“Does Fallon still have you?”
She shook her head, momentarily forgetting that she was on the phone. “I got away from him.”
“Good. I tracked Fallon’s flight to France. Dr. Pierce will be there soon. Do you want to talk to him? I’ll patch you through.”
Before Gallo could answer the question, she heard Pierce’s voice. “Gus? You’re safe?”
“I should be asking you.”
He laughed. “You didn’t really think a hole in the ground would keep us down for long?”
“No. I mean, I hoped you’d find a way out.”
“Where are you? Are you safe?”
“I think so.” She glanced around, afraid that Fallon had ignored her warning and sent his hired thugs to grab her again, but there was no sign of them. “I’m at Chartres Cathedral.”
“Chartres? What made you decide to go there?”
“I figured out what you were trying to tell me.” She related her plan to trick Fallon into lowering his guard so that she could escape with his phone.
“You got all that from what I said?” There was a hint of awe in Pierce’s voice.
“What did you actually mean?”
He chuckled. “Follow the Templar trail. Find the Ark. But I like your way better. Besides. Now I know where the Ark really is.”
“Do tell.”
“It’s in London. I know I told you to ask the Templars, but that’s only the beginning of the story.”
FORTY-SIX
Ishiro Tanaka was a patient man. He had been waiting his whole life for this, for his chance to stop the endless cycle of suffering and death. Now the goal was in sight. He could wait a little longer.
Still, he was not immune to the frustration that came with being stranded.
Twelve hours after leaving Tomorrowland, his plane had touched down at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. International air traffic was still a jumbled mess, but there were flights to be had for the right price, and the Children of Durga no longer had any reason to be thrifty. Twelve more hours and he was still there, stuck in the Windy City, and the prospects of traveling on any time soon were not looking good.
The West Coast was a wreck. Portland and Seattle were still digging out. Anchorage had been leveled. The only aircraft going west of the Rockies were military, carrying relief workers and supplies, and that did not seem likely to change any time soon.
Durga had promised to provide a way for him to continue on to the goal, but as a physicist, Tanaka was all too familiar with the property of inertia. He had lost his momentum, and now it was going to take an extraordinary amount of energy to get moving again.
Another tedious hour ticked by. He sat in his hotel room, a few miles from the airport, watching the news coverage with a mixture of horror and satisfaction. The suffering galled him, but thousands had already been freed from the anguish of the slow death called life, and that was his doing. Soon, very soon, the misery of the survivors would also be at an end.
His phone began vibrating on the night table, signaling an incoming text message from Durga. He snatched it up and read the message. It was not the news he had been hoping for.
>Pierce alive. Fallon alive.
Tanaka wasn’t sure why Durga was sharing this news with him. There wasn’t anything he could do to help now. Before he could articulate a question, the phone buzzed again.
>Went to Jordan, then France. Believe Pierce is still looking for a way to stop you.
“And you’re telling me this why?” he muttered, but then he tapped in a more thoughtful reply.
>>>If he’s still looking, it means he didn’t find anything at Sinai. He’s desperate. Grasping at straws.
>Straws can break backs. Is there a risk?
Was there? He recalled the conversation in the Geneva safehouse a day earlier, when Pierce’s people had trusted him with their plan to find some ancient relic made from the same meta-material as the Roswell fragment and the Black Knight.
A sun chariot from some Greek fairy tale?
It had sounded ludicrous to him at the time, but the same could also be said about the Black Knight satellite and the ancient alien explorers who had probably left it behind.
>>>We can’t take any chances. You have to stop him. Go all in.
Durga did not respond for several minutes, and Tanaka thought perhaps the conversation was over. Then another text arrived, with an accompanying location link for a U.S. Air National Guard facility in Peoria, Illinois, a three-hour drive from Chicago. The message read:
>Found you a seat on a supply flight leaving at 1800. Will get you close. The rest is up to you.
He was still processing this information when another text came through.
>Final message. You will not hear from me again. The victory of Durga begins.
FORTY-SEVEN
Lazarus returned to the grounds of Our Lady Mary of Zion before dusk, but he did not approach the cathedral. Instead, he took a stroll around the outer perimeter. He wore a red and yellow dashiki suit, with matching sokoto drawstring trousers and a black brimless kufi cap. He wasn’t sure if the ensemble, which had been purchased at a tourist gift shop, would make him stand out or blend in. Ethiopia was an ethnically diverse country, and his Persian complexion was just dark enough that he could pass for an Abyssinian — someone of Habesha ancestry. Ultimately, he didn’t care if he was noticed or pegged as a visitor, so long as they paid more attention to the outlandish outfit than they did to the man wearing it.
As the sun dropped behind the cathedral, he did a quick 360 degree check and then slipped into a wooded area near the southeastern corner of the structure’s foundation. One corner of the Chapel of the Tablets extended out beyond the fence separating the church from the outside world, just forty yards away.
Once concealed, he slipped out of the dashiki, which covered his jeans and a black hoodie, and then crouched down to wait for darkness. He waited a full hour, barely moving at all, then another, watching people come and go, or simply passing by on the street. Some carried candles and oil lamps, others bore smoky torches. After three motionless hours, he checked his watch and rose to his feet, although he did not step out from his hiding place. Stiffness wasn’t a problem thanks to his regenerative capabilities, but he stretched anyway, cracking his knuckles and then his cervical vertebrae, in anticipation of the go-signal.
It came just thirty seconds later, a harsh explosion. Sounding more like the report of a mortar or RPG launch than something mundane like a car backfiring or a big firecracker. It was in fact the latter, a firecracker about the size of an M-80, with a makeshift time delay fuse and a slight aftermarket modification to increase the volume of the detonation. Carter had dropped the lit firecracker a block away eight minutes previously. If she was following the plan, she was already long gone.
A few lights came on inside the church complex and a few brave souls ventured out to satisfy their curiosity about the noise. Lazarus also spotted a policeman emerging from a concealed watch-post, just outside the church grounds, to investigate the disturbance. When nothing more happened, everyone seemed to lose interest. The lights went out, and the police officer returned to his guard post.