“You kidnap them, bring them here and then watch what they do. Learn everything about them. Mannerisms. Tastes. Am I in the ballpark? You doubled me, right? When I showed up asking the wrong questions, you were worried that it might all start to unravel, so you brought me here to pump me for information, while you got my double ready to head back to the real world and make sure the investigation goes nowhere. Is that about right?” He turned and scanned the woods at their back. “Is he out there? The guy you got to double me? Hey. Come on out. Let’s talk.”
“You are a remarkable man, Professor Chapman,” Carrera said, without a trace of sarcasm. “Mimicking your intellect may be the most challenging part of replacing you.”
She smiled and Professor was shocked to see that she no longer looked like the First Officer of Flight 815. It was as if voicing his revelation had triggered a sympathetic physical reaction in her, stripping away the veil of illusion. She still bore a passing resemblance to Carrera, but there were discernible differences. She reached up with her left hand and peeled back her right eyelid. A finger sweep removed an opaque contact lens, revealing her natural, jet black iris.
“I’m afraid you’ve already missed your replacement. He left twelve hours ago to rejoin your girlfriend, Jade Ihara.” She removed the lens from the other eye, and flicked it away like a nuisance insect. “You see, we knew who you really were before you came looking for Flight 815.”
Professor snapped his fingers. “Rafi. You doubled him, used him to kill Roche so that it would look like Muslim extremists. You had the real Rafi in that car. The double triggered that explosion to cover his tracks and make it look like Rafi killed himself.”
“An opportune scapegoat. The replacement was a hasty affair, but then it was never meant to stand up to close scrutiny.”
He narrowed his gaze at her. “So who are you really working for? The Russians? Chinese? No, this is something else.” He snapped his fingers. “Some kind of international crime syndicate, right? That’s why you wanted to pin this on Muslims. You get rid of that nuisance Roche, and stir up a little profitable international unrest in the bargain. Win-win.”
“Unfortunately, you and Dr. Ihara refused to just let it alone.”
It was the second time Carrera had mentioned Jade by name. A chill ran down Professor’s spine. “Jade isn’t going to find anything. Roche was barking up the wrong tree. You know it as well as I do. Leave her alone. She’s no threat to you.”
Carrera smiled again, but there was no humor in her cold black eyes. She waved to someone in the woods. Professor’s doppleganger might not have been lurking there, but several figures wearing mesh head coverings and gray fatigues emerged and began closing in around him.
“You are intelligent,” she said, “but believe me when I say that you have no idea what’s really going on.”
TWENTY
Jade’s first impulse was to deny. It was a crazy idea. There weren’t any Changelings except in Roche’s delusional brain…and he’s dead now, isn’t he… so Professor couldn’t possibly be one. That this perfectly rational argument, which she so desperately wanted to believe, was an even less convincing possibility, went way beyond unsettling. It terrified her.
If that’s not really Professor, then where is he? Is he… No, I won’t even think that.
But her refusal to frame the thought did not keep her dread at bay. This impostor was wearing Professor’s clothes, his watch, even his ridiculous fedora.
He’s a hostage. That’s what happened. He figured out what they were up to, but they caught him, and sent this guy in his place.
They who? The Changelings? She glanced over at the startlingly familiar visage. Who else?
“Find anything down there?” she asked. Her voice caught in her throat, so the words came out like a coughing fit.
“You okay, babe?”
“Yeah,” she croaked. She didn’t need any more proof than that. Professor — the real Professor — would never, ever call her ‘babe.’ “You know how I get around dust.”
He threw her a sidelong glance as if trying to decide if she was testing him, then returned his attention to the road in front of them. “It was a dead-end. Looks like you’ve been busy though.”
Jade barely heard him. She could barely hear herself think, a condition that had nothing to do with the jet engine loud blast of sound she’d experienced in the Oracle Room.
Changelings are real. The Vault is real. Professor is…not here.
What the hell am I supposed to do?
Kellogg, perhaps sensing the awkward silence, jumped in. “Good thing you showed up when you did. Those Arabs nearly had our guts for garters.”
“Not Arabs,” Professor—
Not Professor!
— corrected. “At least not all of them. The guy leading them is Atash Shah, co-founder of the Crescent Defense League. He’s actually Iranian.” His eyes found Jade again. “That’s the group Rafi was working with.”
She blinked at him, fighting the urge to ask how he had known to go to the Hypogeum. She had pulled her SIM card in Syracuse, before Paolo ever mentioned Malta, and had not tried to contact him since. As if sensing her anxiety over this discrepancy, Not-Professor added, “That’s how I found you actually. I followed him and he went right to you.”
“Makes sense,” she murmured. Except it did not explain how Shah had tracked her in the first place. Paolo? No, that couldn’t be right.
Kellogg?
She bit her lip to keep from letting out a gasp of dismay. Kellogg was working with Shah… or he was a Changeling, too. Were the two factions working together?
She pressed her fingertips to the bridge of her nose, as if to squeeze the paranoia out of her brain. There was a conspiracy at work, but if she let her imagination run wild, she would be virtually paralyzed, unable to defend herself or stop them.
“From what I can gather,” Not-Professor went on, “he thinks that Roche put you on the trail of some historical evidence to prove that the Prophet Muhammad was fictional.”
Kellogg leaned through the space between the car seats and gave her a playful slug in the arm. “What did I tell you? Mr. Roche was right about Phantom Time.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far,” the impostor said. Then after a pause, he added, “Unless you found something you haven’t told me about. Did you?”
Kellogg drew back suddenly as if realizing he had spoken out of turn. “I’ll…aah, let Jade tell you. I’m not actually quite sure what to make of it.”
The Changelings are using Shah as a stalking horse. That has to be it. They sicced him on Roche…
Suddenly she understood where it had begun. Rafi, the real Rafi, had been replaced by a Changeling, in order to pin the blame for Roche’s murder on the Crescent Defense League, and by extension, the Islamic religion. No doubt, a similar fate had been planned for her.
But Kellogg has been helping me. Do the Changelings want me to find the vault for them? Or am I wrong about him?