She swung her arm forcefully, freeing herself.
The attacker stood up. He looked dazed and Elise thought she might still have a chance of reaching him. But then he took a couple steps back up the hill, retrieved his handgun and started shooting at her.
The monk threw himself onto her for protection.
Several shots went over their heads. When they stopped, Elise shuffled forward and spotted her attacker running away, wearing her backpack — taking with him the fourth sacred stone and the last hope for humanity.
She tried to chase after him, but the monk stopped her. “It is not worth it. He has the gun. All you will do is get yourself killed, and I can’t allow that.”
She shrugged, realizing he was right. “You have no idea how important the contents of that backpack were.”
The monk smiled. It was an ascetic face, old and withered, but full of kindness. “You think all is lost without the sacred stone?”
“All is lost without… hey, what do you know about the sacred stone?”
“I know that it is meaningless if you die.”
“What do you know about me?” she asked.
“We know lots about you. We’ve been expecting you for nearly a thousand years.” He smiled. “And we are so glad you’ve finally arrived, Elise.”
The monk started to walk toward the north. He moved with the speed and determined purpose of a much younger man. She had to work to keep up with him.
“Hey, where are you going?”
The monk didn’t slow down or give her an answer. If anything, he seemed to increase his pace.
“Hey, where are we going?” she persisted.
The monk stopped to face her. “To the Pidurangala Rock, of course — to complete the prophecy.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The Gulfstream G650 used every single one of its combined 33,800 pounds of thrust, produced by its two Rolls-Royce BR725 A1-12 engines in order to get off the island’s meager 2,907 feet of runway. Once free of the blacktop, it climbed steadily, before banking to the northeast for a direct route to Sri Lanka. Sam took one last glance at the green and azure waters of its tranquil lagoon and then picked up his satellite phone.
He pressed the call button.
It rang twice, before Elise picked up. “Sam?”
He breathed a long sigh of relief. “Elise! You’re all right. I’ve been trying to reach you for two hours!”
“Yeah, I’ve had some problems.”
“What happened?”
“I was attacked by the same man who tried to kill you at the Great Blue Hole in Belize.”
Sam expelled his breath silently. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Yeah, but I lost the fourth sacred stone. The man who took it said something about using it to save the human race — only he specified only the worthy few would be saved. Any idea what he meant or where he’s taking the stone?”
“Yes. The Secretary of Defense said there was a second stolen Göbekli Tepe stone. It was a map to a natural subterranean cavern, or ancient bunker, where a small colony of survivors may keep the human race alive. Apparently, a man named Leo Botkin, who was chosen to lead the colony, decided to turn it into a eugenics experiment, by filling the colony with people who have superior DNA.”
“So what do they care if we have one of the sacred stones?” Elise asked.
“The Secretary of Defense said that the material used in the construction of the stones appears to be identical to the asteroid that’s approaching. Her advisers believe that part of the asteroid broke off thirteen thousand years ago, landing as a meteorite somewhere on earth.”
“Go on?” Elise didn’t try to hide her confusion.
“There weren’t enough fragments of blackbody to construct the four sacred stones and protect the colony. The idea was if the four stones couldn’t be used to avoid the disaster completely, then one of them would be used to add an additional barrier of protection to the colony.”
“So we find the colony, we find the fourth stone?”
“Yeah.”
“Does anyone have any ideas?” she asked.
“No. But the Secretary of Defense must have some ideas.” He sighed, heavily. “Did you find the receptacle in Sigiriya?”
“Not yet. But a monk is leading me to where he believes the stone belongs.”
“Really? How would he know?”
“How, indeed?” Elise’s tone softened with curiosity. “He says that the local Buddhist monks have been expecting me for the past thousand years.”
Sam thought about what she said. They both knew she descended from one of the Master Builders, but other than that, her genetic past was a mystery. “Okay. You go see if you can locate the receptacle. I’m going to contact the Secretary of Defense and do my best to retrieve the remaining stone.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Sam contacted the Secretary of Defense and explained where they were at.
When he was finished, she asked, “What’s your next plan?”
“I need to get the stone back. Everything depends on it, which means you’re going to have to help me find the colony.”
“It will be difficult. The entire system was designed so those who remained couldn’t ever find it.”
“But?”
“I have my ways. I’ve been trying to narrow its location down and I’m getting close.”
“How?”
“In the past twenty-four hours a number of members of Congress and Defense Staff have taken a sudden leave of absence. Most had innocuous enough excuses. They had a cold, their children were sick. It wouldn’t have even been brought to my attention, except that so many had done so on the same day.”
“They were escaping to the colony?” Sam asked, incredulous.
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“We brought them in of course. They were all catching flights, along with their families, to Moscow. Nearly a hundred people in total. All experts in their fields. Perfect citizens for the new world.”
“Did they reveal the location of the colony?” Sam asked.
“Not yet. They’re being interrogated right now, but they won’t say.”
“No one can hold out indefinitely,” Sam persisted.
“They can if they don’t know anything. They would have told me the truth if they had known it. You have to remember, these people know the world is ending, and right now they’re about to be on the wrong side of an ancient bunker when it does.”
“So they’ll talk?”
“If they knew anything they would. Apparently, they were supposed to fly into Moscow where a private jet would take them to the colony.”
“Had any of them been there before?”
“Yes.” She sighed, heavily. “But that didn’t help much. They didn’t have maps or anything to tell where they had been flown.”
Sam persisted. “What did they know?”
“The colony was four hours away from Moscow by jet. The ground near the colony was always frozen. There was a lake. From the sky, the lake was shaped like a big boot. In the middle of the lake was an island and what looked like the cooling tower of a nuclear power station. But other members of the party have since rejected this statement, saying that the colony was powered by an enormous geothermic generator.”
“So we’re looking for a Russian lake, shaped like a boot and a geothermic cooling tower?” he asked.
“Beneath which, an enormous volcanic cavern provides an ancient bunker,” she added.
“I take it no one’s located such a place by entering those details into the Geographic Information System?”
“No. We’ve tried. It didn’t work. There’s nothing even close to those descriptions that use geothermic power.”