The Secret Prophecy (19 page)

Chapter 39

T
he log cabin proved as fake as Em’s travel documents. It looked like the real McCoy as they approached on a track that might have been made by goats, but failed close inspection by the time they drew up at the pocket-sized veranda. Em could see that the “logs” were actually just facings on a prefabricated wall, and the windows were plastic, painted brown and then grained to look like wood. The whole thing might have been a gigantic trailer disguised as a traditional dwelling. The inside was spacious and newly furnished. Em felt the air conditioning at once. He also noticed the stereo sound system and a well-stocked bar at one end of the living area.

“It’s owned by a writer,” Victor explained. “Comes here every two years to churn out his latest blockbuster. In between times he takes himself off to Bermuda and rents the place to anybody who wants to get away from it all. The Section arranged a calendar month, which should be more than long enough for what we have to do.” He gave a slow grin. “One of the rooms has a water bed—you ever try one?”

Em shook his head, but his mind wasn’t on the sleeping arrangements. He was still feeling uneasy, and now he realized why. It was just a small thing, really, something that had happened back in England when they were in the first safe house and Victor wouldn’t let Em make a phone call in case the Knights traced him through his voiceprint. It had sounded reasonable enough at the time, if maybe just the tiniest bit science-fictiony, but then it had turned out later that Victor had a secure cell phone that couldn’t be traced. Why hadn’t he let Em use that right away? There was probably a very good reason. It was just that Em couldn’t think of one and it niggled.

He wondered if he should ask Victor outright, thought it over, then decided against it. Was such a small thing worth worrying about? Especially since it was old history. Best to get on with the job at hand? “Okay,” he told Victor brightly, “I call the water bed.”

The water bed proved a bad choice. It felt cold despite the under-blanket, the motion made Em seasick, and he was constantly plagued by the thought of falling through and drowning. When he reemerged from the room, Victor was counting his yarrow stalks with his copy of the
I Ching
on the table beside him.

“What are you asking?”

Victor glanced up, but his hands continued to split and count the bundle. “Getting your father’s proof isn’t going to be as easy as I thought.”

He was asking the
I Ching
about getting the proof? Sometimes Em thought Victor might be a bit unhinged. Aloud he asked, “Why not?”

“I thought it would just be a question of driving into the desert to the right coordinates, figuring out what he meant by the ‘blind man’s toe,’ and maybe doing a bit of digging—my thought is that he most likely buried the documents. Biggest problem would be to make sure we weren’t followed, hence taking this place and dropping out of sight for a few days.”

Em nodded. “That’s more or less what I thought too. So what’s the problem?”

Victor released an explosive sigh. “The problem, my boy, is that I’ve just checked the area on a large-scale map. The coordinates your father gave are inside the Bederbeck fence.”

“Oh,” Em said.

“This isn’t going to be like walking into the university to get the camera,” Victor told him unnecessarily. “The guards are authorized to use lethal force.”

“You mean they could
shoot
us?”

“This is Arizona, Em. Gold rush tradition.”

“Shoot us just for
trespassing
? Suppose we’re hikers who got lost or something and just wandered, like accidentally, onto their property?”

“We’d have to just wander over a ten-foot-high electrified fence with razor wire, but yes.” Victor looked at him seriously. “The foundation has a lot of political clout around here, biggest employer for a hundred miles, contacts in high places. . . . They want to preserve their privacy. Couple of years ago they opened fire on a group of protesters who tried to break their perimeter security. Nobody killed, but they hospitalized two students and left one woman permanently disabled in a wheelchair. Judge said the foundation was within its rights to protect its own property. There was some fuss in the national press, but it soon died down. The local press didn’t even report the story.”

“Wow!” Em said.

“Wow, indeed,” Victor remarked tiredly. “While you were taking your little snooze, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do. First thing, obviously, is that I go this alone. It’s far too dangerous to consider taking you along.”

“I wasn’t taking a little . . .” Em began, then let it drop. He had more important things to worry about. “No,” he said firmly.

“No, what?”

“No, you’re not leaving me behind.” Since he couldn’t think of a single, sensible reason why not, he explained, “I’m not Charlotte, Victor. The message about the documents was for
me.
” Which clearly wasn’t going to carry much weight with Victor; but since there was no way, no
way,
he was going to miss out on finding the documents now that he’d come this far, he put his mind into racing gear and added, “I know what Dad meant by ‘the blind man.’” It was a lie, but Victor wasn’t going to know that, so he compounded it quickly: “It was a thing we had between us, a sort of a joke.”

Victor stared at him. “Meaning what?”

“Oh no,” Em said. “I’m not going to tell you that. Once you know, you’ll leave me behind. Let’s just say that when we get to the right place, I’ll identify exactly where to look and tell you then. I’m going with you, Victor. You can’t stop me.”

“Listen, Em,” Victor said soberly. “I don’t think you appreciate how dangerous this mission is.”

“You just told me how dangerous it is. I’m still coming.”

Victor looked at him thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I believe you about ‘the blind man.’”

Em shrugged. “Suit yourself. But are you willing to take the chance?”

Apparently Victor wasn’t, because he said with an air of finality, “Okay, you come along. But only if you promise—
swear—
you’ll do what I tell you. Stick close to me at all times. And if I tell you to get out of there, you get out of there.”

“Okay,” Em agreed. “So what’s the plan?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. Finding the documents at night might be a lot trickier, but I don’t see that we have any alternative. If we go in daylight, we’ll be spotted by the cameras once we approach the fence. Even at night we’ll have serious problems.”

Em pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. “Why?”

“The cameras all have an infrared function.”

Frowning, Em said, “If they have infrared cameras, we might as well go in daytime. We’ll be spotted either way.”

“I’m toying with the possibility of trying to take out some of the cameras. But how long will it take their security people to respond once a camera goes down? Or how, come to that? Do they assume it’s a technical fault and send out a repair team? And they may send out an armed response unit just to be on the safe side. You see the problem?”

Em did. “Can’t you fool infrared?” he asked.

“Infrared cameras detect heat radiation. From our bodies, in this case. Basically you
can
fool them in one of two ways. The simplest way is to mask the radiation from our bodies by setting a fire. The cameras can’t separate out our body heat from the background of the much greater heat from the blaze. So long as you stay close to the fire, they can’t see you. The high-tech way is to use a reflective suit that traps your body heat completely, makes you invisible to an infrared camera. Unfortunately, you can’t wear a reflective suit very long, otherwise the buildup of heat inside will fry you. The more active you are, the less time you’ve got.”

“Active like climbing the fence?”

“Actually,” Victor said, “I wasn’t thinking of climbing the fence. Apart from the razor wire, triggering the electrical circuit will almost certainly let them know something is trying to climb over. I was thinking of digging our way under. The question is, can we dig under before the suits fry us?”

There was no answer to that, but Em thought about it for a moment anyway. “What about your other option: setting a fire? We wouldn’t need the suits then.”

A pained expression crossed Victor’s features. “There are problems with that one as well. First of all, we have to start a fire without being seen by the cameras. Also, it’s very dry in the desert at this time of year, so there’s no guarantee a fire wouldn’t get out of hand. Tell you the truth, I’d more or less ruled out the fire option.”

“So we use the suits?”

Victor nodded. “I think so. We’ll just have to move fast and hope we get lucky with the digging. At least getting out again should be easier once we’ve got hold of the documents.” He flicked open the
I Ching
book.

“What were you asking the oracle?” Em inquired for the second time.

“Whether the omens were favorable for a successful mission,” Victor muttered soberly. He turned several pages, then stopped.

Em felt a totally irrational surge of excitement. “What’s it say?” He looked at Victor’s expression and felt the excitement slide sideways into a sudden fog of fear. Something was wrong.

“Hexagram 29,” Victor said slowly. “‘The Abysmal.’” He looked up at Em. “Repeated!”

“That’s bad?” Em asked. Of course it was bad. When was something abysmal anything other than bad?

“That’s dangerous,” Victor said. “But we knew that before I asked. What really worries me is the moving line.”

“Moving line?” Em echoed.

“Six at the top,” Victor told him. He picked up the book and read aloud, “‘Bound with cords and ropes, shut in between thorn-hedged prison walls: for three years one does not find the way. Misfortune.’”

A lot of the
I Ching
was obscure to Em, but not this reading. This reading was as clear as day. The oracle thought they were going to be caught and jailed for three years. “What are we going to do now?” he asked.

“Risk it,” Victor said. “We have to get those documents. Let’s just hope the
I Ching
’s got it wrong.”

Chapter 40

T
he infrared suits looked like silver body stockings with hoods and full-face masks that came with silvered fine-mesh grilles, allowing them to breathe and see. Em and Victor tried them on in the cabin with the curtains drawn.

“You look like something that just stepped out of a flying saucer,” Victor remarked.

Em peered at him through his fine-mesh visor. “So do you.” He could see quite clearly, but already the suit had begun to feel warm. Given that his only exertion had been putting it on and the cabin’s air-conditioning kept the surrounding temperature to a comfortable level despite the outside heat, he wondered how long it would take before his body began to feel the real effects.

Victor obviously had much the same thought, for he said, “Try jogging on the spot. I want to see how far we can get with these things.” Without waiting for a response he began to jog himself. Em followed suit, a little more briskly. It took less than a minute before he found himself slick with a sweat that dripped to sting his eyes and leave his vision as impaired as if he’d begun to swim underwater.

Victor stopped jogging and pulled back his headpiece, gasping. His face was sweating as profusely as Em’s and had turned a beet red. “Wow!” he said. “I thought we might have a bit more leeway than that!” He stared at Em, who was still jogging. “How close are you to cooked?”

“I’m okay,” Em said without slacking pace. “Hot, but I think I could keep going a little longer.” What he meant was a lot longer, but didn’t want to sound boastful.

“You’re fitter than I am,” Victor said admiringly. “At least your body is adjusting to the heat buildup a great deal better. I think you may have to do most of the digging.”

Em slowed, stopped, then pulled back his headpiece and wiped the sweat from his eyes with his sleeve. “That’s okay,” he said.

Victor was shaking his head thoughtfully. “Must be our age difference. This makes things a lot trickier. We’ll have to wait until the last minute to put on the suits, conserve energy as much as possible, and just hope we can get under the fence before we fry. Meanwhile, we need to get in some practice in using the suits, maybe acclimatize to them a bit more before we attempt the actual mission.”

“When
do
we attempt the actual mission?” Em asked him.

“About an hour’s time,” Victor said.

Before Em had arrived in America, his mental picture of the Arizona desert was something similar to the photographs he’d seen of the Sahara: vast, lifeless stretches of sand dunes reaching to a distant horizon beneath a merciless sun.

It hadn’t been like that at all, of course. The parts of the Sonoran he’d seen were heavily vegetated, mainly with rough grass, shrub, and cactus, but still sporting a healthy scattering of spiky trees. It looked even less lifeless at night than it did during the day: the headlights of the truck kept picking up the glint of animal eyes in the undergrowth, some of them high enough from the ground to suggest creatures that could do you serious damage. As they bumped slowly along, Em couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he was living in a Stephen King novel.

Victor had been over the plan with him several times in the cabin. He’d bought a mobile GPS system and converted their target latitude and longitude into GPS coordinates: N 31 17.224, W 110 54.151. Then they had charted a route that would keep them well clear of the foundation’s boundary while taking them directly to what Victor kept referring to as “base camp”: a hollow in the lee of a rocky outcrop where they could abandon the truck, don their infrared suits, and walk to the section of fence they planned to breach. Assuming that was successful, they could remove the suits and use the GPS to guide them to their final destination. It had all sounded great in theory, but now, under the desert stars, Em was feeling distinctly nervous. “Are we nearly there yet?” he asked Victor.

“That’s the third time you’ve asked,” Victor snapped at him impatiently. “You sound like a kid on a camping holiday.”

“Sorry,” Em said sourly. Then, because he couldn’t avoid the issue any longer, he added, “I need to pee.”

“Can’t you hold on a bit?” Victor demanded. “We’re only five minutes away—ten at the most.”

“Too bumpy,” Em told him. “I’d never last.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Victor snapped impatiently, and slammed on the brakes. “Try not to be too long—we’re running late.”

“That’s better,” Em said as he hauled himself back into the truck. He’d decided to stop worrying about Victor. The man had his own way—an odd way—of doing things, that was all.

The truck jerked forward as Victor slammed it into drive and floored the pedal.
He really was in a hurry,
Em thought.
Maybe he was just impatient.

It seemed less than five minutes before Victor pulled the truck off the narrow desert track and stopped again. “Base camp,” he muttered as he pushed open the driver’s door. “Time to suit up.”

They stood together for a moment in the hollow, listening to night sounds that somehow accentuated the silence. From this vantage point there was no sign of the fence at all, although Em knew it had to be close by. “Where do we go when we’re ready?” he asked.

Victor was at the back of the truck unloading their equipment: shovels for digging, a small pickax in case they got unlucky and struck stone, nightscope goggles to help them see better in the darkness, their handheld GPS, and, of course, the infrared suits themselves. “Out of the hollow and over the rock,” Victor said. “You can follow me. The fence is just on the other side.”

“Do we have far to walk before we start to dig?”

Victor finished unloading. “Few yards once we’re clear of the outcrop. Then we dig. It’s a much longer walk after that to where your father buried the evidence, but we can take the suits off once we’re clear of the fence, so it shouldn’t be too bad. We can use the GPS then as well.”

“Why not sooner?” Em asked. It occurred to him that the GPS would be useful right now to check their position.

“Screen lights up,” Victor said. “It would be visible to the cameras.”

“You want me to put my suit on now?”

Victor shook his head. “Nope. We climb until we’re about to emerge from the outcrop. Then we strip off to our underwear and stand around like idiots until our bodies cool down. We get as chilly as we can stand,
then
put on the suits. After that we stroll over to the fence. And I mean
stroll.
Everything slow and easy so we generate as little heat as possible. Then the digging.” He began to gather up his equipment. “You carry your own shovel and suit. I’ll look after the GPS. Remember, no talking under any circumstances once we’re clear of the rock. The cameras are all wired for sound, and you can be sure the mikes are very sensitive. Even if they can’t see us, they can hear us: one word and they’ll come running.”

Something suddenly occurred to Em. “Won’t they hear us digging?”

“They will. I was about to come to that. Our big danger time arrives when we reach the fence. If we try to dig under in the usual way, there’s an excellent chance some guard at Bederbeck will hear the sounds, put two and two together, and figure out what they are. It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen, and the way we do it is to make the sound of digging come across as part of the natural night sounds.”

“How do we do that?”

“What makes digging sound like digging is the rhythm,” Victor said. “Shovel in . . . lift earth . . . empty earth beside you . . . shovel in . . . lift earth . . . empty earth beside you . . . People hear the sounds and figure out what’s happening. What we do is push the shovel in as gently as possible, empty it as gently as possible, so we minimize the sounds.” He hesitated, then added, “Hopefully.”

“Right,” Em said.

“I’ll take out the first shovel of earth, then you, then me, and so forth. If I overheat I’ll just stop and you carry on as long as you can. If I find I can go on again, I’ll signal you like this—” He waved his right hand.

“Wait a minute,” Em said suddenly. “I won’t be able to see you.”

Victor looked at him soberly. “How do you figure that?”

“The goggles work on infrared, don’t they? With the suits we won’t radiate infrared. We won’t be able to see each other at all.”

But Victor was shaking his head. “The goggles don’t use infrared. They work by amplifying ambient light: starlight. It’s new technology at this level, developed in Section.”

“Okay.”

Victor said, “You happy you know what you’re doing?”

Em nodded. “Yes.” He stopped himself from adding “Blissful” since he didn’t think Victor would appreciate the humor.

Victor tossed him his shovel. “Okay,” he said, “let’s get the show on the road.”

The nightscope goggles were a bit of a miracle. The second Em put them on, his whole environment lit up as brightly as it would have on a full-moon night. He could see Victor clearly, see the fence as they moved toward it. As they reached it, Victor pointed to a spot in the ground, presumably the area they were supposed to dig, then followed up by unslinging his shovel and carefully taking out the first scoop of earth. He was not entirely silent, but he managed to make so little sound that it might have been caused by a sigh of wind. Victor stepped back, waited a moment, then signaled to Em.

Em stepped forward and pushed his shovel gently into the earth. He’d been wondering how he was going to manage without making noise, but Victor’s earlier comments turned out to be right: the earth beneath the fence was sandy and loose, so that he managed it easily enough. He deposited the earth quietly to one side and stepped back as Victor had done.

It was slow going. The trench they were digging so painstakingly soon exhibited a habit of filling itself in with miniature landslides of loose earth. At one point Em waved Victor back and tried experimentally to open a new trench nearer to the closest fence post, figuring the earth must be firmer there to support the post itself. He quickly discovered the post was sunk in concrete and went back to their original plan.

Frustratingly slow though it was, they began to see progress eventually. Finally the moment arrived when Em, slick with sweat, realized the trench was deep enough for him to wriggle through it. He was about to signal to Victor when Victor signaled to him and walked away toward the rocky outcrop, indicating that he wanted Em to follow. Once out of sight of the fence, Victor unzipped his infrasuit and pulled it down to his waist. “Bloody thing is frying me,” he muttered. “You all right?”

Em nodded, but unzipped his own suit just the same. He was pouring perspiration and shaking from the effort of digging. The night air flowed across his body like a balm. “I could get under now.”

“Yes, I know,” Victor said breathlessly. “And that’s exactly what you should do when you cool down.” He shook his head. “This is proving far tougher than I thought. Change of plan. I want you to take the GPS. . . .” He hesitated. “You know how to work it, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s already set to
TEXT ONLY,
so you won’t have to worry about making noise. I want you to take the GPS, get under the fence, and head for our coordinates. I’ll dig deeper when I cool down and follow. It’s going to take too long if you wait for me. The sooner we have the documents and get out of here the better.”

“What do you want me to do when I reach the coordinates?” Em asked.

“You’re the one who claims he knows all about ‘the blind man,’” Victor snorted with just the barest hint of cynicism. “If you can find the proof, grab it. If not, I’ll join you as quickly as I can.”

Minutes later Em, safely suited again, pushed his shovel and the GPS underneath the fence, then lay flat on his stomach and wriggled after them. He emerged on the other side with a feeling of exhilaration. He’d scarcely let himself experience any emotion, but now the sheer sense of adventure almost overwhelmed him. Victor’s cynicism was well-founded. Em knew nothing about the “blind man” in the message, but he was confident the answer to the riddle would be obvious once he reached the proper coordinates. His father would never have included something Em could not quickly figure out.

Em moved a distance from the fence before unzipping his infrared suit and switching on the GPS. Victor was still hidden behind the outcrop, presumably suitless, allowing his overheated body to cool down. But it made no difference; the GPS was already programmed with the coordinates. It was now showing a directional arrow and the written instruction:
Walk North 200 yards, then turn East.
Em allowed himself a satisfied smile and walked off.

Although it looked perfectly ordinary, the GPS proved to be a more sophisticated device than the ones he’d seen in England. He was far from any mapped roads now, but the device Victor had given him seemed to sense the wilderness terrain directly. The instruction “Walk North” took him over relatively even ground; but after two hundred yards, his progress was blocked by an enormous boulder. When he turned east, however, he only had to push between two bushes to find his way clear again, with a new message on the screen:
Walk 50 yards, then turn North.

He was making his way around a clump of high-growing cacti when it occurred to him that Victor’s promise to follow him made no sense. Without the GPS, Victor
couldn’t
follow him. Em was now well out of sight of the place where they’d dug; and while the night goggles helped, there was no way Victor was going to track him.

Em frowned. Should he go back for Victor? But that was wasting time; and as Victor had said, every minute they spent out here increased the chance of something going wrong. On balance he thought going on would be the best policy. According to the screen he was getting close to his destination now.

The last few yards were tough. Em pushed his way through some densely packed bushes, wincing at the thorns that scratched his chest, legs, and arms. Then he broke free. His destination was at the center of his screen. He was standing at the exact coordinates his father had given him.

Em looked around. He was in a clearing. He saw the “blind man” at once: a tall spur of rock that had weathered into a reasonable approximation of a face in profile, the eyes banded by striations like a blindfold. There was nothing to suggest a toe, but that might show up from a different perspective. At that instant Em didn’t care. He was too startled by another feature of the clearing: a small, prefabricated hut to his right and beside it a parked RV. Muted lights were shining through the windows of both. Somebody was already here!