CHAPTER 86
St. Paul’s Catacombs
Rabat, Malta
David held his hands up. He could feel Kate’s eyes on him, watching his lead, wondering if he would turn and fire on the man behind him. David wanted to, but he didn’t know who or how many were back there.
Another voice broke the silence, a voice David knew.
“Lower your weapons. They’re the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
David and Kate turned slowly, focusing on the young man who stepped from the shadows of the tunnel.
“Milo,” Kate whispered.
“Hello, Dr. Kate.” Milo nodded at David. “Mr. David.”
David thought there was something distinctly different about this young man he had first met at the monastery in Tibet. A maturity, a poise.
“Come with me,” Milo said. He turned and led the way through the tunnel, two heavily armed soldiers—Knights of Malta, David assumed—flanking him.
The tunnel opened onto a large square stone room that was much larger than the other burial chambers. A half dozen guards stood around the room, guns at the ready.
At the end of the chamber, a stone box lay on a slightly raised altar.
Kate rushed to it and unslung the backpack. She turned back to the soldiers. “Can you lift the top off?”
Milo nodded to them, and four guards released their guns and moved to the box.
“Milo, how did you get down here?” David asked.
“It is a long story, Mr. David, but let’s just say… that I wouldn’t want to do it again.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
At the altar, Kate was leaning over into the stone ark, working on something. David walked up beside her and peered into the box. Through the faint light, he could just make out the bones of a single person.
Beside him, Kate manipulated a device David didn’t recognize, something from the pack. He knew she was collecting a genetic sample, but he had no idea how. Focus on what you know.
He turned to the men spread out around the altar in the room. Milo stood silently in the center of them. There was something very different about him.
David glanced back at Kate. “You have what you need?”
She nodded.
“Milo,” David said, “we need to get back to the surface, to our computer, where we can process the sample.” He paused. “We think there could be a killer down here.”
“We will be fine here, Mr. David.” Milo nodded toward the soldiers. “They have been guarding this place for a very long time. And they can see you safely out of the catacombs.”
Several soldiers broke from the pack and stood at the opening to the tunnel that led to the surface. David and Kate fell in behind them.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dorian caught a glimpse of a helicopter on the ground. An Immari helicopter.
He pointed at it. “There! They have to be close by.”
As the first rays of sunlight broke across the tunnel, David realized that he no longer heard the guards’ footsteps behind them. He glanced back, but the guards were gone. He shook his head. Add it to the list of mysteries, he thought.
At the surface, Kate raced to the computer, set down her backpack on the table and began working quickly.
David checked the magazine in the rifle, a nervous habit, and paced the room, never taking his eyes off the entrance.
“What happens now?” he called over his shoulder to Kate
“I need to upload the new dataset to Continuity and hope they find a therapy from it.”
“How long?”.
She rubbed her forehead and stared at the screen. “I don’t know—”
“Why not?”
She glared up at him. “Well my brain is pretty much fried at this point, and Janus did the last round—he’s much better at this than I am.”
He took a second to tear his eyes away from the tunnel. “Okay, okay. I just think… that expediency is the order of the day.”
A chirping sound broke the tension.
“What’s that?”
Kate took the sat phone from her pocket. “There’s a voicemail.”
Kate set the phone on the table and resumed typing and scanning the computer screen. “You listen to it if you want. I hear expediency is the order of the day, and I have work to do.”
David glanced at the phone, then swiveled back around to the tunnel and raised his weapon. He made a mental note not to pressure Kate when she was working, and not to use ridiculous phrases that might come back to haunt him.
Deep in the cave, beyond the light, he heard footsteps. They were faint, cautious, as if someone were approaching the entrance—someone who didn’t want to be heard.
David got Kate’s attention, raised his finger to his lips, and sidestepped away from the opening, taking a position outside the tunnel. He pointed his rifle at it, ready to fire. It would be Shaw—he was sure of it, and he would be ready.
Dorian leaned into the cockpit and eyed the Immari helicopter that sat in the square below.
“Put down beside them?” the pilot asked.
“Of course. May as well send a text message saying where we are. Or light a flare.”
The pilot swallowed. “Sir?”
“Put down somewhere else. They could be waiting near the helicopter to ambush us. We’ll survey the ground by foot.”
Dorian checked his phone again. No messages. Why?
Was Adam dead?
He hoped not. That would be the final loss, the very last family he had, his only relationship in the entire world. His brother. The only person in the world he trusted to capture Kate Warner. And he was somewhere in Rabat. But why? What was here? Dorian was sure history could be his guide, reveal the exact significance of Rabat, but who gave a damn? History was so much work.
“Do any of you know the history of Rabat? Any significant cultural points?”
The soldiers turned to him, blank looks on their faces.
The pilot called over the intercom, “Mdina was the Roman capital in ancient times. The Phoenicians and the Greeks before them governed from there as well.”
Who fills their head with this useless shit? Dorian thought. “Very interesting… But we’re not in Mdina, are we? What’s in Rabat?”
“They buried their dead here.”
“What?”
“The Romans placed a premium on sanitation. And safety. They built walls around their cities and wouldn’t let the dead be buried within the walls. Rabat was a suburb—”
“What the hell are you saying? Get on with it!”
“There are burial chambers here. Ancient ones. The catacombs of St. Paul.”
Dorian considered this. Yes, it was exactly what David and Kate would be here for—dead bodies, ancient genetic clues to the cure. How many thousands of years were buried below this ancient city, in the stone chambers used over the ages? Had someone hidden an ancient body among these burial chambers, cloaking it, hiding it in plain sight? It didn’t matter. All he needed was her, the code, the knowledge in her mind.
Slowly, the figure emerged from the darkness. David gripped the trigger. He depressed it slightly, ready to fire.
The man emerged from the tunnel, his hands raised.
Janus.
Kate stood from the table. “Thank God. I need your help.”
Janus closed the distance to her. David instinctively followed the scientist with his gun.
“You found it?” Janus asked.
“Yes—”
“The Ark—from the Tibetan tapestry? It was here? All this time. The alpha. Adam?” Janus asked.
Kate nodded.
“Extraordinary…” Janus mumbled as he eyed the computer. “May I?”
“Of course, please.” Kate stepped aside.
“Where’s Kamau?” David called, over his shoulder.
“We got separated after the scream.”
“He’s alive?”
“I certainly hope so,” Janus said, as he typed on the computer, his eyes scanning back and forth.
A minute passed with David focusing on the tunnel entrance and Kate and Janus staring at the computer.
Janus nodded. “This is it—the point of origin, the first human to receive the Atlantis Gene. If we combine the genome with those bodies from the bubonic plague and survivors of the Spanish flu outbreak, it all makes sense. I think they can isolate all the endogenous retroviruses from this dataset.” He turned to her. “This is it, Kate.”
Kate grabbed the sat phone and plugged it into the computer. She worked the computer. “It’s uploading.”
Janus paced away from the computer, toward the entrance to the tunnel.
“You can’t go down there,” David said.
“I am afraid I must,” Janus answered. He turned to David. “For a scientist such as myself, this is the opportunity of the ages. The first human of a wholly new tribe, the genetic cataclysm that began all that came after. The history, the science. Despite the risk, I have to see it with my own eyes.”
“Stay here—”
Janus slipped into the tunnel before David could stop him.
Kate disconnected the sat phone from the computer and dialed quickly. David took up position between her and the tunnel’s entrance.
Paul, I just sent a new data set—Yes—What—No, I didn’t check the message.
Kate’s eyes went wide. “No… I… thank you for letting me know. Call me back when you have the data.” She ended the call. “Janus and Shaw. They’re both fakes.”
From the tunnel, David heard footsteps approaching the opening. He raised his gun, ready to fire, but the figure emerging from the darkness stopped.