The ghost stepped forward. Or was it a slide more than a gait?
Shrinking in the mattress, Alred couldn’t move.
Clink.
She looked at the oak nightstand to the right of her bed. Was something there, by the clock where nothing had been before? It looked more like a stain…a mark…of the ghost.
She could feel the apparition behind her now, close to her ear. Spinning her head around, she saw the ghost near enough to kiss.
“Just…”
She saw his mouth moving, saying words that didn’t reach the mortal world. Petrified, she listened.
“…tell…my wife…I’m…okay….She’ll know what this is for.”
Closing her eyes tight, she bit the inside of her cheek and tasted salt. She knew the voice now. She knew what the face was supposed to look like.
“I have to go,” said the spirit.
She watched the shadow, staring at her from the wall hidden in the darkness.
“Keep looking over your shoulder, Alred,” he said, passing into nowhere, but visibly going away. “You’re in danger…and so is your friend….”
Alred awoke with an ache to speak in her throat. She let the words out in a whisper. “He’s not my friend.” Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she sat up and looked around the room.
Just another dream.
Of course. How could someone who was such a stickler for scientific process have failed to see her experience for what it was while it was happening?
She felt her quick pulse running through every part of her body.
She heard a whisper.
From the dark, the phantom lashed at her.
Alred screamed.
She caught the beast and scolded it quickly.
Just Samantha. It rubbed against her and meowed as she caressed the soft fur. “Don’t do that again.”
The cat jumped from her bed and went after the ghost that hadn’t been there.
Flopping back to her pillow, Alred moaned and closed her eyes. The lids opened to peek once at the clock, though she didn’t want to know the fiendish hour.
What she saw made her sit up.
On the nightstand, a small key waited like a child squirming to be lifted.
She leaned forward and swiped the cold metal.
Her light went on, and she traced the markings with the tip of her fingernail: 0417-2105.
It was difficult getting back to sleep.
* * *
Porter’s fingers felt their way through the books like blind moles climbing through underground caves. The cricket inside him wanted to chirp for help, but he knew the cats would hear him first. And they would only need a moment to strike.
He couldn’t shake the thick fog of dream from his head. Porter knew he was awake, but still saw himself as a tiny insect running from Halloween cats with sleek fur and shining fangs. After all, this couldn’t be happening!
For once he was thankful for the labyrinth of bookcases making up the fourth floor of the Stratford University Library.
The hunters were perfectly quiet.
They did slide forward like cats.
Before running deeper into the shelves, Porter saw the shadows of two of them, but he worried there might be a third man.
He thought he heard whispers as rubber soles touched down on dark vanilla-colored carpet. The silence rang like a non-stop train whistle in his ears. He heard his breath as if amplified by a microphone and a thousand dollar stereo system. Trembling hands stroked the book shelves. Wide eyes stared through the holes in the stacks, trying with no success to see the newcomers.
He’d already spotted the guns. The barrels were too long. Silencers were illegal in the state of California. These weren’t university personnel, police, or even customs officials looking for the codex.
Maybe they’d tracked down the wrong man. But there couldn’t be anyone else in the library. Porter knew he was lucky they hadn’t shot him through the window.
It needed to be cleaner.
They probably had a car outside, a van. Three other men, dressed in the same expensive black attire, waiting for the body to be brought forth, prepared to haul it to an unmarked grave….
What am I thinking?!? Porter thought. He rubbed his face and told himself he had to see clearly. Drop the dream state and reevaluate this new reality.
In his mind, he saw Wilkinson face down on the floor of his office with the letter opener in his back. He watched Albright die. He imagined Ulman chased through the tall trees in the mid-highlands of Guatemala until they’d caught him.
No. Who can they be?
There was no they. These guys had the wrong man. Perhaps there was someone else hiding in the building. They’d climbed all four floors and already checked the basement levels. They had to be sure he wasn’t hiding among the books on the last story. If Porter didn’t watch out, he’d probably bump right into the man they hunted! Porter’d be taken hostage. They wouldn’t care. Bullets would zing. He’d fall….
Porter bit his lip until he tasted salt. He had to focus, or he was a dead man. It was instinct. These men were too quiet. If they communicated at all, they made no noise of it. They were good, and he didn’t want to know how well-trained in the art of killing they were.
Rethinking their entrance, he wondered if they’d really made any sound at all.
These weren’t lowly thugs. Their black suede shoes, their leather gloves of the same color—these men didn’t fear the act of killing. They didn’t do it for the rush an amateur might feel. And there were too many of them.
Two? Three?
Yes, too many…for one miserly bookworm, professor of ancient history wanna-be.
There would be more outside. He slid to the wall and looked through the window at the parking lot.
The kill would be silent. Unless they intended to leave the body, they had to carry him to another location.
To disguise the death? To make it look like natural causes?
Porter was sweating. He wiped it away and kept moving. He knew he was thinking irrationally, and his fear mixed with anger at himself.
Albright’s body had been found.
Wilkinson hadn’t been moved.
Ulman….
Turning a corner with caution and eyes large enough to roll out of their sockets, Porter thanked himself for putting on his leather Rockports, the black soles of which were comfortable and thick. He made no sound other than the involuntary snare drum of his heart and the growing thunder of his swelling lungs.
He was running out of places to hide.
They were moving.
He had to get to the stairs or the fire door, and if they expected he was here—if they’d been watching and already knew he was hiding among the bookshelves—they would be waiting for him to sprint.
The fire door would be covered at some point by another gunman, if they were as professional as they looked. And there was at least fifteen feet of open space from the main stairway to the nearest wall of bookshelves.
He tasted sweat in the corner of his mouth. The remaining bits of flavorful pistachios turned to gray moss in his teeth.
Holding his breath, he paced from one aisle to another, covering ground in the direction of the main stairs.
He had no idea where they crept now, bent like panthers ready to strike. He knew they’d sniff the air with their ears. They’d stand still, waiting for whatever slight murmur of sound Porter made as he rolled on the balls of his feet as best he could in his dress shoes.
He tightened his hands on the handle of his heavy briefcase and felt the wetness between his fingers, his palm, and the brown leather.
The shelves grabbed his shoe.
He looked down.
The lace on top of his left foot had unraveled itself from his poor knot. He hated penny-loafers, but was now wishing he had a pair.
Glancing up, he saw a shadow on the ground appear from around the side of the bookshelf.
He backed up quickly, eyes moon-shaped, but not w
atching where he was going. His free hand did the seeing.
The shadow became a man of the same color.
But Porter had stepped out of sight.
He held his breath again and could hear the assassin’s air leave his lungs, catch, and slide inside to silence again.
Porter put a bookcase between them, striding fast.
Were the other men just around the next bend in the shelves?
The guy behind him would turn the corner before he would reach the next break in the great bookcases.
Porter spun around and saw the man’s subtle shadow hit the shelf as he neared the far end of the bookshelves. The man in black would do the same as Porter had: come to the turn, make a left, swing around and—bang! Porter would hit the ground more loudly than the bullet would when leaving the gun.
There was nowhere to go.
The young scholar looked to heaven, but only saw the ceiling. And the top of the old wooden bookcase.
Only a second now.
Porter climbed the shelves like a ladder, kicking the books in with his feet. No time to think about the damage, the signs he’d leave behind. He only hoped he could make it to the top before the man appeared again. He had to have faith in the impossible chance that the rest of the men wouldn’t see him pressing his hands on the ceiling, which floated five feet above shelves. No.
Porter rolled quickly onto the dusty summit, his eyes looking at the ceiling that hung five feet up with cold lights waiting for morning to illuminate them. He clamped his briefcase to his chest and stapled his lips together with the muscles around his mouth. He shut his eyes.
His ears didn’t pick up the feet of the aggressor in the alley beneath him. He couldn’t sense the breathing he’d heard when the books stood like a wall between them, though they’d been only three feet apart. But he felt the man’s rippling presence in the dark light.
Turning his head, Porter could see the florescent light of his desk hitting the ceiling thirty feet away. The beams from the lamps along the stairway walls shined a bright square on the roof twenty-five feet away.
He rolled his head to the side where he felt the assassin…stop. Was the man looking at the books smashed into the shelves…as if someone had used this part of the bookcase as a ladder? Was he feeling the spots were Porter had put his feet and may have left some aura of warmth? Did he point his gun and his eyes at the top of the bookcase and see the faint outline of a human shape?
Porter…waited.
Porter had to find out if the man knew he was there.
He bent his head…to the edge…and he peeked.
The hair was dark and slicked out of the way with gel. The assassin hadn’t gone far, which meant he had stopped. But with his weapon at waist level, he started walking away.
Porter knew he had to get down. Trapped on the fourth floor, he had to exit the Library.
Lifting himself, Porter swung his leg off the safe side of the bookcase.
His hard rubber heel caught the edge of the wooden shelf with a sharp crack!
Porter swung his head back to the assassin.
The man whipped around with his gun raised, his fiery eyes blown wide, his cold mouth in a tight frown.
As Porter launched his weight to the top of the next bookcase, away from the man in black, the gun went off with the chirp of a bird. The bullet struck one of the hanging lights, shooting sparks for a millisecond as metal passed through metal.
Smashing his briefcase into the top of the second bookcase, Porter gripped the wood with his hands, one leg falling off secure ground completely. He pulled himself up, his ears picking up the sound of silent running.
Porter looked at the stairs, so close from here, but so far through the weaving shelves. Such an old fashioned library.
The men were almost around him, however many there were.
Hugging his package tightly, Porter twisted his bottom and top lip together and climbed to a squatting position. Immediately he crouched upward and jumped to the top of the next bookshelf.
Peripheral vision spotted two other men closing in on him.
Landing on the top of the bookcase, his legs kept going, springing him to the next case. Faith screamed Go, go, go! And he sprinted, dragging the fingers of one hand on the ceiling for balance, shoving the cheap hanging lights aside with his briefcase as the bullets came.
Three guns went off as he ran, but he soon hit the floor. The stairs were in sight. He dove for them, panting breath he’d forgotten to let out.
Bouncing off the wall, his feet cleared three to four steps at a time before he touched the third floor landing. He kicked his heels high behind him as he leaned forward, running, almost falling into the staircase that made for the second floor.
There’s a car out front. It’s waiting for you.
Porter toppled down those stairs as a bullet ticked the wall above him.
Then a quick right into the shelves of the second floor.
Fiction. The sign fell over when he hit it.
Great trail you’re leaving them! he scolded himself.
But he knew he couldn’t go to the first floor. Who knew how many men in black waited at the front door.
He threw himself into the far wall when he reached it and made a left, scraping the plaster with his elbow.
The men behind him moved like flying shadows. They uttered no sound. But he knew they were there. How close behind?
It didn’t matter.
There was a window on the second floor that overlooked nothing but a rooftop. Porter had always thought it an architectural stupidity. But what did he know about twentieth-century buildings? Porter had told his friends once that if a thief ever wanted to break into the Stratford Michael H. Weiss Library, they’d need only climb the east side of the building to the window, cut it, and walk in. There were no alarms to his knowledge. The library was open all night, so why would there be? It was an unnecessary window, which didn’t even give much light, as the J.T. Fowler Building rose right in front of it.
Porter shattered the glass with his briefcase and slid through. He dropped onto the first story roof and grimaced as the speckles of sharp glass cut into the palms of his hands. Jogging like an old man who’d drunk too much throughout his life, he came to the edge of the roof.
He jumped without a pause.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
April 25
8:51 a.m. PST
“None of you will like this,” said Peter as he reached for the play button. “You are listening to a telephone conversation. Ms. Alred, specifically. I’m sure you’ll understand the rest.”
The room was cold, the way the old executives liked it. They each wore dark cotton suits and leaned against leather backrests, eyeing the young man with his marble skin and perfectly pressed attire. They squinted and glowed with suspicion, distrust, and hungry curiosity. Resting their hands together beside their five-hundred dollar pens and their black computer notebooks, they reached into the tape recording with their minds, analyzing the words for double meanings, worrying they’d hear their doomsday announced in forms the rest of the world weren’t even aware of.
The room smelled of age, though the building had stood for less than thirty years. The carpet was gray, the pictures on the walls featuring mostly dead people. They dealt with death daily, when necessary. Very little frightened them. No one knew who they were and no one would ever find them.
Like the fluctuating wind, they always existed. Never seen, but forever felt, even when the populous didn’t realize it.
“Yes,” said the voice through the unseen speakers set somewhere in the walls.
“Dr. Kinnard?” said Alred.
“Present.”
“I don’t mean to disturb you,” she said.
Peter pushed the pause button on the remote. “She is bothering him of course. We taped this conversation just after midnight this morning.”
Click. “Dr. Kinnard?”
“…I’m here.”
“I don’t know if you�
�ll remember me. Erma Alred. You spoke with me in a meeting with Dr. Masterson concerning my dissertation?”
Pause. “Hello Alred.” Cough. “Excuse me. You’re not calling about the change in dissertation dates, are you?”
“The fifth of May?” she said, “I heard about that—”
“—cause I have no—”
“I’ll deal with it. Dr. Kinnard, I need to ask you—”
“That bad?” he said.
She waited for a minute. “Sorry?”
Sigh. “I’d really like to assist you, Alred—”
“I’m not asking for assistance.”
Pause. “Masterson’s your supervising professor? You’ll have to go to him to get out of the project. Porter doesn’t have the same luxury.”
“Dr. Kinnard, I believe I have sufficient evidence to stand against Porter’s dissertation. I need to compose the data into a formal paper, but I’m not worried about the time shortage.”
Pause. “Porter’s going to love you.”
“On the fifth?” she said. “I’ll need armed protection to leave the building! Porter’s a fanatic. He finds supporting facts in everything he looks at.”
“He presents them well. And he is my friend, Alred.”
Silence. “Sorry if I offended you, sir. I don’t know quite where I stand on this project.”
“You didn’t want it in the first place,” he said.
She said nothing.
“I saw it in your eyes,” said Kinnard. “You’re a strong woman, Alred. Composed. You’ll make a fabulous professor someday, if that’s your goal. Masterson knew well to pit you against Porter. But I admit…I was against your involvement.”
Again, silence.
“Alred?”
“I’m here….This was Dr. Masterson’s idea?” she said.
But Kinnard didn’t answer.
After a moment of unspoken thought, Alred’s voice came again through the speaker. “There is a…problem.”
“What’s that,” said Kinnard.
“Forgive me for saying so, but…I’ve suspected for some time that Porter’s been holding out on me. Hiding something he found in the KM-2 codex.”
The Kukulkan Manuscript Page 14