"Don't," came a voice from behind them on the other side of the structure's interior. A very familiar voice.
In a blur, the gun was knocked out of the girl's hand before she could pull the trigger, and then Payton stood between the teens and Morgan and Fletcher.
He was bruised and had blood stains across his bald head, and he wore the casual clothes of a tourist. Otherwise he looked just as Fletcher remembered him.
He drew his sword in a split second and waved it in the direction of the teenagers. "Drop the stash, and leave Jerusalem. Don't come back," he warned.
Stunned, they let the bag fall to the ground and ran, their footsteps echoing for several minutes.
"You're all right, then?" Morgan tentatively asked, approaching him with Fletcher trailing behind. She maintained a healthy distance from her former lover.
"Never mind that," Payton answered dispassionately. He looked Morgan in the eye, and Fletcher saw a familiar loathing in that gaze. "I found something. You better have a look."
"Later," Morgan replied, resolute. "The city is in ruins and people are dying. Whatever you've found, it can wait."
"No," he replied bitterly. "It cannot." He turned and marched to a spot some twenty feet away. They followed him across barriers meant to seal off the Foundation Stone, now fractured and broken on the ground. Payton stepped onto the Stone itself and continued walking.
"You shouldn't be up there!" Morgan cried, her knowledge of the Foundation Stone's historical and religious significance weighing heavily upon Payton's every footstep. If anyone caught him walking over this thing ...
"Wait there," he said, and he dropped inside a tiny hole on the far side of the Stone.
Despite her misgivings, Morgan and Fletcher climbed up onto the giant white rock and looked down into the hole Payton had disappeared into.
Minutes passed, and they heard echoes of movement emanating from the darkness. But they could see nothing.
"What's down there?" Fletcher whispered.
"A small cave known as the Well of Souls," Morgan replied. "Though I should think much of it collapsed when the city fell. It's connected to the catacombs I mentioned, and some believe that the voices of the dead can be heard within the Well."
Fletcher shivered in the dark candlelight of the building's interior and shifted his weight away from the hole. "Thank you for choosing to share that right now."
"If you liked that, then how about this?" she said. "According to Jewish tradition, the creation of the world originated with this particular rock. Which, if true, would make the Foundation Stone the oldest existing object there is. Sound familiar?"
Fletcher's beady eyes nearly jumped out of his head. "The Dominion Stone! You said it was the oldest object on earth. Do you think the Dominion Stone came from here?"
"I haven't the slightest," Morgan admitted. "But it's an enticing notion, is it not?"
At last the sounds drew closer again, and they leaned over the edge of the small, round hole once more.
It wasn't Payton that came up through the hole. Instead a large, flat piece of metal was flung upward from it, and Morgan and Fletcher recoiled instinctively. It landed next to them atop the white stone, approximately three feet across and two feet tall.
There were words inscribed upon it. Morgan and Fletcher were examining it in disbelief as Payton climbed out of the hole.
"See anything you recognize?" he asked.
Etched into the broken piece of stainless steel was a very familiar lettering that bore the words:
SUBSTATION TAU EPSILON
"Found it this afternoon, about an hour before the quake hit," Payton explained a short time later. Amiel had insisted that Grant take a break after more than twelve solid hours of work, and Morgan brought him here, inside the Dome, to rest. Amiel's people had sealed off the building and placed it under guard to avoid any further looting or desecration of the site. But he'd given Grant and his team access as a courtesy.
Payton detailed his story for Grant, Alex, and Julie exactly as Morgan and Fletcher had heard it earlier.
They sat on the ground near the Foundation Stone, the tarnished piece of metal on the ground between them.
"So what were you doing in Jerusalem?" Julie asked. "Morgan said you were investigating some front company for the Secretum in Paris."
"That investigation led me here. In the file I found in Paris, I came across a list of longitude and latitude coordinates. One of the coordinates was the exact spot where Morgan and I found the first fragment of the Dominion Stone all those years ago. I realized the list contained coordinates for finding all of the pieces to the Stone. An intriguing find, but no longer useful, as all of the fragments have already been found.
"Elsewhere in the file, I found another set of coordinates scribbled in pencil at the bottom of a work order. These coordinates were accompanied by a depth relative to sea level. We're standing about five hundred feet above that depth. I found the wreckage of this `Substation Tau Epsilon' down there and had fished out this piece of a door as evidence, but when I neared the surface with it, I heard voices echoing through the catacomb tunnels-some kind of religious types on a tour, I believe. So I hid the metal and made my way to the surface when their backs were turned, planning to return after dark and retrieve it. I never got that chance, for obvious reasons. After the city fell, I awoke and set about finding my way underground again. I'm as surprised as you are that my way back led here, of all places."
Grant and the others stared in silence at the metal sheet with the words inscribed across it, absorbing the implications.
Alex, who sat next to Julie, leaned over and whispered, "Are his adventures always so ... death-defying?"
Julie didn't turn. "There's usually more violence."
Morgan finally spoke up, her impatience getting the best of her. "Do I need to say it out loud? Do we all grasp what this means?" she asked, gesturing at the steel plate.
"It means the substation beneath the Wagner Building was not the only one. There must be others," Grant replied. "Which, more importantly, means that-"
Morgan could hold it in no longer. "The Secretum's resources are larger than we ever conceived of."
"But this substation was abandoned, wasn't it?" Julie asked. "Payton said it was `wreckage.' Don't you think that's an important detail?"
"Perhaps," Morgan replied.
Grant sighed. "You all can ponder this all you like," he said, standing to his feet, "but I've had my obligatory twenty minutes of downtime and I have to get back outside."
Once he began moving, Alex was hot on his heels. Soon everyone else followed, including Payton. But Morgan and Fletcher stayed behind, examining the steel door fragment once more.
"Is he not taking this seriously enough?" Fletcher asked when they were alone.
"No, he gets it," Morgan replied. "No one understands the stakes better than Grant."
It was almost thirty-six hours before Ethan finally set foot inside the disaster zone. It required all of the FBI's resources to get him across the ocean quickly, but Israel's airports were closed down, so he had to fly into Cairo and take a car from there.
In the car, Ethan listened to the radio as the Israeli president issued a statement declaring a state of emergency. The borders were locked down, IDF was on high alert and ready to scramble at a moment's notice, and though he didn't word it as such, he had effectively placed the entire country under martial law.
He cited concern that Israel's enemies might try to take advantage of his nation's vulnerable state right now as reason for the tightened security.
Old fool ... Ethan thought bitterly. You're playing right into your enemies' hands. Let's just hope it's a long while before they realize that.
Not that he could blame the president. There really was no other responsible course of action for him to take, both professionally and politically.
Two hours after hearing that decree over the radio, Ethan used his FBI credentials to get through the locked-down borders.
Stevens had phoned ahead to their diplomatic consulate to assure that he would have a smooth entry.
Ethan tried to use his drive to Jerusalem to prepare himself for his mission but all that vanished when he brought his car to a stop at the edge of a road that simply dropped off at the outer edge of the crater. His heart raced at the sight of the city midday. A surprising amount of it still stood-more than the TV reports were leading everyone to believe. He'd seen countless shots of the area from the sky, which were largely obscured by the dissipating smoke and dust that persisted throughout the entire region. But those sky-cam views were worlds apart from the view here on the ground.
He retrieved a backpack from the trunk of the car, and from inside the bag a pair of binoculars. He scanned the city's interior, especially the areas where there was a high concentration of activity. Grant Borrows proved an easy man to spot; his eyes merely followed the walls that were rising into the sky on their own and then hurling themselves off to some spot Ethan couldn't see miles away in the distance.
The IDF was doing its best to create and maintain a perimeter around the crater to keep others out of danger. Ethan spotted several groups of onlookers behind the perimeter holding up signs of adoration for Guardian and cheering whenever they caught a glimpse of him.
But despite the attempted perimeter, anyone who really wanted to get inside could. Ethan just slipped down inside the crater and began his trek on foot toward Guardian's location.
By late afternoon on the third day, Grant, Alex, and many of the others were sifting through the streets of the Old City. They led a procession of emergency workers, searching for any last survivors that might be located in this most ancient part of town.
Over two hundred thousand bodies had been uncovered across Jerusalem, with twice that many found alive. That left anywhere between two and four hundred thousand more unaccounted for.
Grant's face was drained, lifeless. He'd seen too much death over the last forty-eight hours, held too many hurting victims, washed his hands too many times from all the dirt and soot and blood. He had no passion for going on; he merely willed himself to keep moving, keep searching, even though the number of survivors they were finding dwindled sharply.
King David Street was a total loss. Formerly it had served as a bazaar-a crush of stands for authentic local knickknacks and walk-in stores where tacky souvenirs could be purchased. The timeworn cobblestone paths were lamented by locals for being overrun with signs, rugs, and even stringed instruments hanging at eye level, all to loosen the purses of foreign travelers.
But now the buildings on either side of the street had fallen in and taken out most of the street with them.
Some of the emergency workers were talking quietly amongst themselves in the rear of the line when Alex suddenly stopped walking and turned to them.
"Quiet!" she called out. "Listen!"
Silence fell across the old street, and Grant's eyes lit up when he heard it: the unmistakable cry of an infant.
"Where?" Grant asked, turning to Alex.
Her eyes were closed, and she was concentrating hard on the location. Grant had learned something new about her abilities from this experience: children were often easier for her to locate than adults, because their emotions came from a purer place within. Whereas adults had a tendency to try and stifle their true feelings and put on a front of some kind, there was less clutter to get through with children.
Babies, paradoxically, were often the hardest of all to get a bead on, because they relied so heavily on instinct that their emotions were often too primal for Alex to easily grasp.
"In there!" she pointed toward one of the indoor souvenir shops, which was really the bottom floor of a much larger structure-all of which had collapsed in. Alex grabbed Grant by the arm. "I think it's hurt," she whispered. "It's bad."
As he had done so often during the cleanup efforts in Jerusalem, Grant forced himself to go slowly, lifting the fallen structure piece by piece to avoid jostling any victims with the wreckage, making their injuries worse.
Hector! he thought desperately, willing the healer to get here as fast as possible. Through his mind's eye, Grant couldn't tell where Hector was exactly from his surroundings. One pile of rubble tended to look like every other. But chances were, he wasn't anywhere nearby.
Minutes passed, and the baby's cry began to weaken. "Come on, come on!" he shouted, watching the recovery workers sift through the debris, looking for the source of the sound. His imagination worked overtime, thinking of the helpless infant crying out for the basic needs of safety, food, and love. He began to shake nervously.
He hefted several heavy wooden beams and tossed them high and away into the pile outside the city.
"Here!" one of the strong-armed men called out. "It's here!"
Alex ran inside and saw the edge of an overturned stroller beneath a soda machine that had fallen over.
"Move this thing!" Alex shouted.
Grant flung the machine into the air with a thought, while racing inside. The baby's cries were barely audible now.
Alex already had reached into the stroller, which was lying on its side, and unbuckled the infant from its seat. A young olive-skinned woman lay dead beside it, her cold hand still clutching the handle of the stroller. Alex cradled the child-a boy-in her arms, stark horror spreading over her face. Grant could practically feel it emanating off her as he approached.
Grant watched as the infant coughed one last time in her arms, and a tiny spurt of blood flew out of the baby boy's mouth, splashing across Grant's face. Water spilled down his cheeks as his eyes moved from the baby's empty face down to a piece of floor tile that was stuck into the side of its abdomen. Its tiny hand wrapped around Alex's forefinger and squeezed it, but then suddenly it turned limp and let go.
For the first time since they'd met, Grant saw Alex break down and cry.
It was too much. So much pain and death and grief. Blood ran from the wound in the baby's side and fell in tiny droplets to the ground, where it seemed to vanish among the brown earth and stone.
Rage seared through Grant's veins, and he ran back outside and into the street. With every muscle in his body clenched, he raised his hands toward the heavens and screamed. The bone-chilling sound could be heard, carried by the wind, for miles around. He reached out with his mind, needing something, anything, right now, that wouldn't hurt anyone....
The ground shook with his anger, and suddenly what remained of the mighty walls that surrounded the Old City surged upward into the sky. Higher and higher they went, until they abruptly exploded into white powder at the exact moment Grant fell to his knees. Specks of old Jerusalem Stone gently rained down on them all like light hail.
Spent, Grant hung his head, sobbing.
He looked up to see that Alex had collapsed similarly inside the broken building, but still she held the dead infant in her hands. She cradled him with great tenderness.
Something about this child had brought out a side of Alex that Grant had never seen before. It was as if something had been awakened within her, something profound and terrible.
He approached and tentatively took the baby from her arms. He handed him off to a rescue worker and then sank to his knees in front of Alex.
She instinctively reached out and wrapped her arms around him, crying uncontrollably into his shoulders. She held him tight for a long time.
Daniel wandered alone through the governmental district, finding few souls he could help. But he was not alone out of self-pity.
Walking through the ancient city had aroused in him a profound sense of reverence. History saturated every single thing he laid his eyes upon; holy sites for three major religions were all around.
Mosques for the Muslims. Churches for the Christians. The Temple Mount for the Jews. He had never been exposed to any place like this that held so much prominent human history.
The Tower of David. The Shrine of the Book. The Mount of Olives. The Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
>
So much history, and most of it was still standing, though quite a bit worse for wear. Daniel stopped near the Shrine of the Book. Built to house the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was a one-of-a-kind edifice which at its peak had a lovely white dome that unexpectedly curved up and in at the top to meet at a round hole well above the dome's main structure. Now crumbling pieces of Jerusalem Stone broke off and shattered from the wall and the dome that had once been surrounded by a pool of water on all sides. But the earthquake had done away with that. An enormous wall of black basalt was built opposite the dome to offset and enhance its dramatic appearance.
Daniel remembered reading once how the shape of the dome had been built to resemble the lids of the jars inside which some of the Dead Sea Scrolls had been found.
Just outside the Shrine, a courtyard made entirely of white Jerusalem Stone blocks was dug into the earth, providing a few shaded places to sit while waiting to enter the building.
Daniel was about to make his way down to the courtyard and go inside to check the safety of the Scrolls-arguably the greatest archaeological find of the last century, and thus his responsibility as a scientist-when an elderly woman, sporting a traditional Jewish tallit that covered most of her head, appeared in the courtyard and ran into the Shrine's entrance. She was crying loud enough that he could hear her from where he stood at street level above.
It was mere moments before two large men exited the Shrine, dragging the old woman along behind them. They tossed her roughly onto the ground in the center of the courtyard, spat on the ground near her, and returned inside.
Daniel's mind immediately began formulating possibilities. Were the men Orthodox Jews who had taken it upon themselves to guard the Dead Sea Scrolls? Were they Palestinians, attempting to claim the site or its contents? Or were they merely common criminals, nosing around in places they didn't belong?
He would probably never know. His mind returned to the present as the sound of weeping reached his ears. The woman on the white ground below remained on her hands and knees, sobbing loudly and not caring who heard her.
Fearless (Dominion Trilogy #2) Page 14
