“Yeah.” Turcotte nodded. “It was the way The Ones Who Wait could infiltrate our government.”
“We have had our Ones Who Wait also,” Yakov said. “We don’t think they had an official organization here like your STAAR, but they had operatives infiltrated in the KGB and GRU.”
“And we believe that The Ones Who Wait destroyed Section Four,” Katyenka added.
“Why?” Turcotte asked.
“I don’t know,” Katyenka said.
“Maybe they were looking for something,” Yakov suggested.
“What?” Katyenka asked.
Turcotte wasn’t sure how much he should say in front of Katyenka. He noted that even Yakov didn’t answer that question, so he thought it best to keep quiet about the key also.
“Have you discovered anything about the KGB… FSB… archives?” Yakov asked Katyenka. “We need to be moving now.”
“There is a man at FSB headquarters. A very powerful man. His name is Lyoncheka. I think he is the one at FSB who knows of the Airlia. Who knows what secrets the KGB has kept hidden all these years. As my GRU has hidden records, I have heard rumors of an archives of artifacts and information maintained by the KGB about the Airlia. If anyone would know where it is, it would be Lyoncheka.”
Yakov stood. “I will look for him shortly. First, though, let us go to Stantsiya Chyort and discover what happened there and look for what we came here for.”
“Now that I have some leverage”… Mualama hefted the scepter in his hand —“we can call UNAOC.”
“Do you know where the Hall of Records is?” Lago asked.
Mualama smiled broadly. “This was where I thought it was. I think the Hall will be where I believe it is. Far from here.”
“Where?” Lago pressed.
“That was the promise Burton made… that he would not reveal what he had seen and where he had seen it. But I think I have figured it out.” Mualama tapped the side of his head. “That remains here. With this key and the knowledge, UNAOC will have to allow me to continue. And we will need their help to get to the next place.”
Mualama pointed toward the south rim of the crater. “Take the Rover and go to the lodge we passed on the way here. Call UNAOC in New York. Do not tell them what we have, only that we have discovered high rune writing. You can fax them a picture of the stone marker. Do not mention the scepter.
“Try to talk to someone who knew Professor Nabinger. Someone who can appreciate what we have found. Tell them we will meet whoever they send right here.”
Less than two miles from where Professor Mualama and Lago were scratching the dirt of the crater, deep under the mirrorlike surface of Soda Lake, Lexina was watching two of her kind die.
She stood over them, a tall, slender figure wearing a gray robe that was worn and dirty from her travel to this location. If Mualama had followed a difficult path to arrive at Ngorongoro Crater, then Lexina’s trial had been almost impossible. She’d walked south along the Great Rift Valley, one of the most inhospitable tracts of land on the face of the planet, dwarfing the Grand Canyon in length, running from southern Turkey, through Syria, between Israel and Jordan where the Dead Sea lay… the lowest point on the face of the planet. From there it formed the basin of the Red Sea. At the Gulf of Aden the Rift Valley broke into two, one part going to the Indian Ocean, the other inland into Africa. South of Ngorongoro Crater, the Rift Valley continued for hundreds of miles before ending in Mozambique.
She had swum out into Soda Lake the previous week and found the entrance to the remains of an ancient Airlia base, her new home after spending the past twenty-two years under the ice in Antarctica at Scorpion Base. She was the head of The Ones Who Wait. Since they had been forced to flee Scorpion Base, her small group had scattered across the globe to continue their tasks, but as always, it seemed like all they were doing was reacting to the forces of The Mission.
Her skin was pale and smooth, but the strangest feature visible were her red eyes with elongated pupils. She stood on a black metal floor in a circular room, approximately fifty feet in diameter. Light came from a series of blue, glowing tubes spaced along the vaulted ceiling.
She knew little of this base from the records her kind had kept other than that the Airlia had established it during the height of their domain on Earth. To find it, she had followed ancient markers from the kingdom of Axum.
One of her operatives, Elek, was in Qian-Ling but needed a key to access the lowest level. Two of her other operatives, Coridan and Gergor, had been the ones who destroyed Section Four’s base on Novaya Zemlya in their search for the key. In the process of leaving there, they had crossed the contaminated part of the island and now they were paying the price for their rush. However, they had brought her an artifact from the archives of Section Four… a black sphere that could make communications with the computer on the surviving talon. She had found instructions how to use it in the base’s data files and taken control of the ship from its autopilot.
The talon was badly damaged and low on power, but the main weapon system could still function out to a limited range, as it had done automatically in destroying the space shuttle Columbia approaching the ship; the weapon could also be used on a lower setting as a tractor beam, as Lexina had used it to draw in the Warfighter satellite. She had then established contact with the Warfighter’s main computer through the talon, using information STAAR had gathered over the years they had infiltrated the American space program.
Lexina knelt next to Coridan and Gergor and administered more pain medicine so that their distress would not interfere with her work. She knew they had only hours left. She was not overly concerned with their loss, because the previous day she had found a lab deep in the complex where there was equipment similar to what she had used at Scorpion Base to “grow” more operatives.
Reaching into each man’s shirt, she removed a gold medallion, shaped like two arms extended upward in worship, strung on a thin metal chain from around their necks and placed the object into her pocket.
She left the two and reentered the main control center for the complex. She had no idea what this place had been, nor did she know how the upper portion had been destroyed.
Her job for all her “life” had been to maintain the status quo. It had been easy as long as the truce held, but once the balance had been upset, things had been happening faster than her group could keep up.
She needed help. Taking tissue samples from both dying men, she went to a room filled with large vats. She loaded the cells into the base of two of the vats. The controls and setup were similar to what she had had at Scorpion Base. She inserted the samples and turned the machines on.
The Southern Star rolled and pitched in the rough fifteen-foot swells. The entire ship vibrated from the engines churning at full speed.
On the bridge, Captain Halls watched the deck as several of the passengers slowly moved along a rope from the forward cargo hatch to the galley below. He felt nothing for them and the misery they were currently experiencing. Idiots, in his opinion.
“Progressives” is what the newspaper called them, and Australia had been hopping full of the lot when he’d left Sydney Harbor to pick up this group in Tasmania. He had the most extreme on board, but there had been thousands of others who would have gladly joined this expedition. Of course, Halls had to be honest with himself: He had those who had been willing to pay the top dollar he had asked.