by Mark Alpert
Lucille and the other agent cornered David, each grabbing one of his elbows. He tried to break free, but they held on tight. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “What’s going on?”
She frowned. “Bad news. About Michael.”
LUKAS STOOD AT THE BACK OF THE LECTURE HALL, BLENDING IN WITH THE crowd. He’d bought a suit for the occasion, a cheap blue pinstripe, and under the jacket was a Heckler & Koch pistol in a shoulder holster. The assignment was simple enough. There were no security guards or metal detectors in the building. The only problem was the timing. Lukas was supposed to complete his mission at approximately the same time the other teams finished theirs, but he couldn’t take out his target in front of all the scientists in the lecture hall. So he had to wait. To pass the time, he recited the Lord’s Prayer, mouthing the Latin words under his breath: Pater noster, qui est in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum . . .
Luckily, after a few minutes his target left the room. Lukas slipped out a different exit and took up position near the staircase, flattening himself against the wall and peering down the corridor. It was a good place to do the job. The hallway was dark and there was only one witness who needed to be eliminated. Lukas reached into his new jacket, removed the Heckler & Koch, and quietly attached the silencer. But just as he raised his gun, the doors to the lecture hall opened and two more people stepped into the corridor. One was a standard-issue FBI agent. The other was some kind of supervisor, a big ugly brute of a woman. Lukas quickly stepped backward, retreating into an alcove.
This is unfortunate, he thought. He didn’t want a firefight. But he was a veteran of the Delta Force, the U.S. Army’s elite counterterrorism unit, so he was ready for combat. Over two decades he’d taken out dozens of targets in Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and he’d lost none of his skills in the three years since he’d heard the Lord’s call. The FBI agents stood with their backs to him, so he knew he could kill both of them before they drew their guns. He raised his pistol, lining up the gun sights with the old woman’s hairdo. Always eliminate the commander first, that’s what they’d taught him.
A second later, though, his luck changed again. The FBI agents marched off with the witness, a trim, dark-haired professor in khaki pants and a tweed jacket, leaving the target alone in the hallway. Lukas waited until he couldn’t hear the agents’ footsteps anymore. Then he aimed his pistol at the bald man with the cane.
3
MICHAEL COULDN’T MOVE HIS ARMS OR LEGS—THEY WERE STILL STRAPPED to the gurney—but he could turn his head to the right and stare at the clouds through one of the airplane’s oblong windows. He’d never traveled in a plane before and the first few minutes were terrifying. The floor shook and the gurney jangled and an impossible roar filled the airplane’s cabin, which was a tube about twelve feet long and six feet wide. Then Michael’s feet tilted upward and his head sank down and the horrible roar drilled into his skull, tearing through his eardrums. It was so loud he couldn’t even hear himself screaming.
He closed his eyes and kept them closed for a long time. When he finally opened them, the gurney wasn’t tilting anymore and the roar had died down to a steady rumble. Michael lifted his head and saw two people sitting in the cockpit at the front of the plane, the man with the scarred neck in the copilot’s seat and the woman named Tamara in the pilot’s. It reminded him of a computer game he used to play, Eighth Air Force, which simulated the cockpit of a B-17 flying over Germany during World War II. But in the computer game the pilot and copilot were both men and they never left the plane to kidnap or shoot anyone. Confused, Michael turned back to the window and focused on the clouds, which glided past in great white domes tinged with orange from the sunset. It was a pretty view and after a while he felt calmer. He made a point of memorizing how the clouds looked, every ridge and hump and billow.
He continued studying the sky for about an hour. Then the noise from the airplane’s engines subsided and his gurney started to tilt again, dipping at the feet this time. In a panic, he closed his eyes as tightly as he could. The tilt grew steeper. Michael felt like he was sliding, feetfirst, into a deep hole. Against the black of his eyelids he saw hundreds of red stars, all moving in unison from right to left. Then, for the second time that day, he saw the Einheitliche Feldtheorie, written by Albert Einstein, his great-great-grandfather. Michael had memorized the equations when he was thirteen, and they’d burrowed in his mind for the past six years. Their odd symbols glowed as they streamed through the darkness.
After another fifteen minutes Michael felt a jolt and opened his eyes. He looked out the window and saw a flat, empty field crisscrossed with red and white lights. The plane was coasting down a runway, raising the flaps on its wings just like the B-17s did in Eighth Air Force. The sky was dark now, almost black. As the plane slowed he glimpsed a building on the far side of the field, a hangar with a curved roof and giant doors. But there were no other buildings in sight and no other aircraft. At the end of the runway the plane turned and came to a stop. Then the engines shut down and all the runway lights switched off and Michael couldn’t see anything outside.
In the cockpit Tamara rose from the pilot’s seat. She’d taken off the jumpsuit she’d worn when she was pretending to be an ambulance attendant; now she wore camouflage pants and a brown T-shirt. Because the cabin’s ceiling wasn’t high enough for her to stand up straight, she hunched forward as she came down the aisle and squeezed into the space beside the gurney. Michael turned his head away, but a moment later he felt the scrape of her bandaged fingers on his chin. She pulled his face toward hers and bent down low. Her lips were wet and her teeth glistened. “How are you doing, Michael?” she asked. “Everything all right?”
He strained his eyes to the left and right, frantically trying to look past her. He caught a glimpse of the cabin door and imagined David Swift bursting through it. Oh, where was David now? Why wasn’t he here?
“Are you uncomfortable? I’m sorry about that. I wish I could let you get up and stretch your legs, but I can’t.” She reached into the pocket of her camouflage pants. “But I have something if you’re hungry. A little snack. I bought it this morning.” She pulled a candy bar out of her pocket, a Milky Way Midnight bar. “Here, I’ll unwrap it. I can hold it up to your mouth and you can take a bite.”
Michael shook his head. He usually liked Milky Way bars, but this one was crooked and the wrapper was wrinkled. He wouldn’t have eaten it even if David had offered it to him.
Tamara shrugged, then slipped the candy bar back into her pocket. “We’re just making a quick stop here. The longest part of our journey is still ahead. Angel is going to refuel the plane and pick up supplies.” She glanced at the cockpit, where the man with the scarred neck was pressing buttons and throwing switches. Michael took a deep breath, relieved that she’d turned away from him. He wanted to close his eyes and slide into the darkness again, but Tamara was too close. He was afraid she might bend a few inches lower and bite him.
“And while we’re waiting here, we’re going to have a visitor. Brother Cyrus is coming to see you, Michael. He’ll be here any minute.” She let go of his chin and ran her fingers through his hair. The bandages made a crackling noise as they moved behind his ear. “Please be respectful in his presence. Don’t say anything unless he asks you a question first. He’s our leader and he deserves respect.”
Smiling, she gripped Michael’s chin again and brushed the fingertips of her other hand against his cheek. “You’re going to help Brother Cyrus,” she said. “And he’s going to help you, too. No more pain, no more suffering.” She slid one of her fingers across his forehead, soft and slow. “Just peace. Everlasting peace.”
He opened his mouth to scream, but at that moment the man with the scarred neck called out, “They’re coming!” Tamara instantly let go of Michael and rushed to the door at the front of the cabin. With one hand she grasped the door’s handle and swung it open, and with the other she pulled a gun out of her pants, the same gray pistol she’d used
to kill Dr. Parsons.
She waited in the doorway, pointing her gun outside and peering into the darkness. After about fifteen seconds Michael heard the sound of a car approaching, then screeching to a halt. After another ten seconds he heard footsteps. Then Tamara stepped back from the doorway and a man without a face entered the plane.
He wore black pants and a black jacket, and his head was wrapped in a thick black scarf that covered everything except his eyes. Michael stared at him, transfixed. It was like a man-size piece of the darkness outside had drifted into the plane’s cabin. He wasn’t very tall—in fact, he was shorter than Tamara—but he had a broad chest and bulky shoulders, and the narrow confines of the cabin made him look enormous. His eyes glinted within the slit of his head scarf as he approached Michael’s gurney.
Tamara followed a few feet behind. “This is Brother Cyrus,” she announced. “Say hello, Michael.”
The strange thing was, Michael wasn’t afraid. This is a game, he told himself. He imagined he was immersed in a computer game, one of the first-person shooters he used to play all the time on his Game Boy. David had convinced him to stop playing the more violent programs—War-fighter, Desert Commando, America’s Army—but Michael remembered them clearly. In all those games the enemy soldiers looked like Brother Cyrus. They wore black uniforms and helmets, and their faces were usually masked or obscured so you wouldn’t feel bad about shooting them. And if this was a game, Michael reasoned, there must be a strategy for winning. He didn’t have a gun, unfortunately, and his avatar was immobilized. But he wasn’t defenseless.
He avoided looking at the man’s eyes. Instead he focused on the black creases where the scarf wrapped around his jaw. “Hello, Brother Cyrus,” he said.
The man folded his arms across his chest. He wore black gloves, Michael noticed. Not a single square inch of his skin was exposed. It was impossible to tell whether he was white or black or something in between.
“Hello, Michael,” he finally said. His voice was low, muffled by the scarf. “Please forgive my appearance. I suffered a disfiguring accident a few years ago. I’ve found that it’s less disturbing for everyone if I keep my face hidden.”
For a moment Michael wondered what kind of accident it was. A fire? An explosion? But in the end it didn’t matter, he thought. He disliked looking at faces anyway. “Where are you taking me?” he asked.
“All in good time, Michael, all in good time. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. When I was a young man I once met Amil Gupta, your grandfather. He was an assistant to Albert Einstein during the 1950s, correct? And he married the great man’s granddaughter?” Brother Cyrus moved closer. The creases in his scarf shifted as he cocked his head. “Amil was a genius himself, one of the finest physicists of his generation. I was very sorry to hear about his death.”
Michael didn’t want to talk about his grandfather. Amil Gupta had broken his promise and tried to reveal the Einheitliche Feldtheorie. David had told Michael that he shouldn’t think too badly of his grandfather; the old man had gotten sick, David said, and the sickness had made him do all those terrible things. But Michael didn’t believe it. He decided to repeat his previous question, which Brother Cyrus hadn’t answered. “Where are you taking me?”
Tamara stepped forward. “Michael! Show some respect!” Then she leaned over his gurney and slapped him in the face.
The pain and surprise were so sharp, Michael’s eyes watered. Still, he didn’t turn away from Brother Cyrus. It’s just a game, he told himself again. Nothing but a game.
Cyrus uncrossed his arms and pointed a gloved finger at him. “I’ve spent the past two years observing you, Michael, and I’ve learned that you’re a remarkable young man. In some ways, you’re even more remarkable than your illustrious great-great-grandfather.” He moved his hand closer, aiming his index finger at the center of Michael’s forehead. “I’m not talking about your mathematical abilities now, all the numbers and equations you can cram into that brain of yours. No, I’m talking about your innocence. Your purity of spirit.”
Michael wanted to ask for a third time, Where are you taking me? but he was afraid that Tamara would slap him again, maybe harder than before. Or Cyrus would hit him with that big, gloved hand.
“God gave you a wonderful gift,” Cyrus continued. “Yes, your autism is a gift. You can’t lie or cheat. You can’t be deliberately cruel. Your mind lacks all the evil impulses that make the human race so despicable. In a sinful world, you point the way to our salvation.” He opened his gloved hand, splaying the fingers. They hovered just a few inches above Michael’s eyes. “You’re a herald of the world to come, my child. A world without sin and rot and corruption. The Kingdom of Heaven we will soon bring to earth.”
“Amen,” Tamara whispered. She lowered her head and stared at the floor.
To Michael’s relief, Cyrus withdrew his hand and took a step backward. His eyes still glinted, though, within the slit of his head scarf. “The Lord has given us a great task, Michael. After Amil Gupta died, I heard the rumors about the theory he’d uncovered. Through my informants in the FBI and the other American intelligence agencies, I confirmed that it was Einstein’s Einheitliche Feldtheorie. And I saw that the Almighty was giving me a sign. The Lord was telling me to pursue the unified theory because it held the keys to His holy kingdom.” He extended his arms, gesturing at the airplane’s cabin. “Luckily, I have significant resources at my disposal. I hired experts to assemble the bits and pieces of equations that had been picked up by the intelligence agencies.”
Michael’s stomach jumped. Although he and David Swift had tried to destroy every hard drive and computer disk that had held the formulas of the unified field theory, it was possible that they’d missed some. Amil Gupta had been very careless with the equations.
“We couldn’t reconstruct the entire theory,” Cyrus said. “But we learned enough to put us on the path to the Redemption. We conceived a plan to carry out the Lord’s will and open the gates of His kingdom. And just a few hours ago, the Almighty gave us another sign. The results from our test prove that we’re on the right course. Now all we need are the missing pieces of the theory, the parts we haven’t been able to reconstruct.” He pointed at Michael’s forehead again, his gloved hand trembling. “I know you have the equations, Michael. Einstein bequeathed the Einheitliche Feldtheorie to his young assistants, and fifty years later they passed it on to you. Once you give it to us, we can take the final step.”
Tamara raised her head and looked at Michael. She leaned over his gurney and grasped his left hand. “Don’t worry, it’ll be simple. I’ll show you what to do when we get to our camp.”
Michael tried to pull his hand out of her grasp, but his arm was strapped down too tightly. The cords dug into his wrist as he struggled. “I told you, I won’t help you! You killed Dr. Parsons!”
Brother Cyrus nodded. “Yes, and there will be more deaths, unfortunately. But in the end we will triumph over death. The Lord has given me His promise, whispering the holy words in my ear. There will be no death in His Kingdom, only eternal life. All of God’s subjects will be resurrected, and we will live forever in His loving embrace.”
Tamara whispered “amen” again. Then Cyrus stepped sideways, moving behind her. He put a gloved hand on her shoulder. “Sister, I’m afraid I must leave you now. But I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point the day after tomorrow.” He walked to the front of the cabin, heading for the door. “Before the plane takes off, make sure that Angel gives the boy a sedative. We want him to be well rested when he arrives.”
“Yes, Brother. Go in peace.”
Tamara let go of Michael’s hand. She watched Cyrus leave the plane and continued to stare at the cabin door after it had swung shut behind him. Then she turned to the cockpit and shouted an order at the man with the scarred neck. Several seconds later he came toward them, fitting a shiny silver needle into a syringe.
Michael couldn’t pretend that this was a game anymore. He rolled his head from
side to side and began to scream.
4
DAVID SWIFT AND HIS FAMILY WERE IN ONE OF THE INTERROGATION ROOMS on the twenty-third floor of Federal Plaza, the FBI’s field office in Lower Manhattan. While David paced across the linoleum, Monique cradled their one-year-old daughter in her arms, rocking Baby Lisa to sleep. Jonah, David’s son from his first marriage, sat at a table in the center of the room and stared at his iPod Touch. The screen was blank—Jonah had taken the device out of his backpack half an hour ago, but he hadn’t turned it on. Normally, he was a cheerful, blond, blue-eyed nine-year-old, but now his eyes were red and his cheeks were wet. He’d been crying ever since the FBI agents had picked him up from his after-school karate class.
David stopped pacing. He came up behind his son and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Go ahead, turn on the iPod,” he urged. “It’ll help pass the time.”
Jonah didn’t move. He kept his eyes on the small, dead screen.
Monique swayed toward them, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Baby Lisa’s eyes were half closed, her caramel face pressed against her mother’s shoulder. “Hey, Jonah, I can show you a new app,” Monique offered. “It’s a 3-D model of the Milky Way galaxy. You can zoom in on the spiral arms and everything. It’s very cool.”
After a few seconds the boy looked up at David. Another tear slid down the side of his nose. “Dad, are we under arrest?”
David’s heart constricted. He would’ve preferred to tell his son the truth—that the FBI was protecting them from any further kidnapping attempts—but he didn’t want to frighten the boy. “No, we’re not under arrest. We’re safe. Everything’s all right.”
Jonah scowled. He dropped the iPod, which hit the table with a clunk. “Then what are we doing here? And where’s Michael?”
