, too, particularly the Gospels of the Old Testament. But his interests were not in what I would call the religious aspects of the Bible.”
“Oh?”
“No, Franz was more interested in certain aspects in the Bible that he thought related, somehow, to his own field of study—theoretical physics.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I remember he was very keen on the book of Joshua and some of the events described in that Gospel.”
“You talked to him specifically about these things?”
“Oh, yes. Over a period of about two and a half years, I would say from late 1956 to early 1959. We were in the same circle of friends at that time. He was older than I was, but I was friends with some of his younger colleagues, and we would all get together for dinner or coffee and just, you know . . . talk about things. It was a very exciting time. And by the way, Franz was not the only scientist from the institute who was interested in religion in those days.”
“Who else was?”
“Well, for instance, Albert Einstein often sat in on lectures at the Princeton Theological Seminary and sometimes provided critiques. He even gave a few lectures there himself. But that was before my time. Benjamin Fulcher, another well-known physicist who was there at that time, was quite interested in religious studies. My point is, there was a great synergism in those days between the scientists at the institute, especially the physicists, and students of religion like me.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Perhaps it was a sense of optimism in those early days, when so many amazing discoveries were being made, that science would eventually reveal every mystery of the universe. At which point, science and religion would simply merge into one cohesive, universally accepted understanding of the cosmos, and we would all implicitly understand who we are and why we’re here. At least, that was one view.”
“You mentioned that Dr. Holzberg was particularly interested in the book of Joshua. Can you tell me more about that?”
Reynolds smiled. “I can tell you a lot about that. How much time do you have?”
Ana shrugged. “All day.”
Reynolds looked genuinely excited by this prospect, and Ana sensed that he probably missed this sort of intellectual discussion. “Wait right here,” he said. He di
sappeared through a doorway and returned a minute later carrying a large black book that Ana recognized as the Holy Bible. He sat down with the book in his lap and thumbed quickly through several pages. “Joshua, Joshua,” he mumbled. “Ah, here we go.” He paused for a few seconds before continuing. “By the way,” he asked, “do you belong to any particular religious denomination?”
Ana had to think about that one for a second. She hadn’t bothered to assign the fictional “Ana Griffin” any specific religion. So, as a fallback, she just used her own. “I was raised as a Presbyterian,” she replied. “But I don’t really attend church anymore.”
“Fair enough,” said Reynolds. “But I’m sure you’re familiar with the story of Exodus. How Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and how they wandered in the desert for forty years.”
“Generally, yes.”
“And at the end of those forty years, after all the elders except Moses had died off, the decision was made to invade Canaan to conquer the promised land for Israel, as God had commanded.”
“Uh-huh.”
“At the age of a hundred and twenty, Moses died in sight of the promised land, never having set foot there. So Joshua was appointed as the new leader of the Israelites, and he quickly went about preparing to lead his people into battle. His first challenge was how to get them across the Jordan River.”
Ana was nodding along politely. But she really wished the conversation would hurry up and steer back toward Dr. Holzberg, or at least something more . . . relevant. But she knew she had to be patient.
“Crossing the Jordan would be no easy task,” Reynolds continued. “Here, let me show you a map.” He flipped to the back of his Bible, which contained a series of annotated maps of the Holy Land. Then he placed the Bible on the coffee table, opened to a two-page map of the Middle East, circa 1400 BCE. “The first thing you need to realize,” he said, “is that the Jordan was a much more powerful river in those days than it is now. Nowadays, it is heavily diverted for irrigation and drinking water, and there are various flood-control levees in place. But back then, it was just a raw and natural river. Very powerful. As you can see, it runs from the Sea of Galilee in the north, up here”—he tapped the appropriate spot on the map—“to the Dead Sea in the south, down here.” He pointed to the Dead Sea on the map. “Along the way, it picks up runoff from the mountains and hillsides that extend all along the Jordan Valley on both sides.” He indicated these features on the map, tracing both sides of the Jordan River with his bony finger.