The Holy Grail (Sam Reilly Book 13)

by Christopher Cartwright

  “I sure am.”

  “Why?” Ben met his eye with incredulity. “I don’t have the gun anymore. I lost it when I jumped free from the JetRanger. You’re free to go. I have no way to keep you prisoner anymore, so why stay?”

  Sam set his jaw. “Because someone picked a fight with the wrong person.”

  “They sure did,” Ben said, his voice filled with gravel and defiance. “But it’s not your fight.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Sam grinned. “They made that abundantly clear when they tried to kill me in the process!”

  Ben asked, “You’re really going to stay and help me?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “We might get killed.”

  Sam shrugged. “Whatever’s going on here, I think it’s safe to say someone will always be trying to kill us unless we get to the bottom of this, and fix it once and for all.”

  “That’s the real question. How do we fix it?” Ben said, “I mean, we can keep running, but at some stage if we want to finish it, we need to find out what’s really going on and why.”

  “Agreed. You’re right. We can’t just keep running forever. First thing we need to do once we’re out of here is work out who or what they think you are. Once we do that, we might just find out who exactly wants you dead, and why.”

  “And how that person is connected to the long reach of the Department of Defense.”

  Sam rubbed his thawing hands together in front of the fire. “So far, we know this has something to do with what your parents did – or someone thinks they did – back in Bolshoi Zayatsky. We know that you were born lucky, with the good fortune to rarely if ever, get sick, and never seriously unwell. You look young for your age and have naturally fast reflexes that would have put you in line to play sports at a professional level. Anything I missed?”

  “Yeah, I have purple eyes.”

  “Right. Purple eyes. As you pointed out, so did Elizabeth Taylor and a couple thousand other people throughout history, but it is an extremely rare genetic anomaly – and Special Agent Devereaux certainly seemed to have honed into that detail. It’s not a lot to go off.”

  “Barely anything at all.”

  Sam said, “We can search for terrorist events or any unique event for that matter in Bolshoi Zayatsky, particularly around the mid to late seventies. It’s a stretch, but even a simple Google search might point us in the right direction if there was a terrorist organization there at the time.”

  Ben’s lips flattened into a hard line. “There wasn’t.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Hundred percent.”

  “How?”

  “I already had a look.”

  “But the first you’d heard of Bolshoi Zayatsky was when you were being interrogated at the Pentagon.”

  “I checked on my smartphone – before you threw it in the fire.”

  “Right.” Sam nodded, a slight grin forming on his lips. “What about your parents. Do you know where they were buried? It might sound a little ghoulish, but the only definitive way to determine the truth about your genetic lineage might be to exhume their bodies and crossmatch their DNA with yours.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “Too ghoulish?”

  “No. Just not possible. Both my parents were cremated.”

  “Where are their ashes now?”

  “Scattered across the Yosemite Valley.”

  Sam nodded. “All right, that might make it a little difficult,” Sam agreed. “What about a picture?”

  “Yes, just one. I’ve kept it with me all these years, but I don’t see what you can do with it.” Ben handed him the photo from his wallet. “Here have a look at it.”

  Sam took the photograph, a Polaroid, and examined the image.

  It showed two adults in a cave – presumably his real parents – and a small child standing inside with them. Sam studied their faces. His father was roughly the same age as Ben was today, and could have easily passed as his brother. There was no doubt in Sam’s mind that the man was his real father.

  Sam met Ben’s eye. “This is your family?”

  Ben nodded. “As far as I know. I don’t recall their faces. You know, I look at this picture, and I feel like it was real. I even recognize the location, but I can’t in all honesty say I recognize my parents. Does that sound crazy?”

  Sam tilted his head, trying not to look at him directly. “You were very young. It’s easy to forget.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t forget. I have what the doctors tell me is an eidetic memory – an ability to vividly recall images from memory after only a few instances of exposure, with a high precision for a brief time after exposure, without using a mnemonic device – and yet, I can’t remember my own parents. Does that sound strange to you?”

  “Like I said, you were very young. Even the best of memories can’t be expected to hold true at that age.”

  Ben’s eyes welled up. “I’ve stared at this photo more times than I’d like to admit, searching it for some sort of clue about where I came from. I’ve always known I was different. Always have. Sometimes I don’t even look at the photo, I just search the image I have indelibly embedded in my mind.”

  “And still you find nothing?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “But you remember the location?”

  “No. I remember exploring the location. It was surreal, like something out of one’s fantasy… I’ve often thought if I could just find the cave, it would jog my memory, and maybe reveal something about my past that it appears my parents have gone to great lengths to withhold from me.”

  Sam smiled. The story was sounding more and more like just that, the imagination of a child, longing to recall the past, rather than to recall anywhere in particular. “I have a friend who’s pretty good with computers. When we get out of here, and we get a new cell phone, I’ll send her a copy of the photo and see what she can find. Maybe she can correlate the image with a cave on her database.”

  Sam’s eyes turned to the cave itself. It had a unique purple hue to it. A crepuscular beam shined down on the polished rockface behind them, making it stand out like a prized painting at a gallery.

  Something about the image caught his eye.

  There were elaborate pictograms etched into the rockface. The photo’s resolution wasn’t good enough to make out the intricate details, but there was no doubt about the basic design. He stared at the drawings etched into the rockface for a minute.

  There were seven in total.

  Each one depicted a human face. Although, the more Sam looked at them, the more he doubted whether that was true, deciding that they were most decidedly near-human. A missing link on the scale of evolution, perhaps? He would need the expert advice of an anthropologist, but at a guess, he thought the faces were of cavemen.

  Sam handed the photo back to Ben without saying anything.

  Ben took it, his jaw set and his eyes fixed with defiance. “Well? Go on. Aren’t you going to ask the question?”

  Sam grinned. “What question?”

  “The same one everyone asks. The first thing everyone wonders when they look at the photo.”

  Sam grinned. “Okay, what’s the story with the ancient faces?”

  Ben nodded. “Every person who’s ever seen that photo has asked the same question.”

  “What’s the answer?” Sam challenged him.

  “I have no idea who the strange masks belong to. I’ve spent years searching for some reference of them, but have found nothing. I’ve looked for the cave, too, without any luck.”

  Sam nodded. “I wouldn’t expect anyone to have had any.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, if my instinct is right, that cave has been buried in perpetuity and the identity of those faces long forgotten.”

  Ben patted his hanging pants to see if they were dry yet. “So then what do we do?”

  Sam replied without hesitation. “We head to North Dakota.”

  “Really?” B
en asked. “What’s in North Dakota?”

  “Someone who might just be able to give us answers about why you’re so valuable… or dangerous to the world.”

  “All right, sounds good. You got a plan how we’re going to get there?”

  “I’ve got some ideas, but it depends.”

  “On what?”

  “How you feel about white water rafting the Shenandoah River during the spring runoff?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was 8 a.m. before Sam woke up.

  He’d had just three hours sleep in the past twenty-four hours. There was no way of knowing how long that wildfire would burn. Already, there was a good chance the wreckage of the helicopter might be accessible. And when it was, they would discover no bodies. He could just imagine the subsequent manhunt that would unfold.

  No. Three hours would have to do. He and Ben needed to get moving.

  They picked the first raft they found in the summer camp’s storage lockers. The thing was mildly deflated after spending the winter out of the water in storage. Ben found a pump and it didn’t take long to have it fully inflated again.

  Sam broke into the emergency supplies locker and found some out-of-date canned food – vegetable stew – bottled water, blankets, first aid kit, and a map of the whitewater rapids.

  By 8:30 a.m. the six-person whitewater raft was loaded with supplies and paddles. Sam and Ben donned a pair of wetsuits, helmets and lifejackets. They placed their now dry clothes into a dry bag, and pulled the raft onto the bank of the Shenandoah River.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Ben asked.

  Sam ran his eyes across the wide river. It was flowing, but didn’t look all that dangerous in the daylight. He nodded. “Yeah, this looks like the fastest way to cover ground. Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s spring. That means the winter snow has melted and its runoff is feeding this river, making it flow much faster and meaner. Didn’t you think it was strange no one else is on the river yet?”

  “Hadn’t really thought of it.”

  Ben’s face crunched up into a slight grimace. “Only the die-hard rafters would even attempt the river this time of the year.”

  “The die-hard rafters and those running for their lives.” Sam grinned. “Come on; let’s get this raft in the water.”

  “All right. Can’t say I didn’t warn you though.”

  Sam stepped barefoot into the shallow water at the edge of the river. The water felt like liquid ice as it stung at his protesting lower legs. He dragged the raft deeper.

  When the water reached the top of his knee, Ben climbed into the back of the inflatable and he said, “Come on, Sam. Get out of that cold water!”

  Sam pushed down hard on the bow of the inflatable raft, taking his weight off the ground and swung his legs over the edge and into the boat. He picked up a paddle, and together, in silence, the two men synchronized their paddling until they were into the deeper, faster flowing river, where the powerful current caught them.

  The raft drifted downriver over the course of the next hour without any concerns, comfortably following the natural course of the river, before reaching the first set of dangerous rapids. Normally only shallow ripples, the spring runoff meant that the section was now rated more like a class III or IV set of rapids.

  Sam’s eyes darted between the upcoming rapids and Ben. “What do you think?”

  Ben sighed. “I don’t think we have a choice. Let’s just ride it out.”

  Sam shrugged. “All right, let’s do it.”

  The raft dipped over the first cataract, dropping nearly eight feet in a swift movement. Sam shifted his weight to the back, as the bow punched through the naturally forming recirculating and trapping current known as a hydraulic.

  White water washed into the boat.

  Sam and Ben hit their paddles hard, trying to gain enough forward momentum to break the current’s hold on them.

  Up ahead they narrowly missed a large boulder, before dropping off the side of the next cataract. This time, the current caught the large raft, immediately sending it sideways.

  The inflatable started to lift on the left side.

  “High side!” Sam shouted, as he threw his weight down on the lifting section of the boat.

  “I’m on it!” Ben replied.

  Ben reacted fast, shifting his body weight so that he was almost entirely out of the raft. The boat started to turn in a strange spiral motion, until the stern caught the main current and the raft shot out of the hydraulic.

  They drifted down another set of shallow drops, fighting the current and washing machine effect of the turbid waters for another twenty minutes before the river settled into a more docile calm.

  Sam caught his breath and assessed the boat. It had held up well without any puncture or damage. Their cargo, stored in water tight containers, and secured to the raft by rope, were all over the place – some not even inside anymore.

  He pulled them inside.

  Ben glanced at him. “Thanks. We don’t have much, but it’s nice to keep what we do have.”

  “Agreed.”

  Sam settled into the raft, stretching out, as the river calmed. He studied the deciduous forest that lined the Shenandoah River. There was chestnut oak, red oak, and tulip poplar, intermingled with spruce-fir. A diverse array of wildflowers blossomed throughout the shallow scrubs and green grasses.

  As they drifted farther downriver, Sam gazed upon the seemingly countless ferns and scrub species found beneath the trees. There were multicolored azaleas and lady slipper orchids. Purple-pink Eastern Redbud blooms and bright green buds filled the landscape set upon the backdrop of mountain ranges.

  A pair of baby black bears foraged on blueberries on the river’s bank, while their mother kept a guarded watch. Her eyes met Sam’s with casual indifference. It obviously wasn’t the first time she’d spotted a raft drifting lazily down the river.

  A military helicopter passed overhead. Sam watched it for a minute, before it banked to the east and continued onward. The pilot was clearly searching for something – most likely them.

  Ben asked, “What if they start to search the river?”

  “Then we hide the raft, and find somewhere to lie low until they pass. They’ll be searching in a series of grids. Once they finish their fly overs they’ll move on to the next zone.” Sam ran his eyes across the dense bank of the river as it met the narrowing rocky valley; they were quickly losing hiding places. “Isn’t there some massive limestone cavern somewhere here? Maybe we can hide out in there for a while.”

  “Yeah, a town called Grottoes. Home of the Grand Cavern, America’s oldest show cave, open to visitors since 1806. I visited it once as a kid. The cave was used by the Confederate and Union soldiers to hide during the Civil War.”

  Sam nodded. “That sounds good. We can use that if we need to lay low for a while.”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Ben shook his head emphatically. “It’s about fifty miles south of here, upriver.”

  “All right, then we’ll just have to make sure we’re gone by the time they start their search of the river.”

  His eyes swept the Shenandoah Valley. Surrounded by ancient mountains, the Shenandoah River cut a gentle and incredibly flat valley into the landscape. Its lush pastoral scenes were framed by a vibrant deciduous forest growing on the hills.

  Sam’s mind wandered to its history. However peaceful it may now appear, the history of the Shenandoah Valley Civil War tells of a time when sacrifice was the currency that bought freedom. Riddled with old battlefields and Civil War cemeteries, the valley had earned the peace and harmony of the present day.

  The rocky valley narrowed as the next set of rapids emerged.

  A quick glance at the map they’d taken from the summer camp, showed them aptly named, Bull’s Tail, the Shenandoah’s mile-long Staircase, Mad Dog, White Horse, Hesitation Ledge, and Roller Coaster.

  The raft rode these
at speed.

  With the higher water levels of the spring runoff, the rapids at this section were less harsh than earlier along the river. The massive torrent worked to speed up their progress rather than hinder it for once.

  At the bottom of the final set of rapids, Sam spotted a series of blue herons, ospreys, and bald eagles feasting on the abundant trout, discombobulated by their navigation of the rapids.

  As the water slowed, Sam and Ben continued to paddle downstream until the river widened into the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers at the tripoint of Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland.

  They passed the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and a sign that noted that this was the view Thomas Jefferson claimed was “worth a trip across the Atlantic.”

  The raft drifted farther along and a few paddle strokes set them alongside a jetty. Sam and Ben opened their dry bags, trading their wetsuits, life jackets, and helmets for their clothes and shoes.

  Ben glanced at the raft, its presence conspicuous as the first one for the season. “What do you want to do with this?”

  Sam spoke without hesitation. “Push it back into the river. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will find it at Knoxville or even farther along the Potomac and assume we got off there.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Harpers Ferry

  Ben opened his wallet. “I have thirty-five dollars in cash, what do you have?”

  Sam opened his wallet, licked his lips and frowned. “I have a fifty.”

  “That’s it?” Ben looked at him through slightly narrowed eyes. “I thought you were the rich son of a shipping mogul?”

  “Sure, but this is the new century. No one carries cash anymore.”

  “Great. So, we have eighty-five dollars to get from here to North Dakota. Maybe we should skip the railway and just start hitch-hiking from here?”

  “Nah, that’s all right,” Sam said, holding his hand out. “Hand me what you’ve got. Eighty-five will probably do for what we want, anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Hand over the cash.”

  Ben handed him the cash, his jaw set firm, the lines deepening beneath his eyes.