“It’s tiny,” Laura said. “Can’t be more than two hundred feet long.”
“And half that wide. I—” He pointed. “Hey, what’s that?”
She saw what he meant: a vertical gap in the rocks at the north end. As they floated closer she saw a narrow cove penetrating the wall at an acute angle to the shoreline.
“It’s like a micro fjord,” she said. “And look—there’s a boat in there.”
Rick piloted their craft into the rocky alleyway. A similar cabin cruiser, maybe a few feet shorter but much more weathered and worse for wear, rocked on its moorings at a tiny dock snug against the end of the little fjord. Beyond that sat a small shed and a rickety staircase running up the wall.
“Problem solved,” Rick said as he cut the engine.
But Laura became aware of another engine as the sound of theirs stopped.
“Is that other boat running?” she said.
Rick shook his head. “No. It seems to becoming from that little shed there.” He vaulted onto the bow and fended off the nearest piling. He tied the bow line then jumped onto the worn, makeshift dock. “Toss me the stern line,” he said.
Laura did just that, and once they were moored, she joined him on the dock where she followed him to the shed. He pulled open the door to reveal a running generator hooked up to a fifty-five-gallon drum of diesel fuel.
“Look,” Laura said, pointing to the gray pipe she saw running up the wall and diving into the rock near the top. “Somebody up there needs electricity.”
He nodded to the stairway that zigged, then zagged to the top. “And there’s our way up to join them. I’ll go first.”
“Why you?” Not that she really cared, just … why?
“Because, number one: Going first is my job. And number two: Because if it will hold me, it’ll hold you.”
She pointed to the weathered launch. “It obviously held whoever arrived in that.”
“This is not up for discussion.”
She let it go. He had his macho on, and arguing with him was only going to delay things.
He stepped on the first step and jiggled the railing. The whole stairway vibrated.
“Wish me luck,” he said and started up, moving quickly and smoothly. It took him only a few seconds to reach the top. “It’s got lots of rot but it’s sturdier than it looks. Come on up. You’ve got to see this to believe it.”
Laura hurried up with no problem—all that blather for nothing—but froze when she reached the top.
“What the…?”
The first thing Laura thought of was a Christo art project. Back in 2004 she’d trained into Manhattan to see his “Gates” installation in Central Park. This reminded her of that, except the rectangles of fabric were blue-gray instead of orange and tethered at all four corners eight to ten feet above the ground. She hadn’t been at all impressed by Christo’s thing—she couldn’t bring herself to call it art—but this was mind blowing.
“It … it looks like it covers the whole island.”
“I’m sure it does,” Rick said. “And I think that’s why it doesn’t show up on Google Earth. All this fluttering fabric looks like water from space. Not gonna fool high-res spy cams, and it can’t hide the surf when the seas get rough—that explains the foam we saw on one of those photos—but it does make it hard to find.”
Beneath the fabric lay a carpet of green. But not grass …
Laura knelt and examined the plants. “These are like the one Stahlman showed me … the ones the panaceans grow.”
“I thought they looked familiar. I guess we’ve found the place we’re after … or at least were still on the right road.”
She rose and looked around. “Which way do we go?”
“Well, since we end up in the drink if we head north, let’s try south.”
She gathered that was his way of saying Dumb question without using those exact words.
“That boat didn’t drive itself here,” he added. “Gotta be some sort of dwelling.”
“Then why can’t we see it? This island can’t cover more than an acre.”
“Less, I’ll bet. All we can do is look. I suggest we follow this narrow little strip of earth where the plants don’t grow.” His voice took on a pedantic tone. “Now why wouldn’t they grow there? Hmmm … could it be that someone travels that path to and from the dock? What do you think?”
“I think you’re getting on my nerves. Let’s go.”
He hesitated, patting the hunting knife on his belt. “Wish I had something better than this.”
“If this is the home of the panaceans—or one of them—I don’t think we have to worry. So far we haven’t seen any violence from them, defensive or otherwise.”
“It’s not the panaceans I’m worried about.”
“I don’t see that you or I can do anything about that now. We’re here. Let’s go.”
He nodded. “Let’s.”
The narrow path led them around a small hillock and stopped at a door.
“It’s a freakin’ hobbit house,” Rick said.
She had to agree: An arched stone wall with a door and two windows was set into the hillock.
“No wonder we couldn’t see it,” she said. “Its back end is all plants.”
The door opened and a woman stepped out. She looked maybe seventy with long silver hair and bright blue eyes. She wore a monkish robe tied at the waist.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling. “I was expecting you sooner.”
Laura had noticed Rick’s hand darting toward his knife, but it dropped to his side as they both stared, dumbfounded.
Laura found her voice first. “Wh-what?”
“What took you so long?” she said.
Something familiar about her. The hair, those eyes …
“You wouldn’t happen to have an older brother, would you?”
She hunched her back and stroked an imaginary beard. “You mean Leander?” she said in a perfect imitation of his creaky voice.
Laura laughed. “Yes! That’s him!”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I have no siblings of either sex.”
“Then…?” Suddenly Laura got it. “That was you?”
She nodded. “Yes … me with a beard. I am Clotilde.”
“I knew something was off about you,” Rick said. “But what were you doing around the side of the abbey if you weren’t peeing against the wall?”
She smiled. “Giving you time to decode the poem. You needed to do it on your own.”
“You knew we were coming to the Wound,” Laura said. “You were waiting for us. How?”
“We’ve been following you. I disguised myself because I knew we would be watched.” She looked around. “Just as we might be right now. Come in, come in.”
As expected, with no windows except the two in front, the interior was dark, but an array of oil lamps lit the long front room. Wooden planks for walls, floor, and the bowed ceiling, with curved beams arching overhead like ribs.
Rick had to stoop to keep from getting clocked by those beams.
“Give me a ring and call me Bilbo,” he said, looking around. “Oil lamps? What’s the generator for then?”
“I have other uses for its current.”
“With all those plants out there,” Laura said, taking it all in, “I have to assume this is Panacea Central. I expected something a little more elaborate.”
“We’re not centralized about anything,” Clotilde said. “This is just one of our farms.”
“That’s probably smart,” Laura said. “But why the Orkneys?”
“This is home. The original Orkadians were worshippers of the All-Mother. We lived and thrived here five thousand years ago. We raised the stones of Stenness for Her, and dedicated the Ness and the Ring of Brognar to Her. But the climate changed, became too cold for farming, and we had to move south. But now it’s warming again and here we are.”
“So are we,” Laura said. “And I guess you know why.”
Clotil
de nodded. “Yes. The panacea, as you call it.”
“What do you call it?”
“Ikhar. It’s from the old tongue.”
The term Ix’chel had used.
“Does it really work?”
“You examined the remains of the boy who had the arthritis…”
“You know?”
“I told you we’ve been watching. When one of our sylyk is murdered, we take notice. When two…”
“This panacea,” Laura shook her head. “I … I can’t grasp it.”
“From outsi-ide,” Rick singsonged in a low voice.
Laura ignored him. “Is it real? Tell me—please.”
“The ikhar is real.”
“But how does it work?”
Clotilde shook her head. “We do not know. We know only that it does.”
“What does it do?”
“It rights what’s wrong.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
It made sense to Rick, she knew, because he had an answer. But she could not accept that answer any more than she could wrap her mind around a cure-all.
“Does it have to make sense?” Clotilde said.
Yes, dammit!
“But that means if you had an endless supply you could live forever.”
The old woman shook her head. “It cures what is wrong at the moment. It resets your health to maximum.”
Sounds like a video game, she thought.
“But,” Clotilde was saying, “it would not prevent you from catching, say, malaria from a mosquito bite the very next day. Yes, you might live longer because you are no longer suffering from a particular malady, but aging is not a malady. It is a natural process.”
“It doesn’t lengthen telomeres, then?”
“I have no idea what you just said. I do know that your cells get tired and they stop functioning. The All-Mother sets a limit for you at conception. You cannot undo what the Goddess has planned.”
Laura realized this pagan was talking about genetic limitations on lifespan, something science was only beginning to understand, but which Clotilde was attributing to her deity.
She tried a new tack.
“Okay. Just say I accept all that. Why hide it from the world then?”
“Because that is the way the All-Mother wishes it to be.”
That’s not an answer! Laura wanted to shout, but bit it back. Not an answer to her, who didn’t believe in this All-Mother, but apparently all Clotilde needed to know.
“She doesn’t want you to share it with the world?”
“We do share it.”
“Barely. Only on a strictly limited basis.”
“Because that is the way—”
“—the All-Mother wants it. I get it.”
“I’m with the All-Mother,” Rick said.
Laura could only glare at him.
“I’m serious,” he went on. “Making it freely available to the world would be aiding and abetting.”
Now was Clotilde’s turn to look puzzled. “Aiding and abetting whom … or what?”
“Vast, cool and unsympathetic intelligences,” Laura said. She didn’t add as imaginary as your All-Mother, though she wanted to. “But let’s not get sidetracked here. I’m requesting a single dose to take back to the States.”
“To analyze it?”
“No, to give to a very sick man.”
“I do not think the All-Mother will object, but first we must deal with the members of 536 who are about to arrive.”
Dimly through the earthen roof and the stone front wall, she heard the rhythmic thrum of a helicopter.
Laura’s heart sank. “We led them here.”
“Well, we knew they were following us.” Rick didn’t seem surprised. “I was hoping we could get on and off before they caught up.”
“But the ocean was empty and the sky is all clouds. I thought—”
Rick poked a thumb skyward. “Eyes in the sky. You can’t hide these days.” He turned to Clotilde. “Any idea how many?”
“Three from 536,” she said, “plus the pilot.”
“How do you know this?”
“We are more than you would think. We have eyes on them. Please do not resist. They are heavily armed and I do not wish any bloodshed.”
“There will be bloodshed,” Rick said. “These guys leave dead bodies everywhere they go.”
Clotilde held out her hand. “Give me your knife, please.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Having it will only tempt you to use it. They will have guns and will outnumber you. You will die.” She fluttered her fingers. “Please.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled it from its sheath, gripped it by the blade, and passed it to her handle first.
“I hope I don’t regret this.”
“You must trust me to handle them,” she said, slipping the knife into a drawer. “The All-Mother has foreseen this. She has been guiding me and will continue to do so. Do what they tell you to do and all will be well. The All-Mother will see to it.”
Oh, well, Laura thought, that makes me feel so much better.
Outside, the thrum-thrum-thrum grew louder.
2
The pilot’s voice crackled in Nelson’s headphones. Even with the volume turned up to maximum, he could barely hear him over the noise of the helicopter’s engine and rotors.
“I can’t land!”
Nelson could see why. All that camouflage fabric and the poles that supported it would foul the rotors if they tried to put down. The fabric might fool the commercial satellites but it hadn’t fooled the Company’s or NSA’s recon birds. Bradsher had been able to follow the course of Hayden’s rental launch from hundreds of miles up—even through the fog.
“You’ll have to use the winch,” the pilot added.
The winch … this Huey was primarily used for rescue, so it had a heavy-duty winch installed on the right side of the cabin. Riding that down was not quite the last thing Nelson wanted to do, but very nearly. His head felt ready to explode and the insane noise of the copter only made things worse.
But he said, “Fine. Let’s just get on with it.”
“I’ll go first,” Bradsher said.
In less than two minutes he had the cabin door slid open, the winch arm extended, and himself in the harness. He swung out over the AGM-114 attached just below the hatch and made the short, twenty-foot descent look easy. He unslung his HK MP-5 and held it at ready as the winch rolled back up.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Nelson told the pilot. “Follow the plan we outlined.”
He nodded and gave a thumbs up. “Got it.”
Nelson descended next. Chayat, also armed with an MP-5, followed. As soon as the Israeli undid the harness, the copter roared away. It would hover off the south end of the island and await instructions.
Nelson praised the Lord for the relative peace and quiet as he slipped off his headset and stowed it in a pocket.
“Infrared scanning indicated some sort of habitat that way,” he said, pointing.
“I believe I see it already,” Chayat said.
Indeed … straight ahead an older woman stood in a doorway set in a stone wall, set itself in an earthen mound. She was beckoning to them.
“Come! I’ve been expecting you.”
“Be very careful,” Nelson said as he led the way forward. “Be ready to shoot on an instant’s notice. We don’t know how many are in there.”
The infrared had detected a generalized heat signature but, because of the insulation supplied by the thick layer of dirt over the structure, individual signatures were not appreciated.
Nelson stopped before the woman. He didn’t bother showing his credentials. What for? They carried no weight here.
“How many people besides you are present?”
“Two others. I believe you are familiar with them both, Brother Fife.”
The use of his name jolted him but he refused to acknowledge it.
He pointed to the o
pen doorway behind her. “Lead on.”
He stood aside and let Bradsher and Chayat follow her with their assault weapons ready, then stepped in behind them.
Dr. Fanning and Hayden stood a dozen feet back from the door, both sets of hands in plain sight.
“Fife?” Hayden said. “Jesus Christ! You’re behind this?”
Nelson pointed to him. “Pat him down and cuff him. Take no chances with him.”
The only reason Nelson did not have Bradsher and Chayat drag Hayden outside and terminate him immediately was because that would inject panic and fear and anger into whatever followed. Much easier to have a semi-civil conversation-interrogation, learn what he could, then start adding to the body count.
Wisely, Hayden offered no resistance. Chayat kept the muzzle of his weapon pressed under the ex-agent’s chin while Bradsher searched him and then cuffed his hands behind his back.
“Look!” Bradsher said, his expression fierce as he held up a handful of zip ties. “These are what he used on Miguel.” He leaned into Hayden’s face. “I can’t wait till I have a little one-on-one time with you.”
“Gee, that’s just what your mother said the last time I saw her.”
Bradsher reddened and punched him in the face, rocking his head back.
Hayden shook it off and said, “Your mother punches harder than that.”
Bradsher cocked a fist, but before he could throw another punch, Nelson said, “Step away from him. Now.”
Bradsher reluctantly complied.
Nelson couldn’t lecture Bradsher now, but couldn’t he see that Hayden’s childish remarks had succeeded in getting him riled? That had been the whole purpose: Emotionally riled people make mistakes.
“I know what you were doing,” Nelson said, stepping before Hayden and unbuttoning his own shirt. “If you think you can turn the tables on me, think again. I am always one step ahead of you.”
“Like when you framed me for selling intel to the Israelis?”
How did he figure that? Nelson thought. No matter.
“Someone sold it. I still don’t know who, but no matter. Someone needed to be blamed. The Company was better off without you so…” He shrugged.
Hayden mimicked his shrug. “I was ready to get out anyway. The accusations were the convincer. It all worked out, so no hard feelings.”