Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

Rainer suppressed a chuckle. He had known; he had even said as much, but the billionaire had dismissed his concerns, claiming that Sigler and the others were almost certainly dead in Myanmar. Rainer hadn’t believed that for a second, if for no other reason than that he and Jack Sigler had unfinished business.

Still, going to Iran had been a risk he wasn’t eager to take, so he’d bowed to the other man’s wishes. While the triad soldiers, in the guise of a Chinese cultural delegation, were getting their asses handed to them, Rainer and his men had been indulging in a veritable smorgasbord of pleasures afforded to guests of the five-star Renaissance Shanghai Pudong Hotel, where they had been holed up since their escape from the facility in Myanmar.

He waved off the excuse. “My agency contact reports that Sasha has gone off the reservation, and she’s got help from Danny Parker.”

“Should that name mean something to me?”

“Parker was in my unit. He’s a good soldier and a smart guy, but I think he has a soft spot for Sasha. You know, she says ‘jump’…well, it sounds like he jumped.”

The billionaire still didn’t get it. “Why has she left?”

“The official word is that it has something to do with—get this—‘biogenic weapons.’ Does that sound familiar?”

The man’s eyes flitted back and forth as he pondered the news.

Rainer went on. “I think our girl solved the problem, and learned something important from the book. The Company is looking for her and Parker in the south of France.”

“France? What on Earth could be there?”

“I guess I’ll find out when I run her down,” Rainer answered confidently.

“Your decision to implant the RFID tracking chip in her when she was unconscious was fortuitous. That bit of foresight is going to pay off a huge dividend.”

“Yeah, well that’s me. Mr. Prepared. Speaking of which, I don’t want to get caught flatfooted like those jokers in Iran.”

His employer just smiled. “I think I can help you with that.”





FORTY-EIGHT


Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, France



Daniel Parker breathed in the cool air and turned slowly to take in the panoramic vista laid out before him. Thousands of years ago, the Ardèche River had cut through the soft limestone landscape, leaving a deep gorge, and although the river’s course had changed long ago, the place still remembered. He felt that it remembered something else too, something much more ancient.

Sasha got out of their rented Renault, but she didn’t seem the least bit aware of the magnificent scenery. Her attention was completely fixed on the strange device she placed on the hood of the car—really nothing more than a board on which several irregular looking quartz crystals hung suspended by fine copper wires. Roger Bacon had once possessed such a device, and he had probably stood with it on this very spot.

They had built Sasha’s version of the crystal array shortly after arriving in Paris, though hers was an upgraded model. The bare copper wires were spliced to a length of speaker wire that trailed from the microphone jack of her laptop computer. All she needed to do was push a button, and the computer would play a harmonic frequency that would vibrate in the crystals. The computer would then translate those vibrations into a graphic display, allowing for a much greater degree of precision than Bacon could ever have hoped for.

Sasha studied the display as she adjusted the position of the crystal device, just as she had done in Paris, from the roof of the hostel where they had spent their first night, and several times thereafter, to verify that they were on the correct path, following in Bacon’s footsteps.

They kept to the back roads and avoided human contact. Parker knew they were being hunted.

He gazed once more at the wooded slopes that ran up to the sheer walls of the gorge, wondering if they were being watched right now, and if so, by whom.

Sasha made a disapproving sound as she fiddled with the device. He watched her for a moment, marveling at her single-mindedness, then finally he asked, “What’s wrong?”

She pointed at the looming cliff wall to the north. “The signal is strongest in that direction, but it’s not strong enough.”

He circled around the car and looked over her shoulder. Based on her earlier calculations, they should have been practically on top of the Prime source, but sure enough, the crystals weren’t vibrating with the feverish intensity he expected. He turned the crystal array back and forth, but the action only had the effect of further diminishing the vibrations. He returned them to their original position and stared in the direction in which they were pointing.

Had Roger Bacon and Nasir al-Tusi been confronted with such a puzzle?

“Right at the cliffs,” he muttered. He tilted the array up, toward the place where the rock face met the sky, but once more the signal strength faltered.

No, not up, he realized with a growing sense of excitement.

He tipped the array so that it was angled down.

The pattern of oscillations on the screen practically exploded with intensity.