She turned to look at Hall, who was sliding away from them along the wall. “I don’t get it,” she told Savage.
“What’s that?”
“The two things the ancients were consistent about were the science of astronomy and the geometrical precision of their engineering by developing structures down to measurements of exactness. I mean down to the exactness within an inch on massive constructions. But to look at this,” she said, pointing to the wall. “The measurements are in a funhouse sort of way — in odd designs.”
“Puzzles?”
She nodded. “It appears that way.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Well, we’ll have to make that decision when the time comes. If you see something that looks remotely promising, then you let me know. I trust your judgment.”
“And what about them?” She nodded her head in the direction of Eser and Harika.
“We’ll keep them close,” he told her. “I won’t leave them behind.”
She looked him squarely in the eyes and saw the conviction within. It was here that she noticed that he wasn’t wearing his collar. She pointed to his throat. “Your collar.”
“I left it with Red.”
“Why?”
“A couple of reasons, I suppose. The first one being that I was surrendering my ties with the Vatican because it isn’t what I was looking for.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Direction,” he said. “Simple… direction.”
“And the other reason?”
He shrugged. “I guess I thought Red could use some help seeing that he was facing his Day of Judgment. Thought the collar might provide some juice.”
“You really believe that?”
“Hardly.” Hall was making his way back admiring the wall like priceless art, obviously something he had to have. “Here comes the idiot,” said Savage. “When we get to the second level, stay close. If an opportunity arises, then we take it.”
“Have you forgotten?”
“What?”
As Hall was moving closer, their voices lowered to mere whispers. “Those things are still out there.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll have to take out one of Hall’s team and appropriate his weapon.”
“Are you nuts?”
“I don’t think we have a choice, do you? If we remain inactive, then we will surely die.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“You find what you think is an opening and I’ll act. Trust me,” he added. “I have a very particular set of skills.”
“So do they.”
He winked at her. “Maybe so,” he said. “But they’re nothing like mine.”
Creatures of a simple mind are motivated by self-preservation and have no concept of numerical value. They do not understand the number eight, the number of those left impinging on their province, they only understood that they provided the basic need of sustenance.
While some gorged themselves on meat and lay in some dark recess for the slow process of digestion, others hunted, their advanced sensory system picking up the scent of their quarry the same way a shark can detect a wounded creature by a drop of its blood from hundreds of meters away.
With their frills expanded, they moved their heads back and forth like a radar dish so that the nerve endings could pick up vibrations, process them, and then zero in.
They knew they were in the room not too far from the Central Chamber and they sensed their prey was not grouped together but scattered, making them easy prey.
In the darkened shadows where the only light was the glow from fonts more than ten thousand years old, where the beasts had grown for generations in shadows and shade, darkness was their ally. They would move forward, circle, and attack with their tails, destroying the Light. And then they would converge. Taking them one… by one… by one…After the metered ticking of claws against the floor, and once the synapses of their brains transferred the process of the hunt, the creatures moved through the dark warrens as easily as if they were fully sighted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Pope Leo was sitting in his chamber behind his ornate desk. Across from him sat the assistant director of the Servizio Informazione del Vaticano; a short man with doughy features and balding pate. His eyes were naturally hooded, giving him the look of someone between wakefulness and sleep. He was, however, a man with an astute mind, who was very omniscient about everything going on around him, a man with all the latest spyware at his fingertips. Stenciled on the pocket of Father Gacobelli’s shirt were the initials SIV.
“I was able to confirm that Savage entered the Göbekli Tepe dig site and spoke with Ms. Moore two days ago.”
“And?”
Gacobelli opened a manila folder that was sitting on his lap. Inside was the tracking data regarding Savage’s run into Turkey. “Everything’s minimal at this point,” he said. “But I believe Savage to be with the woman.”
“To be with the woman was not the goal of the Church.”
“I understand that, Your Holiness. But it is what it is.”
The pontiff tented his hands and bounced the tips against his chin in thought. “Are they still at Göbekli Tepe?” The ADD lifted a single sheet of paper and slid it across the pontiff’s desk. Pope Leo picked it up. “What am I looking at?”
“Coordinates to where they may be,” he said. “It appears that they have taken a course to the eastern part of Turkey.”
The pontiff looked at the sheet again, at the coordinates. “These numbers — are you telling me these are the coordinates to…” His words trailed one word shy of saying “Eden.”
“They’re numbers, yes. But to what we don’t know. They may mean something. Or they may mean nothing at all. All we know is that Savage left with the woman and her team two days ago for the southeast part of Turkey… The entire team disappeared at that specific location.”
The pontiff looked at the sheet.
“As you know, Your Holiness, we often dispatch the Knights of the Holy Order to global hotspots to save the lives of those within our citizenry who are in danger. Mr. Savage’s mission was to protect the interest of the Church. Although he was equipped with his own weaponry, he needed a special accessory form the KHO armory. He took one thing,” he said. “He took a suppressor embedded with a state-of-the-art chip in the cylinder used for tracking. By attaching the device to the weapon, it summarily activates the system and generates a GPS read. Since he did attach the suppressor, I can only assume that he intended to use it. But why I don’t know.”
GPS chips embedded within weaponry were becoming the norm, more notably with US troops fighting the Afghan War. Insurgents often took weapons from deceased US military and added them to their arsenal, not knowing that the embedded chip served as a beacon that gave away their guerilla encampment and set them up for future sorties.
“And this is where you lost him? At these set of coordinates?” The pope pointed at the numbers.
“That’s where the GPS signal ended, yes.”
“Why would it disappear?”
“It could have been a number of things,” he answered. “It could have been interference, like weather, causing the signal to fade in and out, to go dead. I just don’t have enough to go on to figure out why.”
“I assume you used aerial to these set of numbers?”
“Better,” said the ADD. He lifted a grouping of photos and handed them over. “These are satellite images zeroing on the given point.”
“It’s nothing but desert.”
“This is true, yes. But there’s a geographical anomaly, if you look closer.”