“Malcolm,” Colonel Slayton interrupted. “Before we go any further, there’s the matter of the doctor’s DNA disc.”
Tressalian became slightly embarrassed. “Oh, yes, exactly right, Colonel. I must apologize once again, Doctor. But recent events have forced us to become a little more circumspect in our dealings. Do you mind?”
“Oh—no, of course not,” I said, going for my wallet and removing my DNA identification disc. “Hell,” I went on as I quickly plucked a hair from my head and handed both items over, “during the last few days I wouldn’t have been able to swear that I was me.”
Tressalian and I watched as Slayton produced a handheld DNA reader (much like the one Max had carried nearly everywhere he went), then popped in the disc and the hair. After a few seconds he took them out again, nodding as he handed the disc back to me. “Ah, good, that nuisance is out of the way,” Tressalian said, heading for the metal stairs that led up to the observation dome. “Now, Doctor, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have—though I think you might enjoy watching Larissa in action while we talk.”
I mounted the stairs next to Tressalian, whose slow movements were practiced if not easy, while Slayton stayed a few steps behind us, either to make sure Tressalian didn’t fall or to keep a careful eye on me; in all probability a bit of both. One felt the colonel’s presence keenly no matter where he was, not least because of the disturbing and mysterious scar on his face. In an age when almost any organ or tissue in the human body save the brain could be fabricated in medical laboratories—when the colonel’s own skin could have been duplicated and run off like so much cloth and then grafted onto his injury—the fact that he left the disfigurement unaddressed was certainly indicative of the man’s character. The question was, what was such a character doing in the service of the strange, remarkable man who was hobbling along beside me?
All such cogitations left my head when we reached the observation dome, which offered an unobstructed view in every direction—a view that stretched the limits of my credulity even further.
C H A P T E R 1 0
Surrounding us was the panorama of the night sky, though I didn’t have an opportunity to enjoy it: I could see at least five Geronimos—Apache Mark V military helicopters that had been adapted for use by local law enforcement as well as the FBI—in pursuit of our ship, their cannons spinning as they blasted glowing tracer rounds at us. In addition, there was a fleet of late-model Hummers coursing through the streets below, lights flashing and large-caliber mounted guns ablaze. From the look of things, I quickly calculated that we had only a few moments to live—especially as we weren’t yet returning fire.
But then I noticed that as the multitude of bullets being fired at us reached the tapering, rounded fuselage of the ship—its pair of foldaway wings and its glowing “head” resembling nothing so much as a giant flying fish—most of them swerved badly off target. Tressalian read the puzzled look on my face (he was evidently as perceptive as his sister), then touched the collar of his own shirt and began to speak to Larissa through what I realized was a surgically implanted communications system that provided the two with a secure link to each other.
“Sister? . . . Yes, Dr. Wolfe’s right here, and watching anxiously. But remember, we’re making directly for the coast, so there’s no need for excessive—Larissa?” Tressalian took his fingers from his throat with an indulgent shake of his head, then held a hand toward the scene being played out around us. “I suggest you observe, Doctor—this seems to be for your benefit.”
With that, the large rail gun in the ship’s turret opened fire, expelling flights of projectiles that were proportionately larger than the ones fired by Larissa’s handgun. The varied pattern of destruction wrought by the gun as it spun from pursuer to pursuer was awesome to behold: a finely focused burst could removed a Hummer’s wheel or a Geronimo’s mounted gun, while a wider pattern could reduce both land and air units to so much shrapnel—and human body parts. All of this, or so Tressalian had said, was for my benefit: an effort by Larissa not only to impress me with her flying and combat skills but also, it seemed, to let me know that what I had stumbled onto was some kind of mortal struggle. But over what?
Excitement, horror, and, yes, some satisfaction (given that our pursuers were doubtless ultimately controlled by the same people who had killed Max) were registering inside me; yet I was still clear-headed enough to be curious. “Their bullets,” I said. “They’re not reaching us.”
“It has been said,” Tressalian explained, “that the man who controls electromagnetism controls the known forces of our universe. I don’t pretend to have mastered the area yet, but we have enough insight to be able to project fields that will cause far more complex forms of matter than bullets to change their behavior. Even without the fields we’d be in little danger—the ship’s superstructure and sheathing, even its transparent sections, are constructed of advanced composite resins. Stronger than high-quality steel of a much greater thickness and far lighter.” Tressalian paused a moment, still watching me. “You’re appalled, no doubt,” he finally said. “But believe me when I say that if the governments of the world left us any choice—”
“Of the world?” I echoed in a whisper. “But I thought—”
“Oh, our efforts are quite global. Here, come and look at this, Doctor.” Tressalian turned and hobbled over to a bank of monitors that was installed on a low table at the center of the observation dome. “It may help you understand.”
I soon found myself staring at half a dozen images of a considerable military force on the move. There were ships at sea, remotepiloted fighter-bombers in flight, their ghostly cockpits empty of anything save computer equipment, and carrier crews loading still more warplanes with bombs and missiles.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The reason your friend Mr. Jenkins was killed,” Tressalian replied. “An American task force, on its way to inflict what will certainly be a massive attack.”
“On whom? Where are they going?”
“The same place we are—Afghanistan.”
C H A P T E R 1 1
“Afghanistan . . .” I said, thunderstruck. “But why? And how in hell are you getting pictures of all this?”
“By satellite,” Tressalian answered simply. “Our own satellites.”
My mind made a sudden connection. “Satellites . . . satellites! Tressalian—Stephen Tressalian, the man who devised the fourgigabyte satellite system, who created the modern Internet!”
“He was my father,” my host acknowledged with an ambiguous nod. “And that sin was indeed his, along with many others. But he paid for his transgressions in the end—and his money did allow us to undertake all this.”
“But what in God’s name are you doing?”
“The more important question right now,” Tressalian answered evasively, “is, what is your government doing?”
“ ‘My’ government? Isn’t it your government, too?”
Tressalian, slightly amused, shook his head. “Not for many years. Those of us aboard this ship have renounced all nationalities—largely because of these sorts of national behaviors.” He indicated the screens.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What are they doing?”
“It would seem that they intend to finally eradicate the very impressive underground complex that has been the principal training ground for Islamic terrorists during the last two decades.”
I looked at the busy screens again. “Retaliation for Khaldun killing President Forrester?” I asked.
Tressalian nodded. “Your country is, after all, nearing a national election. But there’s a slight problem with the government’s decision, one that I have reason to believe it has begun to suspect but which it cannot, given the political rhetoric that led to this launch, allow anyone such as yourself to discover. You see, Tariq Khaldun wasn’t a terrorist—and he certainly didn’t kill President Forrester.”
“But the disc—”
“The man on that disc”—Tressalian t
ouched a keypad on the table and brought up the assassination images that Max and I had studied for so many hours—“was in fact an actor of Afghan origin who enjoyed some slight success in the Indian film industry during the last part of the twentieth century. We—borrowed his image.” Tressalian shrugged with a smile. “How could I know that there was a minor Afghan diplomat in Chicago who might be the man’s double? Don’t worry, though, we’ve arranged for Mr. Khaldun’s escape. At any rate, the actual killer of the late, lamented President Forrester was”—another touch of a keypad, and the image before me changed to the second version of the event that I’d seen, the one in which the assassin’s face was Asian—“this fellow. Hung Ting-hsin, a major in the Chinese external security force.”
I paused, now wholly unaware of the dance of fire and death that was going on beyond the transparent shell around us. “You deliberately distorted what happened?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“So Price created those images for you—you were the ‘private contractor’ his wife told me about.”
“Correct again. None of us was happy about Mr. Price’s death, Doctor—but he’d decided to try to blackmail us. Then, when Larissa and Jonah went to warn him against such a course, he became violent. Actually knocked Jonah against a wall, and would have done worse, but—well, Larissa . . .”
All the pieces surrounding the mysteries of John Price’s and Max’s deaths were falling into place—but none of them explained why in the world Tressalian was doing any of this, and so I asked him straight out once more.
“Oh, I have my reasons,” he said, sighing again; but the sound was heavier this time, and as it came, Tressalian suddenly winced. “I have my—” His eyes opened wide as the apparent attack of pain seemed to rapidly worsen. “You must—forgive me, Doctor. I seem to—” Suddenly he clutched his head and pitched over with a muted cry, bringing Colonel Slayton to his side even before I could offer any help. “I—think, Colonel,” Tressalian said through gritted teeth, “that I’d better rest for a bit. If our guest will excuse me . . .” His breathing became labored as Slayton pulled one of his arms around his own neck and lifted his disabled body as if it were weightless. “I’m sorry, Doctor, I know you want answers,” Tressalian gasped. “Dinner—we’ll talk at dinner. For now—remember—” He brought his head up and, through his agony, gave me a look that I will never forget: it was full of all the mischievousness of his sister but at the same time conveyed a dark, terrible urgency. “Remember,” he went on, “what you saw on the door . . .” And with that, Colonel Slayton whisked him away.
Tressalian’s sudden attack, combined with the images on the screens at the table as well as the ongoing combat outside—not to mention the fact that I was now alone—served to turn my growing anxiety into the beginnings of what I feared would soon become panic. I tried to calm myself by focusing on what Tressalian had said, by forcing my mind to delve deeper into the Latin I’d learned so long ago in order to come up with an answer to the riddle of the legend on the door.
I don’t know how long I stood there, watching Larissa decimate our pursuers and mumbling to myself like an idiot. “Mundus vult decipi,” I repeated over and over, as bullets streamed around the ship. “Mundus, ‘the world,’ yes. Vult, ‘wills’? ‘Wants’? Something—”
And then I froze at the sudden sound of a pulsing alarm that echoed throughout the vessel: not a harsh tone, exactly, but enough to let me know that something big was happening. I scanned the horizon in all directions, trying to catch sight of what might be prompting it—and looking forward, I got my answer:
The wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean had appeared on the horizon.
I spun around when a voice I recognized as Julien Fouché’s began to speak over some sort of shipwide address system:
“Thirty seconds until system transfer . . . twenty-five . . . twenty . . .”
We showed no sign of slowing our approach to the water as Fouché continued to count down, in five-second increments, to “system transfer,” whatever that might be; and then I experienced a startling chill as, in the midst of my mounting fear, I succeeded in translating the legend.
“Mundus vult decipi,” I said aloud. “ ‘The world wants to be deceived’!”
Not yet realizing the potentially threatening connotation in the words, I felt a sense of triumph—one that quickly reverted to terror as the ship sped over the shoreline and dived into the open sea beyond.
C H A P T E R 1 2
As soon as the vessel was completely submerged, a series of powerful lights on her hull’s exterior came on, offering an extraordinary view of the coastal Atlantic depths as we turned north along the line of the continent. What I saw outside, however, was not an idyllic scene of aquatic wonder such as childhood stories might have led me to expect but rather a horrifying expanse of brown water filled with human and animal waste, all of it endlessly roiled but never cleansed by the steady pulse of the offshore currents. Sometimes the trapped filth was identifiable—great stretches of medical waste and the detritus of livestock husbandry were particularly disturbing—but for the most part it all blended into one indistinguishable mass that I, left alone to watch and ponder, found utterly disheartening. I knew, of course, that in the years since the ’07 financial crash, environmental cleanups had been deemed unaffordable luxuries in most countries; nevertheless, to be presented with this sort of firsthand evidence was shocking.
After what seemed a very long time, I was escorted to my quarters not by Larissa Tressalian (who I assumed had joined her mysteriously stricken brother) but by the curious little man called Dr. Leon Tarbell. Alone among the crew, the “documents expert” Tarbell was unknown to me by either sight or reputation, a fact that made him all the more intriguing; for he was certainly treated as an equal by the others and behaved entirely as such.
“Do you enjoy the decor?” Tarbell asked pleasantly as we walked down the carved wooden staircase to the ship’s lower deck. His accent was hard to pinpoint, and his manner was equally ambiguous: though clearly friendly, he seemed to enjoy my lingering uneasiness. He pulled out a pack of the new, smokeless, and supposedly “safe” cigarettes that the American tobacco industry, after a generation of pressure and lawsuits by a combination of East Asian nations, had recently started to market and offered me one. I declined, and as he lit his he said, “It is not to my taste, this particular area. I prefer the modern. Minimalist, athletic—sexual.”
“Some might simply say ‘ugly,’ ” I offered quickly, before bothering to consider whether Tarbell might take offense.
But he only laughed. “True! It can be very ugly. But ugly”—his fiery eyes grew even more agitated—“with sexuality!”
I would soon learn that the entire world, to Tarbell, was divided between people and things that were not “sexual” and those that had “sexuality!” Though a simple formula, it seemed as valid as any and a good deal more amusing than most, given the way he made his pronouncements with near-comic vigor; so I laughed along with him, relaxing a bit as we arrived at the door to what were to be my quarters.
Inside was a small stateroom that recalled images I’d seen of early-twentieth-century transatlantic ocean liners. The temperature was well above the forty-five degrees of the corridor, creating a welcoming atmosphere that was complemented by more wood paneling, a small, porthole-shaped transparent section in the hull that could be chemically tinted at the touch of a nearby button, finely crafted glass light shades, and marble-and-ceramic sanitary facilities that appeared to be genuine antiques. It was even more unlike the very high tech nose area of the ship than were the corridors, a fact that caused my confusion to spike once more.
“Past and future, side by side,” Tarbell said with a nod. “You could say that time does not exist aboard this vessel. Such is Malcolm!”
I turned my thoughts to my host. “Is he all right?”
Tarbell nodded confidently. “They pass, these attacks.”
“But what’s wrong with him?” br />
“I am not entirely comfortable speaking about such things. Perhaps he will tell you. Or perhaps Larissa.” Tarbell gave me his demonic grin. “She has fastened her eye on you—lucky man. A woman of rare brilliance, beauty—and sexuality!” As he barked the last word, he clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Yes, you will join our little company, I think!” Turning to go he added, “You will find everything you need—even fresh clothes. We dine forward, in one-half hour. Malcolm tells me that you enjoy vodka—come soon, and I will share my private stock!”
It was evident that these people already knew almost everything about me, from the size and preferred style of my clothing (there was nothing in the closet of my quarters that I could not or would not have worn) to my taste in liquor. I didn’t wonder how they had attained such knowledge, any more than I wondered about the cost of building the ship on which we were traveling. Malcolm and Larissa Tressalian’s father, Stephen, whose satellite system had made the modern Internet possible, had been one of the wealthiest men in the world. He’d also been a leader of the group of information technocrats who, during the ’07 crisis, had put up their collective private and corporate assets to guarantee the solvency of the American government, just as the financier J. P. Morgan and his associates had done a century earlier. Tressalian and his allies had then used this timely support as a club with which to beat Washington into dropping any and all attempts to regulate information commerce, thus dealing the deathblow to, among other things, the already wounded concept of personal privacy.
There would have been few things beyond the reach of such a man’s heirs, yet that fact alone did not explain the most urgent questions at hand, which I grappled with yet again as I washed and changed for dinner: What exactly were these people up to, and why had they decided, in Larissa’s phrase, that they needed me?
In twenty minutes I was headed back toward the nose of the ship, determined this time to get answers that were more than cryptic.