“They went to the bottom level at Dulce?”
“I am sure some did,” Von Seeckt said. “The Paperclip people who worked there, they were most ruthless. They had experience in the camps. Even in your great democracy such things go on.”
Turcotte ignored Von Seeckt’s barbs. “What was going on in the very bottom level? Where the vats holding those people were? I saw vats like that at Scorpion Base. It was how STAAR ‘grew’ their own agents. Agents who we now know were Airlia/human genetic combinations. What was going on at Dulce? Were they doing that? Or were they doing something else? Biological-warfare experiments?” “I don’t know.” Von Seeckt turned his head.
“What about General Hemstadt?” Turcotte asked.
“He had cold eyes,” Von Seeckt murmured. “No life in them.”
“Was he working on biological warfare?” Turcotte pressed.
Von Seeckt said nothing.
“The Black Death,” Yakov growled.
Von Seeckt turned back toward the camera. “Who are you?”
“The Black Death,” Yakov repeated. “Have you heard of it?”
“Rumors,” Von Seeckt whispered.
“Rumors of the Black Death?”
“Just rumors. A weapon.”
“The Mission.” Yakov spit the two words out.
Turcotte noted that that brought a reaction. Von Seeckt’s eyes widened.
“Tell me about The Mission,” Turcotte pressed.
“I don’t know—”
Yakov cut the old man off. “Do not lie to us! Hemstadt went there, didn’t he?”
Von Seeckt wearily nodded. “When I heard he left Dulce, I knew something was wrong. It was a month before General Gullick wanted to fly the mothership. I wonder now if they were connected. I also feared that Hemstadt wanted to use the bouncers. To spread whatever he had been working on in the lab at Dulce.”
Turcotte stared at the screen. Von Seeckt had slumped back on his pillow, his eyes closed.
Turcotte cut the connection. There was so much that wasn’t clear. If Majestic had been infiltrated by the Guides — or STAAR — then that put a whole new light on many things that had occurred. It also put a new light on the destruction of the Dulce facility by the foo fighter. Maybe the target of the foo fighter had been more than just the guardian? Maybe the foo fighter had taken out the Dulce facility to destroy whatever Hemstadt was working on? But the foo fighter had been controlled by the guardian. Had they taken out Dulce to cover the trail? To protect The Mission? The more Turcotte learned, the less he understood.
CHAPTER 10
The traveler walked the dusty path, a solitary figure in a very inhospitable land. The person was tall, wrapped in gray robes that were worn and dirty. A hood covered her face, the only indication of her sex being the slight curve at bosom and hips. She had a large pack on her back that she carried easily.
The path could barely be called that. She had picked it up thirty miles southwest of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. She had not seen a human in the four days since starting her journey. At times the path was so overgrown, she used the machete strapped to her waist to cut through. But always she pressed on, even moving at night, resting only a few hours out of each twenty-four-hour cycle. She wished there were another way, but by foot was the only means of finding where she wanted to go. The trail was ancient, and modern means would not work to follow it.
The path ran along the Great Rift Valley. The longest, continuous crack on land on the surface of the planet, the valley ran from southern Turkey, through Syria, between Israel and Jordan where the Dead Sea lay — the lowest point on the face of the planet. From there it formed the basin of the Red Sea. At the Gulf of Aden the Rift Valley broke into two, one part going into the Indian Ocean, the other inland into Africa, the track the woman was currently on.
To her west, she knew the Rift Valley framed Lake Victoria, the world’s second-largest freshwater lake. Ahead of her, it went south for hundreds of miles through the rest of Kenya, into Tanzania, before ending somewhere in Mozambique. The Rift Valley made California’s San Andreas fault look like a child’s scratching on the face of the planet, while this split was the work of a god.
The land she passed through was tumbled and broken. A river ran through the lowest part, surrounded on both sides by high, tortuous mountains. The path roughly paralleled the river. The sun beat down on the land, raising the daytime temperature easily over one hundred. She relished the heat even though it was difficult to adjust to, as she had spent the past twenty-two years under the ice in Antarctica. To those she had worked with there, she had been known only by the name Lexina, the head of STAAR. Since they had fled Scorpion Base, her small group had scattered across the globe to continue their tasks, but as always, it seemed as if all they were doing was reacting.
Lexina paused as she turned a bend. She scanned the terrain until she saw the anomaly in the growth near the trail. Drawing her machete, she cut through the weeds and cleared away the vegetation. A weathered stone obelisk, five meters high, slowly became visible. It was on the side of the path, half obscured with weeds, the stone itself worn with the passing of many years.
Long, pale fingers reached out and traced the markings on the stone. It was the third such obelisk she had passed in the last few days.
They were markers, border stones from the ancient Empire of Axum. The top half of the stone was covered with Ge-ez, the official language of Axum. Lexina could read it — indeed, it was not a dead language, as it was still in use among a few monks of the Ethiopian church.
Axum was accepted by historians as one of the earliest empires in the world, founded around the first or second century before the birth of Christ. The empire covered most of what was now Ethiopia and Kenya. It traded with Greece and Rome during its heyday, while at the same time reaching to the east to India and even China.
Lexina also knew it was an empire few people had heard of. Mostly because it was here in Africa and because it was an empire of dark-skinned people — not the most popular subject around the world’s history courses. But at its height, Axum rivaled any of the kingdoms it traded with — Rome, China, India. And it had a most interesting history. Like many early peoples, the people of Axum worshiped a sun god. Even long after Christianity came to Axum, the Queen of Sheba was reported to be a sun god worshiper. Although she was known to most in the present day as the Queen of Sheba and her visit with King Solomon was well recorded, Lexina and those who knew the history of Axum knew her official title was Queen of Sheba and Axum.
This marker made mention of the queen, and her borders, but it was the bottom half of the marker that interested her. She could make some sense of the writing there also — the high rune language.
The markings indicated she was on the right path.
She pulled a small headset out of a fold in her cloak. The mike was voice-activated, the cord connecting it to a very small but powerful transmitter in her pack.
“Elek?”
She waited a moment.
“Elek?”
“Yes?” The voice on the other end was crystal clear, relayed through the earpiece.
“I have found another stone,” Lexina said.
“The path is still good?”
“Yes. Anything further on your mission?”
“I am arranging transportation and mercenaries. That is proving to be difficult, but not impossible.”