by Jon Land
“Max! Max, listen to me!”
His gaze met Vicky’s.
She gasped. “Your eyes, Max, what’s wrong with your eyes?”
He turned to the mirror mounted on the wall over the laminate wood bureau. The lantern light was enough to reveal his eyes had gone all black, impossible to distinguish the pupils from the inky patches that had leaked over the whites. Max squeezed them closed, then opened his eyes again to reveal the ink patches seeming to recede, the whites returning.
“Please, get out of here!” Vicky ranted at him, her voice ringing with heartache and desperation. “Get away from him, as far as you can!”
She separated from Max long enough to fetch his boots, the rest of his clothes.
“Now. Now, Max, go. Please.…”
Maybe Vicky had kept talking, and Max had stopped hearing. He couldn’t remember whether her lips were moving or not. Denton was still there in the corner, but Max didn’t register his presence anymore. Didn’t give him another thought until he realized he was behind the wheel of the Volvo wagon, no idea where he was or how much time had passed in getting him there. A glance in the rearview mirror showed his face and hair to be mottled with black, scabby blood. The burner phone was tucked in the pocket of his jeans, the top button still undone.
Max threaded it closed as he dialed his father.
New York City, 2008
“Dad,” Ben heard Max say, his voice barely audible.
“Max, are you all right? Is everything okay?”
Of course, Ben already knew it wasn’t, the only question being how bad.
“I killed these guys, Dad.”
“What? Who?”
“Three of them. Denton’s men, those goons he’s got.”
Ben felt his heart hammering his chest. He felt dizzy and short of breath, needed to lean up against the wall outside Dr. Kirsch’s office for support.
“Slow down, son. Where are you? Is Vicky still with you?”
“Yes—I mean, no. She was.”
“What happened, Max? Slow down and tell me what happened?”
* * *
Ben shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d been in denial about this for too long, going on eighteen years now. Kirsch’s claims had brought it all home to roost. All the times bad things happened to people who crossed Max Younger. It had started innocently enough with spills off bicycles, falls down stairs, one boy who was hit by a car, and another who lost two fingers in a wood shop saw after stealing Max’s baseball cap.
Max was always so matter-of-fact about it all, that Ben was able to convince himself he’d had nothing to do with any of it, at least not consciously. Because opening his mind to the alternative meant facing the fact he had raised a monster, conceived somehow in the depths of a cave in the Yucatán.
And that, one way or another, it was his fault.
“What about Vicky, Max? Is she okay? Is she with you or not?”
“She’s not with me. I ran. I don’t know where I am. I just kept driving.”
“These three men…”
“I killed them,” Max said, his voice breaking. “They were alive and then they weren’t. I killed them in what came in between.”
Ben felt as if he’d been struck by a heavy, hot gush of wind. Had to press himself tighter against the wall to avoid being spilled over.
“What about Denton, Max?”
“Vicky stopped me before I could hurt him. I would’ve done it too. It would’ve been easy.”
“All right,” Ben said, through the chill fostered by the casual sureness of Max’s assertion, “I want you to drive on until you reach someplace I can find you, somewhere with an address. Walk away. Hide. Leave the car but keep the phone and call me. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Dad, those three guys…”
“Max—”
“I killed them all. They came at me and I killed them all. And…”
“And what?”
“I enjoyed it, Dad. I loved it. What’s wrong with me, what’s happening to me? Am I sick?”
Ben tried to swallow, couldn’t. The rock, he thought, it had all started when he’d touched the rock. An impossible escape from the depths of the cave, an impossible oil strike, an impossible miracle conception.
Or maybe a curse.
“We’ll get through this,” Ben Younger resumed, trying to reassure his son. “It’s not your fault.”
“Bullshit.”
“You need to trust me, son. Do you trust me?”
Silence.
“Do you trust me, Max?”
“Yes.” Finally.
“Then do what I tell you, and we’ll get through this. I’ll meet you wherever you end up and we’ll figure it all out. No choice with mountains left to climb. How many peaks left, Max, how many?”
“Three.”
“Say it again.”
“Three.”
“That’s right, and we’re going to climb them all. Do you hear me? We’re going to climb them all. I want you to think about that. I want you to think about that and nothing else until we’re together. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” Max said, his voice barely audible.
“Good, son. Now, drive.”
FIFTY-NINE
London, 2008
“Sit down, Pascal,” Cardinal Martenko said, upon meeting Father Jimenez in London, in the lobby of the Savoy Hotel where he was attending a conference of Catholic bishops. “Are you sick? You look terrible.”
Jimenez tried to collect himself, sort out his jumbled thoughts. “When I landed at the airport, the television monitors everywhere were covering news of an airplane crash. As soon as I saw footage of the wreckage, I feared it might be Father Sremski’s plane. Then the announcement came that it was bound for Italy from Moscow, and I knew my fears were justified.”
“Sit, please, Pascal. Because a Vatican emissary was traveling on board,” Cardinal Martenko continued, after Jimenez finally took the chair next to his, “I was made privy to various details not shared with the public, including the last recording when the pilot called in the Mayday. Horrible, high-pitched screams, the pilot going on about the passengers killing each other, trying to break into the cockpit. Then nothing.”
“Father Sremski was transporting a sample taken from the scene of the catastrophe. It must have gotten loose on the plane, just like it did in that village,” Jimenez said, chilled by the lobby’s recirculated air. He hadn’t been able to rid himself of the chill since braving the storm in Kusk. “I was a fool to act so rashly, to put so many lives in jeopardy.”
“This isn’t your fault, Pascal. You were doing the Lord’s work.”
“And all the people on that plane are dead now, thanks to me. The fact remains, Your Eminence, that I never should’ve tried to secure a sample without proper safeguards and equipment.”
“Which the Russians would have forbidden under any circumstances.” Martenko stopped and studied Jimenez closer. “You don’t look well, Pascal. I’ve read your preliminary report about Kusk, being trapped in the onslaught of a blizzard.…”
“It wasn’t the storm, Your Eminence. There was something else in that town.”
The Vatican, 2008
Mohammed al-Qadir watched the scene unfolding in St. Peter’s Square on Vatican television. On instructions from the Holy Father himself, the members of the Curia stood at the forefront of the multitudes gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the papal address. According to reports, the pope had taken the criticism pointed at the church hierarchy to heart, choosing this as the first symbol of his desire to showcase the Vatican’s most trusted cadre of cardinals out among the people. Just symbol, of course, but symbol could go a long way toward easing the perception of the church as elite and out of touch. Members of the Curia, more accustomed to the hallowed halls of the Vatican, mixing with common people that included three men in wheelchairs.
Al-Qadir focused on those men.
London, 2008
“The morning the storm pass
ed,” Jimenez continued, “the Russian military resumed their search of the area surrounding Kusk, and unearthed something beneath a layer of ice: a crater, Your Eminence.”
Martenko remained silent, his eyes urging Jimenez on.
“Though substantially smaller, it resembled another crater we’re both familiar with, from the country where we met for the first time.”
“Nigeria,” Martenko realized.
The Vatican, 2008
Al-Qadir watched the three men in wheelchairs disperse, and edge closer to the members of the Curia from different angles, no one paying them any heed at all. On the television before him, he thought he actually met the gaze of one fighter looking to him for one final blessing, one last affirmation of the holy mission with which they’d been entrusted.
Al-Qadir couldn’t help but nod, in the last moment before all three of his fighters detonated their suicide vests from their positions, and the television screen erupted into a bright flash that gave way to smoke, flames, and screams.
Especially screams.
London, 2008
“A crater carved out of the frozen ground instead of the tepid jungle, Your Eminence,” Jimenez resumed. “There had been reports of a meteor strike in the area, forty-eight hours before contact was lost with the town, but nothing scientists and geologists could pin down.”
“Making you first on the scene again, Pascal.”
“And, again, I could find no trace of any meteorite, in spite of what had clearly been a moderate impact.”
“Are you drawing a connection between Kusk and your unfortunate experiences in Nigeria? That doesn’t sound like the wisdom of a scientist, Father.”
“No, it’s the wisdom of a priest.” Jimenez groped hard for his next words. “Have you ever experienced true evil, Your Eminence, an evil that was as real and present as anything physical?”
Martenko’s lips quivered. “You ask me that in an unprecedentedly dangerous time for the church, with radical Islam practically at war with Christianity. One of these groups I’ve never heard of before even threatened the sanctity of the Vatican itself, if you can believe that.”
Before Martenko could respond, a young aide rushed over to him and handed the cardinal a cell phone in a trembling hand. Martenko took the phone, listening in silence for several moments, before handing the phone back to his aide. Trembling himself now, he struggled up from the chair, his legs suddenly wobbly.
“I’m sorry, Pascal. I must get back to Rome.”
Jimenez rose with him. “Your Eminence?”
Martenko’s face had gone deathly pale. “There’s been a terrorist attack. In St. Peter’s Square. I must get back there.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Martenko regarded Jimenez, as he walked away in the company of his aide, tears welling in his eyes. “Pray, pray for all of us.”
PART 6
BLOOD OF THE LAMB
The Present
Nature has no principles.
She makes no distinction between good and evil.
—Anatole France
SIXTY
George H. W. Bush
Father Pascal Jimenez had tossed and turned through the night, the face of Mohammed al-Qadir returning to haunt him every time he started to nod off. He’d nearly vomited right in front of Admiral Darby and the man named Red, his legs buckling and hands shaking so much he couldn’t still them, after recognizing al-Qadir’s piercing emerald-green eyes, remembering the last time he’d seen them. Staring up into the face of the man about to kill him in Nigeria.
Your God is not here.
Cambridge … Al-Qadir.
Jimenez saw one, saw the other. Transposed the face of one onto the other.
The same man … Cambridge and al-Qadir, they were the same man!
Jimenez had realized he couldn’t breathe, found himself sitting in a chair with no memory of taking it.
“You okay there, Father?” Red had asked him.
Jimenez wiped the drool and stray flecks of vomit from the edges of his mouth. “Just a bit sea sick, that’s all, and I haven’t been sleeping much lately,” he managed. “If I could just have some water…”
And he guzzled down the Styrofoam cup Red brought him between his trembling hands.
“I think we better get you settled,” Red had offered, taking Jimenez by the arm and helping him up. “Everything else can wait until morning.”
* * *
He’d brought Jimenez to his stateroom, but every time sleep tempted the priest, Cambridge’s face filled his mind. The man who’d killed his own SAS team, along with the scientists who’d accompanied Jimenez to Nigeria back in 1991. Killed them all with the ease of crushing a bug under his boot, and he’d had every intention of killing Jimenez as well.
“I think we’ll take your head, Professor. You won’t be needing it anymore anyway.”
Those final moments in Nigeria had never lost their crystal clarity in his mind’s eye.
“Your God isn’t here. If he is here, beg him to give me a sign and I’ll spare your life.”
Cambridge had leaned over and plucked the gold pen that had belonged to Jimenez’s father from his pocket moments before the eclipse that had led Cambridge to spare Jimenez’s life struck. He’d never seen the man again, except in his dreams.
Until he’d looked into the eyes of Mohammed al-Qadir.
* * *
The stateroom they’d given Jimenez was tiny by hotel standards but comfortable and functional. The cot-sized bed was cramped, and Jimenez hadn’t managed to sleep anyway. And the times he did nod off found him seated in the single chair squeezed under a small desk.
That’s where he was, his mind trying to settle on a place in his consciousness where the memories would leave him alone, when a knock fell on the door, and Red entered without waiting to be invited.
“Feeling better, Father?”
“Quite a bit, thank you,” Jimenez said, sitting up straight in his chair and stretching his arms. He noticed that Red was holding a tablet.
“Good, because there’s something I need to show you,” Red said, firing up the tablet and jogging it to a screen filled with images of tiny pages.
Jimenez watched him click on the first page and angle the tablet so the priest could see the screen.
“Look familiar?”
“Lord in heaven, it’s the scientific journal I kept in Nigeria.”
“Forty-six pages of notes. Sound about right, Father?”
“About, yes. But how…”
“Did we come by them?” Red completed. “We had a mole planted in a scientific research team linked to the New Islamic Front, a German Muslim named Gunther Brune. He infiltrated the group on the eve of the members taking up residence at a facility in southern Lebanon, and managed to get this to us just before something went terribly wrong. See, this scientific team was trying to develop a bio-superweapon for the terrorist group. Looks like they unexpectedly came up with something worse.”
“The pathogen that’s spreading through the Middle East,” Jimenez realized, recalling that part of his conversation with Red during the course of the long flight from Brazil. “But what could this pathogen have to do with my notebook from Nigeria?”
“That’s why you’re here,” Red told him, “to help us figure that out.”
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” Jimenez said.
* * *
“The man you knew as Cambridge disappeared after Nigeria, fell off the face of the goddamn Earth,” Red explained, returning to Jimenez’s stateroom an hour later after learning everything he could glean from various intelligence files and sources. “The British government never stopped looking for him, and now we may know why all their efforts failed.”
“Because, if I’m right, he became somebody else.” Jimenez hesitated, his gaze drifting before returning to Red with new focus and intensity. “I’ve always looked at life as being full of uncertainties and, ever since I took this job, there have be
en fewer and fewer things I’m truly certain of. But I’m certain of this, because I’ve seen those eyes every night of my life for the past twenty-seven years in my dreams, and my nightmares.”
Red nodded in noncommittal fashion. “‘Cambridge,’ as you knew him, was born in Chechnya and became part of a wave of orphans to reach the West in the mid-1970s in efforts led by the Catholic Church after a Soviet crackdown on anti-Communist movements. He was adopted by a minister and his wife in England. That couple later died in a mysterious fire, after which Cambridge lived on his own for a time before joining up with the British army and being selected to serve in the Special Air Service. After Nigeria, we know he was a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda in Iraq. His debut performance with the New Islamic Front that he personally founded came in 2008 when the NIF claimed credit for the suicide bombing in St. Peter’s Square that wiped out a hefty portion of the Curia.”
“So he joined the SAS to, what, hone his skills?”
“And bide his time.”
“Until Nigeria,” Jimenez said, trying to suppress the chill that had seized him. “Why then and there? What changed?”
“Nobody’s got a clue. Opportunity, perhaps, and convenience, what with that country’s first wave of Islamic radicals beginning to make their presence felt. The British government, for its part, has traced Cambridge’s movements from the time he came to London as a boy. They developed a timeline that covers every day of his life until he disappeared. And there’s nothing whatsoever in their reporting that links him to these Maitatsine rebels. That tells me Cambridge didn’t know them until he went down there. So how exactly did he meet them? Who handled the introductions?”
Jimenez stiffened, the memories returning with a force that hit him like an uppercut to the chin. “What was the New Islamic Front doing with my notebook?”
“Your 1991 report to the British Ministry of Defence indicated all the geological samples you took from the scene were destroyed. But you’re not sure they were destroyed, are you, Father? The man you claim became Mohammed al-Qadir, leader of the New Islamic Front, could just as easily have taken possession of them, along with your notebook.”