The Secret Prophecy

by Herbie Brennan

  “I’m okay,” Em said without slacking pace. “Hot, but I think I could keep going a little longer.” What he meant was a lot longer, but didn’t want to sound boastful.

  “You’re fitter than I am,” Victor said admiringly. “At least your body is adjusting to the heat buildup a great deal better. I think you may have to do most of the digging.”

  Em slowed, stopped, then pulled back his headpiece and wiped the sweat from his eyes with his sleeve. “That’s okay,” he said.

  Victor was shaking his head thoughtfully. “Must be our age difference. This makes things a lot trickier. We’ll have to wait until the last minute to put on the suits, conserve energy as much as possible, and just hope we can get under the fence before we fry. Meanwhile, we need to get in some practice in using the suits, maybe acclimatize to them a bit more before we attempt the actual mission.”

  “When do we attempt the actual mission?” Em asked him.

  “About an hour’s time,” Victor said.

  Before Em had arrived in America, his mental picture of the Arizona desert was something similar to the photographs he’d seen of the Sahara: vast, lifeless stretches of sand dunes reaching to a distant horizon beneath a merciless sun.

  It hadn’t been like that at all, of course. The parts of the Sonoran he’d seen were heavily vegetated, mainly with rough grass, shrub, and cactus, but still sporting a healthy scattering of spiky trees. It looked even less lifeless at night than it did during the day: the headlights of the truck kept picking up the glint of animal eyes in the undergrowth, some of them high enough from the ground to suggest creatures that could do you serious damage. As they bumped slowly along, Em couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he was living in a Stephen King novel.

  Victor had been over the plan with him several times in the cabin. He’d bought a mobile GPS system and converted their target latitude and longitude into GPS coordinates: N 31 17.224, W 110 54.151. Then they had charted a route that would keep them well clear of the foundation’s boundary while taking them directly to what Victor kept referring to as “base camp”: a hollow in the lee of a rocky outcrop where they could abandon the truck, don their infrared suits, and walk to the section of fence they planned to breach. Assuming that was successful, they could remove the suits and use the GPS to guide them to their final destination. It had all sounded great in theory, but now, under the desert stars, Em was feeling distinctly nervous. “Are we nearly there yet?” he asked Victor.

  “That’s the third time you’ve asked,” Victor snapped at him impatiently. “You sound like a kid on a camping holiday.”

  “Sorry,” Em said sourly. Then, because he couldn’t avoid the issue any longer, he added, “I need to pee.”

  “Can’t you hold on a bit?” Victor demanded. “We’re only five minutes away—ten at the most.”

  “Too bumpy,” Em told him. “I’d never last.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Victor snapped impatiently, and slammed on the brakes. “Try not to be too long—we’re running late.”

  “That’s better,” Em said as he hauled himself back into the truck. He’d decided to stop worrying about Victor. The man had his own way—an odd way—of doing things, that was all.

  The truck jerked forward as Victor slammed it into drive and floored the pedal. He really was in a hurry, Em thought. Maybe he was just impatient.

  It seemed less than five minutes before Victor pulled the truck off the narrow desert track and stopped again. “Base camp,” he muttered as he pushed open the driver’s door. “Time to suit up.”

  They stood together for a moment in the hollow, listening to night sounds that somehow accentuated the silence. From this vantage point there was no sign of the fence at all, although Em knew it had to be close by. “Where do we go when we’re ready?” he asked.

  Victor was at the back of the truck unloading their equipment: shovels for digging, a small pickax in case they got unlucky and struck stone, nightscope goggles to help them see better in the darkness, their handheld GPS, and, of course, the infrared suits themselves. “Out of the hollow and over the rock,” Victor said. “You can follow me. The fence is just on the other side.”

  “Do we have far to walk before we start to dig?”

  Victor finished unloading. “Few yards once we’re clear of the outcrop. Then we dig. It’s a much longer walk after that to where your father buried the evidence, but we can take the suits off once we’re clear of the fence, so it shouldn’t be too bad. We can use the GPS then as well.”

  “Why not sooner?” Em asked. It occurred to him that the GPS would be useful right now to check their position.

  “Screen lights up,” Victor said. “It would be visible to the cameras.”

  “You want me to put my suit on now?”

  Victor shook his head. “Nope. We climb until we’re about to emerge from the outcrop. Then we strip off to our underwear and stand around like idiots until our bodies cool down. We get as chilly as we can stand, then put on the suits. After that we stroll over to the fence. And I mean stroll. Everything slow and easy so we generate as little heat as possible. Then the digging.” He began to gather up his equipment. “You carry your own shovel and suit. I’ll look after the GPS. Remember, no talking under any circumstances once we’re clear of the rock. The cameras are all wired for sound, and you can be sure the mikes are very sensitive. Even if they can’t see us, they can hear us: one word and they’ll come running.”

  Something suddenly occurred to Em. “Won’t they hear us digging?”

  “They will. I was about to come to that. Our big danger time arrives when we reach the fence. If we try to dig under in the usual way, there’s an excellent chance some guard at Bederbeck will hear the sounds, put two and two together, and figure out what they are. It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen, and the way we do it is to make the sound of digging come across as part of the natural night sounds.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “What makes digging sound like digging is the rhythm,” Victor said. “Shovel in . . . lift earth . . . empty earth beside you . . . shovel in . . . lift earth . . . empty earth beside you . . . People hear the sounds and figure out what’s happening. What we do is push the shovel in as gently as possible, empty it as gently as possible, so we minimize the sounds.” He hesitated, then added, “Hopefully.”

  “Right,” Em said.

  “I’ll take out the first shovel of earth, then you, then me, and so forth. If I overheat I’ll just stop and you carry on as long as you can. If I find I can go on again, I’ll signal you like this—” He waved his right hand.

  “Wait a minute,” Em said suddenly. “I won’t be able to see you.”

  Victor looked at him soberly. “How do you figure that?”

  “The goggles work on infrared, don’t they? With the suits we won’t radiate infrared. We won’t be able to see each other at all.”

  But Victor was shaking his head. “The goggles don’t use infrared. They work by amplifying ambient light: starlight. It’s new technology at this level, developed in Section.”

  “Okay.”

  Victor said, “You happy you know what you’re doing?”

  Em nodded. “Yes.” He stopped himself from adding “Blissful” since he didn’t think Victor would appreciate the humor.

  Victor tossed him his shovel. “Okay,” he said, “let’s get the show on the road.”

  The nightscope goggles were a bit of a miracle. The second Em put them on, his whole environment lit up as brightly as it would have on a full-moon night. He could see Victor clearly, see the fence as they moved toward it. As they reached it, Victor pointed to a spot in the ground, presumably the area they were supposed to dig, then followed up by unslinging his shovel and carefully taking out the first scoop of earth. He was not entirely silent, but he managed to make so little sound that it might have been caused by a sigh of wind. Victor stepped back, waited a moment, then signaled to Em.

  Em stepped forward
and pushed his shovel gently into the earth. He’d been wondering how he was going to manage without making noise, but Victor’s earlier comments turned out to be right: the earth beneath the fence was sandy and loose, so that he managed it easily enough. He deposited the earth quietly to one side and stepped back as Victor had done.

  It was slow going. The trench they were digging so painstakingly soon exhibited a habit of filling itself in with miniature landslides of loose earth. At one point Em waved Victor back and tried experimentally to open a new trench nearer to the closest fence post, figuring the earth must be firmer there to support the post itself. He quickly discovered the post was sunk in concrete and went back to their original plan.

  Frustratingly slow though it was, they began to see progress eventually. Finally the moment arrived when Em, slick with sweat, realized the trench was deep enough for him to wriggle through it. He was about to signal to Victor when Victor signaled to him and walked away toward the rocky outcrop, indicating that he wanted Em to follow. Once out of sight of the fence, Victor unzipped his infrasuit and pulled it down to his waist. “Bloody thing is frying me,” he muttered. “You all right?”

  Em nodded, but unzipped his own suit just the same. He was pouring perspiration and shaking from the effort of digging. The night air flowed across his body like a balm. “I could get under now.”

  “Yes, I know,” Victor said breathlessly. “And that’s exactly what you should do when you cool down.” He shook his head. “This is proving far tougher than I thought. Change of plan. I want you to take the GPS. . . .” He hesitated. “You know how to work it, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “It’s already set to TEXT ONLY, so you won’t have to worry about making noise. I want you to take the GPS, get under the fence, and head for our coordinates. I’ll dig deeper when I cool down and follow. It’s going to take too long if you wait for me. The sooner we have the documents and get out of here the better.”

  “What do you want me to do when I reach the coordinates?” Em asked.

  “You’re the one who claims he knows all about ‘the blind man,’” Victor snorted with just the barest hint of cynicism. “If you can find the proof, grab it. If not, I’ll join you as quickly as I can.”

  Minutes later Em, safely suited again, pushed his shovel and the GPS underneath the fence, then lay flat on his stomach and wriggled after them. He emerged on the other side with a feeling of exhilaration. He’d scarcely let himself experience any emotion, but now the sheer sense of adventure almost overwhelmed him. Victor’s cynicism was well-founded. Em knew nothing about the “blind man” in the message, but he was confident the answer to the riddle would be obvious once he reached the proper coordinates. His father would never have included something Em could not quickly figure out.

  Em moved a distance from the fence before unzipping his infrared suit and switching on the GPS. Victor was still hidden behind the outcrop, presumably suitless, allowing his overheated body to cool down. But it made no difference; the GPS was already programmed with the coordinates. It was now showing a directional arrow and the written instruction: Walk North 200 yards, then turn East. Em allowed himself a satisfied smile and walked off.

  Although it looked perfectly ordinary, the GPS proved to be a more sophisticated device than the ones he’d seen in England. He was far from any mapped roads now, but the device Victor had given him seemed to sense the wilderness terrain directly. The instruction “Walk North” took him over relatively even ground; but after two hundred yards, his progress was blocked by an enormous boulder. When he turned east, however, he only had to push between two bushes to find his way clear again, with a new message on the screen: Walk 50 yards, then turn North.

  He was making his way around a clump of high-growing cacti when it occurred to him that Victor’s promise to follow him made no sense. Without the GPS, Victor couldn’t follow him. Em was now well out of sight of the place where they’d dug; and while the night goggles helped, there was no way Victor was going to track him.

  Em frowned. Should he go back for Victor? But that was wasting time; and as Victor had said, every minute they spent out here increased the chance of something going wrong. On balance he thought going on would be the best policy. According to the screen he was getting close to his destination now.

  The last few yards were tough. Em pushed his way through some densely packed bushes, wincing at the thorns that scratched his chest, legs, and arms. Then he broke free. His destination was at the center of his screen. He was standing at the exact coordinates his father had given him.

  Em looked around. He was in a clearing. He saw the “blind man” at once: a tall spur of rock that had weathered into a reasonable approximation of a face in profile, the eyes banded by striations like a blindfold. There was nothing to suggest a toe, but that might show up from a different perspective. At that instant Em didn’t care. He was too startled by another feature of the clearing: a small, prefabricated hut to his right and beside it a parked RV. Muted lights were shining through the windows of both. Somebody was already here!

  Em’s mind raced. Company was the last thing he expected. Should he run? Should he back quietly into the bushes and hide to give himself a chance to survey the situation? Had something gone wrong, or was this something his father had arranged when he stole the documents from Bederbeck? Both Em and Victor had assumed the papers would be buried somewhere, stashed away in a hurry as his father escaped. But suppose it hadn’t been like that? Suppose his father had had the opportunity of hiding the proof at leisure? Suppose he had actually arranged for the hut and the RV out here in the wilderness? It seemed unlikely, but—

  There was a loud, metallic click, and the clearing flooded with light. Em screamed and dropped to his knees as the amplification technology in his night goggles blinded him, painfully and absolutely. On a reflex that cut in microseconds too late, he screwed his eyes shut and scrabbled to tear off the goggles.

  There was a sound of running footsteps: more than one person. An American voice called out, “Something’s happened; he’s in trouble.” Another voice, closer, almost beside him, asked solicitously, “You okay, Em? What’s the matter?”

  “Eyes,” Em managed to gasp. They were stinging like mad, and even without the goggles he was blinded. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that they knew his name. Which meant they were expecting him; and whoever they were, they had to be from the Bederbeck Foundation—with the hut and RV on foundation land, nothing else made sense. Em was still watching fireworks in the darkness as strong hands helped him to his feet. But the greatest pain he felt had nothing to do with his eyes. He was both devastated and bewildered. He had been betrayed.

  And there was only one person in the world who could have betrayed him.

  Chapter 41

  They left the main desert highway and turned onto a well-maintained minor road with a prominent sign reading

  BEDERBECK FOUNDATION

  PRIVATE ROADWAY

  NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT PRIOR AUTHORIZATION

  Em stared blankly as it flashed past. His eyes still stung and watered; but he could see again, and it was obvious there would be no permanent damage. He’d exchanged his infrared outfit for a T-shirt and jeans and was squeezed between two large men in the backseat of a luxury limo. Both wore tailored suits and tinted glasses. Neither showed any inclination to explain what was going on. Not that he needed an explanation. It was clear he was a prisoner of the Bederbeck Foundation, a front organization for his old friends the Knights of Themis. He wondered briefly how much they had paid Victor to turn him in.

  Now that he knew what had been going on, there were things about Victor that were just as suspicious as the business with the security phone. He kept thinking about the way Victor had sent him to the airport on his own with the fake passport and visa. That really rang alarm bells. All very well for Victor to quote “security”; but all it really meant was that if the forgeries had been discovered, it was Em w
ho was headed for jail with nobody to help him. He could imagine the reception a teenager would get if he started babbling about a government agency so secret nobody had ever heard of it. He didn’t even know Victor’s real name. Then there was the way Victor seemed able to get things done. A car was fine—anybody could call a friend and ask them to pick up a visitor—but a helicopter? A helicopter and pilot, and Em seemed to recall another man there as well. That was big-deal stuff, the sort of thing you wouldn’t expect from a humble field agent. It all added up to one thing: Victor had never been what he seemed.

  Their driver, an olive-skinned man with a heavy mustache, said something in Spanish, and the man to Em’s right grunted. There were streetlights along the side of their road now and more lights clustered up ahead. As they drew closer, Em could see a manned barrier. The limo drew smoothly to a halt, and a uniformed guard strolled across carrying a clipboard in his left hand. Em noticed the holstered sidearm on his belt and wondered if it might be worth making a fuss: with a revolver, the guard would be more than a match for his captors. But he dropped the idea as quickly as it emerged. The guard had to be a Bederbeck employee just like the men in the car.

  The tinted window whispered down, and the man on Em’s right leaned out. “We have young Goverton,” he said. “Check us through, then phone ahead.”

  The guard bent down to look into the car. He was a middle-aged, brown-eyed man who might have had Native American blood. He nodded slightly as he looked at Em, then glanced down at his clipboard. To Em’s surprise there was a black-and-white photograph of Em attached to it. The background was out of focus, so he’d no idea where it had been taken; but the jacket seemed like the one he’d worn when he first met Victor.

  The guard looked back up and gave him the benefit of a slow smile. “Welcome to Bederbeck, Mr. Goverton.” To Em’s captors he said, “Go ahead. And congratulations.” The barrier rose as he walked back to the hut. As the limo pulled away, Em could see him lifting a telephone.