by A D Davies
“You think... it’s magic? Cause that’s nonsense.”
“Unfortunately, it seems ‘nonsense’ is the only explanation. I watched what you did. We don’t know for certain if that chemical reaction is what actually happened in the water, but all my research, all my tests... it makes sense. I know I’m just theorizing, but what you did... it’s not out of the question using modern technology. Technology that my companies have tried to develop. Electro-manipulation of molecules, of the gluons that hold matter together, changing one thing into something else.”
Jules allowed a small laugh. “That’s one of your attempted cures, huh? Another failure?”
“Correct again. My, you are just the best. But after what you’ve seen... ancient jewelry sparking to life at your touch, your commands creating a tsunami through sheer willpower...”
“Thought it wasn’t jewelry. A key, that’s what you said.”
A pause.
Then, although Jules couldn’t be sure, he could almost hear the happiness in Valerio’s voice. “Yes, a key. But what does it open? Where does it lead? Haven’t you ever wondered? I mean truly wondered about the item your mother kept safe all those years? She never let you touch it but gave it such value. Died trying to protect it. Then you, all these years later... do you believe you are brain damaged, Jules? Do you believe anyone can be so obsessed with retrieving an object that he forsakes every other aspect of his life without a deeper meaning? Some other outside urge driving you?”
When Jules could not answer, Valerio went on.
“Yes, you were right, I think, about the genetic quirk. You are bonded to the Aradia bangle. Those African tribes the Romans plundered, they knew certain individuals commanded its power. When I say you’re special, Jules, I don’t mean like God reached down and blessed you. I mean you have... something... that others do not.”
“Ain’t we all special in that way?”
Valerio laughed. “That’s your elementary school teacher talking. In reality, you’ll never know for sure what lies inside you, not if you disappear and drop the bangle in a box for the rest of your life. You need to explore this. Not shut it away.”
“I can do what I want.”
Valerio’s tone grew strained, as if he were holding back another tantrum, but he kept it under control. “Where’s your logic now? You’ve seen things you never thought you would. Feats that shouldn’t be possible... the light, the vibrations, that ridiculously cool water flume. Aren’t you interested in what makes your mom’s legacy so very... special?”
“Man, you don’t give up, do you? It’s just a rock that reacts with the oils from my skin, with water. And saltwater makes it a more violent reaction. Probably laced with strontium or barium or some compound that increases those water reactions.”
“Wow, someone paid attention in chemistry! You know about the earth metals. Neat. But none of them react like that, not that strongly. And what about you? Your ability, your brilliance?” His voice cut out momentarily, the cell service waning.
“I’m not special. I got higher than average cognitive skills, but I ain’t a superhero. Just know a lot about a lot. And I still say the wave is a fluke. I don’t care about those answers.”
Another long pause punctuated by heavy breathing, an angry man attempting to sound reasonable.
“So what’s next, Jules? Sure, if it was just one of those things, fine. But combine it all—the genetics, the light shows, the clues leading to an ancient tomb, the sheer power demonstrated minutes ago. Any one of those events or facts in isolation is a fluke, an anomaly.”
He cut out for another second.
“Jules, a week ago you were a street rat robbing criminals of their ill-gotten gains. After all you’ve seen this week... you think you can settle down, start a new life? Sit at home watching football, eating Cheetos, feeling your six-pack turn into a keg? Even if you keep up with your fitness, your abilities, what then? Go to college surrounded by normal folks? Get a job? Where? In a bar? A library? A call center? Plenty in India if you want to go that route.”
Jules pressed the cell phone to his ear, not comprehending why, exactly, he was listening. He eased off the throttle to slow his escape from the cell tower’s signal.
“But no,” Valerio said, “you’ve seen what that bracelet can do, and you’ve seen what I’ll do to possess it. You’re worried about why I want it? Well you’re right. I’m dying. Donors might help prolong my life, but there’s no permanent fix. I am tainted at the genetic level, the way you are blessed at yours. The tomb of the first priest? His original gospel... that might be the answer. The book you stole from me, it writes of regenerating dead tissue. Thomas, the doubting apostle, he likens it to the risen Christ and again doubts Christ’s divinity. If anyone can rise, does this make Christ special? He says yes, though, because this tomb... it cannot bring you back from the dead the way Jesus returned. No, Jesus was different, so I think we’re best leaving that to the Bible. I only care about the tomb, Jules. Thomas’s tomb. It fixes people. Broken people, not dead ones. All because of your ‘quirk.’ And maybe, just maybe, your mom carried that quirk too. Maybe she knew what it did. Maybe the tomb is her legacy. Not the trinket.”
Jules came to a full stop.
Valerio was saying things Jules hadn’t considered before, revealing secrets from the text even Bridget couldn’t decipher.
“Lot of silence coming from your end, Jules. You’re thinking about it. You’ve got the bug haven’t you? Through all your psychological troubles, all your obsessive traits, you’re starting to understand what Toby and Bridget understand, what Colin Waterston understands, what I have understood since long before you and I met in Prague... you need to know. You can’t just put it on a fire mantel or in a display box or wear it on your wrist like some hipster archeologist sauntering around Bushwick. You have to know, don’t you?”
Jules lowered the phone, cutting the throttle entirely. The pitch and roll fogged his vision. No, not the movement. Tears. Tears obscured it all. His plans for the future, once so clear, were now tainted by Valerio’s words. And not because the man was a manipulative psychopath but because he was right.
After all Jules had learned this week, the sights, the feelings, the sheer escalation of the questions he’d long thought could never be answered... those questions resurfaced. His teenage self demanded he explore them, reaching from the past to close his throat and conceive of trusting a madman capable of killing him just for kicks.
“You got influence,” Jules said. “With the authorities.”
“I do.”
“Then tell ’em this was all a show you put on for your guests. Got outa control. Offer to pay for the damage, a bit extra to whatever fake funds they use to accept bribes round here. You get Toby, Bridget, and the others outa jail. No charges. No records. Nothing.”
No hesitation. “Deal.”
“I’m gonna hole up till morning. Eight a.m., I call Bridget’s phone. They’re all unharmed, free to go, I’ll cooperate. Clear?”
“I could have them call you.”
“Nuh-uh. I won’t have a phone with me.”
Jules hung up, dropped the cell over the side in case it could be tracked, and swung the launch north on a random heading to take him closer to shore. If he didn’t know where he was going, no one else could guess either.
But at least, even if he was handing himself over to the devil, Bridget and the others would be okay, and Jules could die in the knowledge that he did all he could—for them and for himself.
Part Six
It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways —Buddha
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self —Aristotle
Chapter Thirty-Six
The random place Jules decided on was a beach sixty miles up the coast after three hours of freezing travel on a sea that ranged from lake-smooth to scarily rough. He soon spotted a cluster of electrical
lights inland, so he beached the launch and dragged it up the sand. He camped under the stars on scrubland atop the dunes, where he slept on a bed of lifejackets, wrapped in a blanket, with a mosquito net he found on board propped over him using driftwood found nearby.
He woke with the sun, jerking to full consciousness, convinced for a second that he was covered in snakes, spiders, and crabs. No. He was fine.
As fishermen schlepped rowboats to the sea, Jules trekked the opposite way, up a dusty path toward a village. Everyone was thin, most wearing wraparound clothes of various bright colors, and the place stank of animals and their feces. The wooden houses stood on stilts, presumably to mitigate flooding, and each person he passed ceased what they were doing and stared at the young black man walking among them in a filthy tuxedo.
He made the universal thumb-and-little-finger gesture for “phone” without success. Eventually, toward the end of the village, he found a store of sorts, one that sold very little: dried meats, shriveled vegetables, bottled drinks, and canned goods he didn’t recognize. A pay phone hung in one corner, but he had no coins. Just a roll of large-denomination dollars.
The old man behind the cash register was all gums, with very few teeth, grinning at Jules with the comprehension of a hamster at feeding time. Jules pointed at the phone and offered a hundred-dollar bill.
The man’s eyes widened, and his gums stuck out farther. Then he looked sad, shrugged his shoulders, and opened the till with a clunk. It contained half-full cups of coins worth maybe ten bucks total. Jules pointed at the heaviest-looking coins and then the phone, eyebrows bobbing in query. The shopkeeper nodded. Jules placed the hundred down and took the cup to the phone.
He lifted the receiver and found a rotary dial and four different-size slots. He fed the slots, and after a degree of trial and error, he figured out the system, dialed a number, and listened to a trilling through the earpiece.
“Hello?” It was Bridget. “Jules?”
“Yeah. You all out?”
“They put us in a minivan and drove us to Surat.”
“Where’s that?”
“The small airport we flew into yesterday. A long way outside Mumbai. I think they’re letting us go.”
“Good. You okay? All of you?”
“Yeah, they even got air conditioning. What did you do?”
Jules closed his eyes a moment. All the things he wanted to say stuck in his chest. Not Hollywood mush or big declarations, but a desire to express sorrow, regret, perhaps a hope they’d meet again and explore whatever brewed in their brief time together. And not only with Bridget. He’d teetered on the brink of actual friendship with LORI.
“Tell the others I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll try and find you when it’s over.”
“When it’s—”
Jules hung up on her. Fed the phone. Dialed the “Minion Number 1” phone number he memorized before ditching Valerio’s cell. Someone answered after three rings.
“You tracing this call?” Jules asked.
“Of course,” Valerio replied. “Now we’ve had the time to set it up.”
“Good, because I ain’t got the faintest idea where I am. There’s a beach nearby. I’ll be waiting.”
In the deserted café overlooking Surat Airport’s runways, Bridget swung between boredom and utter frustration. LORI’s release involved paperwork. A lot of it. The government official in the cheap suit presenting them with statements and nondisclosure agreements did not speak much English beyond the basics and exuded a gruff manner that suggested he’d rather be anywhere but there. So Bridget sat back while Toby took the lead. He even fielded a call from his former protégé Colin Waterston.
The curator shouted and cursed, his voice clear through the earpiece. Toby tried to reason with him, offering to spill everything they learned in exchange for Colin’s promise to stop Valerio. Toby insisted that Colin had the resources, the clearance, the law enforcement personnel, but was cut off constantly. Eventually, Toby relented and listened for an extended period while Colin appeared to speak calmly.
Afterward, Toby explained, “He is locked down. All foreign intelligence is under house arrest across the country. Someone with huge influence has acted here. Colin cannot help us. Cannot interfere anywhere on Indian soil.”
“So, it wasn’t him who sprung us from jail,” Dan said.
Charlie shook her head. “Valerio Conchin isn’t that powerful. Is he?”
“Money and promises,” Toby said. “All he needs is a couple of politicians, and people like Colin are out of the game completely. In fact, Colin stated openly, it is up to us to stop him. If we can.”
It elicited a wan smile. Bridget sensed Toby’s satisfaction at getting one over on his protégé for the first time in years, but no one was feeling it. Ego-driven victories lay under a heavy shadow.
“I think Colin is more worried about Valerio than he let on,” Toby continued. “He tried to cut us out, but now...”
“Now he can’t break international protocol,” Harpal finished for him. “But we can.”
“Yet we’re being deported,” Charlie said.
“At least we’re not in prison.” Bridget found her voice weak and timid and injected what her momma called chutzpah into the next words. “Thanks to Jules.”
All eyes landed on her, disbelieving.
“How you figure?” Dan said.
Bridget told them she believed Jules had made a deal with Valerio to set them free, but after witnessing the power of the Aradia bangle and its red twin, no one expressed any gratitude.
“We’ve held objects that appear odd before,” Toby pointed out. “Even some with a curious energy to them. But nothing equal to that.”
“I remember,” Charlie said, and no one needed to be reminded what had happened to her husband on that misadventure. “Which makes what Jules did all the more stupid.”
“He’s hurting.” Bridget pressed her fingers into her palms to form tight fists. “Can’t you see? He left us because he knew the cops were waiting and thought he could escape if y’all fell in with him. Because he was right. He was right in Rome and he was right in Mongolia. We’d be home by now.”
“Home?” Harpal said. “Already?”
“Fine, we’d be on the way.” Bridget released the fists and sighed. “Do you have to be so pedantic?”
Harpal held his hands open in surrender. “Sorry, but... Charlie’s right. Valerio has the bangles, the full manuscript, and a translation... we have nothing except a... a best guess.”
The official pointed at another paper, which Toby signed and passed down the line. Another confidentiality clause relating to the incident at the marina.
Toby said, “Maybe we could rouse Tina Trussot. She might remember something from her translation.”
Dan signed his name on the latest missive. “Why bother? He don’t want our help.”
“Because...” Charlie reigned in her obvious frustration, signed her name, and passed it on to Bridget. “Because it’s not about him. It’s about stopping Valerio getting hold of whatever’s in the tomb.”
“What if he just wants to heal?” Toby said.
Harpal’s turn to sign. “What if it’s a moot question? We have no clue where to start looking.”
“Interpol?” Bridget suggested. “Call Colin back, explain it.”
“Sadly,” Toby said, “that may be our only option. Come clean. Give him everything and hope—”
Charlie’s phone trilled with a high-pitched birdcall. Just once. A tone tailored for one purpose only. Everyone looked at her. They glanced between one another in confusion. Charlie slipped her phone out of her pocket. Held it up to her face. The light bathed her features in an off-white glow.
The Indian official coughed and pointed at the latest sheet of paper he’d flourished from his ring binder. His hooded eyes emitted a disgruntled boredom that Bridget clocked but ignored. With an absent expression, clearly engaged in her phone, Charlie signed and received her stubby military knife back,
still sealed in an evidence bag.
“Where?” Toby asked.
“North, up the coast,” Charlie replied, snapping back to the business at hand.
The noise from Charlie’s phone was fed from the Demon Server, a noise that only sounded when someone bit down on a tracking pod. The alert came from a distress beacon. And only one person not present carried one of those at the back of his mouth.
For the first time this week, the warmth of certainty swelled within Bridget. After days of guessing, chasing, living in fear, she finally found something solid on which to act. “It’s Jules! He wants us to help him.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
As soon as he confirmed the eight-man Indigo inflatable was his taxi off the beach, Jules swallowed the tracking pod, having rolled it around his tongue for an hour between bites of canned fruit he bought from the shop. Horse said nothing as Jules waded out to the shallows, tossed the dry bag in, and hopped on board. The Ravi brothers eyeballed him through bruising that Jules was sure had not been his handiwork.
During his escape, one of them took an elbow to the jaw and the other suffered a choke hold, so these injuries must have been inflicted by either their boss or by the punishment dished out by the explosive wave.
The Indigo shot across the bay, the fishermen in their tiny boats impassive, as if this were an everyday occurrence. They reached the mother ship in minutes, not the Lady Mel, but a smaller craft, a mere sixty-footer, on which Valerio stood atop steps that lowered smoothly on a gimbal. Without waiting for an invitation, Jules snatched up the bag, ascended the stairs, and stood before Valerio.
The yellow-skinned mogul now wore tan cargo pants, a white cotton shirt, and a tan fedora. Like the bad guy in a Tarzan movie. “You know, I could say something very cheesy.”
