Ben Gellie was dead.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
The Secretary of Defense came up to greet Sam in the back of the ambulance.
Aliana Wolfgang was sitting with him, too. She stood up, immediately and greeted her, “Madam Secretary. I’ll leave you two to talk in private.” Aliana turned to Sam. “When you get better, you still owe me a vacation somewhere.”
Sam grinned. “Agreed.”
The Secretary of Defense turned to him, “How do you feel?”
“Well, I got shot, and then my lung collapsed so these fine paramedics,” his eyes drifted toward the two paramedics, “Shona and Danny stuck a needle in my chest to reinflate my lung. Apart from that, I’m pretty good.”
“Good man.”
Sam closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked like he’d just remembered what he was doing there, his mind flashing back to Ben Gellie. He turned his head to face her. “Is he dead?”
She nodded. “Yes. It’s over.”
“Thank goodness.” He took a deep breath — it looked painful as all hell — and then sighed. “You know we killed the wrong man, don’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you saying?”
“Genevieve and Tom went to the labyrinth at Bolshoi Zayatsky.”
“And? What did they find?” Her voice, now a whisper.
“Someone has redacted the important parts of the ancient Master Builder text within the labyrinth — the Russian parts that is — no one at the time knew how to decipher the ancient script of the Master Builders.”
“John and Jenny Gellie weren’t developing the Phoenix Plague?”
He shook his head. “No. They were trying to develop a genetic solution. Ben Gellie was meant to be the genetic antidote to the Phoenix Plague.”
“And we got him killed!”
Sam raised his voice, “Someone set this up. This wasn’t an accident. It was a targeted attack, spanning back to the seventies, when the Department of Defense first got involved in the investigation of the Bolshoi Zayatsky labyrinth.”
“Everything about the original team has been redacted. There’s no record of the original investigators,” the Secretary concluded grimly.
Sam said, “The Phoenix Plague is still out there, and someone just succeeded in destroying the only antidote ever developed.”
“I know.”
“You know what that means?”
“Yes. We have a traitor among us.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Sam must have blanked out for a minute or two.
When he woke up, Special Agent Ryan Devereaux was waiting for him.
He blinked. “You must be Devereaux.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you mind if I go to the hospital before you take my statement? I’m a little tired.”
“I’m not here to take your statement, Mr. Reilly.”
Sam blinked again, trying to stay awake. “You’re not?”
“No. I just wanted to apologize for ever doubting you, sir. I thought…” Devereaux’s eyes dipped downward. “I thought you might have been working with Ben Gellie. I see I was wrong.”
Sam gave him a curt nod. “It’s okay. You could only work with what you had.”
“I did wonder, though…”
“What?”
“How a man without military training could keep you captive all this time… what with us finding my original service issued Glock at the helicopter wreck site, and all.”
“Good question. As you know, things don’t always add up.” Sam grinned. “On that subject, there’s a woman named Emma Thompson. I believe she was one of your doctors. She inherited a pharmaceuticals company. If you look into her land holdings around the place, I think you might find quite a syndicate of meth labs.”
“Really?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. We came across one about ten miles south of Devil’s Lake.”
“All right. We’ll take a look. Thank you.”
Devereaux stood up to leave.
Sam said, “Best of luck.”
The Secretary of Defense stepped back into the ambulance. “Sorry about that. He was feeling guilty.”
Sam shrugged, as best he could with his injuries. “What the hell do you care about his feelings?”
“I don’t.” She made a wry smile. “Hell, I don’t even care about your feelings — just so long as you get better, and get back to work.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“I forgot to show you something.”
Sam shuffled back in the ambulance stretcher, uncomfortably. “What?”
“Three months ago you discovered what you thought might have been the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s Electra… there was no sign of her or her navigator Fred Noonan’s remains, but you did find an antique camera.”
Sam nodded. “Go on.”
“Our Historical Photographs Department developed the photos. I thought you might want to see one in particular.”
Sam felt his heart race. “For goodness sake, go on!”
“I should warn you, we couldn’t establish whether or not the photos were indeed taken by Ms. Earhart.” The Secretary smiled and handed him a duplicate of the photo. “But I thought you might find this one just as interesting.”
Sam stared at the photograph.
It depicted a cave. It had a unique purple hue to it. A crepuscular beam shined down on the polished rockface making it stand out like a prized painting at a museum exhibition.
He focused on the pictograms etched into the rockface. The photo’s resolution wasn’t good enough to make out the intricate details, but there was no doubt about the basic design. Each one depicted a human face.
There were seven in total.
The faces, clearly the same prehistoric hominids from Ben’s photo, adorned the same cave wall.
Sam handed it back to the Secretary of Defense.
He had seen a similar photo before. Obviously, it wasn’t the same photo, but it was the same location. It was the same place in which the Ben Gellie’s only family photo had been taken.
Chapter Sixty
Ben Gellie huddled by a fire in an abandoned, half-collapsed old red barn nearly a mile east of where he’d crashed into the Souris River.
His hair had finished drying.
Next to him lay his face mask and SCUBA tanks. If Genevieve and Tom had not acted when they did, he would have died of hypothermia well before he drowned.
As it was, he owed them his life.
Elise walked into the barn.
His eyes lit up and he embraced her with a tender hug.
Ben smiled and gave her a hug. “Hello, my sister… you’ve grown since I last saw you.”
“Hello Ben. I wish I could remember you. I was crawling last time I saw you. But I remember your voice. I knew for certain the second I spoke with you on the phone.”
She handed him a new passport, social security number, bank details, and educational records.
“All fake?” he asked.
“No. All legitimate. I hacked into the various governing bodies that look after each field. Everything you see will stand up to any examination someone might attempt. Oh, and by the way, I put a couple million dollars in your account. No reason you should be poor in your new life.”
“Thank you. I wish there was more that I could do for you.” He embraced her again. “And I wish I could spend more time with you.”
“One day. All of this will be behind us, and we can be together as a family.”
He wore his heart in his throat. “Do you know what happened to our parents?”
“No. But I intend to find out,” she replied.
He picked up his small bag of new belongings. “I should go.”
“You know how to contact me?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes welled. “Where will you go?”
“I’ve always wanted to do some traveling along the west coast, but have never found the time. Maybe I’ll make that time now… do some sightseeing.”