Maze Master

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  CHAPTER 53

  OCTOBER 23. ZERO HOUR.

  Micah left Lehman tied up on the floor and went to switch off the solar lantern, which plunged the room into darkness. He gave his eyes time to adjust, then quietly eased the door open a crack and peered outside. Darkness cloaked the corridor, but it was a lighter black than his room. No guards in sight. He listened for any hint of breathing or movement.

  As Micah stepped into the corridor and closed the door behind him, it made a soft snick. He listened again. Lehman’s boots were a couple of sizes too big, but he’d laced them tight. They’d do.

  Carrying the revolver in his left hand, he moved down the corridor with catlike precision. At the end of the hall, he stood perfectly still. To the right, a staircase led upward. He trotted to the top and halted on the landing. The staircase continued upward, but he needed time to stop-look-and-listen, as his mother once instructed him to do at railroad crossings and military training had perfected. A draft of cold air flooded down the steps. Had a door to the outside world been left open somewhere in the fort? Micah could smell the salty fragrance of the sea mixed with earth and rain.

  If Lehman had told the truth, Nadai should be quartered somewhere on this floor. He trotted down the hall. At each door, he knocked lightly and called, “Nadai?” When no answer came, he moved on.

  By the time he reached the end of the hall, he’d decided Lehman was a liar.

  He climbed the next staircase one step at a time.

  When he reached the landing, he heard something flapping on the far side of the hallway. In an alcove near the window, a crow dried his wet wings by flapping them briskly, then plucking at his feathers as though rearranging them. There really was a door open somewhere.

  Micah turned right, studied the dim corridor and walked thirty-two paces to the T-intersection, where he gripped his pistol and eased around the corner to look down the hall to the right, then to the left. Counting five doors down on the left side of the corridor, his eyes tightened. No guards. Couldn’t possibly be Anna’s …

  He heard the click of a revolver hammer being pulled back. “Drop the gun, Captain.”

  Micah let the pistol fall from his hand.

  “Turn around.”

  Micah turned toward Cozeba. The general needed a shave badly. His brown eyes blazed as he lifted his pistol and aimed it at Micah’s heart.

  “Did you kill Lehman?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a liar. How did you get out of your room?”

  “I used my brain.”

  Cozeba smiled. “I wouldn’t brag if I were you. Stupid men find themselves looking down the barrel of a gun.” He lifted his pistol higher to make sure Micah could look straight down the barrel. “What are you doing up here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  Cozeba was not amused. He gestured with his gun. “I’ve been trying to keep you safe, Captain. You’re defeating my efforts. Get down on your knees.”

  Micah dropped to his knees.

  Down the hallway the crow cawed and flapped its wings again.

  Cozeba walked toward Micah. When he got close enough, he kicked Micah’s pistol hard, sending it skittering across the stone floor. It stopped when it struck the wall thirty feet away.

  “Where did you get that gun? Lehman? I knew I shouldn’t have sent a historian to do a combat veteran’s job, but I couldn’t spare anyone else. Did you kill the guards?”

  “No.”

  “They just let you go, huh?”

  “They liked me.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  Micah grinned.

  Cozeba grinned back, but it was not a pleasant sight. “You have no idea what you’re doing, Captain. There’s no time for any explanations. We have to get to Asher’s quarters. Are you with me?”

  Micah gave him a wary look. He didn’t trust this guy at all. “I assume that means you’re engaged in staging the final battle with the Angels of Light.”

  Cozeba wiped his nose on his sleeve while he stared at Micah. “Whose side are you on, Hazor? Mine or the enemy’s?”

  “I haven’t decided who the enemy is yet. It might be you, General.”

  “It’s not, Captain.”

  He actually sounded like he was telling the truth. Micah hesitated for a few eternal seconds, before saying, “All right. I’m with you, sir.”

  Cozeba said, “Then pick up your pistol. We have about thirty minutes before all hell breaks loose.”

  CHAPTER 54

  “Where’s her room?” Micah asked.

  Cozeba gestured in the opposite direction. “Down this corridor.”

  Micah followed three paces behind, listening the whole time for boots on stone. When they crossed the stairway landing, the crow squawked and took wing, flapping down the dark hall as though leading the way. It had a macabre Edgar Allan Poe flare.

  “Where’s your flashlight, General?”

  “I shouldn’t need one. This hallway should be guarded by men with a solar lantern.”

  Micah’s heart tried to pound through his rib cage.

  Faint sounds came from the room.

  Micah said, “Get there fast, General.”

  Cozeba strode down the hallway and stopped in front of the door.

  Micah concentrated. In the darkness it was virtually impossible to see what the general was doing. He relied on his hearing, the sound of cast iron touching Cozeba’s wedding ring. He did not hear plastic or wooden grips scratching the woolen fabric of his pocket.

  Cozeba pulled out a key and slipped it into the lock. When he swung open the door, Micah’s heart leapt. A lantern blazed where it sat on the floor beside the two tied-up guards. The soldiers were flopping around and crying out against their gags.

  “Goddamn her!” Cozeba shouted. “I ordered her to stay in her room!”

  “Where would she have gone, General? If she escaped, she had a destination.”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  Micah stepped past Cozeba, backed into the room, and went to examine Anna’s guards. Both of their rifles were missing, as well as one flashlight. Micah pulled the other flashlight from the guard’s belt. He found it interesting that she’d left the soldiers their pistols. They remained snapped in their holsters.

  She thought they were going to need them. She knew a fight was coming.

  “Think, General. Where would Anna be?”

  To still his rage, Cozeba had to momentarily clench his jaw and fists. Micah studied the man’s facial expression. If Cozeba were not the enemy, he’d tell Micah the truth. If he were the enemy, he’d lie. How would Micah know the difference?

  “All right,” Cozeba exhaled the words. “She has two allies. Captain Bowen and Major Bibi. But I don’t want you anywhere close to the Garden, Hazor—”

  “Then I’ll take Bibi. Where’s the major quartered?”

  Cozeba didn’t hesitate. He pointed at the ceiling. “Next floor. She…”

  Micah turned and ran. When he found the stairs, he took them two at a time to the next floor. At the top, he saw the open window. Rain was falling outside. The crow’s entry? He looked down the dark hall to the right. To his left, at the very end, a pale blue glow seeped from an open doorway. Voices drifted on the cold air.

  One of the voices belonged to Anna.

  CHAPTER 55

  Martin stood guard just inside the doorway with a pistol in his hand and sweat running down his face.

  Three paces away, Anna leaned over Zandra Bibi’s shoulder, studying the computer screen. Dried blood streaked Anna’s right arm. Both rifles hung by their slings over her shoulder. Her white T-shirt and khaki pants were coated with dirt and grime, as though she’d been rolling around on the floor before she’d come to rescue him. Not only that, strands of auburn hair had been torn loose from her braid and straggled around her face.

  “See what I mean?” Zandra Bibi leaned back in her chair and looked up at Anna. She wore camo and a holstered pistol. Her rifle leaned ag
ainst the wall to the rear of her computer table.

  Anna frowned. The sequence kept repeating, then it would pause, and the cursor would flash. “Yes, he used the double helix architecture of DNA, purines and pyrimidines, to design a photonic message.”

  Martin said, “What does that mean?”

  “Well, imagine a long string of Christmas tree lights spiraling around the tree, but the light bulbs are shaped like hexagons and pentagons.”

  “Which are the building blocks of life, right? Adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine?”

  “Correct. However, in this case, each light bulb, each hexagon and pentagon, is actually made up of thousands of tiny points of light.”

  “Photons?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, the string of lights is turned off right now.”

  Zandra nodded. “And when we turn it on, we’ll see the photons spinning, up or down, and we’ll be able to read the message in the same way that we’d read the message of a conventional computer written in ones and zeroes—like opening your email.”

  “How do we turn the string of lights on?”

  “We need a key: the quantum key code.”

  Anna looked at Martin for several seconds, as though deep in thought. “I wonder if the QKC is our maze.”

  “Our maze? How?

  “Think of the QKC as an ordinary key that fits into a door lock. The jagged edge of the key, when inserted into the lock, clicks over tumblers, and unlocks it. The zigzagging course around the shapes of our maze may be the jagged edge of the key.”

  “How do we insert it into the lock?”

  “I don’t know.” Tears of frustration briefly glazed her eyes. “Let me try something. Major, can you cross-reference every known version of LucentB with Hazor’s most recent DNA sample?”

  Bibi moved her chair forward again and put her hands on the keyboard to input the commands. “Sure, but I don’t understand what relevance—”

  “You will.”

  Anna paced while they waited. Those few instants seemed like forever.

  Zandra Bibi suddenly leaned forward. “I don’t believe what I’m seeing.”

  “Show me.” Anna leaned over her shoulder to study the monitor.

  “Here and here. Do you see? Hazor’s nuclear DNA has been rewritten to add a specific mutation of the HERV-Kde27 sequence. My God, he has the plague.”

  “No, I suspect he was vaccinated with a live form of the virus.” Anna suddenly bent down to stare more closely at the screen. “Major, would you mind if I sit down? I need to decode the geometry of that virus.”

  “Sure.”

  Bibi vacated the chair and Anna sat down. It didn’t take long with a quantum computer to generate a visual model. As it appeared on the screen, she slowly leaned back in the chair. “My God, LucentB is beautiful.” She straightened and turned to Martin. “Can you see this?”

  “Yeah, it’s a weird sphere, kind of like a geodesic dome.”

  Zandra shoved back her chair and started to rise. “We need to tell Cozeba what we’ve found ASAP.”

  “Wait.” Anna held up a hand. “Please, give me a little more time. We’re almost out of the maze, but not yet. I need to figure out how the Divine Word might fit into all this.”

  “What’s the Divine Word?” Bibi asked.

  Martin wiped his face on his dirty sleeve. “We don’t know that, either.”

  “Okay, just tell me how this relates to Hazor’s DNA. Were the Russians testing a hypothesis on him?”

  “Maybe,” Anna said. “Clearly, someone developed a live vaccine and gave it to him to see if it made him sick.”

  With the silence of a cat, Anna rose and walked away from the screen. She stood so still, it was hypnotic. “But why isn’t Micah sick?”

  “Neither is Major Bibi. Neither are you.”

  Barely audible, as though speaking to herself, Anna whispered, “If Micah is pure sub-Saharan African he may not have Neandertal or Denisovan genes. Think of AIDS. Some people carry the retrovirus all their lives but never get the disease.”

  “I don’t understand. Does that mean sub-Saharan Africans—”

  “Are immune?” Micah said as he appeared just outside the doorway. He looked like a tall, broad-shouldered Grim Reaper. His dark skin had a turquoise tint in the light cast by the computer screen.

  Martin was so surprised by Hazor’s sudden appearance he leaped backward. “I didn’t even hear you, Hazor! Jesus Christ!”

  Hazor held up a hand and softly said, “Lower the gun, Nadai.”

  Martin instantly lowered the gun. “S-sorry.”

  Hazor remained standing just outside the door, his gaze continually flashing between Anna and the hallway. “Toss me one of the rifles, Anna.”

  She did it instantly.

  Hazor caught it. Tucking the pistol into his belt, he cradled the rifle. “All right. Talk to me about the DNA sequences.”

  Anna took a step toward him.

  “Here’s my hypothesis: the long photonic sequence Major Bibi has been receiving is the cure. I think the maze is the key to decrypt it, but I’m not sure how to insert the key into the lock—”

  “So you’ve been in contact with Hakari?”

  She shook her head violently. “No, but my partner may have. Yacob is probably the person who developed the vaccine you were given. He was brilliant at vaccine development. I don’t know how much you heard out there, and I don’t have a lot of time to explain! Just, for now, the point is, we almost have the cure, and we have to protect it!”

  “Protect it from whom?”

  “Russian troops are on the way.”

  “Come on, Anna,” Martin said. “This isn’t the twentieth-century Cold War. Do you really think the Russians would just steal it and let the rest of the world die?”

  Hazor turned to look at him as though he could not believe Martin had said that. “Yes. I do.”

  “Well, if you’re right, then who on earth can we trust with the cure if we ever find it? Maybe every nation will hoard it for its own people.”

  The room went so quiet that Martin could hear himself swallow. He felt like he’d just matter-of-factly revealed the death knell of the world.

  “And so…” Micah said in a low deep voice, his gaze pinioning Anna. “Hakari left clues for the only person who might be able to decipher his genetic maze. The only person he trusted. You.”

  “He didn’t trust me, Micah. He was too terrified to trust anyone. That’s why the maze exists. Besides, there were ten of us. Not just me. If he’d—”

  “Ten,” Martin whispered. As certainty surged through his body, he felt suddenly feverish. It had to be! “Dear God. I can’t believe I didn’t figure this out when we were in Bir—”

  Hazor suddenly turned to look down the hall, and yelled: “Get down!”

  In Martin’s mind, the man moved in slow motion, pivoting like a well-oiled machine, crouching slightly, aiming his rifle down the hallway. Hazor fired a brief burst, then leaped into the room just as bullets shattered the stones outside and screams shredded the afternoon.

  Stupidly, Martin stood riveted to the floor, his paleographer’s brain inanely cataloging their language. Russian, but a particular southern regional variation with hints of …

  Martin skidded back into the corner to the right of the doorway where he stood shaking so badly he could barely keep his grip on the weapon. He’d never been this scared in his life. I don’t want to kill anyone.

  “If they come through this door, you be ready to use that pistol!” Micah ordered.

  “I—I will.” He prayed that was true.

  Anna ran to take one side of the door, while Hazor covered the other. At the same time, Zandra Bibi grabbed her laptop and the notebook-sized device, shoved over the table to act as a shield, and leveled her pistol across the top.

  CHAPTER 56

  Micah leaned against the wall where he could see through the open door and down the corridor about five paces. His brain kept trying to process what he’d s
een climb up the stairs. Their HazMat suits had shimmered as though created of some new spectacular metamaterial. To Gembane, in the smoke and dust of Operation Mount of Olives, the Russians must have looked like Angels of Light.

  When he’d fired, four had collapsed, sprawling across the floor. The two survivors responded with the reflexes of professional shock troops, dropping behind their fallen comrades, bracing rifles across the corpses, and returning fire.

  Anna said, “Micah, look at me. How many were there? Look at me!”

  He tore his gaze from the corridor. “Six. I got four.”

  She forced calm into her voice. “General Garusovsky must have more soldiers on the way—”

  “I’m expecting that.”

  Anna gave him one of those I’m-with-you stares that only soldiers who’ve already given themselves up for dead can share. A familiar euphoria filled him. As the light-headed sensation swelled, his heart rate kicked up, and the scent of the blood in the hallway charged his muscles with adrenaline.

  He nodded to Anna. “What’s the plan, Captain?”

  “Let me do the talking. I know what he wants.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “I don’t care what happens to Garusovsky.” Her deep voice had a strange resonance. “But please try to protect Borodino. He’s Garusovsky’s black-haired lieutenant. I can’t explain—”

  “Understood.”

  Micah pressed his back against the wall, trying to peer as far down the corridor as he could. Still no sign of the enemy. Damn, he wished he had a mirror.

  Boots thumped as heavy bodies scraped the floor, being dragged out of the way in preparation for the final assault.

  And we’re trapped in here. For God’s sake.

  A staccato of boot heels echoed in the stairwell. Twenty people? Thirty?

  Anna exchanged a look with Micah. Burned into their brains were the sounds of American combat boots and Russian combat boots. He’d heard both out there. She must have, as well. Even worse, in the distance beyond the walls of the fort, the sound of more troops, troops on the move, rang out. He heard orders being shouted and equipment rolling across stone.

  “Micah, keep in mind that the people outside will do anything to get the vaccine. So the code on Bibi’s computer must be protected at all costs. Martin, do you understand?”