Search: A Novel of Forbidden History (46 page)

David fell to his knees, and Jess rushed to kneel beside him.

Seconds later, she looked back at Victoria. “He’s alive because they used darts this time. In Boston, their orders were to kill.”

“Why the change?” Jess demanded. The Cross operative in olive drab outback gear didn’t answer her. With the hypertrained resolve of each recruit in what was, to all intents, the Family’s private army, he slipped a new cartridge into his Taser.

“Orders are to take you both to Zurich. Uninjured, if possible.”

Jess saw Bakana’s look of surprise at the threat of violence. Victoria continued to say nothing.

Jess touched David’s smooth bare chest. Barbed electrodes were still hooked into his skin there. Blood oozed from the impact points.

He moaned, still not coherent. The disruptive effects of the high-voltage, low-current shock did take some time to wear off, but Jess thought it odd he showed no signs of recovery yet.

She turned back to Victoria. “In Boston, Su-Lin wanted David and me dead. Now she doesn’t. That means she needs information from both of us. She wants us to tell her how to find the temples.”

Jess ignored the astonished faces of the operative and Bakana. All that mattered was what Victoria would do.

The Defender of Canberra evidently made her decision. She spoke to the man with the Taser, her voice authoritative, commanding.

“You are in my domain. If you expect to leave with your prisoners, you’ll do me the respect of telling
me
why you’re taking them.”

The operative hesitated, and Jess guessed that Su-Lin had ordered him not to reveal anything. Not even to the Shop’s director.

She saw Bakana, conflicted, look from the bodyguard back to her superior. Aware that she was watching history.

Jess suddenly wondered if
this
was one of the stories she would tell the Family’s children someday.

“You should speak to the Defender of São Paulo,” the operative finally said.

“I intend to. But right now, I’m speaking to you.”

David moaned again. The sound distracted the operative, and he reached down for the wires trailing from David’s chest, to pull them free. “He should be fine now.” But in one quick motion David ripped the darts from his chest himself and used them to slash at the operative. The man reeled back, startled, his face streaked with blood as he raised his Taser to fire again, and—

—fell back as David grabbed a heavy book from a shelf and slammed it against his head.

David scooped up the Taser and backed away, waving the weapon at Bakana as he ordered her to stay by the fallen man. Though David’s hand was shaking and his face was ashen, blood still dripping from ragged chest wounds, it was obvious to Jess that he’d deliberately acted to persuade the operative, and her, that the Taser had debilitated him more than it had.

“Let’s just find what we came for,” he told Jess, “and get out of here.”

Bakana found her voice. “You can’t get out of here. No one can.”

“I can wait for the door to open,” David said. He looked at Victoria. “You are going to open it, right?”

Despite what she’d just witnessed, Victoria maintained an air of imperious calm. She pulled out a dusty black phone from under a stack of papers. “Jessie, I agree with you that something’s not right, and that Su-Lin’s somehow involved, but you still haven’t convinced me she wants the temples destroyed. There’s just no reason for it.” She lifted the receiver, ready to place the call.

Before Jess could make one last attempt to convince Victoria to help her, David spoke.

“Sure there is,” he said. “What about the Family secret?”

It was as if a sudden chill had frozen everyone in the office. Bakana and the operative turned to stare at him. Victoria stood with the handset of her phone halfway to her ear.

Jess knew what David was about to do: Defend
her.
She tried to warn him off. “David—”

But David was oblivious to the hurricane he was about to unleash.

“I couldn’t even begin to guess what this facility cost,” he said. “What it took to get a blast door into the center of Australia. How Jess can get fake passports, charter planes halfway around the world . . . It’s like money doesn’t exist for you people.”

“Your point?” Victoria asked. She was looking straight at Jess, the unspoken question in her eyes.
How much have you told him?

Too much,
Jess knew. Then David made it worse. Much worse.

“The MacCleirigh Foundation, your ‘Family,’ exists to search for the temples. So tell me, what happens when they’re found?”

“There’s more to us than that.” Victoria’s voice was even, but Jess knew that outrage was beneath it.

“Not a lot,” David said. “It’s pretty much the fate of all institutions. They’re formed to achieve a particular goal, but when they get big enough, rich enough, they put their first goal to the side and work only to ensure their own continued existence.

“The Family’s no different,” he continued. “Look what Jess had to go through to get you people to finally listen to her. If Su-Lin destroys the temples, then the Family’s search will never end and the MacCleirigh Foundation goes on forever. End of story. But thanks to Jess, you’ve got something bigger to think about now. If you do find all your temples, including the White Island, and maybe even rediscover the big secret that you defenders lost—no matter what that secret is, no matter if it’s still even meaningful after so many centuries have passed—the Foundation will have fulfilled its goal and it’s all over. Right?”

Victoria replaced the handset. Jess didn’t have to look at Bakana or the operative. She knew what she would see. Shock. And condemnation. David had just made it clear that the Family’s newest defender had knowingly broken its most sacred vows.

Her cousin seemed to have aged in only moments. “Jessica . . . how could
you
betray us? Florian chose you herself.”

Jess refused to capitulate. “David
is
one of us, so I told him everything.”

“Even if he is,” Victoria said with finality, “he’s not a defender. Now he knows too much. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one.”

Her gaze swept the room, including Bakana and the operative.

“What you’ve done, Jessica . . . It’s out of my hands. Our traditions give me no choice.” Jess heard the finality in her cousin’s words. “None of you can ever leave this place again.”

“Are you ready?” General DiFranza asked.

Lyle sat at a console at the end of the central table in the Emergency Conference Room of the National Military Command Center. It had been three years since his last visit to the Pentagon, and that had been for an outdoor memorial service. He had never been at the heart of the nation’s military command structure, and had never imagined being in a situation where three generals with eight stars among them would be looking to him to take action. The others in the room—Captain Trevor Kingsburgh and his two air force communications specialists, five analysts from the National Reconnaissance Office, two from the National Security Agency, and six other unsmiling civilians who pointedly had not been introduced to him—were icing on this particular cake.

The only good thing about what was about to happen was that Roz Marano wasn’t present to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Even if it turned out to be the right thing, as it often was, it would be to the wrong people.
Small mercies,
Lyle thought.

“Yes, sir,” he said. He looked down again at the cheat sheet the Department of Justice had prepared for him.

“Bulldog?” DiFranza said. “How’re your boys doing?”

Carter “Bulldog” Tyrell was the other three-star general in the room. He was checking the progress of an aircraft currently depicted as a blue triangle on one of the six large display screens on the double-story wall to Lyle’s left.

The aircraft was an MC-130H Combat Talon II that had just completed its second inflight refueling over the Pacific. On board was a team of twelve Air Commandos from the 1st Special Operations Wing unit operating out of Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. They were en route to their first staging point on their mission: Christchurch International Airport, New Zealand, the USAF’s most southerly operational foreign airbase. It was just under two thousand miles from Vanuatu.

Bulldog covered the small mike on his headset and answered DiFranza’s
question. “ETA three hours. On-site eight hours after landing Christchurch.”

DiFranza, Lyle, and almost everyone else in the room checked two of the other large screens on the left wall. One showed a crisp surveillance photo of Ironwood’s sprawling home in Port Vila, Vanuatu. The other screen of interest was a world clock. In eleven hours, it would be 3:00
A.M.
in that region of the Pacific, a definite advantage for the air commandos who’d be able to see in the dark with thermal imagers.

If Lyle’s phone call didn’t go well, then Holden Ironwood was going to have visitors on his island paradise.

“You’re on, Jack.” DiFranza gave Lyle a pat on the shoulder, then stepped away to let him work. Lyle nodded at the airman seated beside him. The airman pressed a single button on the console.

Lyle picked up the black receiver in front of him and heard the faint hollowness of a satellite connection, then the distinctive buzz of a Vanuatan phone ringing. Only once.

“Ironwood.”
Lyle was surprised at Ironwood’s harsh tone, as if he’d been expecting a call other than one that could guarantee his personal safety.

“Jack Lyle.”

At that, Ironwood’s usual bonhomie returned.
“What can I do for you, Agent Lyle?”

“Well, sir, I’ve checked out the Cornwall printout as you suggested, and I’m ready to talk. But I’m going to need some additional assurances from you.”

“You’re ready to talk. I like that. How many people you got listening in on this call, son?”

Lyle didn’t have to think about his answer. “Let me see. I’ll count.” Half the room looked surprised by that comment, but Lyle knew the only way he had a chance of gaining Ironwood’s trust was to be completely honest. “Including me, there’re twenty I can see. Couldn’t tell you who else might be listening up the line.”

Ironwood seemed pleased with his answer.
“And where are all you fine people calling from?”

DiFranza shook his head at Lyle.

“Let’s just call it a secure and undisclosed location. But you’re important, Mr. Ironwood, and from the amount of brass in this room, it’s safe to say you’ve got our attention.”

“Then it’s your move, son.”

Lyle knew what the first step was but glanced down at his cheat sheet anyway. “First, we need to be certain your method for extracting information from the SARGE database is real.”

Ironwood snorted.
“You already know that. That’s why you’ve got twenty people in that room.”

“No, sir. We don’t know it. And we can’t take your word for it. Bottom line, we need a copy of your disk.”

“Son, give me credit for having half a brain, will you? If I give you that disk before we come to a satisfactory understanding, you won’t need me. We make our deal based on my guarantee that the technique on that disk—let’s call it an algorithm so you know what you’re bargaining for—works the way I say it does. Then, when all’s said and done, if I’ve been playing you, you can lock me up in Area 51. You’re already protected in this arrangement, so I’m not showing you squat. Move on.”

DiFranza gestured for Lyle to do so.

“How many copies of the database did you make?”

“You got the one in my casino. I’ve got one other backup that’s operational, in what you could also call a secure and undisclosed location. And then a second in the same facility that’s just a stack of unconnected drives.”

“We’ll need proof of that,” Lyle said. It was on his checklist, but he knew what Ironwood’s response would be.

“I’ll say it one more time: You’re already protected. Anything I tell you that turns out not to be true, my deal’s over. I know that. Why don’t you?”

Lyle looked over all the other demands the DoJ had put down on the sheet, each one carefully prioritized and bulleted. He knew Ironwood wouldn’t go for any of them. So why bother?

“Listen, Mr. Ironwood.” Lyle held out the receiver, crumpled up the sheet of paper. “Hear that? That was the list of demands they gave me. They’re done.”

He heard Ironwood laugh.

“So now it’s your turn. What do you need from us?”

Ironwood answered so quickly and concisely, Lyle realized the billionaire had his own list prepared.

“First, full immunity from any and all charges related to my ‘acquisition’ of the database for myself, my son, and everyone else who aided and abetted me, especially my fine programmers.”
Lyle looked up to see one of the civilians give him a nod—that demand had been expected and could be worked out.

“Second, immediate cessation of all probes and audits by Treasury, and a guarantee that no new probes or audits will be launched as retaliation.”
Another civilian waggled her hand back and forth—maybe something could be worked out.

“Third, and most important of all, immediate and complete disclosure by the White House of all documents and other evidence relating to the ongoing cover-up of the government’s knowledge of UFOs and alien visitation.”

Roz would have loved to hear that one. Lyle lifted an eyebrow at DiFranza, but the general was frowning, looking over at another civilian who shook his head once.

He was still trying to make sense of that exchange when DiFranza came closer to whisper, “Can’t release what doesn’t exist.”

“Uh, that it?” Lyle asked Ironwood, thrown off his rhythm.

“I think that’s enough for you fine folks. All I ever wanted was to get the truth out. Do that for me, and I’m a happy man.”

“Well, all right, so here’s the consensus.” The next words were some of the hardest Lyle had ever had to say. “Full immunity we can talk about. Shouldn’t be a problem.” He had to pause then, to let the disgust he felt shake out and sink to the bottom of his gut. Then, “The Treasury thing looks to have some complications, but it seems something can be done.”