He was lying just above the Siren’s keel, his ear to the ship’s wooden frame as he tried to listen to whether the propeller was turning, when he heard three hollow thuds, one after the other. And they were close. Too close.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Tito—that’s what his shipmates called him—had no time to react. A massive thud now rocked the ship and he could barely believe his eyes: Less than two feet away, a giant needle of some kind was splitting the hull open, a gash that let the Atlantic Ocean spill into the Siren’s bowels. It tore through the ship with a monstrous sound, like a butcher’s knife tearing through a bedsheet, and Tito’s ruddy face paled in fear. The gash widened and the foamy sea spilled inside as Tito tried to run for the stairs. But the force of the hungry ocean pulled him down, down into the blackness, forever out of sight.
The ship buckled. Three of the crew members, who had been sharing beers with the captain upstairs, felt the wooden deck move beneath them, their chairs crashing to the deck. As the ship listed to one side, all of the crew’s closets in the cabins down below swung open, tossing their possessions to the floor. Tristan, who mended the fishing nets, tripped over a sliding trunk as he tried to run out of his cabin and fell head-over-heels against the doorjamb—instantly breaking his neck. He never felt a thing. Unfortunately, his shipmates weren’t spared the brutality of their deaths. Others were trapped in the cargo hold as hundreds of wooden pallets toppled over and crushed their bodies while the ocean swirled their blood out to sea.
Four men were killed and seven others injured in six and a half seconds.
Not until hours later, after the coast guard had given the survivors a clean bill of health, did they learn what had destroyed their ship. And even then, when they heard all the unbelievable details, they were sworn to secrecy after signing a confidentiality agreement—that is, if they indeed wanted to claim their cash settlement and a brand-new metal ship, courtesy of the United States government.
“Either you all sign or none of you sees a single euro,” a man said, as if the unsuspecting sailors had been the guilty party.
As it turned out, their ship had been gutted like a fish by the top-secret photonic mast of a three-hundred-and-eighty-foot undersea titan with a fitting name: the USS Texas. The United States’ Department of Defense had sent the state-of-the-art Virginia-class nuclear submarine to the western coast of Spain, into NATO territory, on a rescue mission—the details of which even the ship’s admiral would never fully know.
Inside the Texas, red warning lights went off the second it scraped against the doomed Lalín’s Siren, but it was far too late.
“I can’t explain it, sir,” the sailor in charge of the three-dimensional sonar said as he blessed himself with the sign of the cross. “Our sensors didn’t pick up a single thing. We must have been hit with some kind of electronic countermeasures.”
“Will this affect our operation on land?”
The ship’s captain needed an answer.
“Negative, sir. We can send in the team right from here. All our computers and communications seem to be operational.”
“Excellent.” The captain sighed. “Commence operations.”
Exactly eight minutes later, the surviving crew of Lalín’s Siren watched in amazement from their listing ship as the side of the USS Texas opened with a hum, and a team of six men armed with M4A1 rifles and grenade launchers and wearing high-tech helmets hopped aboard a speed boat and shot from the submarine’s belly as they headed for the Spanish coast, the fishermen swearing at them in a language none of them would have understood.
63
Artemi Dujok walked out of the Santa María a Nova church to give orders to his men standing guard outside. I didn’t have to understand their language to know what he was telling them: Grab your gear, double-time it to the helicopter and prepare for takeoff. Our work in Noia is done.
Fortunately, our mission had been quick, clean and fruitful. We hadn’t damaged the historical site—aside from a pair of locks that could easily be repaired—and it was clear to Dujok that it had been overkill to come loaded up with weapons. Especially considering the grim prognosis of the only enemy who might have stood in our way: Colonel Nicholas Allen.
I know this will sound strange, but I felt at ease for the first time since this whole fiasco began. I was exhausted from the tension. The racing around, my nerves, not knowing anything about Martin—all of it had sapped my strength. And now that my world started to clear a bit, my brain started to release the necessary endorphins to bring me a modicum of peace.
During that momentary respite, I thought back on Dujok calling himself Martin’s teacher, and it reminded me of something that happened years ago, back in London, just after our wedding, a time filled with such excitement—and so many secrets. One of the few Martin shared with me happened to him on an esplanade in northern Turkey, not too far from the site where we were now headed. And it happened the day he met his “sheikh,” an Arab word that means “teacher” or “wise man”—a word whose depth I was only now beginning to grasp.
Their friendship was forged during the one and only time Martin had ever been captured, and on the very day he lost a companion. His colleague, he told me, was a stubborn, hardened soldier who disappeared before his very eyes during a mountain storm. “You know, one of those powerful squalls you only see at high altitudes—and that always end badly,” he told me. Whether his colleague had died or not that day had always been a mystery to him. “That storm, Julia, was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” He said it came without warning, a wall of grayness that seemed to rise out of the earth and overwhelm them in mere seconds. The terror on his face as he recounted the story said it all. It had been years since that day, but he still had nightmares about that whirlwind of sand and stone that consumed them. He started to shake just at the memory. Something about that day rattled his understanding of the world, “like one of those magnetic storms in science fiction movies,” he told me.
And that’s when he told me his deepest secret.
He said that amid that chaos, a force that felt like a pair of steel arms grabbed him and tossed him violently. He hadn’t seen any machines nearby that could have been responsible for it; it made no sense. But he swears it wasn’t a dream or a hallucination. And, moreover, he thought he caught a glimpse of whose arms they were: At the center of that swirling storm he thought he saw an inhuman angular face with glowing red expressionless eyes, and he felt he needed to fight for his life. “Like Jacob and the angel, remember?” he had said. But Martin didn’t have the energy left to resist. Dizzy and disoriented, he tried to crawl away from that monster, but instead he only managed to move toward it in his stupor. When he realized his mistake, it was too late. He had crawled into some kind of electrical storm and found himself floating in midair with sparks and flashes zigzagging all around him.
That was as much as he could ever bring himself to say. I think he was too scared to get into the details. Or maybe he just couldn’t remember. In fact, the few times I ever asked him about that day again, he said what had saved him had been the familiar theme in his life: John Dee. Needless to say, he was obsessed with the man. And after hearing the rest of the story, I understood why.
While he was inside the whirlwind, one detail made him think of Dee. Before Martin fell unconscious, the whirlwind blew him toward a rocky ledge, to which he held on with all his might. And carved into the stone, he swore he saw a familiar symbol:
Seeing that glyph emblazoned on a stone so close to Ararat reminded him of a spell he had learned from his aunt Sheila, one used to conjure storms.
Martin had practiced the incantation so many times that now, even exhausted, he could muster the strength to recite it once again:
“Dooaip Qaal, zacar, od zamram obelisong,” he cried out.
His words drowned in the swirling tempest. And just as he was about to say them again, something changed.
It’s as if the sparks flying all around him paused to h
ear more.
“Dooaip Qaal, zacar, od zamram obelisong!” he yelled.
And he yelled it again.
After the third time, he could sense that his words were having some kind of effect. It’s as if he had called out “Open sesame!” and it had triggered an end to the nightmare. Everything came to a standstill. His body was bruised and burned in places, and he barely had enough strength remaining to breathe. But he was alive. And in a second, the electrical field that had held him in midair evaporated, and he crashed to the ground, losing consciousness.
When he awoke, he found himself in the home of the man who went on to care for him for eight long weeks. The man had been so impressed to see a foreigner survive an attack from the “Guardian of the Earth” that he concluded it must have been divine providence. “If you defeated the monster the way Gilgamesh defeated the steel lions, it is because your heart is pure,” he told Martin.
It turned out that this humble and generous man was the same one who had taken him there to die; Martin’s enemy had become his friend. He told Martin about those mysterious guardians, how they appear different to each person and how they had been placed there—dormant and invisible—to protect an ancient treasure. He taught my husband how to control the forces of nature and overcome his fears—to be “like Enoch, who was consumed by a whirlwind and yet managed to overcome it to return home.”
Martin always spoke warmly of this man, as if he were part of the family. He called him only “my sheikh.”
But now, I realized his true identity: Artemi Dujok.
64
Antonio Figueiras arrived at the Lavacolla airport just as his unwanted reinforcements hit the tarmac. And he was nervous about it. Now there were two more Americans interested in his case, and they were important enough that the chief ordered Figueiras himself to attend to them. He hadn’t managed to shut his eyes the entire night, especially after hearing that the army didn’t have any luck finding the rogue helicopter. They said something had been interfering with the radar throughout the night.
He nervously paced the terminal with a well-worn copy of the morning’s La Voz de Galicia under his arm.
“Inspector Figueiras?”
A woman’s voice snapped him back to reality and he was stunned when he turned around to see her. She was a curvy young brunette dressed in tight pants and a black Armani blazer, one hand on a leather briefcase, the other extending a hand in greeting. And God, what a lovely hand it was. Her long, slender fingers, with perfectly manicured nails, slipped like silk into his large, rough paw.
“M-Me? I mean, yeah, that’s me,” he stammered in only passable English. “And you must be . . .”
“Ellen Watson, from the Office of the President of the United States.”
“The Office of the President . . . ?”
Ellen smiled. She loved how announcing her title unnerved others. Especially men.
“And this is my partner, Tom Jenkins, intelligence adviser,” she said. “I hope you’ll get along famously because you’re going to be working together.”
With the pleasantries out of the way, Figueiras led them out to the parking lot. Ellen Watson headed for the rental counter to get herself the fastest vehicle in the fleet, while Figueiras was left with her stiff counterpart.
Just my luck, Figueiras thought.
The American wasn’t going to be much of a talker, Figueiras figured. He sat shotgun in Figueiras’s Peugeot, snapped on his seat belt and said nothing other than telling Figueiras to take him to see Colonel Allen. He didn’t have to hear another word to realize he wasn’t going to be able to squeeze this guy for any information on the case. Just like it was any time he worked with a secret service agency, the relationship was going to be one-sided: They would ask for everything and leak nothing in return.
“This is shaping up to be a pretty complicated case, huh?” Figueiras said, trying to spark some kind of conversation as he weaved his way out of the airport and sped back toward the city. Daybreak was upon them and it looked like it would be clear in Santiago, not like the day before. “Two of my men were murdered last night while they were investigating some kind of aircraft that landed in the plaza outside the cathedral. Some kind of . . . foreign aircraft. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“Was that what they used to kidnap Julia Álvarez?”
“That’s what we think.”
The American smiled enigmatically but said nothing.
“Something funny, Mr. Jenkins?”
“Today’s your lucky day, Inspector,” he said, reaching in his pocket for his cell phone. “At this very moment, the helicopter you’re looking for is near these coordinates: forty-two degrees, forty-seven minutes latitude north, eight degrees, fifty-three minutes longitude west.”
Figueiras shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know much about maps.”
“They correspond to the little town of Noia, Inspector,” Jenkins said. “Our satellites have located Julia Álvarez there. But don’t worry, we won’t let them get her out of the country.”
“And how do you intend to stop them? You’re just two . . .”
Jenkins again broke in with that smug, self-satisfied smirk. “And where do you think my partner is racing to at this very moment?”
“To . . . Noia?”
Jenkins nodded. “Once she’s there, if she needs backup, she’ll know to call for it. That’s why we’ve got you, isn’t that right, Inspector?”
Figueiras immediately tensed up and began gesticulating frantically with his hands. “We’re dealing with murderers, Mr. Jenkins! We should contact the station and have them send reinforcements right away. You can’t leave these killers to a woman!”
Jenkins grabbed Figueiras’s hand and planted it on the steering wheel. “You worry about driving and not getting us killed, Figueiras,” Jenkins said. “This is above your pay grade, boss. Let us take care of this our way and I’ll personally hand over your suspects.”
“Your way?” Figueiras’s voice cracked. He pressed down on the gas pedal.
“We have more resources dedicated to this case than you can imagine, Inspector. We’re just as interested in Julia Álvarez’s and her husband’s safety as you are, believe me.”
“In that case, I’m going to be following your every move,” Figueiras said, pounding the steering wheel. “Goddamn it, those dead cops weren’t just my men. They were my friends!”
“I’m on your side, Inspector. But right now, I need you to get me to Nicholas Allen—alive! Watch the road!”
Figueiras adjusted his glasses and gunned the accelerator. “Okay. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
65
Outside Santa María a Nova, things took an unexpected turn.
A split second before he saw his partner Janos fall to the ground face-first in a heap, Waasfi—Dujok’s right-hand man—felt a puff of air on his cheek and a buzz by his ear as if a rocket-powered mosquito had shot past him.
“Gun!” he yelled, adrenaline immediately surging.
The wall of marble tombs at his back chipped, and there was no doubt they were under attack.
Crack, crack, crack!
Three silent shots whizzed past him as he ducked for cover and a red laser hopped from tomb to tomb, looking for a living victim.
Janos was fifteen feet away; his nose was broken, and blood dripped down his face and left arm as he writhed in pain, their so-called Amrak just inches away. The men had sworn a blood oath to protect what was inside that chessboard-sized box.
Just before entering Santa María a Nova, Dujok had ordered his men to position the Amrak outside the temple entrance. If the adamant they were searching for was inside, the Amrak would likely activate it. Their sheikh knew that one of the Yezidi’s secret towers had been built in this very spot centuries ago—what the ancients called the finis terrae, the end of the earth—and he trusted his men to handle the Amrak’s mysterious power. They were to awaken and place it on the northern wall, just below t
he catacomb of one Pedro Alonso de Pont. But Janos doubted Dujok’s plan. He was a mercenary, an expert in chemical and biological weapons who trained at Saddam’s death camps until they discovered his mother was a Kurd and his father a Yezidi priest. And he had thought all along that Dujok’s plan was madness. He worried that if the Amrak reacted the way it had that night in Santiago, anyone within thirty feet of it could be killed. And that might mean none of them would get out alive.
Waasfi watched dispassionately as Janos writhed in agony. Providence, Waasfi figured, had punished him for his sinful insolence.
He calmly switched the safety off on his machine gun and adjusted the high-tech infrared scope. Waasfi knew his sheikh was finishing important work inside the church and that the mission’s success now depended on him. So without turning to shoot wildly, he sized up the situation.
When he saw Janos leaving a bloody trail as he dragged himself for cover, Waasfi knew he wouldn’t be of any help. Judging from the position of Janos’s wound, Waasfi figured he must have a punctured lung. Dujok was still inside, and Waasfi couldn’t see where his other partner, Haci, was. He had originally set up on a balcony just outside the cemetery.
Maybe he was already dead.
What else could go wrong?
Of course. The Amrak.
Just before they were ambushed, the Amrak had done something unexpected. Janos had reluctantly removed the leaden top, allowing the cool night air to flow inside. He peeked in and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The object’s surface was rough and black and scarred and looked as if some ancient unintelligible language had been scored into its surface. But when Noia’s humid air washed over it, it began to change colors. The “slate” pulsed red and began emitting a rhythmic chirping, like an alarm.
“What the . . . ?”
But Waasfi’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie and told him to hurry up and put it next to the tomb where their teacher had ordered them to, without complaining or second-guessing.
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