Old Earth (30 page)

“No, it reminds me of…” Kritz searched her memory. “Maybe it was in…” She thought more. “Describe it.”

“Like you see here. Just totally black, but with a high gloss to the touch. You can feel it, but you can’t see it. Weirdest thing I’ve ever encountered.”

“Got it.” Kritz looked for answers in the ceiling and around the room. Nothing immediately came to her. “Maybe it was in an old book.”

“How old?” Katrina followed up. Her heart was racing.

“I don’t know. Old.”

“More specific?”

“I’m trying to remember. Archival old.”

Kritz taped the photographs again.

“Maybe something from the 1800s. I’ll give it more thought. Maybe it’ll come to me.”

They sat silently for minutes. Kritz broke the silence with a different thought.

“I can’t speculate on what you have seen,” Kritz volunteered. “I can talk about who may be after you.”

“How?” Quinn wondered.

“Deduction.”

Katrina and Quinn were ready to listen to any theory, plausible or incredible.

“I’ll start with the basic truth. You discovered a secret.”

“No argument there,” McCauley agreed.

“So, let’s make a list of whose secret it could be.”

“Good idea,” he acknowledged.

Kritz went to her desk for a yellow pad.

“Okay, don’t bother explaining why, just list what comes to mind.” She handed them the pad and a pencil.

“Like?” Katrina said needing some prompting.

“Like big and small; obvious and outlandish.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“Come on. Think paranoid, Katrina. Who’s after you?”

McCauley took a stab at creating the list. He called them off as he wrote.

US Government
Army
Air Force
CDC

Katrina understood now. She added her own thoughts.

Research Corporations
Think Tanks
CIA
NSA

“Can I be honest with you?”

“Please,” Katrina and Quinn both said.

“Too ordinary.”

“But you said obvious,” Katrina replied.

“I did. But go outrageous.”

Kritz rose again and went to her bookshelf. She pulled a number of volumes while her guests threw out additional guesses.

Halliburton
Black Ops
Area 51 guys

“More!” Renee implored.

A rogue corporation
Aliens

“Okay, now based on what you
think
could be possible, eliminate those that don’t meet that test,” she said from the other room.

Katrina took the pencil from Quinn. She had no idea what to cross out.

Renee returned with a set of books. She put them on the table, examined their list and picked up another pencil. “At this point, there’s no logic, only supposition. So here’s what I’d remove.” Renee proceeded to cross off
everything
.

“Oh, shit,” McCauley proclaimed. Then, “Sorry for my language.”

“It’s okay,” Kritz said. “I’ll explain.” She pointed to each. “Too new, too new, too new,” she said thirteen times. On the final, “aliens,” she exclaimed, “Wouldn’t that be fun. But no.”

Katrina posed the natural follow up. “Then who? Or what?”

“Well, I’d go for something more unusual. And we should reframe the question. To my thinking, ignore what you’ve found. Think about this as a cover-up.”

Katrina didn’t follow.

Kritz cleared her throat. “Whoever is after you is real. They may not have created it…whatever
it
is. But they’re trying to keep your discovery from the public. Actually, more than that, from public scrutiny. Their goal is to protect, not expose. And that, my dear friends, brings us to secret societies.”

She dropped eight books squarely on the dining room table.

“What kind of secret society?” McCauley asked. “Like Skull and Bones? Bilderberg? Freemasons? And what the heck is that religious sect?”

“Which one? There are so many,” Kritz replied.

“You know.”

“The Illuminati?”

“Right. Them,” he said. “What about them?”

“Come on, that’s not the real world,” Katrina argued.

Kritz disagreed. “Debatable, but, I’d say we should go beyond the usual suspects.”

“So who?” Quinn wondered.

“Well, the trouble with secret societies, really secret ones, is that they are secret. I did a master’s thesis on them and after I ran through a litany of organizations, my faculty advisor came back with the stupidest comment in the history of the world.”

“I’ll bite,” Quinn said. “What?”

“ ‘Admirable research, but I haven’t heard of half of these.’ What an ass!” she added. “But instead of calling him out I politely stated, ‘That’s why they’re
secret
societies.’ ”

Quinn laughed. He knew the type all too well.

“Where do we go from here?” Katrina asked, returning to the subject at hand.

“Don’t know. In the meantime, what’s your next step?”

“Well, we’ve got a couple more people to track down. One is a French explorer named Bovard,” McCauley explained.

“I’ve heard of him. He did some research with National Geographic. The other?”

“A Vatican scientist.”

“Oh?”

“Why
oh
?”

“It ups the stakes. Who recommended you look there?”

“The guy we met in California. The one whose house was blown up.”

Kritz nodded. “And he pointed you to Rome?”

“Yes. Is that meaningful?”

“Not sure. But there’s something about Rome and the Church that takes me back to that sketch again. Damn.”

“So what’s in the books?” McCauley asked.

“A lot of crap and maybe some gold, but let’s read.” Kritz slid a book to each of them.

“Since you just mentioned the Church, let’s start with this one.” She opened the brown leather cover and leafed through to the title page and copyright. “The author was an American minister, Peter Rosen. It’s pretty rare. Here. Enjoy
The Catholic Church and Secret Societies.
”

“But you said… ,” Katrina started to say.

“Not the usual suspects,” Kritz interrupted. “It’s for background.”

“Okay, let’s have at it,” McCauley stated.

“The reverend opens quoting a note written by Pope Leo XIII to a cardinal. ‘
Christ is the Teacher and The Example of all sanctity and to His standard must all those conform who wish for eternal life.
’ Standard stuff. However, the book takes an interesting look at how secret societies began to flourish in the US on university campuses, through men’s groups, and some religious organizations that could find something to hang their hats on and get their membership cards stamped.

“But Reverend Rosen also gives us the common denominators we may be looking for. Here.” Kritz began to read from Chapter 1.

By a secret society was formerly meant a society which was known to exist, but whose members and places of meetings were not publicly known. Today we understand it to be a society with secrets, having a ritual demanding an oath of allegiance and secrecy, prescribing ceremonies of a religious character, such as the use of the Bible, either by extracts therefrom, or by its being placed on an altar within the lodge room
.

Kritz stopped to make an observation. “The key takeaway from the passage is that
a secret society is a society with secrets
; keeping something secret that they hold dear and making certain anyone else who learns about it will not use the secret. Follow?”

Quinn and Katrina nodded.

“Further in the chapter, ‘
Most of all ranks in public and private life belong to secret societies. The character of many of these people is such that it is sufficient proof in itself that the final aims and object of these societies are not understood by them.
’”

“What does that mean?” Katrina asked. “Is the church…?”

“Not the church. The society. It means they’re vulnerable. Secret societies may exist under the radar, but they have a public face somewhere and since they’re run by people, they’ll ultimately make human mistakes. Or at least, you’d hope so.”

Fifty-five

JUNE 21, 1633
ROME

Galileo fully recognized it was not just the Church he faced. Father Maculano was charged with a goal greater than defending the faith. He was protecting the institution.

“You believe that science justifies your vaulted intellectual pursuits; that your ideas are as limitless as the skies. They are not. We live with laws of the state and our firmly held Canon Laws. When it comes to standing up to you, Galileo Galilei, they are one and the same. You are a threat; a threat that cannot be permitted an audience or a place in history.”

“I’m merely a thinker with no political power.”

The priest grasped the point. “A thinker?
Thinking
is the root of political power—proposed by Plato, re-defined by Aristotle, and re-interpreted by heretics and outcasts ever since.
Thinking
leads to the organization of apostates who espouse the secular rather than the holy. We can’t afford thinkers, Galileo. We cultivate followers and believers. And so, by your own admission you are a thinker?”

“I am.”

“Then your guilt is solidified.”

“It isn’t the Holy Inquisition that judges me or seeks to purge the name of Galileo Galilei from history. You represent something else.”

“The Inquisition suffices for our purposes. And our decision will serve all purposes.”

Galileo sat again and rested his head in his hand.

“Perhaps your head hurts from all your thinking. It should. Your thoughts do the work for me.”

“Thoughts, observations, intellectual pursuits. I have no arrows in a quiver; no knives in a sheath.”

“Words that undermine faith are equally dangerous weapons. You are well-armed with those,” Maculano resumed. “So is research that threatens how things ought to be.”

Galileo considered his next words carefully. He spoke slowly and with conviction.

“I did not understand what I had come across. My interest was in my experiments. Though I somewhat described it to my two friends, I did so as a fantastic story. Bedtime tales and fodder to pass the time away.”

“But what you discovered was real. As real for me as it was for you. It set the course for your greatest work. It pointed you to the stars and the heavens. But did you see God through your lens or his great deeds? No, only something that would challenge him.”

Galileo, weakened by argument, years and pain, lowered his head.

“Alas, dear Galileo, the cave is sealed and so is your fate. You see, I am a man who understands what needs to be done. And others are in accord. What was there represents chaos. I will not permit chaos to undermine order.”

Fifty-six

VOYAGES
OFFICE

The one thing Gruber never hinted at was a hierarchy above even him. Now, with people flexing their muscles at seemingly every level, including the secretarial, Kavanaugh questioned the structure he inherited.

Gruber
, y
ou left this place totally dysfunctional with outdated tools. All your boring lectures and you couldn’t tell me if anything is on automatic or not. Who else is out there?
That’s got to change. Colin Kavanaugh was determined to lead the organization into the future.

With that thought, he dove into the latest reports from the field. Something new intrigued him: the phone history of the Yale paleontologist’s graduate teaching assistant. There were calls to him from phone numbers that hadn’t shown up before.
That’s another thing
, he said to himself,
we have to do better trolling for metadata.

He decided to dial a number on the hacked call log to see who would answer. He had a strong suspicion already.

• • •

KRITZ’S APARTMENT
THE SAME TIME

“Mistakes?” McCauley asked.

Kritz was about to respond, but she was interrupted by McCauley’s phone ringing.

Quinn was surprised. Katrina had the same reaction.
A call on that phone, particularly at this late hour?

The phone continued to ring.

“Who?”

“Probably Pete,” he said. But the screen read “No caller ID. He shook his head. “No, not Pete.”

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Katrina asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Could be a wrong number?” Renee offered. “Then again…”

The ringing stopped. He was happy he hadn’t recorded a message.

“Tell us more about secret societies,” he said.

• • •

VOYAGES
OFFICE
MINUTES LATER

Colin Kavanaugh really didn’t expect anyone to answer, especially if his theory was right. He had another idea. He dialed DeMeo, who had been tracked to Italy.

On the third ring he heard a tired, “Hello.”

Kavanaugh hadn’t really considered what to say. He would have had the same problem if someone had answered before. So he fell back onto a natural default. He hung up, but not before he made a decision that would define his leadership over Gruber’s.

Fifty-seven

LONDON
THE NEXT DAY

“‘Morning. Pour yourself some coffee,” Kritz said to Quinn, who was the first to join her for breakfast. “I racked my brain last night over that damned sketch. I’m not certain, but I seem to think I saw it on a library shelf in a Russian studies section. At least that’s my vague recollection. Anyway, it’s a place to start.”

“Where?”

“Oxford. Years ago.“

McCauley knew from his own work that in an instant, a memory could take him back to a dig he hadn’t visited in years. Calling it to mind, he’d see where specific rocks laid and the color of the dirt. Rich details. Maybe Renee was beginning to have that same kind of recollection.