The Last Second

by Catherine Coulter

  Grant said, “There has to be some way to communicate. Aren’t you hooked into a satellite somewhere?”

  Broussard nodded. “Of course we are. It will have marked our last transmission location and someone at the company will share that information when I miss my board meeting in the morning.”

  The ship’s lead engineer, Eros, called from another boat, “I tried to get a distress call out when I woke up, sir. But nothing registered. I don’t think it worked.”

  Broussard said, “You tried, Eros, and we are all grateful. Mr. Thornton tried as well. We will have faith the calls were heard and our rescuers are on their way to us now. Have you been able to chart our position?”

  “I have, sir,” Eros said. “We’re two nautical miles from the last known location of The Griffon, and moving away from that position at approximately four kilometers per hour. I will continue triangulating. We have the stars to guide us until the typhoon gets close.”

  “Excellent. Cesar, do we have rations and water?”

  “We have water, sir, and the lifeboats have the usual—twenty food packs per person, enough to last five days. The ropes holding us all together are stout, so no one will break away.”

  At Grant’s raised brow, Broussard said, “We always keep the lifeboats provisioned. The submersible also has food and water for five days. I like being prepared for the worst. If we have to, we can ride out the storm. Also, we can try to take the submersible to land. With luck, someone will start searching for us sooner rather than later.”

  Grant thought Broussard sounded more confident than he felt. The aftereffects of the drug were making him nauseated, and the idea of being alone in a small submersible in the middle of the Indian Ocean with a storm bearing down didn’t make him feel much better.

  “And if they don’t come for us?”

  “Then we wait. And we pray.” He thought again of Emilie, how weak she’d sounded, but hopeful—she’d believed him utterly when he said that he would cure her. He couldn’t fail her, not now, not this close.

  A huge metallic groan sounded behind them, and everyone turned to see The Griffon slide under the water.

  Broussard cried out, couldn’t help it. Every man and woman stood frozen, staring in horror.

  Now they were completely alone.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  T-MINUS 71 HOURS

  The Hassler Hotel

  Rome

  July 25

  Nicholas was drinking coffee and watching the news, enjoying the warm summer breeze flowing across their bed from the open terrace doors. Mike walked out of the bathroom, her hair in a towel. He gave her a grin and a wave.

  “All right, Mike. One more day in Rome. You’ve seen the Vatican—hey, what’s this?”

  At his tone, Mike focused on the television. A large red crawler ran along the base of the screen.

  Breaking News: Jean-Pierre Broussard, head of Galactus Space Industries, missing; fears the tycoon’s megayacht, The Griffon, has sunk off the coast of Malaysia.

  “Oh, bollocks.”

  “Oh no, that’s the boat Grant is on, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He turned up the volume. The anchor was speaking with barely contained glee—now this was news that should show his face all over the world. One of the planet’s richest, most successful men, possibly dead? Missing at sea? It was a feast to last for days.

  “—reports have been coming in that the ship went off the radar last night, and Broussard was reported missing this morning after failing to attend a scheduled board meeting. Authorities report there was a brief SOS call, but there have been no distress calls since. Authorities trying to contact the crew are receiving dead air, and the boat’s transponder, which should allow for emergency services to locate it, has not registered. Is it possible some sort of sabotage occurred or was the ship the target of pirates who are known to sail the waters in the area?”

  Nicholas turned down the volume. “We’d best get in touch with Grant’s people. I assume Kitsune knows already—”

  “No, she’s off-grid, remember? No communications. She won’t know unless she gets in front of a television, and she’s not the type to be hanging around watching TV on a job. Chances are she’s totally in the dark. We have to go search for him, Nicholas.”

  Nicholas scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yes, of course we do. Let me contact Blue Mountain, see if I can scare up any new information.”

  Five minutes later, Nicholas said, “I have Grant’s boss here, Mike,” and put the phone on speaker.

  “Sir? I’m Special Agent Nicholas Drummond, with Special Agent Michaela Caine.”

  “Wesley Fentriss here. Yes, I know who you are. I also know I have you two to thank for helping Grant out of his last, ah, situation. You’re calling about the disappearance of Broussard’s yacht, right?”

  “Yes. We knew Grant was aboard The Griffon. We wanted to ask—”

  Fentriss cursed, grumbled about operational security, but Nicholas interrupted him. “You know Grant is our friend, there’s no one I’d trust more with my back, and we were in a tight spot with him not long ago, as you well know. We want to offer our services to help find him. Anything we can do. Our FBI team, Covert Eyes, is at your disposal. We’re in Rome, we can be wherever you are in a couple of hours if we leave now.”

  Silence, then Fentriss said, “Very well. Grant says if it hadn’t been for you and your people, neither he nor his wife would be walking the earth.

  “We’re lucky, we’re staging from Rome. I was here on another business matter already. Come to the British Embassy. Via Venti Settembre. I’ll have someone meet you. Thirty minutes.”

  Fentriss hung up, and Nicholas said to Mike, “We’re only ten minutes away. Let me call down to the desk, tell them we won’t be checking out right away, have them hold the room and call us a car, then we can head over there.”

  She was already pulling her damp hair back into a ponytail. “I hope this is all a mistake, and Grant and his team are okay. I hope—” She swallowed. She was afraid, as afraid as she knew Nicholas was.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  T-MINUS 70 HOURS

  The British Embassy

  Rome

  Mike thought the front of the British Embassy looked like a ship, with its triangular prow and double staircases. She told Nicholas, who said, “Of course it does. Don’t forget, Mike, England enjoyed hundreds of years of naval superiority.” He pointed across the room. “Over there. If I’m not mistaken, there’s someone from Blue Mountain.”

  The “someone” was a young woman who looked lethal despite being dressed in loose palazzo pants and a cropped blazer. Chic, and dangerous, Mike could see the outline of her weapon on her hip. When she spoke, it was pure, unadulterated British girls’ school.

  She stuck out her hand, shook theirs. “Poppy Bennet. I’ll take you to Mr. Fentriss. He’s hot under the collar, so don’t be surprised if he blows up at you instead of saying hello. Grant’s team has been out of touch for ten hours now, no check-ins, no GPS signals. We’ve been trying to back-channel with the Malaysian government but they don’t want to talk. They’re claiming The Griffon found a long-lost shipwreck that has them and the governments of Indonesia and India all up in arms and fighting for jurisdiction. We’re only concerned about finding our people. Sorry, I’m talking too fast. I’ve had a lot of caffeine. You’re Drummond and Caine, right? Of course you are, I recognize you. Grant had his little escapade last month with you. He referred to you as his saviors and friends. Right. Come with me.”

  They stopped at the desk to show their credentials, then Poppy hurried them up the gallery stairs to the second floor. “We’re operational on a separate issue in Kosovo. A team got caught on a K&R—kidnap and ransom—but of course you know what K&R stands for, sorry. They were pulling a client out of Syria when it went south, so the boss flew in to handle the negotiations himself. Two teams in trouble in a day, that’s a record for us.”

  Blue Mountain had set up shop in one of the
embassy’s ornate ballrooms. There were portable screens all over the walls with a bevy of operators on headsets typing and talking. Satellite imagery of Kosovo on the main stage, another set of screens showed satellite images of endless stretches of blue water.

  Fentriss, gray-haired, steel-eyed, square-jawed, looking every inch the retired full general he was, stood to the side, arms crossed over his broad chest. He said without preamble, “We’re looking for them everywhere, using Grant’s insertion as a jumping-off point. The ship isn’t showing up on radar, isn’t showing up on the satellites, which is a miracle considering how big the bloody thing is. Upwards of four hundred feet, The Griffon. Hard to imagine its simply disappearing, which is why we’re afraid she went down.” He stuck out his hand, shook theirs. “It’s a pleasure. I’m sorry we have to meet under these circumstances. Grab a headset so you can hear what’s happening. I’m going to attend to my other disaster for five.”

  He switched headsets and stepped away, started barking orders.

  Poppy said, “Here you go.” She handed them headsets, donned one herself, but left one ear open in case they had questions.

  She said, “The last communication we had with them was yesterday, 0200 Zulu. Grant had done a sweep, the package—Jean-Pierre Broussard—was secure, they were about to have some sort of fancy dinner. Lots of excitement on board, Grant said Broussard claimed he’d found the Holy Grail and they were having a big celebration.” She rolled her eyes. “Well, who knows? I remember that huge tsunami heading for Washington, D.C., and then poof, it suddenly disappeared. In any case, Grant was supposed to check in again at 0400 Zulu, but he didn’t. And nothing since.”

  She pointed to a screen that showed the last known position of The Griffon. “We flew him in from Jakarta on a chopper and this is where he went on board.” She was silent for a moment, and they could hear the chatter of the search and rescue pilots.

  Poppy said, “They’re flying a grid pattern, but that’s a seriously big ocean and The Griffon isn’t showing up visually or on radar.” She paused. “There is a strong possibility they went down. We don’t know, just don’t know yet.”

  Nicholas said, “Were they on the move or stationary when Grant last checked in?”

  “We don’t know that, either. I have all the logs, if you want to look at everything the team has uploaded recently. It will be a couple of weeks of data.”

  Nicholas said, “I’ll take it. Combing through minutiae is a specialty of mine. Maybe something will stand out.”

  Poppy laughed, pointed to a computer terminal at the back of the room. “Everything is uploaded and ready to go right there.”

  Nicholas handed over the headphones, and a few moments later his eyes were glued to the terminal.

  Mike asked, “So Grant said Broussard found the Holy Grail, and that’s why he hired Blue Mountain, to protect it once he found it. They had a celebration feast, and that’s all we have?”

  Poppy said, “Grant said Broussard was certain he’d find the Grail aboard a shipwreck they located—the Flor de la Mar. Sank in 1511. Evidently billions of pounds of treasure aboard. So they found her, and Broussard believes he did indeed find the Holy Grail.” Again, she rolled her eyes, then shrugged.

  The Holy Grail? Mike, like every other sentient human being who’d seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, pictured a chalice in her mind’s eye. Broussard believed he really found it? No, that wasn’t possible, how could it be? The Grail was a legend, nothing more, a miraculous tale changed and embroidered on over the centuries.

  Mike listened to the search and rescue helicopter pilots for a few moments. “You don’t have any sort of GPS trackers on your teams?”

  “All of their comms are chipped, their sat phones are, too, obviously. As I said, Grant’s entire team went offline last night. The yacht has a transponder, a black box to be used in case of an accident, like an airliner, but that, too, is offline.”

  “I thought those were built to withstand pretty much anything.”

  “We can only hope Broussard would keep his up-to-date, he’s a seasoned sailor. They have a hundred-day battery life. They’re not foolproof, though, especially if they’re manually disabled.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. With all the technology we have, they should be findable.”

  “And now you understand why we’re so worried. And of course, there’s a nasty storm brewing out there. If they’re alive, they’re getting ready for rough weather.”

  Nicholas sat back in his chair. He called out, “We have a problem.”

  Poppy and Mike joined him at the computer station. Poppy asked, “What is it?”

  “There’s a microburst transmission from Grant’s last location. It’s in Morse code.”

  Mike asked, “What’s it say?”

  Nicholas met her eyes. “ ‘They have a nuclear EMP.’ ”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  T-MINUS 68 HOURS

  Aquarius Observatory

  Sri Lanka

  They stopped in Kuala Lumpur long enough to switch the Sikorsky for a chartered jet, hired, naturally, under an assumed name. The flight was only three hours, and they landed in Colombo at the private airport as the sun came up.

  Nevaeh loved traveling to the mountains of Sri Lanka. It felt more like home than any place she’d ever lived, second only to her time in space. That was her real home. But the rain forests here were lovely. She’d asked the Numen once about their homelands, if they were arid or rainy, but they’d chimed, Wait and see, wait and see. Trust went a long way to cement the relationship between them, so she hadn’t asked again, knowing they’d show her everything as soon as they felt the time was right.

  And it would be soon. She finally, finally had the Grail, or as the Numen called it, the Heaven Stone. Or had she first called it the Heaven Stone? She couldn’t remember, only that they had agreed she must have it to be immortal like they were. And that was why she knew everything Broussard knew about the Grail. And now she had it and spoke quietly to them, rejoicing in their pleasure. Their blended voices, all in one said, Soon you will be ready for us. You will join us, be immortal like us, and we will be with you when you return to lead the Earth.

  “Soon,” she whispered, “soon enough, we will be together. First I will clear the heavens for you, then anarchy, and finally rebirth, and then we, my friends, will lead the Earth into its future.”

  When she and Kiera stepped off the plane, they were greeted by Rayyan Megat, the head of her observatory facility, Aquarius, so named for Nevaeh’s own astrological sign and her favorite constellation. The station was a two-hour drive from the airport, deep into the mountainous center of Sri Lanka.

  It was here where she would meet the Numen in person again. She had told them that, and they’d said in their beautiful single voice that it was good. And she’d had Aquarius designed specifically—it was both a refuge and a place from which to strike. And a place of welcoming. She didn’t know how they would arrive, they hadn’t told her. A spacecraft? Who knew? They were all-powerful, omniscient. Of course, they’d changed over the past years, as her world had changed, as demands had changed, as she’d learned and planned, and spoken to them often. And in that moment, she found herself wondering if they’d changed or she had. No, no need to concern herself about any of that now. It was nearly here, her day of triumph.

  Rayyan bowed deeply. “Welcome home, Doctor. Everything is ready for you. There are waters in the truck—as you know, it’s going to be very hot on the way, so we don’t want to get dehydrated. I know you want an update on the coming storm. We are expected to take a direct hit on the coast, which will mean severe winds and flooding rains at the facility. The generators have been fueled, the shutters are in place. The kitchens are stocked as well. Even if there should be more damage than anticipated in the lowlands, we are prepared.”

  “Very good, Rayyan.” They settled in and Kiera silently took both bottles of chilled water, cracked their lids, and drank deeply. She handed the other
bottle to her boss.

  Kiera lightly touched her arm. “That’s right, drink it down. Good. Now, rest. You have a big few days ahead.”

  As she drifted into sleep, Nevaeh thought again how everything had gone so perfectly, the plan she’d been laying in place for so long coming at last to fruition. But wait, something was bothering her. Something felt—wrong.

  Was it the unexpected storm? She hadn’t planned for a typhoon in the middle of all of this. Would it hurt the Numen’s chances of coming back to Earth? No way to know without talking to them, which she planned to do as soon as she arrived at the facility and had some privacy.

  If not the impending storm, was it the Grail? Her Heaven Stone? It was inside its box at her feet. And strangely, it felt somehow restless to her. Restless? Wait, was she really hearing it give out a tiny buzz? Where was the warmth she’d expected? The welcoming? And its heaviness, it didn’t seem right. It worried her. No, Broussard and all his books and letters had been wrong. It was heavy, very heavy, and it buzzed. Who cared? Because above all, she had not a single doubt she was worthy of the Grail, her goals were worthy, everything she’d done and planned to do was justified, necessary, even critical to survival. She was bringing peace to the Earth—peace dictated by her and the Numen, naturally, but given the savage brains of most humans, again, what she would bring would be a blessing. She suspected Jean-Pierre had wanted the Grail for some specific purpose he hadn’t shared with her. But what it was, she had no clue. Probably self-aggrandizement. He wasn’t worthy, not to her mind. Nothing noble or selfless in his actions.

  The stone was hers. But why the constant low buzzing? It was driving her mad. She prayed the Numen would understand.

  But still—something was off.

  Her satellite phone rang, and it was a number she recognized.

  Her secretary, Alys.

  Nevaeh debated answering, but the sense that something wasn’t right made her scramble the call before she picked up. No matter what was happening, she couldn’t run the risk of being tracked down. Only Kiera knew about Aquarius. Nevaeh wanted to keep it that way. She watched the screen until she was satisfied she couldn’t be traced, then pressed the talk button.