The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3

by Christopher Cartwright

  Veyron climbed down from the control box of the small crane. “Sam, you wanted to know about Elise as soon as you reached the surface?”

  “Yes.”

  “She called an hour ago. Said she needed to see you right away. Genevieve’s gone to pick her up right now.”

  “That’s great,” Sam said.

  He felt it, too. An hour ago he suspected he’d reached a complete dead end on his search for the Third Temple and for Billie. He couldn’t find the stone, and he was still waiting for Elise to tell him the truth about the painting in the hidden cavern inside Mount Ararat.

  Within minutes he, Tom and Peter were staring at a perfectly restored stone tablet. He wondered what the original mason who chiseled the markings would think about it being read all these years later. The stone had one recognizable image and two sets of numbers. The numbers were in base eleven and he could decipher them easily enough, but he’d never seen the word after the numbers – although he could guess its purpose.

  There were two numbers. Most likely two points of reference and where they intercept is the precise location. The unfamiliar word, Carrib, most likely represented a measured distance, such as a mile or a kilometer – only it didn’t. The purpose of the word was obvious. He stared at the numbers. Converted into base ten they read, 318 and 325.

  But 318 and 325 what?

  Sam breathed out, purposefully slow. He ran his fingers over his forehead and through his brown wavy hair. “It appears the Master Builders worked out a similar means of defining precise locations long before GPS.”

  Peter said, “That even looks like a latitude and longitude reference.”

  Sam swore. It was a sudden and loud show of frustration, and it was unlike him. “It may as well be the location of a secret treasure hidden on another planet for all the good it’s going to do us.”

  “Why?” Peter asked.

  Sam shook his head. They had come so far to find the map, and yet it was entirely useless to them. “Because by the looks of things, the Master Builders were using a completely different numerical reference point. This map shows us clearly where the Third Temple was located. It’s at the point where reference number 318 Carrib and 325 Carrib intercept – but I don’t have any clue what a Carrib is.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” Peter said.

  “I know it doesn’t. I just told you it doesn’t.”

  “No, not that.”

  Sam asked, “What then?”

  “Hammersmith wasn’t a Master Builder, so how did he know how to follow the map?”

  Sam paused, as he thought about it for a moment. “I have no idea. Maybe there’s an easy conversion.”

  Tom sighed. “Or there was a Master Builder on board.”

  Sam nodded. It was the most likely possibility. “All right, I’ll give it to Elise when she gets here. If there’s any way of extracting the code, she’ll work it out.”

  A few moments later, the Maria Helena reverberated under the downward whoop, whoop of the Sea King landing. Sam looked at Tom and Peter. “Speak of the Devil.”

  Sam jogged up the steps, taking two at a time. He stepped out onto the deck and opened the helicopter’s front passenger door. It was empty. He looked up at Genevieve. “Where is she?”

  “She wouldn’t wait for the blades to stop turning. She’s gone inside. She said she had to see you straight away.”

  Sam nodded. “Okay. Thanks for getting her.”

  Genevieve smiled. She knew how much he appreciated her, but it was rare for him to voice it. Every one of his crew worked hard and put a hundred percent into the job twenty-four hours a day. It’s what he expected from them and more often than not, what he needed. Genevieve said, “Go find her.”

  He found Elise coming back down the stairs from the bridge.

  She spoke before he could speak. “I’ve got the results from each of the samples.”

  “And?”

  “You’re not going to believe what they show.”

  Chapter Forty – Vatican City

  Sam sat down on an old leather armchair opposite John Wallis who sat behind the heavy oak desk of his office. A wooden placard read, Swiss Guard. Minister for the Future. Eight weeks ago, Sam had sat in the very same chair, when he’d first been introduced to the man. Since that day, he had no revelation as to what Wallis’s official title meant. Sam had found him because, among other things, Wallis documented the history of the Master Builders, going by a Latin name which meant, Witness to the Master Builders. It was a very old title, and it stretched back to the days of the Great Plague, when Nostradamus had accurately predicted a young monk in training would one day become the Pope. Wallis had been instructed to continue to perform the task of Witness, even though he had never met one of the great descendants.

  His eyes swept the office. It was scattered with unique memorabilia from history. An early edition of the Holy Bible, strange Mayan weapons given or taken during the spread of Catholicism to the New World, an incomplete world map showing the ignorance of the 16th century Conquistadors, photos of the various Heads of State from around the world – on closer inspection, Sam saw that Wallis was in the background of every one of them – it was obvious, the man provided specialized services to the Holy See above and beyond Pontifical Security.

  Wallis stared at him in silence. His hardened face perched in a permanent question, as if to say, I’m ready, let’s hear the truth. Sam quickly gave it to him; handing out the facts as they had been given to him. Even he hadn’t worked out why someone would do such a thing, or how it could have been achieved. None of it mattered. The fact was, he was happy to have been invited by the Church to find the truth, but now that it was out, it wouldn’t serve him or Tom any benefit in achieving their goal of finding Billie.

  “A hoax?” His eyes narrowed. “I was there with my own eyes. There was a damned wooly mammoth there frozen in solid ice!”

  Sam smiled, politely. It was all he could do. “Well that part was true.”

  “I don’t understand. You’d better start from the beginning.”

  “The wooly mammoth was dated as roughly 12,000 years old.”

  “So, the strange temple is at least that old?”

  “No. You have to remember the extinct creature was forced into the cavern by a slow moving glacier sometime in the past two thousand years. Only part of it had dropped into the lava tube, while the rest of it continued further into the mountain. The only remaining ice was what you saw a few days ago.”

  “Okay, what about the paintings?”

  “They were done around 300 A.D. give or take 50 years. But I’m willing to bet money that it was in April 286 A.D.”

  Wallis sat up in his chair, as though his rigid muscles could coax his mind into some sort of understanding. “You think it was Gregory the Illuminator?”

  “I do.”

  “You think he found the frozen wooly mammoth, a monster he knew died out long ago, and decided to impart some sort of crazy lie, so that future generations might... what… believe in Christianity?”

  Sam answered like a child in trouble, who knew that none would be adequate. “No.”

  “That Christianity was fake, because Jesus Christ was based upon another person who died ten thousand years earlier – I don’t understand – for what purpose could Gregory the Illuminator have possibly performed such a horrible hoax?” Wallis paused, as though his mind was still trying to make some sort of sense of the news. “Even if he went to the tremendous lengths required to achieve it, what about the Four Horsemen? What part do they play in all this?”

  Sam closed his eyes, waited for a moment and then spoke. “I’ve been thinking about the Four Horsemen and about Gregory.”

  “And?”

  “This isn’t some sort of juvenile hoax made up to get attention. This wasn’t for fun. It had to serve a purpose, and I think I might just know what it was.”

  “Go on.”

  “The entire elaborate deception was all designed to make us fo
cus on one particular thing – the time period. He wanted us to examine a very specific time. He wanted us to look at what happened roughly twelve thousand years ago.”

  “Why?”

  Sam swallowed. “I think he was trying to give us some sort of warning. What if he was trying to warn us that the disaster that caused the period of mass-extinction of twelve thousand years ago, was hurling toward us again?”

  Wallis spoke the words with a quiet solemnity. “The extinction of the human race.”

  Sam nodded in silence. He’d had the same concern. Eight weeks ago he’d discovered that the final vision Nostradamus had seen was the extinction of the human race, and somehow – Sam Reilly was the only person on earth who might have the power to change the outcome.

  It was Wallis who broke the silence first. “What about the Four Horsemen?”

  Sam said, “I’ve been thinking about that, too. What if the Four Horsemen were set up to act as a final defense against the imminent disaster? Like an ancient covenant to come into effect when the time was right.”

  “But how would they know when that was?” His face was etched with doubt and cynicism.

  Sam nodded. It was a hard stretch to believe. “What if Nostradamus wasn’t the first?”

  “You mean, what if someone else knew the future?”

  “Sure. What if that person knew a precise date for a cataclysmic event, and how to stop it, but no way to be certain that the Four Horsemen would achieve their goal?” Sam took a breath and then continued. “People die, stories change over seventeen hundred years. The remaining Four Horsemen may not exist.”

  “So?”

  “So, maybe that person saw that we’d have an unusually warm summer this year. He or she saw the snow, which capped the upper third of Mount Ararat, begin to thin. It would lead someone to fall into the cavern. Maybe they knew the shifting glacier would bring the frozen wooly mammoth from twelve thousand years ago into the lava tube and our plain sight. That the twist about the age of Jesus Christ was so compelling that no matter who found the cavern, the message would reach the Vatican – where you would contact me to become involved.

  “It’s a whole lot of what ifs for me to believe.” Wallis took a deep breath and then slowly breathed out. “Even if I did believe you, the fact remains, what are we supposed to do about it?”

  Sam smiled, and withdrew the pendant out from beneath his shirt. It was made of solid red garnet and its rider carried a longsword. “We need to gather the Four Horsemen.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Sam stared at Wallis as he took in all that he’d been told. Wallis’s face was hard and impassive. It was impossible to know what to make of it. The concept was impossible, yet the man had seen the impossible before.

  “Do you have any idea where they are?” Wallis asked.

  “No. I’ve been following a lead about a recent movement by the Master Builders in the hope of finding a temple where our friend, Dr. Billie Swan, is being held prisoner. It’s led us to search for something called the Third Temple – a pyramid we believe is in the Kalahari Desert.”

  “I wasn’t aware there were any pyramids that far south.”

  Sam smiled impatiently. “Yes, well we haven’t been able to find one either. That said, while we were searching for it, we were attacked by a strange man. Do you know what he told us his name was?”

  “No.”

  “He said his name was Famine and his time was now.”

  “Okay, so we find the Third Temple and we might find the rest of the Four Horsemen.”

  “The only problem is all of our leads have run dry.”

  “If there’s anything I could do to help I would, but right now, I think we’re both out of options.” Wallis stood up to shake his hand. It was a courtesy and at the same time a dismissal. “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll head back to the Maria Helena to follow up on some other leads.”

  Sam turned to face the door and then stopped. His eyes caught sight of the old world map hanging up on the wall. He’d spotted it before, but hadn’t taken any particular interest. It was only now that his eyes fixed on the date of production – January 1655.

  “Do you know when this map was surveyed?”

  Wallis seemed surprised by the question. “Not a clue. The date’s on there somewhere. 16 something.”

  “Then it’s not a fake?”

  “Absolutely not. Why would I have a fake map hanging on my wall?”

  “Why would you have a map you know nothing about?”

  “Touché.” Wallis smiled patiently. “It’s not a fake. It was taken during a period when the Catholic Church was sending missions to all corners of the globe to promote God’s will. Of course, God – in his almighty wisdom – chose to repeatedly sink a number of our ships in the process. That’s why his Holliness ordered a complete survey of the African coastline and that of South and North America. Why would you think it was a fake?”

  Sam apologized. “It just appears drawn incorrectly.”

  “How should I know?” Wallis grunted. “I’m not a cartographer.”

  “But you’re certain it’s not a forgery?”

  “No. Why are you so concerned with it?”

  “Because I’ve extensively studied maps of the region, dating as far back as 1655…”

  “And?”

  “This part here.” Sam pointed to a large bay along the west coast of Africa.

  “Yes?”

  “In my maps, the coastline starts all the way out here.”

  John Wallis shrugged indifferently. “Is that a big difference?”

  “It’s nearly ten miles.”

  “So? Lands change. Particularly sandy ones, it would appear. Why are you so interested?”

  “Because the last visitors to the Third Temple became shipwrecked there. Since then the sandy coast has shifted inward and outward a hundred or more times, like the turning of the tide. But if we know what the coast looked like during the same year the ship sank while at anchor, then I think Tom and I might just have a chance of finding her.”

  Chapter Forty-Two – Istanbul

  Dmitri waited just inside the dilapidated hovel Peter Smyth called home. He still wore a dark custom made suit, but had removed his sunglasses. He didn’t carry a handgun. Contrary to what popular culture and movies would have you believe, Interpol agents never did. And even if he had, Dmitri wouldn’t need it today. His hands were strong and his reflexes inhumanly fast. If Peter needed more persuasion, Dmitri was confident he knew how to provide it using his hands alone.

  He had been keeping track of Peter for the past three years. After finding information about the Third Temple, the man had become a problem for Dmitri. But all problems have solutions. He thought about ending this problem three years ago. In retrospect, he probably should have, but there was always the concern that maybe, just maybe, the man might lead him to what he was after – access to the Third Temple.

  So instead of killing him, Dmitri kept digital eyes on him. The man, frightened they were after him, had naturally gone to ground and removed all evidence of his life. In the past three years there were no records of any banking transactions, passport hits, credit, rental applications, cell phone use, or social media. As far as modern society was concerned, the man was already dead. Hell, if Dmitri had to kill him now, no one would ask questions – you can’t be punished for killing a ghost.

  But Peter hadn’t died and Dmitri never stopped watching him, or the progress that he made. The most recent of which, had genuinely surprised him. He could have guessed roughly where the Mary Rose had sunk, but given her location, he’d never bothered. It would be too difficult for him to reach a depth of 3000 feet and if he hired a team of professional divers to do so it could cost far more than he could afford, and bring dangerous attention to himself – from the others.

  He watched as the tile that hid the entrance moved. He waited until the tile had slid all the way to the side. When he was confident the tile cou
ldn’t be shifted back into place and latched from below, Dmitri stepped out of the shadow.

  “Hello, Peter – it’s been a while.”

  Peter stepped off the ladder below, trying to drop to the ground. He was quick, but Dmitri was faster. He gripped Peter’s wrist and pulled him up into the above ground section of the hovel. Peter twisted and wrestled to free himself.

  Dmitri looked at him, amused by the man’s efforts. His fingers were like a vice, and would simply dig deeper into his arm the more he struggled. Peter whimpered under the pressure. When he caught his breath, he redoubled his effort to escape.

  Dmitri shook his head. “I can do this up here – where THE OTHERS may be listening. Or we can do it downstairs and speak where they can’t listen.”

  Peter looked at him, his eyes wide with terror. “Okay.”

  “I’m going to let go so you can climb down all by yourself. If you try to do anything at all not to my liking, I won’t simply catch you again. I will extract what I’m after and then I’m going to give THE OTHERS the tracking code.”

  Peter glanced at the small tattoo on his wrist, where Dmitri had imbedded a GPS tracking chip three years ago. For an instant, Dmitri wondered how many times the man had considered lopping off his own wrist, simply to get away from it. Peter looked up and nodded in acquiescence.

  “Are you certain?” Dmitri’s voice was firm.

  “Yes.”

  Dmitri let go, and Peter hurriedly climbed down the stairs. His eyes glanced at the couch and then back to Dmitri. One glance and Peter stood perfectly still.

  “What do you want?” Peter asked.

  “You found the map, didn’t you?”

  Peter nodded.

  “Do you have it or do they?”

  “I have it,” Peter said. “It’s over there, resting against the wall.”

  Dmitri stepped toward the stone tablet. At a glance, he knew it was authentic. The timing couldn’t have been better. “Well done, Peter. It appears it was worth my while keeping you alive these past three years.”