On the Fifth Day (44 page)

She sighed, glanced out the window, and turned back to him.

"I'm scared, Tom, okay?" she said. "I'd like to go back to my office and carry on like all this doesn't concern me or is over, but that's tough to believe. I want . . . I don't know, a conclusion. I want closure."

She wasn't just talking about Ed's death or their current predicament, and Thomas knew it. Their fight at the temple had not ended things between them so much as it had revealed how much had gone unsaid over the years. Thomas said noth

ing, but he felt it too, the sense that they were waiting for something to happen that would--at last--move them for

ward: separately, Thomas presumed, finally closing the door behind them, forever shutting off the part of their lives they had spent together.

"I don't know if I can come with you," she said. "I have some vacation time coming, but I don't know. I have to make some calls and do some thinking, okay?"

"Okay."

Thomas felt tired and confused. Parks and Jim were both being furtive in their different ways, and Kumi . . . He just didn't know about Kumi. Not for the first time, Thomas felt out of his depth, the shore long fallen away beneath him as he drifted into darker, deeper waters on unpredictable currents. For all he had learned over the past weeks he was still no nearer to figuring out who was commanding those who had pursued him across the world. Jim was right; he was no James Bond, and neither was Thomas. The idea that the people who wanted him dead, the people who had killed his brother, could 330

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manipulate government agencies or field trained killers in he

licopters was frankly terrifying. He could only have survived so far out of the merest luck, and that was bound to change, and soon. Perhaps he should turn himself in to the authorities, let himself be taken to face the music at home or in Italy. He was innocent. That would count for something, right?

It should have been a rhetorical question, and for all his skepticism about authority, it normally would have been. But today, with his brother apparently dead and investigations into his own links to terrorism underway, there was nothing rhetor

ical about it.

God,
he thought,
what I'd do for a drink.
The four of them sat there in silence as the train rattled on around the base of Fuji and on to the coast. It was not an aus

picious start, thought Thomas, to a voyage into the South China Sea and beyond. He didn't know how long it would take them to get there, but it was a journey on which trust would be in short supply.

Night had fallen on the Heiwa Dori, and the endless procession of faux samurai had finally come to an end with no sign of Knight and the others. War and his men still watched the rail

way station, but it was increasingly evident that their quarry had slipped through their fingers once more. He still watched, but his mind was otherwise occupied. He was waiting. The inevitable call came half an hour later. The Sealbreaker's voice was calm and even, and while War delivered his professional assessment of their failure, the other man said nothing, so that when War finally stopped talking the silence unnerved him and he thought they had been cut off.

"Sir?" he said. "Did you get all that?"

"Yes," he said. "I would rather have heard something dif

ferent, of course . . . but, yes."

"I'm sorry, sir," said War. "I don't know how they got by us, but it's chaos down here still . . ."

"Clearly," said the Seal-breaker, with such finality that War 331

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fell silent as if struck. But then the voice came back and the ir

ritation, the crispness had fallen away. "Well," he said, "I would have preferred that it had not gone this far, but so be it."

"Should we monitor the station all night, sir?"

"No," said the Seal-breaker. "They are gone, but that's okay."

"Sir?"

"It's not like we don't know where they are going," said the Seal-breaker, as if he was musing to himself.

"Should we prepare to intercept?"

"No," said the Seal-breaker. "We've always known where they would finish up if given the chance. Better hit them there where another stack of corpses won't attract much attention. Our best card is yet to be played, and there is a kind of sym

metry to the thing, a fitting closure. I look forward to being on hand to witness it all in person."

"You're going to come with us?" said War, aghast and a lit

tle excited. He had met the Seal-breaker only once in person. Pestilence never had, a fact that War held as one of the clear

est markings of rank between them.

"Certainly," said the Seal-breaker. "Regroup. Gather your forces--all of them--and await deployment coordinates. I'll be waiting for you when you get there. We'll end this together. And War?"

"Sir?"

"Put this failure behind you."

"Yes, sir," said War, a rising panic overwhelming him at the Seal-breaker's uncharacteristic compassion.

"The Lord works in mysterious ways his wonders to per

form," said the Seal-breaker. As one door closes, another opens, and through it is the way to glory."

"Yes, sir," said War, his suddenly cold skin prickling, the hairs on his arms and neck standing upright, though whether the sensation he was feeling was exhilaration or terror, he couldn't say.

THE JESUS FISH

We have reached a crossroads in human evolution where the only road which leads forward is towards a common passion . . . To continue to place our hopes in a social or

der achieved by external violence would simply amount to our giving up all hope of carrying the Spirit of the Earth to its limits.

--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

CHAPTER 94

They had been at sea for almost two weeks. Thomas wasn't sure what he had expected when they reached Shizuoka, but the boat had surprised him. It was huge--more than a hundred feet long--stuffed with state-of-the-art marine research equipment including sonar and a two-man submersible, and run by a crew of twenty-two, not including scientists and guests. It was owned by the Kobe aquarium, and though Parks was nominally in charge of the expedition, the boat's staff structure rendered him little more than a passenger. Thomas had no idea what Parks had told them, but there had been a se

ries of lengthy phone calls on the train and in the port before the expedition had been approved. God knew how he had overplayed their meager evidence, but they had eventually been welcomed aboard by Nakamura, the ship's captain, with typically Japanese politeness.

It was impossible to discern what the captain and his crew thought of their mission, and they kept pointedly to them

selves. Nonetheless, Thomas suspected that they thought Parks a loose cannon, and that it wouldn't take much to turn the boat back to Japan. Whether the captain knew that the names of the foreigners on the passenger manifest had been falsified, he couldn't say, but Thomas spent the first two days on deck, watching for signs of the Japanese coast guard; how

ever much they seemed to have escaped from the mainland, the boat would quickly feel little better than a floating prison cell if the authorities opted to pick them up. Thomas hadn't learned that there was no alcohol on board till they set sail. At first he was merely disappointed that he couldn't have the beer he thought he had earned, but after two more days the subject made him irritable. Everyone but Jim stayed out of his way for almost a week: no mean feat on a boat. It was about then that Thomas began to reflect on the last 336

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time he had gone for more than two days without a drink, without several drinks, and his irritability turned into some

thing darker and more private. The thirst had passed, for now, but he felt conspicuous, humiliated, and it was another two days before he began seeking out the company of the others.

"Welcome to our very own floating Betty Ford clinic," said Parks, with customary detachment. Jim winced, but Thomas shrugged it off.

The boat was called the
Nara,
though Parks had hung a hand-lettered sign over the side that read
Beagle II.
It cut through the blue water at what had first seemed like breakneck speed, till Thomas had taken to studying the charts with the captain at the end of the day, noting with dismay the way they were inching south. Two days ago they had gotten their first glimpse of the Philippines, easing down the western coast of northern Luzon, spending the night in sight of Manila, where the crew took on supplies. The foreigners had decided that passing through Philippine immigration wasn't worth the risk, so they had sat up half the night, jealously staring off toward the lights of the city. Now everyone was back aboard and pushing south once more, this time through the Sulu Sea to

wards the thousand-island archipelago of the same name that pointed a dotted and irregular arrow southwest to the Malaysian coast.

As they got closer, the crew grew quieter, more watchful. These waters had a bad reputation, as did the islands them

selves, and not just for piracy. These were the stomping grounds of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the smaller but more radical Abu Sayyaf. The latter was the extremist and belligerent wing of a largely peaceful Muslim population whose home in the islands predated Spanish conquest but of

ten found itself left out of the considerations of the Manilacentric government. Part of the disagreement between Parks and Captain Nakamura, it seemed, had concerned the safety of their destination, a place of bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings that most governments advised their people to avoid. Combine such facts with the occasional sighting of a 337

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ten-foot tiger shark streaking through the waters, and even the pale, palm-fringed beaches darkened, became--perhaps unfairly--places of menace.

"It's perfect, isn't it?" said Parks, appearing at Thomas's elbow.

"I guess," Thomas agreed.

"No," said Parks, "I mean it's a perfect habitat for the fish. Like Naples, all these islands are volcanic, the same undersea caves, the same warm waters. As soon as we get close to the island on the satellite images, we'll put the submersible down: a hundred meters or so should do it. See what's down there."

"You think we'll find them?" said Thomas.

"We'd better," said Parks. "It's what your brother died for."

"Maybe," said Thomas. "You think he died because some

one wanted to keep the whereabouts of these fish secret?"

"Whereabouts or existence, yes," said Parks.

"Because they are worth money on the Chinese folk rem

edy market?"

"Maybe," said Parks, staring out over the water.

"But probably not," said Thomas, reading his tone.

"You want to know what I really think?" said Parks, round

ing on him. "I think that it's not about money, or terrorism or science. Particularly not science. I think it's about antiscience."

"Which is what?" said Thomas.

"Religion," said Parks, like a man finally laying down his cards. "Specifically, Christianity. What I think is that your brother found swimming, walking proof of evolution, some

thing he thought he could make some money off of, and they wanted him shut up."

"They?"

"The Church," he said. "His church, probably. What do you think the Reverend Jim is here for, Thomas? He's doing what he did when he was charged to watch over your brother. If we find the fish, you might want to toss him overboard be

fore he brings the Catholic death squads down on us."

"You can't believe that," said Thomas.

"Really?" said Parks. "You want a list of what the Catholic 338

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church has done to people who didn't agree with it? You want to hear about the Inquisition, or the Albigensian Crusade? Try this for size. It's July twenty-first, 1209, a town called Beziers in France. The armies of the papacy surround the town and demand the expulsion of about five hundred members of a heretic sect called the Cathars. Knowing what will happen to the Cathars if they are handed over, the town refuses. So what did the papal army do? They attacked. Ever heard the phrase

'Kill them all and let God sort them out'? That's where it comes from. More or less. It's what the papal legate or some

one said when asked how they were supposed to separate the heretics from the rest. They sacked the town and slaughtered everyone they could find inside. Twenty thousand dead."

"That was a long time ago," said Thomas.

"Some things don't change," said Parks. "Religion doesn't tolerate dissent, doesn't debate truth. You are either with them or you are against them."

"But Ed was a priest."

"A priest who found evidence of evolution," said Parks.

"That made him a target."

"I don't see why those two things are opposed to each other," said Thomas, "and I still don't see why this fishapod is such a big deal if all it does is confirm what you already know from fossils."

"It's not about scientific proof, because these people aren't interested in science except when they can use it to back up some half-witted tale about Noah's ark," said Parks with a sneer. "The fishapod wouldn't prove anything about evolution to the scientific community that they don't already know in general terms, but showing these things walking around might change a lot of minds that aren't in that community. The creationists and the intelligent-design crazies can point at holes in the fossil record all they like, but if you can then point right back to a living example of Darwinian evolution, it takes the wind out of their sails. It shouldn't, and if they were real scientists it wouldn't, but they aren't and it would. It will."

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It was a credo, a statement of faith, and he reveled in it.

"Ed was a Christian who believed in evolution," said Thomas. "He can't be in that small a minority."

"Nonsense," said Parks. "He was a Christian who was pre

pared to dump his beliefs when the facts gave him an angle he could work for profit."