"I'm not going to sit here and take the blame for that anti-bomb going off in Anaheim," Eddie retorted.
"You can take the blame wherever you like," said the man. "The hotel has room service, in case you'd like to enjoy the blame in your suite."
"What do you want from me?" Eddie demanded.
"Eddie," the man said pityingly, "I don't want anything from you. Focus on what I've given you: a riveting story about the end of the world. I even put the Finch Group on your trail, so you'd have an in when it came time to publish it. What are you waiting for? I thought you wanted to be a writer, not some kind of second-rate muckraker. No, worse than that: a plagiarist. A common thief. I had higher hopes for you, Eddie."
"Hey, Eddie," said a woman's voice from behind them. It was Cody. "Making friends at the bar, I see. Who's the..." She trailed off as they turned to face her. Her face went pale.
"No..." she whispered. "It can't be. You're...dead."
"You know this guy?" Eddie asked. "He's a bit of a pain in the ass. He's been going on about how I'm supposed to publish this book that I..."
"Hi, sweetheart," said the old man warmly. "It's really good to see you."
When Cody spoke again, it was a barely audible whisper, consisting of a single word.
"Dad?"
TWENTY-NINE
Jacob awoke to find himself strapped into a plush leather chair, the hum of jet engines filling his ears. To his right was a small oval window that showed only an endless expanse of blue. The small table in front of him bore coasters featuring the logo of the Finch Corporation.
He could only assume that something truly horrible was happening to him. He had never seen a movie in which a government scientist regains consciousness on a private jet miles above the ocean because his friends had noticed he was getting a little burned out and thought he could use a surprise jaunt to Bermuda. His suspicion that nefarious agents were at work in his present situation was bolstered by the fact that the last thing he could remember was being in a mysterious tunnel hundreds of feet underground.
He sighed and stared out the window. A fluffy wisp of cloud drifted past. This is nice, he thought. Nice plane ride. Nice plane.
"Can I get you something to drink?" asked a uniformed flight attendant who had approached his seat.
"Sure," said Jacob. "Diet Coke?"
"Pepsi OK?"
"It'll do."
The flight attendant smiled and walked away.
Jacob stared out the window some more. My head hurts, he thought. Should have asked for some aspirin.
After a moment, the flight attendant returned with his Pepsi.
"Thanks," said Jacob, taking the drink. "Also, I'm sorry; could I get some aspirin?"
"Tylenol OK?"
"It'll do."
The flight attendant smiled. "Would you like to know where you are?"
"Airplane, right?" said Jacob.
"Yep," she replied.
"Good enough," said Jacob.
The flight attendant smiled and walked away.
Jacob looked out the window again. He didn't see any reason to rush things. Clearly he had been kidnapped and taken aboard an evil tycoon's private jet to be flown to a secret hideout to be used as a pawn in some sort of malevolent scheme, but there would be plenty of time for that.
After a few minutes, an older, balding gentleman in an expensive gray suit walked up and sat down in the chair across from him. He handed Jacob a small paper packet. "Tylenol," he said. In his other hand, he held a brown accordion folder that appeared to be stuffed to capacity.
Jacob smiled, tore open the packet, and downed the pills with a sip of Pepsi. He returned to staring out the window.
"My name is Gardner Vasili," said the man. "I suppose you're wondering where you are."
"Airplane," said Jacob, still absently staring out the window. "The stewardess told me."
"Right, but aren't you a bit curious..."
"Let me ask you something," said Jacob. "Do you know who I am?"
"Of course," said Gardner Vasili. "Jacob Slater. Forensic blast expert for the FBI We've devoted quite a lot of resources to..."
"OK," said Jacob. "I was just checking."
"Checking?"
"Yes," said Jacob. "I wanted to make sure this wasn't a case of mistaken identity. It would be embarrassing if we got to the secret hideout and it turned out that I wasn't who you thought I was."
"What secret hideout?"
"You are taking me to a secret hideout, right?" asked Jacob.
"In a manner of speaking."
"Fine. So you don't think I'm someone named Lane or Lang?"
"No. Should I?"
"No, it's just that I have a vague memory of someone calling me 'Mr. Lang.' It may have been a dream. Also, do you know anyone named Cody?"
"I don't believe so."
"Me neither," said Jacob. "Could I have another Pepsi?" He held out the empty glass.
"Now look, Mr. Slater," said Gardner Vasili. "I have certain things I need to explain to you."
"Knock yourself out," said Jacob, tossing an ice cube from the bottom of the glass into his mouth. He crunched the ice loudly in his teeth and appraised the dapper gentleman who was patiently waiting for the noise to die down so that he could explain whatever nefarious goings-on were in fact going on. Jacob wasn't sure if it was the knock on the head or if he was finally completely fed up with being manipulated by powers beyond his understanding, but he had no interest in hearing the man's explanation. As a scientist and investigator, insatiable curiosity was an occupational hazard, but Jacob had reached a point where he simply didn't want to know any more.
It was also true that he was enjoying being in a position of power for once. Most people in Jacob's position would probably have exploded in anger at being abducted and taken aboard a private jet to be whisked away to a secret lair for nefarious purposes, but explosions were, ironically, not in Jacob's nature. His anger had driven him to show no emotion at all, and his impassivity was clearly bewildering his captor. Jacob knew the feeling: having expected an explosion, the man was greeted instead with an implosion, and was at a loss about how to proceed.
"Mr. Slater, if I may..." began Gardner Vasili, as Jacob finished off the ice cube.
Jacob picked up the glass again and made to toss another ice cube in his mouth.
Gardner Vasili deftly swept in and intercepted the glass en route.
"Diet Pepsi, please," said Jacob, with a smile.
"Mister Slater," Gardner Vasili began again. "I work for Horace Finch. You've heard of Horace Finch?"
Jacob made no reply.
"Horace Finch is, at last reckoning, the twenty-sixth richest person in the world. He owns the Finch Group, which owns the Charlie Nyx franchise, the Charlie's Grill chain of restaurants, and the Beacon, among other properties."
Jacob sighed. Gardner Vasili was obviously not going to leave him alone---let alone get him another Diet Pepsi---until he had fully explained the nefarious goings-on to his heart's content.
"I know who Horace Finch is," said Jacob. "Now can you just tell me what he wants with me so that I can get another drink and enjoy the rest of the flight?"
Gardner Vasili smiled. "Mr. Finch has need of your expertise."
Jacob frowned. "Horace Finch needs a forensic blast specialist?"
"Not that expertise," said Vasili. "Your other area of expertise."
Jacob tried to think what he knew about other than explosions. "Horace Finch needs me to make lasagna?"
"Very funny, Mr. Slater. No, Horace Finch needs your help getting his CCD online."
Jacob's brow furrowed. "Has he tried Viagra? I could forward him some e-mails."
"You don't seem to appreciate the gravity of the situation, Mr. Slater. Playing dumb isn't going to help you. We have surveillance video of you in the Los Angeles collider minutes before it was destroyed. We suspected you knew something after your performance at ACHOO, but when you showed up in the CCD, we knew you were our guy."
Jacob was beginning to think this was a case of mistaken identity after all. They obviously knew who Jacob was, but had completely misinterpreted his actions. Seeing him poking blindly around the elephant, they had somehow come to the conclusion that he was an elephant tamer.
"The HeadJAC briefings are classified," Jacob said. He hadn't yet decided whether it was in his interest to confess that he knew virtually nothing about the "collider" under Los Angeles, so he decided to play coy.
"You underestimate Mr. Finch's reach," said Gardner Vasili.
"Got it," said Jacob. "No Viagra."
"We'll be on the ground in four hours," said Gardner Vasili. "I suggest you use that time to familiarize yourself with the design. We've made some upgrades to the original." He tossed the accordion folder onto Jacob's lap, got up, and walked back to the cabin.
To Jacob's credit, he sat and stared aimlessly out the window for another three minutes and twelve seconds before cracking and excitedly pulling the stack of papers from the folder.
The cover page read:
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS FOR CCD-II
CHRONO-COLLIDER DEVICE
WEKTABA, KENYA
Chrono-collider device? thought Jacob. He had done two years of graduate work in physics and had never heard of such a thing. As far as he knew, Wektaba, Kenya, was not at the forefront of research into quantum mechanics.
He paged through the papers but couldn't make heads or tails out of most of it. Particle accelerators, he knew, were designed to create high-velocity collisions between the smallest particles of matter known to humankind. The idea was to observe the way the particles reacted in an attempt to discover the basic principles underlying the fundamental questions of the nature of space, time, and matter. The Large Hadron Collider in Europe, for example, had been built with the intention of testing various predictions of high-energy physics, involving many particles whose existence was purely theoretical. Such collisions could be dangerous; a certain fringe element had even suggested that activation of the LHC might destroy the world.
Jacob concluded that either a great deal had happened in quantum physics since he left the field, or whoever had written this document was further out on the fringe than even those doomsayers. The purpose of the CCD was, as far as he could tell, to isolate a particle called a chroton. The CCD would fire a tightly focused beam of energy at a small amount of matter in an attempt to free some of these chrotons, and then somehow channel the chrotons into some sort of specially designed receptacle. It wasn't clear from the documentation what this receptacle was, exactly. If he weren't being held captive on an insane billionaire's private jet, he would have suspected that the whole document was an elaborate joke. It was the sort of thing that would have had his old mentor, Alistair Breem, in stitches.
One mystery was solved, however: he knew where the plane was going.
THIRTY
"Mercury, what the hell are you doing here?" Christine demanded.
Uzziel, seated behind a massive oak desk, replied smugly, "He turned himself in."
"Yes, Uzziel," Mercury said. "I turned myself in. Or, to put it another way, you couldn't catch me." He turned back to Christine. "Come on in," he said cheerfully. "Uzziel needs your help to trump up some charges against me."
Uzziel motioned to two chairs facing his desk and they sat. "Trump up charges?" Christine asked.
"Hardly," said Uzziel. "I'm being more than fair with Mercury. I simply need you to corroborate certain elements of the official report having to do with Mercury's unauthorized creation of an End Times cult in Berkeley, his failure to assassinate the Antichrist as instructed, his misuse of Heavenly resources for his own purposes..."
"His own purposes!" exclaimed Christine. "He saved the world! He...that is, we foiled not one but two demonic schemes to take over the Mundane Plane!"
"Yes," Uzziel agreed, "but the way he went about it was entirely underhanded. And, I might add, he also foiled thousands of years of planning for the Apocalypse."
"Forgive me if I don't shed any tears over that," said Christine. "Forget it, Uzziel. I'm not helping you railroad Mercury."
"You may not have any choice," said Uzziel. "If you won't voluntarily cooperate, the Iscaya can subpoena you and..."
"Iscaya?" Christine asked.
"Independent Seraphic Senate Commission on Apocalyptic Irregularities in the Execution of the Apocalypse Accord," replied Uzziel. "ISSCAIEAA. Iscaya."
"Of course," said Christine. "Carry on."
"Look," said Uzziel. "There's no need to make this into an adversarial situation. I understand the value of what you and Mercury did, but the bureaucracy has to be appeased. We've got to document everything and put the best possible face on it, and maybe if we can find someone to blame, what do you call it...?"
"A scapegoat," Christine replied.
"Right, if we can blame it on those idiots in Prophecy for not reigning in Harry Giddings or somebody in the Mundane Observation Corps for losing track of whoever was feeding him bad information, then maybe Mercury can get by with a slap on the wrist and a transfer to another department. Maybe T and C."
"Transport and Communications?" Mercury snorted. "You'd have me patting down tourists at the planeport? When I turned myself in, you agreed to do everything you could to help me keep my job in Apocalypse."
"Be realistic, Mercury," said Uzziel. "You know I appreciate your talents, but there's going to be a shakedown once Iscaya releases its findings, and without some serious leverage, you're not going to survive the purge."
"Leverage?" Christine asked. "What kind of leverage?"
"Well," said Uzziel, "Anything we could offer them showing that Mercury is a valuable member of the Bureau..."
"Come on, Uzziel!" Mercury protested. "I've got six thousand years of service under my belt. I think you can---"
"I wasn't finished," Uzziel snapped. "If we can demonstrate that you're a valuable member of the Bureau who is able to put aside his own personal agendas for the greater good of Heaven, then we might have a chance of saving your job."
Mercury stared blankly at Uzziel.
"I think," said Christine, "he means that you need to follow orders for once."
Mercury looked sick. "Ugh," he said. "Really?"
"Really," said Uzziel. "Remember, there's no I in 'team.'"
"And there are two in 'perdition,'" added Christine.
"Er, yes," said Uzziel. "Unfortunately, I have no assignments for you right now. Everything is up in the air now that the Rapture fell through. And Lucifer's been very quiet since his plot to renege on the Apocalypse Accord was uncovered. Other than retrieving the two Attaché Cases of the Apocalypse, there isn't much to do. And I've already got my most capable agents on that."
"Your most capable agents!" Mercury snorted. "I hope you've got pestilence insurance, Christine."
"I've seen some of your agents, Uzziel," Christine replied. "One of them is in my condo trying to figure out how to make SpaghettiOs. You and I both know that Mercury is the only man...er, cherub for this job."
"You know I'm not one to brag," Mercury added, with a straight face, "but she's right, Uzziel. If you want those cases retrieved safely, I'm your cherub."
"No way," said Uzziel. "My job is at risk here, too, you know. If the Council finds out I've assigned you to an important task like this..."
"The Council cares about results," Mercury retorted. "By the time they find out I'm on the case, so to speak, we'll have the Cases back in our possession."
Uzziel shook his head, stony faced.
"What if," Christine asked, "I provided you with some intelligence about another serious danger on Earth...the Mundane Plane? Something potentially even bigger than the Cases?"
"A bigger threat than the Attaché Cases of the Apocalypse?" asked Uzziel. "Like what? I've looked into the reports of M. Night Shyamalan remaking The Greatest Story Ever Told, and it's just a baseless rumor."
Christine considered her options for a moment, then spoke.
"An anti-bomb," she said. "Like the one that went off in Anaheim."
"Impossible," said Uzziel dismissively. "The anti-bombs have been under constant guard since the Antipocalypse, and they are all accounted for. Well, except for the one that imploded Anaheim."
"Well, you'd better re-count," said Christine. "Because I had one of your little glass apples in my pocket yesterday."
"No, no," said Uzziel. "It may have looked similar to your mortal eyes, but it couldn't have been an anti-bomb. Did it really look just like the ones you saw on the Floor?"
"Well," Christine said, beginning to doubt herself. "It was missing the trigger mechanism at the top. Also, it was a different color. But I'm telling you, it looked just like---"
"What color was it?" Mercury asked.
"It was darker," Christine replied. "The others were sort of a translucent rose color, but this one was more like crimson. It was almost completely opaque."
Mercury cast a fearful look at Uzziel. He asked, "You saw one of these on the Mundane Plane? On Earth?"
Christine nodded.
"No..." said Uzziel again. "It can't be."
"It sure sounds like it, Uzziel," said Mercury. "I don't think Christine would make up something like that."
"What?" Christine asked. "What is it?"
"An anti-bomb darkens in color as it ages," Mercury said. "When it's young, say for the first several hundred years, it's that rosy color. Over the next few thousand years, it gradually gets darker and darker until it's a dark crimson. That's how you know it's, well, ripe."
"Ripe?" asked Christine.
"Yes," answered Uzziel. "What Mercury is saying is that if what you saw really was an anti-bomb, it could detonate at any moment. There's no need for a trigger with a ripe anti-bomb. The slightest shock could set it off."
"Jeez, I was carrying that thing in my pocket while running down the side of a volcano in the middle of a thunderstorm," Christine said.
Mercury Rises Page 18
