Old Earth (41 page)

“Not likely, Father.”

“Look, if we’re not supposed to be here, we can all just leave. No problem,” McCauley said.

“My dear Dr. McCauley, the problem exists precisely
because
you are here. And you have cost me sleep for weeks. Your exhaustive pursuit of things you have no concept of. Your inability to stop.”

“Before or after the bombing or the plane crash? I take it that was your work,” McCauley declared.

“You are quite the sleuth.”

“…And what about my assistant? I haven’t been able to reach him,” McCauley said hoping to hear something about Pete DeMeo.

“I wouldn’t worry about anyone else right now,” the man with the gun said.

“You’re going to…” Katrina couldn’t complete the thought.

“Well, not right at this rather remarkable spot. Far too pristine. Besides, thanks to you I now know how to re-enter. But I see you understand the gravity of the situation, Dr. Alpert.”

Father Eccleston took a step forward. “You don’t have to do this. You…”

“Oh, but I do. It’s my job.”

“This is absurd,” Katrina argued. She tried to step around McCauley who held her back.

“As absurd as what you’ve come across?” the man asked impassively.

The point was ironic.

“You can live with three murders including a priest?” McCauley asked.

The man looked like he considered the point.

“We’re not here to exploit anything. Hell, we don’t even know what
this
is. We’re merely academicians, invisible in the long run. Father Eccleston is a Vatican scientist. Assuredly, the Vatican knows how to contain him. So why don’t we all leave none the worse and as ill-informed as when we arrived. We go our way, you go yours.”

“Perhaps,” the man volunteered.

McCauley didn’t believe him for a second, but thought it might buy them some time or opportunity.

“But we haven’t begun to understand anything about…”

“Not your job, Father.”

“And what is your job?” Eccleston decried. “You mentioned your job.”

“Right now, cleaning house. Okay. Everyone out. One at a time. Father Eccleston first, then you, Dr. McCauley. Dr. Alpert comes up third, close to me. She will be the first to die if you attempt to run.”

“Run?” Katrina complained “Through here?”

“Out,” the gunman ordered. “Out!”

• • •

They left the expanse and its mysteries. As they passed through the opening, the white dissolved quickly to black and the wall began to close behind them as silently as it had opened. They walked, then crawled where necessary.

“I think the flashlights will work about here,” McCauley soon said. Katrina started to douse her lamp.

“No!” the man shouted. “Flashlights on first. I need to see you!”

They did as they were told, but McCauley lost an opportunity he hoped he’d get.

While still on all fours, McCauley found a small rock; not quite round, but something he could palm. It might be the only weapon available.

Their footsteps began to echo again, indicating the tunnel was opening up. The lights lit the pathway and the walls. Soon they were fully upright re-entering the expansive cavern with the extraordinary geological shapes and the underground river.

There was a moment, only a moment when McCauley could tell Katrina and Eccleston what he planned. With his back to the gunman he whispered, “Get ready to shut off your flashlights and hit the ground when I say,
Now.
”

“But?”

Katrina was about to argue that the man was going to let them go. McCauley knew better.

“Okay, stop,” the captor ordered. It surely wasn’t a conversational tone. He panned his flashlight from McCauley, to Alpert and lastly over to the priest.

They stood about fifteen feet in front. McCauley was ready to give the signal, but the gunman acted first. He fired at his target with no warning.

Father Eccleston heard the shot, which was enough to surprise him. Then he felt growing warmth in his stomach. All of this was within the initial second. He looked down, then up, confused. The next shot ended all his surprise and eliminated the pain. Father Jareth Eccleston dropped to his knees, then toppled into the water.

McCauley had the wits to yell, “Now!”

He dropped his flashlight. Katrina did the same and fell flat on the floor just as another shot rang out. Both of their lights broke.

McCauley stepped to his left and turned his body sideways.

The man fired again, but had no true target. However, the gunman’s flashlight gave McCauley his. He pulled his right arm back and aimed for the man’s head.

His throwing arm didn’t fail him.

The man dropped. The flashlight fell from his hand which plunged the cavern into complete darkness.

“Katrina!”

She didn’t answer.

“Katrina!”

“Over here.” She struggled with her reply.

“Where?”

“A few feet away.”

Katrina groped for her flashlight. She found it, but it didn’t work.

McCauley pulled another from his backpack and turned it on. He was grateful to see she wasn’t hurt. McCauley helped Katrina up.

McCauley panned his new flashlight along the floor. The man was down.

“Is he… ” Katrina hesitated. “…dead?”

“I don’t know, but get out now!”

“Father Eccleston?”

“Out now! I’ll be right behind you.” He gave her another flashlight.

Alpert started toward the pathway, but turned when she heard a splash. She rushed to the water’s edge.

“Quinn!” She shined her light into the water.

After twenty seconds McCauley’s head popped up for air. He filled his lungs and went back under. Another thirty seconds, he returned, took a deep breath, and dove again. After the third attempt, he swam to Katrina.

“He’s gone. But you should have… .”

“Shut up and let me help you.”

She reached out, bracing her legs against a stalagmite. “Grab hold.” McCauley took her hand and struggled onto the cavern floor.

“Okay?” she asked.

“Yes, yes. Okay. Thank you,” he said shivering.

McCauley took her flashlight and shined it on the downed man. He was groggy and disoriented.

“Can you make it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

They quickly retraced their steps. Adrenaline kept them going. When they could, they held hands. When that wasn't possible, McCauley made sure she went first.

For an instant, McCauley thought he heard breathing or wheezing behind them. “Faster!” he exclaimed.

“Is he…?”

“Just go!”

Soon, they saw welcomed daylight. The late afternoon sun would warm McCauley and the open road would provide escape. Ahead, more unknown. For now they were grateful to be free and alive.

As they emerged from the cave and their eyes adjusted, they abruptly realized that that option had disappeared.

Eighty

INSIDE THE CAVE

Colin Kavanaugh gradually regained awareness. McCauley’s rock had only dazed him.

He groped for a flashlight. First forward, then side-to-side. Without it he feared he’d never find his way out. Suddenly, he heard something roll toward him. Metal on rock. He struck his hand out as the flashlight reached him. He turned it on and scanned about for his gun.

“Looking for this?”

The voice came from the side. It was as cold as the cavern, but more chilling because he recognized it.

He turned to the direction of the voice. All he saw was a flashlight beam shining on a handgun aimed directly at him.

“I believe this is yours.” The gunman tilted the flashlight up to his face—a sneering, angry face; the last man in the world Colin Kavanaugh ever imagined he’d see again: the man with the umbrella.

• • •

OUTSIDE THE CAVE
THE SAME TIME

Quinn and Katrina stood ten feet from a row of gunmen armed with semi-automatics. The afternoon sun created something of a halo around them. Given their weapons McCauley determined it was totally undeserved.

“You’re to stay right where you are,” a man in the middle of some twenty others emphatically ordered.

Quinn thought the instruction sounded secondhand, delivered by someone awaiting final instructions. The breathing he heard in the cave?

“Mind if we sit down?” Katrina was serious. She was exhausted.

“Be my guest.”

• • •

INSIDE THE CAVE

“Mr. Gruber, apparently your death preceded you.”

Gruber shined the light onto his prey.

“I had to be certain you were ready,” Gruber said.

“So this has all been another test?”

“Oh no, young man. Not just another test. Your final, as it were.” The voice behind the light sounded all the more cruel. “You failed.”

“Mr. Gruber,” Kavanaugh pleaded, “I was only following protocol. Find, research, review, contain. Just as you always instructed.”

“You bungled your research. You let emotion rule your decisions. You ordered an attack on an individual when none was warranted, thus raising increased suspicion. You brought chaos to our organization and created opportunity for disunity, which is not permitted.”

“But!”

“
Secretum
! Did you not understand anything I taught? Obviously not. You ultimately risked it all by killing a priest, no less. You. With your own hand. It’s sure to bring an investigation from the church, potentially exposing
Autem Semita.
I cannot recall such ineptitude in our history. You, Mr. Kavanaugh, shall be a brand new lesson for all future candidates.”

Of all the words he could have used,
candidates
was the most damning.
Candidates,
not
successor.
Kavanaugh read it like a death sentence. He struggled to find a way to defend himself.

“It’s a new day, Mr. Gruber. Social media spreads word in seconds. A tweet from an explorer’s cell can produce viral recognition for his discovery and trouble for us. Try to contain that. Impossible. So we must intervene at the earliest possible opportunity. That’s what I did. I acted in time; appropriate for this new age. Swiftly, efficiently.”

Kavanaugh was gaining strength and a renewed sense of his own purpose

“We can no longer merely hide behind a research publication. We must be more aggressive; more pro-active. Ours is a holy mission. A priest who digs too deeply is as much a threat as a teacher.”

“Right now, you, Mr. Kavanaugh, you are the biggest threat to our ongoing success.”

“No, I am the future.”

“You failed to understand the past. How can you possibly see the future?”

Kavanaugh wondered if Gruber would actually pull the trigger.
No, not like I did, without prejudice. He loves talking. Time to talk.

“Mr. Gruber, we can fix this. I can make it better. Obviously I have more to learn.”

“Appealing to my paternal side? Remember, I have no children.”

“Sir, I am deferring to the man I most admire and have obviously disappointed.”
Keep this going.
“I’m happy that you’re alive.”
What a lie.
“I wasn’t ready to take over.”
Bullshit.
“This test has proven that to me as well. You were correct to do it.”
Lower the fucking gun.

“You are a danger to all that we have built. If you had truly understood our purpose over the power you sought, you could have been a deserving leader. I had hope, even though I harbored doubt. Yet, you disappointed me and I’m troubled I misjudged you so.”

Kavanaugh could no longer contain himself. “Damn you and your endless lectures. Your incessant rants, your antiquated approaches. All so formal and so meaningless. I listened until I heard enough. Do you want to know the truth?”

“Ah, the truth. That would be enlightening.”

“I perfected the art of tuning you out while fully being in your presence.”

“And thus, your true self. A charlatan posing as a believer,” Gruber declared as he took a wide berth around Kavanaugh. He finished by tapping his umbrella on the cavern floor. First slowly, then faster. It was an unnerving sound. Suddenly he stopped.

“How could I have so misjudged you?”

“I
am
a believer!” Kavanaugh rubbed his scalp, the unconscious sign of his anxiety that Gruber read all too well. “But I finally had to see for myself if the secrets were real.”

“They are!” Gruber shouted. He paused and lowered his voice. “My boy, my impertinent boy. If you had any doubt, you had merely to ask.”

The response startled Kavanaugh. He looked up at his mentor, who didn’t seem like a sickly old man in the partial light and shadows.

“You would have shown me?”

Gruber simply smiled.

“You would have?” Kavanaugh asked again, struggling with his words, trying to get to his knees…to beg.

“Had you asked and had you proven yourself. In time, yes.”

• • •

OUTSIDE THE CAVE
THE SAME TIME

McCauley sized up the guards flanked in front of them and now to the sides. He gauged they were all roughly age 40. Ex-military or certainly with military training. They wore khaki pants and shirts with no insignias or identification, matching tan caps and boots. Besides handguns they were equipped with an array of rifles, some with scopes, others that looked like they’d be ready for a full-on assault.

McCauley sat next to Katrina to hold her, believing the worst was yet to come.

“Move apart!”

“Come on,” McCauley complained.

“Apart now!” The man backed his demand with the a steely-eyed look and his gun coming up, first aiming at McCauley, then shifting to Katrina. “Farther!”

McCauley moved to the side but held Katrina’s hand. They waited in the sun, perspiring as much out of fear as the heat.

• • •

INSIDE THE CAVE
THE SAME TIME

“You faked your death!”

“Only to lessen my misgivings,” Gruber admitted. “After all, I think we can both now agree they were well-founded.”

“You spent all those years investing in me. All your lessons. Now take a look at yourself. Go ahead look at your reflection in the water. You’re a failure as a teacher. It’s you who haven’t passed the test your own mentors set for you. Without me, you have no one to take over. There is no one else!” He defiantly stared at the old man.