Fortune Favors

NINE

The sun was just starting to brush the tops of the trees that lined the west fence as Joe King finished his last pass with the big riding mower, and steered the machine onto the gravel path leading back for the shed. No sooner had he dismounted to throw open the wooden doors when the automated sprinklers activated and droplets of water began falling on the immaculate — and freshly cut — emerald green turf.

Just made it, he thought as he got back on the mower and coaxed it forward a few more feet, into its parking spot. It had been a busy day. His plan to get an early start on the north lawn had been derailed when, on his way out, he’d noticed some fresh graffiti — the third time in as many weeks. He’d spent the better part of the morning scouring paint off the weathered marble and picking up the litter — fast food wrappers and beer bottles — that had been left behind by the vandals. The first time it had happened, he had called the police, but aside from taking the report and suggesting that maybe some additional security measures were in order, the officer had been of little help. Joe understood. From their point of view, it must have seemed like a victimless crime. Indeed, aside from being put off his schedule a few hours, what harm had been done?

But it wasn’t so much the fact of the vandalism that concerned Joe, as the tone and message of the graffiti: swastikas, triple-Ks, and a variety of slurs ranging from the old classics to some Joe had never heard before and only barely grasped.

What did you expect? He had thought to himself as he scrubbed the last bits of paint from a tombstone. Keepin’ one of the oldest cemeteries for black folks in the county. ‘Course the rowdies are gonna make it all about color.

In the end, he’d managed to get the north lawn cut before the sprinklers came on, and now the defaced graves were the furthest thing from his mind as he pulled the shed doors closed and shackled them with a padlock. He knew it had been a slow day up at the office — folks weren’t, contrary to the old joke, dying to get in, at least not into a plot at the Ashley Rest Memorial Gardens, which suited Joe just fine — and that meant plenty of time for Candace to whip up one of her spectacular suppers. He quickened his pace, skirting along the edge of the stately manor that now served as the chapel, and aimed for the adjoining building, a small but adequate single story house that he and Candace called home.

That was when he saw the visitors.

At first, he thought nothing of it. In an age where people could look up their ancestors on the Internet, it wasn’t unusual for folks to come by the house, asking for directions to the last resting place of a distant relation. But as he drew closer and got a better look at the pair standing on the porch, he felt a tingle of apprehension. A tall man with silver-white hair, dressed entirely in black, and a shapely, poised blonde woman.

White folks almost never came asking for directions.

As he got within earshot of the porch, he slowed to listen in on the exchange and heard the male visitor speaking.

“Good evening, ma’am.” Joe thought the man sounded rather abrupt, rude even, but it might have owed to the fact that there wasn’t the least trace of an accent in his voice. “I am looking for Mr. Joseph King.”

Joe could just see the top of Candace’s head, her wispy gray hair bobbing in the space between the two visitors. “Joe’s my son,” she answered. “Unless of course, you looking for Joe’s granpappy, Mr. King senior. You’ll find him out in the gardens, if you take my meaning.”

“He’s dead.”

Joe felt a chill at the way the man said it, and lurched forward again, gathering his courage to shoo this pair away before they could cause any real trouble.

“That’s right,” Candace continued smoothly, with a confidence and courage borne of her years. “So if your business is with him, then I’d say you came about ten years too late. Now, if they’s nothing else, I’ll bid you kind folks good evenin’.”

The tall man seemed to stiffen, and Joe saw him take a step forward. “Actually, ma’am. Maybe there’s something you can help us with.”

Joe broke into a sprint, bounding up the steps, but whatever demand he had been preparing died on his lips when he caught sight of the small automatic pistol the blonde woman now held pressed against Candace’s abdomen.

The silver-haired man half turned to acknowledge him. “Ah, this must be the junior Mr. King. Perhaps you can help as well.”

Joe drew up short and raised his hands in a gesture of supplication. “Don’t want no trouble now, sir.”

“Nor do I. I just have a few questions, and then I’ll be on my way.” The man offered an icy smile as he gestured for Joe to enter the house. “For your sake, I hope you know the answers.”

“What do you want to know?”

Even as he asked the question, Joe realized the answer, but he still did his best to look surprised when the silver-haired man said simply: “Tell me everything you know about Hernando Fontaneda.”

“Stop!”

Kismet immediately shifted his foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal, bringing the rented Ford Explorer to an abrupt but controlled stop. They had turned off the main road and onto a long graveled driveway only a few seconds earlier, so there wasn’t much risk of causing a collision, but Higgins’ sudden command nevertheless filled him with apprehension. “What’s wrong?”

Higgins, from the front passenger seat, pointed forward, down the length of the landscaped drive to a cluster of buildings dominated by an immaculate white antebellum manor house. “They’re here already.”

Kismet tried to sharpen his focus, scanning the foreground, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. A silver sedan was parked in front of the manor — nothing too suspicious about that. Then he caught a glimpse of motion…a flash of golden hair, illuminated by the porch light, disappearing into the doorway of a smaller structure, just as old as the manor house but considerably less elegant, extending out from it like an architectural postscript.

Annie leaned over his shoulder, curious about the unexpected stop, and saw it too. “That bitch,” she snarled.

It was an opinion Kismet shared. He eased off the brake and guided the SUV off the road surface, then turned to his companions. “So, how do we play this?”

Higgins didn’t answer, but instead got out and circled around to open the Explorer’s rear hatch. A moment later, Kismet saw him peering through the scope affixed to a long, matte black bolt action rifle. The business end of the gun was pointed at the porch of the distant house.

“They’re inside,” Higgins announced after a few seconds, lowering the gun. The Kimber Model 8400 Advanced Tactical rifle, equipped with a Trijicon AccuPoint 2.5-10X56 30 millimeter scope, was the former Gurkha’s favorite new toy.

“Why don’t you go conduct a little recce?” Higgins answered at length. “See what our friends are up to. We can cover you from here.”

“We?” Annie protested.

Higgins patted the polymer stock of the rifle. “Wasn’t talking about you, Annie girl.”

Kismet suppressed a laugh, but then addressed the young woman in a more serious tone. “Actually, I think I should go alone. Your father will watch my back, and you can watch his.”

Annie frowned, but nodded, grasping the tactical rationale behind the decision.

Kismet slid out of the Ford to retrieve his own combat gear — a MOLLE compatible shoulder holster rig which he’d adapted to hold his kukri sheath on the side opposite his Glock. He slipped the nylon web straps around his shoulders, checking one last time that everything was secure, and then covered it all up with a loose leather bomber jacket. He tossed a nod to the others, and then set off down the drive toward the house.

He didn’t know what sort of resources Leeds had at his disposal, but judging by the reception committee the occult scholar had arranged in Central Park, he thought it best to stay below the radar. It seemed well within Leeds’ ability to monitor the airports, so instead of a ninety minute flight he opted for the twelve-odd hour long overland route.

Despite the need for urgency, Kismet wasn’t going to let Leeds take him off guard again, so before leaving New York in the rented Ford, he had taken Higgins and Annie on a little shopping spree. He’d grimaced a little at the price tag of Higgins’ weapon of choice; even more costly had been the time spent finding a shooting range where the rifle could be properly zeroed.

“You have to let me zero it,” Higgins had persisted. “Otherwise, what’s the point of buying it?”

Kismet had wondered that very thing when the initial purchase was made, but he was pleased that Higgins seemed to finally be treating Leeds as a real threat. There had been more than a few times when he’d wondered where Higgins’ loyalties lay. He still didn’t know what to make of Higgins’ reaction to the statue of Prometheus at Rockefeller Plaza.

In all the time since that fateful night in Iraq, the one thing Kismet never had cause to question, was the role of the soldiers who had accompanied him. He had always just assumed them to be unwitting pawns in someone else’s game, but Higgins’ reappearance, so close to a trove of priceless artifacts…so close to what might be a connection to the secret of immortality itself…made him question all his assumptions.

His choice of Rockefeller Plaza as a rallying point had been deliberate.

In the early days of his quest to unmask the Prometheus conspiracy, he had quite naturally wound up there, staring at Paul Manship’s gilded bronze statue of the mythic Titan delivering his gift of fire to mankind, wondering if this place…this confluence of corporate power, the home of not one, but several television networks and twenty-four hour news agencies…might not be some kind of beacon for his newfound foe. Perhaps even their headquarters.

His investigations had yielded nothing, and not just at Rockefeller Center, but he had become quite familiar with the place, and had even started to think of the balcony over the ice rink as a sort of sanctuary.

He hadn’t failed to notice Higgins staring at the statue of Prometheus, but the old soldier’s reaction had been impossible to gauge. There was a look of recognition to be sure, but no different than what could be seen in the goggle-eyed gaze of hundreds, perhaps thousands of first time visitors. Prometheus wasn’t exactly the Statue of Liberty, but it wasn’t unreasonable to think that Higgins might have heard about it. What he didn’t question was the look of delight in the soldier’s eyes when he’d picked up the Kimber rifle.

Kismet reached the front porch of the house a few seconds later, but instead of climbing the steps, he crept around its perimeter to see if there was a back entrance that would permit him to go in unnoticed. As he ducked under the broad picture window at the front of the house, he could hear loud voices from within.

“Liar!” raged the occultist. “Fontaneda told your father, and your father told you. I know he did. Now you tell me, or I will cut your heart out.”

The threat was palpably real, even through the double-paned insulated window. It occurred to Kismet that, in all his encounters with Leeds, he had never witnessed the man losing his temper.

“Please sir,” came the hoarse reply, barely audible. “He didn't tell us anything.”

Kismet paused a beat. Had it been a woman’s voice? He started forward again, rounding the corner, and spied a back door to the house. He tried the knob; locked.

With a dismayed frown, he stole back to the front of the house. As he ducked under the window, he heard Leeds threaten again. “Do you love your son? If you don't tell me about Fontaneda, I'll cut his throat.”

“Please,” begged the weak voice. Leeds had used the word ‘father’…was this Joseph King’s daughter? “Please. I've told you what I know. There's nothing else.”

Kismet could sense that something terrible was about to occur inside. He crept onto the porch and touched the knob, turning the handle slowly so as not to betray himself with the click of the latch mechanism. Pistol in hand, he pushed open the door.

There was a short vestibule just beyond the door, and past that a right turn into the sitting room. Kismet could plainly see four figures. He immediately recognized Leeds and Elisabeth, even though their backs were turned. The blonde actress stood with a gun pressed against the temple of a young African American man, while the silver haired occult scholar menaced an older woman, presumably the young man’s mother…and evidently, Joseph King’s daughter. Something glinted in Leeds’ hand…a blade of some kind, a straight razor or a scalpel.

With a disdainful grunt, Leeds thrust the old woman away and wheeled on Elisabeth’s hostage. The blade came up in a glittering arc and then held there, poised above the young man’s neck like the Sword of Damocles.

Kismet threw caution to the wind and charged forward, brandishing his pistol. “Back off, Leeds!”

Elisabeth gasped in surprise, but recovered with unexpected speed. She brought her own pistol around, aimed at Kismet’s chest, and in the same fluid motion, stepped between him and Dr. Leeds, placing herself directly in his sights, and at the same time, spoiling his shot at the occultist.

Leeds seemed not to have notice the intrusion. There was a strange hunger in his eyes as he stared down at the captive, contemplating him like the victim in some bloody ritual sacrifice. In a rush of understanding, Kismet realized that was exactly what the young man was about to become. This wasn’t about torture or coercion any more.

He tightened his finger on the trigger, felt it start to move. He could see the hesitation in Elisabeth’s eyes. She wasn’t going to shoot, not intentionally at least, but she wasn’t going to move either. “If you think I won’t shoot you—”

Before he could finish the threat, Leeds’ blade hand began its final, horrible descent.

As soon as Kismet started down the drive, Annie and her father picked up and began moving as well. They didn’t approach the house; it was only about four hundred meters, and with Higgins’ scope and the pair of spotter’s binoculars Annie had grabbed from the back of the Ford, they didn’t need to be any closer to see what was going on. They just needed a better line of sight. They hiked across the road and out across the manicured cemetery lawn, careful not to trip on any of the low headstones — or step on any graves — and took a position facing the large front window of the house they’d seen Elisabeth Neuell enter.

Annie did a quick three-hundred-sixty degree scan, to ensure that none of Leeds’ hirelings were creeping up behind them, then turned back to the house and peered through the binoculars. The window was partly obscured by slat blinds, but when she moved her head sideways, ever so slightly, she found that she could see right through them.

She easily picked out the familiar figure of Elisabeth Neuell. Annie’s breath caught in her throat as she realized that the actress was holding a gun to someone’s head. The rest of the tableau resolved quickly. Dr. Leeds, tall and silver-haired, was menacing another captive…an old woman.

“Bollocks. Dad, they’re—”

“I see it,” Higgins cut her off. His voice was taut, and in the silence that followed, she could hear his breathing, deep and steady, just the way he’d taught her. Take a breath, let it out, find your target, take a breath, let it out…

She braced herself in anticipation of the shot, but it didn’t happen. Her father continued to breathe rhythmically, his right eye glued to the scope. In the interminable silence, Annie realized why he hadn’t yet pulled the trigger. He had been a soldier, a steely-eyed killer, but was he that person any more? Could he kill this way — not some enemy soldier on a foreign battlefield, but someone he knew?

She forced herself to do another quick sweep of their surroundings — still no sign of anyone else in the cemetery — then peered through the binoculars again.

Something had changed.

Elisabeth was now pointing her gun toward some unseen target…Kismet! And Dr. Leeds was now standing over her former hostage, his upraised hand gripping a blade.

“My God! He's going to cut him, Dad!”

The hand with the knife started to descend.

Higgins let out a breath…

And squeezed the trigger.

TEN

There was a loud crack as something punched through the window.

Just over Elisabeth’s shoulder, Kismet saw Leeds’ hand explode in a spray of red flesh and broken steel. Bits of the blade flew across the room, embedding in the wall in the same instant that the sound of the shot buffeted the fractured window pane.

Dr. Leeds stared down at the ravaged flesh where his right hand had been, a look of amazed detachment on his face. The bullet had blasted through the small bones of his hand, virtually severing the appendage through the middle of his palm. His fingers dangled uselessly from the bloody ribbons of flesh that had survived the trajectory of the thirty-caliber slug.

Elisabeth held her stance, blocking Kismet’s way, but looked back at her associate in mute horror, unsure of what to do.

Leeds just stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. Then, he began to laugh.

Kismet bolted forward, ducking under Elisabeth’s gun barrel, and snared her wrist, twisting it until the pistol fell from her nerveless fingers. She gave a yelp, then wrenched free of his grip, fleeing to take refuge behind the wounded occultist. Leeds continued laughing, seemingly oblivious to the pain.

Kismet advanced, holding the Glock trained on his adversary, but before he could close the distance, the occultist brought something from his pocket. Kismet pulled the trigger, but Leeds was already moving, and as the bullet flew harmlessly past his head, he hurled the object — a glass ampoule filled with some kind of gray powder — to the floor.

Brilliant white fire exploded in the center of the room, blinding Kismet momentarily. He triggered the pistol again into the expanding miasma of black smoke, then checked his fire; there were at least two people in this house he didn’t want to kill, and blinded by the flash and smoke, there was no way to tell the difference.

Holstering the pistol, he plunged forward to where he thought the young man was. His ears were ringing from the discharge of the pistol and the detonation of Leeds’ flash grenade, but he could hear shouting, the voice of the young man, calling out a name.

“Candace!”

“I’m here.”

As the fumes cleared, he saw the two now-freed captives huddled in front of a sofa, but there was no sign of Elisabeth or Leeds, save for a trail of blood leading outside. He knelt in front of them, and for just an instant, flashed back to a night more than twenty years earlier, when he had attempted to offer comfort to victims of violence. This time at least, he’d been able to do more than just ease their passage.

“It’s okay,” he said in his most soothing tone. “I’m here to help.”

“What do you want?” demanded the young man, his eyes fixed on the Glock in its holster, visible beneath Kismet’s open jacket. He didn’t sound nearly as distraught as Kismet would have expected.

“Well, I guess I want the same thing that other guy did,” he answered honestly, leaning back in an effort to hide the gun from view and look a little less intrusive. “But I’m not going to threaten you to get it.”

“Figures,” was the disdainful reply.

“Joe!” This sharp interjection came from the old woman. “You mind your manners, now. This man just came to our rescue. The least we can do is hear him out.”

Joe didn’t seem terribly impressed with the old woman’s exhortations. “Don’t take that tone.” He seemed poised to continue in that vein, but a noise in the vestibule instantly silenced him.

Kismet drew his pistol and spun on his heel, but before he could take aim, Higgins and Annie stepped into view. He eased the gun back into its sheath and glanced back at the householders. “It’s okay. They’re with me.”

The young man — Joe — gave a snort.

The old woman spoke again, with the same reproving tone. “Joe. These folks helped us.”

Kismet turned to Higgins. “Leeds?”

“Gone,” Annie announced with some satisfaction. “They made it to their car and took off out of here like they were on fire.”

Kismet shook his head ruefully as he turned again to the pair — mother and son, if he’d overheard correctly. “He’ll be back.”

Joe stood, raising the woman to her feet, and then sagged onto the sofa. “All right. Just who in the hell are you, anyway?”

Kismet paused a beat. Given the violence that had just occurred, the man’s distrust was warranted, and unless he did something to change the mood, it was unlikely that he’d get any kind of meaningful cooperation. Start at the beginning, he thought.

He looked intently at each of them in turn. “Joe, right? And Candace? I’m Nick Kismet. I work for a United Nations cultural agency. Several years ago, a man named Henry Fortune contacted my agency about…an unusual discovery.” He thought he detected just a hint of a reaction, but whether it was to the mention of Fortune’s name or the ‘discovery,’ he couldn’t say.

“When we attempted to follow up on it, we got another letter from a Joseph King.” He gestured toward Candace. “That would be your father?”

She nodded slowly.

“Mr. King indicated that Fortune had died, and that seemed to be the end of it.”

“Henry Fortune died in the 1960’s,” the woman said. “You’re chasing after something that happened fifty years ago?”

“Some new information has come up.” Kismet scrutinized the woman’s face. “Did you know him?”

“I remember Henry,” she said, her tone not quite wistful. She exchanged a knowing look with the young man, almost as if asking permission to elaborate.

Kismet thought he was gaining a measure of trust, and decided to give them a moment. He turned to Higgins. “Al, why don’t you try to establish some kind of secure perimeter?”

The former Gurkha seemed to understand what Kismet was really asking, and beckoned his daughter to follow him back outside. “Come on, Annie girl. Let’s go keep an eye out for unwanted visitors.”

When they had left, Kismet eased into an adjacent chair and turned to the old woman. “The man that assaulted you wants Fortune’s discovery. You’ve already seen what he’s willing to do to find it. Whether or not you actually know anything doesn’t matter to him right now; you’re in danger. You need to leave here. At the very least, you should call the police.”

Calling the police ought to have been their first reaction as soon as they had ascertained that the danger was past, and yet strangely, the pair hadn’t shown the slightest inclination to do that.

Joe glanced at the wall. The spatter of blood and metal fragments was the only real evidence that the whole thing hadn’t been just a bad dream. “Ain’t callin’ the police,” he said quietly after a moment. “Call them, an’ then we’d have to answer questions that I ain’t inclined to answer.”

He turned back to Kismet. “You saved us. I suppose that counts for something. So let’s just cut to the chase. We know what you’re lookin’ for.”

Candace gasped apprehensively. “Joe, you sure about this?”

The young man nodded. “It’s been a secret too long. Is it Henry Fortune you’re looking for? Or the Fountain of Youth?”

Elisabeth sucked greedily at the cigarette, holding the nicotine-laced smoke in her lungs for several seconds before exhaling out the open car window. The breeze of their passage down the Savannah Highway snatched the fumes away, but a lingering trace of the odor permeated the car. During their time together, Leeds had forbade her from smoking in his presence, but right now she didn’t give a damn what he thought, and besides, he seemed to have other things on his mind.

She’d only gotten a brief glimpse of the wound in the moments following their escape from the cemetery. Leeds had quickly wrapped his injured hand in a now thoroughly blood-soaked cloth, but she’d seen enough to know that the pain must have been debilitating. The unseen sniper’s bullet had torn off half his hand. Nevertheless, Leeds had calmly led her from the smoke filled house and back to their rented sedan where he’d gotten in the passenger’s side and instructed her to drive, supplying her with a destination as soon as they were outside the cemetery gates.. Except for the telltale beads of perspiration on his brow, Leeds seemed completely indifferent to the experience.

Maybe not completely indifferent, she thought. He’s not bitching about me smoking.

She tossed the cigarette butt out the window and took the exit Leeds had earlier indicated. As she negotiated the main streets, he spoke again, guiding her through turns and into a residential neighborhood like some kind of living GPS device.

“Stop here,” Leeds announced after directing her to turn into a typically nondescript suburban cul-de-sac.

Elisabeth eased the sedan to the curb and Leeds promptly got out, protectively cradling his injured right hand, but otherwise moving with his usual self-assuredness. She hastened after him, catching him just as he turned up a concrete path to the front door of a rambling ranch-style home that had seen better days. Without preamble, Leeds stabbed a finger at the doorbell, then impatiently rapped the knuckles of his left hand against the doorframe.

A dog began barking from somewhere inside the house, followed by gruff commands from its owner. The door swung open a moment later to reveal a stocky middle-aged man who studied them carefully through the screen-door — Elisabeth noted that his gaze lingered appreciatively on her — before speaking. “Can I help you folks?”

“I am Dr. John Leeds.” There was, at last, the barest hint of discomfort, or perhaps it was urgency, in his tone. “This is Elisabeth. I have been told that you are a physician. I have been injured…” He held up his right hand, and the movement caused a fat drop of blood to spatter on the concrete at his feet. “I require medical attention.”

The man’s eyes widened. “Well, goddamn…Why did you come here? You should get to the emergency room!”

Leeds pitched his voice low. “This is a bullet wound. I cannot seek treatment through the normal channels. I was assured that you could help me…Dr. Ayak.”

The man went instantly pale. For a moment, he appeared unable to do anything but stare at them, but then he furtively opened the screen and stepped out, pulling both doors shut behind him. When he spoke again, it was in a low hiss. “Now what the devil are you playing at, here? You folks reporters?”

For the first time since she’d been with him, Elisabeth saw Leeds taken aback. “I — we are not.”

“Read about ‘Ayak’ on the Internet, did you?”

Elisabeth couldn’t tell if the man was taunting them, or making a sincere inquiry.

Leeds inclined his head. “It would appear that I was misinformed. I apologize for disturbing you.”

The man snaked a hand out abruptly and snared Leeds’ shoulder before he could turn. He held the occultist, staring into his eyes for a moment, and then seemed to reach a conclusion.

“We don’t use that secret language bullshit no more. It’s the goddamned twenty-first century, you know.” He gave a weary sigh, and then beckoned them to enter the house. “Unless that’s cherry pie filling you’re dripping on the ground, it’s plain to see you’re hurt. Come on in and I’ll have a look.”

As they followed him inside, the man called out, “Louise, there’s some folks come to speak with me in private. Why don’t you go watch the ‘Wheel’ in your bedroom.”

There was a sound of movement from somewhere in the house, and an abrupt silence when a television set was switched off, but the man said nothing more as he led his guests through a formal dining room, and into a neatly arranged kitchen.

“Put your hand over the sink, and let’s see what bit you.”

Leeds complied, and gingerly began unwrapping the cloth. Elisabeth gasped involuntarily as she saw the ragged wound — raw red, speckled with grisly bits of yellow and white, surrounded by swollen purple skin. It looked as though his hand had been nearly amputated, just above the palm. His fingers flopped uselessly across the back of his hand, one of them still adorned with the gaudy Ouroboros ring.

Their host also looked a little shaken by what was revealed. He shook his head. “There’s not a lot I can do for you. You don’t go to the hospital, and those fingers are as good as gone. Not even sure they can save ‘em for you.”

“Then I have no further use for them,” Leeds replied, his earlier dispassion once more in evidence. “‘If thine hand offends thee, cut it off.’”

The man gave a disbelieving chuckle. “Well. You’re a God-fearing man, then. Let me get my bag.”

As the man headed for the exit, Leeds called out to him. “Time is of the essence, doctor. Before you proceed, I must ask that you put me in contact with the Circle.”

The doctor froze in mid-step, and turned around, his face twisted with the same suspicion that had originally greeted them. “Mister, I don’t know who you think I am—”

“You are part of an ancient and honored rite of brotherhood, a circle of men who stand in defense of the Invisible Empire. As am I. In the name of our shared bond, I call upon you in my hour of need.”

Elisabeth thought Leeds’ pronouncement sounded rehearsed, but then she felt that way about him most of the time. As an actor, she had an ear for such things, and to her, Leeds seemed always to be playing from some carefully prepared script. Yet, as she listened to what he was saying, the full impact of his words hit home.

The Circle…oh, God, what have I gotten into?

“Mister…what did you say your name was?”

“Dr. John Leeds.”

“Dr. Leeds, then. You obviously know a thing or two about me, and in the name of whatever it is you think we share, I’m gonna do what I can to fix up your hand. But let me set you straight about something. Any ‘brotherhood’ I might belong to? That’s got nothing to do with ancient rites or any of that mumbo jumbo. I wear the sheet — yes, I’ll admit it — but only because I’m not about to stand idly by while the country I love is being taken over by a bunch of Jews and niggers and spics.”

Elisabeth winced visibly at the slurs, and immediately felt a flush of fear at having betrayed herself with the reaction.

Leeds again seemed uncharacteristically rattled by this development, but quickly recovered his composure. “It just so happens that a particular nigger is responsible for my injuries. I was hoping that you and your brothers could help me with…a little payback?”

The man stared back through narrowed eyes. “Mister…excuse me, Doctor, this here’s the twenty-first century. We don’t do that lynch mob shit no more. We can’t afford to, if you take my meaning.” He paused and took a breath. “However, I may know a few good ol’ boys who aren’t as, shall we say, scrupulous? They don’t care nothing about rites or ancient mystic brotherhoods neither, but for the right price, I reckon they’d do most anything you want.”

Leeds gripped the man’s forearm with his good hand. “Make the call.”

Joe stood up and crossed to what looked at first glance like a side table. He removed the various decorative accouterments, and Kismet saw that the table was actually an old steamer trunk. Joe unlocked it and threw back the lid to reveal several stacks of leather bound books.

“Here,” Joe said without looking at Kismet. “Is everything we know about Hernando Fontaneda.”

It had not escaped Kismet’s notice that Joe had been consistently using the Spanish form of the name. He rose from his chair and went to stand beside the young man.

“These are Fontaneda’s diaries.”

The volumes might have been from a museum exhibit on the history of bookbinding. Those in the stack on the far left looked rough, hand sewn, while those on the right appeared to have been fashioned using modern — or at least twentieth century — techniques. Kismet gently picked up a book from the left hand stack and opened it.

The old binding creaked in his hands. The thin vellum pages were brittle and the ink had gone blurry in places. There was no question that the book was hundreds of years old, but if he needed any further evidence of that, he found it on the first page; a date:

Anno Domini 14, Junio 1645

The book was written entirely in Castilian Spanish, a language that normally would have posed little difficulty for Kismet. The script however was elaborate and spidery, and like so many writings of that era, the text was rife with grammatical errors and inconsistent spelling. The prose was rambling and disjointed, as if the author had been having trouble keeping the sequence of events straight. Nevertheless, it took only a few minutes of reading for him to begin painting a picture of the life of Hernando Fontaneda and his four hundred and fifty year old secret.

In the year 1549, the ship carrying young Hernando De Escalante Fontaneda wrecked on the Florida coast. The survivors were captured by Indians who proceeded to sacrifice them all, except for Fontaneda, who somehow learned enough of their language to be useful. During the seventeen years that followed, he learned several native dialects and served as a translator for the Calusa king, Carlos.

Kismet was already familiar with much of the story; Fontaneda’s memoir of his captivity was a matter of public record. But the book he now read contained a slightly different recollection of those events.

During his time with the Calusa, Fontaneda heard many rumors of a magical pool capable of healing grievous injuries and extending life indefinitely — the very thing he claimed had brought Ponce de Leon to the Florida peninsula. But the pool…the Fountain…was far from Carlos’ territory. Fontaneda, a slave and prisoner, had no opportunity to ascertain its location, but he never stopped thinking about it. He even wrote about it in his memoirs, calling it the “River Jordan” and claiming he had never found it. He had even spoken mockingly of the many natives who had believed the legend over the years. ‘So earnestly did they engage in the pursuit, that there remained not a river nor a brook in all Florida, not even lakes and ponds, in which they did not bathe; and to this day they persist in seeking that water, and never are satisfied.”

The claim, written for publication in Spain, was disingenuous. It was true that Fontaneda hadn’t actually found it, but he knew exactly where it was.

Risking the last of his inheritance, he set out once more for the New World, and this time, he brought with him a small army, mercenaries all — outcasts and fugitives, conversos and Moriscos fleeing the persecution of the Inquisition, freed Negroes desperate to make their own fortune and avoid being returned to a life of servitude. The expedition debarked at Saint Augustine sometime around the turn of the 17^th century. Fontaneda would have been about seventy-five, far too old to be tramping around the fetid swamps and jungles of the Florida peninsula, especially at a time when surviving to fifty years was an accomplishment.

At first, the expedition traveled through lands inhabited by peoples known to Fontaneda, and whose languages he spoke. But the Spaniard had not come seeking peaceful relations. His forces attacked the village where Carlos’ hoard was kept, and they took the treasure with them as they continued on, intent on finding an even greater prize.

For several days, as they traveled deeper into the interior, the surviving Calusa harried them but after a while, the Indians turned back, content to let the wilderness finish what they had begun. Some of Fontaneda’s men fell prey to wild beasts — panthers, alligators and poisonous snakes. On more than one occasion, the voyagers would awaken to discover some of their number missing, carried away in the night by unseen attackers. Later on, they would find the headless corpses of their comrades, a warning to the survivors.

A warning that went unheeded.

Eight days after the massacre of the Calusa village, their party now reduced by half, they discovered a village of natives living near the shore of a great lake. In the middle of their village, bubbling up from the ground, was a spring of water. The purity of the water and the abundance of healthy plant and domestic animal life, as well as the vigor of the villagers bespoke a single truth; they had found the Fountain.

Yet this spring was clearly not the source. Its potency was diluted; its power nothing like that of which they had heard. The villagers still grew old and died. Fontaneda knew they must continue their search. They entered the village, and demanded to know the source of the waters. When the natives were not forthcoming, the Spaniards slaughtered them and took to living in the village. Soon after, they located a cave entrance in a place revered by the slain villagers, and Fontaneda led the expedition into the dark entrance. The cavern was holy ground for the natives; no human had entered its depths in centuries. Not far inside the cavern, they discovered a miraculous chamber, where fire danced upon the surface of a shimmering pool. The merest taste of the water from the pool invigorated Fontaneda magically stripping away the years and healing his wounds.

Natives who had survived the village massacre fled into the forest, spreading the news of the Spanish atrocities. Ancient tribal feuds were forgotten in the face of the new threat, and several tribes combined their forces to make war with Fontaneda’s army, most of whom died when the attack finally came. Fontaneda and six other survivors fled back into the cavern.

They fortified their position, setting up traps to protect themselves, although none of the natives dared enter the sacred cavern. After a long period of time, they decided to venture from their refuge, only to discover that the village had been burned to the ground, and overtaken by an unnaturally dense thicket of foliage. A few of the survivors claimed that the ill fortune of the expedition was evidence of God’s judgment upon them; they were being punished for partaking in such an unholy quest. Had they not been warned, before ever embarking on their endeavor, that the search for life eternal apart from Christianity, was the search for the profane; the will of the Devil, not the will of God? Now, they knew it was true.

The discovery of the Fountain had indeed given them youth and virility, but at great cost. The restoration was useless as long as they were imprisoned in a foreign wilderness. Moreover, many that had drunk of the Fountain's water had perished. The Fountain had not proved to be the source of life eternal for them, but had instead caused death, and quite possibly, damnation.

The decision was finally made; they would return to the shore of the ocean and wait there for ships from the island colonies to arrive. Upon returning to civilization, they would confess their crimes, and remain silent before all others concerning the profane Fountain.

They attempted to reach the coast, but were attacked several times, and forced to retreat once more to the fortified cavern. In the end, only Fontaneda and two comrades, all of them badly wounded, reached the safety of the Fountain chamber. The sparkling waters were a constant temptation; they had only to drink of the unholy water and be healed. His companions held out, refusing the easy path of sin. Hernando however vacillated. Drinking from the Fountain, he immediately felt his body restored to health. His comrades died, cursing his weakness.

For untold years Fontaneda lived alone, at times lapsing into madness because of the virility burning with no outlet, inside him. His magically begotten youth would fail him from time to time, blessing him with long spans of lucidity, but in his weakness he would always return to the cavern, and the restorative waters of the Fountain.

As the Spanish increased their presence in the New World, Fontaneda gained the courage to return to his countrymen. The presence of fellow humans gave him an outlet to his carnal frustration, and his first return was blessed with over a decade of normal existence, married and living as he was accustomed thanks to King Carlos’ treasure stash, but never revealing who he really was, or the secret of the Fountain.

It was at this point that Fontaneda’s account ceased to be a reminiscence of days past, and instead became a day to day record of his life. Kismet, lost in the story, began skimming the sometimes brief entries and soon reached the point in the tale where Fontaneda had made his drunken boast to the colonial governor. The account was not quite verbatim with what he had read in the letter, but sufficiently close to convince Kismet that the author of the diary was the same man that Andrés Rodríguez de Villegas had written of.

Hernando Fontaneda born sometime around 1535, was still alive — still robust and vital — a hundred years later.

Kismet weighed this assertion carefully. He didn’t doubt that he was reading a contemporary account, written by someone living in the mid-seventeenth century. But it didn’t necessarily follow that the account was the whole truth. Fontaneda…or Fortunato…might have been a con man, just like many of the alchemists and mystics that roamed Europe, claiming to be immortal. Where was his proof?

He went back to reading, curious to see what Fontaneda had done next. Not surprisingly, after fleeing Saint Augustine, he returned once more to his refuge in the cavern where he had found the Fountain of Youth.

From that point forward, through the end of the volume, the entries were nothing more than the meandering thoughts of a fugitive living in self-imposed exile. Kismet closed the book and reached for another, but then hesitated. It would take weeks to read through them all. He needed to get this collection away, find somewhere safe, away from Leeds’ relentless machinations. Unless…

Kismet turned to his hosts. “You’ve read these?”

Joe shrugged noncommittally.

“You said you knew about the Fountain,” Kismet pressed.

“He told us about it,” Candace volunteered. “I mean, back before he…”

She trailed off, but her meaning was clear. Fontaneda, the man who had later reinvented himself as Henry Fortune, had told Candace and her father, Joseph King, about the Fountain. Why he had chosen to unburden himself remained as much a mystery as his death, and Kismet was burning with curiosity about both of those questions. There was something more to all of this, something he was missing, but it seemed unlikely that he would get answers from this pair. “Did he tell you where to find it? Is that information here?”

His hosts exchanged a meaningful glance, and then Joe spoke again. “No. But there is a map.”

Kismet felt a thrill of anticipation, coupled with frustration at the young man’s evasiveness. “Where is this map?”

Joe smiled cryptically. “Like that letter said, he took his secret to the grave.”

“The map is buried with him? In his coffin?”

“Well it ain't quite that simple—”

Before he could complete the thought, Annie burst into the room, visibly alarmed. “Someone’s coming!”

ELEVEN

Kismet gestured for the others to get down and then moved to the side of the big window and peered through the blinds. Headlights were visible, at least three different vehicles, rolling up the drive toward the house. If it had been only one car, he might have been inclined to disregard its significance; someone visiting the grave of a loved one perhaps, or coming to make arrangements for a funeral. Three vehicles though…definitely not a coincidence.

“Annie, get your dad back in here.” He turned to Joe and Candace, but before he could say another word, a loud crack reverberated through the house, followed by an equally loud report. More shots followed, and suddenly the window exploded inward in a spray of glass shards. Kismet hit the floor as bullets began tearing into the wallboard opposite the window and continued slamming into the exterior.

Higgins appeared from an interior doorway, having evidently broken in through the back door and made his way through the house. “We're surrounded.” He shouted. “A dozen or so men on foot flanked us before the trucks showed up.”

A dozen? Kismet wondered where Leeds had managed to pull together an army on such short notice.

The incoming fire slacked off momentarily, and almost too late, Kismet grasped the significance of this. He spun around to face the vestibule area, just as a pair of figures came through the front door, brandishing shot guns. Both were clad in long gown-like white garments that appeared to have been stitched together from bed sheets, replete with full-head masked cowls.

Kismet did not let his disbelief stop him. As the lead figure lowered the gaping muzzle of the shotgun, aiming it in his direction, Kismet squeezed off a controlled pair with the Glock.

The white robed figure staggered back into his trailing comrade, the second man’s shroud now spattered with fine droplets of red. Kismet brought the pistol up and triggered another round, but the second man was already scrambling back, out of the vestibule. A moment later, the fusillade resumed.

As he backed away, Kismet saw Joe staring in disbelief at the motionless form that lay sprawled across the entry, and he knew the young man wasn’t transfixed by the sight of a dead man, but rather by his distinctive apparel. There was a look of terror in the young man’s eyes. Like he’s seen a ghost, Kismet thought.

“We don’t know what this means,” he shouted, trying to break the spell. “Focus. We need to get out of here!”

The attack had come so swiftly that Kismet was only now beginning to think strategically. Leeds needed the information that these people possessed if he ever expected to locate the Fountain. The unrestrained fury of the assault had to be a ploy — a shock and awe tactic just like the white robes — designed to crush their morale and force a surrender…

Something crashed through the tattered remains of the blinds and hit the floor in the front room. The odor of gasoline filled the room and an instant later, the burning rag stuffed into the end of the Molotov cocktail ignited with a whoosh.

Okay, maybe not a ploy.

For a few seconds, the flames were concentrated in the area where the firebomb had landed, consuming the spilled fuel, but the blaze quickly spread, blossoming out in a circle from the point of ignition…a circle that blocked all access to the steamer trunk with Hernando Fontaneda’s diaries. Even as he started toward the chest, he saw that it was too late to retrieve them, and if they didn’t do something quickly, it would be too late to do much of anything.

“There's another way out,” Candace shouted over the din of gunfire, her voice stronger than Kismet would have thought possible given her years. She crawled to the hearth and then gripped the bricks. To Kismet’s surprise, the elevated platform rose a few inches, as if on a hinge. Joe reached her side a moment later, adding his strength to hers, and the hearth swung up to reveal an empty space, like a waiting sarcophagus.

“Here!” Joe shouted, waving to Kismet urgently. He then helped Candace climb into the newly created opening and disappeared into it after her.

Even from across the room, Kismet could see that the space was more than just a recess; the hole concealed by the hearth was a passage to…what exactly, he didn’t know, but it had to be a be better than the alternatives of being shot or burning up.

“Annie! Al!” He shouted, trying to locate them through the growing curtain of smoke. “Fire escape!”

Higgins emerged from the miasma, dragging Annie by the arm, and unceremoniously dropped her into the dark void.

A wall off flames rose up behind Kismet, blocking the path to the front door. The incoming gunfire ceased immediately, and over the roaring of the fire, Kismet could hear Leeds’ voice, stridently raging at the ineptitude of his accomplices. He knew what was coming next.

A white-robed shape appeared across the room, emerging from the interior of the house, evidently having entered through the back just as Higgins had done. The figure was hazy through the smoke, but he evidently saw Kismet and brought his gun around.

Kismet fired the Glock into the smoke cloud, driving the man back long enough to clear a path to the hearth, and then dove headlong into the dark unknown.

It was like falling into another world. The darkness was almost absolute; a square of dim light — fire partly obscured by smoke — from the opening directly over his head was the only illumination, and the only way for him to even begin judging the dimensions of his surroundings. He could tell that the opening was about eight feet overhead, though he could have guessed that from the plunge. As for the rest, it might have been a wide open cellar or a tunnel — there was no way to tell. In the faint orange glow, he could make out Higgins and Annie, no more than a few steps away. The old Gurkha seemed ready to face whatever fate threw at him next, but Annie looked visibly anxious, almost distraught.

“Come on!” Joe shouted from the darkness. “Get away from the opening.”

There was a flicker of light from the direction of his voice, as a battery operated fluorescent lamp warmed up, and Kismet finally got a look at their refuge.

The space was cramped, the rough-cut dirt walls only about six feet apart. Upright beams stretched from concrete footings up a to wood-slat ceiling that sagged in the middle as if holding back a tremendous weight, and barely allowed six inches of clearance. The one dimension that didn’t seem to be closing in on them was its depth; beyond where Joe and Candace stood, holding matching electric lanterns, the underground space was indeed a tunnel, stretching away into the impenetrable darkness for at least fifty feet, and probably more.

Joe continued urging them deeper into the passage but Annie hesitated, clutching at her father’s arm as if unable to breathe. “I can't,” she whispered, turning involuntarily back toward the entrance.

Kismet shook his head and tried to turn her back into the tunnel. Even though she didn’t fight him, he could feel the resistance in her muscles as he grasped her arm. She was clearly in the grip of some irrational panic.

Claustrophobia. Hell of a time to learn about that.

When they were about ten feet down the passage, Joe turned called for Kismet to stop.

“They can still follow us. Here.” He pointed to a thick rope, which ran vertically from the floor alongside one of the support pillars. The rope was anchored to an eyebolt set in one of the footings, and ran up to the ceiling, where it functioned as part of the support system for the wooden slats. Kismet noticed a second line on the opposite side, and realized that these two ropes were holding back the collapse of the entryway.

“Cut the rope,” Joe urged.

Kismet felt a moment of hesitancy. The ropes were the only thing restraining uncountable tons of earth; if they cut them, the ceiling would cave in and their way out would be blocked permanently.

No, not the way out. The way for their enemies to come in, to follow them.

Kismet drew his kukri and hacked at the rope. The dry old fibers parted with an audible twang and the slats on that side dropped partway down, allowing a torrent of dirt and gravel to spill forth into the tunnel behind them. The ceiling beyond that point remained intact. He darted across to where Joe waited, and with another sweep of the blade, sliced the anchor rope in two.

The ceiling fell hard, as if in a single mass, and hit the ground with such violence that Kismet was nearly knocked down. The tremor shook the rest of the tunnel, forcing Kismet and Joe to scramble away lest more of the ceiling come crashing down.

An eerie silence flooded the tunnel as the collapse sealed them off from the noise of the attack and the fire. The only audible sound was of Annie gasping for breath.

“My God!” she whispered, on the verge of fainting. “We're buried alive.”

The loose cluster of white robed figures scattered like pigeons as Dr. John Leeds strode fearlessly through the smoke filled house. Leeds, looked like a raven in his black cassock, a stark contrast to the soot-stained white garments favored by their new accomplices, or for that matter, to the thick mitten of gauze wrapped around his maimed hand.

He picked his way through the charred timbers and found a group of men deploying a battery of small fire extinguishers to battle back the blaze that one of their number had recklessly started. The small extinguishers were designed to combat small fires, and even in concert, there simply wasn’t enough of them to completely snuff out the spreading fire. At the perimeter of the room, the fire continued to spread, licking at the walls.

Elisabeth, following cautiously behind him, knew that the only reason Leeds hadn’t flown into a rage was that doing so would have been an admission that he had erred in enlisting this bunch of good ol’ boys. In New York, such arrangements had been handled by Leeds’ aide, Ian MacKay, but the Scotsman with the silver tooth had not been heard from since the abortive attempt on Kismet’s life in Central Park, and they could only assume that he had not survived the encounter.

Given that Nick Kismet was involved, that outcome was not altogether surprising.

Leeds may have been a genius when it came to mysticism and the occult, and as adept at manipulating people in face-to-face encounters as any carnival fortune teller, but he had zero organizational skills. In Hollywood, he would have been a great executive producer but a complete failure as a director.

The men with the extinguishers stood in loose formation around the hearth of a brick fireplace in the front room. The top of the platform had been lifted out of the way revealing a dark opening with a heap of freshly turned dirt a few feet down.

“Some kinda escape tunnel,” growled one of the hooded men, nodding to the fireplace. “Completely caved in. They got away.”

“Then all is not lost,” growled Leeds. “In spite of your failure.”

“Two of my friends are dead,” hissed the man, incredulous. “And you’re happy ‘cause those niggers survived?”

“Your attack was poorly engineered. You relied far too much on your ability to frighten them into submission.”

The man tried to respond, but his words were lost in a fit of smoke induced coughing. A section of the rear wall collapsed inward, releasing a fiery cloud of sparks. Even Leeds was forced to take a step back.

“We have to get out of here,” insisted one of the men. “This whole place is coming down.”

Without waiting for a reply he started for the door. Elisabeth felt an overpowering urge to follow, but Leeds stood his ground a moment longer. “A tunnel has two ends. This is one; find the other.”

In the settling dust of the cave-in, Kismet finally took a moment to survey their refuge.

The tunnel had been dug through dense clay soil, a task that had surely taken several years, especially since it seemed unlikely that powered digging equipment could have been employed. The walls remained bare dirt, but the ceiling had been shored up by beams and posts, placed every ten feet of so. The ceiling was low enough that he actually had to duck to pass under the beams, but the tunnel was almost wide enough in some places for two people to walk abreast.

Annie was huddled into a ball, sitting with her back to the dirt wall. Her father knelt beside her, one arm around her shoulders, but his attempts to offer comfort did not seem to be meeting with success. Kismet took a knee as well.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I think we’re safe for the moment.”

“Safe?” gasped Annie. She seemed to be fighting to get the words out, as if in the grip of an asthma attack. “We're trapped. Buried alive.”

“We’re not trapped,” Kismet insisted. “This is a tunnel. King dug it, it must lead somewhere.”

“I can't breathe.”

“That's just in your head. There's plenty of air down here.” Despite his assurance, Kismet was suddenly very conscious of the close quarters and the fact that the air did seem to be getting a little stale. He shook his head to clear away the rising paranoia. “Look Annie. The tunnel does end, but we have to get moving if we're ever going to get out.”

That seemed to motivate her. Annie looked up, a single mote of hope floating in her pool of misery. He offered her a sip from his flask, and she gratefully downed it.

“Did you dig this tunnel?” Kismet asked when they caught up to Joe and Candace.

Joe shook his head, his eyes, and perhaps his thoughts, unfocused. “The tunnel was dug back before the War…the Civil War, that is.”

Then the young man straightened perceptibly. “Actually, it was Fontaneda that dug it, way back when. He was an Abolitionist. He’d give runaway slaves a place to hide until they could catch a ride on the Underground Railroad. Dug this tunnel so they could come and go.”

The idea of the Spanish Conquistador as a Southern gentleman in the years before the Civil War, and an Abolitionist no less, was mind-boggling. If everything he thought he knew about the man was true — including the claim that he had discovered the Fountain of Youth — then Fontaneda would have been about three hundred and fifty years old at the time of the Civil War. It was difficult to conceive of how four or five lifetimes of experience might have changed the man. Had his decision to support the anti-slavery movement been a way of atoning for past misdeeds…like the slaughter of the native village that had protected the Fountain in the first place?

Kismet thought about the dead fall that had blocked the entrance and wondered if that had been Fontaneda’s doing as well.

The tunnel followed a straight line for at least fifty yards before coming to an abrupt and unexpected end. The walls were hidden behind stacks of mildewed cardboard boxes and old splintered wooden crates. If not for the secret entrance under the hearth and the long separating distance, it might have seemed like nothing more than a storage cellar, but in light of those two details, Kismet was inclined to believe that boxes were nothing more than window dressing. His suspicion was confirmed when Joe started shifting some of the boxes out of the way to reveal an eight-foot folding ladder, resting on its side.

Joe wrestled the ladder out of its hiding place and then propped it up in the center of the tunnel. Kismet realized that the ceiling was higher here, and as Joe extended the legs of the ladder, Kismet saw a dark opening directly above where the ladder had been positioned. Joe rocked the ladder a couple times to ensure that it was stable, then retrieved his lantern and climbed up until his upper body was above the top step and mostly inside the opening. After a few moments of fumbling with something overhead, he resumed his ascent and disappeared completely through the hole in the ceiling. Kismet approached the ladder, and saw Joe staring down out of a well-lit open space high overhead.

“It’s a little cramped up here. Mister…Kismet, was it? I think you should come up first. There’s something I want to show you.”

Kismet glanced at the others. Annie was still on the verge of hysteria. Higgins offering his daughter what comfort he could, simply shrugged. The old woman, Candace, gave him an encouraging nod and gestured for him to go up the ladder. He did.

The overhead space was much smaller than the confines of the tunnel; it was about the size of a walk in closet, but part of the space was dominated by what looked like an enormous chest. It was a crypt, he realized, and the chest was a sealed casket.

Joe gestured to the funerary container. “There it is. What you came for is in there.”

It took Kismet a moment to realize what Joe was saying. “This is Fontaneda’s tomb?”

“He built an empty vault to hide the tunnel exit. When he died, it seemed like the best place to lay him to rest. No one else was using it.” Joe laid his palms flat on the top of the casket, staring at the smooth surface with an almost wistful expression. “So, you want me to open it?”

Kismet swallowed. “How do you even know what’s in there?”

“I know,” Joe said, as if that was the final word on the subject. “He took his secret to the grave. That’s what Joseph King told you in the letter, right?”

Shoving aside a final hesitant attack of conscience, Kismet nodded. There was a faint hiss as Joe broke the seal. Kismet felt a stir of expectation and dread as the cover was thrown back. A mixture of strange smells wafted from the casket; some kind of perfume fragrance — sandalwood, perhaps — that couldn’t quite mask the odor of embalming fluid. But there was no smell of rot or decay; if there was a body in the casket then it had remained perfectly preserved. Kismet picked up Joe’s lantern and held it above the shrouded figure that lay in repose within.

There was indeed a body, a man, with a thick unkempt mane of black hair and a bushy beard that could not quite hide his youthful features. His skin had the pallor of death, but looked firm, with no hint of decomposition. The motionless figure in the casket could have merely been sleeping, or just recently deceased, instead of having been dead and buried for more than fifty years. In fact, he looked a little too good.

If the Spaniard’s youthful features were a testament to the power of the Fountain, if his life and health and vigor had been preserved for nearly four hundred years beyond its normal span, then what had happened at the end? He clearly had not died of old age.

Kismet saw Joe staring at the face of the cadaver with a mystified expression. “What’s the matter?”

“The hair. And the beard? I don’t…” He took a breath. “I can’t believe Joseph King would have laid him to rest in such a state.”

Kismet looked more closely, studying not only Fontaneda’s face, but also his hands. The fingernails were long, unnaturally so, like the talons of a raptor. It was a popular misconception that hair and fingernails continued to grow after death; what actually happened was that, as the skin gradually became desiccated, it shrank and pulled back, which created the illusion of longer hair and nails. But nothing like that could account for what he was looking at. The dead man's beard and fingernails would have had to be growing for several months, years perhaps, to achieve the length and density it now possessed.

“He really found it,” Kismet said, almost in a whisper. “The Fountain of Youth. Maybe whatever kept him young, kept these cells alive long after the rest of him died…”

Morbid curiosity prompted him to check the lid of the casket. He half-expected to discover claw marks, but the silk headliner was intact. Fontaneda had evidently been very dead when his body had been placed inside. What had actually killed him was anyone’s guess.

“You said there was a map?”

Joe took a deep breath, then leaned over the cadaver and tore open the dead man’s shirt. The action took Kismet by surprise, and it took a moment for him to realize what he was seeing. Etched into the pale skin, partially obscured by a tangle of chest hair, was an intaglio of lines and symbols. Fontaneda’s map to the Fountain of Youth was tattooed on his chest.

It was not a map in the traditional sense. It more closely resembled a childishly drawn landscape, with triangles that might have been mountains and rounded, irregular shapes that Kismet took to be lakes. There were other markings as well, animals shapes, similar in form to petroglyphs found all across the Americans, and perhaps most distinctive, a small Christian cross. The image was marred by what looked like a jagged white scar, almost directly over the Spaniard’s sternum, but the blemish didn’t significantly alter the picture. There were no names or orienting marks, but vertical lines stretched various points — the centers of the “lakes,” the heads of the animal shapes, the peaks of the “mountains,” all at very deliberate angles, like the rays of a web, to converged on the head of another animal shape, a long squirming snake outline that almost completely bisected the image. The tip of its tail was in the center of the man’s chest, a few inches above the scar, and its head was just above his navel.

“This is meaningless,” Kismet growled. “There aren't any mountains like that in Florida.”

He drew his kukri and began scraping the edge of the long blade across the exposed skin, shaving away the hair to more completely reveal the image. The snake shape was unquestionably the focus of the reference lines, the requisite “x” to mark the spot. That suggested something, a landmark of some kind that would provide the final clue when they arrived there. He looked more closely at the mountains, and decided they were not mountains at all, but rather resembled squat pyramids.

“Pyramids in Florida?” he muttered. Something about that seemed familiar, too.

“That mean something to you?” Joe asked.

Kismet frowned. He wasn't sure he wanted to share this revelation. “I don’t know. I’ll have to do some more research. I need some paper to copy this.”

“I don’t have any,” Joe said. “I think there’s only one way to take this map with you.”

Kismet immediately grasped what Joe was saying, and tried just as quickly to dismiss the idea. There had to be a better way to record this image. Maybe Higgins or Annie had a scrap of paper he could use…He could take a picture of it with his phone…

But if he took a reproduction of the map with him, he’d need to destroy the original in order to prevent Leeds finding it. As revolting as the idea was, given the circumstances and the very short list of alternatives, Joe’s suggestion had merit.

“All right,” he growled, not meeting the young man’s gaze. “Might as well get this over with.”

He laid a hand on Fontaneda’s chest, feeling the dead man’s skin for the first time. It was cool to the touch, but supple like the leather of his bomber jacket. Thinking about it in those terms helped him dissociate from what he was about to do. It was just a piece of hide, no different than the calf-skin used to make vellum parchment or driving gloves.

He placed the tip the kukri above his hand, and cut a straight line across the Spaniard’s torso.

The skin parted and immediately spread open to reveal purple-blue viscera beneath. There was no blood, but the cut did release an invisible cloud of formaldehyde vapor that stung Kismet’s eyes and nostrils. Blinking away the effect, he turned the blade for another cut, this time down Fontaneda’s right side. Two more such cuts outlined the map in a square. With each cut, the skin had spread apart as if under tension, and now the map — he tried to think of it only as such, ignoring the grisly reality of what he was doing — was outlined by a dark square.

He inserted the tip the kukri underneath the epidermis, working at it until he succeeded in peeling a corner away from the underlying dermis. Then, gripping that corner between a thumb and forefinger, he began to pull, as if trying to peel a piece of wallpaper away from a wall without tearing it. The skin was tougher than he expected, and tearing it wasn’t a problem, but separating the layers of tissue was not as easy as he’d hoped. Finally, after several minutes of tugging at the corner of the map, worrying the blade further and further under the skin, he succeeded, and it came away with a hideous sucking sound.

He laid the map back on the cadaver’s chest and meticulously wiped the kukri clean before sheathing it. Only then did he inspect his handiwork.

The map was intact, but separated from its human frame, the canvas of skin had shrunk considerably, condensing the tattooed lines and pictures into a dark but still legible image. The obverse side was covered with a grotesque gray film, thankfully dry to the touch. Suppressing one last shudder of revulsion, Kismet rolled the map up and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Joe had watched the whole process without speaking, and now he simply nodded and lowered the lid of the casket, returning the Spaniard to his final rest. “Now you know what he knew,” he said simply, without a trace of judgment.

Kismet gestured to the door of the crypt. “That’s our way out?”

The young man nodded. “There’s a good chance they’re still out there.”

Kismet was sure of it. Leeds and his white robed goons were probably already digging up the cemetery trying to find the tunnel exit. Getting back to the rented Explorer didn’t seem like a viable option; what did that leave?

“You said this tunnel was used by runaway slaves? Where did they go from here?”

“There was a trail leading to Charleston harbor. It’s several miles, an all night walk. From there, they’d travel north in the holds of merchant ships owned by Northern Abolitionists. But that was a long time ago. Everything has changed. There’s a few acres of woods, but beyond that it’s mostly neighborhoods now.”

Change wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, Kismet thought. They didn’t need to walk all the way to the port; they only needed to find a place where they could hide out and maybe call a taxi.

Of course, Leeds would know that. His new allies would be watching the roads.

“There’s a rail line about a mile to the east,” Joe continued. “You get to that, and you can follow it north into the city.”

The way Joe said “you” set off alarm bells. “You’re coming with us, right?”

A strange smile touched Joe’s lips. “I think Candace and I will just stay put. You’re gonna need to move fast if you want to get away, and Candace…well, her runnin’ days are long gone.”

“Will you be safe? What if Leeds discovers this crypt?”

“We can take care of ourselves,” Joe answered confidently. “An’ no offense, but the sooner you’re gone, the better off we’ll be.”

Kismet wasn’t so sure about that, and he didn’t relish the idea of abandoning the pair to such an uncertain fate, but the young man seemed to have made up his mind. “Then there’s something I need to know.”

Joe cocked his head sideways. “Somethin’ more?”

“You knew about all this. You had the diaries, you knew about the Fountain and even the map. So why are you here?”

“Well…” Joe let the word hang in the air for several seconds. “The truth is, I'm kind of scared of that Fountain. It don't seem natural, somehow.”

“And old age and death are natural?”

“Everybody gets old and everybody dies. Ain't nobody that never died, not even him.” He gestured to the casket. “What did he accomplish with all those extra years?”

Joe frowned, as if he had meant to say something else but couldn’t find the words. “Living like that…how is it any different than getting addicted to a drug? You live for the next fix, you keep it a secret and don’t share because you’re afraid that if you do, it won’t be special no more.”

“So, eternal life just leads to misery?” Kismet didn’t mean for the question to sound rhetorical, and quickly added: “What about Candace? Wouldn’t you like to spend a few more years with her? And not just as an old woman, but young and full of energy? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if the oldest and wisest of us had a few more years?”

“Mr. Kismet, I think that if folks learn about the Fountain, there's going to be plenty of misery for everyone. Powerful people will control it. And poor folks…black folks…they’ll just be in the way in a world where everyone lives forever.”

The argument surprised Kismet, not in the least because of how difficult it was to refute. “Everyone has something to give, Joe, something worth preserving.”

“I don't think so. If you want to go find it, that's you business. Me and Candace are going to stay where we belong.”

Kismet looked at King thoughtfully. “And this is where you really belong? Are you sure of that?”

“More than you might think, Mr. Kismet.” Joe smiled sadly. “If I could talk you out of looking for it I would. I think when you find it, we’ll all be in a world of hurt.”

TWELVE

Annie Crane hugged her arms around her chest and squeezed her eyes shut, but try as she might, she could not convince herself that she was somewhere else. Somewhere she wasn’t buried under tons of earth.

Claustrophobia, she thought. An irrational fear of being trapped in an enclosed space, and I’ve got it. How am I only learning this now?

Right up to the moment when she had plunged into that dark hole, Annie would have believed that she wasn’t afraid of anything. She was Al Higgins’ girl. She could shoot as well as any man she knew, was an expert rock-climber, flew paragliders and jumped out of airplanes…oh, there were still a lot of things on her bucket list — scary things — but not a one of them filled her with the kind of overwhelming primal terror she felt now.

Of course, now that she thought about it, there were a few things that had never held much appeal. Her dad had invited her to go caving once or twice, but the timing had never been good. Or had she just found excuses to avoid doing something that scared her more than she realized?

“Annie!” Her father’s voice was a welcome intrusion on her private hell. “Let’s go, girl. Time to get moving.”

If ‘moving’ meant getting out of this living tomb, she was all for it.

With the eagerness of someone trying to escape a snake pit, she scrambled up the ladder. Just knowing that she wasn’t underground anymore was a marginal relief, but the cramped little cube of cut stone in which she found herself wasn’t much better, particularly when she realized what function it served.

Kismet stood with his face pressed to the door of the crypt, a door which she now saw was open just a crack. He turned back to the rest of them after a moment. “Let’s go.”

Annie didn’t resist as her father bustled her forward, through the door which Kismet threw open to the night. If anything, she fairly ran to get through it.

The transition from tomb to open air was like a resurrection, but her euphoria was fleeting. She caught a whiff of smoke on the wind, and spied flashes of light — the beams of electric torches — crisscrossing the air above the endless sea of grave markers, and realized that, while they had escaped her underground nightmare, the danger which had prompted them to seek refuge in the tunnel was far from past. Leeds’ white robed goons were still looking for them.

Kismet tugged on her arm, pointing toward a maze of larger vaults that were clustered together near the crypt they had just exited. “This way.”

As she started to run behind him, a backward glance revealed that the crypt door was closed again, and the couple from the house — Joe and Candace — weren’t with them. She wanted to ask about this, but it was clear from their haste that questions and explanations would have to wait.

Joe descended the ladder and found Candace waiting patiently at the end of the tunnel.

“So you just sent them on their way?” she asked, a faintly accusatory tone in her voice.

“Didn’t seem like they’d have it any other way,” he answered. “Sooner they’re gone, the sooner we can get back to normal.”

“Normal,” Candace scoffed. “It’s done, Joe. There ain’t no going back to what was, and you know it.”

Joe leaned against the ladder and hung his head. She was right, of course. Oh, they could wait down here as long as it took; the hooligans in white robes — whether they were Klansmen or just a few rowdies using the sheets to misdirect suspicion, he didn’t know — probably wouldn’t linger until sunrise, especially if they caught the scent of Kismet and his companions. But what then? Their home was destroyed, and with it, the life they had so carefully constructed for themselves.

Candace moved to stand next to him, but said nothing. Joe intuited that something more was troubling her, and he thought he knew what it was. “You think I should have told them everything, don't you?”

“They saved us,” she replied, without directly answering him.

“I told them where to find what they’re looking for.”

“Yes.”

He could tell from her tone that she was holding back. “Then what's the matter? That Kismet fellow knows what he's doing. They'll be fine.”

“They need to know the truth.”

Joe sighed. Maybe she was right; maybe Kismet did deserve to know everything. But the Fountain had a way of keeping its own secret; who was he to interfere?

They managed to get as far as the edge of the cemetery before they were noticed.

As they clambered over the fence that marked the border, Kismet heard distant shouts and saw flashlight beams playing along the tree line, seeking them out, and knew that now it would be a race.

He’d briefed Higgins and Annie on the plan as they had darted between the headstones. If they got separated in the darkness, they would find each other again at the rail line Joe had told him about. Now, as they started running headlong, no longer making an effort to conceal their movements, he would have to trust them to make that rendezvous.

The sparse woods offered some concealment, but there was little doubt that Leeds’ men were giving chase. When he glanced back, he could see their flashlights through the boughs. They had a good lead, maybe it would be enough. But as the minutes passed, ticked out by the pounding of his heart and the rhythm of his breathing, he heard an ominous sound in the distance and knew that fate had thrown a monkey wrench into the gears of his plan. A low rumble and the squeal and clatter of steel wheels on iron rails…there was a train on the line.

At least it will be easy to find, he thought.

As he broke out of the woods, he caught his first glimpse of the train. He could make out the squared-off silhouettes of box cars, or maybe shipping containers, as well as tankers, and flatbed cars with unusual shapes secured to them. It stretched in both directions as far as he could see, at least a mile long, moving south, away from the heart of the city at what seemed like a glacial pace. They could still follow the rail line back to the city, but if their pursuers caught up to them, there would be nowhere to go, not while that serpentine behemoth blocked the way.

Maybe…

He glimpsed Annie emerging from the woods behind him. She seemed rejuvenated after her paralyzing and unexpected bout of claustrophobia in the tunnel. Her breathing was steady, as if the desperate flight through the woods had been no more challenging than a jog to the corner store. Her father trotted out a few seconds later, panting just a little, but clearly still in fighting shape. Kismet noted with some satisfaction that the old Gurkha still had his Kimber rifle, now slung across his back. He waved, urging them to join him as he started running again, slower now so they could catch up, and headed straight for the train.

He paused at the edge of the raised gravel rail bed and beckoned them close. The ground rumbled beneath his feet as thousands of tons of steel rolled by just a few yards away.

He pointed up at the line of cars. Higgins seemed to grasp what he was silently suggesting, for a look of disbelief twisted his visage. “Mate, you are not bloody serious.”

Annie’s gaze switched between them until she too seemed to understand. “Oh.”

“I think we can do this,” he shouted back. “It’s not going that fast; maybe only twenty miles an hour.”

It was a guess, but a good one. Out in open country, a train might cruise along at fifty or sixty miles per hour, but here, close to populated areas with a lot of road crossings, trains had to observe speed limits just like automobiles.

Okay, it might be more like thirty miles per hour, he decided, but didn’t voice this aloud. “We can do this,” he repeated. “It’s our best chance. We hop this train and get off a few miles down the line. They won’t have a clue where we are.”

Higgins glanced at his daughter, and then nodded with only the barest hint of reservation. Annie was a little more reticent with her assent, but Kismet was pleased and a little surprised at how quickly they accepted his crazy plan. He realized it was probably because they had no idea just how dangerous what they were about to do really was.

There wasn’t time to work out the finer points. They would have to run alongside the train, as fast as they could manage, pick out a good handhold as the cars passed by, grab on and pull themselves up. An Olympic sprinter, running all out, could easily reach twenty miles an hour and sustain that pace for a few hundred meters. None of them were in that kind of shape, but with adrenaline pumping, he didn’t doubt that they could come close, at least for a minute or so. The train would be moving at about five to ten miles an hour faster, so grabbing on would, in theory, be a little like reaching out from a standstill and snaring someone running by.

Higgins went first, with Annie only a few steps behind him. Kismet too started running along, giving the others a little bit of room. He paid scant attention to their progress, keeping his focus on the task at hand. Further complicating matters was the fact that in order to reach the train, they would have to dart up the sloping side of the rail bed at the last minute, effectively running right at the lumbering train as it moved by. A stumble or an error in judgment of even a few degrees, and they might very well be crushed to death or sliced in half beneath the clattering wheels.

He caught a glimpse of Higgins making his move. The old Gurkha found a previously untapped vein of energy and dashed up the rail bed to grasp the front edge of a flatcar as it rolled by. His grip was fierce enough that the train pulled him off his feet, and for a moment, he was dragged along, his boots bouncing off the gravel, but then with a superhuman heave, he hauled himself up onto the platform where he immediately rolled onto his belly and reached out with both hands to his daughter.

Annie made it look easy. Her lithe form and the vigor of her youth enabled her to almost match the pace of the train for a few seconds, long enough to catch her father’s hands. He lifted her onto the flatcar with the grace of a ballet dancer lifting a ballerina over his head, and then they were gone, whisked from Kismet’s line of sight as the train rolled on.

He quickened his pace, lowering his head as he broke into a full sprint along the base of the rail bed. A container car, with no easy handholds, passed him by, moving almost twice as fast as he. He kept running, biding his time. A second container car passed, and then another.

Not good.

He glanced over his shoulder, afraid that he might be running out of train, but positioned as he was, he just couldn’t tell. Then he saw his chance; a flatbed with some kind of vehicle or large machine was coming up next. As its front corner passed him, he charged up the gravel slope and reached out.

In that moment, the sheer lunacy of what he was doing hit him like a physical blow. He’d done some crazy things in his life, sometimes without any kind of safety net, but this time it felt different. Maybe it was because he was running, exerting himself to the physical limit at a time when he most needed his judgment to be pitch perfect. The exacting nature of what he was attempting filled him with uncertainty, a dread reminder of just how precise his timing would have to be, right at a moment when he most needed to be sure of himself. The thunderous passage of the train car right beside him didn’t help his focus any.

Then his outstretched hand felt something that wasn’t smooth unyielding metal. It was a heavy nylon web belt, one of the tension straps that held the flatbed’s cargo in place. He curled his fingers around it…

And was yanked off his feet.

For an instant, he panicked, struggling to gain his footing while at the same time trying to keep his legs from being swept under the car. In desperation, he flung his other hand up to grasp the strap, even as his feet started to drag and bounce along the gravel slope.

Damn it, he thought. Now I’m screwed.

He dared not let go, but how long could he endure the punishing assault of being dragged by the train. He had to pull himself up, but was he strong enough?

He flexed his biceps, pulling with all his might, but almost immediately, something like liquid fire began to burn in his muscles and he felt them start to fail. In desperation he kicked at the ground moving beneath his feet, trying to propel himself up, just a few inches…

It was enough. He pulled his torso up against the strap and felt the edge of the flatbed against his hips. The instantaneous respite from being dragged restored his confidence, and savoring his success for just a moment, he began working his hands up the length of the strap until he could haul himself the rest of the way up onto the flat bed, where he finally collapsed in exhaustion.

After a few relieved breaths, he rolled onto his side to get a look at his new surroundings. The first thing he saw was an enormous black donut shape more than three feet in diameter — a truck tire — and then he realized that there was another right beside it, and a few feet down, separated by an external fuel tank, there was another pair. As his eyes continued to adjust to the darkness, he made out more details of the strange looking vehicle. It had been a while since he’d seen one, but he recognized it right away. It was an M977 A2 Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, the ten-ton capacity, eight-wheel drive, diesel powered workhorse of the US Army.

The train was transporting military hardware, probably vehicles that had been shipped back to the States after seeing action in the Middle East or Afghanistan. It now occurred to him that the other flatbeds he had seen, including the one that Higgins and Annie had mounted, were likewise loaded with HEMTTs or possibly Humvees, all on their way to a motor pool somewhere halfway across the country. The details didn’t really matter much, but the vehicles would be a lot easier to negotiate around than container cars that now separated him from his companions.

He glanced in the direction the train was traveling. There were at least two container cars between him and his friends. Easy or not, it was time to get moving.

He rose and moved alongside the HEMMT, stepping over the tension straps and chains that held it secure to the flatbed, until he reached the front end of the flatbed. In the darkness, he could just make out the heavy steel knuckle that joined this car to the next a few feet below where he stood. About six feet away, across a gap bridged by that coupling, was the container car. He now saw that the container was secured to a flat car just like the truck. Although its massive bulk almost completely filled the moving platform, there was a narrow ledge — about six inches wide — around its perimeter. The ledge was tempting, but the sheet metal walls of the container afforded little in the way of handholds.

He stepped cautiously down onto the coupling, maintaining two-handed contact with the edge of the flatbed car until both feet were firmly planted. Then, with only a single quick step forward, he reached across to grasp hold of the shipping container. From there, it was an easy thing to pull himself up and onto the ledge.

Instead of attempting to traverse along the ledge, he instead used the vertical rods of the containers external door latch like a climbing ladder, and deftly pulled himself up onto the roof.

The wind of the train’s passage blasted him with surprising intensity, ripping at his jacket and stealing the moisture from his eyes. The train was probably only going about thirty miles an hour, but the rush of air was relentless. He stayed low, hugging the slick metal and crawling forward, even though the chance of being blown off his perch was effectively nil. After a few minutes of inching his way along, he reached the far end of the container and another long gap between cars.

With a running start, he probably could have easily leapt to the next roof, but there seemed no pressing reason to tempt fate. Instead, he lowered himself slowly down to the ledge and again stepped cautiously over the coupling.

As he did, something flashed through the air above his head.

He did not see it so much as sense it, and as soon as he looked and saw nothing, his rational mind tried to dismiss the experience. It could have been anything…probably was nothing…but the animal part of his brain — that evolutionary holdover instinct that raised gooseflesh on the back of his neck and set his heart to racing — was unconvinced. Although still moving with painstaking care, he felt a new urgency as he began climbing up the container door.

As soon as his head rose above the roofline, he saw the figures — two of them, white robes whipping furiously about their bodies — striding forward down the length of the car, bent forward in defiance of the headwind. Evidently, Leeds’ goons had seen them hop the train, and at least a few of them had managed to follow suit.

“Damn!” The wind snatched the muttered curse from Kismet’s lips. He inched up onto the roof, staying flat, and drew his Glock from its holster, as the two creeping figures reached the far end of the car. Higgins and Annie were up there somewhere, waiting for him and completely unaware of the trouble headed their way.

He was about to rise to his feet, intent on giving chase, when a strong hand grabbed one of his ankles and yanked him from the roof and into the crushing darkness between the cars.

Annie widened her stance as the train rocked into a curve and nearly caused her to lose her already tentative footing. She gripped the side of the military truck secured to the flatcar which she and her father had boarded only a few minutes earlier and waited for the sensation to pass.

She gazed once more into the darkness, down the serpentine line of cars behind them, and wondered aloud. “What’s taking him so long?”

They had both seen Kismet make it aboard the train…or to be more precise, they had seen him charge up the sloped rail bed before vanishing from sight. They had continued watching, but he had not reappeared, which probably meant that he was aboard, but could also mean that he had slipped and fallen onto the rails, and been subsequently sliced apart by the steel wheels.

No, she told herself. He made it. We made it, and it wasn’t that hard…so he made it too.

But if he had made it onto the train, where was he?

“We should go look for him,” she decided, shouting to be heard over the din.

Her father gave a perturbed look, but then nodded his assent. With one hand still resting against the exterior of the truck, Annie began moving toward the rear of the train, intent on finding Nick Kismet. She had only gone a few steps however when a strange white shape appeared atop the shipping container on the car behind them. It took a moment for her to register what she was seeing, a moment in which the cloaked figure abruptly launched into the air, white robes fluttering like moth wings, and came down squarely on the flatcar, just a few steps away.

Higgins saw the unexpected arrival and immediately brought the barrel of his rifle around, but before he could attempt to aim the unwieldy weapon, the intruder raised a handgun of his own and let lead fly.

The report of the pistol was muted by the rush of air, sounding about as loud as a door slamming. Annie hit the flat deck and hastily rolled under the tall wheels of the military transport. She expected to hear her father’s rifle thundering as he returned fire, but to her surprise, he hit the deck and rolled beside her, shaking his head in frustration. He gripped her shoulder and then pointed to the forward end of the car. “Go!”

She didn’t argue. Scrambling away on hands and knees, she quickly reached the end of the car. The rush of air moving past caught away most of the sounds from behind her, but there were at least two distinct voices shouting to each other; the gunman wasn’t alone. She gazed ahead, to the next car in the train — another flat car — and mentally rehearsed what she was going to do next.

Like a sprinter off the block, she sprang to her feet and launched herself forward, over the gap between the cars. There was no hesitation in her stride; perhaps on some level she was trying to compensate for her earlier episode of claustrophobia, but she was confident of her ability to make the jump, even working against the train’s forward acceleration. She touched down lightly and caught herself with outstretched palms against the front end of another military truck. She skirted around the vehicle and made for the next car in the line, intent on putting even more space between herself and the gunmen.

A rush of movement and a faint tremor beneath her feet alerted to the presence of another person on the car, and she shrank instinctively against the truck as if trying to melt into its exterior.

“It’s me,” Higgins rasped. “Can’t get a shot. Keep moving.”

He didn’t need to explain it to her. The Kimber was a devastating weapon, but its long barrel made it unwieldy in close quarters, and to make matters worse, it only had a five round magazine. The only option that made any sense was to fall back and find a more defensible position, where the rifle’s lethal accuracy and potency could be used to best advantage. On a linear battlefield like the train, that meant just one thing: get as many cars as possible between themselves and their attackers.

And Nick?

The thought was there before she could stop it from forming, but she pushed it away. Either Kismet was still alive and still in the fight or he wasn’t, but there was nothing she could do to help him right now. She pushed away from the truck and started moving again.

She leapt to the next car and this time kept going, nearly at a full run. She danced over the tie-down straps, but as she reached the forward end of the car, she saw that the next car was different. It had a rectangular silhouette, but there was a platform at its rear surrounded by what looked like a low fence. Adjusting her stride just a little, she made the jump, catching herself on the barrier, and then clambered over it onto the platform. In the darkness, she could just make out a door, but in the moment that she grasped the latch handle, she heard something hit the rail behind her.

She whirled to find her father, clinging to the fence and struggling to regain his footing. Gripping his shoulders, she managed to steady him and then helped him over. When he was safely beside her, he turned and aimed the rifle into the darkness, looking for a target. With a nod, she fell back to the door and tried the handle. The door swung open, spilling light from the interior.

“Got it,” she cried. “Come on.”

Not waiting for a reply, she charged into the car, Higgins right behind her…

The car was full of men — armed men — and as she skidded to an abrupt halt, half a dozen gun barrels swung up to greet her.

Kismet’s next thought was of pain.

He had flung his arms out instinctively, desperate to grab ahold of something to keep from falling into the gap between the cars or perhaps simply to regain some sense of which way was up. Then, he hit the heavy steel coupling and for a moment, experienced a supernova of pain. The metal knuckle caught him in the abdomen, punching the wind out his sails.

At some primal level, his initial instinctive response saved him, for even as the impact knocked his breath away, his arms curled around the coupling with the intensity of a vise. There was no conscious involvement; agony superseded all voluntary actions. Yet, even as the torment began to recede, a new eruption struck. A blow, then another, not as intense as his crash onto the coupling, but more focused…someone was hitting…no, kicking him.

The unseen assailant that had pulled him from the container was now trying to finish what he’d started.

Even as Kismet made this deductive leap, his desperate grip faltered. He didn’t fall, but under the relentless assault, he felt the metal junction slipping away. He rolled sideways, the metal scraping against his arms as his own weight pulled him down. There was yet another rush of pain as the metal scraped against the insides of his clenched arms and legs, and simultaneously he felt something — the ground probably — slapping at his back, through the thick leather of his jacket.

He caught a breath, finally, and with it came a rush of purpose. He flexed his arms, drawing himself up closer to the coupling and away from the abrasive washboard of railroad ties and gravel. But even as that torment ended, he felt his assailant’s boot strike a glancing blow on his forearm.

In desperation, he let go with his right arm and threw a hand up, hoping to deflect the next kick. His fingers grazed something soft and yielding — fabric, a pant leg perhaps. He grabbed onto it like a lifeline and pulled.

Perhaps because he was in such a dominant position, the move caught his attacker completely off guard. The fabric Kismet grabbed, the white sheet the man had donned both as a way of terrorizing his intended victims and masking his identity, became his death shroud. As Kismet hauled in on the sheet, the man was pulled off balance and pitched forward, into the gap between the cars. Kismet felt something brush against him as the man fell past, and then the sheet was violently ripped from his fingers.

For a moment, he could do nothing more than hang there, struggling to draw each breath but savoring the unexpected victory. But he couldn’t stay where he was; just holding on was sapping his strength fast, and if he didn’t move soon, he’d be joining his vanquished foe. Moreover, he knew that if one of the robed hooligans had made it onto the train, then others probably had as well. In fact, he was almost certain that the noise he’d heard just before the attack had been another of Leeds’ men, jumping between the cars and already moving up the train, looking — he assumed — for Higgins and Annie.

He didn’t hold back the roar of pain and exertion that accompanied his attempt to get back on top of the coupling; any noises he made were drowned out by the squeal and rattle of the train’s wheels against the rails. The effort seemed futile; he would struggle to exhaustion and then simply fall into the darkness when his muscles failed. He might even survive…

No! He kept at it, shifting and squirming until, after a few agonizing seconds stretched out to eternity, he found himself once more atop the coupling. He quickly shifted his grip to the exposed ledge surrounding the shipping container, and began methodically working his way up onto it.

Escaping the jaws of death was like a tonic. The pain in his ribs was nothing more than a dull ache and his fatigued muscles felt revitalized. He quickly shinnied up the latch rods once more, this time keeping his head on a swivel to avoid being taken unawares a second time. When his head breached the plane of the rooftop, he checked in both directions, but the coast was clear so pulled himself the rest of the way up. Then, against his better judgment, he stood, and faced into the relentless wind of the train’s forward passage.

The lead locomotive’s headlamp cast a cone of illumination out ahead of the train. But the light also revealed dark silhouettes — two human shapes — moving in the foreground, along the top of the train, perhaps a hundred yards meters ahead. He couldn’t tell whether the figures were his companions or more of Leeds’ goon squad, but they were well past the point where Higgins and Annie had boarded. There was only one possible objective in that direction — the locomotive — but he couldn’t fathom why the pair — be they friend or foe — would be headed there. Then he looked behind him, and it all made sense.

From his elevated position, he could easily make out the rear of train, at least two hundred yards back. Further back, perhaps another two hundred yards he saw the headlights of a vehicle, moving alongside the tracks and bobbing crazily as the driver negotiated the rugged terrain alongside the rail bed.

Reinforcements, he realized with a growing feeling of dread. Some of their pursuers had made it aboard, but evidently the rest had called for help. There was no way the driver of the approaching vehicle — probably a 4X4 pickup or SUV — would be able to get close enough for his passengers to cross over; he was having a hard enough time just keeping pace.

That, Kismet realized, was what the two figures advancing toward the locomotive were trying to accomplish.

Hunching over into the rushing air, he began moving as fast as he dared. He reached the end of the container and deftly climbed down to leap onto the flatbed. The urgency of the situation enabled him to sublimate his instinctive fears, imbuing him with a surefooted decisiveness as he negotiated the obstacles and unhesitatingly crossed between the cars, picking out handholds, climbing onto roofs as if they were merely a maze of obstacles on a child’s playground.

In a matter of only seconds, he was past the flatcars where he was sure his friends had boarded. There was no sign of them, and he hoped that meant they had found somewhere to hide. He couldn’t take the time to look; if Leeds’ men succeeded in stopping the train, then all hope would be lost. He kept going.

A long series of box cars sped him along. He was able to jump from one roof to the next without breaking stride. Yet, even as he raced forward, the two figures he pursued dropped out of sight. He kept going, and reached the place where they had vanished a few seconds later.

The last boxcar in the line was hooked to a locomotive, one of a pair that worked together to pull the train. Kismet hopped over to the platform that ran along the side of the engine, following it to a short stairway that fed into the cab. The interior of the control room was dark and unmanned; the locomotive had been slaved to the lead engine. The engineer would be in the forward locomotive, and that was where Leeds’ men would be headed. A narrow door led out the front of the cab and onto another small ledge, surrounded by a guardrail.

As he vaulted the rail and landed on the deck at the rear of the lead engine, he caught a glimpse of white fabric, fluttering in the wind, moving along the exterior of the locomotive, just ahead of him. Without slowing, he reached for his holster, but found it empty. His gun was gone; he had probably dropped it during the fall. His kukri however was still sheathed on the opposite side, and he drew it, switching it to his right hand and holding it in a fierce grip as he ran, determined not to lose his last remaining weapon.

Kismet rounded the corner, gathering his momentum to tackle the sprinting figure…

Something slammed into his back and sent him reeling. He staggered, rebounding off the blistering hot engine hood and fell back against the protective railing that lined the walkway. In that instant, he caught a glimpse of assailant, a hulking form beneath a now-grubby sheet that had somehow gotten behind him, and was now advancing with undisguised malevolence.

Kismet tried to get the kukri up but was a heartbeat too slow. The man closed the distance and thrust out his hands, wrapping them around Kismet’s throat, squeezing the life out of him even as he bent him back over the waist high guardrail.

Kismet’s reaction was automatic. He brought his hands up, intending to fight the chokehold, but the hilt of the Gurkha knife was still locked in his right fist. The blade glanced harmlessly off the attacker’s forearm, but the mere reminder of its presence emboldened Kismet. He broke off his defensive struggle, and immediately went on the offensive with a backhand slash across his foe’s exposed torso.

The man fell back, his howl of rage audible even over the deafening rumble of the diesel engine. Kismet slashed again, a miss, but enough to drive the man back, staggering, his will to fight evidently leaking away along with the blood that seeped from his wound.

Kismet broke off the attack and wheeled around, resuming the pursuit of the lone remaining attacker. There was a flash of light as the cab door ahead was thrown open, and then it was gone as the white-robed figure eclipsed the source. He was there a moment later, but instead of charging in blind he stopped to appraise the situation inside the cab.

The door was still open, and beyond, a shrouded figure brandishing an enormous large bore revolver — possibly a .44 Colt Anaconda or a S&W .500. With a hand cannon like that loose in the cab, he didn’t dare rush the man from behind; a single shot, even a glancing wound to an extremity from one of the Magnum rounds, would be lethal. He didn’t think the gunman planned on killing the train’s engineer, but there was no telling what might happen if he spooked the man.

“Stop the train,” the man ordered, shouting to be heard over the rumble of the diesel. He shook the pistol meaningfully. “Now!”

Then again…thought Kismet, hefting the kukri.

He stepped past the metal threshold and got within an arm’s length of the unsuspecting gunman. Over the man’s shoulder, Kismet saw two men in work clothes — the train’s crew — standing with their hands raised, transfixed by the sight of the enormous gun barrel pointed at them. Kismet’s unexpected appearance was enough to draw the gaze of one man, but probably because he had no idea whether Kismet was friend or foe, his terrified expression did not change. The other man turned to comply with his captor’s orders.

Kismet drew a deep breath into his battered rib cage, and then with as much forcefulness as he could muster, shouted: “Drop the gun!”

The white-robed man started to turn, the reaction automatic, his instinctive curiosity greater than his fear of an unknown threat. Kismet had been expecting exactly this reaction, and as soon as he saw the barrel of the revolver waver a few degrees away from the train crew, he brought the butt end of the kukri’s hilt down squarely on the back of the gunman’s head.

The hilt, two dense pieces of hardwood, riveted through the thick steel tang and capped at one end with an eighth-inch thick layer of metal, slammed into the man’s skull like a hammer, and he crumpled beneath his sheet, deflating to the floor like some kind of fairy tale ghost banished by a happy thought. The heavy Magnum pistol, still clutched in one fist, thumped to the deck without discharging.

Kismet heaved a relieved sigh and lowered the knife. He made eye contact with each of the men in turn, offering a reassuring nod, then opened his eyes to tell them that they were safe, and that they should under no circumstances stop or even slow the train.

But the words never left his mouth. Before he could speak, heavy hands clapped down on either shoulder and yanked him back, through the narrow doorway and once more onto the catwalk where he stumbled uncontrollably toward the rear of the engine. A foot lashed out and swept his legs from under him, depositing him in a painful heap on the metal grill of the ledge. Flat on his back, he looked up into the blank white of his attacker’s disguise. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes through the ragged holes in the sheet, but the bloody horizontal slash across the man’s chest identified him as the man Kismet had earlier struggled with; evidently the man had regained his nerve and wanted back into the fight.

Kismet brought the knife up, and at the same time braced his feet against the walkway, propelling himself backward, away from his foe. The man closed with him, but the distance gave Kismet time to get back to his feet, slashing at the air in front of him to drive the man back. It worked, for a few seconds at least, and then the man reached under his shroud and drew his own blade, a big Bowie knife — easily fifteen inches in length — with brass knuckles on the hilt.

With his nerves already alight from his earlier brush with death, the sight of the heavy blade — a veritable short sword to rival the kukri—didn’t give Kismet the slightest pause. He had survived more than one knife fight in his life — hell, he’d he survived more than one just in the last week — and he doubted very much the redneck under the sheet could make such a boast.

But then something happened that took the fight out of Kismet. At first it was just a strange sensation, like being pushed forward even though no one was behind him. Then he heard the ominous shriek of metal against metal, and knew what was happening.

Up in the cab, the engineer, recognizing that something very bad was about to happen, was doing the one thing Kismet desperately needed him not to do. He was stopping the train.

Kismet launched himself forward, hacking the air in front of him repeatedly and driving his foe back a step before the man even knew what was happening. The man under the sheet was big — football linebacker big — and surprisingly light on his feet, but Kismet could tell by the way he held the Bowie that his first hunch about the man was right; the only thing this man knew about knife fighting was what he saw in movies. He even tried, at one point, to parry Kismet’s blade, like some kind of pirate, fencing with a cutlass. Kismet easily swatted the Bowie down, using the kukri’s forward curve like a hook, and then lashed out with a foot. The kick connected squarely with the man’s gut and sent him reeling backwards where he tripped on the steps and fell halfway through the door to the cab.

Kismet leaped forward intent on shouting for the engineer to keep the train moving forward, but before he could utter even a syllable, a kick from the supine knife-wielder drove him back. The man was back up in an instant, charging forward with the knife out ahead of him like a lance. Kismet twisted to the side and managed to avoid the blade, but the force behind it — the man’s bulky body — slammed into him and both men crashed into the engine hood and tumbled in a tangled mass of limbs and blades on the walkway.

Kismet thought he felt something sharp against his arm — a steel edge cutting through the leather sleeve of his jacket, probably the blade of his own kukri which had been torn from his grasp in the collision — but in the desperate unfocused struggle, the only sensation that meant anything at all to him was the persistent shift of his center of gravity as the train squealed to a stop beneath him.

The hand wielding the Bowie knife suddenly came into view above his head; the man had wrestled his arm free and now had the blade poised right above Kismet’s throat. Both of Kismet’s arms were pinned, immobile beneath the man’s body. All he could do was wrench himself sideways as the knife point came down. Something tugged at his shoulder as the blade ripped through the leather, gouging a shallow furrow in the flesh beneath, but then the blade hit the metal of the walkway and stopped cold. The man had put so much force behind the thrust that the abrupt impact caused the hilt to twist out of his hand. Kismet was only peripherally aware of this fact, but he knew he’d avoided being skewered. Twisting again, he heaved himself and his assailant sideways. As the man resisted, Kismet thrust forward, ramming his forehead into the man’s chin.

The stab of pain that shot through Kismet’s skull was a small price to pay in exchange for the satisfying crunch of his assailant’s lower jaw cracking and probably breaking. But that minor triumph did little to change the situation. Without his knife, the hulking attacker was left with only the weapons nature had given him — his fists, his body mass, his evidently superior strength — and unlike the knife, he was clearly more familiar with how to use those. Agonized and enraged, the man started raining blows in the direction of Kismet’s exposed face. Kismet, his hands still trapped, could do nothing but raise his head, staying as close to the other man as he could in order to limit the effectiveness of the punches.

The gamble worked. His assailant, frustrated by his inability to pound Kismet senseless, changed tactics and instead pushed away in an effort to extricate himself from the grappling match. Kismet got his arms free, but just as quickly wrapped his legs around the man’s middle, trapping him in close combat, the same way he’d been instructed all those years ago when learning ground-fighting techniques in the army. Kismet got his right arm around the man’s neck, then caught his right forearm with his left hand and began ratcheting his grip tighter.

The man continued to struggle ineffectually for a moment, but then seemed to realize what Kismet was doing. He stopped thrashing and instead tried to slide his beefy hands in between his vulnerable throat and Kismet’s headlock.

The battle seemed to have come to a standstill, with neither man moving an inch. Kismet felt his foe’s squirming fingers working into the notch of his elbow and realized that the man was about to succeed. In desperation, he began twisting his own body back and forth, trying to shake the man, the way a predator shakes its prey in its jaws to break its neck.

The man roared in fury, a roar that was all the louder for the fact that the squealing of the train’s brakes had subsided to a low rasping. The agonized howl took the last bit of fight out of the man, and a moment later, his struggles ceased as asphyxia bore him down into dark unconsciousness. Kismet held tight a moment longer, fearing that that the sudden capitulation was a ruse, and then heaved the still figure away.

At that instant, the train lurched to a full stop.

Lights flashed and bobbed in the darkness alongside the train, heralding the imminent arrival of Leeds’ men. Over the deep rumble of the idling locomotive, Kismet hear the distinctive report of gunfire and knew that, despite his victory in the close-quarters struggle, things were about to get a lot worse.

On hands and knees, he groped for his knife, found it, and was about to stand up when he became aware of another white-robed figure looming over him. The man that had reached the cab first, the one he’d cold-cocked with the kukri, had evidently recovered from the blow…and recovered his pistol as well. The gaping barrel of the Magnum was pointing straight at Kismet’s face, and as the latter stared back, helpless in defeat, the shrouded man thumbed back the action and tightened his finger on the trigger.

A shot, then several more…too many too count…thundered in Kismet’s ears.

But the revolver hadn’t discharged.

The man with the big gun flinched as bullets ripped into him and then fell against the guard rail.

In disbelief, Kismet turned toward the source of the shots. Brilliant white light, the beams of a half-dozen or more high intensity LED flashlights, left him nearly blind, but he could just make out the shapes of the advancing group. The men were poised for action, carbines held at the high, ready and trained on him, but they weren’t wearing the makeshift disguises of the bunch that had attacked them at the cemetery. This group wore a different uniform; helmets and body armor, tactical vests with spare magazines and other equipment, all in the distinctive gray and off-white digital camouflage pattern of the United States army’s advanced combat uniform.

THIRTEEN

For the next two hours, Kismet barely moved.

Most of the soldiers had swarmed over the locomotive, ensuring that there were no other hostile elements lurking nearby, but two of their number had remained with him, keeping their M4 carbines raised and ready the whole time. He stayed quiet, and except for a few terse commands, so did they.

Once the security sweep was complete, an army medic in full battle-rattle arrived on the scene to begin assessing casualties. Ignoring Kismet, he went first to the man that had been carrying the revolver. He used a pair of trauma shears to cut away the man’s disguise, revealing the bland face of a younger than middle-aged man with unkempt hair and a short beard. Kismet surreptitiously watched as the medic checked for a pulse, listened for breath sounds, and then repeated the process twice more before glancing up to the stone-faced riflemen and shaking his head.

The man that Kismet had choked out was luckier. Once again, the mask was stripped away, this time to reveal a much younger man, and the medic successfully found a pulse after a few seconds. He moved to the man’s side, giving his security element a better line of fire in case the man came to, and went to work checking for other injuries.

“Broken jaw,” he mumbled, as if dictating to an unseen secretary. He probed some more, repositioning the kid and mopping up blood to see if minor wounds concealed more severe injuries. “Superficial laceration to the upper chest…a lot of bruising…” He looked up again, addressing one of the other soldiers. “He’ll live, but we should evac him to a local facility.”

The soldier nodded and, still keeping his carbine raised with one hand, keyed a radio clipped to his vest and relayed the message.

The medic regarded Kismet with evident apprehension. “I need to check you over.”

Kismet nodded, but said nothing. As far as the medic and the soldiers were concerned, he was a potentially hostile combatant; any attempt to put them at ease would probably just make them even more suspicious.

The medic ticked off the list of Kismet’s injuries, mostly bruises and abrasions. He daubed Betadine onto a few of the deeper cuts and used butterfly sutures to close the wound on Kismet’s shoulder. When he was finished, the medic addressed Kismet with a little less reservation. “You should probably get checked out in the ER as well, but Major Russell wants to talk to you first. You okay with that?”

Kismet nodded again. “I’ll live. And the sooner I get to tell my side of this, the better.”

The medic cocked his head sideways in a knowing gesture, and then went to work preparing the unconscious man for transport. Once the patient was borne away on a field litter, the long silence resumed, and Kismet waited some more.

The night air was just starting to get uncomfortably chilly when another soldier climbed up onto the walkway. This man had removed his battle armor but still wore a holstered semi-automatic pistol on his hip. There was a gold oak leaf badge on his patrol cap and the name tape on the front pocket of his uniform blouse read “Russell.”

Despite being sore, tired and frustrated by the long period of inactivity, Kismet did his best to present a cooperative demeanor. “Major Russell.”

The officer cut him off with a brusque wave. “It’s Kismet, right?” He spoke with a clipped but precise style, accentuating his faint southern drawl. “Do you have any idea what you have done here? I have got a ten mile section of railroad that’s now a crime scene, and now all train traffic on the eastern seaboard is at a dead stop.”

Kismet bit back an equally rancorous reply and focused on what the major had, perhaps unintentionally, revealed. “I hope the fact that you know my name means that you’ve talked to my friends already. Are they okay?”

Russell’s mouth twitched a little, as if fighting away a smile. “They’re fine and in a lot better shape than you.”

“So I assume they’ve already told you that we aren’t the bad guys. The only reason we were even on this train is because we were being chased by the guys in white sheets. We were just lucky that this train happened to be transporting military equipment.”

“You were lucky,” Russell scoffed. “Regulations require an escort when our equipment is transported by civilian carriers, but it’s just a preventative measure. If the crazies know that there are soldiers guarding the trucks, they’ll think twice about hijacking them. Never in my wildest dreams did I believe someone would actually try.”

Kismet thought the officer’s manner seemed more irritated than confrontational. “I don’t think your cargo had anything to do with this.”

“No, I suppose not.” Russell put his hands on his hips and sighed. “That bunch in the pickup lighted off like jack rabbits when they got a look at us. Local law enforcement is tracking them down now. Probably not part of any organized group — the local Klan chapter was quick to deny any involvement and I am inclined to believe them.”

“Does it matter?”

Russell actually laughed. “More than you might think. If this was an organized attack, and not a bunch of rowdies jacked up on meth and moonshine, then it’s domestic terrorism, and that means we break out a can of bureaucratic alphabet soup.”

“It wasn’t just ‘rowdies.’”

“That’s what your friends said.”

Kismet tried unsuccessfully not to frown. What exactly had Higgins and Annie told this man? Had they mentioned the goal of their quest? Their protestations of innocence would surely be undermined by the revelation that they were really nothing more than treasure hunters. He tried changing the subject. “Can I see them?”

Russell crossed his arms over his chest, his expression at once perturbed and thoughtful. “I guess that depends on whether you can give me one good reason not to simply turn you over to Homeland Security. I’d just as soon do that, and let them sort this mess out.”

“I don’t know what more I can add.” Kismet was choosing his words carefully, but at the same time trying to avoid sounding evasive. “My friends and I are looking for something…call it a historical research project. There’s a man out there named John Leeds who wants to beat us to it. We were in the middle of an interview with someone when Leeds and this bunch of ‘rowdies’ drove up and tried to kill us. We ran into the woods and saw the train. They followed. End of story.”

Russell didn’t seem remotely convinced, but he didn’t turn away. “Tell me more about this project you’re working on. If this Leeds fellow is willing to kill, it must be…what, worth a lot of money? Or is it something else?”

Kismet couldn’t tell if Russell was sincere. As both a former army intelligence officer and an attorney, he knew a little about interrogations and leading questions. But it wasn’t like there was any trap to fall into; Leeds was the bad guy, they’d done nothing wrong, and if push came to shove, he’d argue that in court, never mind how preposterous it sounded. But Kismet didn’t really get the sense that the major was trying to trick him. Maybe he really didn’t know; perhaps Higgins and Annie had discreetly stayed mum regarding the more fantastic aspects of their mission. He was still trying to figure out how to explain it when Russell’s expression abruptly hardened.

The officer frowned as he took a mobile phone from his pocket and glanced at the illuminated display. “Excuse me,” he said, and then stepped down from the locomotive and retreated several paces away before taking the call.

Kismet could hear the major’s voice and make out a few words — he distinctly heard the man say “yes sir” several times — but the topic of the conversation remained a mystery.

At length, Russell lowered the phone and dropped it back in his pocket with an almost quizzical expression. He addressed the soldiers who had been holding Kismet at gun point, ordering them to stand down then he turned to Kismet. “Let’s go find your friends.”

Alex Higgins was still trying to process the abrupt change in the demeanor of the soldiers who had been guarding them when he saw Kismet and Major Russell enter the car.

For two hours, he and Annie had been held at gunpoint, separated at different ends of the decades old steerage class passenger coach. Russell had interrogated them each in turn, relentlessly asking the same questions over and over again. For his part, Higgins had kept his answers short, cautious about revealing too much information, and resisting the impulse to ask about Kismet. He knew his daughter well enough to believe that she would do the same. Though obviously dissatisfied with their answers, the officer had eventually left the car, with he and Annie still sequestered.

Then, in response to a radioed message, everything had changed. The soldiers had relaxed their guard and allowed them to sit together, and a few moments later, Kismet appeared looking considerably worse for wear, but moving freely, without any sign of duress.

Annie burst from her seat and threw her arms around him. Kismet winced but gamely returned the embrace. Higgins too rose to greet him, but felt a surge of anxiety at the sudden shift in mood. Something about the whole situation bothered him.

Kismet looked to Russell. “Are you letting us go?”

The major turned away for a moment to converse with another soldier, but then gestured for the three to sit. “You’re not in custody,” he began. “Of course there are still a lot of questions to be answered, but no one thinks you’ve done anything wrong.”

A long line of soldiers began filing into the car.

“Are we leaving?” Higgins asked.

Russell nodded. “I’ve been ordered to get this train to its destination, ASAP.”

“So much for a ten-mile long crime scene,” Kismet muttered. “By the way, I lost my Glock somewhere between here and where we got on. Might be…ah, something else on the tracks too.”

“Something else?”

“Something or someone.”

“Shit.” Russell rubbed the bridge of his nose as if trying to ward off a migraine, then shook his head. “Someone else’s problem now.”

“But you’re taking us along?” Annie said.

Russell’s stare remained fixed on Kismet. “It seems this man, Leeds, has attracted some attention at the highest levels. He’s a person of interest in a crime spree that occurred in New York’s Central Part a couple days ago…”

Annie broke into a coughing fit.

“And there are a few other red flags associated with him. He’s got indirect ties to a number of hate groups. Homeland believes he might be involved in some kind of terror plot. And obviously, he’s targeted the three of you.”

“So when we get where we’re going, you’ll hand us off to Homeland Security?” Kismet asked.

Russell drummed his fingers on his knee. “You work for the United Nations, right? It would appear that affords you a rather unique status. A sort of diplomatic immunity.”

Kismet frowned suspiciously. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Be that as it may, someone above my pay grade has made it clear that I am not to interfere with you, or whatever it is you are doing, in any way. You are, to put it simply, free to go. In fact, if you really want to, you can hop right off this train and go on your merry way.”

“Leeds is still out there,” Annie intoned. “Still after us.”

“Is that the plan?” Kismet pressed. “Cut us loose in order to draw Leeds into the open?”

Russell managed a wry grin. “That possibility was discussed. However, my orders are to give you safe escort…to wherever it is you are going, and for as long as you need it.”

Higgins kept a stony expression and watched carefully as Kismet digested the major’s statement. Did Russell know what they were looking for? Did the offer hide some ulterior motive — an attempt by the government to seize control of the Fountain of Youth, if it existed to be found? Or was there some other player at work?

It was just like Iraq; one minute they were up shit creek, and the next…?

Kismet shook his head. “Let me get this straight. You’ve been ordered to provide a military security escort for us? I think the Posse Comitatus Act makes that illegal.”

“Ordinarily, it would require special circumstances — a declared state of emergency, for example — for regular army troops to be deployed domestically. We, however, are a Georgia National Guard Unit, which means we can also be activated by the governor. There’s a reciprocity agreement that allows us to operate most anywhere in the US. I don’t pretend to completely understand the finer points, but my orders are clear.” He paused a beat, and nodded meaningfully. “Whatever you need.”

Higgins thought again about what Leeds had told him in Central Park.

Prometheus…

Kismet has become their bloodhound, tracking down the world’s mysteries so that Prometheus can hide them away.

Was that what was happening now?

There was no further discussion on the subject of their ultimate destination or purpose. Russell excused himself in order to attend to the responsibilities of command, leaving Kismet and his friends alone as the train began moving again.

Kismet felt a numbing exhaustion settling over him, and was on the verge of nodding off when Higgins voice reached out to him.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about all this, mate.”

Kismet managed to prop his eyelids open and regarded the former Gurkha thoughtfully. He had his own reservations about the situation, and about the unusual offer Russell had made — an offer that was evidently sanctioned by the major’s chain of command. On its surface, there was a certain logic to it. Dr. Leeds was by his own admission, a white supremacist, and while not every racist was a terrorist, Leeds had repeatedly demonstrated a propensity for violence and a disregard for the law, so it made sense that he would be on the radar of law enforcement agencies. It was just dumb luck that they had fallen into Russell’s lap, and he had to believe that the offer of cooperation had nothing at all to do with the object of their search. Homeland Security wanted to take Leeds down, and Major Russell’s Guard unit happened to be in the right place at the right time to accomplish that.

Still…

“I’m with you,” he told Higgins. “Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence, but it always pays to stay on your toes.”

“Do you think that all of this—” Higgins gestured to the train car full of lounging soldiers—“could be…maybe your government trying to get its hands on the…” He trailed off, as if afraid to even utter the words “Fountain of Youth.”

Kismet had already considered this, too. “I don’t see how they could even know about it. I didn’t tell them; did you?”

Higgins and Annie both shook their heads negatively.

“It’s still possible that they found out while investigating Leeds; maybe he posted ‘Looking for the secret of eternal life’ as his Facebook status. Regardless, the Fountain, if it even exists, is on American soil, so the government doesn’t need to seize it; it’s already theirs.”

“You know it’s not that simple.”

“Maybe not. But better the government than Dr. Leeds.” He held Higgins’ gaze. “You’re with me on that, right Al?”

“Of course we are,” Annie intoned, sounding almost insulted.

Higgins nodded too, but Kismet felt a sliver of doubt about his old comrade’s motives. He too had a bad feeling about the situation, and it had nothing to do with Major Russell’s offer of military assistance.

The train reached Atlanta the next morning where the cargo was unloaded and turned over the drivers from the receiving military unit. Most of Russell’s men remained there, completing their original mission to guard the shipment, until the transfer was complete, a process that lasted well into the afternoon. The major however, made good on his promise of assistance, offering them lodging at nearby Fort Gillem, a mostly decommissioned army base to the southeast of the city.

“We can put you up there as long as you like,” Russell suggested. “At the very least, you can get a decent night’s sleep.”

Kismet was still undecided about whether to accept the major’s offer to provide security for the ongoing search, but as he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in a proper bed, the immediate invitation was one he couldn’t refuse.

The afternoon was spent attending to details such as buying some clothes to replace their tattered, lived-in apparel and arranging for their abandoned vehicle to be released from impound in Charleston and returned to the rental agency. Kismet also took the opportunity to do a little research on their ultimate goal, and that evening, over a meal and few pints of beer at a local brewpub, he told the others what he had learned.

There had been no opportunity earlier for Kismet to share what Joe had revealed to him in Fontaneda’s crypt, and despite his willingness to keep them in the loop, it was with some apprehension that he produced the tattooed map he’d cut from the Spaniard’s corpse.

Annie’s forehead creased in mild revulsion as he recounted the story of how the map had been procured, but he kept the discussion focused on what the map revealed.

“Fontaneda made this for himself,” he explained. “He wanted to be able to find the cavern with the Fountain, and probably didn’t trust his own memory. He didn’t have GPS…hell, there weren’t even any proper maps until a couple centuries later, so he would have had to come up with a way to mark its location using reference points that would be easy to find.

“These round shapes are probably lakes. There are a lot of them in the area west of Saint Augustine and unfortunately they aren’t a very reliable reference because the geography has changed a lot since then. In fact, it changes almost constantly. ”

He tapped the cluster of strange mountain-shapes. “I think this is the key. There aren’t a lot of landmarks in Florida, and certainly nothing that could be confused with a mountain.”

“They look more like pyramids,” Higgins offered.

“That’s what I thought as well. And it just so happens, that there are pyramids in Florida.”

Despite their unfamiliarity with the region and its history, both father and daughter met this statement with raised eyebrows.

“The technical term is actually ‘earthworks,’” he continued. “More than a thousand years before Europeans discovered the New World, several civilizations of mound builders arose in eastern America. The practice of creating earthworks seems to be universal; they are found all across Asia, and the early American cultures probably brought the knowledge with them when they emigrated across the Bering Strait. Most of the American earthworks sites are found in the Mississippi River valley, but there are quite a few in the Deep South as well. They made enormous pyramid-shaped and conical earthworks, as well as some mounds that resembled animals. The most famous of these is the Serpent Mound in Ohio.”

Higgins tapped the snake image on the map. “Is that what this is?”

Kismet shook his head. “Fontaneda was definitely on the Florida peninsula. I think he may have found a different serpent mound, one that hasn’t been discovered yet, or was possibly flooded or destroyed in the centuries since. But I think these other earthworks — the pyramids — might still be around today. There are several mound sites throughout the state, but I think the best candidate is the Lake Jackson Mounds on the panhandle.”

He produced a Florida highway map and unfolded it on the table. He drew a circle near the city of Tallahassee, just north of the inverted V shape of Apalachee Bay. He then laid the tattoo map alongside it, orienting it so that the serpent was pointing down.

“The mounds are our starting point,” Higgins observed. “Which way from there?”

Kismet touched another point on the tattoo map in the upper quarter opposite the pyramids, where a tiny cross had been inscribed. “I think this is supposed to represent Saint Augustine.” He drew another circle, and then connected it with a straight line to the first, then approximated the converging lines of Fontaneda’s map to form an off-center downward pointing triangle. The lines crossed southeast of Gainesville in the Ocala National Forest.

“The entrance to the cavern is where these lines converge.” As he circled the X at the convergence of the lines on the highway map, he took another look at what lay in the center of the triangle. The mark was almost exactly on the south shore of Lake George, but what caught his eye was the St. Johns River, flowing north out of the lake and meandering across the landscape all the way to Jacksonville. The undulations of the river course almost exactly matched the curves of the tattooed serpent on Fontaneda’s map.

Kismet recalled something Dr. Leeds had told him during their first encounter, that the snake was an ancient symbol of life. In the Bible, a snake had tricked Eve into eating from the forbidden fruit, an action which had led to banishment from Eden and the Tree of Life. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, a snake had devoured a similar plant with the same properties, depriving the hero of the prize of eternal life.

Now it seemed they would be the one’s snatching the prize of life from the serpent’s devouring jaws.

Despite Kismet’s reluctance — and Higgins verbalized objections, there seemed little choice but to accept Russell’s offer. The major would be able to provide them with resources that might help them pinpoint the location, but more importantly, the soldiers would keep Leeds off their back. That would be of particular importance if they actually found the Fountain, though when he discussed it with the major over coffee the following morning, he omitted mention of their ultimate goal, saying only that they were looking for a cavern that might be an important archaeological site. Russell seemed to accept the explanation without question as he arranged for a convoy to take them south. The major and his three guests rode in the relative comfort of a government issue passenger van, while a platoon of soldiers from Russell’s battalion, part of the National Guard’s 78^th Homeland Response Force, bracketed them in Humvees.

About an hour into the five-hour journey down the Interstate however, the officer finally indulged his curiosity. “So, I’ve played along this far. Care to let me in on the big secret?”

Kismet gazed back at him, impassive. “What do you want to know?”

“This is a treasure hunt, right? Your ‘archaeological’ site…” He made air quotes. “I get that people are willing to kill for money. What I don’t buy is that you want it bad enough to take that chance. So what’s really going on?”

Kismet felt Higgins’ eyes on him as well as Russell’s. He glanced off into the distance at the scenery flashing by.

They had just passed Macon, Georgia, which Kismet had been surprised to learn in his research had once been inhabited by the same mound building culture that settled near Lake Jackson. Had those early settlers brought the secret of the Fountain of Youth to American? Were they the “Serpent priests” Leeds had spoken of, carrying the Seed of the Biblical Tree of Life, or something like it?

He put on his best poker face and answered. “I haven’t deceived you, major. I’m following up on a lead that someone sent to my office, regarding an otherwise undiscovered cave — a natural wonder — that may also have special historical significance. You'll have to ask Dr. Leeds why he thinks it’s worth killing for.”

Russell continued to watch him, unconvinced, but did not press the point. “You served, right? Army?”

“Yes.” Kismet was nonplussed by the change of subject. “Army intelligence during the first Gulf War. It was ages ago. Didn’t end well. Why?”

“Basic military wisdom: know your enemy. Now I know who the enemy is, but without knowing why — his motivation — I can't very effectively defend against him. I think you know more than you are telling. Now, my orders don’t require me to know the ‘why’ but I think that, sooner or later, you're going to have to tell me what makes this cavern so important.”

It was early evening when they arrived in Gainesville, where they spent the night at a budget motel just off the Interstate. Russell’s men set up a rotating guard schedule that not only maintained security on the vehicles but also watched access to their rooms.

The following morning, they headed east, into the Ocala National Forest. A remote campsite near Juniper Springs was selected, and while the soldier went to work erecting four GP, Small tents, Kismet reviewed topographical maps of the nearby lake country to establish parameters for their search. If the entrance to the cavern lay at the “snake’s mouth” as Fontaneda’s map suggested, then they would have to concentrate their search at the point where the St. Johns River flowed into Lake George. On the map, the tributary looked eerily similar to a serpent’s forked tongue.

In another site, not far from the lake and just to the north of the army encampment, another group was establishing a campsite for the night. To a curious observer, they appeared to be clients of a commercial fishing tour operator, but there were two people in the party who looked completely out of place among the plaid shirts and ball caps that were de rigueur among the rest of the group. One was an attractive blonde woman in her early thirties, who might have been lovely were she not so bedraggled by days of travel at an exhausting pace. The humidity had caused her golden hair to frizz about her head like a halo, and she seemed to be attracting more than her fair share of interest from flies and mosquitos, despite the fact that she maintained an almost constant cloud of cigarette smoke around her. The winged insects weren’t her only problem either; she was the only woman in a group of men that ordinarily wouldn’t have even been in the same zip code as someone with her pedigree, and like a forbidden fruit ripening on the tree, she had unfortunately attracted their attention. Only one man in the group seemed to be immune to her charms and despite her initial ambivalence about him, Elisabeth Neuell now found herself irresistibly attracted to Dr. John Leeds.

She had felt a similar attraction to Kismet, though for much different reasons, and for a long time thereafter, she considered what might have happened if she had stayed with him. That of course hadn’t been possible; too much had gone wrong between them. Kismet had always been, at best, nothing more than a means to end.

She had felt similarly about Dr. Leeds at first, but perhaps because he, unlike Kismet, had not succumbed to her repeated seductions, she now found herself obsessed with the idea of having him. Him, and the thing he sought — the secret of Eternal Life.

They had worked well together. It had been she, and not the occultist, who had recognized the clue in Joseph King’s letter to Kismet’s agency, and realized that it was a literal reference to a cemetery. Without Kismet's interference, they would almost certainly have learned the Fountain's location from Joe and Candace King. And while it was Leeds’ money that was paying for their army of redneck renegades, it was her feminine presence that had staved off desertion and mutiny, particularly following the twin disasters at the cemetery and again on the train. Three had been killed and several more wounded. One of them had been arrested and had probably already spilled his guts to the authorities. Her flirtations were about the only thing that kept the rednecks from bolting.

More important even than that, it was she that knew where Kismet and his military escort were going next. “I’ve got a few secrets of my own,” she’d told Leeds. “People in high places who are willing to do whatever I ask.”

That explanation wasn’t strictly speaking the truth in this case, but it was close enough.

Elisabeth envied Leeds’ power, but she too had power, the power to control men — to command them with nothing more than a subtle promise of sexual reward. She rarely fulfilled that promise; to do so would break the puppet strings from which her servants dangled.

But her particular brand of power was a slippery thing. This adventure was proof of that. Dressed in jeans and a man's t-shirt, unable to regularly bathe, check her makeup or keep her hair under control, her visual appeal was diminishing.

There were ways to mitigate that, but it made her think about the real enemy, the irreversible hand of time. Her natural beauty had launched a successful movie career and attracted the notice of one of the wealthiest men on earth, but all of that had been years ago. Botox injections, collagen treatments, even human growth hormones and cosmetic surgery…none of these extraordinary measures could sustain her beauty…her power…more than a few years, a decade at most. The Fountain of Youth would change all of that. It would sustain her power indefinitely.

She hadn’t believed in the Fountain at first; she had other reasons for aligning herself with Leeds. It was not Leeds’ persuasive certitude that had eventually convinced her that it might be real, but rather the fact that Nick Kismet was looking for it too…and seemed poised to find it first.

She found Leeds, dressed as always in black and seemingly impervious to the oppressive humidity, standing at the edge of the camp, gazing south in the direction of the other expedition. His arms were folded across his chest, but she could see a steel hook, barely visible beneath his left elbow, where his right hand had once been.

Leeds had been disdainful of his doctor’s attempt to save his maimed extremity, and as soon as the wound had been stitched, he had asked to be fitted with an artificial hand. The doctor had tried to explain patiently that the injury would have to heal completely — a period of several weeks if there were no complications — before they could begin the equally lengthy process of crafting a custom prosthetic and teaching him how to use it. Leeds rejected the advice, and in the end, the doctor had fitted a simple cuff with a fixed hook over the swollen stump.

Even his disfigurement, and the lethal hardware, Elisabeth found strangely appealing.

Noting her approach, he turned to face her. “Everything is in place,” he observed, a tight smile visible on his face. “You know, my dear, I do believe we would have saved ourselves a good deal of effort by simply leaving Kismet alone, and letting him lead us to the Fountain.”

“Are you admitting to a mistake?” she asked, incredulous. Could it be that the ever implacable and well-rehearsed Dr. Leeds, was cognizant of his human fallibility. If so, perhaps he had other human weaknesses and appetites to which, despite all evidence to the contrary, he was vulnerable.

Leeds’ smile frosted over, but did not vanish. “All things considered, no. He is an unpredictable, dangerous variable. As long as he lives, he threatens the success of our venture. Yet, as fate seems to have given him the lead, I am content to wait.”

“And if he finds it first?”

“My dear, why do you suppose I have been so diligent in trying to exterminate him? At every step he has proven more resourceful than I would have believed.” His voice dropped to a murmur. “It’s enough to make me believe the things they say about him are true.”

Then he shook his head as if the thought irritated him. “It does not matter. I am everywhere. Kismet cannot find the Fountain unless I permit him to, and when he does, I shall be there to take it away.”

The next morning, the search began in earnest.

Fontaneda's map gave Kismet a good approximation of where the cavern lay, but even if it was precisely accurate, there was a lot of ground to cover, and no indication at all what they should be looking for. The entire region was little more than a thick layer of limestone known as karst, shot through with innumerable wormholes, most of them flooded sinkholes and cenotes. Did the Fountain lie in one of them? Fontaneda’s diary seemed to indicate a dry cavern, but that account had been written more than three hundred years earlier; who could say how the topography had changed. To find it, they would have to employ a brute force approach.

They organized in the fashion of a military patrol. The platoon deployed in an echelon formation, spread out in a line that ran north-south, while cutting across the area described by the map from west to east, and then back again in overlapping search lanes. The soldiers carried their M4 carbines, but on Russell’s orders, the weapons weren’t loaded. They were in a national recreation area, and while they could explain away their presence, even equipped for battle as they were, as a training exercise, live ammunition would raise suspicions and draw unwanted attention to their presence. If they ran into trouble, the weapons could be loaded in a few seconds. Kismet hadn’t been able to replace his Glock, but Russell had provided him with an army-issued M9 Beretta. His kukri had also been returned.

The first pass followed the edge of Lake George, from the point where it began to curve north and ended at the St. Johns River. The ground was saturated and in some places, they had to wade through knee deep brackish water. Enormous waterlogged cypress trees blocked their path at every turn, throwing the carefully organized search into disarray. To make matters worse, because Kismet had no idea what exactly they were looking for, it was necessary to stop and investigate every sinkhole or depression or unusual lump in the ground to see if it was a clue left by Fontaneda. By the third pass, they were unable to see the lake and the only way to stay on course was by constantly consulting a GPS device.

With the sun settling in the west, they finished their last pass of the day and hiked back to the campsite, tired and dispirited. Russell dispatched two of his men to make the drive into town and bring back pizzas, while Kismet laid out a topographical map of the area and used a highlighter pen to record their progress.

“Doesn’t look like we’ve accomplished much,” Annie observed, looking over his shoulder.

Kismet regarded her thoughtfully. She seemed a very different person than the wisp of a girl he’d wrestled with back on The Star of Muara. He knew that her bout of claustrophobia in the tunnel under the cemetery had left her feeling embarrassed and vulnerable, but there was something else. She seemed to be clinging to her father, as if afraid to let him out of her sight. Though Kismet was only now realizing it, she had been like that since the incident in Central Park, and he wondered again what had happened to them that day.

“You’re right,” Kismet admitted. “I think all we did today was eliminate the most unlikely location.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Look at where the lines cross.” The previous night, he had transferred the information from the highway map to this smaller scale map, doing his best to accurately pinpoint the trajectories Fontaneda had used. The result had been a diamond shaped area, the northern tip of which lay out in the midst of the lake. Most of the diamond covered the inflow of the St. Johns River and its maze of tributaries. Only a very small portion of the diamond fell within the search grid they had employed. “We should have been looking here: in the serpent’s mouth.”

“In the river?”

Higgins shook his head. “And me without my gummies.”

Russell surveyed the map as well. Though he had not been made privy to the original map tattooed on Fontaneda’s skin, Kismet had seen no advantage to keeping him out of the loop regarding the area of the search. “We can use boats,” he suggested. “I’ll make the arrangements.”

“Beats the hell out of tramping through the woods,” Kismet said.

“Or wading through the muck,” Higgins added.

Russell took a long look at the map, as if committing it to memory, then clapped Kismet on the shoulder. “Tomorrow, we’ll find it. Whatever it is.”

The next morning, Kismet was surprised and a little dismayed to learn that the boats Russell had arranged for were inflatable three man rafts. The rubber boats were more portable than hard-shelled craft like canoes, but more vulnerable to hazards hidden just below the surface, such as fallen tree branches. Eager to get on with the search, he kept these concerns to himself.

They hiked to the lake shore and inflated the boats using portable battery operated pumps. There were six boats in all, accommodating eighteen of them altogether — the rest of the platoon would remain at the camp. Kismet and his friends were assigned to separate boats, each with a two man escort, and the entire element was split into two groups to double their effectiveness.

Russell’s boast of finding the goal that day proved overly optimistic. Kismet’s concerns about the risk of using inflatable soft boats however, proved prophetic.

It was a little after four o’clock when Kismet and his escort were just paddling out of a minor creek — so tiny that it did not even appear on the detailed topographical map — when the little boat snagged on something.

At first, Kismet thought they had merely grounded on a submerged rock, but the audible hissing noise warned that the situation was far more critical.

“Damn it,” raged the soldier at the front of the raft. “I missed that.”

Kismet felt a shudder pass through the boat they back-paddled away from the snag. A submerged root shifted beneath the murky water, visible for only an instant as the water came alive with bubbles of air escaping from the ruptured air cell.

Kismet didn’t think the raft would sink. The inflatable air cells were all independent, so one leak would not compromise the craft’s buoyancy. At the very worst, it would lose some rigidity and take on a little water. Unconcerned, he was about to resume paddling when the soldier nearest to the leak panicked, scrambling away from collapsing cell.

Water suddenly poured into the boat as the undamaged section of the raft became overloaded. The shift caused everyone to pitch forward, and the hasty soldier tumbled into the creek. As he struggle to avoid being likewise dislodged, Kismet realized that the something was moving in the water all around them.

“Snakes!”

“Son of a bitch!” The soldier who had fallen in screamed at almost the same instant, splashing frantically. Amid the froth of white water, Kismet saw a dark, writhing mass fall away from the man’s wrist.

Water moccasins!

Kismet’s heart lurched into overdrive as he became aware of more of the squirming shapes. He couldn’t tell what was a snake and what was just a shadow, but for a moment, they seemed to be everywhere.

Something moved near his foot.

The other boats in the party were already paddling over to help. Russell had his pistol out and was searching for a target, but Kismet barely noticed. At least one of the deadly vipers was in the stricken raft with him, squirming in the water just inches from his leg. Meanwhile, all around the boat, the water was alive with dark wriggling shapes. Before he could move, the man in the water was attacked again.

“Help him!” Annie cried from another boat. She started paddling furiously, as if she might, all by herself, somehow reach the struggling soldier and save him.

Russell fired into the water, dangerously close to both the ailing man and Kismet’s raft. One of the squirming shapes exploded in a spray of viscous blood, but the animal continued to thrash violently. Russell fired again and again, emptying the magazine into the water.

Kismet did his best to ignore the tumult outside the raft. With painstaking slowness, he drew his kukri, but even that slight bit of movement caught the viper’s attention. It coiled and struck…

The dripping fangs closed around the steel of Kismet's knife, and as it squeezed down, the razor edge sliced deep into its head.

With a flick of his wrist, Kismet hurled the mortally wounded snake back into the swamp.

While Russell and his men drove off the rest of the snakes, Annie’s boat crew arrived to pulled the wounded soldier into their raft. The man was already clenching his teeth in agony and swearing at his ill luck.

Kismet heard Annie asking: “Will he be all right?”

Actual deaths from snake venom were rare, especially in the United States, but the grim expression of the unit medic as he hastily administered an antihistamine injection filled Kismet with dread.

The man — Specialist Jeremiah Olson — was still alive and conscious when they reached the hastily arranged rendezvous with the rest of the platoon and the Humvee that was waiting to take him to the hospital. There was every reason to believe that the man would survive, but the tragic incident had dealt a savage blow to the morale of the expedition, crushing all hope of finding their goal.

Russell waited until they were back at the camp, in the tent and more or less out of earshot from his men, to vent his rage. “I am done with this shit, Kismet. You will tell me what in the hell you are looking for, or I will leave you here, right here, right now, orders be damned.”

Kismet sighed. He understood how the major felt; it was a soldier’s job to follow orders, even if those orders didn’t make sense, and it was the commander’s job to send men into harm’s way, without knowing the reason for the sacrifices that would be made. But that didn’t make it any less of a burden.

On the other hand, would learning the truth about the mission — about the mythical nature of the their goal — put Russell at ease, or make the accident on the water seem even more senseless?

“All right, Major. You probably are going to wish I hadn’t told you this, but here goes. You probably know the story of how Florida was discovered, right?”

Russell's eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Spanish explorers, looking for the Fountain of Youth…Wait…is that what you are looking for?”

His tone was incredulous, yet there remained an undercurrent of hope that belied his skepticism.

Kismet gave him a short version of events, starting with the correspondence from the man who had called himself Fortune, and leading up to the discovery of Fontaneda’s diaries. He spoke of Leeds only as a rival explorer, omitting mention of all that had happened on The Star of Muara. Finally, he showed Russell the map, cut from the Spaniard’s own skin.

“You don’t seem crazy,” Russell finally concluded. “But is any of this even possible? Eternal youth?”

Russell’s question, strangely enough, was the one part of the mystery Kismet had not allowed himself to dwell on. From the moment the search had begun, his one thought was to beat Leeds to the prize. He had accepted Fontaneda’s account on faith, focusing on finding the cavern, without indulging in “what if” fantasies about living forever or saving the world. He spread his hands, shrugging. “I’m no biologist, but it seems conceivable that some natural property of the water from this Fountain might stimulate new cell growth.”

“It could heal wounds?”

“According to Fontaneda, almost instantaneously. But I’m sure if it exists, there’s a rational scientific explanation. It’s not magic.”

“I understand now why this Dr. Leeds is willing to risk so much to find it first. And why we have to make sure he doesn’t.” Russell leaned over the map table. “So, where do we go from here?”

Before Kismet could answer, Russell’s radio squawked. Kismet expected to hear a report from the medic who had gone with the injured soldier to the hospital, but instead he heard the voice of the platoon leader — Lieutenant Pierson — who had gone with Higgins in the second search team, eagerly announcing: “Sir, I think we’ve found something.”

Although there were only a few hours of daylight remaining, Kismet, Annie, and Russell, along with a security detail, set out in the two remaining rafts and paddled for the GPS coordinates Pierson had supplied. About forty-five minutes later, they spied the rafts beached along a low delta that barely protruded from the water’s surface.

Higgins was waiting for them, and anxiously guided them to an elevated clearing surrounded by cypress trees where the rest of the group was waiting. “Well?” Russell asked. “What did you find?’

Pierson almost chortled. “You’re standing on it, sir.”

Kismet looked down, and then let his eyes roam the shadowy edges of the clearing, expecting…no, hoping, to see a marker of some kind, a petroglyph perhaps…the ancient equivalent of a sign that would point the way to their goal. Then he realized that Pierson had been speaking literally. The clearing in which they stood was almost perfectly square, about ten yards on each side, and was a good thirty-six inches higher than the rest of the land mass.

“It’s a mound!” Kismet realized aloud.

Higgins nodded. “Just like your bloody pyramids. Only this one wasn’t marked on the map.”

“No, but Fontaneda spoke of a village near the…” Kismet glanced at the waiting soldiers and censored himself. “Near the entrance to the cavern. He wrote that, after they had exterminated the inhabitants, the village was overgrown. I think this mound was a part of that village. They probably built up the land here to escape the effects of seasonal flooding.”

He clapped Higgins on the shoulder. “This is an important clue, Al. Well done.”

“Can you use this to find the cavern entrance?” Russell asked.

“I won’t make any promises, but I think we just got a lot closer.”

Russell seemed satisfied with that. “Let’s head back while we’ve still got light.”

The officer then took something from his pocket. At first, Kismet thought it was the GPS unit, but a second glance revealed that it was a satellite phone.

Russell caught Kismet’s apprehensive glance. “Orders. I have to check in daily with headquarters. I should have called as soon as we sent Olson to the hospital, but then all of this happened. At least now there’s some good news to go with the bad.”

Kismet nodded, but was still a little disturbed by the revelation that Russell had been maintaining regular contact with his superiors. In hindsight, he should have realized that the major would be required to do so, but now he regretted having revealed the true nature of their quest.

Later that evening, Russell’s sat phone rang again. He recognized the number on the caller ID display, and answered with a simple, “Hello.”

“You’ve done well, Major.” The voice on the other end belonged to the same person that had spoken to him a few nights earlier, after the abortive attack on the train. Now as then, the caller came directly to the point. “The mission has changed. I have new orders for you.”

FOURTEEN

They resumed the search the next day from the mound Higgins group had discovered.

Using the rafts to shuttle between land masses, they expanded the search outward in concentric circles and found still more evidence of ancient human habitation.

Kismet kept track of the mound locations on the map and soon had a rough plan of what the native village would have looked like in Fontaneda’s day. On paper, it seemed to point like an arrow toward the lake.

“Do you think that’s where we’ll find it?” Russell asked.

Kismet shrugged. “I’m cautiously optimistic.”

The officer considered this answer for a moment. “After what you told me last night…” He paused and glanced around to make sure that none of his men could overhear. “About what it is you’re really looking for…”

He stopped again, as if trying to figure out how to broach a very sensitive subject. “Don’t get me wrong. I have absolute trust in my soldiers. I’ve served with a few of them for more years than I can count…But something like this is…well, let’s just say I don’t think they have the security clearance for it.”

Kismet held the other man’s gaze. “I appreciate your help so far, Major. But this is not and has never been a military operation. Your men don’t need security clearance. And if this turns out to be the real deal, then it won’t matter if one of them leaks it to the press or posts it on Facebook. I’ll be telling the world anyway.”

“Until you do, I think the fewer people who know the exact location — when we find it that is — the better. I’m going to have Lieutenant Pierson pull back and establish a perimeter. I’ll stay with the three of you and we’ll keep looking.”

“The search might go faster with more sets of eyes looking.”

“I’m not so sure about that, especially as none of us really knows what to look for anyway.” With that, Russell moved off to brief the platoon leader, and a few minutes later, the soldiers departed.

Kismet climbed into a raft with Russell, Higgins and Annie took another, and they began paddling toward the lake.

Lake George was clear and shallow, averaging only about eight feet in depth. At the south end, where it was fed by the St. Johns River — the channel through which the search party had just entered — there was a fan-like accretion of sediment. Throughout Florida’s history, the river had been an important commercial route, necessitating occasional dredging which altered the natural flow regime. With the decline of steamboat traffic, the river and lake remained popular with recreational boaters. Management practices were now less intrusive, but frequent seasonal storms that hammered into the peninsula, coupled with the steadily rising sea level due to global climate change, meant that Lake George today bore little resemblance to the lake Fontaneda had discovered. That, Kismet believed, was the reason why they hadn’t yet found the cavern; the geography had changed, the entrance to cavern, which had been on dry land when the Spaniard first entered it, was now out there, under the waters of Lake George.

They decided to start close to shore, rowing back and forth, making a visual sweep of the area. Kismet was contemplating ways to expedite the survey — SCUBA gear, or even something as simple as a depth finder — when Annie called out, directing their attention to something on the shore.

It was another mound, a bank, waist-high earth lushly covered in vegetation jutting from between the trees and sloping away into the water. But unlike the other mounds, which had been rectangular, suggesting platforms on which houses might once have been built, this elevated earthwork was narrow and deliberately sinuous, undulating back and forth as it disappeared into the woods.

“Is this it?” Annie whispered, her voice full of nervous tension. “Have we found it?”

Before Kismet could answer, the distinctive crack of a rifle shot echoed across the tops of the trees.

The shift to a defensive stance was immediate, but after a few seconds, when the sound did not repeat, Russell took out his radio and keyed the mic. “Pierson, give me a sitrep.”

The only response was silence. Russell tried again, and with each failed attempt to make contact, the furrow between his eyebrows deepened. Finally, he turned to the others. “I don’t know what’s wrong with the comms. We should still be in range…I’m going to investigate. You three stay here.”

“Is it wise to separate?” Kismet asked.

Russell shrugged, but then managed a wan smile. “Probably not. Don’t worry. I won’t take any chances. And I think you three can take care of yourselves.” He nodded to Higgins and his big Kimber rifle.

Before climbing into the raft, he marked the location on his GPS. “I’ll meet you back here in, say an hour? Any longer than that, and…” He shrugged and then pushed off, paddling in deliberate strokes for the river channel.

Kismet watched for a few minutes before turning to his companions. “Al, what do you think?”

The former Gurkha shook his head. “Something’s wrong.”

Annie folded her arms across her chest. “Do you think it’s Leeds?”

Kismet didn’t want to believe that the occultist had somehow tracked them down once again. Moreover, as ruthless as Leeds was, Kismet had trouble believing that man would go up against the army.

“So what do we do?”

Kismet frowned. They were close; he could feel it.

“This mound is shaped like a serpent, just like the one on Fontaneda’s map. The snake wasn’t just supposed to represent the river; it also showed what to look for.” He pointed into the woods. “The head of the snake is where ‘X’ marks the spot. So, we find it…fast. And then get the hell out of here until we can figure out what’s going on.”

Father and daughter nodded in agreement, and Kismet, borrowed pistol in hand, led the way into the woods on the back of the snake. The trees seemed to fold over them, shutting out the light of day and plunging them into a world of shadow and silence. The ground to either side of the snake mound was saturated, and in some places there were deep, reeking pools of stagnate water, buzzing with mosquito larvae. About twenty yards in, Higgins gestured for an abrupt halt, and then pointed down into the murk. At first, all Kismet saw was the dark water and the browns and greens of the forest floor, but as he stared, he saw the statue still form of an alligator — at least eight feet from tip to tail — patiently waiting for something to come within reach of its powerful jaws. They gave the beast a wide berth and pushed forward, but a few moments later, they emerged from the trees and found themselves staring once more out at the waters of Lake George, about a hundred feet east of where they’d gone into the woods. The mound continued out into the lake and disappeared like the first.

“It’s a loop,” Annie exclaimed.

Something was nagging at Kismet’s subconscious, trying to bubble to the surface. The snake, writhing, but ultimately coiling around in a circle to meet itself—“Of course!” he exclaimed. “It’s an Ouroboros. Like Leeds’ ring, the snake, devouring its own tail.”

“Then the entrance is…where? Out there?” She pointed to the lake, approximating a point midway between the ends of the earthwork serpent.

Kismet was about to answer in the affirmative when a nearby tree branch exploded in a spray of woodchips, followed almost simultaneously by the report of a gun.

In unison, they dove for cover, practically tumbling onto the slope of the mound, even as more shots started to thunder from the woods. Clods of earth and splinters of wood showered down on them, and the air was filled with the smell of fresh cut wood and cordite. The shooters were close.

Too damn close, Kismet thought.

It had to be Leeds’ men, though he couldn’t imagine how they had slipped past the soldiers, or how they thought they were going to escape. It didn’t seem possible that the entire platoon could have been wiped out; they’d only heard a single shot…

The shot had been a signal. As soon as he realized that, the other pieces began falling into place, even as the forest around them continued to explode with violence.

A signal to Russell, letting him know that the trap was laid.

Was it Leeds’ men shooting at them? Or was it the army?

“Al! We can’t stay here.”

“Agreed.” The Gurkha was on his belly, the rifle cradled in his arms as he scanned the top of the mound in all direction, trying to figure out where the fire was coming from. “But I think they’ve got us boxed in.”

“Then we swim.”

Higgins looked at him in astonishment and then glanced at the water. About thirty feet of murky swamp was all that separated them from the open waters of the lake. They would be exposed, but it was the only avenue of escape that didn’t require them to run a deadly gauntlet of enemies.

“Give me the rifle,” Kismet shouted. “I’ll cover the two of you.”

“Like hell you will. I’m a much better shot than you, and you’re a better swimmer. Take my daughter and get the hell—”

Suddenly the dark water at their feet erupted, as something long and scaly burst onto the slope. Kismet barely had time to turn his head to look before the beast’s jaws closed on the meaty part of his calf, and then, as quickly as the attack had begun, it ended with the alligator snatching its prize back into the swamp.

As the water closed over him, the spike of pain through his right leg recalled to Kismet’s mind everything he knew about alligators — about their powerful jaws, about how they liked to drown their prey and leave them submerged, sometimes for days, before eating them.

He also recalled watching gator wrestlers subdue the thickly muscled creatures, almost effortlessly holding those powerful jaws because while an alligator’s bite strength was almost unparalleled in the natural world, it had almost no muscles for opening its mouths.

As the scaly black monster thrashed deeper into the swamp, dragging him toward the deeper waters of the lake where the killing would surely occur, Kismet wondered if that bit of trivia would be enough to save his life.

Annie was still gaping in disbelief at the suddenness of the attack that had snatched Kismet away when more scaly shapes broke from the murk below them. Despite the bullets scorching the air overhead, she instinctively climbed higher, away from the reach of the slavering reptilian jaws. A pair of alligators waited below them, one still half submerged, but the creatures did not advance. The water was their element, and they were nothing if not patient.

Kismet’s pistol had slipped from his grasp during the attack and now lay a few feet away from Annie. She scooped it up and was about to fire down at the nearest gator, when the Kimber boomed in her ear and the top of the beast’s head exploded. It thrashed violently in its death throes, forcing the other alligator to retreat.

“Save your bullets,” her father admonished. “That pistol won’t even slow them down.”

Helpless, Annie looked past the mortally wounded animal to where Kismet was locked in a struggle to the death with another, while dirt and debris stirred up by the constant barrage of gunfire continued to rain down around her.

Kismet felt the vise around his leg loosen almost imperceptibly, but enough. The blunt, peg-like teeth tore through the fabric of his trousers and the skin underneath as he wrenched free. Part of him desperately wanted to put as much distance between himself and the alligator as he could, but he resisted that urge; in the water, the alligator could move like lightning. Instead, he did the only thing he could think of to keep it from seizing him again: he wrapped his arms around its snout and hugged the beast to his chest.

The reptile was a writhing mass of power, stronger than any man he had ever fought. To make matters worse, he had no leverage in the water. It took all his strength to hang on as the animal thrashed, trying to dislodge him. The vestigial legs, which could propel the creature through the water with unbelievable speed, began clawing at him. The raised, scaly ridges on the alligator's back scraped against his chest as the beast twisted completely around in his grasp. It used its immensely powerful tail to throw itself, and its human attacker, from side to side, slamming Kismet against the lake’s marshy bottom. Kismet could do nothing but hold on.

Abruptly, the creature stopped fighting him and instead started swimming for open water. Before Kismet knew what was happening, the alligator rolled over and dove for the lake bottom. He struggled for several breathless seconds before realizing that the creature was deliberately trying to drown him.

He didn’t dare let go, but beyond that, he wasn’t sure what to do. He loosed one arm from around its neck and began pounding at its pale gullet and underbelly, trying to drive it back to the surface. His blows were slowed by the water and bounced ineffectively off the tough scales of the reptile. The alligator continued sweeping its tail, swimming further out into the lake where Kismet would have no chance at all. He felt a pressure change in his ears; the beast was diving, taking him deeper, away from life sustaining oxygen.

He kept hammering his fist against the creature’s scaly throat, while with his left arm he kept its mighty jaws pinned shut. The gator seemed impervious to his attack, and was patiently waiting for him to give up and die; it had the luxury of time on its side.

Kismet’s lungs were on fire. He shook with involuntary spasms as he fought the impulse to inhale. He had to let go…he had to get to the surface.

He loosed his left arm and felt the monster twist away, its mouth falling open. The creature, perhaps believing that its prey had at last succumbed, stopped thrashing and twisted around to take him in its deadly jaws.

But Kismet hadn’t given up. He found the hilt of his kukri, and despite the fact that water slowed his movements, thrust the boomerang-shaped blade into its pale belly. The thick hide nearly stopped the knife; only its tip penetrated, but then Kismet got his free hand on the hilt and jammed it deeper, twisting as it penetrated.

The alligator tried to squirm away, but succeeded only in disemboweling itself. Something blunt and hard — the mortally wounded creature’s thrashing tail — struck Kismet in the back, forcing the last breath from his agonized lungs. The primal need to breathe overruled all other concerns, and kicking his legs, he broke the surface an excruciating three seconds later, inhaling as much water spray as air.

The gator had dragged him about thirty feet from the shore. He could just make out Higgins and Annie, pinned down near the edge of the woods by the relentless gunfire. Wary of encountering more gators and fully aware that even if he reached his friends there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do, Kismet stretched out his arms and started swimming back to shore.

As he reached the swamp at the edge of the lake, there was a pause in the fusillade. Several seconds passed without a shot being fired; it was as if the attacking gunmen had all emptied their guns at the same moment. In the midst of the eerie quiet, Kismet rose and scrambled toward his friends. He dropped to the ground when the barrage started up again and crawled the rest of the way to Annie. He saw that she was still clutching the Beretta he had earlier dropped.

“Are you all right?” he rasped, his voice barely audible over the constant thunder of gunfire.

Annie nodded, but said nothing.

“Hope you’ve got a plan, mate!” Higgins shouted.

Kismet didn't.

“This is no good, Nick! We’ve been here before. You know how it ends.”

Higgins' defeatism fanned a spark of rage in Kismet, and before he even knew what he was doing, he ripped the gun from his companion's grasp. “If that's how you feel, then you might as well let me use this.”

Higgins gaped at him. Darkness clouded his face; a mixture of embarrassment and seething rage that had nothing to do with the danger they were facing.

Somehow, Kismet couldn’t bring himself to worry about the other man’s hurt feelings. If they survived the next five minutes, there’d be time to make nice. Shouldering the rifle, he crawled up the side of the mound and risked a quick peek into the woods beyond.

A round hit near his head, spitting a spray of dirt at him and forcing him back down, but in that moment, he glimpsed a target — a man wearing woodland camouflage pants and a gray T-shirt — resting in the lowest limbs of a tree, about two hundred feet away on the other side of the mound. He readied the rifle, and this time when he popped into view again, it took him less than a second to find the man in the reticle of the Kimber’s scope and pull the trigger. He was back down, behind cover, before the sniper’s lifeless body hit the ground.

He racked the bolt, ejecting the spent casing, and advancing another round into the firing chamber. The magazine held only five rounds, and he had no idea how many Higgins had already used. Annie had his Beretta, with a fifteen round magazine…maybe…if they made every shot count…

He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Higgins. “I've got an idea—”

“A little late for that!” growled Kismet, pushing him away. Higgins, thrown off balance by the push, nearly fell back down the slope. As he went down, he continued shouting for Kismet to listen, but Kismet paid no heed.

“When I give the word, we’re going to go right down the middle,” he said, directing his words mostly at Annie. “Right down their throats!”

Kismet didn’t wait for either of them to acknowledge. It was a desperate gamble, and survival was unlikely in any case, but their chances would only diminish with hesitation. “On three…

“One,” He took a breath, thinking about how he was going to do this. Come up, take a shot, move…”Two.”

Annie shouted something unintelligible but he was too focused on the task at hand to even notice. “Three!”

He started to rise, but then a firm hand clapped him on the shoulder, pulled him back and spun him around. It was Higgins.

His old mate’s face was twisted into a mask of bitter determination, but that was not what stoppered Kismet before he could give voice to his own ire. Rather, it was the Beretta in Higgins’ right hand, the business end pointing at a spot right between Kismet’s eyes, that stopped him cold. Instead of rage, Kismet’s tone was unnaturally subdued. “What the hell, Al?”

“Drop the gun,” Higgins ordered.

“Dad!” Annie gasped. “What are you doing?”

“Drop the gun,” he repeated, his voice almost quavering. “We're surrendering.”

“Like hell we are,” Kismet answered, his tone unchanged.

Higgins drew back a step, as if sensing that Kismet might try to make a grab for the pistol, and thumbed back the hammer. “I'm serious, Nick.”

As his initial ire cooled, Kismet realized that Higgins was serious. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill Kismet in order to save his daughter. With a bitter snarl, he lowered the rifle. “You don’t think they’ll just let us walk away, do you?”

Higgins took the Kimber from Kismet’s loose grip and tossed it to his daughter. “Annie girl, find a rag or something, and tie it the end of the barrel. Run up the white flag.”

As if aware of the drama being played out by the three, the shooters in the forest ceased their assault. Higgins took the makeshift truce flag from his daughter and waved it in the air. “Leeds, are you listening?” he shouted in the sudden stillness. “You once asked me to work for you, help you find it before Kismet. Well, I’ll take that deal now.”

The silence continued, broken only by Annie’s whisper. “Dad?”

The betrayal stung, but somehow, it wasn’t a complete surprise. Kismet had always wondered where Higgins’ loyalties lay. “Why, Al? What did he promise you? Oh, let me guess…Elisabeth.”

“Shut it,” Higgins snarled. “You don’t even know what this is really about. They don’t even need to work for it anymore. They just turn you loose and you find whatever they want.”

Kismet was taken aback. “Okay. I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I rather think you do.”

Kismet looked up to the top of the mound, where his nemesis, Dr. John Leeds, dressed as always in black, stood like a triumphant general surveying a conquered kingdom. Elisabeth stood right behind him, and a dozen men, sporting an arsenal of rifles, shotguns and pistols — every one of which was aimed down at them — stood to either side.

Kismet put on his best defiant grin. “Left your sheets at home I see. Too bad. I’d prefer not to have to look at your ugly, inbred faces.” He ignored their muttered jibes and profanities, and turned to Leeds. “I like the hook. It suits you.”

Leeds cocked his head to one side, his icy expression cracking just a little. “One more debt I shall soon repay.”

He turned to Higgins. “Mr. Higgins, what makes you think my offer of a partnership — an offer you rejected — still stands?”

“You want the Fountain, right?” The former Gurkha was breathing rapidly; just getting the words out was an effort.

Leeds waved his hook in a dismissive gesture. “The Fountain is here. I don’t need your help to find it. So, my question stands?”

“You were right.” Higgins shook his head, as if embarrassed by the admission, but then looked up at the occultist, almost pleadingly. “Everything you told me…Prometheus…It’s happening again. They’ve been calling the shots all along. Helping him without his even realizing it. So you see, this is the only way I can make it right?”

Prometheus.

When Higgins had said it, Kismet felt his own breathing start to quicken. What the hell? “Al? What do you know about Prometheus?”

Higgins tore his gaze from Leeds. “I know everything, Nick. How they use you to find these treasures so they can hide them away or use them to rule the world. And then, when you get in the thick, they swoop in and pull you out at the last second, never mind who gets hurt along the way. Like me and the lads in Iraq. Sacrifices for Prometheus.”

The raw pain in Higgins’ words stunned Kismet. The Gurkha had been carrying this burden for twenty years; it was a festering wound, filled with anger for something that he could barely comprehend.

That was something Kismet understood intimately.

“Al, I don’t know what he told you, but I’m not working for Prometheus. I’m trying to stop them.”

“Bollocks. You’re helping them just by being here. By hunting these treasures and mysteries.” He glanced up at Leeds, perhaps looking for confirmation. “How else do you think you got the army on your side? Things like that don’t just happen, mate. Not unless there’s powerful people pulling the strings from offstage.”

Kismet found it hard to refute the accusation because the willingness of the army — or whoever it was that had given Russell his orders — had struck him as suspicious from the very beginning. He tried to change the topic. “Speaking of the army…” He looked past Higgins to lock stares with Leeds. “How did you get past them?”

“They didn’t have to,” announced another familiar voice; Russell stepped into view, taking a place alongside Elisabeth.

Higgins was visibly stunned by this revelation, the import of which seemed to undermine his accusation. “But…How?”

“You’ve just got your fingers—” Kismet put added emphasis on the word, “in everybody’s pies, Leeds. I hope you know what you’re doing, Al.”

“I wish I could take credit for this,” Leeds said. “Fate put you on that train. But it was my dear Elisabeth that took care of the rest.”

The former actress spoke up immediately, as if she had been waiting for that cue. “When we learned that you were in army custody, I made a call to an old friend who owed me a favor—” She flashed a mischievous smile. “And just like that, the major was working for us.”

Kismet shook his head in disbelief and fixed Russell with a withering stare. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’re just following orders?”

The other man’s refusal to meet his gaze was the only thing about the situation that gave Kismet any cause to be optimistic. If Russell was as honorable as Kismet believed him to be, then he would surely recognize that, orders or not, he was on the wrong side. He only hoped the major would figure it out and call for his troops before it was too late. He decided not to press the point; if Leeds even caught a hint of dissent, he’d probably have his goons kill Russell without a second thought.

Instead, he turned to Higgins. Despite the betrayal, he got the sense that the old Gurkha sergeant actually believed he was doing the right thing. “Al, he’s lied to you. If anyone’s with Prometheus, it’s him.”

The occultist’s smile fell like the blade of a guillotine. “I most certainly am not. They are the very essence of evil; controlling the world like puppet masters, squandering the power of the ancients, hiding the truth about who we are and where we came from. They believe they are gods among men, and seek the power of the gods for themselves.”

“So, they wouldn’t let you join and you’re pissed off?”

Though at some level, he thought it must be true, Kismet had tossed the quip out as a defensive mechanism to hide the real impact of Leeds’ assertions. This man — this charlatan…this vile racist…this murderer — knew about Prometheus. He had the very answers Kismet had been seeking for more than half his life.

Leeds ignored the barb. “I am pleased that you’ve seen the light, Mr. Higgins. But I’m sure you understand that my trust is something you will have to earn, especially after refusing my earlier invitation. You may begin by surrendering your weapon.”

Higgins lowered the pistol, easing the hammer down and thumbed up the safety. He then took a cautious step up, onto the mound, and handed the pistol over to Leeds, who took it in his good hand and studied it with evident curiosity, as if he’d never before touched a gun. He turned it over several times then gestured to his men.

Several of them advanced and took physical control of Kismet and Annie, pushing them down, frisking them with perverse enthusiasm.

“Leave my daughter alone,” Higgins rasped. “That’s my price for helping you.”

“No deal, Mr. Higgins. You are also a prisoner.”

“Dad, why?” Annie’s voice was barely a whispered, and although he couldn’t see her face, Kismet knew she was weeping.

“Then let me prove it to you,” Higgins said. “Give me that gun and I’ll finish this. I’ll kill him.”

Someone let out a low gasp, but Kismet couldn’t tell who. A cold wave of adrenaline had washed over him and set his heart pounding in his ears like a jackhammer. He didn’t believe for a second that this was what Higgins wanted; it was a bluff, had to be. But he knew it was a bluff that Leeds would call.

He was surprised to hear Elisabeth Neuell speaking out in his defense. “John, we don’t need to do this.”

Leeds ignored her. “You would kill your friend?”

“Friend?” Higgins spat the word out like a curse.

The occultist smiled again, but this was his customary cool, insincere smile. “Very well. I accept your terms.”

The pronouncement left Kismet stunned, paralyzing him long enough that, by the time it occurred to him that there was nothing to lose by making a break for it, two of Leeds’ men had already seized his arms, bending them back so that any movement was impossible. He struggled anyway.

Leeds tossed the pistol to Higgins, who caught it one handed. With practiced efficiency, the former Gurkha pulled the slide action back halfway, checking that a round was chambered. He then turned, and without a trace of hesitation, crossed to where Kismet lay face down, took the trigger in a two-handed grip, and pointed it at Kismet’s head.

Only then did Higgins stop, glancing up at Leeds to see if a reprieve would be offered.

Finally realizing the futility of the struggle, Kismet stopped thrashing and twisted around to meet Higgins’ gaze. “Al…”

There were a dozen things he could have said, a score of pleas he could have made, and every one of them flashed through his head, but he kept quiet. Anything he might say would accomplish nothing more than a futile sacrifice of his dignity.

But he did not look away from Higgins.

“Do it!” Leeds’ voice was eager, hungry.

Kismet could see the tendons in Higgins’ hand bulge slightly as he started to exert pressure on the trigger — heard the faint rasp of metal sliding against metal — and then, the loudest sound in the world.