by Gabriel Hunt
Gabriel lifted the ruby out from under Joyce’s belt. He could see how rapidly she was breathing. She was frightened—but of what? That Grissom would pull the trigger? Or that he wouldn’t, because Gabriel would do what he wanted?
“Let her go,” Gabriel said. “I’ll do it—but let her climb down. Her uncle can get her to safety.”
“Not just yet,” Grissom said. “Miss Wingard is my insurance policy…aren’t you, my dear?” He stroked her cheek with the gun barrel, then turned back to Gabriel. “You’ll do exactly as I say, or she dies. If you run, she dies. If you drop the gemstones, she dies. If you try anything at all, she dies. Am I being clear enough?”
“Perfectly,” Gabriel said. He looked at Joyce. Her eyes pleaded with him not to do it. He looked back at Grissom. “What do you want me to do?”
“You can start by returning to the top of the head,” Grissom said. “Go slowly, so I can see what you’re up to at all times. I’ll tell you what to do next once you’re there.”
Gabriel put the ruby back in the vest’s largest pocket and walked carefully along the statue’s arm. He climbed up onto the shoulder and from there up the slope toward the head. Halfway up, his foot slipped on some loose sand still covering the stone. He groped with his fingers for a handhold and found a seam between stones just deep enough to hold onto. His heart pounding, he looked down at the ground seventy feet below. He’d almost gone the way DeVoe had. He took a second to make sure of his footing, then pulled himself upright and moved slowly until he was standing between the shoulder and neck again.
Up close, he could see that Teshub’s face had been carved from two blocks of stone. A long, narrow seam ran from the bridge of the nose down to the tip of the beard, though, oddly, he saw no mortar in the seam, nothing visibly holding the two pieces together. Using the statue’s ear as a ladder, he climbed up the side of the head.
“Good,” Grissom called when Gabriel reached the top. “Now, give Teshub back his eyes. Slowly! Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Gabriel lay on his stomach and let his head hang down so he could inspect the statue’s eyes. The two sockets looked identical, and measuring them against his hand, he saw they’d fit the emeralds—not the ruby. Gabriel pulled one of the emeralds from the vest. It seemed to hum louder as he brought it near the right eye. As he slid the gemstone into place, he felt it lock in. The glow emanating from the center of the emerald grew stronger until it became a bright green light, shining out across the desert like a lighthouse beam.
He looked over at Joyce and Grissom on the statue’s palm. They were both staring at the beam, awed. Grissom collected himself enough to say, “Now do the other one.”
Gabriel pulled the second emerald from the vest pocket and put it in the socket in the left eye. Another shaft of bright green light shot out from the statue’s head, joining the first. A deep, throbbing rumble sounded from within the statue. It pulsed over and over, almost like a heartbeat.
“Now the last one,” Grissom said.
Gabriel pulled out the ruby. He looked down at Teshub’s huge face but didn’t see anyplace he could put it. The openings in both eyes were filled. The mouth was closed, with no open space between the lips where the ruby could fit. There were no holes for the third gemstone at all.
“Where does it go?” Gabriel called down.
“I don’t know,” Grissom called back. “But you’d better figure it out quickly.” He jabbed Joyce again with the gun. “Any ideas, Miss Wingard?”
“Drop dead,” Joyce said.
“That’s an idea, all right,” Grissom said, “but I don’t know that you really should be suggesting it to a man who’s got a gun on you. Hunt,” he called, “you’ve got till a count of three, then your friend here goes over the side.”
The deep, pulsing rumble continued echoing across the desert. Gabriel looked down at the face again, the twin jade beams shooting out of its eyes. Teshub only had two eyes, as Daniel had pointed out. So where the hell did the third jewel go?
“One!” Grissom shouted.
A final riddle. Gabriel felt certain the answer was right in front of him. It had to have something to do with the legend. He thought back, racing through everything he’d learned: the Spearhead, a powerful device supposedly given to the Hittites by the storm god that could be used for good or evil, and then taken away because Teshub didn’t trust them to make the right choice; the Three Eyes, supercharged gemstones that activated the Spearhead, scattered across the world to keep them from being found, to keep the Spearhead out of mankind’s hands until…
Until what?
“Two!” Grissom shouted.
Gabriel looked at the ruby, trying to clear everything else out of his mind and focus on the legend. Teshub hid the Spearhead because mankind couldn’t be trusted with its power.
Because they didn’t have the judgment to keep it from being used for evil.
No, not the judgment. That wasn’t the word the legend used. The legend said wisdom. The Spearhead would be hidden from mankind until they had the wisdom to use it for good.
And then he knew. Something he should have seen right away. The third eye. It appeared over and over again in the mythology of Eastern cultures, the eye of wisdom. How many times had he seen Buddhist sutras that illustrated the third eye, the eye that wasn’t an eye, drawn right in the middle of the forehead? Hell, he suddenly realized the Death’s Head Key had one on it, the diamond shape between the eyes of the skull…
“Three!”
“Hold on!” Gabriel shouted. “Wait! I’ve got it!”
Gabriel reached down and touched the smooth stone of the statue’s forehead, between the eyes. That was another clue, he realized now: the visible seam between the two blocks of stone began lower down, at the bridge of the nose; there had to be a reason it didn’t continue all the way up to the top of the head. Gabriel felt around for a hidden seam, one he couldn’t see. He felt it a moment later, a hairline groove delineating a rectangular area above the nose. Gently at first and then more firmly, he pressed against it. Under this pressure, one half of a small slab swung inward on a hidden axle, while the other half swung out. He turned the convex slab all the way around until it was concave, a depression in the center of the forehead. And at the center of this depression he saw a socket. He didn’t have to measure it to know it was the size and shape of the ruby.
He placed the last jewel into the socket and felt it lock in place. Like the emeralds, its internal glow intensified until a bright red beam shot out, riding atop the twin green ones. The pulsing thrum that emanated from the statue grew louder and Gabriel heard a grinding deep inside, like the sound of ancient gears beginning to turn.
Gabriel scrambled off the statue’s head and hurried back along the shoulder and arm to the outstretched hand. Grissom still had the shotgun positioned under Joyce’s chin, but he was staring at the beams of light. Gabriel was, too. The three beams intensified to an almost blinding brightness. He shielded his eyes.
And then, suddenly, the Three Eyes of Teshub went dark. Snapped off like blown lightbulbs.
“What happened?” Grissom whispered.
The statue began to shake. Gabriel had trouble keeping his footing. Behind Joyce, Grissom slipped, falling to one knee. Joyce kicked backward, finally connecting with Grissom’s head. He landed on his back, the shotgun skittering out of his grip. He started to get back to his feet, groping for the weapon, but Joyce tackled him, driving one shoulder into his chest.
“No!” Gabriel shouted and grabbed for her—but in an instant they had gone over the side. Gabriel rushed to the edge and looked down. They hit the sand, Grissom on the bottom, beneath Joyce. They hit with the terrible crack of bones breaking. Turning, he leapt across the gap separating Teshub’s hand from his torso, grabbed onto the folds of the storm god’s robe as DeVoe had, and began letting himself down swiftly, hand over hand. When he reached the statue’s leg, he slid down it, letting himself drop the last fifteen feet. Even from that height
, the impact wasn’t pleasant—he could imagine what it had been like from more than twice as high. All he could hope was that Grissom had absorbed the worst of it.
He ran over to where Joyce lay. Daniel was there beside her, holding her hand. She’d rolled off Grissom but hadn’t moved any farther. “Can you stand?” Daniel was saying. “Can you sit up?”
Joyce nodded slowly. “I think so.” But she winced terribly when she tried it and didn’t make it all the way up.
Gabriel looked down at Grissom. He was moaning softly, between wracking coughs.
“My back…” he whispered. “My…”
Blood misted on his lips.
Meanwhile, the statue’s tremors were accelerating, the noise of internal gears growing louder. As Gabriel looked up at it, the statue split suddenly in half, right down the middle, and bright white light spilled out from the opening seam. Each leg split separately down its own seam, though no light came out of those. But the more the seam along the face and torso widened, the more light came pouring out, flooding the entire area. The statue started coming apart as it broke open, huge pieces of stone crashing to the sand below: a thumb, a boulder-sized chunk of Teshub’s robe, the top of his head containing the burned-out Eyes. Inside the collapsing outer shell another shape was being revealed: a monumental crystal obelisk on a forked stand, almost like a giant wishbone or divining rod, nearly as tall as the statue itself. Thick iron bands surrounded the crystal at intervals, connected to long metal posts on either side. The stone was pure white, like a piece of quartz. It emitted a deep, earthshaking hum and blazed from within.
The light at World’s End.
“The Spearhead,” Grissom whispered, and his eyes slid shut forever.
A column of light blasted up from the obelisk into the sky like a beacon. Dark, roiling storm clouds appeared above the Spearhead and circled the column. Lightning flashed inside the clouds.
Gabriel struggled to his feet.
“It’s magnificent,” Daniel said. “Still operational after all these thousands of years. It must be some kind of natural generator, but how can it contain so much power?”
Gabriel knelt beside Joyce and slipped one arm under her lower back, one under her knees. He lifted her off the ground. She bent her head toward him, gave his neck a small kiss. “My hero,” she said.
“Daniel,” Gabriel said. “We have to go.”
“We can’t just leave it…”
“Watch me,” Gabriel said, and turned to leave.
Only to find himself face-to-face with the high priest of the Cult of Ulikummis.
The man was leaning heavily on his staff. The front of his robe was soaked through with blood, and a trail of blood extended behind him. But he’d somehow made it this far, and wouldn’t be stopped now. He bent the staff forward and swung it in a tight arc that would have drawn blood if Gabriel hadn’t stepped back, Joyce still in his arms.
The high priest muttered something in Nesili.
“He says he has to receive Ulikummis,” Daniel said. “That he is Ulikummis’s vessel on earth.”
The high priest dragged himself another step forward. He was nearly standing between the forks of the apparatus on which the crystal stood.
Joyce spoke softly, her voice strained. “Put me down. You’ve got…got to stop him.”
But it was Daniel who stepped into the high priest’s path. He swung Gabriel’s Colt up before him, the gun held in both hands. “Not another step,” he said.
The priest sneered and started swinging his staff.
Daniel pulled the trigger. Twice.
The bullets slammed into the high priest’s chest and he jerked from each impact. He staggered—one step—two—and then collapsed on the ground directly beneath the crystal.
A thunderous explosion sounded overhead. Jagged bolts of lightning crackled in the air between the storm clouds and the Spearhead, each blasting the other with raw electrical energy. The light from the obelisk grew brighter, a hundred suns dawning in the middle of the Kalahari Desert. Gabriel used one hand to turn Joyce’s face into his neck and squeezed his own eyes shut. He began running away from the Spearhead, Daniel running beside him as fast as his limping gait could take him. Even through his closed eyelids, Gabriel saw the bright light that washed over them, past them, extending outward into the night. It was warm, but not as hot as he’d expected. He kept running, waiting for the burning blast that would finish them.
It never arrived. When the light had dimmed and the temperature cooled, he stopped running and opened his eyes. The storm clouds had vanished as quickly as they’d appeared. The Spearhead still glowed, but with waning intensity. In a wide circle around it, the sand had turned to glass, stopping less than a yard from where Gabriel, Joyce and Daniel now stood.
And below the Spearhead, where the high priest had lain, a figure was now standing—a figure blazing with a vibrant white light, similar to the crystal’s. Could this be the priest? That he was upright at all was extraordinary—he’d been stabbed and shot twice, he must have lost a gallon of blood. But the energy of the Spearhead seemed to have flowed into him and was animating him like some sort of puppet. He jerked from side to side. It was as if his body had somehow absorbed the immense power of the Spearhead and was desperately trying to contain it. He bent double, gripping his head in his hands. They heard him begin keening in a voice suffused with pain. The light pouring off of him intensified to a blinding glare. A moment later the light dimmed, then vanished altogether.
It took a moment before they could see at all. When their eyes adjusted, there were only the stars that dotted the night sky, and the moon hanging over the horizon. The obelisk was dark, its once clear crystal smoky and cracked.
“Are you all right?” Gabriel asked Joyce.
She nodded. “What happened? Where’s the priest?”
Gabriel looked toward the spot where he had stood, but there was no sign of him—not his robes, not his staff, not his body. Only the trail of blood, leading up to a point beneath the forked stand.
“Killed by the Spearhead,” Daniel said. “Vaporized.”
“It really was a weapon,” Gabriel said.
“At that moment it was, yes. Who’s to say what it could have been in the right hands?”
“There are no hands I’d trust with a power like this,” Gabriel said.
A loud cracking sound drew their attention back to the obelisk. Deep fissures spread across the crystal like spiderwebs. The crystal broke apart, sliding out of its iron supports and coming down with a crash amid the rubble from the statue.
“Well, it looks like you won’t have to,” Daniel said. He shook his head. “What a terrible loss.”
Gabriel heard the approaching helicopter’s rotors before he saw it overhead. He looked up. The wind blew back his hair and rustled his shirt. The helicopter descended, landing close enough for him to see the emergency foam patches sealing the bullet holes in its tail. The side door slid open, and four men in flight suits, helmets and goggles jumped out. Three of them held machine guns and stood in formation, looking out at the bodies scattered across the battlefield, watching for movement. The question Gabriel had posed earlier came back to him: Which army’s side were these men on?
But he only wondered it until the fourth man pulled off his helmet and goggles.
“Noboru?” Gabriel said, amazed.
Noboru rushed over to his side. He looked down at Joyce, stroked one hand across her hair. “I couldn’t just leave the two of you. Not when I still had something I could offer.”
“Does Michiko know?” Joyce asked.
“Sh,” Noboru said.
“You know this man?” Daniel asked.
“How did you find us?” Gabriel said.
“You can thank your brother,” Noboru said. “Michael told me where you were headed from Turkey. He sounded worried, figured you might get yourself in trouble again. That seemed likely to me, too. I thought maybe you could use some backup.”
“How’d
you get your hands on a helicopter like this?” Gabriel asked. “Never mind the missiles.”
“I called in a few favors from my Intelligence days,” Noboru said. “It took a bit of finagling, but I got the team and equipment I asked for.”
“I’m just…glad you found us,” Joyce whispered.
Noboru looked at the bodies and wreckage all around them. “You guys are hard to miss.”
Daniel stuck out his hand. “Daniel Wingard. Joyce’s uncle.”
Noboru shook Daniel’s hand. He looked across the stretch of fused sand at the broken shards that were all that was left of the Spearhead. “We saw that thing’s light miles away, when we were patching the chopper. What the hell was it?”
“A test,” Daniel said. “After everything, it was just a test to see if mankind is ready to use something that powerful responsibly.”
“How’d we do?” Noboru asked.
Gabriel gave a thin smile. “We survived.”
Noboru nodded, then patted the side of the helicopter. “So. You guys need a lift?”
Chapter 25
The bartender in the Discoverers League lounge, Wade Boland, slid two bottles of beer across the bar to Gabriel. “Women who like beer are something special,” he said. “You try to hold onto this one.”
Clyde Harris, sitting on his usual stool at the end at the bar, chuckled and ran a hand through his thinning white hair. “Reminds me of a woman I met in the Netherlands back in ‘43. She loved beer almost as much as she loved garroting spies.”
Wade shook his head. “Save it, old-timer. Can’t you see he’s busy?”
Gabriel took the bottles back to the table by the fireplace and sat down in the plush red chair across from Joyce. After dropping them off at the embassy in Botswana, Noboru had returned to Borneo. Daniel was back in Turkey, closing down his dig site, and had promised to join them in New York in a few days’ time. Gabriel looked at his watch. Michael would be coming over in a bit over an hour for a full debriefing. But until then, Gabriel and Joyce could finally relax. No bullets, no arrows, no explosions, just the two of them and some stress-free time alone.