The first man slowed. ‘Not yet.’
‘I definitely saw footprints. Try down the hill.’
‘No,’ said someone else. Nina recognised the voice: Simeon. ‘Maintain spacing. If you spread out too far or bunch up, we could miss her.’ The Witness came into view, his rough clothing instantly recognisable. He stopped to gaze into the trees ahead, his back to her.
More people passed, some of them panting. Not all Cross’s followers were super-fit ex-military or CIA, it seemed. ‘Are you sure she came this way?’ someone gasped.
Simeon turned towards the unseen speaker. Even though he was not looking directly at Nina, merely seeing his eyes filled her with terror. The slightest movement at the edge of his vision could draw his attention . . .
‘I’m sure,’ he replied, glowering at the unseen man – then setting off again. ‘Okay, remember she’s pregnant!’ he called as he ran. ‘She’ll get tired long before we do!’
He disappeared into the trees. More figures in white flitted between the palms, then were lost to sight deeper in the jungle.
Nina let out an exhausted breath. She waited for a minute to be sure her pursuers had moved away before hesitantly lowering the frond and emerging.
No voices, no flickers of white clothing amongst the trees. As far as she could tell, the hunters had gone.
How long before they came back, she couldn’t guess. All she could do was keep going. She regained her breath, then resumed her ascent.
It did not take long to reach the summit. The trees thinned out, the sun’s position high above helping her get her bearings. She finally cleared the undergrowth, looking west to see . . .
‘No!’ she gasped, heart sinking in despair.
She was looking at Antigua – in the distance. Between the mainland’s coast and the jungle below was a stretch of open ocean, the Atlantic’s winds kicking up churning whitecaps. The two shores were well over a mile apart, far beyond her ability to swim. She had escaped one prison only to find that it was nested within another.
Nina closed her eyes as the hopelessness of the situation rose to swallow her . . . then snapped them open again. ‘No,’ she said again, this time with determination. ‘Not happening.’ She had come this far; no way was she giving up now.
She turned, taking in the entirety of the island. It was an elongated rough triangle, about a mile in length. Its westernmost tip pointed towards the mainland; the Mission, the church spire rising above the trees, was near the south-eastern corner. Nothing was visible beyond it except the empty Atlantic. Trapped . . .
Wait, she told herself. There had to be some way on and off the island other than by helicopter; it would be insanely expensive to ship everything by air. That meant boats. The shoreline at the enclave itself was a wave-pounded cliff, so nobody would be able to land there. They would need somewhere more sheltered . . .
There. A small cove south-west of the Mission, almost perfectly circular behind its narrow entrance – and visible within was what looked like a jetty. Any boats would be there.
She judged the distance. Not much more than a quarter of a mile. Even moving through the jungle it would not take long to reach – if she didn’t get caught.
No sign of any pursuers below. Resolute, Nina set off downhill. Occasionally she paused on hearing calls and shouts on the wind, but none were close by. She pressed on.
The terrain flattened out. She crossed faint paths through the woods – the Mission’s residents were not forced to stay within its boundaries, then – but still nobody was in sight. Crashing waves gradually became audible. She hurried through the undergrowth towards the sound, emerging at the edge of a low cliff overlooking the cove.
A pounding whump and whoosh to her right. Some quirk of geology was forcing incoming waves into the western corner of the little bay, where they hit a narrow ridge and surged upwards before erupting like a geyser. Given time, the sea would eventually gnaw entirely through the barrier to join up with the coastline on the far side, but for now the Atlantic was still dashing itself against a near-vertical wall rising ten feet above the frothing waters. Nina had read about a similar feature on the Antiguan mainland called Devil’s Bridge; this was less impressive, but both had been carved by the same almost metronomic blasts of spray.
The ragged spit arced out to form one side of the cove. The curving cliff on which she stood made up the other, a stony beach at its foot. The wooden jetty extended out from it; a boat was tied to its end.
She ran along the cliff until the slope to the beach became shallow enough to traverse, then scrambled down and headed for the jetty. The boat had an outboard motor; if she could start it, she should be able to reach the mainland in minutes—
‘Down there!’
Nina glanced back at the shout with renewed fear. Simeon and a couple of others were on the clifftop. They ran after her, Simeon leaping down to the shingle as his companions rounded the cove’s perimeter. There was an open-walled shed near a path that she guessed led to the Mission, a couple more boats inside. The cultists could pursue her, but they would have to carry their craft to the water, giving her a head start – if she could launch before being caught.
She hurried along the jetty. The bobbing boat was secured by two ropes. She unfurled the one at the prow, then ran back to the second at the stern – seeing Simeon sprinting across the beach towards her.
She struggled with the coils of wet rope. A knot snagged on the metal cleat. She tugged at it, for a moment unable to pull it free, then it popped loose. The final loops came away, and she leapt into the boat.
Simeon reached the jetty and pounded along it. Nina grabbed the outboard’s starter rope. The motor grumbled as she pulled, but didn’t turn over. ‘Come on!’ she cried, tugging again. ‘Come on!’ Another pull, Simeon’s feet banging on the planks as he sprinted at her—
The motor caught, coughing out blue smoke before fully turning over. Nina twisted the throttle on the tiller as far as it would go, and the boat surged out into the little bay.
She looked back – as Simeon made a flying leap from the jetty’s end, slamming down on to the stern beside the outboard.
The extra weight pitched the boat’s nose upwards. Legs dragging in the water, he clawed at the hull, trying to pull himself fully aboard.
Nina hit him in the face. ‘Get off my boat!’
The African American slipped backwards, dropping into the water up to his hips. He scrabbled to keep his grip as she drew back her arm to strike again—
Simeon grabbed the tiller and yanked it hard.
The sudden turn threw Nina against him. Before she could regain her balance, he clamped his left arm around her throat. ‘If I go in, you go in!’ he snarled. ‘Slow it down.’
She struggled, but his hold tightened, cutting off her air. ‘Slow down now,’ he ordered. ‘Or I’ll choke you out. You don’t wanna know what that might do to your baby.’
‘Son of a bitch . . .’ Nina croaked, but she had no choice except to comply. She reduced the throttle. The boat slowed and settled into the water.
Simeon levered himself aboard, releasing Nina, then pushing her away. ‘You’re lucky you’re pregnant,’ he told her, breathing heavily. ‘If you weren’t . . .’
He left the threat unspoken, but it was enough to send a chill through her. She hunched up in one of the front seats, defeated, as Simeon brought the boat back towards shore.
18
Cross was waiting when Simeon brought Nina back to the Mission: not in the control room, but in the church, glaring down at her from the pulpit. The light shining through the stained-glass windows cast a malevolent red tint over his face. ‘Did you really think you could escape, Dr Wilde?’ he asked. ‘There are cameras all around the island, not just at the Mission – we saw you as soon as you came out into the open.’
‘Yeah, I should have guessed,’ was Nina’s sullen reply. ‘A control freak like you wouldn’t stop at watching people in the bathroom.’
‘So what do w
e do with her?’ demanded Simeon.
‘She should be punished,’ added Anna. Norvin, the skin around his eyes a blotchy red, nodded in agreement.
Dalton, sitting in the front row of pews, spoke up. ‘As much as I’d like to see her suffer, we need her. Even if we get the angel from her thug of a husband, she still has to find the last one.’
Anna gave him a cold look. ‘If you hadn’t insisted on getting revenge on them, we could have paid another archaeologist. Chase being at the museum in Berlin proves that someone else could have worked it out.’
The ex-president glowered at her, displeased that anyone would challenge him, but was interrupted by Nina before he could reply. ‘The Altar of Zeus was the easiest to connect to what John wrote in Revelation,’ she said. ‘Finding the one in the catacombs in Rome was much harder – and there was a hell of a lot of luck involved as well.’
Simeon’s unfriendly gaze turned upon her. ‘I knew she was sandbagging us. If she’d told us about Berlin first, we would have gotten the angel without our entire team being wiped out!’
‘You think the statue in Berlin would have been sitting on a desk waiting for you if Eddie hadn’t gone there?’ she countered. ‘Someone with a great deal of knowledge of the altar found it for him, and you don’t get that by waving guns around.’
Cross raised a hand to silence the argument. ‘Her husband’s on the way with the angel now.’
‘You’re sure?’ asked Dalton.
‘I checked with a contact of mine at Langley. He left Berlin on a United Nations flight this morning; it lands at VC Bird this afternoon.’ He looked to his right-hand man. ‘We’ll be there to meet him – with backup.’
‘If you hurt him, I’ll never cooperate with you,’ said Nina.
‘That’s up to him,’ Cross replied. ‘But I get the feeling Mr Chase isn’t the type to give up without a fight.’
‘You’re goddamn right about that,’ muttered Dalton.
‘If he fights us, he dies,’ Simeon said flatly.
Again Cross waved for silence. ‘I’m not worried about the third angel. It’s the fourth one that concerns me – the one hidden in the Place in the Wilderness. We need to find it, soon.’
‘Why?’ Nina demanded. ‘Are you on a timetable?’
He gave her a patronising shake of the head. ‘You’ve read Revelation, but you haven’t taken it in. So many things in it happen according to a schedule set by God.’
‘Yeah, I remember.’ She indicated the Fishers. ‘How long have your Witnesses been prophesying? They only get one thousand, two hundred and sixty days of walking around in sackcloth before people get fed up of their yammering and kill them.’
‘And then they are reborn.’ Cross lifted his head, looking up not at the ceiling but at the heavens beyond. ‘After that . . . the seventh angel shall sound.’
Nina could only respond with sarcasm. ‘And God lets you in on all his secrets.’ She turned to Dalton. ‘And you get cheered back into the White House, and Charlie Brown finally kicks that football. I know which I think’s most likely to happen. Hint: it involves a cartoon kid with a big head.’
‘There’s something else you know, isn’t there, Dr Wilde?’ said Cross. The change in his tone made her suddenly uneasy; he sounded extremely confident. ‘The location of the last angel.’ His pale eyes fixed on to hers, as if drilling into her soul for the truth.
‘There’s nothing to find,’ she replied, trying to conceal her nervousness. ‘Even if you’re right about it being in the Place in the Wilderness – which you might well be, considering you’re two for two so far – the clues are too vague to pin down. You could be looking at practically anywhere in the Middle East, from Egypt all the way over to Iraq.’
‘But your research suggests that you’ve narrowed it down to the route of the Exodus.’
Nina felt even more unsettled. Everything about Cross’s attitude implied that he somehow knew about her own personal revelation before the escape attempt. But that was impossible. Her notes, her internet usage, even the pages of the reference books she had checked – none could have given it away. ‘That was just a possibility, and it’s not as if I’m the only person to have thought of it.’
Cross stared down at the redhead for a moment, then descended from the pulpit to stand in front of her. ‘Then explain why, at ten thirteen this morning, you had a sudden surge of adrenalin.’
She looked back in confusion. ‘I . . . what?’
‘Those aren’t just video cameras in your house. We monitor your heartbeat, respiration, temperature, perspiration, even involuntary eye response, all remotely. It’s the same gear the CIA uses. I can track every tiny physical fluctuation of your body and know what you’re feeling even before you’re consciously aware of it.’ An unpleasant smile, then he took a single step closer. Nina tried to back away, but Norvin moved to block her. ‘Now. The response you had was exactly consistent with that of somebody who’s just made a great discovery . . . and then immediately tried to hide it.’
‘The CIA’s been doing this for a long time,’ Dalton chipped in. ‘They really can tell what you’re thinking.’
‘It’s not mind-reading,’ continued Cross, ‘not yet. But it’s the next best thing. So, what did you find?’
‘I didn’t find anything,’ Nina insisted.
He loomed closer, their faces just a few inches apart, then abruptly drew away to walk across the church. ‘My mission in life has always been about seeking the truth, Dr Wilde. The truth of individuals, of nations, of God. So I find it almost personally offensive when someone tries to keep that truth from me. Don’t insult me by trying to deny it,’ he snapped as she opened her mouth to do just that. ‘Even if you don’t know exactly where the angel is, you know which area to search.’ He turned to face her. ‘And now you’re going to tell me.’
‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know.’
He came back towards her, eyes narrowing to threatening slits. ‘But you do know. So I’m going to give you a very simple choice. Either you tell me . . .’ His right hand slipped inside his robes – and drew a slim steel dagger. ‘Or I’ll kill your baby.’
The room closed in around Nina as he held up the knife. She looked to the others, but found no support. Only Dalton was anything other than stone-faced, the former president clearly shocked. ‘You – you wouldn’t,’ she gasped.
‘I will if I have to,’ he told her, advancing slowly. She tried to flee, but Norvin grabbed her. ‘I don’t want to. I consider the murder of the unborn a sin against the Lord. But the mission God has given me is more important than one innocent life. I’ll make it quick and painless for the child. One stab will do it. You won’t need more than minor treatment to survive.’
‘You’re insane!’ Nina cried, desperately trying to pull free of Norvin’s hold. ‘You’re out of your fucking mind! Dalton – Mr President!’ she wailed. ‘You can’t possibly agree with this!’
Dalton stared back, for once at a loss for words. ‘I – this shouldn’t, but . . .’ he stammered, before jumping to his feet. ‘For God’s sake, Nina! Tell him!’
Cross stopped in front of her. He lowered the dagger towards her belly—
‘All right!’ she screamed. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you! Just don’t hurt my baby, please!’
He blinked, almost as if emerging from a trance, then retreated and passed the knife to Simeon. ‘I’m glad you did that, Dr Wilde.’
‘For God’s sake, Ezekiel!’ said Dalton, appalled.
‘I’m not proud of myself, but it had to be done,’ Cross told him. He looked back at the trembling Nina. ‘Now. Where is the fourth angel?’
She still wanted to resist, but knew he had no compunctions about carrying out his threat. ‘The woman . . .’ she croaked, mouth bone-dry. She struggled to draw saliva, then spoke again. ‘From Revelation – the woman with the moon under her feet . . .’
‘Chapter twelve, verse one,’ said Cross, nodding. ‘“And there appeared a great won
der in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.”’
‘I realised what the part about the moon is referring to. The Wilderness of Sin.’
‘Sin?’ Dalton echoed. He had returned to his seat, visibly disturbed by what had just happened. The former politician had been more than willing to order the use of violence by others, but the prospect of actually witnessing it in person had shaken him.
‘A region the Israelites passed through during the Exodus,’ Cross told him.
‘It’s nothing to do with sinfulness,’ continued Nina. ‘Sin was the name of a Semitic deity – one of the gods worshipped by the ancient Jews before they became monotheistic followers of Yahweh. That’s God, if you didn’t know.’
‘Yes, I know. I’m not completely ignorant,’ Dalton growled.
‘Sin was a moon god; what was written in Revelation is sometimes interpreted as a reference to the other gods being trampled underfoot as Yahweh became dominant, but it could literally mean walking over the desert named after him. Now, there’s also a mention of this woman – the Woman of the Apocalypse, as she’s known – going to a place prepared by God.’
‘“And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God”,’ said Cross.
‘Yeah. But I thought about what that might actually mean. It could be that God picked a spot and made it safe for her to stay. Or, more likely, that it was already an important religious site, which at some earlier point had been prepared, sanctified, whatever. Somewhere the Israelites had set up camp during the Exodus. I think that’s what the reference to the twelve stars means – the twelve wells they found as they travelled across the desert.’
The cult leader nodded. ‘That’s a fairly common interpretation.’
‘So the angel is in some sort of temple in this Wilderness of Sin?’ asked Dalton. ‘How hard will that be to find?’
Cross gave him a patronising smile. ‘Quite hard, Mr President. Nobody actually knows where the Wilderness of Sin is.’