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  His pulse quickened at the thought of what was ahead and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about what was behind either. He entered the stairwell with Edie, feeling stronger, less clouded. The surgery he remembered wasn’t actually his first. He’d been knocked out cold for the first, and the second was something Edie and the chief cooked up for the benefit of Peyton who was given a ringside seat to the spectacle while handcuffed to a hospital bed with armed guards on either side.

  The goal was to make her think he was completely out of play and having her think she’d incapacitated him by ripping apart both his hands was one way to do it. But there was more, much more. Letting Peyton think she got herself onto the same medivac chopper as him gave her opportunity and letting her slip away from her guards gave her a chance to do whatever she was going to do.

  Obviously, she was supposed to try to slip away while being tracked to whatever accomplices she was working with or whatever her true goal was. Deciding to come back for him wasn’t something they counted on, but the protective detail should have been enough to keep him safe. Peyton herself was wounded, a series of nasty stabs to the chest from a long thin blade. “Someone was very angry when they did that,” the chief said, “Her accomplice maybe—the ringer for Midshipman Tinsdale. But why?”

  “Can you keep up?” Edie whispered.

  Scott nodded. The first floor landing was ahead and through the glass of the exterior door, green grass and concrete. The outdoor air was moist and fresh compared to the stale air of such an old building. He couldn’t see the Mediterranean but he could smell salt in the air as he opened the door. Edie, ahead of him, was already at the bottom of the exterior steps.

  “Not another step,” said a voice behind him in perfect, but accented, English. The words were backed up with the barrel of the gun close to the side of his head.

  Scott put up his hands. “American. I can explain.”

  “Drop the weapon. Turn around slowly.”

  Scott complied, his eyes darting to Edie who saw his predicament but didn’t seem to know what to do. He shook his head subtly as she beaded her eyes and mouthed something. Shoot him, perhaps.

  There was a burning intensity about the Armed Forces of Malta soldier. He was sweating, panting. “Knees! Knees!”

  “I can’t—” Scott started to say, but he complied when the pistol pushed into the side of his head. He was still trying to assess the situation when the soldier shouted, “Papers? Papers?”

  Papers, passport. If the soldier was asking for his passport, he was reacting to the gun he’d been carrying and not the situation. “No papers, I can explain,” Scott said. “Don’t you know what’s happened?”

  “Spiegare, spiegare! Provate, provate!” the soldier shouted. Explain, explain! Try, try!

  The soldier didn’t trust him. Scott didn’t expect him to, but he wasn’t about to be shot execution style either, even if by mistake. The soldier hesitated, then lowered his sidearm—Scott’s cue to make his move. He swiveled on his knees and lunged, using his weight advantage and his one good hand to get the pistol away from the solider.

  It wasn’t much of a match, even in Scott’s condition. He pressed his knee into the soldier’s throat, his good hand holding down the soldier’s right wrist. “I’m sorry about this,” he said as he released and brought his fist around to the side of the man’s head.

  Standing, he recovered his weapon and tucked the extra pistol into the back of his pants. He breathed in deeply, taking in the scent of the distant sea. As he dashed after Edie, he felt more than himself, almost superhuman.

  Chapter 10

  Mediterranean Sea

  Late Morning, Wednesday, 20 June

  Saint Vincent De Paul Residence housed over a thousand sick and elderly and its complex circuit of buildings sprawled over an area the size of a college campus. Edie moved north, into a building that stood like an endcap compared to the large square she’d just run through. Her weapon concealed, she did her best to move casually, past central reception and out the back where a fountain sprayed the air with a fine mist.

  “Slow down,” Scott called out, coming up beside her and grabbing her arm. “The shooter’s gone or we’d have seen her by now.”

  “I know. I’m not worried about her. I’m worried about you.” It’s what she said, not what she felt in her gut. She didn’t like the way he twisted her arm back, even though her pulse quickened at his touch. She thought about telling him everything right then, but knew she couldn’t—wouldn’t. “Keep your voice down.”

  “Look at me,” he said, turning her to him. She stopped walking when he did, reaching out to brush back his hair. “My hair, really? You think you can fix everything? I know you know more than you’ve told me.”

  She started walking, even faster than before. “I don’t know anything you don’t.” She expected at any moment to hear a shot ring out—a shot that might force her to a decision she didn’t want to make.

  “What was your op?” he said angrily. “Was I your op?”

  She wanted to tell him about Aleph Bet, Mossad, everything. She kept going, but pulled him closer. “Keep your voice down,” she whispered. “Staff parking ahead.” As they crossed the street, she watched warily. “Which one, red or blue?”

  She let Scott chose a white fiat. Nondescript and perfect for what was ahead. She got them in with nothing more than his belt and its buckle. A pull at the wires under the steering column, a twist of red and black and they were driving away.

  North out of the parking lot was the fastest way to a main road. She could tell Scott was still trying to make sense of how he was a target in all this. One of several, but still an unquestionable bull’s eye on his back. If she knew, she told herself she would’ve told him, but the rest of it wasn’t something she was willing to share—yet.

  “Gotta love the classics,” she said, rolling the window down. “Where to?” She could see the thoughts turn in his head, the confusion too. “Earlier, when you were coming around, you kept repeating something about white sails and black smoke.”

  She saw him work through something. “After the attack,” he said, “when we came up to the surface, I saw one of the fishing boats trailing smoke. It was far off and being chased. The zodiac I’m thinking.”

  The zodiac! She hadn’t thought about that at all. Scott put the zodiac in the water with Lian Qu, who everyone called the Kid, just before everything went to hell. The Kid was going after Kathy and Angel, who were out in scuba gear cutting the nets of the Tunisian fisherman. “You think the Kid…” Her voice trailed off. “Kathy and Angel too?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” he said. “I know a lot of maybes. Think about this… You’re out in the middle of the Mediterranean where we were, on a Tunisian registered vessel. Home is west or southwest, but you sail northwest when pressed. To where? Sicily? Sardinia? Corsica? No, too far, but Malta’s right there, even closer than Djerba or Sharqi Island.”

  She turned left at the intersection even before he said another word. The road ahead would take them south past the airport and then wind its way around to Malta Freeport. “It’s not like anyone sailing up from the south is going to climb the Cliffs at Hal-Far, is it?” She said with a smile.

  “There are a few places. Blue Grotto maybe… Others too,” Scott said, “but it’d have to be someone who knew Malta pretty well. Otherwise those cliffs and high walls—pretty scary.”

  “Would’ve been full daylight,” she said. Malta International was visible ahead of her now and there was a small aircraft coming in for a landing on the auxiliary runway. “It’s not like they’re going to drop anchor behind the seawall or in the port itself. It’s all industrial, cargo vessels.”

  Scott shook his head. “Wouldn’t risk sailing past all those big ships, would they?”

  Edie chewed on that thought for a moment. “If they did though, there’d be lots of anchor points. A few marinas too.”

  Scott shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “We need a helicopt
er.”

  She swerved to the side of the road, bringing the fiat to a dead stop. “We need that helicopter,” she said, pointing.

  Scott grinned. She saw him note the industrial area, the buildings around the heliport and the distance from the airport. It was as if someone had giftwrapped the perfect way to travel discreetly.

  Chapter 11

  Mediterranean Sea

  Late Morning, Wednesday, 20 June

  “The singularity is near,” he told himself as he looked around the crowded room. His thoughts roiled. All he could see in his mind’s eye were big waves crashing ashore and he almost wished he’d already unleashed the storm that would bring about his ascendance beyond the mundane. But what good was a storm felt by few, when a storm felt by all was his for the taking if only he would be patient?

  In mathematics, a singularity was the point at which an object went beyond the boundaries of standard definition—the point at which the object became infinite or equally titillating, not differentiable. But in scientific terms, a singularity was a point in spacetime where the laws of physics broke down and no longer applied—the point at which matter could have infinite density and zero volume.

  Black holes were singularities—singularities science had been trying to fully explain for decades but had only relatively recently measured conclusively by detecting the effects that warp space-time at the very edge of the event horizon. The event horizon being the point of no return, the point at which even light cannot escape the inevitable swirling darkness.

  His singularity was not one of mathematics or science, but it was as inescapable as the event horizon at the center of a black hole’s accretion disk—a place where even stars succumbed to the forces upon which black holes fed themselves.

  “We have a problem,” the voice in his ear said.

  Saying nothing, Owen casually brushed at his ear and stepped away from the others. Nodding and bowing as he went, he grinned apologetically at the Prime Ministers of Malaysia and Singapore.

  “Poor timing,” he said softly, walking at as brisk a pace as he dared.

  “I know,” she said in his ear. “It couldn’t be helped. Evers is back in play somehow.”

  Owen smiled. It wasn’t often a pawn reached the other side of the board and became a knight. In the rear of the hall, the Prime Minister of India was talking with the Presidents of Sri Lanka and Singapore. Seeing this, he veered away and entered a long hall that led deeper into the bowels of the Saint James Cavalier Center for Creativity.

  The late morning event was a precursor to the prestigious events being held at the President’s Palace later that day and into the evening. Security forces and cameras were everywhere. His intent wasn’t to head toward the restricted area, yet he knew that was where his next turn was taking him.

  “Talk,” he said when he was finally alone, but while the voice in his ear spoke his thoughts spun. Like Teilhard de Chardin, the French philosopher and Jesuit priest who first posited the Omega Point, he followed the path laid out for him, seeing mankind’s inevitable destiny in the convergence of consciousness and reality—the pantheistic evolution towards which the Earth was hurtling itself. He too rejected traditional interpretations of supernatural creation and creation in the Book of Genesis in favor of the pantheistic and holistic. And he too saw that the transcendent state of maximum complexification and the end of history didn’t depend on any God or all-knowing being, but instead on the complimentary nature of what was within and what was without. Consciousness and matter.

  Unlike those who embraced Chardin’s cosmology but rejected his strict anthropocentrism, he saw the significance of human beings in the universe. The phenomenon of man, human values and experiences, were all one could know until genesis and it wasn’t until the point of the convergence of Omega that anything beyond could be known or truly understood.

  Artificial intelligence, human biological enhancements, brain-computer interfaces were all only signposts and symptoms. Mankind was on the cusp of the technological singularity, the human-machine convergence that occurred at the intersection of the fourth and fifth epochs. But what would mankind do when it learned of the emergence of greater-than-human intelligence? Would the resulting paradigm shifts sweep away all belief systems, create new ones, or only cause the trembling masses to cling to entrenched beliefs all the more fervently?

  The intelligence event horizon would warp our understanding of the future. As with black holes, there’d be no return or escape from the inevitable swirling darkness of the intelligence explosion. Superintelligences would design successive generations of increasingly powerful artificial minds. Technology would master the methods of biology. Our intelligence would be harnessed, but not as we might imagine. Humans would become slaves to the machines, until humans were no more.

  He’d seen that future, in swirling, riotous visions, and knew. The exponentially expanding technology base wouldn’t be one that ultimately included the human technology or biology base. It’d be one that included only artificial minds and artificial biologies. Humankind would be lost and would never witness the Great Awakening.

  Thus, it wasn’t just the fifth epoch and its merger of technology and human intelligence where technology finally mastered the methods of biology that he wanted to usher in—it was the Great Awakening of the sixth epoch, the waking of the universe itself with mankind at the reigns.

  Avoiding the annihilation of the human race required cataclysm, sacrifice on a scale that would shake the very foundations upon which civilization was built and force mankind’s hand. Nations and peoples would work together or be lost in the fight to save the remnants of the world.

  The race into space would no longer be a fanciful notion but a desperate attempt to seed the universe before it was too late. It was the only way to leapfrog the convergence. The only way to save man from his inevitable future. The only way to ensure the survival of the species.

  His thoughts ran so wild he no longer heard the voice in his ear, hearing instead only his own mutterings: “Then I saw an angel coming down from the heavens, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is both the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended.”

  As he said this to himself, he saw he was the angel coming down from the heavens. He saw the key to the pit in his hand, the chain and the dragon, and knew that he was both the angel and the dragon and that the chain bound around him was coming undone. His beliefs weren’t such that he believed in Revelations, God or Christ, but were such that he believed in the message of resurrection. Purification by hellfire was the only way.

  “Sir, sir?” the voice in his ear said. “Did you hear me? Do I have your permission?”

  Owen Blake took in the delicious coppery scent of blood and death. Killing the guards outside their post wasn’t something he even realized he was doing until the deed was done and he was inside the locked room cleaning blood splatter from his cheek with a bright white handkerchief.

  “I’m listening,” he said, but really he wasn’t, for he’d gone back to his mutterings: “Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated upon it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.”

  “Revelations 20 verses 11 and 12, I believe,” the voice said, “but what does that have to do with anything?”

  Owen hadn’t realized he was speaking loudly enough to be heard. “Everything,” he said, “everything.”

  He seated himself behind the long mahogany desk, leaning back and putting his feet up as he chuckled softly. There was no great white throne awaiting him. Only eternity.


  To the insistent voice in his ear, he said, “Fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution have brought us this far, now you, I, and ours will bring us the rest of the way. Do what you must.”

  Chapter 12

  Mediterranean Sea

  Late Morning, Wednesday, 20 June

  Scott walked in silence. They didn’t have a spare nickel between them. He didn’t know how they were going to hire a helicopter from a charter service. The plume of dust and gravel the fiat kicked up when it roared to a stop was still choking him.

  “You need to know something,” Edie said. She wasn’t talking to Scott. She was on the cell phone, talking to someone on the Kearsarge—the chief he guessed. “Scott and I are on the move. I don’t know where Peyton Jones is. I hope you do, but I do know where the other one is. She was just at the hospital.”

  Scott was reeling. He assumed it had been Peyton at the hospital. If Peyton got off the ship because they wanted her to, how had the other operative got off? The Kearsarge undoubtedly had been on a full lockdown by then.

  Everything seemed so jumbled in his mind like he was waking up from a haze. He was still trying to wrap his head around Peyton’s involvement, why she’d want him dead and what all this had to do with David Blake.

  He’d done more than talk to her over the maritime. They’d actually met twice, once when Sea Shepherd and Bardot III were in port together and again in response to an urgent support request. Angel, Kathy and Lian had agreed to go over in the zodiac to bring the needed supplies and he’d jumped in at the last minute to provide security.

  Edie continued. “We’re looking at our ride right now. Take down this name: Malta Sky Charters. Can you get us clearance to fly ourselves? Buy the damned thing if you have to.” She paused. “It’s a helicopter… Yes, I know how to fly the damned thing. Just do whatever you have to do.”