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PART TWO
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21
TRILLS OF SONGBIRDS echoed through the dense foliage. High overhead, the sun burned bright in a clear blue sky. A flash of color in the greenery, and a parrot exploded through the leaves, squawking at the intruder in its midst.
“Mr. Erdogmus, it is time.” A thickly muscled man in a black ballistic vest, a large handgun strapped to his hip, parted a palm frond to one side.
“Thank you, Maxim. You can leave me now.”
“As you wish.”
The man disappeared back into the jungle.
Ufuk Erdogmus breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of the black, loamy earth beneath his bare feet. He raised his face to the sun and felt its warmth, then clicked his watch, turning back on his data feeds. He liked to come here and disconnect.
“You can leave,” croaked the parrot, twenty feet overhead. “You can leave.”
“I know, I know.” Ufuk leaned over, seated on a wooden bench—his wooden bench—and swept bits of dirt from the soles of his feet, put his socks on and then his black patent leather shoes.
This was his refuge, his private sanctuary within Sanctuary. Of course, any resident of Sanctuary could come to wander through the Forest, just as they could swim in the Ocean. But when he was here, people knew.
Do not disturb.
They knew his importance, and left him to himself.
While tying his shoelaces, he stopped to inspect a troop of ants marching single-file, each balancing a fragment of twig or leaf over its head. Insects were surviving, out in the cold, amid the dark, the ash and snow. Insects had survived a dozen mass extinction events, sometimes even thriving while other species were extinguished. But these hardy creatures would have a hard time with what was coming. Hundreds of millions of humans, possibly billions, had persevered through the initial blow that Nomad had dealt the planet, but a long, slow death-march was coming.
He stood, wiped the sweat from his brow, then adjusted his tie and brushed off his lapels before following the path Maxim had taken, pushing aside the palm fronds as he went.
Dappled sunlight fell in patches on the ground. A breeze brought a little welcome relief from the heat, and the sound of children at play drifted over the burbling of a stream he was stepping by. Breaking through the last of the vegetation, a wide expanse of green grass opened onto a sandy beach.
The children were splashing around the edge of a hundred-foot-wide patch of water they called Ocean. A wall of apartments curved up into the sky beyond that. People sat on the balconies enjoying the Sun. Two hundred feet overhead, the curving ceiling of the Dome swept over the top of the apartment complex, the projected images of clouds scudding across the blue sky. Ten thousand souls were sequestered here, underground, in this gilded cage.
Or gilded tomb.
He had his own apartment in the complex. The most exclusive, of course. Not a penthouse, not near the top. Down at the bottom, where the illusion of the sky and sun projected onto the Dome could fool him, when he let his imagination run rampant. There he could dip his foot into the Ocean, listen to children play, and remember what the world once had been.
His watch beeped, warning him that the meeting had commenced.
He keyed a quick response, asking them not to start before he got there, then quickened his pace, stepping off the green grass into a corridor leading under the wall of balconies. The heels of his shoes click-clacked across the polished white marble. Two uniformed men, armed with automatic rifles, nodded as he passed them. He held his pass out to another man, sitting behind a desk further down the hallway. A glowing monitor faced away from him.
“Hand on the screen, Mr. Erdogmus.”
He didn’t need to be told. Ufuk complied and pressed his hand against it, which allowed his DNA to be sampled at the same time his fingerprints passed muster. He gave his pass to the man.
“And what was your mother’s father’s name, Mr. Erdogmus?”
“Philip.”
A pause. The door to the left of the desk slid open.
“Thank you, Mr. Erdogmus.”
Ufuk smiled and nodded, taking back his pass. Something you are, something you have, and something you know—multi-factor authentication. He’d personally insisted on systems like this when he helped design Sanctuary. Security wasn’t something to be taken lightly. Not back then, and not now. Not ever. And now he might have to overcome his own security protocols. He might have to take control.
But one thing at a time.
The door slipped closed behind him, sealing him inside. He strode along the interior corridor. A voice echoed from an open doorway ahead.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered, quickening his pace.
“…another attack by extremists has all but destroyed the Vivas facility outside of Rome,” said the voice.
Ufuk turned the corner, stopping the presenter, General Marshall, in mid-sentence.
“Ah, Mr. Erdogmus, glad you could join us,” Dr. Müller said, standing from his seat at the back of the expansive conference room.
A thirty-by-ten-foot polished cherry wood table dominated the middle of the room. Framed pictures of nature scenes—a mountain top, a forest stream, a lush white orchid draped from a tree branch—lined both walls. A cup of coffee steamed in front of each person seated at the table, military uniforms on half of them, even though the Sanctuary council was a civilian executive.
At either end of the room were large projection screens. Maxim, the head of compound security, stood at the back, behind Dr. Müller, while General Marshall stood in front and glared at Ufuk.
“I asked if you could wait—”
“I remind you, private citizen Erdogmus, that your attendance at these meetings is a courtesy,” the General said.
The billionaire flashed the military man a tight smile. The General—Ufuk always wanted to laugh when he heard the title thrown around. Before Nomad, Marshall had been in charge of a European Union battle group, the Gendarmerie Force, but no EU battle group had ever been engaged in operations. This Netherlander was a political appointee, a second-stringer who even the Dutch armed forces had tried to get rid of. Worse, his Gendarmerie was a military police force aimed at controlling civilians. But laughing would be a mistake. Insecure people tended to lash out.
“Is that Vivas Romana?” Ufuk asked as he pulled a chair from a row of them by the wall and dragged it up to the table. On the projection screen behind the General, smoking wreckage of huts and twisted metal struts of corrugated tin.
“As I was saying, it was attacked by Islamic extremists three days ago.”
“Extremists? In Italy?”
“They mounted the attack that destroyed the Vatican before Nomad arrived. They had to have a sophisticated cell operating within Italy. It seems they are now operational again.” The General switched to a new view of the destroyed surface of the Vivas installation. “And we have reports of an army of extremists amassing in the Western Desert of Egypt, on the border of Libya. They are close to the African Union encampment at Al-Jawf.”
“Have you talked to them? To the survivors at Vivas?”
“We must not break protocol,” the General said thinly. “No communication with individuals or organizations outside of our network for one year. No exceptions.”
The mantra they had forced everyone inside of Sanctuary to repeat over and over again, the psalm of security for the saved and the faithful. Something Marshall seemed to enjoy reminding them of. Even with the European Union reduced to the dust of yesterday, its politics seemed alive and well.
“Violation of this protocol is grounds for court martial,” the General added.
“I’m not military.”
“Then expulsion, which is worse,” Dr. Müller said from the back of the room. “Mr. Erdogmus, like you, I am here as a courtesy, and I too share your…” He grimaced and smiled at the same time. “…discomfor
t with our reliance on our military colleagues. But these are dangerous times. The most dangerous times.” He paused. “You didn’t contact Vivas, did you?” He held up a hand to hold back General Marshall. “I know protocol, but you do have covert operations, yes, General? To recover persons activating beacons?” He turned to look at Maxim, who shrugged non-committedly.
“I didn’t contact Vivas,” Ufuk replied. “That would be foolish. And why would I contact them? I have no interest—”
“But you do have an interest in finding Dr. Rollins, yes?”
Ufuk remained silent.
“As do I, Mr. Erdogmus, as do I,” continued Dr. Müller. “To find the truth.”
“Rollins is dead,” the General growled. “Because of that man’s actions, extremists destroyed the Vatican. His betrayal began a cycle of violence that has continued even now, into what little remains out there.”
“I don’t know that that’s true.”
“Why did he leave Darmstadt in the dead of night? Like a thief, stealing data from the ESOC headquarters?” The General planted his feet wide and cast an accusatory glare in Dr. Müller’s direction.
“It’s obvious. To find his wife and child,” the old scientist countered.
“But we offered to retrieve them,” the General pointed out. “Enough. You do not need to defend him. It’s irrelevant now.” He took a breath. “Please, can we continue with the business of this meeting? Mr. Erdogmus, the reason we invited you—”
“My space launch facility in central Africa will be operational, as far as we can tell. But—”
“That is all we needed to know.”
“Military GPS is still not functioning?”
The General shook his head after a pause.
Ufuk stood and half-bowed. “Nomad gave us all quite a bit more of a shock than we expected. Even with the models. But I’m on it. And I’m going to record the rest of this meeting, with your permission.” He dropped a small device onto the table and propped it up on a stand. “You can query any questions into it, and I will respond. Thank you for having me at your meeting.” He turned and exited the room.
Dr. Müller watched Ufuk walk out. The man was on very thin ice, but then, the cocksure Erdogmus knew that. They needed him, and that was his power. “These extremists massing on the border of Libya, are they within striking distance of Mr. Erdogmus’s space launch facility?” he asked the General.
“We have very little tactical information,” answered one of the General’s staff, a young man. “Our satellites were knocked out. We need to get some birds in the air.”
“Have we established comms with Sanctuary America?”
“Seismic events on the American continent exceeded operational parameters.”
“So they’re gone?” Ten thousand of the most senior Americans, Dr. Müller knew, were in that installation.
“Might still be buried. It’s only been two weeks.”
And these installations had been designed to stay buried for years, Dr. Müller knew, each with their ten thousand occupants living in luxury below ground. One year of complete radio silence, with no contact except with other Sanctuary installations. Not even with the network of fifty Vivas installations. Tales of the Sanctuaries had whirled around. Everyone with money had heard of them, or at least the rumors of them. Those who had made it inside knew they just had to hang on for a year. After that, the protocol was to open Sanctuary doors, once the worst of the Nomad event had passed and the Earth stabilized.
The rebuilding would begin.
They’d saved vast libraries of genetic material, frozen embryos, veritable Arks of the Apocalypse.
“What is Erdogmus’s fascination with Rollins?” asked the General.
Dr. Müller frowned. “Maxim, you had a man with him, didn’t you?”
Maxim stepped forward from the shadows. “Roger Hargate. He had a beacon, but we still don’t know how he acquired one. If he survived, he would have activated it by now. We would have found Dr. Rollins.”
“But perhaps…perhaps it is not Dr. Ben Rollins that Mr. Erdogmus is searching for.”
“Then who?”
“For what, might be the better question, General Marshall.”
22
“I HAVE A COPY.” Roger coughed.
The hangar was still, with only the wind whistling over its frame to soothe Lucca’s intermittent sobs. Raffa had left Leone’s body and now stood by the door, staring out into the darkness. He hadn’t said a word since Leone died. Jess lay flat on her back in the improvised stretcher. The fire crackled, and she watched its light flickering and shifting against the domed ceiling. So they knew Nomad was coming.
But who were ‘they’ exactly? Did her father know?
Not possible. No way. He would have told her.
Her sluggish mind reeled. The room spun. She wanted to vomit, but forced back the bile. “What did you say?”
“I have a copy of your father’s data,” Roger repeated. “Not all of it, just the CDs and what was on his hard drive. It’s on a memory key, in my jacket pocket. That’s why I gave them the bags. I had it copied—”
“You’re lying,” Giovanni snarled. “I saw the look on your face. You were…how do you say…gloating. That was your face. If I hadn’t stopped you, you’d be gone. You thought you were clever.”
Clever. The word echoed in Jess’s mind. Her father always told her that clever was the first cousin of wisdom, just with all the guts knocked out of it. Or was it the other way around? Was it better to be clever, or to be wise? It depended on the situation, she decided. Wisdom could get you killed for the right reasons, but cleverness could keep you alive for all the wrong ones.
“Go check his jacket.” Jess shakily propped herself up again.
Giovanni rooted through a pile near the truck and found Roger’s coat, and after a few seconds of rummaging, produced a matte black memory key. “Is this it?”
“It was our insurance. I was leaving it with you.” Roger’s voice rasped, dry and cracked. “I was doing it to protect all of you. They get what they want. You get to escape. Now they think you’re dead, Jess. It’s perfect. Just let me go. They’ll be coming back for me—”
“How do we even know what’s on here?” Giovanni frowned at the memory key in his hand. Their only other laptop had been in the Humvee. In the rush to escape Vivas, he hadn’t had time to retrieve it, along with a lot of other things he wished he had now.
“You have to trust me.”
Giovanni snorted.
“You have to let me go.” Roger writhed against the cords. “You don’t understand.”
“If they come back, we will be ready.”
“You should be tying her up,” Roger whined, flicking his chin toward Massarra. “Why was Vivas destroyed? Who attacked it? She came from nowhere.”
“Not nowhere,” Jess said quietly, trying to put the pieces together. “We met in Rome. She brought us back to the castle.”
“So you met by accident?” It was Roger’s turn to snort. “I was told to stay close to Ben, see what he knew and where he was going.” He paused. “They told me the Rollins family had connections to terrorists.”
The blood drained from Jess’s face. “Who told you that lie?”
“So then who’s the dead guy she dragged up here?”
Jess had no idea what he meant.
Giovanni rolled to his feet, the memory key still in his hand. “Now that is a good question.” He walked toward the body laid out near the wall. Before he could get near, Massarra crossed from the door and blocked his way. He shoved her aside and knelt to put an arm under the dead man, firmly but gently raising him up. Massarra hovered but retreated.
“Do you recognize this man?” he asked Jess.
She squinted. Something about his face. An old man. Where had she seen him? In the photograph in Vivas. And in the car with her mother. “Is that your uncle, Massarra? You said he'd died."
Massarra didn’t reply. Instead she stood, watching them, ha
nds by her sides.
“You know him?” Giovanni propped the dead man up higher.
“I met him in Rome, when my mother and I got trapped outside our apartment.”
“You see?” Roger said excitedly.
“And he was in the car with us when Massarra drove us to the castle,” Jess added. “And the pictures in Vivas. They had pictures of me with him, from some security camera, they said. That’s when she appeared and told us we had to leave.”
His face beet-red and sweat-slicked, Roger leered at Massarra. “And poof…Vivas was destroyed. Tie her up. Find out who she is.”
Massarra crossed back to the doorway, never taking her eyes from them.
Giovanni put the dead man down and dusted off his sweater arm. “I trusted you with my life,” he said to her in a flat voice.
Her eyes moved back and forth from Giovanni to Jess, then to Roger and the crumpled, blood-soaked mess of Leone and the boys. Her body flinched, as though to go out, but something held her in place.
She closed her eyes, and her body sagged. “Abdullah-shah, the man I said was my uncle, he was a member of the Levantine council. A cleric. I was his protégé. But he was more of a father than uncle.”
“Israeli intelligence?” Jess struggled to make sense of the pieces, but the sideways-sickness in her stomach intensified.
“Doesn’t sound Jewish to me,” Roger sneered.
Massarra hesitated in the doorway, halfway into the darkness outside.
“Please, don’t leave,” Jess implored.
If this woman disappeared, she’d never know the truth. The small woman seemed more of a wraith now, her image wavering in the firelight, somewhere between this world and the lands of the dead outside.
Jess needed to drag her back, into her world, to find peace. “I lost my mother and father for this. I beg you.”
She should be angry, Jess knew, but she wasn’t. She had been lied to, by almost everyone around her. Did that include her mother and father? Even Giovanni? Circles felt as though they turned within circles. Was Massarra just another level of deception? Why save her—more than once? Maybe it was her mind, still slow, or perhaps the daunting darkness of having died and come back to life, but Jess didn’t feel anger.
Sanctuary (Nomad Book 2) Page 16
