"I do!"
At least she hoped like hell they had.
There was a long pause on the phone, as if she had all the time in the world. Off to the side, sharper rifle blasts erupted. They came from her own team. That could only mean one thing-the war was beginning to break through to them.
"Fair enough," the man finally said. "Secure the key."
There was no need to threaten.
The line clicked dead.
She stared over at Khattab.
He held up nine fingers.
4:00 P.M.
Father Giovanni must have known something.
That was all Gray had to go on.
He sat with his eyes open, but he was blind to everything around him. He placed himself back in the crypt beneath Saint Mary's Abbey on Bardsey Island. He pictured the charcoal markings on the wall. In his mind, he again read the notations scribbled by the priest and studied the large circle drawn around the cross. Other lines bisected and sectioned the circle.
At the same time, he pictured the cross here. He remembered his first impression, trusting it. He had thought it looked more like an industrial tool than a religious symbol. Like a bronze timepiece, a device crafted for purpose, not decoration.
Wallace's description of the Cistercian order echoed in his ears.
Everything in its place and serving its function.
He craned his neck and stared up at the quartz starscape. Breathing through his nose, he felt something rising up inside, some understanding that he couldn't quite put into words.
Then he was on his feet. He never remembered rising. He stepped back over to the cross. He stared at it from the side. The bronze sculpture was only a bit taller than Gray. It required him to crouch to peer through the hollow crosspiece.
"It's not a cross," he mumbled.
"What do you mean?" Wallace asked from the other side.
Gray shook away any response. He didn't understand, not completely yet. He bent down and stared through the hollow arm.
Seichan stood at his shoulder. "It's almost like a telescope."
Gray straightened, stunned.
That was it.
That was the one piece he needed.
Inside, a dam suddenly released, understanding flowed through Gray's head. Images flashed across his mind's eye faster than he could follow, but still, somewhere beyond reason, they came together.
He stared up at the roof.
Like a telescope.
He turned and grasped his enemy in a hug. Seichan stiffened, unsure what to do with her arms.
"I know," he whispered in her ear.
She jolted at his words, perhaps misinterpreting them.
He let her go. He dropped to the floor and checked the base of the cross. It sat on a half sphere of bronze. He felt around the edges. It wasn't flush. There was a wafer-thin gap between the stone and the bronze.
He sprang back to his feet and ran for the pack he'd abandoned on the floor. He dumped it out and found a black marker. He knelt down, needing to see it for himself. He worked quickly, his marker flying across the stone.
As he worked, a part of his mind traveled back to Bardsey. He recognized the partial calculations on the wall now. The circle with the lines. Father Giovanni was smarter than all of them. He had figured it out. The circle was a representation of the earth. His notations-
"They were calculations of longitude and latitude."
The others gathered around him.
"What are you talking about?" Wallace asked.
Gray pointed to the bronze sculpture in the center of the room. "It's not a cross," he repeated. "It's a navigational tool. One tied to the stars!"
He finished his drawing.
His sketch showed how the cross could be tilted, how its arm could be pointed at a star, how the weighted sinew could act like a plumb line, and the turning wheel of the device could measure degrees.
"It's an early sextant," he explained.
"Oh my God." Wallace fell back in shock. A palm rose to his forehead. "For the longest time, archaeologists have debated how the ancients were so accurate in positioning their stones. How precisely they were able to align them!" He stabbed a finger at the drawing. "Bloody hell! That device could even be a theodolite!"
"A what?" Rachel asked.
Gray answered, recognizing it now, too. "A surveying tool, used to measure horizontal and vertical angles. Used in engineering."
"The worship of the spiral and the cross," Wallace said. "The symbols truly do represent the heavens and the earth."
Gray stared down at his sketch of the earthbound cross pointed at the stars. "It's more than that. The symbols also represent the worship of secret knowledge, the secrets of navigation and engineering."
Seichan brought them back down out of the stars with a sobering question. "But what does all this have to do with the Doomsday key?"
They all stared toward the bronze cross.
Gray knew the answer. "In ancient times, only the priest classes had access to such powerful knowledge." He glanced at Wallace for confirmation.
The professor nodded.
"To unlock the Doomsday key, we have to demonstrate that same knowledge."
"How?" Rachel asked.
He remembered what Father Giovanni had been calculating at Bardsey. "We have to use the stars above and calculate a navigational coordinate. I'm guessing we have to dial in our location here. An approximate longitude and latitude." He faced the others. "That's the combination."
"Can you calculate it?" Wallace asked.
"I can try."
Gray returned to the floor. The Celtic cross functioned differently from a sextant, which used mirrors and reflections to discern latitude and longitude. But it wasn't that dissimilar.
"I need a fixed constant," he mumbled and stared up at the quartz starscape. It had been put there for a reason.
"The north star," Seichan said. She crouched and pointed to the chunk of quartz that represented the pole star, used over countless ages for navigation.
That would do.
He worked quickly. He knew the approximate coordinates for Clairvaux from using his GPS during the drive here. He pictured the reading from the unit:
LAT 48°09'00"N
LONG 04°47'00"E
Longitude and latitude measurements were broken down to hours, minutes, and seconds. Just sweeps around a clock. Like the lines scored into the spinning wheel of bronze on the cross. It was all proportional.
In under a minute, he had what he believed were the correct assignments using the ancient tool and their current location.
He memorized them and stood up.
Rachel stared at him, her eyes hopeful.
Gray prayed he was equal to that hope. "In case I'm wrong, you all might want to retreat back to the tunnel."
He hurried over to the cross. As he reached it, he suddenly grew less sure. He would have only one chance. If he was wrong, if he miscalculated, if he failed to manipulate the ancient sextant correctly, the others were all dead.
He stopped and stared at the device.
"You can do it," a voice said behind him.
He glanced over his shoulder. Seichan stood there. The others had joined Kowalski in the tunnel. "Get back," he said harshly.
She ignored him, not even reacting. "It may take two people. One to hold the cross steady at the proper angle, the other to dial the combination with the wheel."
He wanted to argue, but he recognized she was right. A part of him also had to admit that he didn't want to be alone.
"Let's do it then," he said.
Gray again crouched to peer through the hollow arm of the cross. Like a telescope, he thought, remembering how the words had unlocked the knowledge inside him. They had come from Seichan.
He knew what had to be done. He reached to the cross and pulled the arm down. The entire sculpture tilted, pivoting on the spherical base. As soon as he moved it, a massive clank echoed up from under the floor.