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by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  “So what’s Ironwood talking about with Weir if he’s not talking about real aliens? Russians? Chinese? The Swiss?”

  “You’re not telling me you think aliens are real.”

  “What I think doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Ironwood believes. Don’t we have to start looking at this case from his perspective?”

  “Fair enough,” Lyle said. “So what do you think that is?”

  “I think Ironwood is the end user of the database.” Roz’s eyes were bright as she made the most of her chance to persuade him to her way of thinking. “Think about it: He’s obsessed with finding his alien outposts. He thinks they’re thousands of years old—that’s archaeological. The SARGE database, able to look underground, that’s got to be a valuable archaeological tool, wouldn’t you say? The MacCleirigh Foundation, they fund archaeological expeditions. So SARGE is valuable to Ironwood and the foundation—no enemy state need apply.

  “What it comes down to is that maybe this isn’t an espionage case. Maybe this is just some modern-day Indiana Jones and SARGE is this year’s Holy Grail.”

  It was a good argument, but it wasn’t on point.

  “Whatever perspective you want to choose,” Lyle cautioned, “the database is stolen government property, and each moment it’s in the possession of someone other than the United States government, we’re at risk.”

  “No argument.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “So . . . what do we do now?”

  Lyle knew he had several options: He could attempt to interrogate the programmers at the table, but, since they’d already asked for their lawyer—tellingly, the same one—there was obviously some kind of plan in place and none of them would be talking soon. He could wait to find out what Captain Kingsburgh might discover, provided Ironwood’s people hadn’t managed to erase every hard drive, but odds were they had. He could search Ironwood’s other facilities—but, if there were other large computing installations in one or more of them, it was also a good bet they were already being disassembled.

  “Only one thing we can do.”

  Roz gave him a sly smile, as if she knew what was coming.

  “We need more information,” Lyle said. “Geospatial has to identify the shoreline in that printout.”

  “And then . . . road trip?”

  “Road trip.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “I wonder what it was like.” Jess spoke quietly, as if in church.

  David stood beside her on the bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Fog and mist filled the morning air. A hundred feet down, they could just make out slow waves gently frothing against the dark stones of the rocky beach. Beyond that, only haze. Even the cries of seabirds were indistinct.

  “When do you think it was built?” David asked.

  First thing this morning, he and Jess had copied the coordinates from the printout they’d made in Boston to a topographical map. According to that, and their handheld GPS unit, they were standing over what Ironwood hoped would be an alien outpost and what Jess believed would be a Family temple. Whatever it actually was, the site, carved out of the shale of Cornwall, lay some ninety feet below them.

  “Nine thousand years ago.”

  “Sea level would have been lower,” David said. “Sixty feet, at least.”

  Jess flashed him a smile, as if he’d said something that amused her.

  “What I meant was, how many people lived here? Were there ships? Piers? Festivals? Shops? What did it smell like? Did they have kilns for pottery? Ovens for bread? What was their world like?” Jess paused, as if overwhelmed by possibilities.

  David offered his own approach to the unknown, distant past. “Well, their technology would be different, but the people would be just like us. Same emotions. Wants. Needs. Human nature doesn’t change.”

  “The First Gods were different.”

  David let it go. He, Jess, and Ironwood were in the same boat. All seeking proof. All running out of time to find it.

  “There!” Jess held her binoculars to her eyes, lenses pointed down to a bluff wall across a two-hundred-yard inlet.

  They’d been walking along the pathways and cliff edges for over an hour, waiting for the fog to burn off. The ruins of Tintagel Castle proper, maintained as a tourist site, were a mile to the southwest of the temple’s location, but here and there among the bluffs, clearly visible, were the remnants of stone walls and eroded steps. None was old enough to date back to the time of the temple, but David could see the effect they had on Jess. The Cornish site was more than a church to her. It was the Holy Land itself.

  “David—there’s a discontinuity in the strata! Twenty feet up, just to the left of the whitish splotch.”

  David aimed his binoculars at the cliff and saw the streak of white. “Above the three boulders?”

  “That’s it! You can see the slate and siltstone layers are interrupted by a conglomerate inclusion.”

  “The jumble of stones?”

  “It’s artificial.”

  David saw nothing but natural rock. He lowered the binoculars. “How can you tell?”

  “Trust me, I’m a geologist.”

  “Seriously, Jess. How can you look at something that thousands of others have seen and tell it’s artificial, when they haven’t?”

  “Because I can see igneous inclusions all through the local strata. Around here, the locals call those ‘greenstone’ or ‘blue elvan.’ So common no one notices them. That discontinuity down there? For the most part, it’s no different from a thousand others along this part of the coast.”

  “For the most part?”

  “Igneous rocks form from magma, so an igneous inclusion in Cornwall shale tends to be solid.”

  “So?”

  “Look closely at that inclusion down there. It’s not solid. It’s a conglomerate—a mixture.”

  David lifted the binoculars again as Jess’s voice directed him. “A long time ago, somebody could have filled a tunnel or cave with rubble or mine tailings or leftover quarry material. Over time, something cemented that filler, most likely minerals deposited by groundwater seepage. End result? It looks solid. For the most part. See it now?”

  “Sort of.” He returned the glasses to her. “Sealing something off? You’re sure of that?”

  “If I wasn’t looking for it, I’d probably miss it,” Jess admitted. “But remember, we’ve got this.” She held up the topo map, folded to show the outline of the temple she had sketched on it. “See how it lines up?”

  She turned the map so it became oriented to the view they faced. David nodded. “There’s a tunnel there.”

  Jess’s voice betrayed excitement rising. “Half of it’s gone by now, collapsed with the shale as the bluff erodes. But five meters farther in, it should open into this main structure.”

  David preferred practicality to dreams. “Any idea how we get through five meters of ‘conglomerate’ without jack hammers and dynamite?”

  “We don’t have to.” She gave him an odd look and tapped her finger along the edge of the sketch. “Look closer.”

  David looked across the inlet, made the connection.

  “There’s a cave.”

  By sunset, the sky was clear, an unbroken sweep of deepest blue, shading to black with a thin band of fiery red sketching the far horizon. The waves were little more than a slow pulse, no splashing. The scent of the Atlantic faint. Sea and land birds silent.

  The only sound that David registered was the sharp click and clatter of stones struck by their sturdy workboots as he and Jess lugged their packs along the shoreline base of the bluff, having timed their approach to attract the least notice.

  The grounds of Tintagel Castle closed at sunset, so there were few cars parked there, and no one else on the unlit scenic pathways to notice two figures in dark coveralls on the rocks below. There was just enough light left to reach what they’d seen that morning, without having to use their flashlights. The cave opening in the bluff was five feet abo
ve the high-tide line.

  They dumped their gear on the stony ground. Two large backpacks with metal frames, and a smaller canvas bag.

  David leaned against the near-vertical slope and made a stirrup with his hands to boost Jess up. As soon as she gained the opening, he tossed the packs and bag to her. A moment later, he scrambled up to join her.

  The opening was six feet across and four feet high. Room enough to crouch, not stand.

  In the falling light, they checked for watchers. Detected none.

  Then they turned from the opening, pulled their flashlights from the packs, and switched them on. Guided by bright beams, they stayed low and moved deeper into darkness, their packs and the bag left behind for now.

  They weren’t the first explorers of the stone-strewn cave. David noted the empty Guinness beer cans, fast-food wrappers, broken glass, and other signs of assignations.

  Twenty feet in, the cave suddenly expanded, and he and Jess both straightened up with relief. The rocky ceiling was at least a foot above their heads.

  David took a deep breath, inhaling moist air, its sea scent concentrated. Jess consulted her electronic compass. The GPS unit didn’t work here—no access to the positioning satellites.

  “Are we close?”

  “We are.” Jess shone her flashlight ahead and up to the left. The circle of light it cast rippled over the rough walls to the ceiling. There was a dark shadowed band there, a gap.

  She went to it, reaching up with a small knife to chip away at loose stones.

  David heard a change in the sound of the knife’s impacts just as she whispered, “There . . .”

  His flashlight beam joined hers.

  Jess rapped her knife point against a different type of stone. It was smooth, finished with a sharp edge.

  “It’s carved,” she whispered.

  David understood. “I’ll get the packs,” he said.

  The work was tedious but not difficult; the shale loose and easily moved. After two hours of scrabbling and scraping, they had cleared enough away for Jess to worm her way through the opening between the cave and the tunnel.

  David heard her muffled report. “It’s clear.” He pushed their packs through, then followed.

  They rested for a few minutes, sitting on the floor. It was damp and cold.

  David snapped two lightsticks, shook them to activate the chemicals inside, then threw them along the tunnel, one near, one far.

  The near one revealed in pale green light a bowed wall near collapse, its carved stones bulging out, apparently held in place by thick deposits of some sort of mineral buildup that resembled thick ropes of melted wax. Similar accumulations threaded down the opposite wall of the narrow tunnel and from the ceiling.

  It was evidence of Jess’s earlier explanation. Millennia of groundwater seepage leaving its mark.

  The far lightstick had landed beyond a mound of rubble from a section of wall and ceiling that had collapsed. Here, the passageway, though constricted, had just enough room for them to squeeze through.

  In the reflected white light from his flashlight and the green glow from the lightstick, Jess’s face was smudged by dirt and sweat, and her tightly braided hair was covered in stone chips and dust. But her eyes were bright, alive.

  “We’ve never beaten Ironwood to a temple before,” she said.

  David selected a rugged Olympus digital camera, one of six that Jess had bought so they wouldn’t have to fumble with swapping memory cards or downloading on-site. “We should start documenting this,” he said. He shot the length of the corridor, the ceiling above, the relatively undamaged wall to one side, a detail of the stone blocks making up the uneven floor. By the time the first series was complete, both he and Jess were momentarily blinded by the multiple flashes. They waited another minute for their vision to recover, then continued.

  Fifty feet farther and they found a branching.

  David held the compass to align with the map as Jess focused her flashlight on the temple sketch. Vapor from their exhalations swirled through the beam of light. The still air was colder now, dense with moisture. Though clearly audible, all sound within the contained world of wet stones and rough textures had strikingly diminished echoes. Under other circumstances, David knew he’d have recorded this unique ambience to add to his collection. But that was then, not now.

  “We’re after this.” Jess touched the image of a circular structure in the temple sketch. “Should be that way.” She shone her flashlight along the left branch of the corridor. “A hundred feet or so.”

  The beam revealed a massive pile of debris. Closer than a hundred feet.

  Jess activated another lightstick and dropped it on the floor.

  They approached the rock pile.

  Once again, David hoisted Jess up, and, flashlight in hand, she called back to him that the way was clear.

  The first thing that struck him was that this time, sound echoed. The second—no sign of water damage on the other side. Not to the floor or walls or ceiling. David asked Jess if she could explain the change.

  After easing once more into her backpack, she directed the beam of her flashlight to the ceiling. “Could be the strata above this part. If it’s igneous, then it’s impervious to groundwater compared to shale. Any water trickling down from the surface would hit it, then seep across it. It’d be moving toward the cliffs and the other damaged parts, leaving this section relatively dry.”

  She shone her flashlight along the floor and, without further word, moved ahead, quickening her pace.

  David took a moment to sling his own backpack over one shoulder, grabbed the small canvas bag with the cameras, and hurried after her.

  He caught up, about eighty feet along the way, where she’d halted, staring at the wall on their right.

  David saw planked doors of old gray wood, warped and twisted, bound with rusted metal—and, directly opposite the doors, a second passageway, a ninety-degree T-intersection.

  “David, look. They’re untouched . . . someone . . . someone closed these nine thousand years ago and . . .”

  Jess’s hand moved forward, then stopped as David reached out to restrain her. “Better take some pictures first.” The doors would never survive being opened, and none of their tools and equipment could preserve something so old and fragile.

  He pulled out the camera and quickly took another series, then cracked and shook a new lightstick and dropped it to the side. “Up to you now,” he said.

  Jess took a deep breath, then pushed gently on the left-hand door.

  In near-silent slow motion, the soft rotted wood crumbled to the floor, the corroded metal beyond support.

  Jess bit her lip but shone her flashlight ahead. Gasped. “It’s there . . .”

  She stepped through.

  They were standing in a room that Jess had already described to him. David’s flashlight beam now doubled hers, illuminating the circular space, which was perhaps twenty-five feet across. At its center was the table—a disk of stone eight feet wide on a central stone support just over three feet high. Carved lines divided the tabletop into twelve equal wedges, and in each wedge was a different indentation. All were empty.

  Jess brushed the dust from one hollowed-out space, touching its angular shape, two branching lines. “We’re too late. Again.” She couldn’t hide her disappointment.

  David played his flashlight over the encircling wall and saw something unexpected. “You didn’t tell me about this.”

  Jess looked up. “A map . . .”

  “Of what?” The image at first glance didn’t make sense to David.

  “The world!” Jess’s voice rose in wonder. “See?” She directed her flashlight at one spot on the wall. “There’s Africa, but it’s upside down. Putting north at the top of a map is just a convention, and whoever drew this chose the other way.”

  Together, they turned slowly in a circle. As their twinned flashlight beams swept over the entire wall, the map was revealed in colors seemingly as bright as the
day they’d been painted into the plaster. Brown and green for land, blue for water, with smooth arcs of black and red lines crossing oceans.

  “A map of the world? From nine thousand years ago?” David swung his flashlight’s beam around to what was clearly the Mediterranean, but a Mediterranean in which Sicily was a continuation of the Italian boot, instead of a separate island. Other parts of the continental outlines seemed equally crude and imperfectly detailed, though if the map were in fact that old, he couldn’t fault its lack of precision.

  “It has to be,” Jess said. “There . . . what’s that?” The beam of her flashlight moved in, wavered, and David saw Western Europe, and its extension—England, still attached. And on the southwesternmost tip of that extension—

  “Cornwall,” David said. Then he saw something more. A mark on their approximate location. Two intersecting blades topped by a circle. Like the cross that Jess had given him. She saw it, too.

  “Our sign, David . . . This was built by our—”

  David grabbed for her flashlight, switched it off along with his.

  Footsteps.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Merrit shone his flashlight and aimed his gun along the damp and disintegrating passageway as J.R. trudged up behind him. “I need to see it,” Merrit said, suppressing his irritation. He’d underestimated the enemy in the South Pacific, not anticipating the MacCleirighs would pay his divers to betray him. Ironwood’s son wasn’t a competent associate, but at least he couldn’t be bribed.

  J.R. swore, voice shaking with cold, as he pulled the sheet of paper from his Windbreaker.

  Frank Beyoun had produced the printout before Merrit had permanently relieved him of the inconvenience of being arrested with the rest of the Red Room team. It showed the outline of one of Ironwood’s alien outposts over a close-up of the ground surface high above them now.

  Merrit studied the map to confirm his plan. The dead-end passageway from the opening in the bluffs was the only easily accessible point of entry for the entire outpost complex. Weir and the MacClary girl weren’t armed, and there was nowhere they could hide. Their glowing lightsticks also marked their trail.