Eden Two

by Mike Sullivan

  Seabury had left the old man and the girls unattended, and he had missed the opportunity to kill them while the big guy was gone. A few minutes before, from inside the grove of trees, he had seen them move up the side of the hill and disappear into the thicket. Now, inserting a fresh clip into his nine-millimeter Beretta, he put the gun back into his shoulder holster. He reached the entrance to the cave and entered.

  “This is A-Okay, not bad,” the Sicilian muttered.

  It was too good to be true. It was a lucky break. Damn it. He was going to reach out, grab hold, and be swept away on a tidal wave of good fortune. For the first time in his sad, miserable, depressing life, he could stop working for guys like Cyril Barat. That slime ball hadn’t the slightest idea what he had sent him out to do. Go get it done now. The bastard. He would go get it done now and come back a wealthy man. He had seen the big guy and the little puny twig of a professor pouring over a map, so it wasn’t too hard to figure out what they were here for. You don’t go searching inside a cave with a map without turning up something big—like buried treasure.

  The Sicilian couldn’t believe his luck. As he stood in the shadows at the mouth of the cave, he almost pinched himself to make sure he was awake and not dreaming. He had a small penlight. He would use that. A flashlight was too big, too much light, and he didn’t want to be spotted before he got the first shots off and killed them, one by one.

  It didn’t matter the order. The big guy was his first choice. Take that hulking mass of protoplasm down and then the scrawny academic. He might even have a little fun with the girls first before he killed them. Luck was sprinkling moon dust down on the top of his head, he told himself as he inched along toward the pillared arch up ahead. He’d let them find the treasure first. He had convinced himself that there was wealth galore hiding inside. All he had to do was let them find it first, dig it up, and then he’d swoop down like fucking Robin Hood and seize the day.

  That was his plan. That’s the way he saw things going down.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Seabury led the way through the underground temple. A domed arch formed the ceiling, and large, cylindrical columns supported huge outer walls along the floor. In contrast to the ancient Javanese paintings and hieroglyphics at the entrance to the cave, tall stone statues now appeared. Armed footmen with swords and shields, jousting knights on horseback stood grim and serious, guarding their stone alcoves.

  They wore woolen and hooded surcoats over long tunics. The tunics stood out noticeably under the light, emblazoned with the Knights Templar Red Cross coat of arms covering their armor.

  Seabury took note, convinced now of the link between the Freemasons and the Knights Templar—excited now about what they might find inside. Moving on, they passed from one chamber into another. Down a flight of stone steps, through another chamber, and into a tunnel, the light beyond their flashlights suddenly grew brighter.

  Along the outer walls on both sides of them, the light glittered. It was hard to believe, and Seabury stopped to catch his breath and pinch himself. “Wow! Will you look at that.” His arm looped around Hornsby. He squeezed him and patted him on the back. Lois and Gretchen hugged each other and laughed out loud, their eyes as bright as stars.

  “Can you believe it?” he asked Hornsby. “We’re surrounded by a sea of gold.”

  Large veins of pure gold snaked up the side of each wall. Seabury shone his light on them. The soft, yellowish glow of gold stared back at him. Still, the greatest marvel was yet to come. On the floor at the end of the temple lay a pirate’s treasure cove. Open wooden chests with iron sprockets overflowed with treasure. Ruby-studded silver chalices. Gold rings, gold coins, pearl necklaces spilled out of the chests and onto the floor.

  In her moment of joy, Gretchen froze instantly in her tracks. She let out a mournful whimper as she stared to her left into the darkness. In a nearby corner, a chest containing the heads of skeletons startled and frightened her.

  “Yuck! Scary,” she said. Lois grabbed her arm and turned her away.

  Hornsby looked all around, beaming with delight as he made his way to the end of the temple. Seabury heard the sound of rushing water outside, and Hornsby said to him, “It’s the Garden.”

  They immerged from the temple into a surrealistic place. Seabury felt it the moment her entered the Garden. A fresh, fragrant air filled his nostrils. The place glittered with a sheen of liquid gold, drifting off for miles in all directions. Further back, the Garden gurgled with the sound of a bubbling brook. Clear, circular pools appeared below lush green trees and patches of bright tropical flowers. Beyond that, a canopy of clouds tipped in silver separated effortlessly. Then below, he glimpsed deer and small furry animals drop their noses into the stream. My word, he thought, spellbound. Paradise on Earth.

  The sound of Hornsby’s voice brought a stop to his reverie. “Oh, my word. The Tree of Life. Are we dreaming?” Hornsby shouted.

  Seabury turned around. “No, not if what you’re seeing is the same thing I’m seeing. I can’t believe it. We’ve entered the Garden of Eden.”

  Lois balked. “It’s just a tropical garden. Don’t get too excited.” She stood back, unimpressed.

  “We’ve found Eden Two,” Hornsby beamed. “And this old agnostic is now a believer. There is a God, and He’s built his Garden here in Southeast Asia. If I don’t take another breath, my life has been fulfilled.”

  “Come on, Professor,” Lois said, still not convinced that they’d found anything other than a tropical garden here in the belly of a mountain. “Aren’t you being overly dramatic?”

  “Not with what I’m seeing. Take a look around. Admit it for once. I’m not saying that the original Garden of Eden wasn’t in Mesopotamia.”

  “What are you saying, then?” she snapped at him.

  Hornsby rubbed his jaw and shook his head, astonished by what he was hearing. “I’m saying that a second Garden was built here after the Great Flood. This whole area wasn’t mountainous centuries ago. During the last Ice Age, the continents were joined together to form the land of Sundaland on the Sunda Shelf. When the ice receded and the area flooded, mountains vanished, and the area became tropical. Because of volcanoes, earthquakes, and catastrophic shifts along the earth’s surface, mountains began to reappear again.”

  He swung his eyes back on the ancient tree alongside the stream. “That’s the Tree of Life…I’m sure of it.” He shook his head, happily. He rubbed back tears welling up in his tired old eyes. He couldn’t control his excitement. “I knew it, I knew it. I did,” he said. “The minute we entered this place, I knew that we’d made the discovery of the century.”

  “Nonsense,” Lois said. “It’s just a tropical garden. It has nothing to do with the Land of Havilah, or Mesopotamia, or anything stated in the Bible. You’re wrong again, Professor.”

  He shook his head, amazed by her ignorance. “Let me tell you something, Lois. I’ve read the Forbidden Books of Eden…the ones the Church Fathers never allowed into their secret, well-protected Bible. I read them in utter amazement. The Church Fathers’ version is so utterly unbelievable and so allegorically flawed that it draws a rational, scientific mind like mine to question everything about it. Let’s just say for the sake of discussion that what your prophet Ezekiel spoke was true. He had a vision. Don’t all the saints and prophets in your Bible have visions?”

  She let the remark go past her.

  “Your prophet Ezekiel spoke of waters running out toward the east country. They went down into the desert and out to sea. What his vision really tells us is that the waters didn’t flow out onto a desert at all, but they flowed onto a tropical terrain that could very well have been here in Southeast Asia. The whole earth was not Eden. Eden was a Garden. It was, according to your Bible, God’s delight, God’s pleasure, God’s Paradise. The Garden was built by God, and man was God’s gardener.”

  Seabury moved away from the discussion, down to the stream with Gretchen. “Those two…” He pointed back over his s
houlder, chuckling. “They’re never going to agree on anything.”

  “She’s like that, Seabury. I told you. She can’t be wrong.”

  Across the way, Hornsby’s voice lowered. Seabury looked at Gretchen. “You know, I’m finally convinced,” he said. “It’s clear that God must have been hurt and disappointed by Adam’s sin. Likewise, he was also kind and merciful. All along, He must have known that man would sin and be driven from the original Garden of Eden. So, out of a feeling of pity, He built a second Garden after the original Garden was destroyed during the Great Flood. He relocated it to Southeast Asia. The Garden became a stay-over or resting place for the trans-migration of Post Flood Man to China, Australia, and over a land bridge into North and South America. This place proves the theory.”

  “Hogwash. Nonsense. Idiotic.” Lois came up and overheard the conversation.

  Seabury chuckled at her. “Admit it for once. You’re wrong, Lois.” He extended his arms wide. “Here it is. You’re standing in it.”

  Lois smiled thinly. “I don’t believe you.”

  Seabury had heard enough. He shook his head and turned away from her. Meantime, the spring bubbled nearby. It skirted the cave and flowed through the outer edge of the Garden down through a deep underground leveret of tunnels out of the mountain. Gretchen watched the spring. It bubbled in a soft misty light, formed a small pool and another, then a series of other larger pools that drained from the Garden.

  “It looks so clear,” Gretchen said to the others. She bent down and scooped a handful of water into her mouth.

  “Hold it,” Lois snapped at her. “It might be contaminated.”

  “Tastes good.” Gretchen scooped more water into her mouth.

  “I wouldn’t,” Lois warned.

  “I’m thirsty…and it tastes good.”

  “I think it’s all right,” said Seabury, joining Gretchen.

  In the midst of their conversation, no one noticed him. At the mouth of the temple leading out to the Garden, the Sicilian stood, quietly watching them. His finger inched closer to the trigger and then slipped gently around it.

  He hardly felt the weight of the gun in his hand as he raised it higher. A flicker of sunlight shot through a crimson cloud and glinted off the barrel. An excellent marksman, he felt the muscles of his right hand relax as he held the weapon at shoulder-height, ready to fire. It wasn’t a great distance, and the shot should have killed Seabury instantly. At the last second, however, Hornsby’s head popped up into the line of fire, just as the Sicilian pulled the trigger.

  Time seemed to suspend for a moment as Hornsby’s shoulders hunched and his body stiffened. Then, his head jolted forward as the bullet tore through his skull and exited in a pink mist out through his left eyeball. As if swept forward by gale-force winds, the old man’s feet flew off the ground. He hurled forward, arms and legs flapping awkwardly. He was airborne for a few more seconds before his dead body came crashing down hard, face-first onto the ground.

  Seabury’s head spun back in the direction of the gunfire. Instinctively, he grabbed Lois and Gretchen and yanked them to safety behind the withered trunk of the ancient tree. The Sicilian tramped down into the Garden after them.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Tossing Seabury a cord of rope, the Sicilian motioned the gun at him.

  “Tie up the women,” he barked, and Seabury complied. He wound the rope around the girls and lashed them to the tree. Lois and Gretchen screamed and struggled to get free. Shouts and cries of desperation filled the air.

  “I know who you work for,” said Seabury.

  Surprised and angered by the remark, the Sicilian struck Seabury with the barrel of the gun. He doubled over and grimaced in pain as the weapon crashed off the side of his head, leaving a deep purple welt above his left ear. Clenching his teeth, Seabury held back the pain exploding in his head. He wouldn’t give the Sicilian the satisfaction of seeing him suffer.

  “Who’s that?” The Sicilian grabbed him by the collar. He forced Seabury down on his knees and demanded an answer. Lois and Gretchen screamed in horror.

  “Well?” the Sicilian said to Seabury. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

  “Cyril Barat. It’s all on the spy camera.”

  “Yeah, I want it back.” He held a hand out.

  Seabury felt his head spinning. He fought back the pain. He looked straight at his enemy and said, “Cyril Barat wanted all of us killed, didn’t he?”

  The Sicilian smiled a surly smile but didn’t respond.

  “He succeeded in getting one of us, though.” Seabury eyes wandered over sadly onto Harlan Hornsby, lying dead a few feet back from the stream.

  “Hornsby was a kind, decent man,” Seabury said. “A bright, intelligent academic. He died here today for nothing. Thanks to you and Barat. Barat’s a sick, sadistic scum bag, and you…” He eyed him with a repulsive look. “You’re no better.”

  “Brave words,” the Sicilian said, smiling thinly, “for a man about to die.”

  “What are you talking about, Sam?” Lois joined the conversation. She stopped squirming in the ropes and stared across at him.

  Seabury did a slow burn. His voice was low, flat, almost sullen. “Your ex-lover put a contract out on us. I have it all down here.” He tapped the pocket of his jacket. “I lifted a spy camera from our boy here. He thinks he’s going to waltz off into the sunset after killing us and collect his money, but I’ve got other plans for him.” Seabury swung his eyes back on the Sicilian. “Where’s Barat?”

  The Sicilian seethed through clenched teeth. He looked at Seabury and shaped a mocking smile. “You’ve either got to be one of the dumbest men I’ve ever met, or you have a huge set of brass balls. I don’t know which. At this point, it hardly matters, though.”

  He paused briefly, then added, “Barat’s on Derawan Island in the Makassar Strait.”

  Seabury nodded subtly, taking it all in. His mind raced forward, backward, looking for a chink in the Sicilian’s armor in an effort to exploit it. A wave of fear swept through him. He saw absolutely nothing there. Nothing he could take advantage of.

  “Among other things…” the Sicilian continued, “he moonlights as a smuggler. He has his hands in everything that makes money. His team smuggles drugs, fuel rods, plutonium, titanium—all of it hidden in hollowed out compartments in slabs of stone supplied by his Freemason friends. They ship it all over the world. You know about the Masons, don’t you?”

  Seabury nodded. “The American forefathers were involved with them. The Carter, Bush, and Obama administrations talk openly about the establishment of a New World Order. How much time do we have before they rule the world?”

  “Not much from the looks of it,” said the Sicilian. “That needn’t concern you. Not where you’re going.”

  He leveled the gun on Seabury. “There’s a boatload of stone with heroin and plutonium coming in for inspection on a cargo ship from Vietnam tonight. Only you won’t be around to see it.” The Sicilian moved the gun back and forth. The mocking smile never left his face. “You forget something, pal,” he said to Seabury. “I’m the one with the gun.”

  “Not for long. Do you know where you are?”

  The Sicilian’s face twisted into a ball of confusion. “What do you mean do I know where I am? I’m here with a high-powered handgun, about to kill you. I’m also getting sick and tired of your flippant tongue.” He moved closer, the gun inches from Seabury’s face. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to, anyway?”

  For years, Seabury believed there were spirits that had departed the Earth. For a reason that mystified him, they often chose to reappear. He’d seen one in the myopic glimmer of a single band of moonlight, in the shadows of a springtime forest long ago in southern Thailand. Another time, one soared over the orchard outside his villa in north Tuscany. Now, all around him, the Garden light seemed to roll back and change instantly into a thick, impenetrable cloud of darkness.

  High above, a loud crash of thunder rocked the Garde
n and shattered the silence inside. A supernova of bright, exploding light shot down from the sky in a white-hot torrent of illumination. Seabury’s eyes glued to the top of the tree as he searched beyond the nest of withered branches. He blinked twice, and there beneath the shadows, he saw the images. Old Testament Seraphim swooped down and hovered in a small circle above the Tree of Life. Another larger image appeared seconds later. It fanned out in a breathless expanse of broad, flapping wings as thick, dense, and wide as the crown of the tree. It came closer, and its huge image quickly nudged out the other apparitions.

  Stunned, the Sicilian’s head jolted back as he heard another crash of thunder. Then, before he realized it, he clutched his hand to his chest and screamed out in a loud, excruciating pain. A fatal heart attack seized him, and he collapsed dead on the ground.

  A moment later, the ropes came off Lois and Gretchen, vanishing in a sharp, whisking sound, and they stepped out from the tree. Seabury glimpsed the angelic figure one last time before it vanished. Then, he hurriedly sprang into motion. All around him now, the ground rumbled beneath his feet, and the whole Garden shook with the sound of a loud, earth-shattering explosion.

  “Come on. We gotta get out of here,” Seabury told the women. “There’s no time to waste.” Hornsby’s body lay crumpled on the ground near the pool. Seabury picked him up and tossed him onto his shoulders. Together, he raced with Lois and Gretchen toward the entrance to the temple.

  As Seabury raced ahead, everything seemed to slow, as if he were running in a swimming pool with the water chest high, and everything slowed down. Hornsby was dead. The guilt and shame, the agony of his tragic death ate at him. Hornsby was a quiet, though at times opinionated, elder statesman. He was bright and gifted, a good man. Now, he was dead. Murdered by a bullet from a nine-millimeter Beretta aimed at him. Hornsby’s death pierced him like a spike to the heart, and he felt responsible. Painful as the death was to fathom, he had to move on and get out of here quickly. Danger lurked all around them.