by A. G. Riddle
“Copy, Snow King. Report status.”
Less is more. He wouldn’t speculate. “We’ve hit something,” Robert said.
CHAPTER 83
When Kate arrived the next morning, David was awake. And angry.
“You have to go. The boy told me we’ve been here for three days.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Kate said in a cheerful tone.
She retrieved his antibiotics, pain pills, and a cup of water. He looked even more gaunt than the day before; she would have to get him something to eat as well. She wanted to touch his face, his protruding cheek bones, but he was much more intimidating now — awake.
“Don’t ignore me,” David said.
“We’ll talk once you take your pills.” She held out her hand with the two pills.
“What are they?”
Kate pointed. “Antibiotic. Pain pill.”
David took the antibiotic and washed it down with water.
Kate moved the hand with the pain pill closer to his face. “You need to—”
“I’m not taking it.”
“You were a better patient when you were asleep.”
“I’ve slept enough.” David leaned back in the bed. “You’ve got to get out of here, Kate.”
“I’m not going anywhere—”
“Don’t. Don’t do that. Remember what you promised me? In the cottage by the sea. You said you would follow my orders. That was my only condition. Now I’m telling you to get out of here.”
“Well… Well… This is a medical decision, not a… whatever you call it, ‘command decision.’”
“Don’t play with words. Look at me. You know I can’t walk out of here, and I know how long that walk is. I’ve made it before—”
“About that, who is Andrew Reed?”
David shook his head. “Not important. He’s dead.”
“But they called y—”
“Killed in the mountains of Pakistan, not far from here, fighting the Immari. They’re good at killing people in these mountains. This is not a game, Kate.” He took her arm, dragging her down onto the bed. “Listen. You hear that, the low buzzing, like a bee in the distance?”
Kate nodded.
“Those are drones — predator drones. They’re looking for us, and when they find us, there’s nowhere we can run. You have to go.”
“I know. But not today.”
“I’m not—”
“I’ll go tomorrow, I promise.” Kate grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Just give me one day.”
“You leave at first light or I’ll go over the side of that mountain—”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“It’s only a threat if you don’t intend to do it.”
Kate released his hand. “Then I’ll be gone tomorrow.” She stood and walked out.
Kate returned with two bowls of thick porridge. “I thought you might be hungry.”
David simply nodded and began eating, quickly at first, only slowing after he’d eaten a few bites.
“I’ve been reading to you.” She held up the journal. “Do you mind?”
“Reading what?”
“A journal. The old guy… downstairs… he gave it to me.”
“Oh, him. Qian.” David took two more bites rapid-fire. “What’s it about?”
Kate sat down on the bed and spread her legs next to his as she had when he was unconscious. “Mining.”
David looked up from the bowl. “Mining?”
“Or, war maybe, no, actually, I’m not really sure. It’s set in Gibraltar—”
“Gibraltar?”
“Yes. Is that important?”
“Maybe. The code,” David searched his pockets like he was looking for his keys or wallet. “Actually, Josh had it…”
“Who’s Josh? Had what?”
“He’s, I used to work with him. We got a code from the source — the same person who told us about the China facility — I want to talk about that, by the way. Anyway, it was a picture of an iceberg with a sub buried in the middle of it. On the back, it had a code. The code pointed to obituaries in The New York Times in 1947. There were three of them.” David looked down, trying to remember. “The first was a reference to Gibraltar and the British finding bones near a site.”
“The site could be the mine. The Immari are trying to hire an American miner, a former soldier, to excavate a structure several miles under the Bay of Gibraltar. They think it’s the Lost City of Atlantis.”
“Interesting,” David said, deep in thought.
Before he could say anything else, Kate cracked the journal open and began reading.
August 9th, 1917
It’s late when I arrive home, and Helena is at the small kitchen table. Her elbows are on the table and she holds her face with both hands, like it will plummet to the ground if she releases her grip. There are no tears but her eyes are red, as if she’s been crying and can’t any more. She looks like the women I used to see leaving the hospital, followed by two men carrying a stretcher covered by a white sheet.
Helena has three brothers, two in the service, one too young to join, or maybe he’s just signed up. That’s my first thought: I wonder how many brothers she has now?
She jumps up at the sound of the door and stares at me, wild-eyed.
“What’s happened?” I say.
She embraces me. “I thought you’d done it, taken that job or gone off and left. Or, I don’t know.”
I hug her back, and she buries her face in my chest. When the crying subsides, she peers up at me, her big brown eyes asking a question I can’t begin to decipher. I kiss her on the mouth. It’s a hungry, reckless kiss, like an animal biting into something he’s hunted all day, something he needs to sustain himself, something he can’t live without. She feels so delicate in my arms, so small. I reach for her blouse, fingering one of the buttons, but she clasps my hand and takes a step back.
“Patrick, I can’t. I’m still… traditional, in many ways.”
“I can wait.”
“It’s not that. It’s, well, I’d like you to meet my father. My whole family.”
“I’d like that very much, to meet him, all of them.”
“Good. I’m off at the hospital for the next week. I’ll ring him in the morning. If it suits them, we can leave on the afternoon train.”
“Let’s… make it the day after. I need, I need to get something.”
“Very well.”
“And there’s something else,” I say, searching for the words. I need the job, at least a few weeks of the pay, then I’ll be set. “The job, I did, actually, have a look and it, um, might not be so dangerous—”
Her face changes quickly, as if I’d smacked her. The grimace is somewhere between worry and anger. “I can’t do it. I won’t. Every day, waiting, wondering if you’ll come home. I won’t live like that.”
“This is all I have, Helena. I’m not any good at anything else. I don’t know how to do anything else.”
“I don’t believe that for a second. Men start over all the time.”
“And I will, I promise you that. Six weeks, that’s all I need, and I’ll throw in the towel. The war might be done by that time, and they’ll have another team in there, and you’ll be shipping out of here, and I’ll need to… I’ll need money for… making arrangements.”
“Arrangements can be made without money. I’ve got—”
“Out of the question.”
“If you get killed in that mine, I’ll never get over it. Can you live with that?”
“Mining’s a lot less dangerous when people aren’t dropping bombs on you.”
“How about when you’ve got the whole ocean on top of you? The whole Bay of Gibraltar over your head. All that water, constantly pressing on those tunnels. How would they ever pull you from that cave-in? It’s suicide.”
“You can see the sea coming.”
“How?”
“The rock sweats,” I say.
“I’m sorry Patrick,
I can’t.” The look in her eyes tells me she means it.
Some decisions are easy. “Then it’s settled. I’ll tell them no.”
We kiss again, and I hug her tight.
David put a hand on Kate’s. “This is what you’ve been reading? World War One-era Gone With the Wind?”
She pushed his hand back. “No! I mean, it hasn’t been like this so far, but… Well, you could probably do with a little romance in your literary diet. Soften that hard soldier heart of yours.”
“We’ll see. Maybe we can just skip the mushy parts, get right to the point where they say the bombs or secret labs are located here.”
“We’re not skipping anything. It could be important.”
“Well, since you’re enjoying it so much, I’ll endure it.” He clasped his hands on his stomach and stared at the ceiling stoically.
Kate smiled. “Always the martyr.”
CHAPTER 84
Clocktower HQ
New Delhi, India
“Sir?”
Dorian looked up at the Immari Security officer lingering nervously in the doorway to his office.
“What?”
“You asked to be kept apprised of the operation—”
“Make your report.”
The man swallowed. “The packages are in position in America and Europe.”
“Drones?”
“They’ve acquired another target.”
CHAPTER 85
Kate thought the buzzing in the distance, the bee searching for them, was getting louder, but she ignored it. David didn’t say anything either.
They sat together in the small alcove overlooking the valley, and Kate continued reading, stopping only for an early lunch and to give David his antibiotics.
August 10th, 1917
The pawnbroker watches me like a bird of prey perched in a tree as I browse the glass cases at the front of the store. They’re full of rings, all sparkling, all beautiful. I assumed there would be three or four to choose from, that it would be rather simple. What to do…
“A young man seeks an engagement ring, nothing more warms my heart, especially in these dark times.” The man stands over the case, smiling a proud, sentimental, smile. I didn’t even hear him move across the room. The man must move like a thief in the night.
“Yes, I… didn’t think there would be this many.” I continue skimming the case, waiting for something to jump out at me.
“There are many rings because there are many widows here in Gibraltar. The Kingdom has been at war for almost four years, and the poor women, the war leaves them with no husband and no source of income. They sell their rings so they can buy bread. Bread in your belly is worth more than a stone on your finger or a memory in your heart. We pay them pennies on the dollar.” He reaches inside the glass case and pulls out a velvet display rack that holds the largest rings. He places the rack on top of the glass case, just a few inches from me, and spreads his hands over them as if he were about to perform a magic trick. “But their misfortune can be your gain, my friend. Just peek at the prices. You will be surprised.”
I take a step back without realizing what I’m doing. I look from the rings to the man, who motions toward them with a greedy grin. “It’s alright, you can touch them—”
As if in a dream, I’m out the door and back on the streets of Gibraltar before I realize what’s happened. I walk fast, as fast as I can with one and a half working legs. I don’t know why, but I walk out of the main business district toward the Rock. Just before I reach it, I cut across Gibraltar, out of the western side, the modern side of the city, which faces the Bay of Gibraltar. I walk into the old village, which lies on the eastern side of the Rock, on Catalin Bay, facing the Mediterranean.
I walk for a while, thinking. My leg hurts like hell. I didn’t bring any pills. I hadn’t expected to walk this much. I did bring $500 of the nearly $11,000 I’ve saved.
I debated at length on how much to spend. I thought of spending more, maybe even a $1,000, but two things convinced me not to. The first is that I need capital to start a new life. $11,000 probably won’t do, but I can find a way. I certainly won’t be taking the Immari job, so the capital on hand is all I’m going to have. The second, a more important reason, is that I don’t think it’s what Helena would want. She would smile and gladly accept the gaudy ring, but she wouldn’t want it. She grew up in a world where fine jewelry, silk clothes, and towering homes were as common as a drink of water. I think those things have lost their luster for her. She craves genuine things, real people. We so often seek what we’re deprived of in childhood. Sheltered children become reckless. Starving children become ambitious. And some children, like Helena, who grow up in privilege, never wanting for anything, surrounded by people who don’t live in the real world, people who drink their brandy every night and gossip about the sons and daughters of this house and that house… sometimes they only want to see the real world, to live in it and make a difference. To have genuine human contact, to see their life mean something.
Ahead of me, the street ends as it meets the rock. I need somewhere to sit down, to get off the leg. I stop and look around. In the shadow of the white rock rising to the right there’s a simple Catholic church. The rounded wooden doors of the plaster Spanish-style mission open and a middle-aged priest steps out into the sweltering Gibraltar sun. Without a word, he extends a hand into the dark opening, and I walk up the stairs and into the small Cathedral.
Light filters in through the stained glass windows. It’s a beautiful church, with dark wood beams and incredible frescoes across the walls.
“Welcome to Our Lady of Sorrow, my son,” the priest says as he closes the heavy wood door. “Have you come to make a confession?”
I think about turning back, but the beauty of the church draws me in, and I wander deeper inside. “Uh, no Father,” I say absently.
“What is it you seek?” He walks behind me, his hands clasped in front of him in a stirrup-like figure.
“Seek? Nothing, or, I was in the market to buy a ring and…”
“You were wise to come here. We live in strange times. Our parish has been very fortunate over the years. We’ve received many bequests from parishioners passing from the world of the living. Farms, art, jewels, and in recent years, many rings.” He ushers me out of the worship hall and into a cramped room with a desk and leather bound volumes crammed into floor-to-ceiling bookcases. “The church holds these items, selling them when we can, using the funds to care for those still among the living.”
I nod, not quite sure what to say. “I’m looking… for something special…”
The man frowns and sits down at the desk. “I’m afraid our selection is not what you might find elsewhere.”
“It’s not that, size, or type… A ring… with a story.”
“Every ring tells a story, my son.”
“Something with a happy ending then.”
The man leans back in the chair. “Happy endings are hard to come by in these dark ages. But… I may know of such a ring. Tell me about the lucky young lady who will receive it.”
“She saved my life.” I feel awkward answering the question, and it’s all I can manage to start.
“You were injured in the war.”
“Yes.” My limp is hard to miss. “But, not only that, she changed me.” It seems like a disgraceful summary of what she’s done for me, for the woman who made me want to live again, but the priest simply nods.
“A lovely couple retired here several years ago. She had been an aide worker in South Africa. Have you been to South Africa?”
“No.”
“A savage place. And only recently of any interest to anyone. Since around 1650 it had only been a watering hole on the trade routes to the East. The Dutch East India Company built Cape Town as a stopover on the Cape Sea Route. Built it with slaves from Indonesia, Madagascar, and India. And that’s what is was, a trainstop on the sea, at least until the 1800s, when they found gold and diamonds and the place b
ecame a true hell on earth. The Dutch had massacred the local African population for centuries in a series of frontier wars, but now the British came and brought modern war, the kind that only European countries can fight, but I think you know about that. War with massive casualties, famine, disease, and concentration camps. There was a soldier who had fought for the British in the South African War, and as the spoils of war go to the victors, the end of the conflict several years ago left him with quite a bit of money. He used it to invest in the mines. A strike made him rich, but he fell ill. An aide worker, a Spanish woman who had worked in the hospital during the war nursed him back to health. And softened his heart. She told him she would marry him on one condition: that he leave the mines for good and donate half of his wealth to the hospital. He agreed, and they sailed out of South Africa for good. They settled here in Gibraltar, in the old city on the coast of the Mediterranean. But retirement didn’t suit the man. He had been a soldier and a miner all his life. Some would say that all he knew was the darkness, pain, struggle; that the light of Gibraltar shone too bright for his heart of darkness, that the easy life left him to reflect on his sins, which haunted him, tormented him day and night. But whatever the cause, he died a year later. The woman followed him several months after.”
I wait, wondering if the story is over. Finally, I say, “Father, we have very different ideas about what constitutes a happy ending.”
A smile spreads across the man’s face as if he’d just heard a child say something funny. “This story is happier than you think — if you believe what the church teaches. To us, death is only a passage, and a joyous one for the righteous. A beginning, not an end. You see, the man had repented, had chosen to forsake his life of oppression and greed. He had paid for his sins — in all the ways that matter. He was saved, as so many men are, by a good woman. But some lives are harder than others, and some sins haunt us, no matter how much we pay for them or or how far we sail from them. Maybe this happened to the man, and maybe not. Maybe retirement doesn’t suit the industrious. Perhaps there is no solace in rest for a hard-working man. And there is another possibility. The man had sought war and riches in South Africa. He craved power, security, a sense of knowing he was safe in a dangerous world. But he forsook it all when he met the woman. It’s possible that all he wanted was to be loved and not to be hurt. And when he was, when he finally found love after a life without, he died, happy. And the woman, all she ever wanted was to know that she could change the world, and if she could change the heart of the darkest man, then there was hope for the entire human race.” The priest pauses, takes a breath, studies me. “Or perhaps their only folly was retirement, of living a sedentary life where the past could catch up to them, if only in their dreams at night. Regardless of the cause of their deaths, their destiny was certain: the Kingdom of Heaven is the domain of those who repent, and I believe the man and woman live there to this day.”