He had nowhere to go with that, because he hadn’t been aware of drawing the pistol. Or wanting to.
“Give me the gun, Harry,” said Violin.
“What?”
“Give it to me,” she said. “Do it now.”
“Oh… sure,” he said vaguely, and offered it to her.
Except that’s not what he did. His arm rose, but the barrel was pointing at a spot exactly between Violin’s breasts. He could feel his finger moving along the curve of the trigger guard.
“Harry… give me the…”
Violin’s voice melted into nothing. Into an absence of sound so profound that it was as if his ability to hear and perceive sound had been torn from him. As it happened, Harry felt totally detached from the motion of pointing the gun at her. In his head, it was as if a door every bit as strange and alien as the one they had seen a few moments ago had suddenly opened wide. He could not hear Violin’s voice. It was gone. All sound was gone, and in its place a silence as vast and deep as forever yawned like the mouth of some great, hungry thing.
Harry looked into it. Hearing nothing, but seeing so far. So deep. Into forever. He never saw Violin move. He did not feel his finger pull the trigger; never heard the shot. He did not hear the scream. Nor did he feel the ground beneath him begin to rumble and growl.
INTERLUDE TEN
They gathered around a dark blue Tyvek tarp Rig stretched out on the floor of the cavern. The guards stood at the exit, but even they craned their necks to see the green objects brought with great care from new pockets discovered in the walls.
“I can’t explain this,” said Svoboda uselessly. He’d said it so many times that it was now as much background noise as the dripping water.
“What is it?” asked Rig. The whole thing was so riveting that Valen noticed that Rig and Ari stood shoulder to shoulder despite everything that had happened. This was bigger than that. Bigger than anything.
“What it is,” said Marguerite, who knelt on the edge of the tarp, “is inarguably the greatest archaeological discovery in the history of the world. And I am not exaggerating. If the carbon and luminescence dating continues to come back with the numbers we’ve been seeing from the chips found in this cavern, then this will mean that history, as we know it, is wrong.”
They all looked at each other. It was what they’d all been thinking, but somehow hearing it aloud made it somehow more real. That’s how Valen took it, at least. More real.
He cleared his throat and knelt across from Marguerite. “First things first,” he said. “The dating is going to take some time, so we can’t let ourselves get caught up in wild speculations.”
“But—” began Marguerite, but he caught her eye and gave a tiny shake of his head and she fell silent.
“First, we need to determine what this thing is.”
They looked at the scattered pieces. Each one had been gently cleaned and placed on the tarp along with a small tag with a numerical code.
“It’s a machine,” said Rig. “What else can it be?”
There were more than three hundred pieces, ranging from some as large as a car battery to others that were clearly some kind of pin or fastener.
“What do we do, though?” asked Rig. His clothes were covered in rock dust and his eyes seemed to be filled with crazy lights. “I mean… can we put it back together?”
“No,” said Svoboda and a few of the others in a chorus of alarm.
“We don’t have a blueprint,” said Marguerite, trying to be a voice of reason.
“I can figure it out,” promised Rig. “I’m good at machines. My work-study job at MIT was repairing assistant engineer in the lab. I fixed everything from the processors on the electron microscope to the gears on that big industrial laser.”
“Kid’s telling the truth,” said Ari. “When the generator in the other cave blew, he fixed it like nothing.”
“Okay,” said Valen. “Kid, you just got a promotion. But every step gets documented. Marguerite will work with you on that. Pictures, video, complete notes. The works. Dot every i and cross every t.”
“History would never forgive us for making a mistake,” said Marguerite.
Valen nodded, though he was thinking of someone else who wouldn’t forgive him if there were any mistakes.
PART TWO
SHOCK WAVES
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Linden Brierley looked like a man who wanted to be anywhere else and do anything else rather than be here to meet her. That made Aunt Sallie sad.
He saw her seated at a side table and angled her way, bent to kiss her offered cheek, and slid in across from her. He wore a medium gray suit and colorful Michael Kors tie, and Auntie figured that it was a deliberate attempt to look like anything else except a former Secret Service agent. It didn’t work, though. He had too much of the Fed look, which was a less human and more anal-retentive version of the cop look. Anyone who saw him would mark him as what he used to be. Old habits died very hard.
“You look like shit,” she said.
Brierley took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, winced, sighed, put on the glasses again. “Thanks. Heaps.”
He looked down at her plate. “What in the hell is that?”
“Huevos rancheros. Four fried eggs topped with melted cheese and ranchero sauce, over crispy corn tortillas, rice, and black beans, served with breakfast potatoes.”
“Good Christ.” When the waitress came he ordered a decaf coffee, and gluten-free toast with a side of organic apple butter.
“Pussy,” sneered Aunt Sallie.
They were alone in their corner of the restaurant. In a confidential voice, Brierley said, “Listen, Auntie, about this thing with Ledger, I think you’re wasting your time coming down here. People talk about ‘executive whim’ as if it’s funny, but it’s not. It’s scary as hell. This president is unhinged and unfit for the job. I’ll take anyone of either party right now. Hell, I’ll take a sock puppet. Just give me someone who understands how Washington is supposed to work.”
“Corruption and all?”
“Corruption can be managed,” said Brierley, buttering his toast with so much aggression it bent the bread and scattered crumbs everywhere. “We’ve been working with corrupt politicians since the invention of special interests, so figure… about when they built Mesopotamia? Incompetence is dangerous.”
She toasted him with her Coke. Brierley frowned.
“Why are you drinking that? Especially this early in the morning. What happened to you being diabetic?”
“Everyone needs a day off.”
“Did you tell your diabetes that?”
Auntie snorted. “Stop being a sissy, Linden.”
They ate for a few moments in silence. Then Brierley pushed the plate of toast away. “Are you really planning on pushing this? No, don’t answer that. You wouldn’t have come all this way if you weren’t hopping mad. So, let me say this, and please listen to me, okay?”
She sipped her Coke and waited.
“If you push this, you won’t get anywhere. This isn’t the Washington you used to know. You can’t play cards with these people. You can’t call in old markers, because everyone is in a state of mildly controlled panic. Those who still have their heads screwed on right are staying out of the line of fire and making no waves at all until this passes. They’re afraid, and they’re right to be afraid. Careers are being ruined right now. Good people — Republicans and Democrats, even some Independents — are losing everything they’ve spent years building. When the smoke clears, none of us know what Washington is going to look like.”