by Madyson Rush
She glanced at him, noting his face. Gray and black hairs peppered his jawline. His cynical mask was beginning to fray at the edges, no longer bereft of emotion. His smoky eyes spoke about sadness, not murder.
“For what it’s worth…” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry Lang thinks you could be capable of something like that. I am sure anyone who really knows you, would know that’s impossible.”
“Lang believes it,” David said, his voice low and quiet.
Thatcher shook her head. “Who is Lang to you anyway?”
“Bill took us in after my mother died.”
“Us?”
“Ian—my older brother—and me,” David answered. “Bill and his wife took care of us during my father’s many ‘excavations.’ All Brenton cared about was proving the existence of God. Family was an afterthought.”
They stopped at another traffic light.
She chewed anxiously on her lip. “But you didn’t kill your father?”
She needed to hear him say it.
“Of course not.”
Thatcher forced a reassuring smile and pulled the Polaroid from his shirt pocket. “Let’s find Ehrman.”
Chapter 39
WEDNESDAY 5:10 p.m.
Isbister, Scotland
Fifty miles southeast of Maeshowe, Isbister faced the seaside cliff on the isle of South Ronaldsay. The invisible sun lowered behind clouds, giving way to dusk. In the darkness, sediment on the floor of the tomb’s main chamber lifted off the ground, stirring and swirling in a plume of dust.
The Tomb of the Eagles groaned to life. Its ghostly whispers were low and inarticulate, a noise that echoed throughout the small passage grave chamber. The noise quickly escalated into a piercing cry. Sound billowed down the length of the narrow channel. The explosion blew apart the thin plastic skylight crowning the chamber mound. The subsonic din bent around the grave, the greater part of the acoustic wave rippling over the seascape in a tsunami of thunderous noise. Its merciless fingers also poured over the grassland, spreading around the sides of the ruin like a volcano of resonance traveling west over the farmhouses of Cleat and Liddel.
Chapter 40
WEDNESDAY 6:22 p.m.
Oxfordshire, London
By the time David and Thatcher reached the western hills of Oxfordshire, London, the sun had set over the suburban neighborhood. Street lamps flickered overhead. They parked along the sidewalk and made their way up a brick path to the front porch, passing between two columns of overgrown hedges that crowded the path.
Thatcher knocked on the front door.
They stood for a minute, waiting, listening.
“Try again,” David suggested.
She knocked harder, pausing a moment to place her ear against the door. The faint cry of a baby sounded deep within the narrow two-story townhouse.
The door swung open.
Thatcher jumped back as a woman in her early-thirties squinted at them like the evening light was severe. Her hair was a tangled mess and her eyes swollen red.
“Mrs. Ehrman?” Thatcher asked.
“Are you from the University?” She sounded like she had laryngitis.
“I’m Brynne Thatcher, a NATO officer working with British Intelligence.”
The woman was slow to react. “I didn’t know you people were getting involved.” Her words tripped over her tongue.
“We’re looking for Michael Ehrman,” David asked. “Is he home?”
The woman stepped back, bewildered. “Michael is dead.”
Thatcher looked at David. What the hell was going on?
“I think your husband worked with my father, Brenton Hyden,” David said. “We’re investigating Brenton’s murder.”
“Dr. Hyden’s dead, too?” She blinked as if awakening from a stupor.
“About a week ago…” he replied.
Mrs. Ehrman studied his face. “They said Michael offed himself.” Her lower lip began to quiver. “They said he was mad. That he covered himself in petrol and lit himself on fire. We buried him in King’s Cross Cemetery two weeks ago Wednesday.”
“Do you have any idea what he was researching at work?” Thatcher asked.
Mrs. Ehrman shook her head. “Michael rarely spoke about work.”
Thatcher nodded.
“He acted so oddly the night before he…” Mrs. Ehrman paused, unable to say the words. “I spoke to the police, but they wouldn’t listen. They just kept saying it was normal behavior for a suicide. They said it was Michael’s way of saying goodbye.”
“What happened?” David asked.
“Michael woke me in the middle of the night, a few hours before he, um—he told me everything has an end, even death, and not to believe when the world said otherwise. He made me promise not to lose faith, no matter what happens.” She pulled a crumpled handkerchief from her robe and wiped her eyes. “I don’t know what that means…” She waited for them to give her an answer, but they had none. “God, you’d think after two weeks I’d run out of tears.”
“Take your time.” Thatcher tenderly brushed the woman’s arm.
Mrs. Ehrman nodded in appreciation. She looked at David. “You understand how I feel, don’t you? You just lost your father. Dr. Hyden was a good man.”
David remained stoic. He pulled the Polaroid from his pocket. “I found this picture in Brenton’s office. It’s of your husband, my father, and two men. Do you recognize either of these other men?”
The woman wiped her eyes, straining to see through her tears. She pointed at the bearded man beside Brenton. “That’s James Vanderkam. He is a Professor of Judeo-Christian theology at Oxford. He was Michael’s mentor. He sponsored all of Michael’s post-doc studies and was helping him get a position at the university.” She searched the face of the oldest man, his crooked body and hollow, sunken eyes, and then shook her head. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“Do you know how to contact Dr. Vanderkam?” Thatcher asked.
“I think he’s in Athens,” she said. “I was surprised that he didn’t come home for Michael’s funeral. I’m sure he couldn’t leave his studies.”
“What’s he doing in Greece?” David put the photograph back in his pocket.
“They’d meet there for a week every two months—Michael, James, and your father, but I have no idea what they were doing.” She brushed hair away from her face, and suddenly looked up at them in alarm. “Do you think someone killed Michael because of his research?”
Thatcher shook her head. The woman had enough to deal with. “No, but thank you for talking with us.”
Mrs. Ehrman nodded sadly. Her eyes widened as she registered the baby crying in the house behind her. “Good Lord, I told the nanny she could leave early.”
“Go ahead.” Thatcher smiled, permitting Ms. Ehrman to leave without feeling rude.
She shut the door, and Thatcher and David headed back down the path, ducking beneath the overgrown bushes. Once they were out of range, Thatcher grabbed David’s arm. “Do you think Vanderkam is dead?”
“She said her husband and Vanderkam were close, yet he didn’t bother to come to the funeral.”
It was very coincidental. They were on to something.
David pulled out his cell phone and dialed. “I need two tickets to Athens departing from Heathrow. The soonest flight available.”
“I almost forgot!” Mrs. Ehrman came running down the path after them, meeting Thatcher at the end of the driveway. She dropped a small hotel matchbox into Thatcher’s hand.
Thatcher twisted the box sideways to read the address printed on the cover.
ATTALOS HOTEL
29 Athinas Street
Athens – Greece
Tel: +30-210-555-2804
“I hated whenever Michael left because there was no way to contact him,” Mrs. Ehrman explained. “It was a point of stress within our marriage, especially during the pregnancy. But I found this matchbox in his trouser pockets while doing laundry a few months ago. There is writing on the insi
de—not his handwriting. Just some numbers. I don’t know what they mean.”
She began to cry, this time without her handkerchief. “You have to understand. Michael wasn’t suicidal. We had just celebrated the birth of our son three weeks before he died.”
Thatcher gave the woman a hug and watched as she went back into the house.
David lowered his cell phone from his ear. “I’ve got us plane tickets to—”
Thatcher’s cell phone rang. She put up one finger to quiet him. “This is Tha—” she began.
“Another passage grave has emitted lethal sound.” It was Hummer. “The Tomb of the Eagles. This one hit two separate towns.”
Thatcher felt her heart stop. She squatted to the ground to catch her breath. “How many are dead?”
Chapter 41
WEDNESDAY 10:45 p.m.
Isle of Ronaldsay, Scotland
The helicopter flew over the Scottish countryside so quickly the cabin shuddered. Rotors blew the grass in every direction, like tufts of hair whipped by a blow dryer. Spotlights illuminated the passage grave below.
“Isbister,” the pilot’s voice sounded over Thatcher’s headphones. “Also called Tomb of the Eagles.”
“It’s so small,” she said. It looked to be one-fourth the size of Maeshowe. Almost benign.
The helicopter hovered over the tiny ruin, then flew back over the island. Its light thrust through the night fog, and she caught sight of farmhouses a few miles away. She held her breath, knowing exactly what to expect.
“Fifty-three dead,” the pilot said. “No survivors. It happened immediately following sunset, approximately 2010 hours. The lethal wave covered an oblong span of six miles across the land. Fortunately, the passage grave faces the sea, so most of the noise was directed out over the water.” He paused for a moment, then finished. “It could have been worse.”
It could’ve been worse. She kept telling herself that, over and over.
White plastic sheets hid rows of bodies on the ground below. NCEC officials moved through the devastation like ants working fruitlessly to contain a biohazard they would never find. Their flimsy protective suits seemed a ridiculous precaution. Sound was the killer, and thin synthetic rubber could never protect them from the noisy death emitted by a passage grave.
The helicopter lifted abruptly northward, mixing her anxiety with motion sickness. She looked at her watch with renewed panic.
Chapter 42
WEDNESDAY 11:27 p.m.
Stenness Basecamp
Orkney Island, Scotland
“Where have you been?” Hummer waited at the bottom of the basecamp elevator. His arms were crossed tightly over his chest. Lee stood beside him, dwarfed by the enormity that was Hummer. He had a smug grin on his face as he waited intently to see her humiliated.
Thatcher stepped off the lift. Her face flushed.
Lambasting leaders in front of their subordinates was one of Hummer’s favorite tactics of discipline. She cleared her throat. “I was working with our lone survivor. He’s the specialist who was studying Maeshowe.”
Hummer maintained his engulfing stance. “You were not given clearance to leave.”
She met his eyes. “I know, but—”
She stopped short, noticing that behind the normal frigidity of his glare was suffocating fear, a subtle outward manifestation of emotion she had never seen in him before.
“Were you successful?” he asked.
“No.” Thatcher tried not to lower her eyes.
“Leave without permission again and your career is over.”
Thatcher drew her head back. The threat was over the top, even for Hummer, but she kept her mouth shut.
The outline of terror pinched at the edges of his eyes as he nodded. Hummer, as a wavering giant, was unnerving.
“Into the conference room, now.” He turned down the corridor with Thatcher and Lee at his heels. They walked through the empty helm into the conference room where Donovon and Marek were waiting. Hummer took the seat at the head of the table. Thatcher took the seat to his left beside Donovon, and Lee sat at Hummer’s right next to Marek.
A large monitor at the front of the room boasted an image of Maeshowe during the passage grave’s last explosion. Dust and debris funneled outward. Particles floated in the air, making the sound wave visible as it tumbled through the arch doorway.
The digital countdown clock above the conference room doorway displayed the hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds remaining until the next explosion. The smallest increment was nothing but a blur as each fraction of a second quickly passed.
Thatcher stretched her neck, trying to loosen the boulders of tension in her shoulders. It was a futile effort. Nothing could relieve the weight of the world. Everything was happening too quickly. She could barely absorb the devastation of Cleat and Liddel.
Hummer clasped his hands together and set them on the table. “Dr. Marek?”
Marek glanced at Thatcher. She avoided eye contact, still angered by his betrayal even though he had inadvertently saved her life.
Wetting his lips, Marek pressed the monitor’s control pad.
The screen changed to show a map of the U.K.
“Six passage graves have ‘awakened’—for lack of a better term. These are the graves that currently manifest signature sound.”
“Six?” Thatcher gasped in disbelief. “I thought there were two?”
Six white dots lit up at various places around the map.
“About twenty minutes ago, we learned that Newgrange in Ireland and Camster south of us on the Scottish mainland are also emitting deadly noise,” he explained. “Add Bryn Celli Ddu and Tinkinswood in Wales, and Isbister and Maeshowe in Scotland, all with fatalities, and that’s six.”
Thatcher sunk in her chair.
“We are measuring continuous subsonic noise at all six sites,” Marek continued. “Although the graves initially exploded at different times, they seem to be building at internal acoustic velocity rates that suggest all six graves will go off simultaneously in less than 48 hours. I expect the soundwaves to align to the explosion pattern of the ‘mother grave,’ Maeshowe.”
“‘The mother grave?’” Lee pursed his lips together.
Hummer removed his glasses from his coat pocket, put on the bifocals and leaned forward in his chair, examining the screen.
Marek pointed as a few more graves lit up in blinking red.
The majority of red dots were scattered throughout Scotland and Ireland, one was a few miles north of London.
“We have to anticipate that between now and the next explosion, more graves will ‘awaken’ and match Maeshowe’s pattern of eruption.”
“Is there any way to know which ruins will ‘wake up’?” Hummer asked.
Marek licked his lips nervously. “That’s the million dollar question. I mean, I arbitrarily picked these locations you see in red, but there are 313 passage graves within the British Isles alone.”
Thatcher’s mouth fell open.
Marek changed the screen. Over 300 blinking red dots appeared across the map. “These are ‘silent monuments’—forgive me for creating all this new terminology, but we have to call them something.”
Thatcher felt panic arise in her stomach. The already insurmountable problem was worsening by the second. “How many graves need to ‘awaken’ before—?”
“The end? Bye-bye? Kablooey?” Marek finished her sentence. He changed the screen so only the six current graves were blinking. “Maeshowe’s explosion intervals double exponentially every 77 hours. The closest metrics we have to measure her blast are the moment magnitude scale or the Richter scale. I’ve been able to trace the evolution of the noise backwards, as well as estimate its forthcoming potential.”
“So when did the graves start to elicit sound?” Hummer asked.
“Two Sundays ago at 1600 hours. Precisely at 1600 hours.”
Thatcher placed her elbows on the table and cradled her forehead. That was only a few hours before
David identified his father’s body.
“Maeshowe’s first explosion wasn’t big enough to harm anyone. The second explosion, last Wednesday around 9 pm, knocked off a few sheep, as reported by Dr. David Hyden during his time with the NCEC. The soundwave that killed the people of Stenness was Maeshowe’s third detonation. The wave that killed Ballistics and Golke was the fourth.”
“What should we anticipate for the fifth?” Hummer asked.
“Each detonation gets bigger, badder, louder, and deadlier. I’d estimate Stenness basecamp can only withstand one more explosion. This sound wave will easily cover the Orkney Islands. We’ll be lucky if the noise doesn’t reach the coastal edges of mainland Scotland.”
“What about the other graves?” Thatcher asked. “The ones in Ireland and Wales?”
“I’m still working on those estimates,” Marek said, shrugging. “Just with these six graves, and only these six, we’re talking complete devastation to the northern United Kingdom by the sixth explosion. Goodbye to Europe by the seventh. Russia, China, and Africa are wiped off the map by the eighth. North and South America in the ninth. Worldwide devastation by the tenth.”
Thatcher shook her head.
“Unless everyone on the planet is able to find significantly deep subterranean shelter, we’ll be dead in 13 days,” Marek finished.
Thatcher focused on the map. Her eyes connected the six random dots of the ‘awakened’ monuments. “Marek, can you light up all the graves again? All 313 of them?”
Marek clicked the remote. The screen refreshed with all the graves blinking in red.
Thatcher twisted her finger, outlining the overall formation. “Look at their shape.”
“Holy hell.” Marek scratched his head. “How did I not see that before?”
Lee’s mouth flattened.
“It’s a bloody spiral,” Donovon said. “Like that rock inside Maeshowe.”
“When exactly is the next explosion set to happen?” Hummer interrupted. “The exact day and time?”
“Friday at 1200 hours,” Marek said.