Exodus 2022 (30 page)

“What’s wrong?” Ring asked again.

“Nothing,” Beck lied. “I slept like crap last night and I don’t feel well. Not myself.”

“Yes, but—“

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ring sighed. Leaned back in his seat.

Beck asked, “Any other news from
Marauder
?”

Ring nodded. “Stanton’s final thought capture finished downloading. My team is cataloging it now.”

Something about the way Ring said this worried Beck. He didn’t sound excited enough.

“Something wrong with the thought capture?” Beck asked.

“No, it’s fine. The files are immense. Lots to look at.”

“So? What’s wrong?”

Ring hesitated, then said, “Phelps and Edelstein want off
Marauder
. They’re demanding to be taken ashore. Want to use the Bell as soon as we’re back.”

Beck sighed. Phelps and Edelstein. Another issue. Another problem to solve. Soon.

“That all? Is anything else wrong?”

“Yes,” said Ring.

Beck waited.

“Your father and sister are on
Marauder
. Landed about an hour ago. They’re in the War Room now.”

Ten minutes later Ring’s tablet buzzed with a new message. A message from his lead assistant. He read the message, clicked on the attachment, and felt his heart begin to thump.

The pictures—there were about twenty or so—were poor quality. Crappy resolution. Murky lighting. Indistinct focus. Like snapshots of another galaxy taken through a powerful backyard telescope.

Still, these were the most important images he’d seen yet pertaining to the phenomenon.

The most important by far.

He scrolled through the pictures, examining each one. There wasn’t much difference between them. The camera angles were limited. But the meaning was clear, and his pulse quickened.

The tunnels are real. They really do exist.

The images had been taken by a remotely operated underwater vehicle. An Erebus ROV in the Bering Sea, not far from the oil platforms where divers Stahl and Galbreth had encountered the whale. Hydrophones had picked up sounds of a tunnel in the area, and Ring had ordered some of the local crew to travel to the site and send down a probe.

The available ROV wasn’t perfect for the job. Wasn’t made for work below two thousand meters. That was a problem because the tunnel was on the seafloor, three thousand meters down. Thus the poor image quality. All of the photographs were taken from high overhead. From one thousand meters above the target.

Ring smiled.

The ROV’s shortcomings didn’t matter. Despite the distance, the tunnel was plainly visible. It dominated every eerie frame: an immense, phosphorescent shape sprawled across the seafloor, big as an ocean liner. Some of the images gave a view inside the structure’s gaping, cavernous mouth. It rested there, delicate and fragile-looking, open and undulating, like some sort of extraordinarily exotic, rarely blossoming flower.

The tunnels are real.
Joy crept into Ring’s always-analytical brain.
The images in Stanton’s head, the sounds we’ve captured—they connect to real structures in the real world.

He’d believed this for a long time, of course, but now, in his hands, he held proof. Definitive proof.

The helicopter zoomed on and Ring turned to Beck and presented the tablet with both hands. “You need to see this,” he said.

TRAFFIC ON I-5 WAS LIGHT,
thanks to the holiday, and Joe and Ella made the ninety-mile drive from Seattle to Bellingham in an hour and fifteen minutes.

A DOT camera two miles north of Arlington snapped a picture of the van and license plate, initiating an automated alert. Six minutes later, State Patrol officer Deanna Jacobs, driving south on I-5, spotted the vehicle on an overpass in Bellingham. She radioed the dispatcher, and within minutes, four Bellingham police cruisers were combing nearby streets.

Joe and Ella wound their way through a classy, low-rise retail district festooned with huge American flags and red, white, and blue bunting. Traffic barricades lined the sidewalks, and confetti swirled in the gutters like windblown snow.

Clearly, they were on the parade route, but the festivities had ended hours earlier and now city workers in fluorescent-orange vests outnumbered tourists by at least two to one. It looked to Joe like they had a lot of cleanup left to do.

They stopped at a Subway and ordered dinner. Both were starving and exhausted and well aware they couldn’t rest. Not yet, at least. Not until they’d talked to Dieturlund. Assuming they could find him.

Joe hadn’t given much thought to what they’d do or where they’d go after Dieturlund. He couldn’t guess where they’d be one hour in the future much less one day, or three days, or a week.

Right now it was just one immediate task after the next: Eat. Find Dieturlund. Ask Dieturlund for his advice. For insight into their situation and Joe’s condition.

Joe figured if they could accomplish these things—if by some miracle they succeeded and Dieturlund helped them—then they could rest.

Ella waited in line for the sandwiches, and Joe found a table.

He sat, intending to look up the address for The Willows, and was startled to observe his right hand shaking. Trembling noticeably.

He rotated the hand, studied it, and watched it quiver, feeling detached somehow, as if it was someone else’s hand he was staring at. Not his own.

He shook his arm. Flexed his fingers. The tremor continued—a steady, constant shiver, as if he were out in the cold somewhere, freezing to death.

He set his iPhone down and tried to steady his right hand with his left. It was shaking, too.

His mouth felt suddenly dry as desert sand, and his heart thrummed in his chest.

What’s happening to me?

He glanced at the cash-register line and found Ella looking his way, smiling.

He smiled back. Did his best to effect an easy, relaxed demeanor.

Easy. Everything’s okay.

He gripped his phone with his left hand and watched the fingertips of his right dance and skitter involuntarily across the screen. Like he was nervous or hypothermic or deathly afraid. He willed himself to relax.

Steady. Easy. Calm down.

No luck.

He’d known parishioners with Parkinson’s. The tremors he was experiencing now seemed similar to what those people lived with—when their medications weren’t working. A constant, unrelenting shake, like his hands wouldn’t listen to his brain. Couldn’t listen.

He gave up trying to make the tremors stop and found the address despite them, though it took twice as long as normal.

Ella carried the sandwiches to the table and they ate, Joe doing his best to conceal his new problem.

Get to Dieturlund. Dieturlund will have answers. No sense making Ella any more worried than she already is.

The food tasted good, and Joe felt better—until the end of the meal, when the room began spinning and his stomach jerked and jumped in his belly. He put both hands flat on the table, stood, and smiled at Ella, burying his fear and alarm—or trying to.

“Restroom,” he said. “Be right back.”

He walked slowly to the back of the restaurant, the vertigo easing a bit as he moved. His stomach was still a tumultuous mess, though. Getting worse by the moment.

The men’s room was occupied, so he went straight into the women’s, locked the door, and crumpled in front of the toilet. Just in time. He vomited up his entire dinner, and then some. A violent ejection of solids and liquids that left him gasping— jagged and ragged and shakier than ever.

Get to Dieturlund. Dieturlund will have answers. Dieturlund will explain things, tell me what I need to do.

He hoped it was true.

He washed his face and headed back to the table, forcing himself to smile, to stay steady, to not let Ella see what was wrong.

Three minutes later they were back on the road.

BELLINGHAM POLICE LIEUTENANT
Kevin Simms spotted the St. Anthony’s van as it entered The Willows parking lot, and got on the radio. Instructions came back fast: Observe. Monitor. Report. Wait for backup and for the FBI team already en route.

Simms parallel-parked his unmarked cruiser near the Starbucks across the street and watched the suspects make their way toward the building. Watched the male suspect stop and stare at the sign. Watched the couple finally head inside, through the front doors.

He wasn’t the only witness.

Knox and Drucker were sitting in a stolen Ford F-350 extended cab at the far corner of The Willows lot, where they had a clear view of the entire scene. Like Simms, they waited.

Collins would be joining them soon. Any minute now. Fresh from Bremerton.

Inside The Willows, Joe and Ella made for the front desk.

The twentysomething receptionist was engrossed in Facebook. Typing fast. Expounding, perhaps, on being stuck inside a musty old-folks’ home while his friends partied and played in the sunshine. His name badge identified him as Jordan Boutman, Resident Services Assistant.

He looked up to find Ella smiling at him and smiled back. Removed his earbuds.

Ella said, “Hi. We’re here to see Dr. Dieturlund.”

Jordan said, “Sure. Apartment J.” He pointed. “That hall there. Big day for Dr. D.”

“What do you mean?”

Jordan shrugged. “Dr. Dieturlund hardly ever gets visitors. But you’re the second ones in today.”

Ella glanced at Joe. “Do you happen to know who it was that stopped by earlier?”

“Two guys. About an hour ago. Can’t remember their names, but they said they were admirers of his work.”

Ella saw a monitor on the desk displaying alternating black-and-white video streams: the lobby, the courtyard, the dining hall. She smiled again and said, “Jordan, I’m really curious if it was my…colleague who came by. Would it be possible to check the footage real quick?”

Jordan shrugged again. Smiled at Ella. “Sure. No problem.”

It took about thirty seconds for Jordan to rewind the day’s footage and find the images Ella wanted to see. He slowed the rewind, went too far, stopped, and hit Play.

For several seconds the screen showed nothing but empty lobby. Then two men appeared in the frame. 

“Beck,” Ella said, almost to herself. She realized Jordan was watching her.

“It
is
him,” she said. “My colleague. He did stop by, just like I thought.”

It occurred to her that Beck might still be in the building. Still in Dieturlund’s room. “Do you think they might still be here?” she asked, trying to look hopeful.

Jordan shook his head. “Nah. You definitely missed them. Left over an hour ago. Looked like they were kind of in a hurry. Late for something, maybe.”

“For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth the beasts. As the one dieth, so dieth the other. Yea, they all have one breath. All go unto one place; all are of dust, and all return to dust.”

-Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3

8:15 P.M.
Joe knocked at apartment J.

“Come in,” said a husky, tired voice.

Joe entered first, made it a couple of paces into the small foyer, and stopped cold, transfixed.

He’d never met Dieturlund before. Never visited his apartment. Never set foot inside The Willows until this day. And yet he knew the place. Knew the room. Knew the hunched old man in the battered chair. Recognized the maps and charts and pictures on the wall. It was all in his head. Memories of a place, of things, of a man, he’d never, ever seen in person.

Ella squeezed past Joe, into the living area. “Dr. Dieturlund, I’m Ella Tollefson, and this is my friend, Joe Stanton.”

Dieturlund gave no reply, not so much as a nod, just stared—first at Ella, then at Joe. The warm light streaming through the windows cast a halo around him, accentuating the papery thinness of his skin.

Dieturlund’s gaze lingered on Joe. Intense. Piercing. 

The old man’s body might be failing, but his eyes remained bright and alive.

Joe had told Ella earlier in the day that he could “see” inside Dieturlund’s room. That he felt like he was on a “three-way call” with Mia and Dieturlund. She wondered if Joe and the old guy were communicating via telepathy now. She could detect nothing of the kind in her own mind. Nothing like what she’d experienced on the ferry, when she and Joe had first realized they could read each other’s thoughts. If telepathy was happening now, Ella wasn’t privy to the conversation.

She waited. Watched.

Dieturlund rose from his chair at last, and—without breaking eye contact with Joe—shuffled forward. He took the young priest’s hands in his. Clasped them firmly.

Neither man spoke for more than a minute, and the room grew so quiet Ella could hear the fan whirring inside Dieturlund’s computer.

At last the professor, in a hoarse whisper, said, “Mia loves you. Did you know?”

Neither Joe nor Ella spoke.

“Hatred has become love. Rage has turned to compassion. And she is profoundly, deeply grateful. I am also. Please. Sit.”

Joe and Ella sat on the end of Dieturlund’s bed as he shuffled back to his chair.

He settled and fixed his gaze on Joe once again. Another minute ticked by. Then—a childlike gleam in his eye—he asked, “What was it like? Swimming with them?”

Joe laughed, and his body relaxed. “Fast. Fast and scary. At first. Until I started to see what was going on.” He thought about it. “Her strength is beyond anything. The power I felt. Moving through the water.”

Dieturlund nodded, wonder in his eyes.

Joe said, “But it was sensory overload, you know? Sights and sounds I barely understood. So much happening. And then it was over. Boom. I wish I’d had more time.”

Joe fell silent, and Dieturlund just sat there, on the edge of his chair, like he hoped Joe would continue.

Ella wanted to say something. Wanted to lead the conversation in a different direction entirely. Wanted to get right to the reason they’d traveled to The Willows—to Dieturlund—in the first place: Joe’s health. Joe’s condition. Joe’s prognosis.