“You mean, have I been anyone important? A king. A general.”
King just waited for an answer.
“George Washington.”
As King whipped his head toward Alexander the man burst out laughing.
“I was being serious,” King said, realizing a straight answer out of Alexander might be more impossible than cracking the secret of immortality, which to his knowledge had been accomplished twice already. He stepped ahead of Alexander and opened the hotel’s front door. “After you, Mr. President.” Alexander snubbed out the cigar in the hotel’s outdoor ashtray and entered the hotel. King gave the street and parking lot a quick glance. No one had followed them. Not that he could see, anyway.
The hotel lobby was four stories tall capped by a grand arched ceiling. Tall windows and an array of sconces flooded the gaping space with light. Four palm trees, covered in white lights, stood in the center. It looked one part Hollywood at Christmas and one part opulent Arabian palace. King was fond of neither look, but still could not take his eyes off the surreal lobby. He had waited outside when they dropped Davidson off and had yet to see the hotel’s interior.
“You haven’t answered my question,” King said. But Alexander just kept on walking, heading straight for the elevator.
Alexander entered the elevator and hit the button for the fifth floor, which was directly over the lobby. He didn’t even acknowledge that King had spoken.
Growing impatient, King said, “Have you done anything meaningful with your life? Cured a disease? Freed an oppressed people? Anything at all?”
Alexander remained stoic.
“You haven’t, have you?” King grew angry at the thought. Alexander had infinite resources, a devout following of Herculean Society members, immortality, and a genius intellect; nothing should have been out of reach for him. “In twenty-five hundred years you haven’t done a damn thing.”
Alexander looked at him with a smile. “I can tell you one thing I’ve done,” he said. “I’ve learned to not let angry men with no concept of time ruffle my feathers. One hundred years from now, I will have all but forgotten this conversation. I live outside your understanding of time. Like a chess player, I can set things in motion and not see the resulting goal until several moves later, which for me could be hundreds of years. Sometimes longer.”
“Then why do you give a damn about what’s happening now?”
“Because my opponent is cheating.”
At least it was an answer, King thought, though he knew it was only a half-truth, if that.
A digital chime rang out and the doors opened. Alexander exited the elevator and headed down the hall. King followed behind him, thinking about what he’d said. Could his endgame be hundreds of years off? If so, did it really even matter? King would be long dead and the human race was likely to nuke itself into oblivion by then. Or was it all a smoke screen? Was the endgame just around the corner and Ridley’s actions putting it in jeopardy? Alexander might be working toward something begun during the time of Jesus. King shook his head. Ignorance was bliss, which was why he was starting to feel so unhappy.
Alexander knocked on the door of suite 907. They could hear movement behind the door. Davidson was no doubt peering at them through the peephole. The deadbolt slid away and the door opened a crack. The chain lock kept it from opening all the way.
Davidson peeked out at them, his eyes nervous.
“It’s us,” King assured him.
“Right. Sorry.” The door shut and the chain was pulled away. Davidson opened the door again and let them in.
It was a large hotel room, standard in most every way—queen-sized bed, a TV, a single lounge chair, and a small desk. What made it different from other hotel rooms was the glossy hardwood floor, the large window split into large waffle squares, and the amazing view of the Mediterranean it provided. The desk was covered in hotel stationery. Notes in Hebrew and mathematical equations covered the pages. Several room service trays holding half-eaten food sat on the still-made checkered bedspread.
Davidson closed the door behind them, locked both locks, and headed to the desk. He sat down, looking disheveled. His face, which had been smooth the previous day, was rough with stubble, and his yellow dress shirt was wrinkled and covered in a big red stain. King took note of the stain.
“You okay?”
Davidson looked down at his shirt. “Oh, yes. It’s marinara.”
Alexander glanced at the large number of room service trays. “I see you’ve been taking advantage of my hospitality.”
“I, well, yes.” Davidson looked to the floor. “But I was up all night and have some new thoughts on the golem.”
Alexander sat down in the room’s lounge chair and opened his arms as though to say, “Let’s hear it.”
King sat down on the bed beside the trays. He eyed a plate of french fries. He hadn’t eaten anything substantial in days. Not that french fries would provide much in the way of nourishment, but they would fill his belly.
Davidson noted his attention. “They’re only an hour old.”
Alexander cleared his throat as King dug into the food.
“Sorry. Ahh. What’s important to realize about a golem is that they are not actually living. I suppose you could say they were quasi-living, but they don’t possess true life. Now, somehow, which I have yet to fully understand, inanimate objects are being animated in a way that mimics life, but these golems lack intelligence. I suspect they have a very primitive knowledge imbued into the atomic structure by their creator—the ability to walk, the desire to kill a certain target—but they can’t communicate. They can’t reproduce. They don’t consume or digest. Based on the files Alexander faxed over—”
“What files?” King asked. He had no idea Alexander had been in touch with the professor. He shot Alexander an annoyed glance as Davidson handed him a folder. He opened it and found several newspaper clippings about the attacks on Fort Bragg, a handwritten detailed account about their experience at Stonehenge. But what really held King’s attention were the several classified documents from the U.S. military, including surveillance-camera still shots from Bragg. He wanted to ask Alexander where he got the documents, but already knew the answer. The Herculean Society was in every nation and in every government.
That’s what Alexander had done in twenty-five hundred years. He might very well control the whole world without a single person knowing. And his direct involvement now might only be because Ridley threatened to upset the balance.
The thought filled King with anger and he wondered if Alexander was so deeply entrenched that he could feed missions to the Chess Team? Just how far did the man’s influence reach? Questions for later, he decided. “Go on,” he said, placing the files on the bed beside him.
“Based on the reports in those files, the golems seem to contain enough energy for a short duration. In every case, the golems simply return to their inanimate state after about fifteen minutes. Without a continued utterance from its creator a golem cannot continue living, err, existing.”
“Like someone chanting?” King asked.
“No, more like a recharge. Something that keeps it energized and on task. It could be as simple as repeating the phrase that animated it in the first place. I’m not really sure. But this is an apparent weakness, time. And brains, or lack thereof. I would compare them to ancient missiles. Their force can be spurred into action and directed, but they cannot be sustained indefinitely and then can be outsmarted.”
King had to admit the professor’s assessment seemed accurate, and useful to a point. But he had hoped for more. Given the anxious glances Davidson shot Alexander, he had, too.
“You mentioned a sample,” Davidson said to Alexander.
Alexander reached into his suit coat and pulled out a small chunk of bluestone. King’s distrust of Alexander continued to grow as his role in the mission became secondary to Alexander’s whims. And that threatened King’s personal goal of finding Fiona. If Alexander’s objective shifte
d, King might be left high and dry. He would continue, of course, but with time short for Fiona, the delay could be deadly.
Davidson took the stone and looked it over. “This is actually a piece of a golem animated from the stones of Stonehenge?”
“It is,” Alexander said.
Holding it up close to his eyes, Davidson stared at the stone as the bright sunlight glimmered off the blue specks. “We need a lab.”
Alexander stood. “I have one waiting.” He stood, leading the way out of the room.
Davidson eagerly followed.
King hesitated for a moment. Could he trust Alexander? If he turned bad, could he be stopped? Deciding the answer to both questions was an unquestionable “no,” King took a handful of fries and followed after them.
* * *
THE LAB WAS both impressive and sketchy. The equipment looked new, or at least rarely used, and the small warehouse that held it was in a seedy part of town. In fact, everything looked like it had been brought in and rigged to be used specifically for this occasion and would likely disappear when they were done.
King didn’t like that everything he had done since heading to Rome was outside the reach of U.S. resources, but he couldn’t deny the results. Though those results were slow in coming this afternoon. The hot Mediterranean sun beat down on the metal building, heating its insides like an oven. Even the mighty Hercules had shed his suit coat and unbuttoned the first few buttons on his shirt.
“It’s too bad your people didn’t think to bring in an air conditioner,” King said.
“I’ll be sure to have them take care of it next time,” Alexander replied.
As King wondered whether or not Alexander was joking he realized that the man had just confirmed his suspicions. This was a temporary lab.
Tension had King’s body in a tight grip. Unless they found some kind of lead soon, their investigation will have run dry. King checked the date and time on his watch. Day four was well under way and Fiona was now out of insulin. He gripped the edge of the lab table he was leaning on, feeling his anger rise.
“I’ve got something,” Davidson said, backing away from a microscope he’d been standing over for the past ten minutes.
King stood straight and headed for Davidson, eager for news.
“At first glance, the sample looks like any other stone, and to the human eye acts the way we all expect a stone to act—like nothing at all. But at the microscopic level, well, take a look.” Davidson switched out the slides. “This is a normal stone.”
King arrived before Alexander and took a look. He saw a patchwork of stone crystals mashed together.
“Stones are composed of varying sizes of mineral grains. Differing amounts of minerals give us limestone, granite, basalt, et cetera. In this case we have Preseli spotted dolerite containing chunks of plagioclase feldspar, which adds to its bluish tint, especially when wet. The point is, the minerals contained in stone are compressed in a random formation that does not shift unless the stone is broken.” Davidson switched out the slide when King stood back. “This is a sample of the bluestone.”
King looked again. The stone crystals were now an orderly formation of overlapping minerals. Their placement throughout was still random, but it was as though they had been snapped into an organized grid. “It looks like chain mail,” he said.
“Exactly, which would give the stone flexibility, and the ability to merge, at least temporarily with similarly affected stones. Like Velcro. Or a zipper.”
Alexander quickly looked at both slides. “Anything else?”
“It has no traces of DNA, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Davidson said. “As I mentioned before, they’re not living. Simply animated by some kind of energy.”
The statement struck a chord in King’s memory. His family had taken a southwestern summer trip in an RV. The strange site had been one of their stops, at the insistence of his father. “This isn’t totally unheard of in the natural world. The sailing stones in Death Valley move on their own. Some are as heavy as eighty pounds but travel across the flat desert appearing to move under their own power. They leave grooves in the ground hundreds of feet long, make ninety-degree turns, and sometimes travel in pairs before breaking off in different directions.”
“Amazing,” Davidson said. “Are there theories about how they move?”
“Heavy rain coupled with high winds is the best I’ve heard of,” King said.
“Perhaps wind alone is enough?” Davidson said. “If stone can be affected by sound, such as with a golem, perhaps there is a rock formation that produces a certain tone at the right frequency, something that sends a simple command: move! Has anyone looked at the stone’s microscopic structure?”
“They didn’t talk about that on our family vacation,” King said.
Alexander began switching off the lab equipment. “If there’s nothing else, I think we should be go—”
“We’re not going anywhere yet,” King said, wondering how much more Alexander had planned without his knowledge. “You may think the world is your playground, that you have the right to go anywhere, do anything, and treat the human race like game pieces, but you don’t. I, on the other hand, represent the wishes of the president of the United States, a man with real power and authority in this world. And I am in charge of this mission. Not you.”
A darkness consumed Alexander’s face. He turned to King, staring him down with eyes that showed a desire to kill. King had no doubt it had been a long time since someone spoke down to him, and he did not take it well. But King didn’t falter. Instead, he turned his eyes away from Alexander’s glare and looked at Davidson. “Is there anything more to glean from these stones?”
“I … I would need more samples. Different samples.”
“Like this?” came a deep voice from the darkness at the end of the warehouse. A figure emerged holding a glass jar. Inside it was a lump of gray material. The man holding it was Bishop. Queen and Knight followed him.
King greeted the others with a nod. He had made a call to Deep Blue shortly after leaving the hotel, requesting the team’s deployment to Israel. He knew they would arrive quickly thanks to the Crescent and had left his cell phone on so they could track his location. With the majority of his team present, he felt a renewed calm and measure of control return to the situation. This King was a pawn to no man, even one who couldn’t be killed.
Alexander glared at King and with a raised voice said, “You had no right to bring them here without my knowledge.”
“You seemed to have access to privileged U.S. intelligence. I thought you would know.”
Alexander lost his patience and stomped toward King. Davidson ducked out of the way.
King didn’t flinch as Alexander stopped inches from his face. “Do I detect a hint of megalomania?” King poked him in the chest, purposely instigating a reaction. He had a point to make. “Don’t like not being in control, do you … little man.” He punctuated the statement with one last poke to the chest.
When the punch came, King was expecting it. He ducked to the side, feeling the breeze of Alexander’s fist pass his face. The fist smashed into a metal support beam behind King. A loud clang accompanied by the crack of breaking fingers rang in King’s ear. The missed blow would have normally been enough for King to take the upper hand in any fight, but Alexander didn’t react. Nor did he react to the perfectly placed punch King delivered to his side. Instead he took King’s arm, spun him around and pinned him against the support beam. The impact split King’s lip and the pressure on his arm would soon snap it. He fought against the pain.
“Don’t be stupid. You can’t win this fight alone,” King said.
The pressure increased.
“And your secrecy is compromising my mission.”
“Your mission? You’re a fool to think yourself my equal,” Alexander said between clenched teeth.
“I don’t consider myself your equal,” King said. “But unlike you, I’m not alone.”
Th
e barrel of a handgun tapped against the back of Alexander’s skull. “Hey,” Queen said. “Remember me? We met a few years ago. I never did get a chance to thank you for the help, but if you mess with my boy here, I’m going to thank you by putting a bullet in the back of your skull. And please don’t fool yourself into thinking I’m incapable of hacking off that handsome head of yours and burying it in the sand.”
Alexander tensed for a moment before releasing King. He stepped back and eyed Queen. “I do remember you. You’re as charming as Rook.”
King saw Queen tense. The confrontation between him and Alexander had been brewing and needed to be worked out. But Alexander would regret lighting this fuse with Queen. “Any word on him?” King asked, stepping in.
Queen looked at him. “Not a peep.”
King turned back to Alexander. “You’re welcome to stay on with us, but you need to toe the line. If I sense you working another angle from this point on, I’ll drop you from the team.”
Alexander stared at King for several seconds before smiling. “You’re lucky I like you, King. I agree to your terms.”
The look in the man’s eyes revealed the agreement would last only as long as it continued to serve his needs, but King was okay with that. The reverse was true as well. He needed Alexander’s knowledge and resources to track down and stop Ridley, but when they’d accomplished that, he would leave the man behind.
Seeing the confrontation ebb, Davidson stepped forward. “Um, excuse me, but did you say you had a new sample?”
Bishop handed him the jar full of gray material.
“Is this from a golem?” Davidson asked.
“Formerly known as Richard Ridley,” Knight said. “Now known as Richard Hunk-of-clay.”
Davidson’s eyes grew wide. “This had a name? It was a … a human golem? Made of clay?”
Knight gave a nod.
“Fully human?”
“Until he turned to clay,” Bishop said. “Before that he seemed to have all the intellect, memories, and personality of the actual Richard Ridley. He lived among people who had no idea he wasn’t fully human.”
Threshold Page 26
