Temple (3 page)

The thing was, if he had, then it worked.
If Lauren was anything, she was street-smart. She wouldn't go on a
mission like this without a good reason.
fact that she had agreed to be a part of Nash's adven- gave it
instant credibility.
you will be amply compensated for your
. not that—'
is also part of the mission team,” Nash said,
Race by surprise. 'He won't be coming with us, but be working with
the technical team at our offices in
. Race thought. He hadn't seen him in a long time since their
parents had got divorced nine years ago. But
was also involved, then maybe…
Race, I'm sorry, but we have to go. We have to now. I need an
answer from you..'
'Will,' John Bernstein said, 'this is could be a tremendous
for the university—'
Race frowned at Bernstein, cutting him off. Then to Nash:
say it's a matter of national security?'
'That's right.'
'And you can't tell me where we'll be going.'
'Not until we get on the plane. Then I can tell you every-
And I'm going to have a bodyguard, Race thought. You usu-
only need a bodyguard when somebody wants to kill you.
The office was silent.
Race could feel everyon6 waiting for his response. Nash.
The three Green Berets.
He sighed. He couldn't believe what he was about to say.
'All right,' he said. 'I'll do it.'
Race walked quickly down the corridor behind Nash, still dressed in
his jacket and tie.
It was a cold and wet winter's day in New York and as they made
their way through the maze of corridors toward the westernmost gate
of the university, Race caught the occasional glimpse of the heavy
rain falling outside.
The two Green Berets who had been in the office walked ahead of him
and Nash; the other two—the two who had been out in the
corridor—walked behind. Everyone was moving quickly. It felt to
Race like he was being pulled along by a strong current.
'Will I get a chance to change into something a little less
formal?' he asked Nash. He had brought his sports bag along with
him. It had his change of clothes inside it.
'Maybe on the plane,' Nash said as they walked. 'All right, now
listen carefully. See the young man behind you.
That's Sergeant Leo Van Lewen. He'll be your bodyguard from here on
in.'
Race looked behind himself as he walked, saw the mountain-sized
Green Beret he had seen earlier. Van Lewen.
The Green Beret just gave him a curt acknowledging nod as his eyes
swept the corridor all around them.
Nash said, 'From now on, you're a real important person and that
makes you a target. Wherever you go, he goes.
Here. Take this.'
Nash handed Race an earpiece and a wraparound throat
Race had only ever seen them on TV before, on
of SWAT units. You strapped the throat mike neck and the microphone
picked up the vibra- voice box.
it on as soon as you get in the car,' Nash said. 'It's so all you
have to do is talk and we'll hear you get in any trouble, just say
the word and Van here will be at your side in seconds. You got
that?'
came to the western entrance of the university, two more Green
Berets stood guard at the door. Nash stepped past them, out into
the pouring rain.
was then that Race saw 'the car' that Nash had said out
front.
the gravel turnaround in front of him stood a de.
motorcycle outriders—two at the head of the two at the rear. Six
plain-looking olive-coloured And wedged in the middle, cocooned by
the out- and the sedans, were two heavy-duty armoured Both were
painted black and they each deeply tinted windows.
At least fifteen heavily armed Green Berets stood with M at the
ready all around the motorcade. The pouring rain down against their
helmets. They didn't seem to
Nash hurried over to the second Humvee and held the
open for Race. Then he handed Race a thick manila
as he stepped inside the big vehicle.
“Take a look,' Nash said. 'I'll tell you more when we get the
plane.'
The motorcade sped through the streets of New York.
It was mid-morning, but the eight-car procession just raced through
the soaking city streets, whipping through intersection after
intersection, getting green lights all the way out of the
city.
They must have set the traffic lights like they did for the
President when he visited New York, Race thought.
But this was no presidential procession. The looks on the
faces of the people on the sidewalk said it all.
This was a different kind of motorcade.
No limousines. No flapping flags. Just two black heavily- armoured
Humvees hovering in the middle of a line of drab olive cars,
slicing their way through the pouring rain.
With his bodyguard seated beside him and his earpiece and throat
mike now in place, Race stared out the window of the speeding
Humvee.
Not many people could claim to have experienced a clear passage out
of New York City in the middle of the mid-morning rush, he thought.
It was a strange experience; otherworldly. He began to wonder just
how important this mission was.
He opened the folder that Nash had given him. The first thing he
saw was a list of names.
CUZCO INVESTIGATION TEAM
CIVILIAN MEMBERS
1 NASH, Francis K—DARPA, Project leader, nuclear physicist
2 COPELAND, Troy B—DARPA, nuclear physicist
3 O'CONNOR, Lauren MnDARPA, theoretical physicist
4 CHAMBERS, Walter J—Stanford, anthropologist
5 LOPEZ, Gabriela S—Princeton, archaeologist
6 RACE, William HnNYU, linguist
ARMED FORCES MEMBERS
1 SCOTT, DwayneT—United States Army (GB), Captain
2 VAN LEWEN, Leonardo M—United States Army (GB), Sergeant
3 COCHRANE, Jacob R—United States Army (GB), Corporal
4 REICHART, George P—United States Army (GB), Corporal
5 WILSON, Charles T—United States Army (GB), Corporal
6 KENNEDY, Douglas K—United States Army (GB), Corporal
turned the page and saw a photocopy of a newspaper The headline was
in French: MASSACR]S DES MOINES
DU HAUL DELA MONTAGNE.
translated. 'Monks massacred in mountaintop
read the article. It was dated 3 January 1999—yester-
it was about a group of Jesuit monks who had slaughtered inside
their monastery high up in the
authorities believed it to be the work of Islamic
protesting against French interference in
Eighteen monks in all had been killed, all of them : at close
quarters in the same manner as in previous
slayings.
turned to the next item in the folder.
was another newspaper clipping, this one from the Los
Times. It was dated late last year and the headline
FEDERAL OFFICIALS FOUND MURDERED IN ROCKIES.
It said that two members of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Set- had
been found murdered in the mountains north of
Montana. Both officials had been skinned. The FBI been called in.
They suspected that it was the work of of the local militia groups
who seemed to have a natural
r toward any sort of Federal agency. It was thought that two
Wildlife officials had stumbled upon some militia-
hunting illegal game for heir pelts. Instead of skinning
the militiamen had skinned the rangers.
Race winced, turned the page.
The next sheet in the folder was a photocopy of an article
a university journal of some kind. The article was in German and it
was written by a scientist named Albert L.
Mueller. It was dated November 1998.
Race scanned the article, rapidly translating the German in his
head. It was something about a meteor crater that had been found in
the jungles of Peru.
Underneath the article on the meteor crater was a police
pathologist's report, also written in German. In the box
marked
'NAME OF DECEASED' were the words 'ALBERT LUDWIG MUELLER'.
29
Beneath the pathologist's report were some more sheets of paper,
all covered with various red stampsmTOP SECRET;
EYES ONLY; U.S. ARMY PERSONNEL EYES ONLY. Race flicked
through them. Mostly, the sheets were filled with complex
mathematical equations which meant nothing to him.
Next, he saw a handful of memos, nearly all of them addressed to
people he'd never heard of. On one of the memos, however, he saw
his own name. It read:
3 JAN 1999 22:01 US ARMY INTERNAL NET 617 5544 88211-05
NO.139
From: Nash, Frank
To: All Cuzco Team Members
Subject: SUPERNOVA MISSION
Contact to be made with Race ASAP.
Participation crucial to success of mission.
Expect package to arrive tomorrow 4 January at Newark at
0945.
All members to have equipment stowed on the transport by
0900.
The motorcade arrived at Newark airport. The long line of cars
raced through a gate in the cyclone fence and quickly made its way
to a private airstrip.
An enormous camouflaged cargo plane stood on the tar “mac waiting
for them. At the rear of the plane, a cargo ramp was lowered so
that it touched the ground. As the motor cade pulled to a stop
alongside the massive aircraft, Race saw a large Army truck being
driven up the ramp into the rear of the plane.
Led by Sergeant Van Lewen, he stepped out of the Humvee, into the
rain. No sooner had he emerged from the big black vehicle, however,
than he heard a monstrous roar from some where high above
him.
An old F-15C Eagle—painted in green and brown camouflage colours
and with the word 'ARMY' emblazoned on its tail—came roaring in
overhead and screeched to a landing on the wet tarmac in front of
them.
3O
As Race watched the fighter plane wheel around on the
and taxi back in his direction, he felt Frank Nash grab him gently
by the arm.
'Come on,' Nash said, leading him toward the big cargo
'Everyone else is already on board.'
As they approached the cargo plane, Race saw a woman
iappear in a doorway on its side. He recognised her
instantly.
'Hey, Will,' Lauren O'Connor said.
'Hello, Lauren.'
Lauren O'Connor was in her early thirties, but she didn't look a
day older than twenty-five. She'd cut her hair, Race saw. Back at
USE, it had been long, wavy and brown. Now it was short, straight
and auburn. Very late nineties.
Her big brown eyes were still the same, though, as was her fresh
clear skin. And standing there in the doorway to the big cargo
plane—leaning casually against the frame with her arms folded and
her hips cocked, dressed in heavy- duty khaki hiking gear—she
looked the way she had always looked. Tall and sexy, lithe and
athletic.
'It's been a long time,' she said, smiling.
'Yes, it has,' Race said.
'So. William Race. Expert linguist. Consultant to the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency. You still play ball,
Will?'
'Just socially,' Race said. Back in college, he'd lettered in
football. He'd been the smallest guy on the team, but also the
fastest. He'd lettered in track too.
'How about you?' he said, noticing for the first time the ring on
her left hand. He wondered who she'd married.
'Well, for one thing,' she said, her eyes lighting up, 'I'm very
excited about this mission. It's not every day you get to go on a
treasure hunt.'
“Is that what this is?'
Before Lauren could answer, a loud whining sound made both of them
turn.
The F-15 had pulled to a halt about fifty yards from the cargo
plane and no sooner was its canopy open than the pilot was leaping
down onto the wet tarmac beneath it and running
toward them, hunched over in the drenching rain. He carried a
briefcase in his hand.
The pilot came up to Nash, handed him the briefcase.
'Doctor Nash,' he said. 'The manuscript.'
Nash took the briefcase and strode over to where Lauren and Race
were standing.
'All right,' he said, ushering them inside the cargo plane.
'Time to get this show on the road.'
giant cargo plane thundered down the runway and
off into the rainsoaked sky.
It was a Lockheed C-130E Hercules and the interior was divided into
two sections—the downstairs cargo hold and the upstairs passenger
compartment. Race sat in the upstairs section with the five other
scientists going along on the expedition. The six Green Berets
accompanying them were down in the cargo hold, stowing and checking
their weapons.
Of the five civilians, Race knew two: Frank Nash and Lauren
O'Connor.
'We'll have time for introductions later,' Nash said, sit- ring
down next to Race and hauling the briefcase onto his
lap. 'What's important right now is that we set you to work.'
He began unclasping the buckles on the briefcase.
'Can you tell me where we're going now?' Race asked.
'Oh yes, of course,' Nash said. 'I'm sorry I couldn't tell you
before, but your office just wasn't secure. The windows
could have been lased.'
'Lased?'
'With a laser-guided listening device. When we speak inside an
office like yours, our voices actually make the win dows vibrate.
Most modern office towers are equipped to deal with directional
listening devices—they have electronic jamming signals running
through the glass in their win dows. Older buildings like yours
don't. It would have been way too easy for someone to listen
in.'
'So where are we going?'
'Cuzco, Peru-capital of the Incan empire before the Spanish
conquistadors arrived in 1532,' Nash said. 'Now it's just a large
country town, a few Incan ruins, big tourist attraction, so they
tell me. We'll be travelling non-stop, with a couple of mid-air
refuellings on the way.'
He opened the briefcase and extracted something from it.
It was a stack of paper—a loose pile of A3 sheets, maybe forty
pages in total. Race saw the top sheet. It was a Xerox of an
illustrated cover sheet.
It was the manuscript Nash had spoken about earlier, or at least a
photocopy of it.
Nash handed the stack of paper over to Race and smiled.
'This is why you are here.'
Race took the pile from him, flipped over the cover sheet.
Now, Race had seen medieval manuscripts before—-manu- scripts
painstakingly reproduced by hand by devoted monks in the Middle
Ages, back in the days before the printing press. Such manuscripts
were characterised by an almost impossible intricacy of design and
penmanship: perfect cal- ligraphy-including wonderfully elaborate
leading marks (the single letter that starts a new chapter)—and
detailed pictographs in the margins that were designed to convey
the mood of the work. Sunny and gay for pleasing books; dark and
frightening for more sombre tales. Such was the detail, it was said
that a monk could spend his entire life reproducing a single
manuscript.