“So, why poison him then?”
“The future was punishing him.”
She’s talking as though the future is a living, breathing, evil thing. “Okay, let me get this straight. Nostradamus thought he’d found a way to beat the future, so he wrote a book and buried it in the Saharan desert where no one could possibly find it until Dr. Delacroix arrived.”
His captor nodded and said nothing.
“So, what’s inside the book of Nostradamus?” Sam asked.
No one answered.
“What doesn’t the future want changed?” he persisted.
His captor turned to face Zara. “Do you want to tell him what you discovered inside the book of Nostradamus?”
Zara shook her head. “No. I can’t!”
Their captor lowered the AK-47 at Zara. “You can and you must!”
“I haven’t worked it out yet. I don’t know!”
“Yes you do. You just refuse to accept it! Now, tell him!”
Zara looked at the weapons pointing at them and then back at him. Her jaw was set firm and her eyes piercing as though she’d come to a decision with terrible consequences. “I’m sorry.”
“Then I’ll tell him!” Their captor said. “The future will —” her words stopped as a multitude of bullets tore through her chest.
Zara was the first to recover. She ducked down and threw a handful of sand in the eyes of the other three assailants. Sam tackled the one closest to him, who pulled at the trigger sending a barrage of bullets into the air in a wide arc.
Next to him, the second nomad fought with the Sterling’s bolt which had jammed. While Sam struggled to get control of the nomad he’d tackled, the third assailant aimed directly at him. The man took three steps toward him and shoved the barrel of his submachine gun hard against him.
Sam felt the pressure on his temple. The man was making certain he didn’t miss and get the other guy. His confidence meant that Zara was already dead. He gritted his teeth, as though his will alone could somehow stave off his death.
A moment later he heard the trigger click and the shot fire.
You really do get to hear the sound of the shot that kills you? A split second later, Sam felt the pressure of the submachine gun’s barrel ease away from his temple. He turned his head slightly and saw a fine mist of red where his attacker fell.
Sam turned his vision toward the sandy crest in the opposite direction. There, nestled high up on the sand dune behind them, Tom was standing up, having taken the man out a moment before he was able to fire.
At the same time Zara kneed the remaining nomad in his groin. He dropped the Sterling submachine gun with the jammed bolt. The weapon dropped to the ground. It landed on the hard edge of the well. The force dislodged the bolt and the Sterling emptied all thirty-four rounds aimlessly.
Sam dropped into the dune. The sharp whine of bullets flying past him making him hug the ground desperately. When the Sterling finally stopped firing Sam stood up. It had killed the two remaining attackers. He quickly ran over to the woman who had been in charge. She’d been struck in the chest and was bleeding hard. There was nothing he could do to prolong her life.
Sam said, “Please. I need to know. What is this all about?”
She turned to face him. Blood draining from her mouth with every breath. Sam sat her up and rested her back against his knee. She coughed and some more frothing blood expelled from her mouth. She tried to talk, but the words wouldn’t come out.
“What is it?” Sam asked, desperately. “What do you need me to do?”
“Protect the future!”
Chapter Forty
Sam watched as the stranger who’d been his captor just minutes beforehand gave up the will to breathe. She coughed a few more times as her body vainly attempted to expel the blood from her lungs and then stopped completely. Sam didn’t bother to check for a pulse. Without an immediate surgical facility and team of cardiothoracic surgeons, her injuries were unsustainable. She would be dead soon and there was nothing he could do to rouse her enough to answer the question he so desperately needed to know.
Zara brushed away a couple of flies from her face, already drawn by the smell of death. “Well, that worked well. I was beginning to worry Tom had lost interest in the plan — it took him so long to shoot.”
Sam said, “I wish he had.”
Zara bent down to take a Sterling submachine gun from one of the deceased and search for spare magazines. “What the hell does that mean?”
Sam grabbed the newer AK-47 and three additional full magazines. “It means I want to know what was really inside the book of Nostradamus.”
“I told you, I don’t know what was inside the book. It’s filled with riddles. So far, my time’s been spent a little preoccupied since I found the damned book, trying to keep myself alive. As I told you, the letter that Nostradamus addressed to me, described his visions of the future as a series of strings of significance. Watershed moments that changed everything. Big changes. These have carried on through the ages. With each possible event, he’s seen the subsequent strings for both futures. But for my generation all human strings cease to exist.”
“Which means?”
“The human race will become extinct in my life time.”
Sam pointed to the now dead woman next to him. “That woman told me you knew exactly what was inside the book of Nostradamus. She said I’m on the wrong side and I need to protect the future. What did she mean?”
Zara avoided his gaze, turning instead to watch Tom run down the steep sand dune toward them. “I don’t know. I promise I have no idea.”
“That’s crap!” Sam grabbed her by her shoulder to stop her from walking away from him. “She was quite explicit. She said to you, do you want to tell him, or shall I?”
“She was mistaken. I’ve barely had time to flick through the damned book. It’s full of riddles that will take years to fully decipher, if anyone ever does!”
Sam said, “But you paused. You stopped. I saw your face. You were torn.”
She swore and looked away. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.” Sam looked at her. Her hazel-green eyes were intense with passion and intelligence, but there was something else there, too. Something he hadn’t seen before — was she ashamed? “For what possible reason would Nostradamus have traveled all the way into the Saharan desert simply to bury and hide his most prized possession — the book which had given him all his power?”
“Do you know how Nostradamus predicted the future?” she asked.
“I always guessed he just made it up, got lucky, and became the King’s best friend.”
“No. He was a true Seer.”
“Really? As a scientist, you can’t possibly expect me to believe this.”
She ignored his complaint. “The way he did it wasn’t magical. It was pure science. You see he could follow the outcome of each significant incident, which would lead to another and another, until the final outcome for an event would occur. Meaning at the end of several hundred events, he could predict the outcome of a certain event today.”
“The butterfly effect?”
“No. It’s not quite as simple as the movies like to make it out to be.”
“You think the movies failed to do adequate research into the science of predicting the future?”
She ignored his sarcasm. “The way it works is like this. Picture yourself driving along a straight, long, flat road in the desert with nothing around to hit. There’s a series of forks in the road but you keep the steering wheel pointed dead ahead. Now imagine a motorcycle or a smaller car bumps into you. You might be forced to drift off the road, but so long as you remain driving, you can simply steer it back on course.”