by Jon Land
“A hundred and fifty feet plus?” Sal Belamo could only shake his head. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger here, old man. This is four thousand years ago we’re talking about, practically prehistoric when you think about it and that means a different world with different geophysical rules entirely where destructive waves like this were as common as car accidents. Best way I can prove that fact is to hook you up with some badass Hawaiian lava bed ganja. That shit will rock your world and show you the magic of times long gone by. Couple tokes and you’ll believe in the Easter Bunny, old man.”
Belamo swung toward McCracken. “He calls me that again, I’m gonna knock his teeth out, boss.”
“Well, in the meantime, chill your uptight ass and listen up. Bottom line is, near as I can tell, Pandora’s Temple was washed out to sea by this massive tsunami in 1650 B.C., along with the entire wasteland known in the legend as the Desert of Lost Souls. Essentially, a new coastline was forged as much as thirty miles inland, not far from where I’m standing right now. You want beachfront property, this is how you do it.”
“So the remains of the temple might still be somewhere underwater off the Greek coastline,” McCracken concluded.
“Remember that old hippie dude Pat I told you about who scored me the kick-ass dope? Turns out he’s heard all about Pandora’s Temple being lost somewhere under the sea. And you’ll be interested to hear that your girl’s daddy has a flotilla of survey ships scouring the area for some hint of its existence. Pat gave me the word they may have found something.”
“Now that’s interesting.”
“It gets better, MacNuts. He told me the local fishermen have another explanation for why the temple has never been found before.”
“What’s that, Captain?”
“They say it’s guarded by a sea monster.”
CHAPTER 70
Hiroshima, Japan
Shinzo Asahara stood outside the fence in the shadow of the A-Bomb Dome, the shell of the last remaining structure in Hiroshima to be hit by the atomic bomb. He held an iPad in hand, currently loaded with reams of intelligence, everything he could find, on Sebastian Roy, which, unfortunately, included nothing of substance on his current residence in a Pyrenees mountain fortress. A phone conversation with Leander Levy had yielded a few tidbits, but Asahara needed much more than that. So he paid a fortune to a contact in the Japanese government to have a satellite illegally retasked and was now waiting to receive the resulting reconnaissance photos.
Meanwhile, his mind could not let go of what had happened to Yoshihiro Shibata’s son once inside the particle accelerator. Asahara had forced one of the other scientists to switch the machine on and then watched as nothing at all happened.
Until everything did.
The son of Yoshihiro Shibata . . . disappeared in a white flash swallowed almost immediately by a cloud of what looked like black specks. Those black specks had turned red as the younger Shibata’s body ruptured into what looked like a million tiny pieces of matter mixed between bone, flesh, and blood. The pieces sprayed against the glass as if shot out of some cosmic hose, plastering it in an even, unbroken coat of what had been a man, no trace of which remained beyond.
Asahara felt strangely at peace, at ease with his place in a history of his own making, a history that had its origins with the bomb that struck the city on August 6, 1945, destroying everything in its path. Almost no one within eight hundred meters of the bomb’s epicenter survived. The decimated land was such a horrifying site that authorities, fearing retaliation from the Japanese even after formal surrender, seized all photographs showcasing the unprecedented devastation and destruction.
Even then, there was no way to accurately capture the despair of the survivors, many of whom were unknowingly doomed themselves. Already traumatized by the bomb’s effects, they had to confront the collection and disposition of the bodies of the eighty thousand dead where there was still something left to bury. Beyond that, there was debris to be cleared and wreckage to remove over a twelve-square-mile radius, and Asahara knew this arduous process took all of four years to complete.
One of these orphaned by the blast and its immediate aftermath was his father, Shoho Asahara. Though his birth date was later given as 1955 to spare him the constant scrutiny arising from his status as a Hiroshima survivor, it was actually thirteen years earlier. He was already mostly blind by the time of Hiroshima and often told his son not being able to see the carnage was what had saved him. Indeed, when the mood struck him, Shoho would ruminate on the possibility that his lack of sight allowed him to “see” what must be wrought from the ashes of the devastated city. He was a true child of the bomb, and Aum Shinrikyo had effectively been birthed in the dark days he spent wandering through the city’s ash-ridden and chalky air.
Because Hiroshima had taught him that there was no such thing as an innocent life. The actions he was long committed to undertaking need come with no guilt or be morally justified.
And now all that fell to his son, Shinzo. A memorial plaque, forged out of smooth, mirrorlike granite stood nearby, and Shinzo Asahara turned toward it as if answering a voice.
The visage of his father gazed back at him, not nearly as clear as back in the hotel mirror and looking more like Marley’s ghost appearing to Scrooge in a doorknocker.
“This man Roy is the key.”
“I know, Father.”
“His work has brought you to where you stand today and now you must confront your greatest challenge yet.”
“I am prepared.”
“You miss my point. I know you are prepared. But now you must ask yourself if you would visit upon the world a millionfold what was visited upon this city.”
“You doubt me, Father?”
“Not at all,” the spectral visage answered. “The truth is I’m not sure I would have taken advantage of the opportunity you have been given had it been presented to me instead.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“You should, because it is the truth, Shinzo. Doomsday was never the real goal for me. It was more a state of mind. A frightening possibility forged out of the necessity to give meaning to my words and make the world listen. But you are stronger than I was. You have a greater gift of conviction, which, in this case, can also be a curse because the actions you contemplate, once put into motion, cannot be undone. A man destroying the work of God.”
“You were a god to me too, Father. You taught me that the world must be punished, that it cannot be saved.”
Shinzo could see the visage of his father’s gaze turn sad. “True enough. But also true is the fact that I never stopped being that young boy wandering the wasteland after the bomb went off. I have no memory of what happened to my parents or of my parents at all. But I do remember the terror, the despair all around me. Perhaps doomsday was about wanting others to know what I knew. And if you find the dark matter, they will.”
“Father?”
“Follow your fate, my son,” the visage of his father said before fading out.
And then Shinzo Asahara’s iPad beeped with the arrival of the satellite imagery of Sebastian Roy’s mountain compound he’d been waiting for. He was studying the images when he received a call from Leander Levy in New Orleans.
“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me, old friend,” he greeted Levy. “Have you news about those symbols I asked you to translate?
“I’m afraid not. But I have uncovered something else I think you’ll find equally interesting.”
“My thoughts have moved on to another means of gaining what I seek,” Asahara told him.
“So you informed me,” said Levy. “That’s why I’m calling.”
CHAPTER 71
Over the Atlantic Ocean
“You ever think, MacNuts,” Captain Seven had said, “that some things just don’t want to be found?”
The conversation had ended there with McCracken pondering the words further as he sa
t across the aisle from Katie DeMarco in the back of the cabin.
“You haven’t said anything since I told you I was going to kill Sebastian Roy,” she said suddenly, breaking his brief trance.
“I’m still waiting for you to tell me why.”
“I thought I had.”
McCracken shook his head. “Plenty of daughters have daddy issues. This is something more.”
Katie looked away, staring out the window on her side. “No one was supposed to die at the plant in Stuttgart, no one was even supposed to get hurt. I fucked everything up. Is that what you want to hear?” she asked, choking back tears.
“Only if that’s what you want to tell me.”
“I”—Katie swallowed hard here—“misjudged the strength of the explosives.”
“Misplaced them more likely, judging by the fire and how fast it spread. The charge you set must have ruptured a gas line, turning a small boom into a big one.”
“The reports said there were multiple bombs, but I only planted one.”
“The other explosions likely originated from the gas lines themselves. It happens. Next time, try explosives one-oh-one.”
“Don’t mock me, McCracken.”
He grabbed an architectural magazine from the seat next to him, obtained by Sal Belamo before the jet had picked him up in New York. “So you know nothing about the logistics of this place Sebastian Roy had built in the Pyrenees after the fire.”
“It’s not written up in there?”
“No, just quotes and a write-up from a few years ago,” McCracken said, flipping to a page that displayed a series of pictures of Grecian urns and jars.
Katie regarded the page too. “He always did like old things,” she said, looking right at McCracken. “Maybe it runs in the family.”
“I’m glad to see you respect my advancing age.”
“Like you said, I have daddy issues.”
Their gazes met and held until McCracken broke it off to return to the twin facing pages again, studying the artifacts. “Plenty of people think I’m a relic, just like these things.”
Katie posed her next question thoughtfully. “Do people blame you for the things you did that went wrong?”
“I’ve been blamed when things go right, too. It comes with the job description. The Indian and I have been dealing with that ever since the Hellfire. Hard to explain the feeling and even harder to find someone who understands what I’m talking about. It’s a pretty small fraternity that I’m a member of.”
That seemed to resonate with her. “There are things I’ve never told anyone. I’ve tried, I’ve . . .” Her voice tailed off and for just that moment McCracken saw her as the young woman she was, lost and scared.
“It doesn’t suit you,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
“The avenger’s mask. The crusader who doesn’t need to justify her actions.”
“You think that describes me?”
“Not at all, young lady. But I believe that’s how you’d like people to think of you. Problem comes when the job description ends up as an epitaph on a gravestone. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve stayed at this for so long. We try to keep the personal shit aside.”
“Oh, so you mean your friend’s death on that rig means nothing to you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So this is personal?”
“I didn’t say that, either, because I know the Indian and I would be flying across the Atlantic now anyway.”
Katie DeMarco looked down, then up again. “Why do you call him that?”
“What?”
“Indian.”
“It’s what I’ve always called him.”
“It’s racist.”
“Not to us.”
“What about the rest of the world?” she challenged.
“You’re real good at changing the subject. . . .”
“Is that what I was doing?”
“. . . and asking questions so you don’t have to face answers you’d rather avoid.”
Katie leaned across the aisle closer to him. “Try me.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Alexandra. But don’t call me that because she died in that fire in Stuttgart.”
“I think that, for all intents and purposes, she died well before then. You didn’t destroy your father’s fossil fuel plant in Stuttgart because you were an environmental terrorist; you became one after the fact to justify your attacks on other Roy Industries facilities.”
Katie DeMarco, born Alexandra Roy, and whose obituary listed her listed her as being dead for seven years now, met McCracken’s gaze and saw something in his eyes she had seen only once before, in those of the psychiatrist who seemed to sense where she was going until Katie had stopped in midstream. She’d fled that office but had the very real sense there was no fleeing from the dark eyes boring into her now.
“You think you’ve got everything figured out, don’t you?”
“That’s not for me to say, young lady.”
“Then what is?”
“I’ve dealt with a lot of monsters in my time, many whose deeds would make any normal person’s skin crawl. But you’re not a normal person, because you’ve been hurt, badly hurt. That kind of pain makes you look at the world differently. But that doesn’t give you a pass to do what you’ve done.”
“So I don’t get to kill and maim as much as I want to like you? What makes you any different, McCracken? Where’s your moral justification?”
“We weren’t talking about me.”
“We are now.”
McCracken’s gaze turned reflective. “Maybe twenty, twenty-five years ago, I found out I had a son. Happened while I was chasing down something called the Gamma Option. Turned out he wasn’t my kid at all—somebody was just using him to force me to figure out a mystery dating back to World War II. So they kidnap the boy I’d been led to believe was my son and all of a sudden, for the first time really, it was personal for me.” He continued to hold her gaze. “Like it’s always been for you.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
He reached out and touched her shoulder. “I don’t mean to, believe me.”
Katie swallowed hard. “What happened to the kid?”
“I told you, he wasn’t mine.”
“But you stayed in touch, didn’t you? I’ll bet you’re still in contact even today.”
McCracken nodded, conceding her point. “He’s serving in the SAS, British Special Air Service.”
“Because you managed to save him.”
“I suppose.”
“But he wasn’t yours,” Katie said, spine straightening. “You’ve got no one, just like me, no one you can save who really matters. Only thing you can do to compensate is save the world instead.”
“As opposed to destroying it, one piece at a time.”
“Still makes us the same, McCracken, or at least damn close.”
“Really? I don’t think so. I’ve always been who, what, I am. But Katie DeMarco didn’t exist until Stuttgart, did she?”
Katie swallowed hard.
“Your hands are calloused. You move like an athlete. You know poison, demolitions, weaponry—things you knew nothing about until things went wrong in Stuttgart. My guess is you went back to school, probably several of them. Learned the skills you needed to reinvent yourself into an avenger to better live with what happened in Germany. Creating a rationale after the fact.” He stopped and held her gaze, not about to let go. “You may be right about me trying to save myself by saving the world. Explains why these past two years have been such hell. You, on the other hand, chose to save yourself by trying to destroy as much as you could. Get the distinction?”
McCracken thought he caught tears welling in Katie’s eyes as she tried to swallow again, but stopped. “That the kind of life you want for your almost son, to follow in the footsteps of his almost father?”
“Which brings us to your real one, Katie. When I said I knew monsters, there
are some of them even I can’t reconcile. I know how I felt when a boy I thought was my son was in danger. Hurting a child takes depravity to a whole other level.”
Katie started to look away, then stopped. “So maybe I really am as much a monster as my father. I have to live with the fact that my mother and brother died that day. And if I don’t keep doing what I’m doing, if I don’t get it right, it’ll all be for nothing.”
McCracken shook his head, slowly and sadly. “It won’t get rid of the pain. It can’t change what he did to you.”
“He didn’t do anything to me!”
Katie didn’t realize she’d nearly shouted the words until Sal Belamo and Johnny Wareagle turned around in the front of the cabin. But she kept her focus on McCracken, continuing.
“It was Christian, my brother.”
CHAPTER 72
Port of Piraeus, Greece
“Here’s what I found out, boss,” Sal Belamo said to McCracken who sat next to him in a rental car outside the sprawling Port of Piraeus with Johnny Wareagle squeezed into the backseat. “That nutjob techie of yours nailed things dead-solid perfect. Roy Industries has had a bunch of survey ships at sea for weeks now. This has been serving as their home base.”
The port was the primary one operating in Greek waters as the largest passenger port on the European continent and the third largest in the world. Its lusciously scenic locale belied a hectic, if not frantic balance of cargo and passenger ships, not to mention ferry boats and the geological survey vessels forever scouring the nearby seas for pieces of Greece’s long storied history. Practically every cruise liner venturing into the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas stopped here as well, in large part due to the port’s convenient location close to Athens and all its richness.
“Central port’s right there,” Belamo continued, gesturing out the open window. “You can see the private water hangars dead ahead. Roy Industries leases four of them, but only one is currently under watch by armed guards: four guards, two inside and two out.”