At the other end of the table was Major Quinn, a leftover from the days of Majestic, the man who knew the inner workings of Area 51 and was able to get what was needed from the US government. Or had been able, as it now appeared that Area 51 was being cut out of the chain of operations. He was a small man, with thick-lensed glasses perched on a thin nose.
“My friends,” Yakov began.
Turcotte didn’t particularly want to hear whatever it was the Russian had to say. He was watching Duncan, who seemed to be slowly coming to her senses.
“My friends,” Yakov repeated as he turned to the others at the table. “We must look at the larger threats.”
“And what can we do about them?” Turcotte snapped. He was bone-tired. Since uncovering the secret of Area 51 he had been fighting the aliens and their minions almost nonstop. For every step forward, every victory gained, there seemed to be two steps back and more secrets uncovered and more defeats. They had learned much but Turcotte felt there was a level of all of this that they had yet to penetrate. They didn’t know why the civil war among the Airlia had started millennia before, nor what each side’s true agenda was, although there was little doubt neither side cared how many humans died in the course of their battles. Beyond that, they didn’t even know why the Airlia had come to Earth so many years earlier or what the civil war had been about. Mualama steepled his fingers. “We have been approaching this incorrectly. This is a war. And war is all about power.”
Turcotte, who had been practicing the art of war his entire adult life, stared at the archaeologist. “And?”
“We must search for the source of our enemies’ power,” Mualama said. “And that is?” Turcotte prompted.
“We must find and control the Master Guardian,” Mualama said. “If we do that, we can control the Easter Island — and most likely the Qian-Ling — guardians. Maybe even the guardian at Cydonia on Mars.”
Turcotte rubbed his eyes for a second. “Now you say we need the Master Guardian but yesterday you said we needed the Grail.”
“We did need the Grail,” Mualama said. “But we don’t have it. Aspasia’s Shadow has it and it is now under the shield at Easter Island. The Grail is indeed powerful, as it holds the secret of eternal life. However, most of Aspasia’s Shadow’s power comes out of the Easter Island guardian. The guardian controls the shield wall and the nanovirus he has infected his forces with. It is also the way he communicates with his forces. It is the key to his power.”
“We don’t have the Master Guardian either,” Turcotte said. “We don’t even know where it is.”
“Burton’s manuscript described Watcher records saying it was removed from the top of the Great Pyramid thousands of years ago,” Mualama said.
“And taken where?” Turcotte asked.
“The Watchers—” Mualama began, then paused. “Go on,” Yakov urged him.
“Yes,” Turcotte said, spinning in his seat toward the African archaeologist. “Tell us what else you’ve been lying to us about.”
“Not lying,” Mualama said. “It just did not come up.”
“So we have to ask you specific questions to get you to help us?” Turcotte asked. He slowly got to his feet and approached the archaeologist. He leaned close to Mualama. “Where is the Master Guardian?”
“It is with the mothership,” Mualama said.
“The mothership was destroyed,” Turcotte said, turning back to his chair and dismissing Mualama. “It’s floating dead in orbit.”
“Aspasia’s mothership is floating dead in orbit. How do you think Artad came to this planet?” Mualama asked in a level tone.
That caused Turcotte to pause for a moment. “There’s another mothership?”
Lisa Duncan spoke up. “It makes sense. Remember we found the power sphere for an interstellar drive hidden in a cavern in Ethiopia, yet the mothership here had one already in place.”
Turcotte slowly sat down and nodded. “The sphere we found came from China.” “And Artad is in China,” Duncan said.
“But we didn’t see a mothership in Qian-Ling,” Che Lu said.
“It might be in the lowest level,” Turcotte said, but he doubted it even as he spoke. The mothership was simply too large to be hidden there, even given how big the mountain tomb of Qian-Ling was.
Quinn spoke up. “The Nazi records you recovered from the Soviet archives indicated that they were searching for an ark — not the Ark of the Covenant, but Noah’s Ark. It would make sense that a mothership would be called such a thing. Perhaps survivors from Atlantis were put aboard it? That would explain the legend of the Ark.”
“But the Nazis didn’t find it,” Turcotte noted.
“We haven’t gone through all the records,” Quinn said. “Do it,” Turcotte ordered.
“Nor have I translated all of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s manuscript,” Mualama added. “He also was interested in the legend of Noah’s Ark.”
“And I haven’t pinpointed all the locations that Professor Nabinger translated,” Che Lu said.
Turcotte rubbed his forehead. Despite all they had learned, they were still far behind the information curve. The truth of the present hinged on knowing the truth about the past and that was still largely unknown. But they did have more than they had started with. Did they have the time to process it all? he wondered.
“And if we don’t find and gain control of the Master Guardian?” he threw out. Quinn spoke up. “The military is marshaling a fleet in Hawaii. It’s our last line of defense in the Pacific. They are considering attacking Easter Island.” “They won’t be able to break the shield wall,” Turcotte said.
“Unless we can access the Master Guardian and shut down the Easter Island guardian,” Yakov pointed out.
Quinn frowned. “There was something in that archive material you recovered underneath Moscow about a weapon and a shield.”
“What something?” Turcotte demanded, leaning forward. “I’ll have to look at it again,” Quinn said.
A sergeant came into the room and handed Quinn a file folder and just as quietly left the room.
Turcotte finally considered the strategic situation. “Without a miracle — or us finding and controlling the Master Guardian — that fleet is not going to be able to get through the alien shield with any degree of effectiveness,” he said. “And according to the status board, the ships the aliens have captured are heading toward Pearl. We’ll be lucky if they don’t seize Hawaii and our ships that we’d need to attack Easter Island. Major Quinn, send a message to the admiral in charge there and warn him of that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Turcotte’s eyes were on Duncan, who seemed to be following the conversation. He turned to her, going back to the more immediate issue, or at least what he considered more immediate. “What happened to you?”
Duncan blinked. “I—” She held her hand up, looking at it as if it were an alien object. “I put one of the stones in the Grail. Then I put my hand in the Grail. One end of the Grail,” she added. “It burned. Up my arm. My entire body.”
“We need to get her to a doctor,” Quinn suggested.
Turcotte ignored the major. “So the legend is true — it grants immortality?”
“It must be,” Duncan acknowledged. She touched her torso, where the bullet had torn through her, still not believing the unmarred skin. “I’m here.” She said it almost as a question. “And you say you saw me die.”
“How does it work?” Turcotte asked.
She slowly shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“It must do more than give immortality,” Yakov said. “It brought her back to life.”
Turcotte thought for a few seconds, then rattled out more orders. “Major Quinn, you check the Nazi records we brought back from Moscow to see if you can learn any more about the location of the ark/mothership. Also, I want you to go back through Majestic’s records and see if there is anything on this shield wall — how it works, and if there is any way we can get through it on our own. Because if we can’t, we’re defenseless against Aspasia’s Shadow and his forces.