The Grail

CHAPTER 18

Turcotte slowly splashed his way down the tunnel, the water of the Nile urging him along. His shoulders were slumped and his step was heavy. The men he had led were dead, Duncan was gone with Aspasia’s Shadow, and the Grail and Ark were with him. The mission had been a complete failure.

When the clatter of metal on stone came from behind, he found it difficult to increase his pace. The clicking noise was getting closer and the ceiling was sloping down, the channel growing tighter. In the dim glow of the flashlight he could see the little airspace he had now was completely gone in twenty meters.

The noise from behind had stopped, but he was caught between the foo-fighter sentry and the water-filled tunnel ahead. He moved forward until his face was turned up, pressed against the rock ceiling. It occurred to Turcotte that something might have changed in the past hundred years since Burton went this way, but he didn’t care.

Turcotte took several deep breaths, then he pulled his head down and went with the current, legs kicking to add speed, but the effort felt wasted as the water took control. He was tumbled about, hitting the wall of the tunnel several times.

Just as he thought he couldn’t last any longer, he saw daylight above. He kicked, using the last of his air. Turcotte broke the surface, gulped in air, and blinked in the harsh rays of the sun, trying to get his bearings. He tread water, turning away from the sun, and saw the pyramids, the Great Sphinx before them, farther upstream and to the west.

Turning, Turcotte saw an Egyptian patrol boat, forward machine-gun manned, heading straight toward them from upstream. He was too tired to even attempt to swim away, not that he could outswim the boat anyway.

Lexina ran her hands across the High Runes etched in the surface of the black tube. “It is not Artad’s resting place.” She turned toward the black wall which had just stopped its slow retreat across the chamber after clearing the end of the tube. “He rests further within. This—” she tapped the tube “—is a guard who must awaken before the wall goes any further.”

“How do we open it?” Elek asked.

“We don’t.” Lexina stepped back. “The process is automated and works on its own schedule. This is beyond us.”

“Perhaps if we access the guardian—” Elek began, but his words were cut off as the black surface slid open, revealing a silver material that immediately peeled back in several layers until all that was left was a body encased in a clear material.

“It is not Airlia.” Elek pointed out the obvious. The body was human, less than five and a half feet tall; a male with Chinese features. He was dressed in a richly embroidered silk robe, dragons breathing fire swirling about the material. Lying next to the man’s right hand was a spear, the head of which was of highly polished metal, a replica of the Spear of Destiny that Lexina had used to access this chamber.

The air inside the tube crackled with electromagnetic static as the field which had preserved the body for thousands of years was slowly reduced in power.

Every cell of Lisa Duncan’s being was in pain. It had started with her hand inside the Black Sphinx chamber. Then up her arm, into her chest, and throughout her body. On the helicopter ride, all she could see was the top of the cargo bay through the haze of tears brought on by the agony as the pain spread through her entire body.

She had no idea where she was, although she was vaguely aware she had stopped moving and been taken off the helicopter. She was on her back, of that she had some sense. But the pain — she had never experienced anything even remotely close to it.

Her brain could tolerate it no longer, and her conscious mind shut down as she slipped into a state closer to a coma than anything else.

Across the room, Aspasia’s Shadow looked at her body on the bed. The priestly accoutrements had been removed and were neatly piled next to him. They were inside a small room, the walls carved out of brown rock. The Ark rested on the floor and Aspasia’s Shadow’s eyes shifted from Duncan to the Grail’s container. He was tempted. Such a temptation he had not felt in a long time, but he had waited millennia to gain possession of the Grail — he could wait a while longer to see if it still functioned, to see what it did to Duncan, if the ancient prophecies would be fulfilled. In the meanwhile, he removed his black cloak and dressed in the priest’s clothes.

Reluctantly, he left the room. One of the two guards on the outside came inside, standing just inside the door, to keep watch on Duncan. Aspasia’s Shadow checked for the third time, making sure the man knew his order — to call as soon as there was a change in Duncan’s condition.

Then Aspasia’s Shadow went down the corridor and entered another chamber hewn out of the brown stone. In the center a golden pyramid glowed — a guardian computer. A chair, more a throne, was set just in front of the guardian. Aspasia’s Shadow sat down and the golden glow encompassed him.

Through the alien computer he made contact with Easter Island to be updated on all that had happened there since he had left The Mission to pursue the Grail. He saw that the forces there were just about ready for action. He issued orders to be implemented as soon as all preparations were completed.

The rebuilt F-14 did what designers at Grumman had known it was capable of but never expected to see — execute a double digit G-force turn. The fact that the maneuver snapped the neck of the man in the cockpit didn’t bother the guardian computer controlling the plane in the slightest. Pilot-less, the plane nosed over and crashed.

Taking the data into consideration, the guardian prepared the next pilot better, enclosing him in a suit it designed to take the forces involved. Another rebuilt F-14 went up and began running through the same tests.

The plane made several more high-G maneuvers, then lined up on the Easter Island runway and came to a landing any carrier pilot would have been proud of. It taxied down the runway and came to a halt beside the full complement of F-14s that had been captured on board the Washington, all modified to the same specifications.

A mile off the south shore of Easter Island, the Jahre Viking loomed like a half-mile-long wall. Smaller boats from the Washington had been commandeered to bring the people who were needed ashore. Others worked at menial tasks on the ship as a flow of nanomachines did the bulk of the important work.

The nanomachines were building two huge doors by the expedient method of removing metal atom by atom. Behind the doors they were preparing they built a watertight seam at the same level. The first several compartments behind the doors were dissolving, the metal being used to reinforce the hull around the large open space being designed inside. The forward quarter of the ship was being prepared as a large open space, accessible through the doors.

Deep under the Rapa Kara volcano, Kelly Reynolds became aware of a new presence communicating with the guardian. A force that was issuing commands to the alien machine, something she had not experienced before, even when it had been in communication with the guardian on Mars.

For a moment, the link from Mars spiked in activity, trying to shut down the new link, but the new connection was more powerful, closer. At first Kelly thought it was the master guardian reestablishing its control, but then she picked up the presence of a mind, a human mind, behind the new guardian and she realized that was the controlling force.

Aspasia!

The name echoed in her consciousness. How could it be? And human? Aspasia was Airlia. And he was dead.

In her fear of being discovered and the uncertainty about what was going on, Kelly retreated, releasing her toehold in the data stream and hiding in the shell of what remained of her body.

“It doesn’t look good.” Major Quinn slapped down a black-and-white photograph on the conference room table. The air was heavy; the only change from before was that Mualama was back at work, his fingers hitting the keys even more furiously than before as he translated. Quinn pointed at the man in the water. “This was taken eight minutes ago. That’s Turcotte.”

He put a second photograph on top. “This was taken six minutes ago.” They could all see the Egyptian patrol boat next to Turcotte. The next picture showed him on board the deck of the boat, surrounded by soldiers. “What about the rest of the team?” Yakov asked. “Any sign of them?”

“Negative.”

“Can you get someone in Washington to contact Cairo and try to get Turcotte released?” Yakov asked.

“Washington has been screaming at Cairo about the AWACS getting downed,” Quinn said. “Now the Egyptians have captured an American soldier, illegally in their country. Also, they let those helicopters get out of their airspace. Someone holds a lot more leverage with the Egyptian government than we do. I think the time for negotiating is long past.”

“What do you recommend?” Yakov asked.

“We need to wait and—” Quinn began, but Che Lu slapped her palm on the table, getting their attention.

“We cannot wait. The Navy SEALs who went under the shield wall on Easter Island have not been heard from. The Ones Who Wait are inside of Qian-Ling with the key to the lowest level.” She tapped the photograph. “Turcotte has failed in his quest of rescuing Duncan, and I see no Grail in his hands as this boat picks him up.” She turned to Quinn. “You must get beyond thinking only of your country and think globally. There is a country, is there not, that would have a very good intelligence system in place in Egypt?”

Quinn nodded. “Israel.”

Che Lu was in her lecture mode, as if she were back at Beijing University. “Very good. And an agent of that government met Turcotte at Hazerim air base, did he not?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I recommend contacting that person and seeing what assistance he can render.” She almost shoved him toward the door. “Go!”

After Quinn had exited, she turned to the bank of computers that hid Professor Mualama. “Do you have any more of the manuscript done?”

Mualama raised his head, just his eyes peeking over the top of the monitor. “Yes. It’s loading now.”

“Does it say what exactly the Grail is and what exactly it does?” Che Lu asked. “That information is most vital now that it appears that someone has escaped with it.”

“The new chapter speaks of the Grail’s travels and—” Mualama paused. “You will have to determine what more for yourself.” His eyes disappeared and she went back to work.

“Sit!” Che Lu ordered Yakov as she scrolled.

“Is this ka thing connected with the Grail?” Yakov asked as the chapter came to an end.

“Perhaps we will find out later in the tale,” Che Lu said. “For now, let us hope Major Turcotte has a plan.” She pointed at the screen. “Note, however that Artad, or his Shadow, was King Arthur, while Aspasia’s Shadow was Mordred. I think our cause lies closer to what is in the lowest level of Qian-Ling than what is hidden in The Mission.”

“Perhaps,” Yakov allowed. “But you would have to convince the United Nations Alien Oversight Committee of that, and then all the countries that are aligning as Isolationists, Progressives, or Neutrals.” He laughed. “I can just imagine trying to convince those politicians that Artad was once King Arthur!”

“This is a very serious matter!” Che Lu admonished the Russian.

“I know it is,” Yakov agreed. “But Artad is going to have to rise from the dead and do something quite spectacular to convince people to align with him. And coming alive in the middle of Communist China might not have been the best choice he could have made.”

“He did not make that choice,” Che Lu said. “Communism occurred long after Qian-Ling was established.”

“Yes, but people have short memories,” Yakov said.

The first sign of life was the eyes flickering open. And it was the first indication that the “man” was not completely human. Red vertical irises within red pupils, his eyes stared straight up for several seconds before shifting about, taking in the two figures that stood next to the black tube.

Lexina held her hands up. “Welcome,” she said in English, knowing there was no way he could understand, but hoping he picked up the intent.

Lexina, Coridan, and Elek bowed their heads as the man sat up. He adjusted his robe. Then, the spear in one hand, he stepped out of the tube.

The red eyes fixed on the three Ones Who Wait. The mouth opened and the singsong words of the Airlia flowed forth, receiving no comprehension. Lexina felt the frustration of not knowing the Airlia language, another piece of knowledge lost over the millennia they had waited. The creature must have realized that, for it became silent once more. Then it spoke in another tongue, most likely ancient Chinese, Lexina guessed, but it was also unknown to her. Once more, seeing the words making no import to the listeners, the man ceased speaking. Abruptly he turned and strode toward the main tunnel leading up.

“Artad!” Lexina cried out, hoping that one word would be recognized. The man paused, eyes glancing at the black wall ever so briefly, then continued up the tunnel. Lexina, Coridan, and Elek hurried to follow.

As they entered the main chamber, the man paused, taking in the shield generator, then entered the smaller room that held the guardian. He went up to the golden pyramid and placed both hands flat on the surface. In a moment he was surrounded by the golden glow that meant he was in contact with the computer.

Lexina, Coridan, and Elek stood by, watching and once more waiting.

Larry Kincaid remembered crunching numbers with a slide ruler, something the new generation of scientists thought as quaint as using an abacus. His opinion was that while the technology advanced, the human minds using that technology retreated into specialty niches, losing the ability to think with imagination beyond what the machines could do.

That’s not to say he didn’t appreciate what modern technology could accomplish. Sitting in a small office just down the hall from the conference room, he had the imagery from the Hubble spread across his desk.

The black smear representing the mech-robots was still moving across the surface, their path relatively straight since leaving Cydonia. Occasionally there was a slight detour as they went around various obstructions in their path.

And there was something else. A second group of mech-robots was leaving the Cydonia region. These were carrying long black objects. Kincaid shifted the magnifying glass to Cydonia. Part of the black network had been disassembled. They were moving it. To where? he wondered.

There was a knock on the door and one of the technicians from the Cube handed him a long cardboard tube and departed. Kincaid pulled out a large rolled-up paper from the inside and spread it out on the floor — it was a mosaic of Mars photographs taken by the first Surveyor probe years ago.

He located Cydonia. Then he marked each location the Hubble had caught the mech-robots at. He took a yardstick and put one end on Cydonia and then aligned it through the median of those points. He drew a line, then removed the ruler.

His eyes followed the line from the present location of the mechs outward. There was no mistaking where the line led — and where the mech-robots were heading. Mons Olympus. The largest volcano on Mars and in the Solar System. It was over fifteen miles high, the equivalent of three Mount Everests. However, its sides sloped so gently, only two to five percent, that its base was over three hundred and forty miles in diameter. The entire mountain complex was surrounded by a four-kilometer-high escarpment.

Why were they going there? Kincaid wondered. The Airlia seemed to have a fascination with high mountains, he thought, as he remembered the story from Burton’s manuscript about the destruction of Mount Ngorongoro in Africa.

He went to the desk and searched through the imagery until he found what he was looking for — a shot of the Cydonia region, focused on the “face.”

Mech-robots were still working over the black metal grill-work that they had uncovered. The description from Burton’s manuscript from the Watcher who had seen the complex on the side of Mount Ngorongoro had reported the same thing. This one on Mars had obviously been destroyed a long time ago also. And now it was being rebuilt. To what end? And how did that connect with Mons Olympus?

Kincaid wondered.

His musings were interrupted by a light knock on the door. Che Lu stuck her head in. “Am I intruding?”

“No, come on in.”

She walked around the large mosaic of Mars and took the seat across from him. “I need some assistance.” She slid a piece of paper across to him, on top of the Hubble images. “I have checked and rechecked my figures, but I still cannot align Nabinger’s grid system with our planet.”

Kincaid picked up the paper and scanned it. “What is your reference point?”

“I have used both poles, aligning every point at least once with each, but it doesn’t make sense. Then I used Easter Island, Qian-Ling, and Giza in the same manner — as one would expect those to be marked by the Airlia — and there has been no sensible correlation among the three points. I even used Ngorongoro — and still nothing.”

“What are you hoping to discover with this?” Kincaid asked.

“I think that the current location of The Mission is hidden among those coordinates.”

“The Mission has moved often — according to the STAAR records we uncovered from Antarctica and Burton’s manuscript. These coordinates are old. Why would The Mission be at one of these ancient sites?”

“I think this is a listing of where guardian computers were located,” Che Lu said. “And given the current situation, it would be logical for The Mission to have relocated from Devil’s Island to one of the ancient bases that has a guardian in order to stay in touch with Mars and Easter Island.”

“How did Nabinger compile this list?” Kincaid asked.

“From his travels and archaeological studies of the High Runes,” Che Lu said.

“So not from one source, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Maybe some of these are false locations, then,” Kincaid said. He counted. “We have twenty-four spots. If even a few are false, that would make it very difficult to orient the grid. What we need to do is run a computer simulation on the spots, removing them one by one, then the various permutations of more than one. We’ll use Giza, Easter Island, and Qian-Ling as three fixed points because we know there were guardians at each of those sites.”

“How long will that take?”

Kincaid closed his eyes in thought. “It will take me a little while to develop the program. Then, when you consider the factorials of possibilities, even using the computer we have here, it will take a while to crunch the numbers. Several hours at least, maybe a day.”

Turcotte was on his side on the desert sand, hands uncomfortably cuffed behind his back. A squad of soldiers milled about nearby, smoking cigarettes while they waited for the commander to make a decision. He was arguing in Arabic with a man in civilian clothes.

Turcotte found he could not focus or bring his energy level up to face the current threat — of course, there wasn’t much he could do in the present circumstances. He’d felt like this before, but never so deeply. He knew he was drained of not only energy, but the ability to produce any more adrenaline.

His reserve was tapped out and he also knew it was more emotional than physical. That still didn’t change the overwhelming feeling of exhaustion.

Turcotte twisted slightly. He could see the civilian and the colonel. They were outside of Cairo, about forty-five minutes from Giza, as near as Turcotte had been able to tell from the bumpy ride in the back of the two-and-a-half-ton army truck he’d been thrown into after getting captured on the Nile. The colonel had taken charge of them and Turcotte first thought he’d be taken into the city, but the civilian — whoever he was — had appeared and presented some sort of credentials, redirecting them to this location.

Turcotte could see the officer nodding and then heard him barking orders to the six soldiers.

One of the soldiers kicked Turcotte in the side, indicating for him to get up, as the other five deployed in a rough line about ten feet away and began checking their weapons.

Turcotte could see the late-morning sun and feel the warmth of the rays on one side of his face and sand on the other. He swore he could feel every little grain pressing against his skin.

The soldier kicked once more and gestured.

Turcotte hardly noticed the pain. He thought of how many times he had seen the sun come up in so many different places around the world, and how often he had simply taken it for granted. To think this was the last he would see seemed more like a bad dream than reality.

The officer knelt next to Turcotte. “You must stand,” he said in surprisingly good English, with a slight British accent.

“I don’t think I’ll be giving you any assistance in killing me,” Turcotte said. For some reason, he was thinking how hard it must have been in the old West to hang someone in the desert. He tried to focus his thoughts, but couldn’t.

“Show some bravery,” the colonel said.

Turcotte didn’t think it was brave to stand before a firing squad. It was the ultimate surrender.

The colonel yelled some more orders and two men grabbed Turcotte by the shoulders, bringing him to his feet. His first inclination was to immediately drop back to the sand, but his training was too strong — that would indeed be a sign of fear in front of these men.

He thought of running, but the field of fire ensured that the bullets would easily beat him to any cover or concealment. He almost laughed. The adrenaline was back, his nerves were alive and alert, his mind racing. If only the threat of death hung over every second of life, then he would always be one hundred percent alive.

“Give me a chance in the desert,” Turcotte said to the officer.

The colonel glanced at the civilian, then shook his head. “I am afraid not.”

“Let me die with a weapon in my hand, then. Even an unloaded one.” If he could only get his hands free, Turcotte felt he might have a slight chance.

A ghost of a smile crossed the colonel’s face. “Do you plan on going to Valhalla? The Viking with his sword or ax in hand to protect the hall of warriors?”

“I work for Area 51, for mankind,” Turcotte said. He nodded his head toward the civilian. “He works for the aliens. He is not even a true human anymore. His mind has been affected by the alien’s machines. Do you serve man or do you serve the aliens?”

The Guide barked something in Arabic. The officer drew his pistol and snapped an order. The six soldiers put the stocks of their weapons to their shoulders.

Turcotte’s arms strained against the handcuffs. The officer stepped to the side, about ten feet away from the firing squad.

He yelled another word in Arabic and Turcotte flinched, expecting rounds to slam into his chest, but it must have been the equivalent “aim.” Turcotte had had enough. He dropped to the sand, scooting his hands underneath him and bringing them to the front. Then he jumped to his feet and charged the firing squad as if going into a gale-force wind, shoulders hunched, body anticipating the impact of bullets.

There were several clicks — bolts slamming home in their breaches — but no rounds were fired. Several of the soldiers were working their bolts, trying to clear what they obviously thought was a misfire. Turcotte didn’t take the time to wonder about this as he grabbed the muzzle of the nearest man’s AK-47 and ripped it out of his hands, turned it about, and slammed the stock into the man’s head, dropping him like a stone. He stepped back, weapon in his cuffed hands as the other five soldiers surrounded him.

The colonel calmly turned toward the civilian and fired one round, hitting the man square in the center of his forehead, blood and brain splattering the sand behind.

The colonel yelled something in Arabic and the five soldiers half turned toward him.

“Get down,” the colonel said to Turcotte in a very calm voice as he swung up a mini-Uzi submachine gun with his free hand from out of the satchel looped over his shoulder.

Turcotte dove into the sand as a spray of bullets cut down the soldiers. Slowly he got to his feet. Turcotte watched the colonel, waiting for whatever would come next.

“We must go,” the colonel said, gesturing with the smoking muzzle of the mini-Uzi toward the truck. “I hope you can drive this thing.”

“Who are you?” Turcotte asked.

“Colonel Ahid Fassid of the Egyptian army,” he said. “Military intelligence. I had to pull quite a few strings to be the one to pick you up at the Nile. Fortunately the regular army becomes very afraid when they see credentials from an intelligence officer of the general staff.”

“I don’t understand,” Turcotte said.

Fassid sighed. “It is the way things are done here. How do you think we have kept the peace for so long? My father and all my uncles died in the wars. We cannot do that anymore. I also work for the Mossad when its aims and mine coincide and no harm will be brought to my country. And the Mossad has done things for me when our aims also have been the same. I received a call from a friend in the Mossad this morning, asking me to keep an eye out for you. This—” he indicated the bodies “—is far beyond anything I have done before. Now I must give up my life here.”

“Why didn’t their weapons work?” Turcotte asked.

“I inspected them,” Fassid said. “And removed the firing pins. Now, let us leave here. A helicopter is inbound to a rendezvous point.”