The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2

by Christopher Cartwright

  “It’s just… earlier today I visited an island a friend of mine has spent her lifetime searching for. The island itself was shaped very much like the number eight laying on its side. The mathematical symbol for infinity.”

  “And you think it’s symbolic that you were to meet me on the same day you visited an island that looked precariously similar to a name a completely different John Wallis created centuries ago? You are a very strange man, Mr. Reilly. Why did your friend wait until now to visit the island?”

  “Because Infinity Island, as we decided to call it, didn’t exist until twelve hours ago.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “There was a submarine earthquake in the Mediterranean this morning. Did you hear?”

  “Yes. I was told the tsunamis had the potential to do extraordinary damage, but through the grace of God, only one person was killed. Was this island damaged by it?”

  “No. Instead, when the tectonic plates shifted – it forced an otherwise low lying submerged mountain nearly two hundred feet upwards. Giving birth to a new island.”

  All color drained from Wallis’s face. “You are talking about the Infiniti Island!”

  “Yes. Now I’m jogging your memory. I thought you might have heard something about it. The Master Builders built it, right?”

  John nodded his head.

  Sam asked, “Do you know what this means? Has Zara Delacroix changed the future?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the birthing of the island confirms she’s saved the world?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “The birthing of the island confirms there is no longer anything humanity can do to save itself. The island was built as a stop gate, to provide answers when the world is in dire need. If the Infiniti Island is indeed on the surface of the Mediterranean, we need to get to it now. There’s no time to waste!”

  “There’s something else, too.”

  “What now?”

  “The Nostradamus Equation didn’t work. It was all gibberish. Nothing explained a reference point to the events in his 58 additional quatrains.”

  “What did you find?”

  “A looking glass. Like the others, this one showed the insides of a series of temples. One of them viewed a large stone chamber, bigger than any we’ve seen before. The structure was still being built. Dark skinned tribal people worked on the structure as though they had been possessed!”

  “Go on, Mr. Reilly! What else?”

  “I recognized one of the slaves. She wasn’t tribal at all and didn’t belong. Her name is Dr. Billie Swan – and I’m going to need you to show me how to find her!”

  Chapter One Hundred and One

  Sam watched the blood drain from John Wallis’s face. He saw confusion there, wonder, bewilderment – and last of all, he saw hope.

  John said, “You saw Dr. Billie Swan through the looking glass?”

  “Yes! Do you know where she is?”

  John stood up in his chair, as though the meeting was over. “How very fascinating.”

  “Where is she?” Sam persisted.

  “I have no idea.” John grinned broadly as he spoke. “But that’s not what I find so fascinating.”

  “Really, what do you find fascinating?”

  “The future!” John grabbed his arm and looked at him directly in the eye. “Don’t you see?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you see? It’s trying to distract you, the only way it knows how. You were close, you had the Nostradamus Equation in your grasp, and the future tempted you with another vision. We have to get back to the Infiniti Island, straight away. Before it collapses, and all is lost!”

  Sam stood up. “Are you coming with me?”

  “Of course. I don’t see how I can trust you not to screw this up, otherwise. Good God, this has nothing to do with Dr. Zara Delacroix and everything to do with you!” He shook his head. “I should have killed you when you first dived the Obsidian Vault!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You were close! There must be a way you can change this, and everything, otherwise the future would have never tried to distract you!”

  “The future tried to distract me? As if it has a will of its own?”

  “Yes. There was something else inside the looking glass you were supposed to find, but instead, you spotted Billy, became irate, and came charging over here. All the while, the sands of Infiniti Island are being reclaimed, and the solution is disappearing!”

  John Wallis opened the door and grabbed Zara. “We have to go.”

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Back to Infiniti Island – to save the human race! And for goodness sake, make sure you bring the book of Nostradamus!"

  Chapter One Hundred and Two

  Sam entered the king’s chamber with Zara and John following. Tom stood up, leaving the pedestal to meet them. He appeared somber, but focused. His face showed signs of dried tears, now replaced by vitriolic rage.

  Tom lifted John by his wetsuit and held him against the sandstone wall. “Where have you taken Billie?”

  Sam stepped in between, and looked at Tom. “This is John Wallis. He’s going to help us calculate the Nostradamus Equation. He has no idea where Billie is.”

  “What about finding Billie?” Tom asked.

  John held out his hand. “John Wallis. I’ll try if I can, but first we need to calculate the equation.”

  Tom didn’t accept the man’s handshake and John didn’t try to offer it again. Instead, John began quickly turning the dial on the pedestal, flicking through several different temples until he stopped at the temple underwater. The fish and other sea creatures all glowed with fluorescence as they were struck by the UV black light.

  John said, “Flashlights off, everyone.”

  Each person flicked their light off until the king’s chamber was dark. He waited as their eyes adjusted to the change. A moment later, John tilted his head backward, and looked up at the no longer empty dome. The ultraviolet light shined through the orb, and toward the ceiling.

  The dome ceiling came alive with numbers, literally glowing. There were some words, but mostly gibberish. Nothing that made any sense whatsoever on its own. Most of the numbers were written in red, some were in blue.

  “Black, Moore, Death of a Twin…” Sam started to read out the words. “None of this means anything!”

  Tom stared at the ceiling. There were words there, written in English. He read them out loud.

  Find the answer to the one question you must ask. Don’t get greedy and search for other answers. Time is short. This was built to save humanity. Use it wisely.

  John turned to Zara. “Give me the medallion!”

  Zara removed it from around her neck, and handed it to him. “Why, what are you going to do?”

  Sam watched, as John ignored her and placed the medallion on top of the orb. The old brass medallion fit perfectly, as though it had been purposely designed to fit – which, of course, it was. There were several holes in the medallion. Sam recalled how they were formed when Zara placed her medallion inside the pedestal of truth within the final resting chamber of the last king of the Garamantes. It had been filled with acid, and seven imperfections in the metalwork had been revealed below the dissolved plating, leaving seven holes. He remembered thinking at the time that the holes appeared too specific to have been created randomly. Now he knew. Light from the orb shined through the holes, lighting up seven individual numbers at a time. Joining them together mentally formed a calendar date.

  John said, “If the words are in red, it means the future is set and nothing can be done to change it. If it’s blue, it means there’s still a chance to change the outcome. Zara, get your book open, we’re going to need the quatrains available when we find the one we’re after.”

  She asked, “We’re going to find a specific quatrain that’s relevant?”

  John nodded. “Yes. And then we’re going to decipher it. And
we’re going to do all this very soon, before the future has a chance to destroy the Nostradamus Equation.”

  The orb had a series of numbers, ranging from 43-100. The medallion rotated, so that each number represented a different position of the seven light apertures. John quickly began flicking through each one.

  Quatrain 43 – 5/31/2020 – written in red.

  Quatrain 44 – 3/5/2030 – written in red.

  John looked up at the rest of them. “Tell me one of you is making notes of each of these.”

  Sam said, “I’m way ahead of you.”

  “Good.” He continued working his way through each of the 58 quatrains.

  Quatrain 56 – 2/14/2021 – written in blue.

  Quatrain 57 – 8/2/2045 – written in red.

  John continued until he reached quatrain 84. It was written in blue – meaning the future was still up for grabs and the date was tomorrow.

  John looked at Sam. “What did you have planned, tomorrow?”

  “Before the earthquake, we’d planned to help a man named Adebowale overthrow the rebel government of the DRC.”

  John asked, “How?”

  Sam said, “Nearly five thousand men are being held prisoner in a mine in the north of the DRC. Next to the mine is Lake Tumba. The United Sovereign of Kongo, of which Adebowale is the leader, have been waiting to mount a mission to release them, because General Ngige would drown the slaves if they attack. We need to free them before the counter rebellion can take place.”

  John went quiet, as though none of it made any sense. His confidence was shattering.

  Sam turned to John. “The Nostradamus Equation is telling us quatrain 84 is about the overthrow. The future’s still in limbo. You said before that I might have been responsible for this catastrophe. What did Nostradamus see? What did he want me to do?”

  “I have no idea,” John said.

  “Then what good was the equation?”

  “You now know the time, and you know the quatrain that refers to the future event. I suggest Zara opens up quatrain 84 and works out what should be done.”

  Zara opened the book of Nostradamus to Centuries VII – Quatrain 84.

  *

  An ocean above and a maze below

  Where the two meet over a baled woe,

  The twin of a king shall die and the sun will set,

  With a new ruler, and a kingdom shall grow without threat

  *

  Sam stared at the quatrain. “An ocean above and a maze below is obviously referring to the Lake Tumba mine. But what the hell does the rest of it mean?”

  Tom leaned in toward the book, and asked, “What’s a baled woe, anyway?”

  “It’s old English,” Zara said. “Meaning a rescued person of great sorrow. Like you’ve saved someone from a terrible fate.”

  Sam shrugged. “The twin of a king. Does General Ngige have a twin?”

  Zara said, “I don’t know. I never even heard of the man until a few days ago, when he tried to kill me.”

  “John, does General Ngige have a twin?”

  “Yes, I think he might. I know he was funded by someone else who first gave him the idea of rebelling. Might have possibly even financed it in the beginning. That person might have royal blood.”

  They bickered back and forward about the possible meaning of quatrain 84 and then stopped. A single clump of hardened sand fell directly on the pedestal, breaking apart where the orb rested. John then pressed a single pictograph on the side of the wall, which released the medallion. He looked at Zara. His blue eyes told her everything she needed to know. He’d seen the truth and it was important that no one else worked it out either.

  John said, “It’s time to go.”

  “What’s going on?” Sam asked.

  “The island’s collapsing. The Nostradamus Equation was never built to last!”

  Sam asked, “But what about the quatrain! What does it mean?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I think you need to free those slaves. If you do that, I believe things will be placed back in the order that they were meant to be. We don’t need the equation anymore. We have the quatrain it led us to. Now we just need to make sense of it.”

  Sam nodded, and felt the second clump of sand fall on his shoulder. It was small and barely noticeable, but the ramifications were deadly. Infiniti Island was breaking apart.

  “Quick!” he said.

  Zara placed the book of Nostradamus into its water-tight bag and pulled the zipper tight.

  Sam said, “Tom, you go ahead first, and get the helicopter running!”

  John had his regulator and dive mask on before he reached the water, and followed directly behind Tom. Sam made sure that Zara was right behind him, before donning his own dive mask and regulator.

  They swam down the dark tunnel. As they turned to join the main tunnel’s entrance, a large section of sand broke off behind Sam. He slipped through, but the tunnel to the king’s chamber collapsed. It drove everyone with a sense of urgency to evacuate the pyramid, or be forever guests buried deep inside.

  Sam was the last one to reach the surface. He pulled on Zara’s dive belt to release it, and then ripped open the Velcro which held her dive tank. He did the same for his own weight belt, but didn’t wait to remove his own dive tank.

  The island around him was almost completely gone.

  Thirty feet ahead, the main rotor blades of the big Sikorsky helicopter had started to rotate. The island was almost completely swallowed by the sea. The mountain behind was starting to collapse, in massive sections, like an avalanche. The obsidian spheres were starting to fall apart, and the twin islands were no longer connected. Water was already lapping at the skids of the helicopter.

  Sam reached the side step of the Sikorsky as a wave rolled through under the helicopter. Tom glanced at him for a moment, and lifted the helicopter into the air. Zara and Tom helped pull him inside.

  Sam slid the side door closed, and looked out the side windshield. Both sides of the island, no longer held together by the connective tissue of the obsidian spheres, now seemed to be drifting away from each other, each one collapsing in an opposite direction.

  The strange obsidian spheres began rolling toward the entrance of the pyramid. A crack formed at the base of the sand mountain, and the obsidian stones rolled in through it. Every last one of them. As though they were driven by some divine power. Thirty seconds after the last stone disappeared, the mountain collapsed.

  Sam watched out the windshield, as Tom turned the helicopter toward the Maria Helena. Infiniti Island was entirely gone, and what remained was nothing more than the calm turquoise waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

  Chapter One Hundred and Three

  The Sikorsky landed on the Maria Helena at 8 p.m. and by 10:05 p.m. a plan had been decided upon and Sam was discussing it with his entire crew, Zara, John and Adebowale. John had already given his view that it was the only possibly outcome now. More risky than had the book of Nostradamus never been discovered, but the best chance of success, now that it has. Adebowale assured Sam that he could have his men ready to start the coup by tomorrow evening.

  Sam said, “Let me make it clear, our job isn’t to participate in this rebellion. Our job is to free the slaves. It’s then going to be up to Adebowale to bring the change of power to the DRC.”

  Everyone nodded. They couldn’t be seen to be picking sides with two rebel leaders inside the Democratic Republic of Congo after it’s democratically elected President had been killed through a ruthless coup.

  “The entrance to the mine is poorly guarded. Fewer than twenty people. They have an old colonial-era Gatling gun fixed at the entrance to the mine, meaning no one can escape from the inside.”

  Genevieve asked, “If Adebowale has the support of so many people, why doesn’t he simply raid it and release the prisoners?”

  Sam said, “One of the main tunnels runs directly below Lake Tumba. The prisoners are trapped below. The lake’s shallow. Only about thirty feet deep. But
the mine is more than a mile deep. General Ngige has spread word that if anyone attacks the guards at the entrance to the mine, they’ll blow the charge and the entire mine will be flooded, killing everyone below.”

  “How many people are trapped there?” she asked.

  “At least five thousand. Might be as many as ten though. Apparently they provide them with the same amount of food each day. General Ngige sets the minimum quota for gold extraction. If they achieve it, they get the food if not they go hungry. Same amount of food every day.”

  “Lots of people would starve.”

  “They just replace them with more prisoners. It’s a good deterrent to rebellion. Think of the Gulag in Russia. A system where you were worked to death. You build a place so much worse than anyone can imagine and they’ll do their best to behave.”

  “So, how do you want to work this?” Genevieve asked.

  “Adebowale. I’ll let you explain the plan.”

  Elise brought up the detailed digital map of the mine. She switched on the overhead projector and the image displayed on the whiteboard in the Maria Helena’s mission room. It showed a maze of tunnels spanning eighty-four levels. At higher levels the tunnels were scattered and sporadic as though they had kept having to change direction to avoid breaking into the lake’s bed. From the tenth level and below, the tunnels became extensive. Long, deep shafts, extending miles in all directions. Three of the mines appeared open and accessible, while the fourth appeared flooded.

  Adebowale stood next to the white board and pointed to the three tunnels that ran beneath the lake. “If we lay dynamite along the entrance to these three tunnels we can cause a series of cave-ins which will create a natural barrier from the lake’s water when General Ngige’s men trigger the release of the water. Then my men will take out the guards, and the prisoners will run free.”

  Sam looked at John. “Did you want to join us?”

  John smiled and shook his head. “No. This mission has no place for me in it. But I wish you well with your endeavor. I truly believe this is in the best interest of the future.”

  Sam turned to Zara, “What about you?”