Kronos (10 page)

Andrea cursed so loudly she was sure that the noise would have rattled Atticus’s neighbors had the sound of the helicopter not done so already. She had missed him by seconds, pulling her blue Volvo into his driveway as the unmarked, spectacularly large helicopter lifted off from his near-acre-sized backyard.

If she hadn’t had to stop five times to ask directions after getting his address out of the phone book, she would have arrived in time. She would have tried to stop him, of course, but if she couldn’t have, she would have gone with him.

She couldn’t forget the eight years they spent together. She’d always wondered what life would have been like if they hadn’t grown apart. Marriage seemed likely. Kids, too. She’d never really stopped loving him, just held different values, different goals. They both did, and being stubborn, neither had given them up for the other. When she’d looked into his eyes at the hospital, the long-buried feelings reemerged and twisted her stomach into knots. Could feelings that old be rekindled? She had no idea. What she did know was that Atticus had been her friend once. One of her closest. The bond forged from childhood to young adult still remained.

And, serendipity, or fate, had brought them back together. She wouldn’t abandon him again, not when he needed help the most. She wanted to give him that much, even if it meant setting aside her personal goals for a time. She realized now, far too late, that it’s what one of them should have done so long ago.

She watched the helicopter fly out to sea and knew she’d find him. The ocean was her territory, and she had resources to track him down. For starters, anyone out there with a ship big enough to accommodate such a gigantic chopper wouldn’t be too hard to locate.

When she could no longer see the helicopter, she headed to the front door and found it unlocked. If she was going to understand who Atticus had become and what he might be thinking, she had to do some digging first. They’d been comfortable entering each other’s homes before, even shared keys with each other, but she couldn’t help wondering what might happen if someone found her in his house. Breaking and entering wouldn’t look good for a member of the Coast Guard. But it was a risk she was willing to take.

She entered the house and closed the door behind her, not fully prepared for what she’d find.

14

Gulf of Maine

Atticus looked down at the ocean, seventy-five feet below. The shadow of the Sikorsky VH-3D helicopter rose and fell with the waves…waves that concealed a great creature, which he was sure could pluck them out of the air even then. He’d been part of several airborne insertions in his SEAL days, but none felt nearly as dangerous as the particular mission he found himself on the verge of undertaking. None had held as much personal meaning either.

The two men seated across from him, O’Shea the priest and Remus the thug, did little to ease his nerves. They were a dichotomy. The priest clearly had brains, but lacked any kind of physical prowess that might suggest he was accustomed to action. He was a priest, after all…but not every priest was a stick-in-the-mud. Then there was Remus. He was a brooding man, whose chiseled smile appeared more like a jackal’s snarl than an honest man’s grin. His pockmarked face didn’t help his grim appearance, and the jagged scar across his forehead was simply a nightcap after drinking in his ugly mug. The bright-colored Hawaiian shirt he wore seemed like a pitiful attempt to pull attention away from his face, but his nonstop chatter about the fiftieth state to join the union revealed a true passion for the culture there.

“Why the obsession with Hawaii?” O’Shea asked, interrupting Remus’s minilecture about how slow-moving lava fields destroy houses, roads, and crops. “Isn’t it just becoming a tourist trap? I read that the scads of new million-dollar homes were raising taxes and that the high-paying jobs were being given to mainland Americans, pushing native Hawaiians and their culture to the mainland. It won’t be a paradise much longer.”

Remus glared at O’Shea.
These two are not friends,
Atticus thought. He tucked the observation into a pocket of his mind and listened as Remus gave the answer. “
Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono.
”

Both O’Shea and Atticus looked at him queerly. He heaved a sigh that was supposed to demean the other two men and make them feel like fools for not knowing what the saying meant.

“The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness,” Remus said. “When land is holy, its essence cannot be destroyed.”

Obviously, the man had not been to Jerusalem, Atticus thought. While it was still an impressive place, the city’s holy sites were a far cry from what they had once been. He and Maria had gone on a tour of the Holy Land before Giona had been born. It was Maria’s idea, and was fascinating, but the state of the region’s holy sites had made Atticus realize that history had taken its toll on the land. But he felt that the people there, both Jew and Muslim, had deep convictions that found meaning in the very soil of the place. Thoughts of the night he and Maria had spent in Jerusalem began creeping into his mind. Giona had been conceived there.

“Sounds like a state motto,” O’Shea said with a smirk.

Remus didn’t hear the sarcasm and smiled proudly. “It is!”

Atticus clung to the conversation, joining it to avoid fond memories. They’d do him no good under the circumstances. “I did some work in Hawaii once,” Atticus said, the first words he’d spoken since the helicopter had left his home… “Tagging humpbacks. To track their migration and numbers.”

Remus nodded, smiling. “The state animal.”

Atticus wondered if Remus had simply memorized the encyclopedia entry for Hawaii, just to make people believe he knew what he was talking about.

“What did you think?” Remus asked.

Atticus knew to the core of his being that he should befriend the man. Remus was dangerous and untrustworthy. Getting on his good side could only help. There were a number of answers to the question, any of which would have done the trick. Atticus was surprised by his quick answer. “Overrated.”

It was an honest answer, but the effect was profound. Remus frowned, squinted his eyes the way seventh-grade girls do when they are teased.

The priest was smiling ear to ear. “A man of few words speaks the truth powerfully.”

At least he’d made one friend, though he doubted a priest would be useful…unless he could pull him back out of hell…because that’s where they were headed—and a confrontation with the devil. Only hell wasn’t beneath the earth, brewing with boiling magma. It was found beneath the seas, cold and remorseless.

The helicopter fell silent again, except for the
whup whup whup
of its long rotor blades. After ten blessedly quiet minutes, Remus ended the reprieve with a strained, “We’re here.”

Atticus looked out the window and took in a ship the likes of which he had never seen in all his years at sea or in the Navy. It was massive, the size of a U.S. destroyer, and gleamed bright white in the morning sun. The pool on the top deck appeared to be shaped like a Chinese dragon. A hardwood carved masthead of a beautiful, but thoroughly dangerous-looking Viking woman graced the bow. The decks were staggered up from the main deck, each oval and lined with tinted glass. Atop the bridge, a mass of antennae and satellite dishes rose toward the sky. It was a ship obviously designed to stay at sea for long stretches…if not indefinitely.

The helicopter set down gently. “Follow me,” Remus said as he opened the side door.

To Atticus’s surprise, no one asked him to relinquish the sidearm still hanging on his hip, though two servants, dressed to the nines, asked to carry his duffel bag to his room for him. He declined the offer, preferring to keep his belongings, not to mention his arsenal, close by. Once on board, O’Shea went his separate way, while Remus took the lead, taking him through one hallway after the next. But they weren’t headed to the upper decks, where he’d assumed most billionaires would prefer to be; instead they were headed down. They descended three flights of stairs, all carpeted in maroon and lined with ivory supporting posts and gold banisters. The smell of the boat was pleasant, clean but not sanitized like the hospital. At the base flight were long hallways, all decorated with expertly carved statues of marble, rough stone, and wood--all originating from a variety of cultures. The fourth floor down brought with it an extended staircase that revealed the floor’s cathedral ceilings…on a boat. Atticus was impressed by the engineering and beauty of it all, though it did little to calm his nerves. His reason for being there was still ominous.

At the base of the stairs, where they flared out onto a marble floor, Atticus was greeted by an amazing sight. Positioned at the center of a large atrium was a full-size rendition of a statue on Easter Island. He had never been to the island, but there were few people in the modern world that wouldn’t recognize the megaliths. “That’s an amazing replica,” Atticus said, more to himself than to Remus.

But the man snickered anyway. “It’s real.”

Atticus placed his hand against the statue and felt its cold surface, as bleak as the once-lush island that had been its home. To obtain such a magnificent artifact meant that Trevor Manfred was either extremely well connected or extremely cunning. Either way, he’d soon find out.

Remus opened a door engraved with the words, sitting room. It sounded innocent enough, but when Atticus stepped through, he entered another world.

“You’re on your own now,” Remus said. “Try not to say anything stupid.
Aloha.
”

With that, Remus closed the door, leaving Atticus alone in the room. Atticus knew Remus’s final word was a warning.
Aloha. Don’t mock Trevor Manfred like you did me.

Atticus took in the fifty-foot, rounded room. An amazingly realistic underwater mural covered the vaulted ceiling; the realism of the artwork was astounding. The walls were similarly painted, featuring whales, sharks, seals, and assorted other creatures. Atticus felt at home in the room, though unnerved to be standing, rather than swimming. The floor was an illusion as well, painted dark blue, just as the depths looked from above. The only break to the illusion was the presence of two elegant chairs—thrones really—rimmed with gold and cushioned by red velvet, and a gold-legged, glass-topped coffee table.

“Come in,” came a loud, cheerful voice from across the room. “You’re just in time for tea.”

Atticus could see a hand waggling him over to the chairs. After placing his duffel bag on the floor, Atticus made his way over. The man sitting there was not what he’d expected. His eyes gleamed with excitement. His hair sprang up, white and wild in a way that Giona would have loved. His clothing was all black, his skin nearly as white as his hair, though clearly not albino. His eyes shown bright green and alive. “Dr. Young, welcome to the
Titan.
”

Atticus decided in that moment that he liked the eccentric man who sat in the deep-sea illusion, surrounded by ancient artifacts and mysteries from around the world.
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
, Atticus thought, remembering Churchill’s description of World War II’s Russia. He was instantly as interested in this man as Churchill had been with Russia’s role in the war. But Atticus felt that the diminutive man posed far less threat than Stalin’s gulags and certainly much less than Remus would have had him believe.

As Atticus opened his mouth to speak, the corner of his eye caught movement. The wall…the outer hull to his left, was not a painting at all! And something very large was swimming just outside, watching them.

15

Rye, New Hampshire

The photo held memories of a happier time for a now-broken family. Atticus sat in the sand, building a sand castle with a little girl Andrea could only assume was his dead daughter, Giona. His hands intertwined with those of the girl, who looked to be about seven, drizzled wet sand on the castle walls. The dripping sand created small structures that looked more like miniature versions of the stone spires that decorate the desert of Moab. But beyond the obvious sand-castling skills, it was the woman to Atticus’s side who held Andrea’s attention.

Her hair had been caught by the wind and partially covered her and Atticus’s faces. Her eyes were bright, full of life, and her full, puckered lips were kissing Atticus on the cheek. The photo embodied everything Andrea always felt a family should be. In the moment the camera’s iris opened, collected, and recorded the light, it captured an image that Norman Rockwell would have been proud to produce. There was one large discrepancy between Rockwell’s paintings and the photo—the latter pictured reality. A family in love, once hale, but since wrecked by time.

Andrea had never met his wife or daughter, but knowing that everything in this image had been taken from Atticus struck a chord in her heart. To love so deeply and have it taken away in two devastating instants could destroy a man…or woman. She knew that from experience.

Giving little thought to the act, Andrea removed the framed photo from the hallway wall and took it to the kitchen. She opened the frame and removed the four-by-six picture. She flipped it over and read the back.

2001, old orchard beach, Atti, Maria, and Gi Gi
.

The handwriting was beautiful and feminine—a reminder of the woman whose loving face graced the front of the picture. She looked at the photo again, and rather than feeling envious or even jealous of the woman whose lips were pressed against the cheek of the man who’d been her first real love, she was filled with a sense of kinship…of responsibility.

She imagined Maria’s voice, urging her,
Take care of him
. But would she mind? Had he ever told Maria about their young love? About his broken heart…if that was what he’d experienced at all? There was no way to be sure, but the woman in the photo would most certainly appreciate
someone
looking out for her husband. “I’ll take care of him.”