“Looks like they’re running late,” he said.
“What time is it?”
“What does it matter? It’ll take a half hour to load all those cars.”
“Please.”
“It’s six fifteen.”
Tisa ticked off on her fingers as she made a mental calculation. She let out a relieved breath. “We’ll be okay as long as we’re not too late shoving off.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Proof, dear doctor. Your proof.”
Tisa had to pay the cabbie because last night Mercer had given the hundred dollars’ worth of drachmas to the couple that ran the restaurant as appreciation for the sumptuous meal.
“So where are we going?” he asked as they joined the line of people at the amidships passenger ramp loading.
“I think the ferry’s next port of call is Crete, but I’m not sure.”
The vague answer made little sense to Mercer. “You don’t know where this proof of yours is?”
“Oh, it’s right here on Santorini, but the best way to see it is from a distance.”
On board, Mercer and Tisa stashed their meager luggage in one of the coin-operated storage bins outside a shabby middeck cafeteria. Tisa kept a single bag and Mercer asked to stash his pistol in it so he didn’t have to wear his sports coat. The day had been a hot one and inside the ship the press of humanity already made sweat ooze from his pores.
Tisa bought several bottled waters in the cafeteria and said enigmatically, “We might need them later.”
They climbed to the top deck and found a space at the ship’s rail shaded by one of the smoke-darkened funnels. Twenty minutes later the ferry’s horn gave a great mournful blast as the vehicle door was secured and lines cast off. She eased from her slip with ponderous dignity, and as soon as she felt waves broadside she started to roll like an overweight woman on uneven pavement. Just a few dozen yards from the black cliffs that reflected the last of the day’s heat like mirrors, the air was much cooler, freshened by the trade winds blowing past the island.
Tisa set her bag at her feet and rummaged through it until she found what she wanted. She handed the bundle to Mercer. It was a book wrapped in stiff waterproofed canvas. The volume was leather bound and ancient; the binding crackled as he opened it.
“You are the first person outside the Order to ever see one of our chronicles.” She gazed at the book with reverence.
“What is this?” Mercer scanned a brittle parchment page but couldn’t read the words, or even recognize the language.
“For almost two hundred years the monks and villagers from Rinpoche-La and later others who became part of us have left the mountain redoubt in order to verify the predictions made about the earth’s chi forces. Each person carried a journal like this to write observations about the event.”
The words “event” and “predictions” sent a chill down Mercer’s spine as he finally understood what Tisa had been saying all along. “You’re talking about earthquakes?”
“Yes,” she said somberly, “and volcanic eruptions too.”
“No one can predict earthquakes.” Mercer shook his head. “It’s impossible.”
“Which is why I didn’t tell you the truth that night in Las Vegas. You would have thought me more insane than I probably seemed. Admit it. Had I said we could predict earthquakes you never would have agreed to meet me. I had to get you here so I could show you proof.”
“This book isn’t proof, Tisa.”
“What time is it?”
“Quarter of seven.” And then he got it, what Tisa meant by proof. He felt breathless. “My God, we’re here to watch an earthquake.”
“According to the original journal entry it should have hit the island two days ago at noon. I said last night that ever since the Tunguska blast the oracle’s predictions have been off. The new calculations say it should hit in about twenty minutes.” She took the book back from him and opened to one of the latter pages. She handed it back. Mercer couldn’t read the faded script so he concentrated on the numbers written along the side of the page. One he saw was the date two days past and others he recognized as longitude and latitude coordinates. Tisa then gave him a modern tourist map. Santorini was circled and he saw that the coordinates matched exactly.
“When was this written?” Mercer whispered, still unable to fully grasp the implications.
“In 1850,” she answered. “This particular chronicle is of seismic activity around the Mediterranean. There are others for the other parts of the planet. If you’d like I can show you where it mentions the Izmit, Turkey, quake that hit in 1999 and killed so many, or the cycles of Mount Etna’s eruptions.”
“You knew about these events before they happened?”
She nodded. “The journals are kept by a council of archivists and were only given to watchers a short time before an eruption or earthquake, just long enough for them to get there so they could report their findings. Over the past twenty years, as the media has become globalized and the Internet has grown, the council has stopped sending watchers because news reaches Rinpoche-La on its own.
“We do have groups around the world, members who don’t know the full scope of our prognostication. They provide details if we need them to help us correct the time differences that cropped up in the prophecy since 1908.”
“Jesus, Tisa, if an earthquake is about to strike the island we have to warn people, we can’t let them die.”
Mercer launched himself from the railing. Tisa had to race to grab his arm before he descended down to the lower deck to find someone to take him to the captain. “Relax. The oracle says the quake is a small one. I would never put you in danger.”
“How small?” he asked dubiously.
“Just enough to rattle some windows and panic a few cats.” She smiled.
“But the others, like the one that struck Turkey? Why didn’t you send out a warning? My God, you could have saved thousands of lives.”
She shook her head. “It is forbidden. I told you, only the archivists have access to the chronicles and only they understand how the oracle works. Because watchers aren’t really needed anymore, we never learn what the oracle had said until after it happens. We then verify the prophecy in order to determine if our efforts to correct the chi imbalance have had an effect. I’m not supposed to have this book,” she admitted in a soft, remorseful voice. “I stole it from the archive so I could convince you.”
She suddenly became angry. “This is what has caused the schism within the Order. Some of us feel that it is our duty to humanity to tell the world what we know. Others, like those that tried to kill you at the Luxor, take a harder line and want to remain in the shadows. They don’t even believe we should actively try to correct the growing chi disparity.”
“That’s how you knew about the experiment,” Mercer said, more to himself than her. “Those quakes that hit in Washington and near Reno hadn’t been predicted, had they? They were triggered somehow by Dr. Marie’s experiment.”
“After they happened, it sent the archivists into a panic because the chronicle said there wouldn’t be any activity in those areas for many months. This was something far beyond the previous imbalances we’d detected before. Something severe had occurred. Something we had never seen before. They dispatched several teams to the United States to discover the cause. Some felt certain that the oracle was no longer reliable.”
“What is the oracle?”
“I’ve only seen it once, when I was a child, but—”
The rumble came from all around them, a vibration that built in their bodies before it became a sound that reached their ears. It was low on the register, a bass that struck in a continuous wave. Several passengers lining the rail to watch the island in the twilight looked at each other in confusion. The moment stretched. A woman screamed as the sea puckered under the seismic onslaught of a mild earthquake. A few rocks dislodged from the massif ringing the caldera and tumbled to the water. The splashes looked like torpedo strikes against the base of the bluffs. Flocks of birds took wing all over Santorini and seemed to further darken the sky.