“Not much. He said someone called Reece hired Danny to work with him on something. You heard of him?”
“Dominic Reece. They all went down in that chopper, didn’t they? I’m sorry, man.” Jabba’s expression tightened. “Vince told you he thought they’d been murdered? All of them?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He didn’t want to lose his thread. “He said they were working on some kind of bio-sensor project. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No. But Vince and Danny were close. Closer than close. He might have told him something in strict confidence. Something he wasn’t supposed to spread around. Like maybe the patents hadn’t been applied for yet. In our business, one slip of the tongue could lose you a billion-dollar advantage.”
Matt rubbed the exhaustion from his eyes. The sign over Greenland was on the screen again, taunting him. It was hypnotic, and Matt was finding it hard to take his eyes off it. “You and Vince. That night. He cut the conversation short, didn’t he?”
Jabba nodded.
“What was the last thing he said? Do you remember?”
Jabba concentrated. “He didn’t say it. I did. I was just saying that it looked like the air itself was being lit up. Like the air molecules themselves were on fire. Only that’s not possible.”
Matt studied the grainy image on the screen. “What if it is?”
“Setting the air on fire? I don’t think so.”
“What about a laser, a projector . . . something that needs the skill set of one hell of a programmer.”
Jabba just shook his head. “Nothing I know of can do that. And if anyone else knew how it could be done, they’d be on every channel.”
Matt shut his eyes and leaned back, frustrated. He was having a hard time concentrating and getting his head around it all. It didn’t help that he was running on empty. He was exhausted, physically as well as mentally. He hadn’t slept for well over twenty-four hours, hours that he hadn’t exactly coasted through. And it didn’t look like whatever it was that had him in its grip was about to let go anytime soon.
“There’s a reason they killed Vince. And it has to do with what happened to Danny and the others. Whether this damn sign is real or not, someone’s doing something.”
Jabba’s face sank. “And you want to find out who’s doing it.”
“Yep.”
Jabba looked at him like a kid studying a three-eyed panda at the zoo. “Are you nuts? ’Cause that’s the wrong play, dude. The right play is we lose ourselves until they’re done with whatever it is they’re doing. We disappear, maybe drive up to Canada or something, we sit tight and we wait until it’s all blown over.”
Matt eyed him like he was now the alien species. “You think?”
Jabba frowned, a bit discomfited by Matt’s sardonic expression. “You asked me what made me and Vince think we could figure this out. What makes you think you can? I mean, what are you, an ex-cop or something? Ex-FBI? Some kind of ex-SEAL special ops hard-ass maybe?”
Matt shook his head. “You’ve got me pegged on the wrong side of that fence.”
“Oh, well that’s just wonderful,” Jabba groaned. He shook his head again, then his tone turned serious. “Dude, seriously. These are bad people. We’re talking about guys who kill people by the chopper-load.”
Matt’s mind was elsewhere.
Jabba could see it. “You’re not listening to me, are you?”
Matt shook his head.
Jabba’s face sank again in exasperation. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”
Matt ignored the question. “Can you find out who else was on that chopper? What their specialties were? And also . . . who was funding them?”
Jabba sighed. “Like I have a choice?” He reached into his backpack and pulled out his laptop.
Matt pointed at it. “Think you can get an Internet connection in this dump?”
“I seriously doubt they have wi-fi here, but . . .” Jabba held up his iPhone and flashed Matt a cheesy, knowing look. Then he remembered and his face clouded. “Forgot. Can’t use this. Dammit.” He rubbed his face with his meaty fingers, thought about it, then looked up. “Depends on what you need. I can fire it up for forty seconds max. Any longer than that and they’ll get a fix on where we are.”
Matt grimaced. “You get that from watching 24, or is this for real?”
Jabba held up the phone. “Dude. First thing I did when I bought this thing? I took it apart to jailbreak it. Just to piss off AT&T.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’ve set it free. I can hook up its Edge data connection to my laptop.”
“Okay. But just to play it safe, maybe the guy at reception’ll let you use his computer.”
Jabba frowned. “Why? What else do you need?”
“A little update,” Matt said. “On where our friends with the Chrysler are hanging out.”
Chapter 32
Mountains of Wadi Natrun,Egypt
Father Jerome looked very different than Gracie had imagined. That didn’t surprise her. In her experience, people often looked different in the flesh than they did in pictures or on film. Occasionally, the change was for the better, though mostly—and more commonly these days, given the amount of Photoshopping that went on—it led to disappointment. In this case, Gracie had expected him to look different, given what he’d been through since the last coverage she’d seen of him. And he was: thinner, more gaunt-faced, seemingly more fragile than she remembered. But even here, in the light of three gas lanterns and a few scattered candles in the oppressively dark cave, his eyes, a piercing green-gray that blazed out of the tanned corona of his face, were more captivating than on film and made up for any frailty his recent ordeal had exacerbated.
“So you don’t remember anything at all of your journey?” Gracie asked him. “You were out there for weeks, weren’t you?”
“Three months,” the old man answered, his eyes never leaving hers. Gracie, Finch, and Dalton had been pleasantly surprised by the fact that he hadn’t refused to see them. Far from it, he’d been warm and welcoming. He was unperturbed, his voice unwavering and soothing, his words clear and slow. He hadn’t lost the trace of Spanish that colored his words. Gracie had immediately warmed to him, no doubt predisposed by her great admiration for the man and the selflessness and humility he inspired.
“And it’s just . . . blank,” she added.
“It’s not something I’ve ever experienced. I have vague recollections, fleeting images in my mind . . . Walking, alone. I can see the sandals on my feet, walking in the sand, the endless landscape surrounding me. The blue sky, the burning sun, the hot air . . . I can smell it, I can feel the heat on my face, the hot air in my lungs. But that’s all they are. Snippets. Momentary flashes of consciousness in an otherwise blank slate.” He shook his head in despair, slightly, to himself, as if chiding himself for that failing.
Although Dalton and Finch were sitting there with her in the cave, along with the abbot and Brother Ameen, Gracie had decided not to ask for this first interview to be filmed. It hadn’t been an easy decision. Although she felt it was best to spend a bit of time with Father Jerome first, to get to know him, to get him comfortable with them, she also wasn’t sure how he’d react to seeing the footage of the signs in the sky. And she felt uneasy and disingenuous at the thought of springing the news on him with a camera rolling.
She glanced up at the roof of the cavern. The white swirls, unsettling representations of the sign she’d witnessed over the ice shelf, were all over it.