On the Fifth Day (45 page)

"You really don't know my brother at all, do you?" said Thomas.

"Didn't,"
Parks corrected. "He's dead, remember?"

"Christians can believe in evolution," said Thomas, ignor

ing him.

"America," Parks went on, "is the stupidest nation in the de

veloped world. We cling to our ignorance. You don't think proof of evolution is a big deal? Tell the fifty-one percent of Americans who still don't believe in it. Tell the seventy-four percent of churchgoers who don't believe in evolution. Tell that to the Kansas board of education who were voted in solely to get evolution out of the curriculum, so that the schools could actually
train
their kids to be ignorant. You think I'm making this up? You can't make this shit up. We're living in the fucking Dark Ages and we're doing it by choice."

"I think Ed believed that the laws of science are the laws of God," said Thomas, thinking it through. "He thought that God made the world, but he did it by what you would call natural and scientific means over millions of years. God made man, but it took time because for God who resides in eternity, mil

lions of years are but seconds."

Parks gave him a long strange look, and Thomas looked down at the water beneath their keel, embarrassed.

"And you agree with him?" said Parks.

"No," said Thomas. "I don't know. Does it matter?"

"It's Easter this weekend, did you know?" said Parks.

"I guess . . . No," said Thomas. "I'd forgotten."

"You know what's going to happen over there this week

end?" said Parks, nodding vaguely toward the coast.

"People will go to church," said Thomas, tiring of the con

versation now.

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A. J. Hartley

"Sure," said Parks. "And then some of them will drive out to a field and will be nailed up on crosses for people to gawk at. Actual crucifixions in the twenty-first century, if you can believe that. People volunteer to show their holiness or to ask God for an extra loaf of bread or some damn thing."

"I've heard of that," said Thomas, noncommittal, jarred by Parks's scorn.

"And here's the best bit," said Parks. "They use stainless steel nails soaked in alcohol to avoid infection. Good, huh?

They volunteer to be crucified, but they want to make sure that the nails they drive through their hands and feet won't
in

fect
them. Whack, whack, whack!" he said, miming the ham

mer strokes with a lopsided grin.

"So?" said Thomas.

"You can't have God and science," said Parks finally. "You have to choose one. If you don't, you're just swabbing for in

fection after you nailed yourself up."

Thomas said nothing. He wanted to respond, but even if he could guess what Ed would have said, he didn't know what he thought himself.

"Don't waver on me now," said Parks, slapping him on the shoulder as he walked away. "The battle lines are already drawn. You've been on the front lines for weeks."

A voice called to Parks from the helm. It was Captain Nakamura. Parks went to meet him.

"You okay?" said Kumi, sidling up to Thomas as he stared out over the water.

"Yes," he said, without thinking. "I guess. Parks . . ."

The sentence trailed off. He didn't know how to explain the leaden feeling the man's words left in him.

"He's a man on a mission," said Kumi. "A crusader."

Thomas smiled at the irony and nodded.

He hadn't expected Kumi to still be with him. Until the moment the boat actually left the dock, he had been waiting for her to leave.

Oddly enough, Parks had made the decision for her, albeit indirectly. She had phoned the Kobe aquarium, calling as a 341

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

State Department representative pretending to be looking into the unconventional hiring of an American citizen. She had, she confessed, been determined to uncover something about him or his story that would reveal the folly of their expedition. She had found nothing. Parks was in good standing with his employer, who clearly regarded him as eminently qualified--

with a Stanford doctorate, no less--focused and cheap. The closest thing to a blot on his record was his failure to get tenure at Berkeley, where he had been an assistant professor right out of Stanford. Though Nakamura had final control of the
Nara,
the Kobe people clearly trusted Parks's judgment. The fact that he was obsessive to the point of irrationality didn't seem to matter much.

"I think they want to ride his wake," she had said. "They'll let him run his quest aground and then, when he finds what he's looking for, they'll hop out to grab all the publicity. If they can land a specimen--alive or dead--it will make them the single most prestigious outfit of their kind in the world."

"So you trust him?" Thomas had said.

"Not as far as I can throw him," she replied. "But if he's legit and on the verge of something important, I want to be there."

"As a representative of the American government,"

Thomas added with a wry smile.

"Close enough," she had said, before squeezing his arm and walking away in the way she used to, long ago, so that Thomas just stood on the deck for several minutes staring at the water.

That had been two days ago and he still didn't know what it had meant.

"How's Jim?" he said now.

"Distant," said his ex-wife. "He seems confused, even a lit

tle sad. Why don't you talk to him? You've barely exchanged words since we left Japan. Is it that he reminds you of Ed?"

"I don't know," said Thomas. "Maybe. You like him, don't you?"

"Yes," she said. It was a clear, definitive answer, but it was one she had chosen to make, a statement of faith and hope, 342

A. J. Hartley

maybe even a little charity. It was less a description of her feelings than a statement about the world she wished to live in. Thomas nodded simply and said nothing.

Parks was coming back toward them, beaming.

"We'll be there in two hours," he announced. "Who's com

ing in the sub with me?"

"I am," said Thomas. He hadn't thought about it before, but he knew that if anything was down there, he had to see it. CHAPTER 95

Deborah Miller sat at her desk in the Druid Hills Museum in Atlanta and frowned. Who was this Matsuhashi and why was he e-mailing her these weird aerial images? He claimed, in formal and very slightly strained English, that Thomas Knight had asked him to forward them to her, though he said he didn't know why. She cycled through them again: the village on the beach, the scarlet water, the smoke, then nothing. It had to be about his brother, but what she was supposed to do about it, she had no idea.

When she last spoke to Thomas, he hadn't known where his brother had died. This would seem to represent new infor

mation, then, though she couldn't imagine what could wipe a village off the face of the earth like that. She fished an atlas out of the bookshelves and searched for the coordinates, hom

ing in on the Sulu Archipelago in the Philippines. She did a series of Internet searches for recent news stories concerning the region, but turned up only stern warnings from various governments about visiting what was obviously a deeply troubled region plagued by terrorism. A small but vi

olent group was waging a secessionist war to create a separate Muslim nation for the islands of Mindanao and the Sulu Arch

ipelago. As part of the war on terrorism, six hundred fifty U.S. 343

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

troops, including one hundred fifty special forces, had been deployed to Basilan (the largest island in the archipelago) in 2002.

Was the smoking beach the result of a terrorist attack, or some kind of counterterrorist strike? In either case, Father Ed

ward Knight may have merely been caught in the middle, though what he was doing there in the first place, she couldn't imagine.

There was a tap at her door and it opened, admitting Tonya, the museum's communication director.

"Just made a pot of coffee if you want to get yourself a cup," she said.

"Thanks," said Deborah. "Hey, look at this, will you."

She had already given Tonya a detailed account of the strange subplot of her time in Paestum, so she didn't need to say much now to bring her up to speed.

"Why did he have this sent to you?" said Tonya.

"Thomas trusts me, I think," said Deborah. "And I don't think he trusts many people right now, and with good reason."

"I guess being interrogated for the same murder creates a bond between folks," said Tonya.

"Quite," said Deborah. "So what do you think?"

"I've never even heard of this place before," said Tonya.

"And if you're talking terrorists and military strikes and all, I think this is way out of our league."

"So you think I should do nothing?" said Deborah, stand

ing up and stretching to her full--and considerable--height.

"Hell no," said Tonya. "But I think you need to get in touch with the kind of people who deal with this sort of thing."

"I don't want to break Thomas's trust or get him into hot water."

"I'd say he was already in hot water," said Tonya. "And be

sides, you could call someone with connections who--for you--would be discreet."

"For me?" said Deborah, turning puzzled on her. But Tonya was just smiling her knowing, sphinx smile and Debo

rah got it.

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Ten minutes later, coffee in hand but still pacing the office like some distracted shore bird, Deborah made the call. It took only two minutes to make her way through the FBI switch

board, and the voice that answered caught her off guard, though not as off guard as she was about to get him.

"Hello?" he said. "This is Cerniga."

"Hi, Chris," she said, businesslike, as if they had spoken only days before. "This is Deborah Miller."

CHAPTER 96

The moment the submarine's hatch was sealed, Thomas re

gretted getting in. It was tiny, about ten feet long, eight feet wide, and almost as high, with a bulbous acrylic cockpit that made the whole thing look like a diving helmet. It was stocked with basic survival equipment including a knife, flare gun, and minimal food rations, and was equipped with a sonar system, life support, and remote-controlled arm. It was yellow. Predictably, Parks met Thomas's claustrophobic unease with song.

"Sky of blue and sea of green,"
he sang,
"in our yellow
submarine . . .
All together!
We all live . . ."

Thomas did not join in.

"You sure this thing works?" he said.

"State of the art, my friend," said Parks, overly chipper.

"State of the Goddamned art. Will take us six hundred meters down if we want it to."

"We don't, do we?"

"Shouldn't need to," said Parks. "I'd be surprised if these things live more than a couple of hundred meters down. If they get much deeper than that, I don't see how they would adjust to the surface. Too much of a change in pressure. You ready?"

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He wasn't, but he nodded anyway and managed to smile at Kumi, who was watching them through the thick glass nose of the craft. One of the crew gave them a thumbs-up, and the submersible was winched up and out over the side on the
Nara
's A-frame. Thomas felt cramped and out of control as the vessel turned slowly on the winch, but he said nothing. Parks had started to sing again, in his element and loving every second of it.

The two men were sitting next to each other surrounded by the clear acrylic bubble of the cockpit canopy. Visibility was excellent, with only the rear and ventral regions obscured by the rest of the craft, and Thomas found himself feeling oddly exposed as they broke the plane of the water and dipped into its shifting bluish depths. He gripped his armrest and stared at the fish that darted past, flashing in the filtered sunlight that rippled and shifted in columns from above. It took him almost a minute to realize that he was holding his breath. He sucked the air in as Parks disengaged the winch automatically and the vessel suddenly became weightless in the swell. The
Nara
had moored a thousand yards from the rocky shore. Though the island was edged with idyllic sandy beaches, they were interspersed with piers and cliffs of dark volcanic rock that extended well out into the sea. Taking the boat in closer would be suicidal, so to explore the rocky outcrops underwater--searching for the caves Parks thought were the habitual lair of the fishapod--they had to make the journey in the sub, cruising at a leisurely two knots.

They were diving too, and as the light outside lowered slowly, Parks flicked on the sub's lamp array, which included two halogen-bright spots facing forward on a rectangular frame. They barely made a difference here, but if the sub kept going down, they would be invaluable. Parks snapped a switch.

"
Nara,
" he said, speaking loud and clear. "Come in."

"This is
Nara,
" said a Japanese crewman, his English heav

ily accented. "Is everything okay?"

"Hunky-dory," said Parks.

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There was a moment of silence, presumably given over to one of the foreigners translating, and then the crewman was back.

"Very good," he said. "All is . . . er . . . hunky-dory here too."

"Well, isn't that just dandy," said Parks. "Sonar is picking up a steep rock face ahead. Slowing to half speed, continuing dive, and commencing search."

Thomas shifted in his seat.

"Watch out for the giant octopus," said Parks.

"There are giant octupses round here?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Parks grinned. "And it's
octopi.
Didn't they teach you anything in school, or was that day given over to how God made the little fishies?"

"I'm pretty sure there was one day when they told me never to go underwater in a plastic bottle with a guy who has tried to kill me," said Thomas.

"Still harping on that?" said Parks. "And I thought we were buds. How's our depth?"