Destiny

ONE-HUNDRED-ELEVEN

There was the approaching sound of emergency vehicles coming from all directions in the city. Marcus drove down one-way streets and back alleys, through ancient cobblestone and brick streets. He drove through a medieval cemetery where gothic tombstones and mausoleums cast shadows of stone under the moonlight.

Marcus looked in the rearview mirror. “I think we lost him.”

Alicia rose from the backseat and crawled to the front. She pointed down the hillside to the bay and a lighted waterfront about two miles from them. “It looks like that’s the port down there.” She glanced at her phone. “My battery’s dead.”

The ticket office was less than one minute from closing when Marcus pulled the taxi into the lot. The ticket agent, a woman with dark circles under her eyes, face flaccid and rubbery, glanced at Alicia in the maternity dress, no sign of pregnancy.

Marcus asked, “How much? Quanto per due biglietti al messina?”

“I speak English. You want a cabin or seats?”

“Cabin, thanks. How much”

“One hundred fifty Euros per person.”

Marcus counted the money and handed it to the agent. She printed the tickets and said, “The ferry to Messina leaves from pier seven.”

They boarded the ferryboat, approached the purser’s desk and got directions to their cabin. Alicia asked, “Does the boat have Internet service?”

The purser shook his head, face flat. “Not yet. We’ll have that service in the spring.”

They found a small bar, ordered two sandwiches, and took the food to their cabin to eat. “Well, it’s a little bigger than what we had on the train,” Alicia said, sitting at the small table in the room. She unwrapped the sandwiches. “Try to eat, Paul.”

He set the laptop on the table with the flash drive and spearhead. “In Messina, we’ll have Internet service again. That’s when it all comes together. Then we’ll see if we can hire a helicopter pilot to take us to the mouth of Mount Etna. We don’t even know if the eruptions have subsided.”

“It’s hard to catch the news when we are the news. I’d love to get in touch with my sister and mother…just to let them know I’m okay.”

Marcus said nothing. He bit into the sandwich and chewed quietly, the food tasteless.

Alicia said, “We don’t even know if the killer chasing us is from Carlson or Iran…or from somewhere else.”

“Can we trust Bill Gray?”

“I don’t know anymore. I’d like to think so. He saved our lives.”

“We both worked for him, and I’d like to think he always worked for America, what it stands for…a constitution…a nation under God. But, then I look at the back of the dollar and see that eye staring at me. Our founding fathers were, I always believed, good men. Now, good men, and good women, for that matter, are a vanishing species. I trusted Merriam Hanover. Before Nathan Levy died, he said we could trust no one. After all of this is online, we have to vanish…literally. I have a bounty on my head, wanted dead or alive, large enough to float most small nations.”

“It’s not you. It’s what you’ve found, and it’s what you’re doing with it.” She reached across the table and touched his hand. “You, Paul Marcus, are a good man.” Her eyes searched his face. “Did anywhere in those prophecies…did you see anywhere in there where I’d fall in love with you?” She squeezed his hand. “Because I have…I love you, Paul. I love you with all my heart.”

Marcus looked at the moon through the porthole. “Alicia…I…”

“Shhh…you don’t have to say anything. You don’t even have to love me. But I can’t help but to love you. I just wanted to tell you in case…in case I don’t get a chance to tell you. You mean that much to me.”

Marcus kissed her lips.

Heydar Kazim drove his car slowly though the Port of Salerno parking lot. Within minutes, he found the abandoned taxi behind a building. He drove to the closed ticket office where he saw a posted schedule in the window that indicated the last ferry sailed thirty minutes earlier. Kazim used his mobile to make a call. “I need to charter a private jet to Messina immediately.”