Incarnate: Mars Origin I Series Book III
Page 22
Oh shoot.
That wasn’t working.
I eyed the exit sign over the door to the stairs and I took off running. I swung open the door and looked down.
Really, Justin you’re going to run down fourteen flights of steps?
I started running down the stairs, but soon was out of breath and dizzy from rounding the corners to each set of steps. The floor number on the door read “12th Floor.” I had come down two floors. Only two floors. Micah was right, I needed to get in better shape. I peeked out the glass window of the stairwell door.
No one would know me down here.
I swung the door open, and with all the calmness and composure I could muster, I walked to the elevator, pushed the button – once – and waited patiently.
But in my mind I was running and screaming all the way down to the lobby where Mase had better been waiting for me to take me home and hide me.
.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Every time I came home anymore, my house was filled with people.
In my kitchen when we got back from D.C. were Jack, Nikhil, and Greg.
What? Did they just camp out here?
Me and Mase had come in the back door. He had the luggage and I was carrying the satchel with the stuff. I dropped the satchel on the table, and then I dropped in a chair.
Everyone stood around and looked at me. I covered my face in my hands and didn’t say a word.
“What’s going on, Justin?” Greg was the first to speak.
“Nothing.” I spoke through my hands.
“Tell us what happened.”
I spread my fingers and peeked through them at the three of them. “Well . . . I didn’t give Senator Cook the information.” They all pulled out a chair and sat down at the same time.
“Hey, what’s going on? What happened in D.C.?” Micah came down the hallway into the kitchen.
Oh Lord. I’ve got to get a smaller house. Maybe then so many people won’t come over.
“Your mother didn’t give up the info,” Greg said.
“You didn’t give him what he wanted? Why? What changed your mind?” Micah pulled out a chair too. Everyone sat staring at me.
I closed my eyes and buried my face in my hands.
I knew by giving Bruce Cook everything he wanted – all of the Ancient’s knowledge, which he didn’t know included the “cure” for overpopulation – Victoria Russell’s ideology manifested in thousand year old writings – I would be helping to usher in a whole new age of humanity.
Giving him that information now felt to me like I would be giving it to Hitler. Only Senator Cook wouldn’t need to create Death Camps to experiment and find out how it’s done. All the experimentation had been done for him, thousands of years ago, he would just have to put it into action.
And without even knowing that that had been the Ancients’ end game, Senator Cook had come up with the same idea all on his own.
Mase had said it once – man no matter when he lived or where – is always the same. Same wants. Same desires. Man of every time and land wanted to rule the world. To be God. Incarnate.
“Justin, are you listening to us?”
I moved my hands and saw Greg in my face. “What?”
“Are you listening to us?” Greg said again.
“No. I guess I wasn’t.” I looked around the room. “What were you guys saying?”
“Why didn’t you give him the stuff? We thought you’d made up your mind. What happened?”
“If I gave Senator Cook that stuff I have, it would be the formation of the Third – well I guess, Fourth Reich. A race of super human people, manufactured with the knowledge from the information I found.” I pushed myself up out of the chair. “The rest of humanity, those that wouldn’t quite measure up, would be done away with – murder by genocide – again based on the information I found.” I walked over to the fridge while I was talking and grabbed a Pepsi.
“And with me being fat,” I grabbed cookies and a glass out of the cabinet and sat back down, “out of shape and forgetful, I’d be in the first group to go.” I opened up the Pepsi. “Oh I need ice.” I got back up and went over to the freezer.
“It would be all because of what I found,” I continued. I looked over at everyone sitting around my table. “I just couldn’t do it.” I sat back down and poured me a glass of Pepsi.
At least my emotional state was a little better than when I found out my last great revelation - that man was from Mars. This time I didn’t start crying and drive through the streets of Cleveland like a maniac. I was calm.
“I couldn’t give Bruce Cook what I had. None of it.”
“What are you going to do, then?” Mase had come back into the kitchen. All the years we’d been married, he’d put up with my craziness and bouts of depression. And went along with my insane decisions. I knew he was going to be on my side no matter what I decided to do.
If I could decide what to do.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what to do or how not to give him what he wants. He’s a senator. He’s running for president. He’s way too big – important for me to just tell him ‘no.’” I looked at Mase and then Greg. “What am I supposed to do? I’ve got to hide this.” I put my hand on top of my satchel. “All of it.”
“And then you’ll have to hide yourself, too.” Greg said. “Because that man will be coming after you once he finds out you reneged on your deal.”
“Jack and I will take care of the Senator,” Nikhil spoke for the first time. I looked at him and then over at Jack. Jack gave a simple nod and no more.
I didn’t even want to think what that meant.
“Why don’t you just put them back where you got them? Like that old guy did,” Greg said.
“What old guy?” I asked.
“You know. I don’t know if he was old, but the guy in 1949 who put the original AHM Manuscript back in the caves at Qumran. We could go there. Hide them in one of the clay pots they found the Dead Sea Scrolls in. No one had looked there for 2,000 years.”
“Hide them,” I said half to myself, half out loud. I looked around the table, with what I was sure was a glint in my eye, because I had just come up with a masterful plan.
At least I thought it was brilliant.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Paris, France
“I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.”
A quote from Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. It was quite apropos, I thought. And it was what we hoped would be our cover. The psychology of it all.
The blue and gold train glimmered like a five-carat diamond in the mid-afternoon sun. Mase and I stood in the Gare de l’Est in Paris and waited to board. Reminiscent of the antique carriages of the 1920s and 30s, the modern-day bullet nose train was to be our mode of transportation for the clever reincarnation of the classic trek from Paris to Istanbul – the famed Orient Express.
I held my satchel close to me. Strap over shoulder, it resting on my hip. I never let it leave my sight or stray from my side while Mase and I drank in the glimpses of the countryside as we journeyed across Europe and into Istanbul. I let the blur of the landscape of the dramatic and exotic, and the ambience of the stirring realm of style and luxurious comfort, lull me into an easy calm.
Along the route of our week-long excursion, we disembarked many times. Dinner in Budapest, wine tasting in Romania. Overnight accommodations in 5-star hotels. We crossed the Danube, and fell in love with the extraordinary view of the sparkling Sea of Marmara.
In Istanbul we left the comfort, but the not the intrigue. We found our way to the Anatolia region of Turkey and checked into a hotel, all with little trouble thanks to my fluent Turkish.
I signed onto the Internet our first night there and found that Senator Bruce Cook was being investigated for public corruption and campaign finance fraud. Looked like his bid for
the presidency was over.
The next morning, Mase and I left to find Göbekli Tepe. A temple believed to be more than ten thousand years old. A place I believed to be where the Garden of Eden had resided, and where the Ancients from Mars had once lived. It was the perfect place to do what we needed to do.
Back to my archeological roots. That made me smile. Mase understood how I felt about history. How I loved it. He’d gone with me on many digs.
Perfect place. Perfect company.
And Nikhil, in our shadows, was never too far behind.
ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ
Giza Plateau, Egypt
“I’m kind of jealous of Mommy and Dad on that trip across Europe. It must be so romantic.”
“Logan, don’t be such a wuss,” Micah said. “It’s not romantic. They are an old married couple. Plus, they are on a mission.”
“I know. Still, it’s the Orient Express.”
“Logan,” Greg said. “You’re supposed to be the lead on this. You want to act like an archaeologist?”
“I’m on it, Uncle Greg.”
“You checked out everything?”
“Yes. Mommy’s friend who’s working on the site with Aaron Coulter will meet us by the Sphinx. She said she knew where he was digging. She also said we were in luck, they were just getting ready to close up that hole he’d dug looking for that supernatural library.”
“Your mother said we could trust this woman?”
“Mom said she didn’t know who to trust anymore, oh, except . . . Let me see . . . She used some quote from the book Murder on the Orient Express. I memorized it. Oh yeah, I remember, “I believe, Messieurs, in loyalty---to one’s friends and one’s family and one’s caste.”
“Meaning she only trusts us,” Micah said.
“Okay, so let’s make sure we live up to the faith she has in us. Now, just to be sure we’re on the same page. Here’s the plan,” Greg said. “We meet this woman – your mother’s colleague – at the Sphinx, we put all of Justin’s research, as she likes to call it, the AHM Manuscript, her translations of the Voynich and the Maya Codex, underneath where that guy-”
“Aaron Coulter.”
“Whatever. Where he found the tunnel with nothing in it. No one will ever look there again. We’ll make sure of that. I guess Nikhil’s got a plan to ruin him. Meanwhile if this Aaron guy was on to Justin, thinking she has something he wants, he’s on a wild goose chase following her over Europe. And Nikhil’s watching her.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Micah said. “And what about Jack?”
“We won’t ever see Jack. He watching our backs. He’s got us covered. In the shadows. But no one should know we’re here. If anyone wants what your mother has, they’d be watching your mother, not us.” Greg looked at Logan and Micah. “Ready?”
“Yep,” they said almost in unison.
“Okay. Let’s bury some history.”
Thank you for taking time to read Incarnate. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends about it. Please take the time to click on the link and post a short review.
http://amzn.to/1y2Soy0
Abby Vandiver’s Other Books
In the Beginning Mars Origin “I” Series Book I
http://amzn.to/1cwDnd2
Irrefutable Proof Mars Origin “I” Series Book II
http://amzn.to/1bwWjFt
At the End of the Line
http://amzn.to/1fg7DYy
Mysticism and Myths
http://amzn.to/1tcCUCn