Or so she had thought.
Instead she had been driven south, far south, into the deserts of Syria and she had been here ever since. The only thing that she knew for sure was that she had been captive among other girls of a similar age, and that she had heard their drunken guards twice sing old Soviet songs about Christmas when the cells were especially cold and the nights long and dark.
Two years.
Elena had been taken out of her cell over that period twice per day and guided to a room that was warm and comfortable. There, relieved to be free of the cold and the darkness that she could not see but somehow knew surrounded her, Elena had been forced to wear some kind of garment on her head that had caused her to experience some of the most frightening and disturbing visions she could have imagined, and many that would never have entered her head until they were forced there by whatever contraption it was that they placed upon her.
The early experiments were gentle but none the less strange: she had felt as though there were people in the room with her despite knowing that she was alone, the guards and the scientists all leaving before the experiments started. A voice would ask her questions through a speaker in the wall: How did she feel? Could she see anything? Did she feel as though she could sense another time or place?
Gradually, with each successive session the intensity of the sensation that she was not alone in the room would increase and she sensed halos of light flashing and flickering on the periphery of what she assumed was the same vision she enjoyed in her dreams. The flashes of light became images, flaring with vivid brilliance only to vanish again like a word on the tip of her tongue.
Then, between the sessions, the headaches started.
One of the things least known about blind people was their acute sense of smell. Elena could detect scents with astonishing accuracy, but some were more easily recognized than others and when Elena was in the company of others girls in the facility she smelled the blood instantly. It was only after a few days that she realized the blood was the result of nosebleeds, the same ones that she began to have and that accompanied the blinding headaches. Elena knew that the strange device placed upon her head each day was to blame, and she figured that it was also to blame for the disappearances of the girls. Like her sense of smell, Elena’s hearing and even rudimentary echo–location were abnormally well formed, nature giving back in recompense what it had taken away. The girls’ voices and their own personal scents vanished from the corridors one by one as time went by, never to be heard or sensed again.
The visions followed the nosebleeds while wearing the device and eventually, shockingly, without it, often occurring in bright flashes amid the terrible pangs of pain that seared Elena’s skull. She saw things, real things, events happening that she could not understand but was required to relay to her captors with unerring accuracy. Elena knew well the consequences of attempting to deceive them as retribution for her captivity, the memory of the wicked lashes on her bare skin as bright and painful now as the day she had first felt them.
They would come soon, Elena knew, for she could sense them already. The puddles in her miserable cell shifted almost imperceptibly with tremors from the thuds of their heavy boots as they marched toward the cells. The air moved as they opened nearby doors, the pressure changing slightly in the cell around her and causing individual hairs on her cheeks to drift with the changing flow. A voice, distant but recognizable caused the hairs on the backs of her arms to rise up as fear drained slick and cold into her belly. Her only consolation was that she knew they could not violate her; such an act apparently rendered the girl’s visions useless.
Elena huddled on the floor and thought of her dear mother and father, so proud of her as she left them behind, and she fought back tears as she heard the cell door open and rough hands hauled her to her feet and dragged her out into the corridor.
Elena walked the sixty–seven paces to the metal gates, the scent of cheap tobacco and unwashed uniforms swirling around her. Through the gates they went, a bubble of warm air from a heater in the guardroom wafting across her along with the smell of sandwiches and coffee. Then the quieter part of the building, the sterilized scents of a further corridor for twenty–nine paces and the hiss of automatic doors as she was guided through into an open laboratory.
Other people were inside, six of them moving about as Elena was guided to the door she always went through. Inside, the smell of soft leather and warm air, food on a table nearby. The guards released her and she stumbled to the food, shoveling it in her mouth and guzzling clean water from a glass, always on the right side of the plate of food.
The voice once again, the same as always, Moscovian and harsh.
‘Hurry, we are waiting.’
Elena felt hands grab her shoulders and she reached for the last of the food as she was dragged backwards and lifted bodily onto a reclining chair, thick straps pinning her down. She knew better than to struggle, to kick and punch and scratch, for it only made it worse. The heavy, metallic device was clamped down onto her head and fixed in place, and then the other people left the room and she heard the door close.
Although she could see nothing, somehow she sensed the lights in the room dim and she closed her eyes and prayed silently that the pain would not be so bad this time.
Through the speakers, she heard the voice again.
‘Just like last time, Elena. You must see Edfu. You must see the temple, the tomb.’
The air around her head suddenly became charged somehow and she felt her long hair rise up with static as a flow of electrons surged through her brain. Flashes of light darted across her eyes and she felt something like a hot poker lance behind her eyeballs from right to left. Elena gritted her teeth against the pain that flashed through her skull and suddenly subsided again, and then light flared before her despite her closed eyes and she saw a massive temple of some kind.
Immense stone pillars the color of sand towered before her, carved by human hands that seemed incapable of such incredible achievements. The sky above was hard blue, not a cloud to be seen, and she was surrounded by deserts that stretched away into a horizon that trembled with heat. Her lungs felt heavy with the hot air, the sunshine burning her skin. Voices called out in a language that she did not recognize, men marching in groups and wearing white tunics, some of them with bizarre head dresses that she recognized from school but could not place.
Then she saw the statue.
Fifty feet high and one of a pair, it had the body of a man but the head of an animal, some kind of dog or wolf. As she squinted up at the incredible monuments, a word leaped into her mind and she whispered it out loud, her voice trembling as the seizures took hold.
‘Anubis.’
A voice replied to her as though from far away. ‘What do you see?’
Elena knew what was expected of her, and she complied.
‘They’re building a temple to Anubis,’ she said. ‘It’s larger now than when I last saw it.’
The view of the temple changed as though the world had spun around her, making her feel queasy and reminding her that she was not looking upon this world with her own eyes: she was seeing the past through the eyes of another.
‘I’m moving.’
Elena was walking across the burning sand, moving past teams of laborers hauling enormous blocks of stone across paths of wet sand, other teams of men tossing sparkling green water from the nearby river in front of a sled on which the stone blocks sat.
The air was filled with swirling dust as hundreds labored all around Elena, and she realized that she too was one of the workers, that she was seeing a day in the life of a man who had lived thousands of years before her.
‘What else do you see?’
The images of the desert seemed to blur before her, and suddenly she saw a man rushing out of a swirling dust storm, dark clouds above and the roar of thunder. The air turned deathly cold and Elena saw a helicopter’s blades thumping the air, saw men in vehicles, guns flashing with fire and dea
th as they charged through the deserts.
She saw a crescent shaped canyon, almost perfect in its symmetry, the storm rushing in upon it and other people fleeing. Men, women, a young girl who stared ahead with eyes as blind as Elena’s. Elena gasped as she realized that she could see another like her, an oracle, a seer, running away from the armed men that she somehow knew were Russians. Leading them was a tall man with light brown hair rippling in the storm, his eyes cold and gray, a large pistol gripped in one hand that he pointed directly at her.
The storm roared in and covered the canyon, and suddenly Elena could see a tomb with Egyptian hieroglyphs across the walls and thick pillars supporting an ancient ceiling. In the tomb was a vivid golden box, like a sarcophagus but smaller, and she saw the people who had fled the Russians lifting the ornate lid of the box from its mounts.
The vision swirled in clouds of dust before Elena and from the miasma a blaze of ferocious white light seared her vision. Terrible heat scorched her skin and she saw men burning, their bodies blackened to the color of soot and blasted away by tremendous winds that melted metal and turned bones to dust. A shrieking gale blasted the remains away, scorching the earth of life.
From the diabolical firmament she heard a woman’s voice scream a name and then the vision disappeared and Elena jerked awake, her chest heaving and her heart thundering in her chest. The seizure subsided, her limbs twitching and her body shaking
‘What did you see?’ the voice asked her.
Elena stared at the ceiling above her, but all she could see was the man charging toward her out of the storm, blood on his hands, the flashing blade and the cold determination in his eyes.
‘What did you see?’
Elena got her breathing under control.
‘A storm, people fighting,’ she whispered. ‘People dying in flames, it was horrible.’
‘Did you see the tomb, Elena? Did you see anything inside it?’
Elena hesitated, wanting to lie, but she knew that the strange devices would pick up her brain waves and that the Russians would know. She sighed.
‘There is a canyon,’ she whispered, ‘shaped like a crescent moon. The tomb is there.’
‘Where, Elena?’ the voice demanded. ‘Where is the canyon?’
Elena’s head sank until her chin touched her chest, blood trickling from her nose as her headache intensified.
‘Egypt,’ she said softly, ‘it is somewhere in Egypt but I couldn’t see where.’
There was a long pause, and then the door to the room opened and Elena knew that the session was over. She was lifted from the bed and out of the warm room into the cold corridor outside, the cosseting warmth leaving her just as it had in the storm in her vision, and as she was led down the corridor so the woman’s anguished voice she had heard pursued her like a demon from a nightmare along with the gunman staring down at her, all the way to her cell.
‘Ethan, no!’
***
XXV
Homs, Syria
The facility was as battered as the rest of the city as Colonel Mishkin was driven toward it, only the ranks of Russian and Syrian soldiers guarding it providing any clue to the importance of what was hidden inside. The small village of Kafr Aya, on the south western edge of the crippled city, was anonymous enough that the Russian contingent could continue their work without attracting unwanted attention from Damascus.
‘The enemy are close,’ his companion said, a Syrian doctor and scientist named Akhmed as he gestured out to the south east. ‘We have pushed them back again with the help from your bombers, but once they melt into the desert they become hard to track and locate. We know they’re out there, waiting.’
Mishkin knew that fighter pilots of the Russian Air Force had pummelled enemy positions to the south east of the city, and he knew also that the civilian casualties had been high. In densely populated areas it was almost impossible to direct effective fire against the fast moving rebel forces without collateral damage. Such was the fog of war, but as far as Mishkin was concerned the people had asked for it: it was they who had risen against their own government and who now decried the attacks on unarmed civilians.
‘Let the rebels wait,’ Mishkin replied without interest. ‘Let them bake in their own sweat in the deserts.’
Akhmed smiled brightly, enthused by Mishkin’s grim tone as the vehicle drove to a checkpoint and pulled up at a set of metal gates between twelve–foot–high concrete barriers that surrounded the facility. Akhmed cleared them through with his identification and moments later the vehicle eased into a small courtyard and turned fully about, the driver facing the vehicle toward the entrance in case they needed to escape in a hurry. Mishkin could see numerous shell holes peppering the interior walls of the compound where rebel forces had attacked the site.
‘We are safe for now,’ Akhmed said as he noted the direction of the colonel’s gaze. ‘This compound has not been hit for two weeks.’
Mishkin got out of the vehicle and directed a withering gaze at the aide. ‘More’s the pity.’
Akhmed smiled again, but this time a shadow of concern flickered behind his eyes as he led Mishkin to a steel door, again guarded by two armed soldiers. One of them rapped on the door with his knuckles and the door obligingly opened to allow the two men inside.
The interior was dark and laden with the scent of sand and cool stone. Akhmed led the way into the interior, where heavy doors lined the corridors with unsmiling guards outside each one.
‘These are the storage rooms, where we keep the subjects,’ Akhmed reported proudly. ‘Escape is impossible. The walls inside are reinforced concrete and the doors are four–inch thick steel.’
Mishkin raised an eyebrow. ‘Why would you need so much security for such weak captives?’
‘Because they are weak only in body,’ Akhmed replied, ‘not in mind.’
Mishkin frowned as they walked. ‘What are you doing to them here?’
Akhmed waved the colonel forward, not replying but clearly eager to show him something as they reached a small room that was equipped with a two–way mirror. Akhmed showed the colonel into the room and closed the door behind them, and Mishkin got his first glimpse of what the general had hinted about in Moscow.
Inside an adjoining room was a gently inclined bed, upon which lay a young girl of no more than thirteen. Mishkin instantly saw the restraints pinning her in place on her back, and the blocky contraption that was wrapped around her skull. Electrodes were secured against her forehead and temples, bundles of wires snaking down to a series of parallel–linked computer processors, their lights blinking and flashing as Mishkin watched. Although he could not hear her, he could see her lips moving as though she were talking softly to herself.
‘What are you doing to her? Recording her brain waves?’
Akhmed shook his head, his body almost trembling with excitement.
‘No, we are recording the future.’
He reached out and flipped a switch on a control panel before him, and suddenly Mishkin could hear the girl’s words as clearly as if he were standing right next to her.
‘… they are closer now, watching.’
Mishkin found himself rooted to the spot as he listened to the girl’s soft voice, speaking in the lilting, colorful inflection of Arabic with a Russian translator repeating her sentences so that Mishkin could understand them.
‘Can you tell me who they are and where they’ve come from?’ asked the voice of another scientist somewhere else in the building.
The girl remained silent only for a moment.
‘They are two, one from here, the other who has travelled far.’
‘Tell me about the one who has travelled.’
‘He is tall, a soldier from Moscow,’ the girl whispered softly. ‘He is standing in the room nearby and he is watching me.’
Mishkin felt the hairs on his neck stand on end and his jaw slacken as he stared at the girl, who was lying with her eyes closed and had not moved an inch.
‘Why is he here?’
‘He comes seeking The Watchers.’
Mishkin turned to Akhmed. ‘What is this?! She must have been told about me?’
Akhmed shook his head earnestly. ‘The girls are kept in seclusion to avoid contaminating the data in such a way.’ He reached out and pressed a button on the control panel.
‘Tell me everything you can about him,’ he ordered the young girl.
The girl hesitated for a few moments, screwed up her brow as though in concentration.
‘He comes from the farms of Saransk,’ she whispered. ‘His parents died while he was away as a soldier. He hates the country for what it has become and yearns for a return to the glory days, for the chance to avenge all that his family lost. There is no greater enemy than the United States.’
She hesitated again, and Mishkin found himself waiting in horrified fascination until her heard her speak again.
‘He fears the future just as his father did before him,’ she whispered, and then she appeared to quote somebody. ‘Trust nobody my son, for when everything we know and believe in falls apart so does the honor of those who claim to lead us.’
‘Shut it off,’ Mishkin uttered, his throat dry.
‘She isn’t finished yet and…’
‘Shut it off now!’ Mishkin roared as he whirled and loomed over Akhmed.
Akhmed cowered beneath the towering colonel as he hastily shut off the feed from the adjoining room and collapsed backwards into a chair. Mishkin stood with his fists clenched, visions of Akhmed’s body jerking in anguished spasms beneath the Colonel’s boots. With an effort he controlled his rage.
‘How is this possible?’ he growled.
Akhmed spoke quickly, cowering away from the bigger man.
The Genesis Cypher (Warner & Lopez Book 6) Page 17