Temple (41 page)

Ehrhardt sank to the floor in the teeming indoor rain—a dribbling,
ugly mess—his mouth open, his eyes wide with shock.
Race just stood there in his doorway, frozen in the firing
position, water hammering against his face, stunned.
He had never shot a man before. Not even during the river chase
earlier. He felt ill. He swallowed back the bile welling in his
throat.
And then he saw the Supernova's timer: 00:03:00 00:02:59
00:02:58
He snapped out of his trance, hurried over to examine the fallen
Nazi leader.
Ehrhardt was still alive, but barely. Blood dribbled out from his
mouth, bubbled out from his chest.
But his eyes still glimmered, glaring up at Race with a kind of mad
delight, as if Ehrhardt were thrilled to have left him in this
position—alone in a control booth in a foreign country, with
nothing but a dying Nazi, a ticking Supernova, and eight drums of
explosive hypergolic fuel that would kill him for certain even if
he did manage to disarm the main bomb.
All right, Will, stay calm.
00:02:30 00:02:29 00:02:28
Two-and-a half minutes to the end of the world.
Stay calm, my ass!
Race scrambled across the floor to the Supernova, peered at the
screen on its arming computer.
YOU NOW HAVE
00:02:27
MINUTES TO ENTER DISARM CODE.
ENTER DISARM CODE HERE
Race stared in dismay at the timer. Sprinkler rain pounded against
his head.
What are you gonna do, Will ?
It wasn't like he had a choice now, was it?
He could die along with the rest of the world or he could try to
figure out how to stop the Supernova—and die that way, too.
Damn it! he thought.
He wasn't a hero.
People like Renco and Van Lewen were heroes. He was just a nobody.
A guy. A university professor who was always
late for work, who always missed his train. Jesus, he still
had outstanding parking fines to pay, for God's sake!
He wasn't a hero.
And he didn't want to die like one either.
Besides, he wouldn't know the first thing about cracking the code
on the Supernova's arming computer. He wasn't a hacker. No, the
simple fact of the matter was that Fritz Weber was dead, and he was
the only one who knew the
code that would disarm the Supernova.
0002:01 00i02:00 00i01:59
Race shut his eyes, sighed.
Might as well die like a hero.
And so he sat up straight in front of the Supernova, and
stared at its display screen with a fresh mind.
All right, Will, deep breaths. Deep breaths.
He looked at the screen, at the line that read:
ENTER DISARM CODE HERE
Okay.
Eight spaces to fill. To fill with a code.
Okay, so who knows the code?
Weber knows the code.
He was the only one who knew the code.
just then a voice exploded in Race's ear and he almost jumped out
of his skin.
“Professor. What's happening?'
it was Ren6e.
'jesus, Ren6e. You scared the shit out of me. What's hap- peg?
Well, Ehrhardt shot Weber and then I shot Ehrhardt and now I'm
sitting in front of the Supernova trying to figure out how to
disarm it. Where are you?'
'Yrn back in the of?qce overlooking the crater. Ehrhardt cut my
bridge/
'Got any ideas on how to disarm this thing?'
“No. Weber was the only one—”
'I know that already. Listen, I've got eight spaces to fill
and I need to fill 'em fast.'
'Okay. Let me think…'
00:01:09 00:01:08 00:01:07
'One minute, Ren6e.'
'All right. All right. They said in that telephone transcript that
their Supernova is based on the US model, right? That means the
code must be numerical.'
'How do you know that?'
“Because I know that the American Supernova has a numerical code.'
She must have heard his silence. “We have people inside your
agencies.'
'Oh, okay. Numerical code it is then. Eight-digit code.
That leaves us with about a trillion possible combinations.'
00:01:00 00:00:59 00:00:58
'Weber was the only person who knew the code, right?' Ren6e said.
'So it has to be something to do with him.'
'Or it could be a number that's completely random,' Race said
dryly.
'Unlikely,' Ren6e said. 'People who use numerical codes rarely use
random numbers. They use numbers that have significance to them,
numbers that they can recall by thinking of a memorable event
or date or something like that. So what do we know about
Weber?”
But Race wasn't listening anymore.
Something had twigged in the back of his mind as he'd been
listening to Ren6e something about what she had just said.
'All right,' Ren6e was saying, thinking aloud. “He was a Nazi
during the Second World War. He performed experiments on human
subjects.'
But Race was thinking about something else entirely.
They use numbers that have significance to them, numbers that they
can recall by thinking of a memorable event or date…
And then it hit him.
It was the New York Times article that he had read on his way to
work yesterday morning—before he had arrived at the university to
find a team of Special Forces troops wait ing for him in his
office.
The article had said that thieves were finding it easier to break
into people's bank accounts because 85 per cent of people used
their birthdays or some other significant date as their ATM
number.
'When was his birthday?' Race said suddenly.
“Oh, I know that,' Ren6e said. 'I saw it in his file. It was in
1914 sometime. Oh, what was it? That's it. August 6. August 6,
1914.”
00:00:30 00:00:29 00:00:28
'What do you think?' Race yelled over the roar of the indoor
rain.
“It's a possibility,” Ren6e said.
Race thought about that for a second. He scanned the room around
him as he did so—saw Ehrhardt sitting with his back up against the
wall, cackling through his blood- filled mouth.
'No,' Race said decisively. 'That's not it.'
“What?”
00:00:21 00:00:20 00:00:19
For some reason, Race was thinking with crystal clarity
now.
'It's too simple. If he used a date at all, it would be a sig
nificant one, but one which would be in some way clever or smug.
Something which shoved it to the rest of the world.
He wouldn't use something as inane as his birthday. He would use
something with meaning.'
“Professor, we don't have much time. What else is there?”
Race tried to remember everything he had heard about Fritz Weber
earlier.
He had performed experiments on human subjects.
00:00:15
He had been tried at Nuremberg.
00:00:14
And sentenced to death.
00:00:13
And executed.
00:00:12 Executed.
Executed…
That's it, Race thought.
00:00:11
But when was the date?
00:00:10
'Ren6e. Quickly. What was the date of Weber's supposed
execution?'
00:00:09
'Oh… November 22, 1945.'
00:00:08
November 22, 1945.
00:00:07 Do it.
00:00:06
Race leaned forward, punched in the numbers on the Supernova's
keyboard:
ENTER DISARM CODE HERE
11221945
Once he had entered the code—with the sprinkler rain pounding down
around him and the timer in front of him rapidly counting down to
zero—-Race slammed his finger down on the '.NTR' key.
Beep!
Ehrhardt's cackling stopped as soon as he heard the beep.
Race's face broke out into a wide grin.
Oh my God, I did it…
And then suddenly the Supernova's screen changed:
DISARM CODE ENTERED.
DETONATION COUNTDOWN TERMINATED AT
00:00:04
MINUTES.
ALTERNATE DETONATION SEQUENCE ACTIVATED.
Alternate detonation sequence?
'Oh, damn…“ Race breathed.
His eyes flashed over to the other timer—the one that sat on top of
the hydrazine drums on the other side of the
room—the timer that was set permanently at 00:00:05.
The second timer activated, ticked over to 00:00:04.
Ehrhardt's eyes went wide with surprise.
Race's went even wider.
'Oh, man,' he said.
Exactly four seconds later, at the expiration of the
abbreviated
countdown, the hypergolic fuels in the drums mixed and the walls of
the control booth blew out with shocking force.
Its windows shattered as one, blasting out into the sky in a
million fragments, closely followed by a roaring, billow ing,
blasting ball of flames.
Debris shot out in every direction—doors, pieces of the Supernova,
torn segments of wooden benches, sections of floor—all dispatched
with such monumental force that some of them even managed to clear
the rim of the crater, landing in the thick foliage that surrounded
the giant earthen mine. The cracked pieces of the two thermonuclear
warheads that had comprised the Supernova landed harm lessly on the
floor of the crater—the hypergolic blast far too crude to split the
atoms inside them.
In a moment, all that was left of the control booth was a blackened
skeletal frame-charred beyond recognition, hanging loosely above
the mineits walls gone, its win dows gone, its floor and ceiling
also gone.
William Race was gone too.
SIXTH MACHINATION
Tuesday, January 5, 1910 hours
The two rivercraft motored slowly across the river's surface toward
the abandoned mine.
One of the vessels was a long sleek speedboat, the other, a
battered-looking little seaplane, with only one pontoon hanging
down from its right wing.
The world was silent, the river calm.
Leonardo Van Lewen and Doogie Kennedy peered out from their
respective cockpits, stared at the deserted mine in front of them.
Slowly, they both brought their vessels in toward the riverbank,
ran them gently aground.
They had heard the hypergolic explosion and now they saw the
mine—the immense brown earthen crater—and the plume of black smoke
rising from the charred box-shaped shell hanging in its
centre.
There was no-one in sight.
Nothing stirred.
Whatever had happened here was well and truly oven The two Green
Berets jumped out of their vessels and walked cautiously over to
the collection of old warehouse- like buildings at the edge of the
canyon, guns in hand.
Then, abruptly, Ren6e appeared from a door in one of the buildings.
She saw them instantly, came over, and the three of them stood
together at the edge of the canyon, staring out
at the blackened remains of the control booth.
'What happened here?' Van Lewen asked.
'Ehrhardt used the idol to arm the Supernova. Then he set it to
detonate,' Ren6e said, her voice sad and soft. 'Professor
Race managed to stop the detonation sequence, but no sooner had he
neutralised the Supernova than the whole cabin just
exploded.'
Van Lewen turned to look out at the destroyed control
booth, at the last place William Race had been seen alive.
'The device was in there?' he asked.
'Uh-huh,' Ren6e said. 'You wouldn't have believed it. He
stopped the countdown. He was amazing.'
'What about the idol?'
'Destroyed in the blast, I presume, along with the Supernova and
Professor Race.'
There came a rustling sound from their right.
Van Lewen and Doogie spun, guns up.
But when they turned, they saw nothing but trees and foliage.
And then suddenly a drum-like cylindrical object—a capsule of some
sort, about the size of a regular garbage bindropped out of the
upper branches of a tree and bounced softly onto the thick foliage
about twenty yards away from them.
Van Lewen, Ren6e and Doogie all frowned, went over to it.
The capsule must have been inside the control booth when it blew,
and been blasted all the way here by the con cussion wave.
The warhead capsule rolled to a halt in the foliage, and ten,
oddly, it began to wobble back and forth, as if there were someone
inside it wriggling around, trying to get out—
Suddenly the lid of the capsule popped open and Race tumbled out of
it and went sprawling butt-first onto the wet, muddy ground.
Ren6e's face broke out into a thousand-watt grin and she and the
two Green Berets rushed over to where Race was lying in the
foliage.
The professor lay on his back in the mud—soaking wet and exhausted
beyond belief. He was still wearing his cap and his black kevlar
breastplate.
He looked up at his three comrades as they came over, offered them
a tired half-smile.
Then he pulled his right hand out from behind his back and placed
an object on the ground in front of him.
Droplets of water glistened all over it, but there was no mistaking
the shiny black-and-purple stone and the fierce features of the
rapa's head that had been carved into it.
It was the idol.
The Goose flew through the air, soaring gracefully over the Amazon
rainforest.
It was heading west in the early dark of night. Back toward the
mountains, back toward Vilcafor.
Doogie sat up front in the cockpit, flying the plane, while Van
Lewen, Race, Ren6e and the wounded Uli sat in the back.
Race pondered his escape from the control booth.
In the five seconds he'd had between disarming the Supernova and
the mixing of the hypergolic fuels, he had desperately searched the
cabin for a way out.
As it happened, his eyes fell upon one of the warhead capsules—a
container capable of withstanding 10,000 pounds-per-square-inch of
pressure since its purpose was th.e protection of explosive nuclear
warheads.
With nothing else to call on, he'd dived for it—snatching the idol
sitting on the workbench on the way and snapping shut the capsule's
lid just as the five-second countdown expired.
The fuels mixed and the control booth blew and he was launched high
into the sky, inside the capsule. Thankfully, it had landed
relatively softly in the trees surrounding the mine.
But he was alive and that was all that mattered.
Now, as he sat in his seat in the back of the seaplane, Race also
held in his hands a tattered leather-bound book that he had found
in the boat-house after his spectacular escape. It had been sitting
on a shelf inside the office overlooking the mine.
It was a book that he'd insisted on searching for before they
headed back to Vilcafor.
It was the Santiago Manuscript.
The original Santiago Manuscript—written by Alberto Santiago in the
sixteenth centur stolen from the San Sebas tian Abbey by Heinrich
Anistaze in the twentieth, and copied by Special Agent Uli Pieck of
the Bundes Kriminal Amt not long after that.
As he sat in the back of the little seaplane, Race gazed at the
manuscript in a kind of subdued awe.
He saw Alberto Santiago's handwriting. The strokes and flourishes
were familiar, but now he saw them on beauti fully textured paper
and written in rich blue ink, not some harsh, scratchy
photocopy.