She looked at him. Her jaw rigid and her eyes intense. “Zero – the human race would be extinct.”
“Okay. So you have a choice. You can do nothing and the human race will survive another three hundred years. That’s not so bad. Or you can take a chance and potentially kill everyone at the end of this generation.”
“Those were the choices.”
“You mean, those are the choices,” Sam corrected her.
“No. Were. Past tense. This is a new note. Nostradamus obviously had another vision since he’d left the book of Nostradamus buried in the Saharan desert.”
“Why? What’s changed?”
“Here he says that when my daughter turns eighty-two – the human population on earth will reach zero.”
Sam did the math. “For that to be true, you’d need to be pregnant right now?”
She took in a slow, deep breath. Closed her eyes and exhaled. “I’m two months pregnant. My lover doesn’t even know. Heck. I only guessed when I read Nostradamus’s note. I didn’t believe it. But things are changing. I haven’t seen a doctor yet, but I can tell you for certain, with the knowledge of a mother – I’m pregnant and I want my child to live.”
Chapter Eighty
Zara held her breath. She waited for a response from either Sam or Tom. She’d betrayed their trust. But how could she have told them any earlier? She had gambled the lives of every living person on the planet, because she thought it was better to have the possibility of extending the time-line for the human race and in doing so, had jeopardized two hundred years of it.
“All right,” Sam said. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying the future has already changed?”
Zara nodded. “Yes. Like I’ve said before, Nostradamus can’t see everything. He has visions and these visions are like scenes in a movie or chapters in a book. They are very clear and provide lots of information about a specific event, but not necessarily the time and date of the event. In this circumstance, the original data that Nostradamus was working on has changed. As it is set now, he believes I’m on course to destroy humanity.”
Sam nodded vacantly, and started looking around the room. She wasn’t sure if he’d heard what she had to say, and was ignoring her completely, or whether he was now simply focused on something entirely different. Either way, he looked like he was miles away, and uninterested in her confession.
She turned to Tom, instead. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Call me selfish, but I’m still more concerned with getting out of here and surviving to my next birthday than the predicted life-expectancy of the human race after the next century. I think I’ll go have another look around outside. See if there’s a way to reach the surface.”
Zara nodded as he left. She then turned to watch Sam study the empty walls, the sides of the sarcophagus, the doors, everything. Despite the catastrophic news he’d just received, Sam’s face displayed his normal level of insouciance, which she simultaneously admired and despised. He smiled, like he was hearing the score of a game of social lawn bowls.
Zara asked, “Did you hear a word I said?”
Sam smiled. “I’m not sure. I think so. I definitely might have. I’m sorry, I got distracted. Where did you finish?”
“Where did you get to?”
“You inadvertently sped up the extinction of the human race.” Sam continued to slide his hand along a small crevice between two sections of the empty wall. His face appeared intrigued and curious, without a hint of concern. “Did I miss anything important, after that?”
“No. That’s about the gist of it.”
Sam smiled. “Good. Well that’s settled then.”
Zara followed him, suddenly aware that he was neither perturbed, nor interested in the news that Nostradamus had left her. She glanced at his face. “What are you looking for?”
“Answers.”
“To what?”
“The next clue,” Sam said, shaking his head, as though it were obvious. “The next step. Think about it. If Nostradamus went to the trouble of doing all this to save the human race from extinction, why would he stop now and write a message informing you that you’d failed and now the entire dark future was going to occur two hundred years earlier?”
She asked, “So what are you saying?”
Sam said, “I believe Nostradamus is still trying to help you find the one thing he never had. The only aid that could possibly allow you to correctly change the future.”
“The Nostradamus Equation!”
“Exactly.” He then stopped at the pedestal. “Ah, and here it is.”
“Here what is?” she asked.
“The next clue.”
Zara stared at the pedestal. It looked out of place in the holy room where the last survivor of the Kingdom of Sands had been laid to rest by Nostradamus himself.
She suddenly grinned. There was another note. It was written in the same scrawl she’d recognized as coming from the hand of Nostradamus.
Searching for answers?
Place the key into the pedestal and learn the truth.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Is this another note by Nostradamus?”
“I think you’re clutching at straws. It’s an old circular pedestal with a remarkably similar shape to your medallion, but nothing more.”
“So you think I shouldn't bother?”
“No. You may as well try. I’m just saying, don’t expect anything to happen.”
Zara nodded. She carefully withdrew the brass medallion beneath her tank-top and placed it in the water. A single drop of water fell on to it from above, but nothing happened. The truth, it would appear, was avoiding her.
“What did you think would happen?” Sam said.
“I don’t know. Anything. Something. Not nothing.”
Zara reached towards the medallion to remove it from the water and then stopped – because the water began to change color and fizz violently.
Chapter Eighty-One
Zara watched for a minute, mesmerized by the suspense. She was going to know the truth. Nostradamus had been right. He knew everything. He knew she would end up inside this ancient city. Everything would be revealed to her. All she had to do was wait.
It was the acrid smell and caustic smoke that awoke her to her mistake. The pedestal wasn’t designed for her medallion. It was designed as a means of torture, or punishment to see who was truly fit and ordained to be king. A test of strength and will.
And now the acid was burning her only hope to find the truth!
Zara quickly pulled on the back of the chain and ran toward the old Garamante baths, which held slowly flowing water. She washed her medallion. The brass appeared to have weathered its misuse, but tiny weaknesses in the metal work had begun to show as the acid continued to eat its way through. There was nothing she could do to counteract the damage as the acid found every tiny fault from the original metallic design. By the time the acid had dissipated she was staring at a medallion with many holes through it. Small, but large enough to allow light to pass.
Sam said, “Okay, Zara. Whatever it is, we’re not going to find it here. We need to get out of here, before we starve and become too weak to escape.”
She nodded. It was the truth, but still she couldn’t understand what Nostradamus had wanted her to see by entering the room.
Tom entered the room again. “I think I’ve found a way to the surface.”
Sam nodded and turned to Zara. “We have to go.”
“I know. But one day, we’ll come back and find the truth.”
Tom led them to another room. It had a series of steps carved into the limestone to form a basic ladder. The room was narrow like a chute and ascended more than a hundred feet above. Every twenty or so feet, the steps crossed over and changed sides with a small landing area in-between. The result was that the maximum distance they could potentially fall never exceeded about twenty feet.
Tom climbed first. She followed and Sam climbed last. It was strenuous and after a
few days of relative inactivity, little rest, and no food, her legs burned as she climbed. On the top of the eighth section, after ascending a total of a hundred and sixty feet, they stopped at a dead end.
This landing area was slightly larger than the others, but not big by any stretch. All three of them could stand without falling down the opening where the ladder stood, but there wasn’t enough room for them to do much more than that. Above them was solid limestone where she’d expected a hatchway or an opening to the surface.
“Now what?” she asked.
Sam studied the walls, running his fingers across any gaps. “Beats me.”
“There’ll be an opening,” Tom said. He spoke confidently as he searched the empty ceiling. “No reason to go to the effort of building such a place without having it lead to an exit.”
Zara crossed her arms. “Maybe it was filled in when the Garamante elite separated from their lesser, surface dwelling relatives?”
Sam said, “Or maybe they left a door handle?”
All three of them stared at the single stone that appeared out of place. It was dark, where the rest of them were cream colored. A small pictograph showed a small funnel leading through an opening, with sand running through. Zara put her right hand on the stone and pressed until it moved inwards.
Nothing happened.
Sam and Tom both looked at her. Their faces said, let me have a try. They even moved toward her, as though they would fix it. They never reached the stone. Instead, a thunderous roar above changed their minds.
“Find something to hold on to!” Sam shouted. His voice barely audible above the rumble coming from the ceiling.
Zara’s eyes darted toward the stone she’d just pressed. It had slid several inches inwards. A slight groove at the lip of the block below it gave her something solid to hold. She moved as close to the wall as possible and stared up at the ceiling above.
A long crack split the limestone above. It started small, and rapidly progressed with the spider-web pattern of a fracture of a stone striking a window. It was a simple conclusion to what happened next. Zara closed her eyes and hoped for the best.
A thunderclap shook their platform as the ceiling collapsed, driven by the weight above. A moment later thousands of tons of sand fell through the opening. It ran past them, through the ladder system, burying the ancient Garamante Kingdom of the Sands.
The entire deluge lasted no more than a minute. When it was over she opened her eyes. No light filtered in. A small amount of sand drifted down from above. She adjusted her eyes and spotted something in the darkness. Speckles of light wafted toward her attention. It took a moment to determine what she was looking at.
Zara grinned as she recognized the vision – The infinite starlight above the Sahara.
“You first, Zara!” Sam said.
“Well done!” Tom said.
Zara reached up through the opening in the limestone ceiling and felt nothing but sand. She looked at Tom. “Can you give me a boost up here?”
“Sure.”
She placed her right foot into Tom’s hands and stepped up into the opening. It was enough to reach half a foot inside the open space. There were no more ladders above. The opening led to a sandy sinkhole.
Zara pulled herself through the opening and then using her hands and legs, clambered up the steep incline of sand until she reached the surface. The Harmattan, the predominant north-easterly wind, blew at a steady twenty knots. It would fill the sinkhole with sand by morning, burying with it all evidence of the ancient city of the Garamante people.
She stared out in all directions, where the stars met the horizons. The desert surrounded them in every direction. She blinked, took in a deep breath. Relaxed and slowly exhaled. She opened her eyes and grinned like a child on Christmas morning. Intermingled with the stars on the horizon were the interspersed lights of Mao – one of Chad’s most northern cities.
Chapter Eighty-Two
The sky was filled with gray. It was the predawn somber and final vestige of peace before the scorching heat overwhelmed the land, as the sun came over the horizon and burned the Sahara once more. They all walked through the night, reaching the northern desert city at dawn. Sam and Tom followed Zara to the airstrip. In their own way, each one of them felt a gentle sigh of relief as they arrived and found the Beechcraft Bonanza 36 was where Zara had told them it would be.
Sam was the first to clamber inside. He glanced at the small cockpit and wondered what it would take to coax the little aircraft to fly without its ignition key. Tom might have been able to get it started given enough time, but the sun was already climbing the horizon and it wouldn’t be long before someone would take notice.
Zara noticed his concern. “Don’t worry. He’ll be here. Flies every morning at first light.”
“And you’re certain we can trust him?” Sam shuffled further into the cargo compartment where he and Tom were nearly out of sight.
“Relax.” She smiled reassuringly. “I know this guy. He’s everyone’s friend in the Sahara.”
“You don’t have a lot of friends in the region currently. Hasn’t it occurred to you that a lot of his friends are also your enemies?”
“No.”
“It hasn’t?”
She smiled. “No. I’m certain many of his clients would pay dearly if he were to turn us over with the book.”
“But still you trust him?” Sam asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?” Sam persisted.
“Shush! Someone’s coming!” she said.
Sam covered his head with the blue tarpaulin. He listened as the door to the cockpit opened. A moment later the pilot began flicking switches. The background light lit up the avionics with a soft red glow. He heard the grind of the engine turning over. It took three goes and then fired. The engine was warmed up, and then taken through to its maximum revolutions per minute, kept there for two minutes and then reduced to idle.
The pilot released the handbrake and taxied toward the end of the sandy runway. Sam gripped the side of the aircraft as he was battered around as the Beechcraft made its way along the dilapidated airstrip.
At the end of the runway, the pilot pressed the brakes hard. Sam watched as the pilot flicked through a series of local maps, making a show to really plan his route. Sam reached for a knife and shuffled forward. There’s no reason a pilot who runs the same route everyday should be checking his maps.
The pilot placed his hand on something low where the maps had been. Sam gripped the hilt of his knife, but Zara shuffled forward first. The pilot fumbled with something inside, while his eyes darted around the cargo hold.
Zara pushed his arm down. “That won’t be necessary.”
The pilot paused and then turned to embrace her. “Christ, Zara! Do you know how many people are looking for you right now?”
“A few, I’d guess.”
“General Ngige’s placed a hundred thousand dollar price tag on your life.” His eyes met Sam’s, and returned to hers. “Who the hell have you brought?”
“Khalid, this is Sam and Tom. They’ve been helping me out for the past couple days.”
“Sam Reilly and Tom Bower?”
“Yeah, pleased to meet you,” Sam said, shuffling forward and offering his hand. His eyes drifted to the end of the cargo hold, where Tom now stretched his legs. “I don’t think my friend here is moving anytime soon.”
Khalid took it and shook firmly. Their eyes met as the pilot studied him, judging him, somehow. It was clear he knew and trusted Zara, but two new strangers might be stretching their friendship. “There’s a woman looking for you. Eurasian. Purple eyes. Sound familiar?”
Sam nodded. “A concerned relative.”
Khalid nodded. “She left the current location of the Maria Helena. Promised to charter this aircraft at three times the daily rate, if I find you.”
“Bargain.”
“I told her my services would cost at least four.”
“Still a bargain.”
“General Ngige’s offering $100,000 for Zara and her book. Very tempting.” He looked fondly at Zara and smiled. “But Zara and I, we go back a long way. I love this woman as much as I love my sister. So, I guess it’s your lucky day. And lucky for you, Zara, that I still love my sister!”
Chapter Eighty-Three
Six hours later, the Bonanza landed at the Tripoli International Airport, in Libya. Its wheels rolled along the scarred runway with a series of bumps before rolling to a stop. The International Airport had been closed since it had been badly damaged in 2014 during the Second Libyan Civil War. The Beechcraft was small enough and slow enough that the Libyan Airforce ignored their landing in an unauthorized airport. Next to where their aircraft had stopped, a Sikorsky Nighthawk stood with its rotary blades still turning.
Sam shook the pilot’s hand. “Thank you, Khalid.”
The pilot shook his head. “Don’t thank me. I did it for Zara. Now make sure you get her out of the country before someone decides the money is worth more than her life.”
Sam nodded. “We’ll look after her.”
Veyron approached the cockpit and handed the pilot a neat bundle of hundred dollar bills in US currency. Khalid took the money, nodded and then pushed the engines of his little plane to their maximum, sending the Beechcraft rolling along the runway, and back into the air.
Thirty seconds later, Sam, Tom, Zara and Veryon were all sitting inside the Sikorsky and they, too were back in the air. It was a short flight. In less than twenty minutes, they landed on the helipad at the aft section of the Maria Helena.
Sam slid open the side door of the Sikorsky and climbed out. Tom was next out, followed by Zara. Veyron opened the navigator’s side door and came around to the undercover section directly behind the Maria Helena’s main pilot house.
Veyron shook Sam’s hand. “Welcome back. We were starting to think you’d found the diamonds and decided to run away with them.”
“We found the diamonds. Would have happily run away with them, if it wasn’t for coming across this young lady, who it appears half the people in the Sahara are interested in killing.” Sam turned to Zara, “This is Veyron. He’s our chief engineer. Veyron, this is Zara Delacroix. A renowned archeologist in the region.”
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2 Page 77