by Sean Ellis
Threading his hands between Saeed’s forearms, Kismet gripped the lapels of the other man’s garment and crossed them over to form a makeshift garrote. Ferocious though it was, Saeed’s assault was ineffectual alongside Kismet’s cross-collar chokehold. The Iraqi’s eyes bulged, first with distress, then from the pressure of depleted blood trapped in the vasculature of his face. Realization dawned, but it was already too late; Saeed’s grip on his neck simply fell away as his oxygen-starved brain ceased transmitting nervous impulses.
Kismet held on a moment longer, fearful that his foe was feigning collapse, but the foul odor of his bowels releasing signaled that the battle had indeed been to the death. For a moment, measured by the thudding of his heart in his chest and a syncopated throb of pain behind his eyeballs, he could only lie motionless on the steel deck. His memory returned in crashing waves—his tormentor was dead… Chiron was wounded… The bomb was….
“The bomb!” The words broke from his bruised larynx as he heaved Saeed’s unmoving form away and scrambled to his feet. The turret, though only a few steps away, felt like the last mile of a marathon. His feet seemed mired in quicksand as he struggled up the stairs. The device, for all its potential destructiveness, gave no indication of imminent peril; it might as well have been a discarded refrigerator. The only thing that had changed since last he looked was the digital readout on the timer, and when his eyes finally focused on the black and gray liquid crystal display, his triumph over Saeed wilted.
0:05… 0:04…0:03…0:02….
“No.”
0:01… 0:00.
Nineteen
Between heaven and earth, a veil.
In the sixty years since their development, atomic weapons had only been used twice against living targets: the occupants of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, Japan. For maximum effectiveness, those bombs, thirteen and twenty kilotons respectively, had each been detonated approximately 500 meters above the ground. Five hundred meters, nearly a quarter of a mile, was the closest anyone had even been to the uncontrollable storm of energy released by the fission of an atom.
Although explosive yield—as reckoned in metric tons of TNT—was the yardstick by which bombs were measured, all the dynamite in the world could not duplicate the effects of even a low-yield nuclear weapon. An atom bomb did not simply release heat and kinetic energy, the forces that wreak devastation upon their intended victims. Rather, when the nuclear core reached critical mass, it became a small-scale quasi-stellar object—a miniature star on earth, which annihilated its entire mass in a single instant. The blinding flash of light, which to a distant observer seemed to precede the shock wave and firestorm by a few seconds, was in fact a burst of electromagnetic energy across the entire spectrum—X-rays, gamma rays, and light visible and invisible in a storm of photons dense enough at close range to etch shadows into stone.
It was an enduring indictment of the short sightedness of human intellect that none of the scientists involved in creating and refining the so-called “doomsday weapons” considered for an instant that the creation of a tiny temporal quasar might have a sympathetic effect, not simply on the planet, but on the cosmos itself. Realistically however, no one could possibly have known what sort of phenomena might occur at the event horizon; no one had ever been that close. Yet, the Theory of Special Relativity which had enabled those scientists to unleash the destructive power of the atom—expressed in the simple equation E=mc2—ought to have enlightened them to the other effects of bringing new energy into the universe.
Any physical object accelerating toward the speed of light experienced what Einstein described as “time-dilation;” a variation in the perception of the passage of time depending on the velocity of the observer. It should have been obvious to them that in nuclear weapons, as in stars, at the event horizon where matter gives birth to energy, time has virtually no meaning.
Kismet stared at the row of zeroes for a long time before it occurred to him that perhaps something more ought to have happened. Had the bomb malfunctioned somehow? The wind had died away to nothing and the foreboding silence offered no answers.
He glanced down at Chiron. Even from several meters away, he could see that the gunshot wound was dire. A bubble of bright scarlet had risen from the center of his chest and seemed poised to erupt. Odd that it hasn’t, he thought, morbidly. It was an arterial bleed and ought to have been spurting like a fountain so long as the old man’s heart continued to pump. The explanation was brutally obvious: Chiron was already dead.
Except somehow that didn’t quite seem like the right answer. His gaze shifted to the other body occupying the platform: Colonel Saeed Tariq Al-Sharaf. He did not feel the same sort of doubt regarding the fate of his old nemesis. Death hovered over the Iraqi torturer like a black aura, sucking the last vestiges of his life force into the still night. The image was so vivid that Kismet looked away, fearful that the grinning skull beneath the shadowy cowl might next turn its gaze upon him.
0:00
It was only then that he realized he had not turned his head at all. His gaze had never left the unblinking display of the countdown timer. Then how…?
His attention was drawn upward, to where the television aerial speared the sky, and what he saw there staggered belief.
His first thought was that he was hallucinating. In fact, he could not be literally seeing the gyrating column of energy that spiraled into the heavens for the simple reason that he was under the cover of the turret. For that matter, his eyes were still locked on the unchanging numeric display of the bomb. It was that impossibility, however, which convinced him of the accuracy of his observations and further verified his growing suspicion that he was no longer completely in the physical world. He also realized in that instant that the nuclear device had not malfunctioned; it had detonated right on schedule.
The gyre stabbed out of the upper atmosphere and into the tower like a tornado of light. It was magnetic energy, he realized, invisible to the naked eye, but easily discernible in this frozen moment. There was no mistaking the direction of the current. The lines of force undulated down into the tower exactly as Chiron had described in his writings. And somewhere high above, something was moving in the tempest, struggling against its tether as the flames of imminent destruction licked at its back.
Oh, God. It’s all true. And I failed.
The Eiffel Tower had still been polarized at the moment of detonation. Maybe the engineers had missed their deadline, or maybe Kismet’s grasp of how to manipulate the geo- and electromagnetic energies had been found wanting. Whatever the reason, the end result was the same. The electromagnetic pulse from the bomb would feed back into the planetary web, just as Chiron planned, and destroy it and any sort of sentient being that dwelled therein. It was only a matter of time. It was already too late.
0:00
Rage consumed him for a long time, rage at Chiron for having conceived of such a diabolical scheme, at himself for having failed to notice the subtle signs pointing to the coming apocalypse, and even at God for not doing something more on His own behalf. Inevitably, the anger gave way to despair. Much later, when he had wrung the last drops of self-pity from his psyche, he began looking for a better answer.
He reached for the bomb, thinking that if he could carry out his original plan to remove the plutonium core, he might somehow undo the moment in which he now found himself a prisoner. Nothing happened. His physical body was completely unresponsive to the commands of his mind, or rather, the electro-chemical impulse that would instruct his limbs to move had not yet happened. Movement required time, and time was something Kismet no longer had. The only thing that could save him now was a miracle.
He once more fixed the churning heavens in his mind’s eye. Miracle. I guess that would be your department.
But if the entity in the swirling mass of energy heard his implicit request—or if it even existed at all—it gave no indication. Nothing happened, nothing at all. The clock still read zero and time remained at a standstill.
He ponde
red Chiron’s words, spoken only a few minutes before—what now seemed like a lifetime ago—on the function of the tower in the schemes of the nameless conspirators who had sought to imprison the divine being. He had likened it to a knife in an open wound. Yet, the tower had only been in existence for a century. Did that somehow mean that prior to the emergence of the industrial age, God—if that was in fact what it was—had roamed freely above the terrestrial domain, doing whatever He—or It—pleased? It wasn’t too hard to reconcile the tragic wars of the twentieth century to that time period…
Forget it, he thought. Don’t get lost in the spiritual debate. Focus on the problem.
He realized with a start that he’d had the right idea all along. Depolarizing the tower was the solution, but how could he do it from this tesseract of time and space? How could he change the magnetic constant of a three hundred meter iron structure from the confines of a frozen moment?
“How did Thutmosis defeat the other priests who were also tapped into the Telluric energies?” Chiron had asked him in the sands of Babylon. “And how did he sustain his own connection to this power once removed from close proximity to the pyramids?”
How did Moses part the Red Sea?
Kismet’s answer had been flippant and skeptical: “He used a stick.”
The Eiffel Tower was that stick, the modern equivalent of Moses’ magic wand. It was the ultimate Solomon Key, built for the express purpose of manipulating the energies of the planet. But having the key was not enough. If Chiron’s supposition was correct, Moses had been privy to all the secrets of Egyptian Geomancy. Nick Kismet was no sorcerer’s apprentice. The most sophisticated tool in the world was little better than a hammer in the hands of an ignorant child.
Then he recalled an earlier conversation.
“That’s where faith comes in,” he had told Chiron as they contemplated sunset over Baghdad.
“Ah, yes. Faith. Jesus’ disciples asked for more faith. Do you know that what he told them? ‘If you have faith as a grain of a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain: Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you.’”
Was it that simple? Did he just have to tell the tower—his magic staff—what to do in order to make it happen?
He could not escape the qualifier: if you have faith…
He did not have faith. He was a pragmatist, and his opinions and beliefs were shaped by facts—by evidence and empirical reasoning. Faith was for… faith was for people who could believe in something without proof. The simple fact was that Kismet did not have faith even as small as the grain of a mustard seed.
Jesus’ disciples asked for more faith.
He stared heavenward wondering how to phrase his request, but then it occurred to him that he already had what he needed. He had faith that an airplane would not fall from the sky because he had seen it happen. He had faith that the sun would continue to rise and set because his eyes were daily given the proof. Faith and proof are not mutually exclusive, he realized, grinning up at the maelstrom. I guess I can’t ask for better proof than that.
Okay, I believe I can do this. Now what?
He reached out again, not for the bomb, but for the tower itself, and in his mind’s eye, there was no impediment. His hands caressed the steel as if searching for the secret switch that would unlock a hidden doorway. And then he found it.
You owe me for this.
A shudder ran through the metal skeleton as every atom of its mass suddenly began to oppose the magnetic field of the planet itself. The transformation was instantaneous—faster even than the speed of light—and the tornado of force spiraling down from the sky abruptly reversed. Something like an eagle taking to flight shrugged out of the tempest and vanished, and at the same instant, the veil separating heaven from earth was drawn aside.
Kismet couldn’t resist a satisfied smile. Only one thing left to do now. He turned his attention back to the spot his eyes had never left.
0:00
***
A shrill, electronic bleating noise filled the night, startling Kismet out of his reverie. A denial was still on his lips, but his whisper had already been caught away by the unrelenting wind. The timer continued to issue a rapid-fire series of beeps, signaling that the end of the countdown had arrived.
And that was all.
No explosion. No nuclear cataclysm to destroy the Eiffel Tower or the rest of Paris. Just a kitchen timer, trilling away cheerily as though the world had not just about ended.
He took a step back, wondering what to do next, and caught sight of Chiron. The Frenchman’s hands were clutching the wound in his chest, a futile effort to stem the geyser of blood that carried away his life force with each prodigious spurt. But something about his eyes told Kismet that Chiron had finally found peace. He found himself compelled to kneel at the dying man’s side.
Chiron’s mouth moved, trying to form words, but there was no sound. Kismet leaned close, and the old man smiled weakly. “So much to tell you,” he whispered.
Kismet felt an inexplicable rage well up. The old scientist was as good as dead, yet he felt no pity. Chiron had come within a whisper of carrying out an unimaginable atrocity—at the very least, the death of tens of thousands in a nuclear fireball, at worst, the eradication of all life on earth. “Why?”
“I had to know, Nick. She always believed, but I could not. I had to put Him to the test.”
“Him? You did all this to see if God really exists?”
“Rather arrogant of me, don’t you think? Challenging God to show himself and save the world?” He coughed and blood streamed between his lips. “I’ve certainly paid the price, don’t you think? Do you suppose I’ll go to Hell?”
Something in the simple question broke through Kismet’s wrath. He tried to answer, but there were no words. There was nothing he could say to ease the man’s passage. He shook his head, unsure of what he meant by the gesture.
Chiron managed a chuckle. “All this to see God, and instead it seems I’ll meet His opposite number instead.”
Kismet felt his throat tighten. “Was it worth it?”
Something changed deep in the old man’s eyes, and Kismet knew his last breath was not far off. “I got my answer, Nick. He revealed himself. He used you to save His world.”
Kismet decided not to waste Chiron’s remaining seconds of life arguing the point.
“And now I am at peace, Nick. I know that she is with Him. She is in a place of sublime happiness. I know that now.” Another gurgling breath was drawn. “Oh, Nick. She must be so proud of you. There’s so much I should have told you. So much…”
Kismet reached out to take his hand, not caring if the old man misinterpreted the action as a sign of forgiveness. Maybe it was. As Pierre Chiron slipped out of the world, Kismet understood why even the condemned murderer is granted absolution. No one should die unforgiven.
He stayed there a long time with the man who had been for many years his close friend and mentor, and for a few brief hours, his greatest enemy. Later, much later, he remembered that the rest of the world was still waiting for news of its fate. He eased Chiron’s cold form to the steel deck and moved to the edge of the observation deck where he waved the “all clear” to the anxious observers stationed below.
It didn’t take long for Rebecca and her team to reach him at the summit. Her hard eyes were expressionless as she surveyed the aftermath of the struggle with Saeed. “What happened?”
It was too simple a query to address the events of the last few minutes. He shook his head wearily. He knew he would have to explain everything, and fully intended to do so, but there was one last bit of unfinished business to attend.
Twenty
Every night, crowds of tourists flocked to the Butte Montmartre, both to visit the splendid Basilique du Sacré Coeur and to take in the awe-inspiring view of the city of lights. None of the vacationers there that night were aware of the crisis at the Eiffel Tower, nor would they ever know any more than
that a fire had occurred at the summit of the monument and that the tower had been briefly closed to the public. They did however get a taste of the excitement when a French military helicopter descended on the lawn and shattered the quiet with the thunderous beat of its rotor blades.
Inside the basilica, a few eyebrows were raised, but the thick marble walls muffled most of the tumult. Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Buttrick was intimately familiar with the sound, but failed to grasp its significance. He continued playing the part of the tourist, idly taking in the majesty of the elaborate depiction of Christ with arms outstretched, reputedly one of the world’s largest mosaic artworks, situated above the choir. Nearly two hours had passed since Marie had received the call directing them to proceed with all haste to Montmartre, and he was itching to know why. Marie had been perfunctorily silent, but he had barely noticed. His thoughts were repeatedly drawn back to the trouble his inquiry into Kismet’s past had caused.
“Nick!”
Marie’s subdued cry startled Buttrick, but he whirled on his heel, searching for the man she had identified. Kismet stood framed in the entry, a grave expression on his haggard face. Buttrick didn’t know the other man that well, but he knew that look. He was instantly on his guard.
Marie moved away from his side and glided toward Kismet, evidently unaware of any tension. She unhesitatingly gave him a gentle hug. “What did you learn?”
Kismet replied softly, almost too softly for Buttrick to hear. “Pierre is dead. Saeed killed him.”
“Saeed? Who is that?”
Buttrick didn’t know the answer to Marie’s question, but thought that she had asked it a little too quickly.
“It’s over, Marie. Or should I call you Miriam?”
Her demeanor reflected appropriate confusion at the statement, but neither man was fooled. Buttrick stepped closer. “What the hell’s going on here?”
Before Kismet could answer however, Marie’s mask fell away, to be replaced by a smile that was at once both guilty and mocking. “It was the helicopter, wasn’t it? That’s when you figured it out.”