“Sorry, it’s been a long day,” Celeste apologized. She hauled Jess back.
It had taken three hours to get from the airport into Rome, normally less than an hour’s trip. Chaos erupted after the news reports, and they waited in the taxi line for two hours. They tried calling and texting Ben on the way, leaving messages for him. Sometimes a call managed to go through on the mobile network, but so far, no return messages. Not since Jess had talked to her father in the airport.
Jess’s phone buzzed. Her heart skipped a beat, hoping it was her father, but it wasn’t. Still, she smiled. Giovanni texted her: You still here? Saw the story on the news. She texted back: Yes, in Rome now.
“Do you have a room available for the evening?” Celeste asked.
The mustache quivered again as the little man winced. “Very sorry, but we are fully booked.”
“Is there somewhere nearby you could recommend”—Celeste inspected the brass nameplate pinned to his suit—“Vittorio?”
Vittorio’s lips mashed together as if he tasted something sour. He pulled a sheet of paper out from behind the counter. “These hotels are close, but I’m afraid they are all”—he paused to add weight to the word—“full, penso.” He nodded in the direction of the doors. People filled the streets outside. “Many people are coming.”
“My friend Angela lives a few blocks away,” Jess said to her mother. At least she had made one friend in her months here. Grunting, she exhaled to let her frustration out. “Did Dad go to the airport?” she muttered under her breath, glancing at her phone’s screen. Almost one o’clock. Maybe her father left to make the 3 p.m. flight?
“He’ll see we aren’t there.” Celeste leaned on the reception desk and turned to face Jess. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”
“Can I get the wifi code?” Jess asked Vittorio, flashing him her best smile. She needed to check her email.
“Yes.” Vittorio’s mustache quivered in a forced smile. He produced a slip of paper with the wifi code. “But it’s very slow.”
Jess took the paper. “Thank you.” She opened her phone and texted a message to her friend Angela: I’m back in Rome - can I stay at your place? No way they were getting out of Rome again, not today. They might need a place for the night. If the text didn’t work, she could try webmail to reach Angela, and see if her dad had emailed her, too.
“Scusi, did you say, Doctor Rollins?” asked a uniformed attendant behind Celeste. “You are looking for him?”
Celeste turned to him. “Yes, Dr. Rollins.”
“I saw him, this morning. He left about ten o’clock, three hours ago.”
“Are you sure?”
The attendant stepped back to open the door for two guests arriving from outside. “Sì,” he said as the guests passed inside. “Dr. Rollins, the famous TV persona. Very nice man. He left this morning, with his friend, the one with the occhiali…the eye glasses.”
“He must mean Roger,” Celeste said to Jess. “His research assistant. Did you meet him?”
Jess nodded. She’d done more than meet him. “But why would he just leave without telling us?” She opened her laptop on the reception counter.
“Maybe he had no choice.” The attendant took a step toward them and lowered his voice. “Dr. Rollins was, how do you say…escorted from the building by two large men. They left in black limousines, molti, all together.”
“Why would you say he had no choice?” Celeste asked in a hushed voice.
The attendant looked left and right. “Non lo so. I just work.”
“Thank you,” Celeste whispered to the attendant. “Thank you, very much.”
“Prego.” The attendant smiled and stepped back to open the door for other guests.
“What, was he kidnapped?” Jess asked her mother.
Celeste looked as mystified as Jess felt. “I don’t know.”
The web took forever to load on Jess’s laptop. Finally, her browser popped to life. Cosmic Hoax? read the top story on her MSN homepage. She scanned the list of articles headlining everything from apocalyptic disaster to conspiracy theories. One image popped out, of riot police lined up behind the flaming burnt out shell of a car: Riots sparked in Los Angeles blamed on cover-up…
“My God.” Celeste held one hand to her mouth.
Jess glanced out the front doors of the hotel, at the crowds in the street outside. Her cell phone pinged. A message from Angela: Sure, come over, but I leave in half an hour. Hurry.
Jess checked her webmail. No messages. Her phone buzzed again. A text from Giovanni again: Are you okay? Where are you staying?
Smiling, Jess texted him back that they were fine, and included Angela’s address—just in case her father managed to get in touch with Giovanni. He knew they’d stayed at the castle.
“Come on, let’s go.” She flipped her laptop closed, stuffed it into her backpack and put it on. “Angela’s home, it’s a ten minute walk. Let’s get somewhere safe.”
“Great.” Celeste grabbed the handle of her rolling carry-on and followed Jess to the entrance. The attendant opened the doors ahead of them, smiling and bowing. “Thank you again,” said Celeste.
An assault of sirens and shouting greeted them outside, cars honking and people yelling. A crush of people walked the street, swamping cars that crept along between them. A policeman on a horse clip-clopped past. A dozen more police wearing white helmets and day-glow yellow vests amassed on the next corner. The Grand Hotel was on a side street next to the Tiber River in the heart of Rome, just a block from the Via dell Conciliazione, the wide boulevard that cut from the Castel Sant’Angelo all the way to St. Peter’s Square at the basilica in the middle of the Vatican.
Celeste stopped and stared at the crowd, then up at dark clouds threatening rain overhead.
“Come on.” Jess grabbed her hand. “We need to hurry. We’ll cross the bridge over the Tiber. Angela’s place is next to Piazza Navona. We need to hurry.”
Jess followed the flow of the crowd, past the knot of nervous-looking police on the corner, onto the Via dell Conciliazione. Looking right, the dome of St. Peter’s loomed over the masses. “Hold on a sec,” she said to Celeste.
Next to the UniCredit Banca on the corner was a concrete pylon lamppost, and Jess pushed through the crowd, grabbed onto the ledge of the pylon and hoisted herself up. She looked down the boulevard. A sea of people flooded all the way along it, fed by tributaries of smaller alleyways, all ending in a jammed crowd of tens of thousands inside St. Peter’s Square. Maybe even hundreds of thousands. She jumped down.
“The Pope announced a speech tomorrow,” said an ancient woman sitting on a bench next to the lamppost. She wore a brown suit jacket with matching skirt and a wide-brimmed hat. A strand of fat pearls sat around her neck. “The Day of the Lord arrives, Judgment Day, that’s what they’re saying.”
“Is that right?”
The old lady worked her arthritic fingers together, purple veins showing through her papery skin. “Oh, no, this is all a game,” she laughed. “War of the Worlds all over again, when Orson fooled us. He’s at it again, the clever deceiver.”
Someone crashed into Jess, almost knocking her over.
“Are you okay?” Celeste grabbed Jess’s arm from behind her.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Jess regained her balance and looked back, but the old lady was gone. Disappeared. What was that about? She shook it off.
“Come on, this way.” Jess grabbed Celeste’s hand and pulled her against the flow of the crowd, back toward the center of Rome across the bridge, under Italian pine trees forming an archway of umbrellas against the dark skies.
On the other side of the Tiber River, the crowds thinned, and Jess led her mother through a maze of alleyways. She stopped halfway down an empty cobbled street, at a huge door, ten feet high in weathered wood. Jess inspected a row of brass buttons and pressed one. “This is it.”
The door buzzed a second later, and Jess pushed against it, heaving it open. Celeste followed. Inside stretch
ed a white marble hallway, dusty, half-illuminated by a flickering fluorescent tube twenty feet above. It ended in a set of stairs next to the tiny black metal cage of the elevator, a discarded baby stroller lying beside it. “Up the stairs, third floor,” Jess said. “Don’t bother with the elevator, the thing’s a death trap.”
They tramped up, the noise of their footfalls echoing off the walls. It felt abandoned, empty, a strange transition from the bursting crowds just blocks away. Two entrances led off each landing, the doors studded sheets of metal with three or four locks each. “An old building,” Jess said. “They like to be safe.”
On the third landing was an open door. Jess went straight in. “Angela, sorry about what happened with Ricardo,” she said right away.
A thirty-something woman in shorts and tank top, with long blond dreadlocks, was stuffing a pile of clothes into a suitcase on a dining table. “Don’t worry, he’s an asshole.” A news channel played silently on a TV in the corner.
“Mom, this is Angela, Ricardo’s sister,” Jess said as Celeste rounded the corner into the apartment.
Celeste took a sharp intake of breath and crinkled her nose. “Ah, I see. Um, pleased to meet you.”
“Don’t worry,” Angela reassured her, “like I said, Ricky’s an ass.” She closed her suitcase and faced Jess. “So you want the keys? I’m going south to my family’s place. Rome is going pazzo. Crazy.” She looked at Celeste. “Maybe you should come? Into the countryside?”
Jess threw her backpack onto the couch. “Think Ricardo would like that?”
“Screw him. He’d handle it.” Angela hoisted her suitcase off the table onto the floor. “You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I need to wait for my dad. He’s in Rome somewhere.”
Angela tossed Jess the keys. “Okay. You can have the place while I’m gone. But you’ll be waiting a long time for your dad.”
Jess caught the keys and narrowed her eyes, frowning. “What? Why?”
Angela strode toward the door and Celeste stood aside. “Because he’s in Germany.”
“Germany? What do you mean? Did he call you?” Jess didn’t know her father even knew Ricardo, never mind his sister, but then her father was resourceful.
Stopping at the door, Angela shook her head and pointed behind Jess. “No, he didn’t call me, but maybe you should call him.”
Jess turned to see what Angela pointed at, and found herself staring at her father’s face. On the TV. Below his face, in block red letters: Dr. Ben Rollins, European Space Operations, Darmstadt. Germany.
13
DARMSTADT, GERMANY
BEN HATED HELICOPTERS. Coming in low and fast, they skimmed the treetops, the town of Darmstadt just visible in the distance. Darmstadt was famous for two things: the heavy element #110, Darmstadium, was named after it, and in 1912 chemists at Merck first synthesized the drug Ecstasy here. Actually, it was famous for three things, Ben thought as the pilot banked sharp right at almost ninety degrees, giving him a view straight down onto the glittering solar-paneled roof of ESOC—Darmstadt was also home to the European Space Operations Command.
The undulating carpet of green forest gave way to a compound of buildings bordered by a train yard on one side, and an intersection of the autobahn highways on the other. A huge white radar dish towered above the trees; a giant mushroom nestled above other smaller dishes and antennae. Snow-capped mountains shimmered on the horizon.
His lunch almost came back up as the helicopter executed another swinging turn to bring it to a stop, hovering in mid-air. Ben burped. Herded into a cavalcade of black limos outside the Grand Hotel in Rome, they had sped off to a small airstrip where they’d been whisked to Frankfurt airport on a ten-seater Learjet—the last few hours were a blur. This helicopter was the final leg of their sprint to Darmstadt, and Ben still had no idea why.
“You okay?” Roger asked as the helicopter sank below the tree line. “You don’t look so good.”
The landing skids settled onto the ground, shaking them, as the whine of the engine and rotors came down a notch. “I am now,” Ben groaned.
Out the window he saw Dr. Müller waving at him with one hand while shielding his eyes from the rotor blast of leaves and dust with the other. He ran toward the helicopter, two guards in black fatigues trailing him. The copilot turned around to open Ben’s door, the engine still whining, the rotors still spinning.
“Ben,” Dr. Müller yelled over the noise, “glad you could make it.” He extended his hand to shake.
Unstrapping his harness, Ben shouted back, “You didn’t give me much choice.” Ignoring Müller’s offered hand, he jumped down onto the grass. Roger stepped out behind him, turning to collect their bags.
“Sorry for rushing you in like this, but we need your help,” Dr. Müller explained, leading Ben away from the helicopter, pointing toward a set of blue glass doors in the side of the ESOC building.
The whine of the engines ratcheted back up several decibels. “With what?” Ben asked, leaning into Müller’s ear.
Behind them the helicopter roared, and Ben glanced back to see it leap into the sky, kicking up a new cloud of dust and dirt. Loaded down with their bags, Roger followed. One of the guards in black ballistic vests opened the door ahead of them, and Müller let Ben enter first.
“With media,” Dr. Müller said as they walked inside. “While you’ve been traveling, a lot has happened. This idiot Dr. Menzinger of the Swiss Institute has been on all the news networks ranting about Armageddon. Chaos erupted in some cities.” He held out a hand and stopped Ben. “You’re as close to a celebrity astronomer as we have.”
Five years ago, Ben did a series of hugely popular PBS specials that were syndicated internationally. Off to one side of the entranceway, beside a set of escalators fronted by security guards and x-ray scanners, Ben saw a mob of cameras and microphones. “I’m not going to lie to them,” he replied in a hushed voice.
“Not lie, of course not.” Müller held him in place and leaned close. “But we don’t know what’s happening, do we? Just tell them that.”
Ben grabbed Müller’s arm and pulled him close. “But we might have known. Does this have anything to do with that research paper?” He didn’t need to say which one.
Müller stared at Ben, his face blank. “We don’t even know if that had anything to do with this. But it is one of the reasons I got you in early.”
Ben looked at the reporters and cameramen. By the way they pointed and swiveled their cameras around, some of them already recognized him. “I’d prefer to stay off the record, if that’s all right.”
Müller looked Ben in the eye. “There are riots in LA and Sao Paulo. Don’t lie, just tell a calmer version of the truth.”
Roger dropped their bags onto the polished marble floor behind Müller and Ben. “Where to, boss?”
Ben looked at his watch. Jessica and Celeste should be landing at JFK in under two hours. Back in Rome, the security guards chaperoning Ben and Roger had taken away their laptops and cell phones, said that they’d get them back on the other end. “I want my cell phone back, and outside network access for emails. And Roger and I need a flight to JFK, tomorrow night at the latest. I need to get to my family.”
“Done.” Dr. Müller nodded. “Just talk to the media, and I’ll have your cell phones returned and get you set up on the ESOC network. And I’ll book you on flights to the US tomorrow, on the condition that we finish looking at all of your data before you leave.”
Ben looked back at Roger, who shrugged. Ben didn’t want to get involved like this, but then he needed to get to Celeste and Jessica. “Okay, but I’m not lying to anyone. I’m going to tell the truth.”
“Good.” Dr. Müller removed his hand from Ben. “A calming truth, yes?” Without waiting for a reply, he turned to the media. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to introduce Dr. Ben Rollins, a key part of our team and head of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.”
Ben gritted his teeth. He wasn’t he
ad of the Center for Astrophysics, just the exoplanet department, but he let it slide and followed Dr. Müller toward the pack of media.
“Dr. Rollins,” asked a woman at the front row, holding a microphone out. Her cameraman swung around to focus on Ben. “Is it true that a planet-swallowing black hole is heading for Earth?”
“We don’t know what…” Ben started but then caught Dr. Müller frowning at him from the corner of his eye. Ben coughed. “Excuse me. No, we don’t know that; in fact, so far we know very little…”
“That was a good show, Bernie.” Roger smiled and nudged Ben in the ribs with his elbow. “You still got it, old man.”
“Thanks.” Ben rolled his eyes. They still didn’t have their cell phones or laptops back. Security protocols, Müller had apologized, but they’d have them soon. Ben wasn’t so sure.
Ben and Roger crowded onto a platform at the back of a voluminous room with six large screens hanging across the twenty-foot-high wall at the opposite end. Three semi-circular rows of workstations lined the lower level of the room, each piled with flat-screen displays and keyboards and telephones amid a tangle of wiring. The spaceflight operations command center smelled of coffee and sweat and crackled with hushed tension.
“We’re on,” said a woman in the front row of workstations. The wall-screens blinked to life.
A hundred and fifty million kilometers away at LG2, the Gaia space observatory re-aligned itself from staring into the Orion Nebula to focus its instruments on their best guess of Nomad’s position.
“Yes, you did a good job, Ben,” Dr. Müller agreed, standing shoulder-to-shoulder beside them in the packed room.
Ben exhaled slowly as they all waited for the images to come on-line. “Maybe too good.”
How easy it was to slip into technical double-speak. No, we’re not sure what’s happening. Yes, of course we would say if we knew. There was truth in Ben’s denials, however. Some of the data coming in gave Nomad’s size a hundred times smaller than other estimates, so either Nomad was a hundred times the mass of the sun, or about the same size, or traveling at thousands of kilometers a second, or just hundreds. The Gaia observatory should resolve the issue.
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