by Simon Toyne
‘I don’t think that’s …’
‘Take it. I don’t care how many Nobel prizes this man has won, he is still a fugitive from the law, which makes him unpredictable.’
The figure beneath the tree moved forward, emerging from the shadow.
‘He’s coming down,’ Shepherd said, handing the gun back.
‘Keep it,’ Arkadian said. ‘I’m too slow and can’t shoot worth a damn since I took a bullet in my arm.’
Shepherd thought about his own less than glowing record as a marksman but slipped it into the back waistband of his trousers anyway, angling himself so his whole body was between the gun and Hevva.
The figure continued to descend the hill, picking his way down a thin gravel path that snaked its way down from the tree: a slender man with silver hair and a Nobel prize for physics on his CV, Dr Kinderman – fugitive from the law. He reached the upper edge of the dig and did a strange thing – he waved at them.
‘He doesn’t look like a man on the edge,’ Arkadian muttered.
‘He’s spent his life on the edge of the universe,’ Shepherd replied. ‘This probably all feels quite normal to him.’
Dr Kinderman rounded the rim of the crater and approached them, a warm, friendly smile fixed to his face, like a man just welcoming weekend guests to his house. ‘You found me,’ he said, his voice nasal and high, like the whine of an overgrown, over-enthusiastic schoolboy.
‘Joseph Shepherd, sir.’ Kinderman clasped the offered hand and shook it. ‘I worked under you briefly on the Explorer mission.’
‘Please.’ Kinderman held his hands up and screwed his eyes shut like he was in mild pain. ‘Call me William, or Will, or Bill even, but don’t call me “sir”, makes me feel like your father.’ He let go of Shepherd’s hand and dropped down to the ground. ‘And who do we have here?’ Kinderman brought his head right down to Hevva’s level. ‘Are you an FBI agent too?’
Hevva went shy and smiley and buried her face in Shepherd’s side.
Kinderman stood and turned to the dig site. ‘Magnificent, isn’t it? A temple to the stars, built eight thousand years before the pyramids in Egypt and then deliberately buried to hide it and preserve its secrets. You can’t really see it properly from here, it was designed to be viewed from up there.’ He pointed back up at the tree on top of the hill. ‘Interestingly enough the locals call that the tree of knowledge, always have done – even when they didn’t know all this was buried beneath it. Isn’t that fascinating?’
Shepherd felt like a schoolboy on a field trip with one of the better teachers.
‘Shall we go inside?’ Kinderman gestured to one of the larger field tents. ‘It’s cooler in there and I have something I want to show you.’
They filed into the tent and through a visitor’s area with information posters on partition walls and a scale model of the dig site on a table in the centre of the room. There was a washroom through one door and a kitchen through the other with a stove and a table positioned beneath a ceiling fan that turned slowly, stirring the air and blowing dust into the shafts of sunlight leaking in through shuttered windows and a back door that had been propped open to let more air in.
‘You wouldn’t believe there were about thirty people here a couple of days ago, would you?’ Kinderman said, lighting the gas on the stove. ‘Yesterday there were ten and this morning just me, so I apologize in advance for the mint tea I’m about to make. I don’t really have the art of it, which is a shame as it’s delicious when done properly.’ He put a pot of water on to boil and grabbed a bunch of mint from a bowl of water by the sink.
‘I can make tea,’ Hevva said.
‘Are you sure?’ Shepherd said, suddenly worried about the stove and boiling water in his first real moment of everyday parental angst.
‘Mama showed me how to do it. She showed me how to do lots of things.’ Hevva slipped off the bench and headed to the stove without waiting for anyone’s permission and held out her hands for the mint. Kinderman handed it over without a word, then she dragged a chair across to the countertop and started ripping up handfuls of leaves and dropping them into a teapot. Shepherd felt a surge of pride as he watched her, though none of who she was or how she behaved was anything to do with him.
‘So,’ Kinderman said, moving over to the table containing the model of the dig, ‘notice anything?’ Shepherd looked down at it. It was perfectly to scale and even had a model tree at the top. In this shrunken form it was easier to see the configuration of the standing stones. ‘They’re constellations,’ he said, remembering the Wikipedia entry he had read.
‘Exactly, perfect facsimiles.’
Shepherd looked down at the main cluster. ‘All except this one,’ he pointed at the tallest stone, the home stone, which sat between two others representing the tips of the horns of Taurus. ‘There is no star here, not normally – except tonight there will be, won’t there, Dr Kinderman?’
Kinderman smiled. ‘Bravo, Agent Shepherd, you are a worthy adversary, no wonder you found me. And in the tradition of all great quests your triumph entitles you to some answers. What would you like to know?’
In his mind Shepherd cycled through all the things he’d been asking himself ever since O’Halloran had given him the initial brief. He decided to start at the beginning and work forward from there. ‘The space telescope,’ he said, ‘why did you sabotage it and destroy all the data?’
Kinderman cocked his head to one side in a way that made Shepherd think of a bird. ‘That’s a bad question, Agent Shepherd. It is built upon two assumptions, both of which are wrong, which therefore renders the question moot.’ Shepherd felt like a student again, one who was flunking a test. ‘Firstly,’ Kinderman continued, ‘you say that I sabotaged Hubble, which implies something destructive when in fact Hubble was not destroyed, it was not even damaged.’
‘What about Marshall? That was fairly destructive.’
‘Yes it was, but again you are assuming that those two incidents are directly linked and that the architect of one must therefore have had a hand in the other.’
‘No, I think you did one and Professor Douglas did the other but that your motives were shared.’
‘Well then you are half right. I did reposition Hubble, as I have already said, but I did not destroy James Webb or the cryo unit at Marshall – and neither did Professor Douglas.’
‘Then who did?’ Arkadian asked.
Kinderman looked at him and shrugged. ‘The same person who was sending us the death threat letters I should imagine, the one who signs his name Novus Sancti.’
‘Cooper.’
Kinderman laughed. ‘Fulton Cooper! You think someone like him could infiltrate the Marshall Space Center and blow a large part of it up without detection?’
‘No, we thought maybe Professor Douglas did after being coerced in some way.’
‘You knew the Professor didn’t you Agent Shepherd?’
‘A little – he was my tutor for a summer.’
‘Then surely you know he was the sort of person who would rather die than destroy his own facility. His work was his life, he valued nothing higher.’
Shepherd felt like a green shoot shrivelling in the blinding brightness of a superior mind. All his thinking had been based on the assumption that Kinderman and Douglas were co-conspirators and saboteurs. But with that keystone gone the whole structure of his investigation was now starting to crumble. ‘But if he didn’t destroy Marshall then why run and hide?’
‘Because we both feared for our lives,’ Kinderman replied. ‘And, considering what happened to the poor Professor, with very good reason it seems.’
Hevva arrived at the table with a steaming pot of tea. She was struggling with the weight of it and Shepherd reached out to take it from her.
‘You should have told someone,’ he said, pouring the hot liquid into several small glasses shaped like tulips. ‘The police could have protected you.’
‘Protected us from whom? You just told me you thought our antag
onist, the one who calls himself Novus Sancti, was Fulton Cooper. If the FBI cannot identify this person, then how could they possibly protect us from him? Whoever is behind all this has to be someone with a high level of access, someone inside the establishment and well connected, someone with a very clear agenda. The Professor and I both realized this. And when we both received the same letter we knew we had to act quickly. My repositioning of Hubble served as a useful diversion, a sop if you like to the blackmailers’ demands to “take down the new Tower of Babel”, it bought us some time. But it also served a practical purpose, one which was outlined right here ten thousand years ago then buried to protect the secrets and those who kept them.’
‘The Mala,’ Arkadian said.
Kinderman nodded. ‘The history of the Mala is the history of suppressed truth. At the beginning of human history things took a wrong turn. Truth was imprisoned along with the relic known as the Sacrament. But the Mala knew the history of it and their enemies, the Sancti, tried to silence them. They established their Church to spread their version of history and declared that anyone who believed anything different from the word of their Bible was a heretic and should be put to death. So the Mala hid and buried their secrets underground until the time predicted when things would swing back the other way and balance would be restored. Over time many were drawn to the Mala, scientists whose findings challenged the Church, philosophers and thinkers who questioned the “truth”. It was an organization that allowed free thinkers to remain free. And it still is. Without their support I would never have been able to flee from America undetected. They are like the French resistance in the Second World War, only on a global scale, providing friendship, support – even a passport under a different name.’ He drained his cup of tea and smiled at Hevva. ‘That, young lady, is delicious tea.’
She smiled shyly, picked up the drained teapot and took it back in the kitchen to top it up with hot water.
‘In 1995, excavations started here and the first T-shaped stones were uncovered. The T is the Tau – symbol of the Sacrament, used by the Sancti and the Mala both. The mountains to the west are named for the Tau, and so also is the great constellation of the bull, which the ancients of our tribe saw as sacred, a harbinger of change. The rediscovery of these stones and the messages captured here told us that the time of change was coming. A time we refer to as the end of days. The established Church uses similar terms though they have demonized it as something terrible. But there is nothing to fear from the end of days. For every end also marks a new beginning.’
‘Hello!?’
The voice took them all by surprise, puncturing the moment and making all heads turn. It was a woman’s voice, American. They heard the faintest of footsteps outside then a tiny woman stepped through the door. She looked at them each in turn, smiling in a way that made her freckled nose wrinkle a little. Then a muffled shriek snapped their heads back round again.
A man was standing in the kitchen.
And he had Hevva.
102
Shepherd saw the man first, then the knife held loosely against his daughter’s throat. Hate boiled up inside him, but also fear. There was something in the man’s eyes, something missing, that told Shepherd he would kill his daughter just as easily as snapping a twig.
‘Any weapons, let’s see them, nice and easy,’ the woman said in her Sunday-school teacher’s voice.
She was by the entrance, covering them with what looked like a toy gun. The man was behind them with a knife. Smart tactics. It made it impossible to look at both of them at the same time and ensured they wouldn’t get caught in their own crossfire. If Shepherd was with a partner they would automatically take one each, but he wasn’t. He was with an astronomer and a cop who had just given him his gun because he couldn’t shoot straight. He felt it now, pressing into the small of his back, hidden by his jacket.
‘I don’t have a gun,’ he gambled. ‘They don’t let you take them on international flights.’
The woman pointed her gun at Arkadian. ‘Nice and slow, mister police man, take it out by the barrel then slide it over.’
‘I don’t have a gun either,’ Arkadian replied.
‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘Not really.’ His movement took everyone by surprise. He darted right, drawing the woman’s gun away from the rest of the group as he reached into his jacket.
Shepherd reacted too, only one thought filling his brain as he pulled the gun free from his belt.
A man is holding a knife to my daughter’s throat.
He saw Hevva’s terrified face pass through his sights as they settled centre mass of the man. A gunshot boomed behind him but he stayed focused. The man started lifting Hevva up to use her as a shield.
Shepherd adjusted. Squeezed the trigger.
The man jerked backwards as the bullet hit him and Hevva dropped to the floor. Every instinct made Shepherd want to run to her but his training stopped him.
A gun had been fired behind him.
He corkscrewed round, dropping down to make himself a smaller target. The woman was in a good two-handed stance, professional and well-drilled, her gun turning towards him, no chance of missing at this range and almost ready to fire. He willed his gun round faster, knowing it wasn’t going to happen.
Scalding liquid hit her face and her head jerked away, pulling her aim wide. Shepherd’s gun-sight settled on her tiny frame just as she was pulling her gun back towards him. The impact of the bullet threw her backwards against the open door, knocking the gun from her hand and out of the door.
He looked across and saw Kinderman holding the empty glass that had contained the mint tea. Arkadian was down, sprawled on the floor and not moving. Shepherd knew he should check the shooter was down and her gun made safe. He should check on Arkadian to see if he was hit. He should do all of these things like he had been taught but instead he turned and sprinted over to Hevva.
She was sitting on the floor, bright blood running through the hand she was holding to her cheek.
She should have stayed in the car.
He should have made her stay in the car.
He fell to the floor beside her and took her face in his hands, feeling the wet warmth of her blood as he checked her over, terrified of what he might find. He almost laughed with relief when he saw that the knife had just nicked her ear.
The knife-man was lying on the floor behind her in a spreading pool of his own blood. He was just about breathing but the wound was sucking and foaming. Lung shot. He was drowning in his own blood. A nasty way to go but Shepherd didn’t care. ‘I never knew dying would feel like this,’ the man whispered as he stared up at the ceiling. ‘I never knew it would hurt so much.’ Then the sucking sound stopped and he was still.
Shepherd bundled Hevva into his arms and carried her over to the others.
Kinderman was standing over the woman, holding her gun in his hand like it might bite him. Shepherd could tell by the way the woman was lying, crooked against the door, that she was dead. Arkadian was still down, blood spreading out beneath him. Shepherd set Hevva down and crouched low to look into Arkadian’s face. His eyes were open and he was still breathing – but only just.
‘I didn’t know you had another gun,’ Shepherd said.
Arkadian smiled weakly. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Then why …?’
‘You needed a diversion,’ Arkadian whispered between snatched breaths. ‘Look after your little girl. Life ceases to have much meaning – when you lose the ones you love.’
Then he closed his eyes and was gone.
103
The first batch of inoculations took place the same day Athanasius woke up. All the infected in the cathedral cave, forty-seven men and women, were given the serum one after the other, almost wiping out the stocks at a stroke.
When every patient had been injected Dr Kaplan returned to the main lab and took an ampoule of the serum from the fridge. There were just twelve doses left and they were expecting new c
ases of the infected within the hour.
He copied all the clinical files to a flash drive then hand-wrote a note to his opposite number coordinating the medical effort outside the mountain.
Ekram,
The serum contained in this vial has been successful in curing one patient so far but we are conducting further trials on all remaining patients. I pray it is successful – we all pray it is. I leave it to you and the politicians to decide how much of it should be produced and when but my advice would be to make as much of it as you can right away. We can always destroy it if these trials fail, but we cannot suddenly conjure it out of nothing if they succeed.
All the details of its makeup are contained in the enclosed drive.
Yours, Ahmet Kaplan
He packed the vial inside a shockproof container and placed everything inside a padded envelope, which he took to the tribute cave himself. He had not been in this part of the mountain for months. The air still smelt of smoke from the fire in the library and reminded him of all the bodies he’d seen burned in the garden.
No more – he promised himself – Please God, no more.
The platform was being prepared when he entered the cave, ready to be lowered to collect the day’s batch of infected. The wooden platform rocked as he walked across to the box reserved for correspondence and placed the envelope in it.
He returned to the cave and watched the platform sink down through the hatch and out into the clear air carrying the first bit of good news to leave the mountain in many months.
104
Shepherd carried Hevva out of the kitchen and into the sunlight. He didn’t want her to remain inside with the freshly slain and the smell of gunpowder in the air.
He sat her down in the shade of an awning and bathed her face, wiping away the worst of the blood then dabbing it clean with wet tissues, all the while talking to her, telling her she was fine and even starting to believe it himself as the blood washed away. Head wounds always bled more than most. The nick in the ear was all she had suffered, at least physically. She had also witnessed her new-found father shoot two people dead. He didn’t want to think what the long-term effects of all that might be.