She had asked to accompany them into the Hypogeum and he had refused — what choice did he have? Her blindness was a liability, but it was her refusal to accede to his leadership — the very thing she had labored to establish — that had really been the deciding factor.
“Atash! Just don’t kill them. Not yet.”
He did not ask her to explain. He knew she would not, and besides, he had no intention of complying. Jade Ihara had to die. Yet, he could not help but wonder why she was so insistent about this matter. In Syracuse, she had argued in favor of keeping Jade alive so that they might interrogate her about her next destination, but clearly, Gabrielle already knew where Jade would go next, which meant Jade had no information that Gabrielle did not already possess.
Perhaps I should be interrogating her, Shah thought, and did not immediately dismiss the idea. She was nothing to him now.
Her refusal to tell him what was really going on was unacceptable. Nor would he tolerate her making demands of him in front of his chosen warriors. He had left her behind, blind and helpless, unable to follow, unable to do anything.
Shah motioned for the others to put their guns away. He could feel the outline of his own pistol, a gift from one of his men, pressing against the small of his back. He had almost refused the offer. He knew nothing about guns aside from what he had seen in movies, most of which was probably wrong. In fact, he despised guns. As far as he was concerned, the obsession with firearms was one of America’s greatest cultural failures, second only to rampant ethnocentrism. But since he could not very well lead men into battle without a weapon of his own, he had accepted the weapon, and after making sure that it would not accidentally discharge, he had tucked it in his belt where he intended to let it remain. The others were better suited to violence, eager for it even. He would merely direct and observe, as was proper for a general.
He pushed through the door and into the dark interior beyond. “Hello? Anyone here?”
He had only Gabrielle’s assurance that Jade was there, in the Hypogeum, and if that information was wrong, the last thing he needed was to be involved in a random shootout that failed to accomplish its sole objective. Better to risk giving up the element of surprise than unnecessary bloodshed.
There no response however. The building appeared to be deserted. He waved the men inside and turned on the flashlight built into his phone, cupping his hand over it so that only a dim glow was visible.
“Spread out,” he whispered. “Search the area but do not shoot unless you absolutely have to.”
Their grunts of acknowledgement were not reassuring, but it was too late to call the attack off now. He only hoped the building was as empty as it looked. With luck, they had arrived ahead of their target and would be able to lie in wait.
If she’s even coming, Shah thought, and wondered again where Gabrielle had gotten her information.
He found the entrance to the subterranean complex and waited there for the men to finish their sweep. One by one, they joined him to confirm that they were alone in the museum. He directed one man to stand watch at the front door, and then led the way into the ancient temple.
Despite his best efforts at stealth, the sound of his footfalls on the metal steps sounded like the ringing of an enormous gong. Gabrielle would have told him he was imagining it. For all his anger, he felt her absence acutely. He needed her.
Why was she being so obstinate? What secret was so important that she refused to trust him, after everything they had been through?
He stopped, turned off his light and searched the darkness for several seconds, then resumed moving. He continued in this fashion until, at the threshold of the second level, he heard something, a strange hum that, when he stood perfectly still, made him feel like he was sliding across the floor. Intuitively, he grasped that Jade was connected to whatever was causing this effect.
Stealth was unnecessary now. The hum was almost painfully loud, an assault on the senses that left him feeling nauseated. The urge to turn away, to run and never look back, was nearly overwhelming.
This is a trap. Gabrielle sent us here to die.
He knew it wasn’t true, but the random thought took root like a dandelion seed.
The bitch. I’ll kill her myself.
“Keep going,” he rasped, not looking back to see if the others were still with him. As he pushed deeper into the Hypogeum, the feeling began to abate, transforming from panic to something more like euphoria, but his resolve remained unchanged.
“I’ll kill her myself,” he whispered gleefully, squeezing the grip of the pistol that had somehow found its way into his hand. He didn’t know if he was referring to Jade Ihara or Gabrielle Greene. Maybe both.
Yes. Definitely both.
He spied light emanating from one of the carved doorways, rushed toward it with his gun arm extended.
He saw two figures standing in the chamber beyond. The light was behind them, revealing only silhouettes, a man and a woman, but he knew that the pair could only be Jade and her companion, the man she had been with at the Arkimedeion. Gabrielle never mentioned him, and only now did he wonder at that omission. Did she know who he was?
It did not matter. Whomever he was, he would be dead in a few seconds.
Just like Jade Ihara.
Shah stretched his gun arm out and stared down the length of the barrel, lined the iron sights up on Jade’s head, and pulled the trigger.
The vortex drew Jade up into the darkness, and then suddenly she was…somewhere else.
Forget ghost hallucinations, she thought. This was a full-on out-of-body experience.
In an instant, she was transported from the Hypogeum and flying through the night sky above Malta, rising…rising…higher and higher into the sky.
It felt like a dream. In fact, she was certain that was exactly what it was. A waking dream. The infrasound frequency had somehow thrown her into REM sleep.
She wondered if Archimedes had experienced something like this. With his genius, the vision had probably been even more fantastic — an Alice in Wonderland-like journey through the landscape of mathematics. Maybe he had seen the true value of pi or the square root of two.
Strangely however, there was nothing familiar about the imagery in this dream. Despite her best efforts to take control, she continued rising skyward, as if strapped to a rocket. Malta was just a dark spot in a darker sea. She could make out the outline of Sicily and the toe of the Italian peninsula. She wondered at how high she was, in both respects. Ten miles up? A hundred?
Am I in outer space?
She tried to look up, into the emptiness of the sky, but even this small measure of control was denied her. This was not so much a dream as a mind movie, but where was it coming from?
All of the Mediterranean was visible to her now, Europe and North Africa, the curvature of the earth falling away in every direction, and then something changed. She was no longer rising, but moving laterally above the globe as it rolled relentlessly beneath her. It was nothing she had not seen before on television or in computer generated images of the earth as seen from orbit, but the detail of the landscape was astonishing. Jade had never really paid close attention, but evidently her subconscious had recorded every minor knob of rock jutting from the sea, every fjord and mountain summit.
The Iberian Peninsula passed beneath her, and then the Strait of Gibraltar. The great gray expanse of the Atlantic crawled beneath her and then something like a great fiery phoenix rose into view above the Western horizon.