Passage Graves

by Madyson Rush

  “The CIA has been collecting fingerprints since 1924,” she said. “You can imagine the size of our collection. There are well over 200 million entries.”

  “The world’s finest,” he said.

  She laughed. The fingerprint finished uploading.

  It was barely legible with three distinct swirls at the edge.

  “This is interesting.” She slid her chair closer to the scanner, removed the envelope, and placed it under a magnifying glass.

  David rolled his chair beside hers. Silky strands of her blonde hair blocked his view.

  She bit her lip. “This is way more challenging than I expected.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She leaned back in her chair and let David take a look through the magnifying glass. “These prints lack normal identifying features like friction ridges, whorls, and tetrarchs. They just look like—”

  “Smears,” he finished her sentence. The prints were mostly smudges with a few lines on the perimeter. He sat back with a sigh. Why was nothing ever simple?

  Brimley searched the envelope for a better sample. “‘Come, thou art Chosen?’” she read the words hidden beneath the spiral scribbles. “Does it mean something?”

  He shrugged.

  “Here’s one!” She focused the lens over the light purple impression. “This one has a little more detail. We’ve got something we can work with…” She pinned the envelope in place.

  The scanner hummed to life. An image formed on screen.

  She zoomed in on the portion of the image. “Every time a line stops or splits, that’s called typica or bifurcation. These marks are unique to each person. They allow us to pinpoint a match if the person is in our database.”

  David pointed at the screen. “Why are there no lines in the center?”

  “That’s what makes your guy so interesting.” She seemed impressed that he noticed. She pointed to where swirling lines abruptly ended and the texture flattened into nothing. “See how the typica just stops?”

  He nodded.

  “That blurred area is probably scar tissue.”

  “Really?”

  “My guess is self-inflicted.”

  “That further narrows the field. Our man is a masochist.”

  She smiled and uploaded the print into the database. “Soviet spies during WWII would burn the skin off their fingers to protect their identity.”

  As the computer processed the print, she removed the letter from the scanner. “By the look of your friend’s artwork here, I’d say he’s a lefty, mid-to-late eighties, severely near-sighted, arthritic, and possibly Parkinson’s symptomatic.”

  Now she was just showing off.

  “You can tell all that just by looking at his writing?” he asked.

  “The writer dragged his palm across the page from left to right. The angle of his print implies his writing arm was turned outward. That demonstrates myopia, or nearsightedness. The spirals are intricate, but a complete jumble.” She placed the envelope under the desk lamp. “See how the lines are jagged? He has an unsteady hand. In most places, they run together. He lacks muscular control.”

  “Show me how he’s lactose intolerant and obsessed with his mother, and then I’ll be impressed,” he joked.

  Brimley smiled. “Heavy compression marks mean he exerted an unusual amount of pressure. Add the thickness and weight of the pencil lead, and we know he’s serious about his cause. Crazy serious. It’s the same type of pressure we see in bomb threats.”

  “Sounds like a winner,” David said. Who the hell was trying to communicate with him?

  The computer finished processing the sample through the database.

  NO MATCHES FOUND.

  Disappointed, David reached for the manila envelope under the desk lamp.

  “Let me try one more thing.” Brimley accessed the CIA Employees Database. “You didn’t see this.”

  “See what?”

  “Exactly.” She uploaded the fingerprint into the system and initiated the check. Within seconds, the computer made a match.

  “He’s Intelligence,” she said. “Or at least he used to be.”

  A photograph and bio appeared on screen. It was the old man in Brenton’s Polaroid. The picture was a black and white image from the 1950s. His body slumped unnaturally to the left. His obsidian eyes, like dark whirlpools of black, made him look crazed. He was just as old as he appeared in the picture from Brenton’s office.

  “That’s from the 1950s?” he asked, confused by the lack of age difference.

  “1952,” she said.

  They skimmed down the identification column.

  “Azore, Anzorare, Asseyev, Askar…God, he’s got fourteen aliases,” she said. “The most recent is Azores.”

  “Azores?” David finally had a name.

  “He is Russian—or, Russia is listed as his country of origin in 1936, but there’s no birthdate.” Brimley shook her head in astonishment. “He fought in both world wars, was enlisted with Russia in WWI and then Nazi Germany in WWII. He served in the CIA from the 60’s to 1980. There’s nothing here about his current residence.”

  It was the right man, but another dead end.

  Brimley forced an uncomfortable smile. “Wow, this guy is sending you fan mail?”

  David swiped the envelope off the scanner. “Thanks, Agent Brimley.”

  “It’s Diane,” she said.

  He headed to the door.

  “Dr. Hyden?” She nodded at the letter. “I’m no genius, but if there is a postal code in the upper right hand corner of that envelope, can’t you trace him that way?”

  He turned the letter right side up and noticed it. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He studied the postal code: Lothian 1152. That was somewhere on the northwestern seaboard of Scotland. He looked at his watch. If he got a car, he could get to Lothian in a few hours.

  “You better hurry,” she said. “They’ve started evacuating everything north of Aberdeen.”

  Chapter 57

  SATURDAY 4:21 p.m.

  Stenness Basecamp

  Orkney Island, Scotland

  Thatcher lay on the cot within her personal quarters. She had finished organizing the exodus of northern Scotland and eastern Ireland. There was nothing left to do but wait. She stared at the digital clock over the doorway. The numbers speedily unraveled, closing in on the next detonation. Halting time seemed to be the only answer.

  She closed her eyes.

  Keep it simple.

  There was a task at hand. She had a job to do.

  The only device capable of creating a vacuum powerful enough to stop the graves was their thermobaric AVX. The weapon created a midair explosion a few feet above ground that formed a vacuum similar to a category F-6 tornado. Midway through the explosion, the pressure wave would collapse into the earth’s crust in an implosion so violent that everything at the surface would be obliterated. The aftermath was unidentifiable. These weapons were deadly and costly, but far more precise than anything in the worldwide nuclear arsenal.

  She shivered. Implosion was a hideous way to die. She’d seen classified photographs of tests during the Cold War. AVX flattened matter like a heavy boot crushed snow. Anything close to the fringes of the explosion would be charred by the fiery plume of secondary fuels.

  Her mind was foggy but it wouldn’t stop racing. Her body needed rest.

  The anecdote of counting sheep came to mind.

  One sheep. Two sheep. Three…

  A friendly herd stampeded over her thoughts. She envisioned the pleasant countryside where they grazed. A short distance away was an outcropping of earth, a beautiful hill, a spectacular place to watch the sunset. She followed them to the mound, feeling the soft breeze across her skin. At the base of the hill was a door, an entrance formed within the rock. She followed the sheep inside and wandered down the narrow passage. It opened into a chamber with tall stone walls peaking high above her head. At the back of the room, a spiral carving glowed on the wall. She felt drawn to
the symbol. She lifted her hand to the etching and traced its inward curvature. Her fingers followed the shape, slowly winding toward center, where the spiral ended with a hole. She reached inside the hole.

  Dust swirled off the floor. Sand slipped beneath her feet. A buzzing noise bounced around the room off each of the walls.

  The ground began to swallow her, draining like an hourglass around her ankles. She sank deeper into the earth, her legs tingling. It was a warm sensation, very different from the cacophony of noise spinning around the chamber. As the floor sucked her under, she grabbed handfuls of sand. It slipped through her fingers and crumbled in her hands. There was nothing to hold on to.

  The sound became a roar, and the sheep turned ugly. Their bodies began to twitch and then convulse. Their eyes were paranoid and bulging. Their skulls caving inward as their heads imploded.

  The earth continued to drag her down. It was now at her hips, devouring her whole. She slipped below the surface. Its dryness filled her lungs with irritating pepper granules. Loam poured into her ears, dampening the furious noise. Dirt encompassed her with a stifling embrace. Although muffled, the clamor resonated inside her skull. It was trapped. Once inside, it would never cease to rage.

  Thatcher sat up in her cot, coughing and gagging. She brushed sweat off her forehead. She lowered her head into her hands and took in a deep breath.

  So much for counting sheep.

  ****

  Marek leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. He had only spent two minutes in his personal quarters before giving up on the idea of a nap. Lee had constructed a make-shift lab with the remaining equipment in the storage room. Once Hummer announced all research of Maeshowe’s voice pattern was off-limits, he’d become obsessed with unscrambling the meaning. After formulating a logarithmic equation capable of disentangling the noise, he built a soundex decoder program from a collection of pirated language software. He had run the recording through a series of filters ranging from Arabic to Zulu.

  So far, the effort was fruitless.

  “You can’t sleep either?” Thatcher took a seat beside him. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to solve this puzzle,” he said. “Trying being the operative word. I’ve run this recording against every language on the planet.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing.”

  Thatcher shrugged. “So, what now?”

  “I’ve been cross-checking Greek lexicons for the last hour.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Not unless they’re saying, ‘Sarah is a good-for-nothin’ towel.’”

  “You might be onto something.”

  “Lachsa’arhh pahrash tssa,” he repeated the phrase from memory.

  The computer beeped another NO MATCH.

  “Maybe the word order is wrong,” Thatcher suggested.

  “Of course—the towel is a good-for-nothin’ Sarah.” He gave her a smart-ass wink. “The program can recognize multiple syllables in any order. That’s why this takes so long. It has to compare all the sound constructs with each language.”

  Thatcher lowered her head to her knee.

  “Why don’t you go get some sleep?” Marek said, rubbing her back.

  She sat up, away from his touch.

  “I’ve already tried.” She bounced her knee nervously.

  The computer beeped another NO MATCH.

  Marek stared down at her bouncing leg. It was shaking the desk.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Marek grabbed her knee. “What’s on your mind?”

  “It’s just…I found something,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve been reading a manuscript by David Hyden’s father.”

  Marek masked his disappointment at hearing the name Hyden. “And?”

  “His father studied passage graves, also. In fact, the man’s theories are quite amusing. He believed the ruins are portal tombs that will be used to move from place to place during the Apocalypse.”

  She waited for his reaction.

  He didn’t give her one. He studied the screen as it searched a new word sequence.

  She continued, “In his research, he found there are passage graves as far away as Ohio in the States all the way to the burial mounds in Gyeongju, North Korea. Those things are all over the place.”

  He cocked his head in consideration. “That could be a very bad thing.”

  “He also said graves are the voice box of God. That this noise is the voices of the dead.”

  “Dead people are talking to us?” he asked in all seriousness.

  Thatcher was embarrassed. “I don’t know. According to David’s father…”

  “Well, whatever they’re saying, it sure isn’t in Greek.” He uploaded the Hebrew index and sat back in his chair. “I went to Bible school when I was a kid. Isn’t there something about God’s voice being all quiet and subtle like a whisper, but it can cause earthquakes and tempests and shit?”

  Thatcher rubbed her temples. “Assume for one crazy second that Brenton Hyden is right. What happens if we destroy these graves?”

  “You mean, what happens if we remove God’s voice box?” He started up the Hebrew program and then turned to face her. “Assuming we even can destroy the graves… I’d say we’re toast.”

  “What would the dead be trying to tell us?”

  “Repent. Eat your vegetables. Floss your teeth.”

  She frowned. “Marek, I’m serious.”

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  The computer beeped another NO MATCH.

  “You should have left basecamp when you had the chance…” he whispered.

  Thatcher looked at him in surprise.

  “I heard your phone conversation when we were topside.” He pulled his iPod from his pocket. “These batteries have been dead ever since that night in the tent.”

  Thatcher turned red. She was such a schoolgirl.

  “I know you’re not telling me something. Be straight with me.” He touched her chin.

  She chose her words carefully. “David has a lead. Whether or not it can stop the graves, I don’t know.”

  Marek stared into her eyes, trying to see beyond the walls and barriers. “Why are you still here, Brynne?”

  She tried to look away.

  “You should be out there. Helping him.”

  “I can’t leave.”

  Marek nodded. “I see how it is…”

  She crossed her arms. “What does that mean?”

  “Your man’s out there saving the world, while you’re sitting on your fine little ass, wasting time with a brother from the Bronx just because you’re too afraid to stand up to your uncle.”

  “It’s more complicated than that and you know it.” She was offended by his oversimplification, and probably by the fact that he was right.

  “We got nothin’ goin’ down here. Hell, we don’t even know if AVX will stop the ‘voices of the dead.’ I don’t care what Hummer throws at those graves—none of it’ll do any good.” He lowered his voice and leaned into her. “You should be out there with him. No matter what Hummer or NATO or the whole damn world thinks.”

  Tears began to build in her eyes. She bit her bottom lip. “What do you expect me to do?” she fired back, fighting the urge to cry.

  “Come here.”

  She didn’t move.

  “Come the hell here.” Marek pulled her into him.

  For once in her life, Thatcher didn’t fight him. Though her body was rigid, she let him hold her.

  “Talk to Hummer,” he said. “He’s your flesh and blood. That’s got to mean something.”

  She wiped her eyes and tried to stand.

  He held onto her shoulders. “Here, take this.” He unhooked the gold chain from his neck and placed it around her head, setting the crucifix softly on her neck.

  He studied her face. She was terrified. Her tear-filled eyes looked up at him with uncertainty. She didn’t
have a clue about what she wanted. Her hands were shaking. She was too delicate to save the world.

  He wanted to kiss her, but her fear made him stop. She didn’t love him.

  Marek turned back to the computer. “Do something,” he said, a rock forming in his throat. “Because you’re driving me crazy.”

  She backed away.

  “I’ll talk with Hummer.” She turned on her heels and left the room.

  Chapter 58

  SATURDAY 4:30 p.m.

  Lothian, Scotland

  The roads were empty. He hadn’t seen anyone for the last thirty minutes.

  Reaching for the Scotland-By-Highway map in the passenger’s seat, he unfolded it with one hand and tried to stay on the road with the other. The print was ridiculously tiny, especially on such an absurdly large map. The paper could unfold well beyond the width of the car. After a few dangerous overcorrections at the wheel, he located Lothian.

  Dammit. He’d passed the turnoff 12 miles ago.

  The map had to be wrong. He hadn’t passed any highways. He set the paper down on the passenger seat. The sun was setting, heating the rental car. He took off his coat and rolled down the windows.

  He spotted a road a short distance up the highway. The turnoff looked like his only option. He floored the gas pedal, turned off the highway, and then pulled over to look at the map again. There was no time for mistakes. He wanted to be certain before heading back down the coast. He stepped outside and spread the paper over the roof.

  Thick grassy tundra spread across the eastern horizon. There was no civilization for miles in every direction. Thatcher had warned him about the evacuation. What if this guy was already gone?

  A gust of wind peeled the map off the hood. The paper twisted out of his hands and tumbled down the road. He ran after it, stomping along the rocky shoulder until he captured the paper beneath his foot. His shoe landed on something hard and he heard a metal clang. He bent over and pushed aside the weeds. Buried under pebbles and grass, a fallen road sign had been reclaimed by the earth. He brushed dirt off the placard.

  Route 839

  Lothian 24 km

  By some miracle, he had stumbled upon the right place.