“Yes.”
Lilith nodded and reached into the bathroom to place the towel on the sink. Then she walked slowly over to the bed. He lifted the blanket and she climbed in. They held each other for a long time. Church buried his nose in her dark hair, closed his eyes, and wished that he was another person. In another life. In another world.
Beyond the window, above the sprawling city, the wheel of night turned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
They sat up late into the night. Jennifer VanOwen was in a deep armchair, a glass of brandy cradled between her palms. She wore a cream-colored blouse and a dark pencil skirt. Efficient heels that gave her enough of a lift to shape her calves — something that mattered to her as one of many tools with which she shaped the reactions of the people around her. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and her makeup was understated, suggesting power rather than sex. Very deliberate.
The president was slumped on the couch, dressed in an expensive satin bathrobe and hand-sewn silk slippers. The residence was quiet because the rest of his family was away.
“Well, that didn’t work,” said the president. He’d said something like that half a dozen different ways, each time with added acidity.
“I did advise against it,” said VanOwen. “Ledger may be psychotic, but he is very dangerous. After all, he took down Howard Shelton and M3. He took down the Seven Kings, the Jakoby family, and other groups that should have been unbreakable. He broke them.”
“He needs to be locked the hell up.”
“He will be. If you let me handle it, we will neutralize any potential threat from him and the rest of the DMS.”
“I should just go ahead and cancel their charter,” growled the president.
“As I’ve explained,” said VanOwen patiently, “that would almost certainly backfire. Church still has friends in Washington. It’s much better if we leave him in place and see who steps up when he needs help. Then we have our list of targets. Then, once we remove his supporters, we can end the DMS.”
The president sat up and studied her intently. “Today was a total disaster.”
Of your making, she thought, but didn’t say it. What she said was, “We have all the best cards, Mr. President.”
He merely grunted.
“Besides, we have Majestic,” she said, “and neither he nor Mr. Church know that it has been completely rebuilt. Stronger than ever.”
“If Ledger is free, he’ll find out.”
“Not in time,” she said with complete confidence. “Not in time.”
INTERLUDE SEVEN
“It’s not possible,” said the chief geologist. “No way.”
Dr. George Svoboda was a stooped, hatchet-faced man who seemed outraged by the crack in the wall. Valen Oruraka and Aristotle Kostas stood with him as they examined the fissure that ran from floor to ceiling. Svoboda fumed because he had done all of the principal work on this site and had a global reputation as the go-to person for this kind of work. Even those colleagues who competed with him for grants seldom offered opinions contrary to his, and for good reason. He had literally written the book, the definitive scholarly texts, on the geology of South Pacific island substrata.
Marguerite did not argue with him. She and Rig stood to one side of the crack and let Svoboda work his way through his denial and anger. She caught Valen and Ari exchanging covert looks several times as Svoboda ran through various frequencies of denial, outrage, and anger.
“Stop yelling, for the love of God,” yelled Ari. “You’re hurting my damn head.”
The small, round Greek looked badly hungover and smelled of sweat, testosterone, wine, and sex. He looked like someone had dragged him down three flights of stairs. Marguerite had heard some sounds rolling over the surf from the expensive aluminum camper that had been airlifted in for him. Those sounds had been feminine, high-pitched, and it did not sound like anyone but Ari was having fun.
Valen stepped up and brushed the moss with his fingertips and peered close to watch how the stalks writhed. Rig offered him one end of a fiber-optic cable scope and fed the other end into the crack. When it was positioned, the scope sent high-definition video to Marguerite’s laptop, which rested on a folding chair. They could see that the supposedly solid wall was anything but. A few meters beyond where they stood was a kind of pocket, about the size of an old-fashioned phone booth, and it was choked with more of the moss, and with other foliage — unusual ferns and flowers and the roots of large plants.
“How is there this much plant life inside a solid wall?” asked Valen. “How is it flourishing? How is there photosynthesis in there? I’ve seen cave plants before and I’ve never seen colors as vibrant as that down in the darkness.”
“It’s one of the reasons I called you down here,” said Marguerite. “We can’t explain it. Chu is on the other side of the island, but I sent her some pictures of it.” Alice Chu was the team biologist. “She said that she couldn’t identify the moss, or any of the plants or flowers. She’s on her way here now.”
Ari glowered at Svoboda. “The fuck, man? You’re supposed to have checked every square inch of this place, and now someone else finds this?”
The geologist gave a stubborn shake of his head. “This section of rock is half a million years old. There are no vents to filter sunlight down into pockets like that. It doesn’t make sense.”
The two of them began yapping at each other until Valen roared at them to shut the fuck up. “Mistakes were made. It’s not going to do any of us any good to dissect the past. Right now we need to understand this find and what it may, or may not, mean for our project. That means we need to reassess this entire area.”
“It isn’t the mining operations,” insisted Svoboda. “It can’t be. You’re enough of a geologist to know that, surely.”
“Valen, Ari, listen,” Marguerite said quickly. “I didn’t call you here to see the plants or the pocket. There’s something a lot more important than that.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Ari. “Not interested in more bullshit.”
Marguerite smiled. “Rig, show them what we found.”
The grad student grinned and worked the fiber-optic tube so that the little camera turned and burrowed like a snake past the strange foliage.
Ari laughed, “You found some of the damned quartz. Why didn’t you…?”
His words trailed off and he stood staring. They all stared for a long, silent, astonished time.
“Dr. Svoboda,” said Valen in a voice that was far calmer than the burning excitement in his eyes, “you say that this section of wall is at least five hundred thousand years old. I’ve read all of your reports, and I’ve seen the rest of the results, the radiocarbon dating, all of that.” He touched the screen. “If that’s the case, then tell me what I’m seeing.…”
Nobody spoke.
They did not have to. What the thing was… well, that was obvious. It was a piece of Lemurian quartz. Quite beautiful in color and luminosity.
What none of them could explain, or even dared to try and theorize about, was that the green quartz was shaped like a weapon, but not a sword or spear or cudgel. No. That would have painted the day in different and more predictable colors. This was not any weapon of the ancient world.
There was a mound of something green and organic-looking partially blocking it. A dead lizard, perhaps. But it was obvious even to the least perceptive of them gathered in the cavern that the weapon was a handgun made from green crystal.