Maze Master

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  “Stop!” Cozeba ordered and stabbed a finger at her. “Do not say one more word, Captain!”

  “You’re already charging me with treason, aren’t you? What more can you do to me?”

  “I can test the hypothesis that you can resist torture!” Cozeba’s chest rose and fell as though he couldn’t get enough air.

  In a very low voice, Anna asked, “How long have you been playing both sides, General?”

  The room went deathly silent.

  Anna laughed so softly Micah almost didn’t hear it. Then she looked up and stared right at him. “I’m sorry I accused you, Micah.”

  Anna got to her feet, walked to the door, and flung it open. The startled guards in the corridor spun around to stare wide-eyed at her.

  Captain Anna Asher ordered, “Take me back to my cell, Sergeant.”

  The young man leaped to obey, then suddenly realized what he’d done and looked around Anna’s shoulder to get confirmation from Cozeba. The general nodded.

  “I’ll take you, Anna,” Major Lehman said.

  They left.

  When Cozeba glowered at them, the two remaining guards snapped to attention.

  Cozeba closed the door and gripped the closest chair back in both hands, squeezing until his knuckles went white. “Don’t let her fool you, Hazor. She’s a member of an extremist group and guilty of treason, sedition, and the murder of millions.”

  Micah just listened. Treason and murder were obvious charges, but he found the sedition charge curious.

  “Sir, permission to speak with my immediate superior, Colonel Joseph Logan.”

  “Denied. Colonel Logan, along with several other members of my senior staff, contracted the plague this morning. He’s in the Garden now, the fenced quarantine zone outside the fort.”

  Micah processed that. He’d been hoping … but it didn’t matter now. “Permission to ask a question, sir?”

  Cozeba took a deep breath. “What is it, Captain?”

  “Why am I here?”

  Cozeba blinked as though he had no idea what Micah was talking about.

  Micah continued, “You expended the effort to find me in the desert. You put me in that boat on the Nile. For what purpose? Did the Russians tell you they’d inoculated me with their latest most potent vaccine and you wanted to see if it worked?”

  Cozeba’s lips pressed into a tight line. He peered down at the pendants resting on Micah’s chest, and kept his gaze there when he said, “Logan guaranteed me that you were a loyal officer who would do anything necessary to protect his country. I need your help, Hazor. I must know everything Anna Asher has told you.”

  Micah paused to take in the general’s expression. Then he said, “Who’s your Russian contact, General?”

  Cozeba’s eyes flared. It took him a second to regain his composure. “You fool. She knows the truth! Don’t you get that?”

  “Tell me what the ‘truth’ is and we’ll compare notes.”

  “For God’s sake, Hazor, I need to know where Hakari is. Is he dead, as the Russians claim? Did Asher tell you?”

  Playing a hunch, Micah said, “General, why did you trust her to encrypt the code?”

  Cozeba blurted, “I never trusted her! But she’s brilliant with…” He stopped cold, and gave Micah a knowing look. “Skillful, Captain.”

  So you did task her with encrypting a code. A quantum code that could not be broken? For what? To communicate with your Russian contact?

  Micah slowly exhaled while he watched the general. “Did you invite the Russians to observe the Mount of Olives operation? Is that why they were on the ground outside Bir Bashan? Was Yacob there? Did you give them permission to vaccinate me, or other soldiers?”

  In a deceptively mild voice, Cozeba said, “What makes you think the order didn’t come straight from President Stein?”

  Micah mulled that over that for a few moments. “What do you get out of this, General? They must have promised you the moon.”

  Cozeba lifted a finger in warning and pointed it at Micah. “I advise you to be very careful, Captain.” In the diffuse light, the muscles of his clamped jaw quivered. “As you know, for the greater good, sometimes soldiers have to die.”

  A weightless sensation possessed Micah. He didn’t know how much time passed, just moments, but he felt the emptiness as eons.

  “Understood, sir.”

  CHAPTER 46

  As they walked deeper into Fort Saint Elmo, the LED halo of Sergeant Gallia’s flashlight cast a glow over the limestone floor and walls. Two armed privates covered him from the rear. Micah glanced back at them—two sidearms, two rifles—then returned his gaze to the bobbing flashlight beam.

  The conversation with Cozeba had left him numb.

  He didn’t know how to put all the pieces together yet, but he had a gut instinct for the final conclusion as it regarded the Elect: The antibodies in my blood must be critical to someone.

  “Where are we going, Sergeant?” Micah looked at him. “This isn’t the route back to my previous cell.”

  Gallia’s face remained impassive. His khaki uniform looked as if it had been washed out in a sink and hung up to dry at night—wrinkled, but clean. He hadn’t been getting much rest. Lines of sleeplessness etched the skin around his eyes and mouth. “General Cozeba wants you held as far away from Asher as physically possible.”

  “Why?”

  “The general didn’t explain his orders, sir. Guess he doesn’t want you two to conspire together.”

  Micah gave the man a sidelong look. “Is that the story that’s going around the fort? I conspired with Asher? To do what?”

  “Come on, Captain Hazor. You must have aborted your mission and fled Egypt with her, which means you were working together before Bir Bashan.”

  The suggestion that Micah had aborted the mission and hung his team out to dry left him bordering somewhere between gut-twisting guilt and explosive rage. He fought to control his voice. “Logan was listening to every word we said. How could anyone think I betrayed my team?”

  “Guess there were problems with the new equipment.”

  “I know that. Communications were difficult, they must have seen us on the—”

  “Mobile tracking station malfunctioned. Couldn’t see through the chemical pools caused by the CW. I heard that your team was in a big blind spot on the screens. No one really knows what happened out there.”

  Micah felt his insides shrivel. “The satellite intel will verify that I was not with Asher when she left Bir Bashan.”

  “Then how is it possible—”

  “Until just a few moments ago, I thought it was an accident.”

  “An accident? You just happened to end up traveling with Anna Asher, a notorious spy?”

  “She’s not a spy. She’s a decorated and loyal air force officer.”

  Gallia turned right and entered a pitch-black corridor that dead-ended ten paces ahead. He stopped in front of a heavy wooden door and pulled a set of keys from his pocket. The cast iron jangled as he searched for the right key.

  Micah glanced over his shoulder at the two privates. They both studied him with curious eyes. They’d probably never seen a traitor before.

  Micah spread his legs to wait. While Gallia continued to fumble with the ancient keys, Micah contemplated the “Anna mystery.” Lehman’s story about espionage just didn’t ring true, but there was no doubt that Anna was in way over her head. Cozeba had set her up.

  He told her to encrypt a code. Maybe a code to decipher something, maybe a code to allow him to communicate with his Russian contact.

  Gallia finally got the right key in the lock, and swung the door open. “Your new quarters, Captain.”

  As Micah entered, Gallia panned the flashlight around. The scent of wet stone rose. It had no windows, and the only piece of furniture was a bed in the corner to his left. “Where’s the light source?”

  “Isn’t any. General’s orders.”

  Gallia started to close the door, and Micah calle
d, “Before you go, there’s couple of things I need to know.”

  Gallia defensively squared his shoulders. “Sir?”

  “When they opened the jar, what was in it? Do you know?”

  “What jar?”

  “Okay, what’s happening with the plague? Has it reached America?”

  Gallia seemed to be evaluating Micah’s expression, trying to decide if he was really as ignorant as he appeared. His scowl deepened.

  The two privates to Micah’s right listened so attentively their M-16s rested slackly in their arms. If he just pivoted …

  Gallia said, “Sir, can I ask you a question.”

  “Of course, Sergeant.”

  “I … we … have heard that there was a top secret Chinese biological warfare project. Genetic engineering. Bizarre stuff. There have been several sightings of weird creatures around the world. Did you really see them at Bir Bashan?”

  “Me?”

  Gallia nodded. “On the battlefield. The Silver Guys. When Corporal Gembane saw them he called them—”

  “Angels of Light,” Micah whispered. Somewhere nearby, a rifle safety clicked. It sounded unnaturally loud. “I don’t think they were Chinese creations, Gallia. I think they were Russians.”

  Gallia seemed to be considering that. “What do you mean? General Cozeba said—”

  “I’m sure he did. I’m sure he told the troops a lot of outlandish, illogical things. After all, he’s the one who’s been collaborating with the enemy. He has to make up some story.”

  Gallia’s jaw clenched, and when he opened his mouth, no words came out. As he stared at Micah, worry flickered behind his eyes.

  Almost as an afterthought, Gallia said, “Take off your boots, Captain.”

  Micah looked at his feet. “Why?”

  “Orders.”

  Bending down, Micah grumbled as he untied his boots, removed them, and handed them to Gallia.

  “One last thing, Sergeant.”

  “Sir?”

  “Can you get a message to my family? I just need to know if they’re alive.”

  Gallia’s eyes tightened. “All communications are down, Captain.”

  He walked out of the room.

  Micah listened to the door being locked, while his eyes struggled to adjust to the utter darkness. The moist stone gave the air an earthy fragrance. Water dripped to his right. Enough that there must be a small pool on the floor in the corner.

  “There has to be some light in here,” he whispered and blinked to help his eyes.

  When, after several minutes, no light appeared, not even under the door, Micah wondered where the guards were. Away from the door, that was for certain, because surely they were not standing watch in the dark. Probably, they stood at the intersection of the dead-end corridor and the main corridor.

  Micah extended his hands in front of him, walked three steps back to the wall, then he proceeded to feel his way around until he bumped the bed.

  Sinking down on the wool blanket, he dropped his head in his hands and tried to think.

  Dozens of conversations ran through his brain. If he could just find the critical points of connection, maybe he could identify a pattern. He had to work the problem.

  He stretched out on his back on the bed and stared up at the darkness.

  You’ve been chosen, Micah.

  “The Russians gave me a vaccine that works. Why?”

  Too exhausted to stomach contemplating the sophisticated mathematical elements, phi, pi, psi, he turned to basic addition. At heart, every puzzle always came back to two-plus-two. Two-plus-two always equaled four. At least with his limited mathematics, it did.

  Forget what you don’t know. Distill the noise to fundamental facts. I know …

  He’d dismissed most of Cozeba’s ranting as the necessary fabrications of a man trying to stay out of a military prison. But if two-plus-two did equal four, then Cozeba’s bizarre statements suddenly made sense. “You fool. She knows the truth! Don’t you get that?”

  Micah closed his eyes and let himself drift through the darkness inside his head. His brain had gone fuzzy from hunger and lack of sleep, but if he just slowly meandered through the morass of information, he’d find the path.

  White sparks seemed to be shooting through the darkness as he fought to see something. Anything. From his sensory deprivation experience, he knew that eventually the sparks would become his whole world, and he dreaded it.

  Micah tossed to his left side and stared blindly at the place in the far corner where water dripped. The slow rhythmic sound had a meditative quality. It was like listening to a metronome. The most bizarre element of this whole insanity was the inscription.

  The letters seemed to be mathematical symbols for the shapes that composed a maze of light.

  And all of this, everything, revolved around the number four. Four what? Vertices? The letters of the DNA alphabet, A-T-G-C? The four letters in the name of God? YHWH? If Hakari had created the maze, it could be all of them combined.

  Micah shook his head at the darkness. This could drive a person insane. Maybe that’s what had happened to Hakari?

  Softly, he said, “Anna is a code breaker. Hakari knew it. The inscription must have been written for her alone. He gave her the clues to decipher the Marham-i-Isa, the cure, because he was too paranoid or psychotic to reveal it himself. But she has a partner. An old classmate named Yacob, who also studied with Hakari.”

  Was it possible that her partner had figured out the maze before Anna had?

  Unconsciously, he reached up to rub the place on his wrist where he’d been vaccinated at Bir Bashan.

  The Russians created a vaccine that works.

  But they still wanted Anna.

  Because their vaccine must not be the cure. A partial cure, maybe for a certain strain. Which meant the Russians hadn’t figured out the maze.

  That’s what they want. The maze.

  The cold was working its way into his bones. Micah pulled the blanket up over his shoulders and listened to the water drip.

  “What the hell is it?”

  CHAPTER 47

  OCTOBER 22. 0900 HOURS. MALTA.

  At one time, long ago, the quarantine camp had served as Fort Saint Elmo’s garden. Though it was now filled with the dead and dying, soldiers out here still called it the Garden.

  The monitoring tent to the north of the Garden was twenty-four feet long and twenty feet wide, with tied-down door flaps at either end. Four empty cots lined the western wall across from Maris, and crates of supplies were stacked in the rear. The labels read: syringes, needles, antiseptics, antibiotics, thermometers, gauze bandages. Plus several boxes of MREs, Meals Ready to Eat. Nothing exotic out here. It wasn’t necessary.

  The whole place smelled like fear.

  Maris huddled in a sling-back chair with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, listening to the groan of wind as it moved through the quarantine camp just beyond the canvas walls. Occasionally, she heard the clatter of the priest Father Ponticus as he walked among the dying, and the lilt of his voice promised salvation. The Latin words tasted like the holy wine she remembered from her childhood: bitter and filled with God.

  The thought made her frown. She’d abandoned the Church in college. Now … now she wished she had a Bible to hold. Just to hold. She wasn’t sure she’d open it, but she wanted to be able to clutch it tightly when the time came. Usually military facilities had Bibles. Had they all been used and contaminated, then burned?

  At least she was not alone. Two men occupied the tent with her. The older man, Admiral Latham, was gray-headed and wore a heavy navy blue coat and a muffler around his wrinkled throat. He squatted on his haunches, staring out through the gap in the door flap. When the wind gusted, the tent puffed in and out and revealed the rows of dying soldiers wrapped in blankets inside the fenced enclosure. Beyond them, ships floated in the blue-gray harbor. Latham stared longingly at them. She’d heard the guards say that the admiral had stayed with his ship until they’d b
odily dragged him off the bridge.

  He was the newest addition to the Garden. Though she’d briefly talked with him when the soldiers brought him in at gunpoint, she knew almost nothing about him. She’d tried to engage him in conversation about an hour ago, but he’d turned his back to her and positioned himself in front of the flap like a caged wolf awaiting his chance to bolt for freedom. His chance to get back to his ship.

  The other man had not spoken a word to anyone. He’d been here when Maris arrived. Around forty, she thought he might be a deaf-mute. He wore the black robes of a priest or monk. Curly black hair hung to his shoulders and he had a full beard. His dark eyes resembled burning coals. She wondered if he’d been in a local monastery, and why they’d brought him here.

  “Admiral Latham?” Maris called to the older man. “How are you feeling?”

  They’d both been exposed to the plague, yet neither of them had evinced the first symptoms.

  Latham turned to look at her over his shoulder. Dignity clung to him like a cape. The deep lines that curved down from the corners of his eyes appeared sculpted. Quietly, the admiral replied, “Sick to my stomach, but not from the plague.”

  His gray hair fluttered in a breath of wind that penetrated the flap.

  Maris had been trying to find out where they’d taken Private Madison. She’d searched every face in the camp and had not spotted him, but many of the dying had pulled their blankets over their heads for warmth. She was worried about him. If he’d died, someone would have notified her, wouldn’t they?

  For the first time in her life, Maris had the luxury of thinking about useless things. She didn’t have a laboratory. She couldn’t experiment to find the cure. She had only her brain now. And her brain kept circling around the evolution of the LucentB virus. If she’d lived three thousand years ago, and a plague had suddenly appeared and begun taking people she loved, she’d have worked tirelessly to find the cure. Because the Bible was written from the perspective of the Israelites, it didn’t talk about it, but if you viewed the Mosaic plagues from the perspective of the Egyptians, their physicians, also known as magicians, must have been frantic. All of Egypt would have been looking to them to find a cure … as my own people looked to me and other medical specialists to find the cure for this plague.