What we're doing is a natural step forward in man's spiritual evolution. It'll be the beginning of a new age."
"You talk about it as though it's going to be greeted with parades and fireworks, but it's the exact opposite, you know that. It's happened before. From the Sassanids to die Incas, history's riddled with civilizations that just collapsed after their gods were discredited."
Vance was unmoved. "They were civilizations built on lies, on shifting sands—just like ours. But you worry too much. Times have changed. The world today is a bit more sophisticated than that."
"They were the most advanced civilizations of their time."
"Give those poor souls out there some credit, Tess. I'm not saying it won't be painless, but . . . they can handle it."
"What if they can't?"
He held his palms out in a mock helpless gesture, but there was nothing helpless about his tone. He was dead serious. "So be it."
Tess's eyes stayed locked on his for a moment before she turned away. She stared out toward the horizon. Wisps of gray clouds seemed to be materializing out of nowhere, and, in the distance, whitecaps were now flecking an otherwise uniformly dark sea.
Vance leaned against the railing next to her. "I've thought about this a lot, Tess, and, on balance, I have no doubt that we're doing the right thing. Deep down, you know I'm right."
She didn't doubt he'd thought about it a lot. She knew he'd been consumed by it both academically and personally, but he'd always considered it from a distorted point of view, through a lens that was shattered by the tragic deaths of his loved ones. But had he thought deeply enough about how something like this would affect virtually every living soul on the planet? How it would put into question not just the Christian faith, but the notion of faith itself? How it would be seized upon by the enemies of the Church, how it would polarize people, and how millions of true believers would quite possibly lose the spiritual core that sustained their lives?
"They'll fight it, you know," she declared, surprised by a hint of hope in her voice. "They'll bring experts out of the woodwork to discredit it, they'll use everything they can think of to prove that it's just a hoax, and given your history ..." She suddenly felt uncomfortable elaborating that point.
He nodded. "I know," he calmly agreed. "Which is why I'd much prefer if you presented it to the world."
Tess felt the blood drain from her face. She stared at him, taken aback by his suggestion. "Me . . . ?"
"Of course. After all, it's as much your discovery as it is mine, and, as you said, given that my recent behavior hasn't been exactly—" he paused, searching for the most appropriate term "—praiseworthy ..."
Before she could formulate an answer, she heard the big ship's engines wind down and felt it suddenly slow to a crawl before turning into the breeze. She spotted Rassoulis emerging from the bridge and, in the swirling fog of her mind, she heard him calling out to diem. Vance kept his eyes locked on her for a moment before turning to the captain, who was gesturing excitedly for them to join him and yelling what she thought sounded like, "We've got something."
Chapter 73
Standing quietly at the rear of the bridge, Reilly watched as De Angelis and the Karadeniz's skipper, a stocky man by the name of Karakas who had dense black hair and a bushy mustache, leaned over the patrol boat's radar display and selected their next target.
There was no shortage of them. The dark screen was lit up with dozens of green blips. Some of them had small, digital alphanumeric codes tagged on, which indicated a ship with a modern transponder. Those were easier to identify and rule out, using Coast Guard and shipping databases, but they were few and far between. Overwhelmingly, the contacts on the screen were just anonymous blips coming from the hundreds of fishing boats and sailing craft that crowded this very popular strip of coastline. Figuring out which one of them was carrying Vance and Tess, Reilly knew, wouldn't be easy.
This was his sixth day at sea, which, as far as Reilly was concerned, was already plenty. It had become quickly obvious to him that he wasn't a sea dog, not by a long shot, but at least the sea had been reasonably well behaved since they'd started their search and, mercifully, the nights were spent on dry land. Each day, they would sail out of Marmaris at the break of dawn and work their way up and down the coastline from the Gulf of
Hisaronu to the area south of the Twelve Islands. The Karadeniz, a SAR-33 class patrol boat, gleaming white with a wide, slanted red stripe on its hull next to the words Sahil Gvenlik in bold, unmissable letters— the Turkish Coast Guard's official name—was lightning quick and reasonably comfortable and was able to cover a surprisingly large patch of sea over the course of a day. Other boats based at Fethiye and Antalya were scouring the waters further east. Agusta A-109 helicopters were also involved, performing visual sweeps at low altitude and alerting the speedboats to promising sightings.
The coordination between the various air, sea, and land components of the search was almost flawless; the Turkish Coast Guard had extensive experience in patrolling these busy waters.
Relations between Greece and Turkey were always less than cordial, and the close proximity of the former's Dodecanese islands was constantly a source of fishing and tourism disputes. In addition, the narrow strip of sea separating the two countries was favored by human traffickers of desperate migrants trying to reach Greece and the rest of the European Union from the still non-EU Turkey.
Still, there was a lot of sea to cover, and, with most of the traffic consisting of innocuous pleasure craft without anyone on radio watch, sifting through them was proving to be a laborious, grueling endeavor.
As the radar operator pored over some charts next to his screen and the radioman compared notes with the crew of one of the helicopters, Reilly stepped away from the screen and looked out the windshield of the Karadeniz. He was surprised to see some nasty weather lying to the south. A billowing wall of dark clouds lay just above the horizon, separated by a thin strip of bright yellowish light. It looked somewhat unreal.
He could almost feel Tess's presence, and, knowing that she was out there somewhere, frustratingly within reach and yet beyond it at the same time, grated at him. He wondered where she was, and what she was doing at that very moment. Had she and Vance found the Falcon Temple already?
Were they already on their way to . . . where? What would they do with "it" if they found it? How would they announce their find to the world? He'd thought a lot about what he would tell her when he did catch up with her, but, surprisingly, the initial anger he had felt at being abandoned had long since abated. Tess had her reasons. He didn't agree with them, but her ambition was an intrinsic part of her and helped make her what she was.
He looked across the cockpit and out the opposite side of the boat, and what he saw unsettled him. Far to the north of their position, the sky was also darkening ominously. The sea had taken on a gray, marbled look, and whitecaps littered the distant swell. He noticed the helmsman glance across to another man on the bridge, who Reilly assumed was the first officer, and indicate the phenomenon with a nod of the head. They seemed to be sandwiched between two opposite fronts of bad weather. The storms appeared to be moving in tandem, converging on them. Again, Reilly looked at the helmsman who now appeared a bit ruffled, as did the first officer, who approached Karakas and was clearly discussing it with him.
The skipper consulted the weather radar and the barometer and exchanged a few words with the two officers. Reilly glanced over at De An-gelis, who picked up on it and translated for him.