ANNA
As dawn neared, the scent of the sea grew more powerful. She drew it into her lungs and looked northward up the coastline at the town of Nahariyya. Though candles flickered in a handful of windows, the dark rectangles of buildings appeared still and lifeless, as though under some dread enchantment. A sporadic series of echoes carried. Hammer falls? Someone chopping wood?
As she knelt upon the sand dune, the weight of the pistol tugged at her hip. She adjusted the holster to a more comfortable position and studied the rain that continued to fall. Brilliant moonlight filled the gaps in the clouds, scattering the ocean and shore with an incandescent mosaic. Occasionally, orange glares from exploding plague ships lit up the distance. Once, when the sound of the waves died down, she thought she heard screams drifting on the sea breeze, then she realized the soft cries were coming from Micah Hazor. Over and over in his sleep, he’s been repeating his name, rank, and serial number in Russian.
Listening to him brought back the feelings of helplessness and despair that she had suffered only six months ago. Her own inner wounds had not healed. Apparently, Micah Hazor’s hadn’t either. When had he been held captive in a Russian prison?
Her gaze moved over Martin where he slept beside the drowned beach fire and back to where Hazor rested propped against the packs.
Thinking about Hazor was a good distraction. All night long she’d been desperate to decipher James’s maze, but hadn’t succeeded. Part of her problem was probably nutritional. Though it filled their stomachs, the dried backpacker’s food they’d been eating did little else for the human body. The other factor was certainly terror. James had once told her that while he’d identified the most dangerous viral mutation that would emerge, not even he could know for certain how many strains would suddenly appear. He’d feared it would arise just like the ordinary flu virus. Every year several strains of the flu virus developed simultaneously. Researchers did the best job they could to guess which strain, or strains, posed the greatest potential for a global pandemic, and then committed resources to developing millions of doses of vaccine for a few strains, but on occasion they guessed wrong. Instead, another strain went global, a strain for which there was no vaccine, and no time to develop one before the entire world was infected. James had told her that was why he was searching for the cure—the true Marham-i-Isa.
But not even James could have foreseen the sheer magnitude of LucentB, or the rapidity with which it spread. LucentB was much more virulent than any virus in the past.
Hazor cried out, then gave his name, rank, and serial number again.
Anna clamped her jaw to still the tremor that started in her arms. There was a chamber deep inside her that she kept locked and barred. Inside that chamber, she was also giving her name, rank, and serial number in Russian. It never stopped. She couldn’t stop it. But she could force it down, so that she could barely hear it.
Tonight, it was loud and clear, like an echo reverberating just beneath Hazor’s voice.
What had Hazor been doing in Russia? Assassination? Rescue? Perhaps just reconnaissance of some sort.
As the clouds parted overhead, she scanned the starlit sky for drones, then pulled out her satellite detector and checked it. Clear. For now.
Hazor cried out, and she held her breath. He was panting. She could hear him above the waves. Was he running? Being tortured?
“Nyet! Nyet!” he cried and bolted upright with his AK-74 clutched in both fists, aimed vaguely at the place where Martin slept.
Anna rose to her feet, carefully surveyed the shoreline for any sign of intruders, then walked across the sand toward him. The ocean had quieted. The water spread before her like an enormous pewter disk, enameled with moonlight, and striped with curling ribbons of sea foam.
When she got to within ten paces, Hazor’s gaze darted over her and along the dunes, as though he expected the demons of his dreams to come striding out of the darkness.
“Captain? It’s Anna. You’re on a beach in Israel. Hear me? You’re safe. Micah? Wake up.”
He shoved his black canvas hood back and tipped his face to the rain, letting the cold drops drench his skin. “I’m awake.”
She continued toward him. “Do me a favor? Flip the fire control up to the safe position and take your finger off the trigger.”
He looked down, pulled his finger from the trigger guard, and expelled a breath as he clicked the safety up. “Sorry. I didn’t realize—”
“I know.”
When she crouched beside him, he blinked at her, as though still trying to convince himself she wasn’t the enemy.
Anna gestured to the AK. “Given your flashbacks, I’m not sure it’s safe for you to sleep with a rifle in your hands.”
He clutched the gun more tightly. “You shouldn’t give advice, Anna. You sleep with your pistol buckled around your waist.”
“True, but I don’t have the kind of flashbacks you do.”
“Oh, yes, you do. You’ve never watched yourself sleep. It isn’t pretty.”
She sank down on the sand to his right and watched the fog blowing along the shore. As the clouds shifted, the wisps alternatively glistened with starlight, or appeared to be an army of dark phantasms marching across the sand. “When were you in a Russian prison camp?”
He gave her a sidelong look. A look she knew. People who’d stared into the abyss—and had it stare back—rarely wanted to discuss the experience. But there was an unspoken question in his eyes.
She explained, “You’ve been giving your name, rank, and serial number in Russian all night.”
“Have I? Did I say anything else?”
“You wept the name of a woman.”
Hazor swallowed hard. His gaze seemed to fix upon the candlelit windows in Nahariyya. “Irayna?”
She nodded. “Lover?”
“Russian intelligence.” Hazor pulled up his hood again; the canvas waffled gently around his handsome face. He had the darkest eyes she’d ever seen, like shining black wells.
Near the fire pit, Martin rolled to his belly. Their voices must have awakened him. The rain had become a windborne mist, drifting over the beach in silvery veils.
“She’s dead,” Hazor said matter-of-factly.
“Sorry.”
The candles in Nahariyya started to wink, as though the last living things in Israel passed back and forth before them. Anna had already assumed Irayna was dead. When Hazor had wept her name, his voice had been utterly hopeless, as though he were watching her die.
“I’ve been a prisoner a few times.”
Hazor gave her a deadpan look, as though that was old news to him. “How does an air force cryptographer get captured by the enemy?”
“Field research. Cryptography isn’t just staring at a computer.”
He granted himself the right to let go of the AK for long enough to roughly massage his forehead, then grabbed hold of it again. “How did you get through it?”
She smiled that he had not asked when, or where, or even why she’d been captured. He was a good soldier. He knew she was in Intelligence, and assumed it was classified. “Oh, I tried a lot of methods, but in the end, I followed the advice of an old friend. I chose to go home in my mind.”
“Home?” He frowned.
“Yeah, the only way I could stand it was to live inside the memories of the small ranch where I was born. When the torture became unbearable, I remembered sounds: the wind through the pines, the shrieks of redtailed hawks, buffalo hoofs clacking on stone as the herd climbed the steep hill toward my house. When my captors beat me, I focused on the songs of the birds at dawn, and the languid warmth of the autumn air. The memories allowed me to wall out the rest of the world.”
Which was a partial truth. For weeks, she had huddled in her dark cell with her face buried in her hands, trying to cover the wrenching sound of sobs that would not stop.
“Was Irayna captured at the same time you—”
“Leave it be, Anna.” The words landed like lead weights.
“All right.”
Post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, was a combat soldier’s constant companion. She could tell him that rewriting the memories was the only way to survive, but he wouldn’t listen. Eventually, he’d figure it out himself. Over time he would learn every moment by heart and, at some point, discover he could short-circuit the sequence. Instead of watching Irayna die, she would kill her attackers and live, or he would manage to escape and save her. Or they would walk up a different alley altogether and have a wonderful lunch in the sunshine while the men who originally captured them walked off in the wrong direction. At some point in his dreams, he would allow himself to be her lover again instead of her savior, and then Micah Hazor would be able to move on. Deep inside, he’d know there was something wrong with that memory, but he would not search for the original. He’d leave it buried. Pray it stayed there. As the clouds sailed through the starlight, their bellies gleamed with an icy brilliance. Anna looked up, searching for movement in the sky overhead.
Hazor said, “You’re clearly worried about the facial recognition software in the satellites and drones. What did you do? It’s time for you to tell me why the military is after you.”
As Anna fluffed her rain slicker out, emptying the pools that had collected in the furrows of the plastic, it crackled, then resettled around her tall body and began collecting new raindrops. The last thing she wanted to do was bring Micah Hazor completely into the fold. If they were captured, and she expected to be, they were all much safer if he knew nothing more than she’d already told him. But …
“As part of my cryptographic duties, I discovered an encrypted message that kept repeating. I pursued it. My research requests alerted my supervisors. For the past six months the CIA and the FBI have both been watching me, tracking me, hoping I’d find what I was looking for.”
Rain pattered the sand around them.
“You mean they let you continue your research?”
“They never denied me access to any file. They never locked my computer. They never picked me up, not even for questioning. What would you call it?”
“Permission. What were you researching?”
Over the past few days, a sense of futility had possessed her. The dead that filled the sea, the empty cities and towns, the utter quiet in a sky that had always had planes, all had left her feeling as though she was being stalked by a nameless terror.
To make matters worse, she’d never felt this useless or lonely. For over a decade, she had lived in a community of men and women whose sole purpose was to understand and combat the enemy. She missed the morning conversations and laughter, the sound of soldiers going about their duties. Most of all, she missed her friends in D.C. Those people had become as much a part of her as her arms and legs. If she admitted the truth to herself, she’d realize she didn’t know quite what to do without them.
But, of course, they were no longer her friends. By now, they all believed she was a traitor … the woman who’d gone AWOL with information vital to stopping the plague.
“Micah, the Marham-i-Isa I’m interested in is not an ancient medical cure.”
He jerked around to stare at her. “Nadai thinks it is.”
“I’ve already told him it may not be.”
“Bet that annoyed him. He wouldn’t have come with you if he’d known the truth, would he?”
“Doubtful.”
Micah smiled. “Okay, so if it isn’t an ancient healing ointment, what is it?”
“I don’t know. That’s the truth.”
“But it’s a threat to national security, right? They would not have allowed you to continue your research otherwise.”
Her memory traced the places she had traveled to searching for that answer over the past three years. So many places.
“It’s a cure, Micah. Just not an ancient one or maybe an ancient one that’s been reengineered. I—I don’t know for sure.”
He seemed confused. He’d probably thought she’d uncovered a plot to kill President Stein, or bomb the White House, or something equally important.
“A cure for the plague?”
“At least that, yes. Maybe far more.”
Beneath her slicker, she propped her elbows on her knees. Micah was smart. The more fragments of the maze he knew, the more likely he was to eventually put it all together. She couldn’t let that happen. There were too many mysteries about him that she had not solved. If a man like Garusovsky ever got his hands on …
“By the way, I asked Martin about the Angels of Light.”
“Really? That must have been a lengthy discussion. Ancient Christian myths are his favorite topic.”
“Pretty short, actually. He said it would take too many semesters to educate me.”
She suppressed a smile. “He’s actually not a bad guy. I know at times he sounds like an arrogant professor, but what he meant is that he personally teaches several semesters on the subject.”
“I know he’s not a bad guy, Anna.”
Unspoken words hung in the air between them.
She said, “He’s just not like us, is he?”
“No.” Hazor hesitated before he continued, “It’s none of my business, of course, but I’ve seen how Nadai looks at you when your back is turned. Is that the reason you won’t let him get close to you? He wants more than you’re willing to give?”
“Be realistic, Micah. Do you really think I have a future with a professor?”
A smile warmed his face. “You might. How do you know if you don’t try?”
“People like you and I can’t have normal lives. You know that.”
“I suspect that’s true, but, frankly, I’d like to try for a normal life.”
“Wife? Kids? A backyard with a dog?”
“I’d give anything for that.”
The tide had come in. The shoreline was swathed in foam. “Well, I’m not sure either of us is going to have that luxury.”
Their boat tugged against its stake. She needed to keep an eye on it or it would slip away in the darkness and leave them on foot.
“Did your friend, Hakari, talk about the Angels of Light?”
“Often. He spent the last months that I knew him poring over ancient documents for prophecies about them. He said their role in the last days would be as the bringers of disease.”
“Did you work in the lab with Hakari?”
“Yes, but my job was primarily computer programming. I was good at designing three-dimensional figures to display genetic realities. He always had us work in teams of two. My partner, Yacob, was far better at the actual genetics than I was, and brilliant at vaccine research. Each team member had a specific task to complete.”
“Is that what this is? Your task?”
The wind gusted, flapping her wet slicker around her. “Before he went into hiding he gave each of us a problem to solve, yes. This is mine. Find and decrypt the Marham-i-Isa.”
“But if you worked in teams of two, how can you work out the maze without knowing your partner’s results?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing. Not sure I can.”
Lightning flashed out over the ocean, bleaching the air around them. Hazor’s gaze drifted to the sea where the invisible plague ships floated. He must be thinking about the desperate passengers. Distance filled his eyes. He looked iconic, like some dark warrior peering out across tomorrow’s battlefield, planning his strategy.
“Is the plague worldwide, Anna?”
He had such an expressive voice, though she doubted he realized it, or he’d probably try to change it. The answer to his question was ashes in her mouth. Spiritual suffering was always characterized by feelings of abandonment, isolation, and a sensation of unbearable futility. He’d managed to encapsulate that anguish in five small words.
“If it isn’t already, it will be.”
“How do you know?”
“Hakari said it would spread around the globe.”
“But he couldn’t possibly know that. Could he?”
She held his gaze. “He had an amazing ability to foresee the probable courses that genetic mutations would take. Though not even James could have predicted how quickly this virus is moving.”
Hazor looked away and sadness filled her.
She scanned the dark dunes again, feeling isolated and alone. Are you alive, Yacob? Where are you tonight?
Micah Hazor turned back. “Anna, what turned you against the military?”
She stiffened. “I never turned against the military.”
“Why didn’t you share your findings with your superiors?”
“I didn’t share my information with anyone, except Martin, and then only pieces of it, because I needed his help to decipher the maze.”
Hazor shook his head. “I don’t get it. If you’d reported your findings, the best minds in the world could have worked—”
“If I’d revealed the goal of my search, the military would have found the Egyptian cave, stripped it bare, and destroyed everything in a headlong rush to discover what I was searching for.”
“But you weren’t looking for the historical Marham-i-Isa, so why would it have mattered?”
As if that velvet voice could weave visions, she had a momentary flash of how he saw her, and it was like a bayonet thrust to her belly. “Do you really blindly trust the military, Micah?”
“Of course not.”
“Then try to understand. I need to figure this out before I decide whom to trust.”
His jaw moved, grinding his teeth for a while. “We’re not headed home are we?”
“Sure we are.”
“I don’t think so. When we came out of the Nile, we should have headed west and followed the African coastline to Spain. We didn’t.”
“No, but I was hoping…” Don’t lie. He’ll know. “Okay, the truth is I was supposed to meet a man at Bir Bashan. He wasn’t there. Plan B was to meet at El Karnak. He wasn’t there, either. Plan C was to meet in Israel. That’s why we headed east instead of west. But we are headed home. Eventually.”
“Have you seen him?”
Emptiness yawned in her chest. “No. Not yet. If he were alive he would have signaled me from shore near Ashkelon. Which makes me think he may be dead. I don’t want to believe it, though.”
“What was Plan D?”
“There wasn’t a Plan D,” she lied.
And their gazes collided like the clash of swords. But after a few seconds, his disdainful expression melted to something like understanding.
“I wouldn’t reveal that, either, Anna. Keep in mind, I’m trying, but it’s not easy to place myself in your shoes, wondering what I’d do if I knew the secrets that you do.”
“You’re a patriot. I know exactly what you’d do. Everything you could to keep the information out of the hands of the power brokers until you were sure it wouldn’t be misused.”
“Wouldn’t be or couldn’t be? I’m not sure the first is ever possible. Especially if it’s a cure for this plague. Nations will want it for their own people, and they may not be willing to share, especially with their opponents. The plague will provide a very convenient method of erasing their enemies from existence.”
“Now you’re thinking. Welcome to my world, Captain. Hakari feared the same thing.”
Hazor pulled the AK beneath his poncho to keep it dry and took another grip on the stock. He knew as well as she did that if something could be used as a weapon, it would be.
Anna rose to her feet and searched the beach and the ocean for movement, or any sign of impending doom. She felt something out there in the darkness, waiting, and started to walk away. “I need to check the perimeter.”
Before she’d taken three steps, Hazor called, “You can trust me.”
She looked back at him. His body glimmered, reflecting the distant lightning.
“Can I?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for the offer. I appreciate it. Truly.”
He gave her a disbelieving smile. “Why don’t you start by telling me where it is?”
“What?”
“The historical Marham-i-Isa. You found it in that cave. I can tell. Is it here in camp?”
She considered lying to him, but he read facial expressions too well.
“Yes. It’s in a small wax-sealed jar in Martin’s pack. But whatever is in that jar will not be the whole truth. That would be too easy.” For the Maze Master.
Hazor’s dark eyes glistened with starlight. “And who first noticed the Golden Ratio?”
She flinched before she could stop herself. He was piecing it together more swiftly than she’d thought he would. “It’s old. In written records the Golden Ratio, 1.618, can be traced to an ancient Greek sculptor named Phidias, who lived from 490 to 430 BC. When Phidias sculpted the famed statue of Zeus in the Temple of Olympia, and when he worked on the Parthenon in Athens, he repeatedly used a ratio of about 1.618. Phi is the first letter of Phidias’s name, hence phi became the symbol for the Golden Ratio. For millennia, architects have identified what they believe to be the most perfectly shaped rectangle, often referred to as the Golden Rectangle, because it has a ratio of just about phi. That’s why ancient philosophers believed the Golden Ratio revealed the mind of God, and why it was called the Divine Proportion.”
He frowned as though he thought the entire discussion might be a distraction. “What does phi have to do with the maze? Is it just about the shape?”
“I don’t know for sure. Yet.”
A strange kinship had arisen between them. She smiled back … and had to remind herself that her enemies had probably inoculated this man. She had no idea what his role was in the upcoming battle. Her own fears, doubts, and half-convictions tightened her throat. “Quid pro quo, Micah.”
He shifted, uneasy. “Okay.”
“What else have you remembered about the battle where you almost died? What was your mission?”
His smile faded. He was debating whether or not to tell her. She could see it in his eyes.
“We were tasked by the Joint Chiefs with capturing an extremist named Taran Beth-Gilgal in Bir Bashan. Supposedly he was planning on dispersing the plague in Africa.”
Anna thought about that. “I met him. I find that hard to believe, but I’m sure that’s what the brass told you.”
Had the government been afraid of something Taran knew, or something he might do?
“I wonder…” Her voice thinned to nothing as her heartbeat quickened.
“What?”
“I just had an intriguing thought. General Cozeba may have feared Taran would kill me before I could discover the secret.”
“Cozeba?”
“Yes. Cozeba was in charge at Bir Bashan. He’s a narcissistic psychopath. As well as a true military genius.”
Hazor tilted his head suspiciously. “How do you know who was in charge at Bir Bashan?”
“He’s currently assigned to the NSA, African covert ops. His specialty is finding and eliminating extremist training camps in Africa, and anyone who supports them. He gets a real kick out of toppling governments. Remember the coup in Zimbabwe three years ago? That was his work.”
Hazor bent toward her with a stony expression. “Why would Beth-Gilgal want to kill you?”
Conflicting emotions moved across his face: a magnetic attraction to her, fear, desperation. The longer they gazed at each other, the more loudly blood rushed in her ears. For a blessed timeless moment Anna allowed herself to drown in the safety he offered. Every line of his face assured her that she could trust him.
She tore her gaze away and looked up at the stars. “For two thousand years, Taran’s order has killed anyone who’s tried to enter the Cave of the Treasure of Light, the cave that held the Marham-i-Isa. The CIA and FBI knew that was my destination. They just didn’t know where the cave was.”
“How do you know that?”
She pursed her lips at his stupidity.
“Oh, right.” He laughed at himself. “You’re a master code breaker. You decrypted the CIA’s and FBI’s internal correspondence. My next question is: How did they know? Did you tell them that was your destination?”
She breathed in the stormy headiness of the night. The scent of ozone carried from the lightning flashes. Like the breath of a ghost, the breeze whipped loose strands of her auburn hair around her face. Hazor’s gaze briefly softened.
“Oh, I see,” he said. “You wanted them to follow you. Why?”
“It was necessary.”
Rain blew across the beach in shining windborne veils. She watched them while Hazor watched her.
“Then my team’s mission may actually have been to protect you. Is that possible?”
Interesting thought. A long time ago, she had fancied herself to be a magician—a mage of symbols and numbers, with an almost alchemical capacity to decipher any secret, anywhere. She followed out sequences. That’s what she did. She deciphered the path of the falling dominoes to determine what they were designed to knock down. Then why hadn’t she seen Cozeba’s move against Taran?
“Micah, how did you get from Bir Bashan to El Karnak?”
Through a taut exhale, he answered, “I have no idea.”
She gestured to his wrist. “What have you remembered about your inoculation? Who inoculated you?”
“That part of my memory is still gone. Sorry.”
Orange flared far out in the ocean. A very large mushroom of fire. Hazor pivoted to look. Long heartbeats later, the muted booms reached them, and the clouds above the explosion flickered.
She rose to her feet. “Try to get some sleep, Captain.”