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by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  “You didn’t move again?”

  “Apparently we’re far enough underground. It’s an old mine that we took over, then excavated even more. Very impressive.”

  “How big?”

  “I don’t really know. I’ve been there four times, and it seems to go on forever. I’m told it houses close to a hundred and sixty million individual artifacts.” She glanced away from the monotony of the road for a moment. “That’s more than the Smithsonian—all the Smithsonians.”

  “You’re just . . . saving stuff?”

  “We study it. Preserve it.” She sounded defensive. “It’s what the First Gods asked us to do.”

  “But they gave away knowledge, and you’re hiding it.”

  “That’s unfair, and you know it.”

  The Cruiser rocked as Jess swerved to avoid a snake sunning itself on the open road. “How many times was the Library at Alexandria looted by invading forces? How many Mayan codices were burned by the Spanish? Books and artwork burned by Nazis? The Taliban shelling the Afghani Buddhas? The Qin Dynasty of China didn’t just burn books, they buried scholars alive. Who can even comprehend the loss in human knowledge, human arts, human experience, that’s been brought about by centuries—by millennia—of religious and political extremism and intolerance?

  “That’s why we keep our beliefs to ourselves. Why we adopt the religion and the culture of whatever time and place we’re in. So we don’t stand out, don’t attract attention. So we can protect human knowledge from human ignorance, and hatred, and fear.”

  “Until the First Gods come back.” David closed his eyes against the glare. He had heard this before.

  “Until then.”

  David’s eyes opened. Jess’s hands were tight on the wheel, her knuckles white. Her attention fixed on the unchanging road and landscape.

  He’d just heard something that he hadn’t heard from Jess before.

  Doubt.

  FORTY-ONE

  Ironwood was on a small dock in Port Vila harbor, buying fish for dinner. It was another of the many reasons he enjoyed the island nation he’d adopted. In addition to its no-extradition-to-America rule, haggling over prices was frowned upon, and it was considered rude to tip. Apparently, at some point in its past, some wise politician had also decided income taxes were rude as well, because Vanuatu didn’t have that annoying custom, either.

  He paid the fair price for a fine barramundi and had the fish wrapped in brown paper for his driver to carry in the string bag already swelling with glossy purple eggplant, bright yellow grapefruit, and ripe brown pawpaw. Farther down the weathered dock was a stand that could be counted on to have the largest prawns. He moved on through the crowd of local shoppers and Australian tourists to make his next purchase.

  But Crazy Mike stopped him, phone in hand.

  Ironwood checked the time. It had taken Agent Jack Lyle almost two days to analyze the Cornwall printout and get back to him. A bit faster than he’d anticipated. No matter; the outcome would be the same.

  He took the phone and selected a section of the dock between two vendors’ stalls where he could lean against the rough wood safety rail and have a private and profitable conversation.

  “So what did your experts tell you?” Ironwood kept his tone amiable, a man in control.

  “Tell me about what?” The voice on the other end of the call was unexpected but familiar.

  “Merrit?”

  “Sorry to call you this way, but the satphone could be—”

  Ironwood lowered his voice with effort. “Where are you?”

  “Probably better you don’t know. The Cornwall thing, it didn’t go the way we hoped.”

  “Go on.”

  “The MacCleirighs got there first. Makes no sense, but they demolished it.”

  Ironwood felt the phone tremble in his fist. How far was his security chief going to take this fabrication? “Where’s my son?”

  He heard Merrit exhale—this from a man who never broke a sweat.

  “There’s no good way to tell you this. He got caught in the explosions, the cave-in. I tried to pull him out, but . . . he didn’t make it.”

  Ironwood had to concentrate on every word he spoke, to keep rage from consuming him. “Then why’s J.R. in the custody of the air force? Telling them things even I don’t know?”

  Merrit hesitated. “I saw the tunnel roof fall in on him . . .”

  “What’d you do to Frank Beyoun?”

  “The programmer? Nothing. Haven’t seen him since—”

  “Frank is dead, Merrit. My son says you killed him.”

  “I didn’t. Why would I?”

  “That last day, when Dave gave me that hard drive, there was something going on between you two. Did he take off because of you?”

  “Your handpicked genius stole from you and hooked up with your enemies, and you’re blaming me because he ran?”

  “Florian MacClary. She died in Tahiti. Now I’m wondering if you killed her, too. I have always considered this . . . ‘difference of opinion’ between me and that misguided foundation to be a gentleman’s disagreement. But if my boy’s right, you’ve turned it into some kind of war.”

  “He’s lying. That’s all I can say.”

  Ironwood had a flash picture of his son lying wounded in a hospital, ready to bring down everything his father had worked to build, the legacy of truth he wanted to leave to the world. Because I saw only what I wanted to . . . heard only what I wanted to . . . ignored the evidence . . .

  He wrenched his thoughts away from what he couldn’t change.

  “Then prove it. Explain it all away, to me, in person.”

  “Why? So you can trade me to the air force for your son?”

  “The air force isn’t interested in you. Now answer: Will you come here and defend your good name?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’ll take that as a no.” Ironwood disconnected.

  He also took it as a declaration of war from a murderer.

  His quest for the truth had just become a quest for survival.

  “Doesn’t look like much,” David said.

  “That’s the point,” Jess answered.

  Thirty miles from the town of Alice Springs, with no other sign of human habitation in sight, she slowly drove the now-filthy Land Cruiser along the winding red-dirt road, through a wide-open gate in a sagging chain-link fence that offered little more than a suggestion of security.

  In the distance, past a weathered tin guard shack, was the beginning slope of a massive sandstone outcropping. Just past the shack was a sun-bleached and wind-scoured sign. It was a directory of storage and file-management companies, listing loading docks each could be accessed through. A wooden barricade arm beside the guard shack was down, ostensibly preventing entry to the continuation of the road beyond, though a car could easily drive around it.

  Jess stopped the big SUV in front of the barricade.

  “What now?”

  “Won’t be long.”

  Less than a minute later, a crunch of dirt, and another vehicle approached from off road. A Land Rover Defender. The much-dented and dust-filmed white vehicle had extra fuel cans strapped to its roof rack. It looked antique, but even through closed windows, David heard its engine. It was new and powerful.

  The driver got out, no sense of urgency about him. He wore knee-length tan shorts, a sweat-stained olive drab shirt with epaulets, thick boots, and what David decided was an Australian version of a cowboy hat. A second man stayed in the vehicle.

  Jess lowered her window as the man approached and rested her hand on the open sill. The position looked awkward to David, and he noticed the tips of her thumb and index finger touched.

  “G’day,” the driver said. “Looking for something?”

  “I’m on a long journey.”

  “Which direction?”

  “West to east.”

  The man’s attitude seemed to change. He scratched lightly at his throat with two fingers, then bent down
to look past Jess at David. “Can you vouch for him?” the man asked.

  “No,” Jess said.

  “Fair enough. I’ll let herself know you’re on the way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No worries.” The man walked back to his vehicle, swung in, and used a radio mike.

  “Was all that some sort of code?” David asked.

  “Some of it.”

  “So why couldn’t you vouch for me?”

  “It’s a different meaning. He wanted to know if you were Family. I said you weren’t, so he had to be careful of what he said.”

  “What if I am part of the Family?”

  “Then I’ll teach you the codes myself.”

  The barricade arm swung up, and Jess drove on. Ahead, beside an industrial-sized propane storage tank, David glimpsed for the first time the opening in the sandstone cliff, wide enough and tall enough for three double-decker buses to drive in, side by side. It dwarfed the Toyota as they drove through.

  The volume inside could easily accommodate a doubles tennis court. Three other white Land Rovers were parked along one red-hued wall whose grooves and lines suggested it had been carved from solid rock.

  Jess switched on the Cruiser’s headlights, and, at the back of the artificial cave, David counted three loading docks with standard garage-type doors.

  Halfway to the docks, she parked beside the wall and told David to leave the luggage and come with her.

  The sign on the metal personnel door between two of the loading dock doors said hours were by appointment only.

  Jess stood before it, waiting.

  David looked up to the vast raw-rock ceiling and saw security cameras looking down.

  The metal door opened.

  The woman before them was young, with a slight build. A soft black cloud of hair framed a caramel complexion and clear sherry-brown eyes. Despite the pervasive red-desert dust, her shirt and jeans were immaculate.

  “Bakana,” Jess said.

  “Defender.” The young woman half knelt, took Jess’s left hand, and kissed it. She glanced at David. “He’s not on the journey?”

  “He will be. I want Victoria to meet him.”

  Bakana stood, and David saw the appraising look she gave him. Not so friendly.

  She led them into a hall, which ended in the distance with a closed door. Lit by overhead fluorescents, a series of innocuous and simply framed prints of local landscapes graced both rock walls.

  Halfway down the hall, Bakana ushered them into a lounge area on the right. They were to wait while she made the arrangements. There were drinks in the cooler. She shut the door behind her.

  David studied a remarkably ugly chair covered in what appeared to be orange burlap. “Anything I should know?”

  Jess rummaged through the cooler and pulled out two water bottles. “You’re my fiancé.” She held one up questioningly.

  David nodded. “Okay . . .”

  She tossed him a bottle, then opened one for herself. “It’s the only way to get you in here. Simpler than the truth.”

  David twisted off the bottle’s cap and took a long swig. He knew he’d become too comfortable with lies, but as death drew near, things he used to worry about no longer concerned him.

  The rest of the lounge furniture was as ugly as the chair, and at least thirty years old. A ring-stained wooden coffee table was piled with well-thumbed magazines. They ranged from Modern Documents Management to the requisite copies of National Geographic from decades past. “It’s not what I pictured.”

  “They get government inspectors from time to time. Drivers for the trucks that bring in supplies. This is what they expect here.”

  “What are you expecting?”

  Jess didn’t answer. She drained the last of her water and dropped the empty bottle in a recycling bin.

  David sensed more than doubt in Jess now. Fear.

  Nathaniel Merrit sat calmly in the chair by the window of his hotel room near Heathrow.

  On the desk beside him were the supplies from the clinic—the ones they’d given him, and the ones he’d stolen.

  Right now, his attention was on the bottle of co-dydramol tablets. He was waiting to see if he needed more. Pain, the warrior’s mantra went, was weakness leaving the body. But his back had been badly wrenched when he’d slammed into the stone table in the treasure chamber. The flesh over his rib cage on the right side had been slashed by the shooter he had had to kill to escape the collapse. And his ankle . . . he’d sprained that making a simple four-foot jump from one of the openings blown out of the side of the cliff.

  It had not been his night.

  The only thing that had made the fiasco in Cornwall even remotely acceptable was that he’d caught sight of J.R.’s body in the passageway, by the rock pile, just instants before the ceiling collapsed.

  By then, he’d already suited up in the black Nomex jacket and helmet of the first shooter who’d entered the treasure room searching for survivors. Merrit had strangled the man so quickly he’d had no time to shout a warning. He’d dropped the other two shooters on the way out. Dressed as one of their partners, he’d made use of his advantage and opened fire first.

  Now, though, with J.R. alive and squealing to the air force, his escape from Cornwall was no longer step one in cleaning the mess Ironwood’s brat had left him.

  His arrangement with Ironwood was over, and that was a problem. His ex-employer had resources, and motive, to silence him. To survive, Merrit knew, would require even stronger resources.

  Fortunately, he also knew where to find them.

  FORTY-TWO

  Jess followed Bakana through a cluttered warren of low-walled cubicles.

  The administrative facility at the end of the hall was more window dressing. Once every year, for the benefit of occupational health and safety officers and business-license issuers, MacCleirigh Foundation researchers came up from the underground caverns of the Shop to play the parts of office workers. For now, though, the cubicles were silent and empty. Every desk and chair was draped in heavy sheets of plastic, the red dust everywhere.

  Bakana carefully pulled the cover from one of the filing cabinets against the back wall. She drew out the middle drawer, and Jess placed her hand inside, palm down, fingers splayed to fit within a set of plastic pegs. A flash of white light. A soft chime. Then a panel in the wall beside the cabinet smoothly moved aside.

  Bakana went through first.

  The open staircase spiraled downward to another, larger room, equivalent in size to the cave where Jess had parked the Cruiser. At the room’s far end gleamed the huge steel disk of a fifty-ton blast door. It was open to reveal a circular passageway as wide as a two-lane road.

  Once through, it was a short walk to a bank of elevators that descended five levels deeper underground. Jess knew that if she had misjudged the extent of Su-Lin’s power over other defenders, it was possible she’d already been declared an enemy of the Family. If anything was going to happen to her, it would be now.

  The elevator door whisked open. Cool air washed in. Jess braced for attack.

  It didn’t come.

  “Such news!” Victoria, Line Claridge, Defender of Canberra, swept Jess into a quick embrace. Her turquoise eyes were as startling as ever in her deep-tanned face. Her white-blond hair was straight and chin length.

  Jess relaxed momentarily. Su-Lin hadn’t sent out an alarm. Her cover story about David and marriage, concocted quickly on the plane, only had to hold until they got the sun map images.

  “My office?” Victoria suggested. “So you can tell me all about him.”

  “Lots to tell,” Jess said.

  Victoria winked. “Time for true confessions.”

  Victoria’s office was like the workplace of any other academic who had too many projects and too little time. Journals and papers and open books feathered with sticky notes covered both desks, each shelf, and every piece of furniture.

  The Defender of Canberra transferred one of those piles fr
om the edge of a dark green leather sofa to the top of another pile already on the floor. Jess settled in as instructed while Victoria took her own chair, checked her laptop, then folded it closed. She stripped off her Velcro-fastened sandals and, with a sigh, lifted her calloused feet up on the only clear corner of her desk.

  “Jessie, Su-Lin’s worried about you.”

  Su-Lin . . . not David or my marriage. Jess returned to full alert. “When did you talk to her?”

  “A few days ago. She said you went missing in Boston after Florian’s memorial, after saying something about going to the Pacific temple site. Before it’s been secured.”

  There was a chance, Jess realized, that Victoria knew exactly what she was doing. There was also a chance that Victoria was merely Su-Lin’s unwitting ally, being used to find out if the new defender might implicate others in her rebellion against the Family.

  There was one way to find out. Strike first.

  “The Polynesian temple’s been destroyed,” Jess said.

  “What?” Victoria swung her legs down. “How?”

  “Underwater demolition.”

  There was a knock on the door. Bakana was there. She held a tray with a covered china teapot, cups, and a plate of Tim Tams. She looked apologetic, apparently aware she had interrupted something.

  Victoria asked her to put the tray down on a relatively stable pile of books, then leave. Bakana closed the door without being asked.

  “Was it Ironwood?”

  “No,” Jess said. “Su-Lin.” Victoria’s strong-featured face betrayed only bewilderment. That, paired with her convincing shock about the temple’s destruction, gave Jess new hope.

  “Why ever would Su-Lin destroy something so valuable? And if she did, how would you know?”

  Jess took a deep breath, hoping she wasn’t making a mistake. “Willem told me. Just before he disappeared.”

  “But Willem’s in Iceland.”