by James Barney
The Dumpster.
With care, he stepped over the dead man’s legs and made his way around the corner of the Dumpster.
And there it was.
He was now standing at the edge of a square hole, about four feet across with a heavy steel access panel that was flipped over on its hinges. He observed a steel ladder secured to one side of the shaft, which extended downward and disappeared into the darkness below. He energized his powerful flashlight and pointed it straight down into the shaft, illuminating the bottom some forty feet below. It looked to be empty, but the cement bottom was shimmering, much like an asphalt road on a hot day. He considered this fact for a moment, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a quarter. With his flashlight still illuminating the shaft, he held the coin above the opening for a moment and released it, watching as it fell straight down, spinning and glinting in the beam of the flashlight.
Until it suddenly vanished near the bottom.
“Whoa.” He continued watching the shaft for several seconds, utterly amazed, half expecting the quarter to suddenly reappear and hit the bottom. But it never did.
“Hello?” he shouted down into the shaft. His voice reverberated in the narrow vertical space and then quickly dissipated, with just the faintest echo still audible somewhere deep below.
Aside from the echo, there was no reply.
He checked his digital watch, which read 7:42 A.M. He wondered whether that was still the correct time. After all, he’d heard the reports on the way into the district about the GPS satellites falling out of sync. And now he knew why. He suspected the entire city of Washington, D.C., had just experienced a very mild time dilation. Perhaps on the order of a few seconds, maybe less for most areas. And most people never even knew about it. Except for the GPS issue, of course.
McCreary also now understood why Califano’s voice had sounded so funny on the radio. Standing at this very spot, Califano would have been at the peak of the bell curve, experiencing a much higher time-dilation factor than the folks back at Langley, who were probably experiencing little or none at all. That had apparently created something akin to a Doppler effect, making Califano’s voice sound deeper than normal.
“Steve, can you hear me?” McCreary said into his microphone.
Steve Goodwin answered a few seconds later. “Yeah, boss.”
“How do I sound?”
“Like Barry White.”
McCreary nodded knowingly and then peered down into the shaft. Of course, the highest time-dilation factor would be down there.
McCreary considered his options for a few minutes, repeatedly checking the shaft with his flashlight to see if anything had changed. It hadn’t.
Finally, blowing out a long, nervous breath, he eased his large, oafish frame onto the first rung of the ladder. Time to find out where my quarter went.
43
HILLCREST ESTATE, MIDDLEBURG, VIRGINIA
Do you want to die?” asked Vladamir Krupnov in a measured tone that bordered on politeness.
The man strapped to the chair in front of him, Malachi, shook his head. His face was badly bruised and bloody. His left eye was swollen completely shut and was about the same size and color as a plum. His other eye didn’t look much better, although at least it was still open a slit. The man’s cheeks were puffy and raw from repeated beatings, and his lips were grotesquely swollen and bleeding.
“Then I suggest you start making yourself useful to me,” said Krupnov in the same measured tone. He paused to gauge Malachi’s reaction. “Do you understand?”
Malachi nodded slowly.
“Good,” said Krupnov. “It’s very important that you understand that.” He stepped away and returned a few seconds later pulling a wooden chair slowly across the pine floor of the guesthouse’s master bedroom. He sat down directly in front of Malachi and stared into his one functioning eye. “You see, the moment I feel you are no longer useful to me . . . the moment I think you are wasting my time . . . that is the moment you will die. Is that clear?”
Malachi nodded his head lackadaisically. He appeared to be on the verge of unconsciousness.
“And after everything you’ve been through, that would be a shame. Don’t you agree?”
Malachi did not respond.
“So let’s go through this again,” said Krupnov. “And please try to be more helpful this time.”
Malachi closed his one good eye and nodded.
“Okay. You entered the Thurmond lab in the spring of 1972, hmm?”
Malachi nodded feebly.
“Early March?”
Malachi nodded again.
“And, at that time, you were working for MOSS.”
“A volunteer,” said Malachi through swollen lips.
Krupnov smiled. “Right. A volunteer for MOSS.”
Malachi nodded his head in agreement.
“And you had two simple tasks. Recover the material from the lab . . .”
Malachi nodded.
“And obtain the map from Dr. Holzberg showing the location of the remaining stones.”
Malachi closed his right eye and slowly shook his head from side to side. A quiet groan of frustration arose from his throat. “I don’t remember a map,” he said with great effort.
Krupnov sighed and then rose to his feet with a tremendous show of disappointment. He raised his right hand and was poised to strike Malachi brutally across the face when a voice behind him suddenly called out, “Let me talk to him.”
Krupnov dropped his hand and turned toward the laptop computer behind him, which was displaying a live video shot of Dr. Benjamin Fulcher. “Bring me closer,” Fulcher said.
Krupnov slid the laptop computer to the edge of the table. Then he and Sashko lifted Malachi’s chair and maneuvered it until it was directly facing the laptop computer.
“Daniel, do you recognize me?” asked Fulcher via the secure video link.
Malachi tilted his head, trying to get a better view of the screen through the remaining field of vision in his right eye. After several seconds, he slowly nodded his head up and down. “Elijah,” he mumbled.
“Yes, of course you remember me,” said Fulcher. “We were a team. MOSS. The Mother of Science Society.” Fulcher said these words slowly, almost reverently. Then his tone suddenly changed. “Silly organization,” he said with a dismissive shake of his head. “Save humanity from itself,” he said mockingly. “Prevent man from doing what he is destined to do . . . which is to consume the apple of knowledge to the core. Chew it up. Digest it. So that we ourselves can become like God. It’s not a tragedy to be prevented. It’s fate.”
Malachi remained motionless. If he had any expression on his face at all, it was impossible to see beneath his injuries.
“You were a fool, Daniel.”
“I fulfilled my destiny,” mumbled Malachi through painfully swollen lips.
“You fulfilled nothing,” Fulcher sneered. “You were blinded by your devotion to Opal and misguided by a childish philosophy.”
“I was called by God.”
“Ha! God doesn’t call men to service. God is a mechanism. A contraption of ingenious design that we are destined to solve . . . and master. Deus ex machina. Are we slaves to the machine, Daniel? No. It serves us.”
“Deus summus est ens aeternum, infinitum,” said Malachi in labored measure.
“Do not quote Newton to me!” Fulcher said, seething. “He wrote that portion of the Scholium under duress, and everybody knows it. Newton didn’t believe in a living God any more than he believed in heaven and hell. He understood the truth. That the clockwork universe is God. And man is the clock winder. Why is that so hard for you to accept? Hmm? God gave us a machine, and we are meant to run it.”
Malachi remained silent.
“What a shame you wasted your youth on this claptrap. Look at you now. Gray hair and wrinkles and nothing to show for it. Although, I must say, I’m surprised by this interesting aging effect. Gray hair and wrinkles . . . yet your body looks youth
ful. Perhaps time dilation causes cellular aging, inside out, but with no atrophy. Interesting . . .” His voice trailed off as he appeared to contemplate this phenomenon for several seconds. “Well, to tell you the truth, I didn’t know what kind of physiological artifacts there might be. I suppose it was unethical to experiment on you like that.” He paused for a moment and smirked. “But you were such an eager volunteer. Who was I to stand in your way?”
“So you knew,” said Malachi slowly.
“What, that you’d be gone for a very long time? Oh yes, I knew that. Of course, I didn’t think it would take this long. But, fortunately, I’m a patient man.” He cocked his head to one side. “But what of your lovely Opal? You must have been quite surprised to see her wrinkly old face.”
Malachi’s face grew slightly more contorted than it already was.
“Tell me, Daniel, is your devotion to her just as strong? Are you still willing to sacrifice everything for her?”
Malachi closed his one good eye and said nothing.
“Time is running short,” said Fulcher. “So I’m only going to ask you this once. But before you answer, you should understand something. I am going to solve this puzzle with or without your help. Einstein may have been confounded by it, and my dear friend Franz Holzberg may have failed miserably with it. But I will not. Time and gravity are the final dimensions to be conquered, and I am on the cusp of controlling both. Finally, man’s destiny will be achieved. We will be our own God.”
“You’re crazy,” mumbled Malachi.
“Crazy? Or heretical? There’s a difference, you know. I’m quite proud to be among heretics like Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton. But I digress. Right now, the only thing you need to worry about is whether you still love Opal.”
Malachi lifted his head. “What are you talking about?”
Fulcher’s face twisted into a patronizing smile. “Daniel. We know exactly where she is. And as soon as her little time bubble decays—and that shouldn’t take too long—we’ll have her and the Thurmond material in our possession. So, like I said, I’m only going to ask you this one time. If you want to spare your dear Opal a great deal of pain and suffering, I suggest you tell us what we want to know. Right now.”
Malachi was already shaking his head back and forth. “I’m telling you—”
“Shut up,” said Fulcher. He held a sheet of paper up to the camera. It was the same drawing of the houselike structure and twelve circles with German notation beneath them that they’d shown him in the van. “Daniel, I want to know where these remaining stones are located.” He pointed to the dashed box that enclosed ten of the small circles. “I know they’re all together. And Franz Holzberg knew exactly where. Now tell me how to find them.”
Malachi closed his eyes and was silent for a very long time. Finally, he dropped his head and muttered, “I don’t know.”
Fulcher pursed his lips tightly and abruptly stood up. A second later, he bent down so that his face filled the entire computer screen. “You’re a goddamned fool,” he said with a scowl. He paused and shook his head. “Vlad, he’s all yours.”
Ana Thorne was lying facedown on a soft bed, her hands secured tightly behind her back with several layers of duct tape. Her ankles, too, were taped tightly together. At the moment, she was thinking about the last time she’d been tied up like this, which was twelve years ago.
It was during her CIA training at Camp Peary, when she’d received a full day’s instruction on how to escape from various types of restraints, everything from ropes to handcuffs to nylon zip ties. During that training, she’d learned that some restraints were easier to escape from than others. And one of the easiest of all . . . was duct tape.
She turned her head and sized up the unshaven goon who had been guarding her in this small bedroom for the past hour. He wore gray warm-up pants and a grimy wife-beater undershirt with a gold chain dangling around his neck. At the moment, he was leaning back in his chair near the door with what appeared to be a Beretta 9-millimeter pistol in his lap. For the past hour, he’d been rocking back and forth in that chair, chewing gum like a cow and leering at her with the same stupid expression that he’d worn in the van.
Ana knew exactly what he was thinking. And it was time to give him what he wanted. With some effort, she rolled herself over onto her back and sat up on the edge of the bed so that she was facing the man. Her jacket was open, exposing her white, form-fitting tank top. “Hey,” she said, tipping her head back slightly.
The man did not respond at first, although he was obviously enjoying the view.
“Hey,” she said again, her voice soft and beckoning.
“What do you want?” said the man with a thick Ukrainian accent. He seemed very apprehensive about what was happening.
Maybe he’s not as dumb as he looks, Ana thought, considering this possibility for a moment. No, he probably is. She arched her back and let out a sensuous groan. “Ahh, I just need someone to scratch my back. God, that would feel sooo good right now.”
The man stared back at her and continued chewing his gum.
“Can’t you just scratch it a little?” asked Ana in full flirtation mode. “That’s all I need. Just a little scratch.” She squirmed her torso all around. “Come on, don’t be mean.”
The man watched impassively as Ana moved her body around with catlike grace.
Ana could tell he was ready to cave. “No?” she asked softly, sounding a bit dejected. “Not even a little scratch?” She pouted. And that was all it took.
“Dobre,” said the goon, rolling his eyes. He stood and tucked his pistol into the back of his waistband, then slowly approached the bed. He drew near and pressed his crotch and stomach up against her as he reached over and scratched her back with one hand. “Like this?” he asked. With his other hand, he reached around and cupped one of her breasts and began squeezing it.
In an instant, Ana brought her unbound hands around and grabbed the man’s pistol from the back of his pants. Amazingly, he didn’t even seem to notice at first. He was still scratching her back and fondling her breast. Then Ana jabbed the barrel of the Beretta hard into the man’s stomach.
Now he noticed. “Vy poviya!” he shouted as he brought his massive hand up to strike her across the face.
But Ana wasn’t about to let that happen. She pulled the Beretta’s trigger, and a 9-millimeter round instantly exploded into the man’s stomach. He winced and looked down in disbelief at the growing circle of red on his grimy white undershirt. “You . . . bitch,” he sputtered. He grabbed the wound tightly with both hands and gawked as blood leaked in great volumes between his fingers. He stumbled backward into a nightstand, knocking it over and sending its lamp and telephone crashing to the floor. Two seconds later, he hit the floor and grunted in pain as he slowly drew his knees to his chest and assumed the fetal position.
Meanwhile, Ana quickly unraveled the duct tape around her ankles. She was nearly done when she heard the heavy footsteps of someone fast approaching in the hallway outside the door.
With her feet finally free, she hopped off the bed and rushed to the opposite side of the room, where two wooden doors were located side by side. She turned the handle of the first and swung it open wide. A closet. She quickly moved to the next door and checked its handle. Locked.
Just then, the door from the hallway began to open. Ana barely had time to train her newly acquired Beretta toward the door before it flew wide open and a thug in a tracksuit came barging into the room brandishing a compact Uzi machine gun. He took one look at his fallen comrade on the floor, then immediately began firing his weapon in Ana’s direction. In the same instant, she pulled the Beretta’s trigger three times in rapid succession. The deafening sound of gunshots filled the small room. Ana flinched as the door beside her exploded into splinters and the window behind her instantaneously shattered. Drywall, plaster, and bits of broken glass flew in every direction.
Ana was sure she’d been hit. She looked up and saw the man with the machine gun
tumbling backward with two bullet wounds in his chest. Center of mass. Then she checked her own body and was amazed to find that she hadn’t been hit at all.
A miracle.
Suddenly, more footsteps and voices could be heard from somewhere inside the house. She had to get out of there. She glanced at the shattered window behind her and was surprised to see a red metal roof directly beneath it—apparently a covering for some sort of porch or walkway attached to the house. She approached and quickly knocked out the remaining shards of glass from the frame and removed the screen. Then, with one last glance behind her, she crawled through the window and hopped down onto the red metal roof below.
The metal roof was sloped . . . and slippery. She found herself sliding quickly toward the edge, and there was no stopping it. Two seconds later, she tumbled awkwardly over the edge and into the bushes eight feet below, where she landed in a painful tangle of branches and holly leaves. She slowly worked her way free of this mess and flopped ungracefully onto the mulched planting bed beside the guesthouse.
She rose to her feet and took stock of her situation. Other than scrapes and cuts, she was fine. For the moment, it was eerily quiet. She gazed out over the manicured grounds of the Hillcrest estate and could see a mansion and swimming pool about fifty yards away, and a barn beyond that. But where was everyone?
Her answer came a moment later in the form of automatic gunfire. The mulch in front of her suddenly exploded as a torrent of bullets whizzed close by her head and into the ground. Several rounds pinged loudly off the metal roof above her and ricocheted into the distance. Someone was apparently firing from the bedroom window above her but did not have a clear shot. When the gunfire subsided a few seconds later, she ran.
She sprinted at full speed until she reached the open lawn between the guesthouse and the pool. Which way? She paused momentarily and stole a quick glance behind her. To her horror, she saw three goons rushing out of the guesthouse, shouting wildly and pointing toward her. She saw one of them leveling his weapon, preparing to fire.