The Grail a5-5 Read online

  They came under the door.

  He fired five shots in rapid succession, knowing the futility as he pulled the trigger.

  He put the hot muzzle against his temple as the first of the micromachines landed on his skin. His finger twitched, caressed the metal, then relaxed. He loved himself too much to do it. He lowered the gun.

  The micromachine let loose its load of the nanovirus and the microscopic machines bore through his skin and into Verquist’s bloodstream. He screamed and tried to bring the gun up, but he was too late as the nanovirus poured into his brain.

  Area 51, Nevada

  “It is now daylight in Cairo.”

  “I am aware of that,” Yakov told Che Lu. They were in the conference room, Professor Mualama still behind the computers, typing away. It was an indication of the seriousness of the situation that Yakov had a mug of hot coffee sitting on the table in front of him, the vodka bottle nowhere in sight.

  “And your awareness improves the situation in what manner?” Che Lu asked. Yakov spread his large hands wide apart. “And how does your informing me of what I already know improve the situation?”

  “Are you aware the Americans lost one of their surveillance aircraft over the Mediterranean?” Che Lu asked.

  “I saw the report Major Quinn sent down.”

  “And that aircraft was tracking two helicopters that took off from the vicinity of the Great Pyramid?”

  Yakov nodded.

  Che Lu continued the questions. “What — and who — do you think were on those helicopters?”

  To that Yakov had no answer. He knew Che Lu was frustrated. She had been working on the grid coordinate system she thought she had figured out in Qian-Ling, but it was not fitting as she had hoped. Close, but not quite there. Her numbers were slightly off, and she didn’t know where the problem lay.

  “I have more of the manuscript ready.” Mualama didn’t even raise his head to announce that. “It’s coming up on the screen now.”

  Yakov walked over and sat down. As soon as the translation appeared, he began scrolling.

  BURTON MANUSCRIPT: CHAPTER 6

  The Middle East is the crossroads between three continents — Asia, Africa, and the eastern edge of Europe. Because of this, it has seen numerous invading armies pass through.

  The Jewish state has been conquered many times. Jerusalem, the home of the Grail and Ark for so many years, has seen its share of warring armies sweep over it in a flood of blood.

  This small place on the surface of the world has given rise to the great religions of western culture — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all born in the arid terrain of the Middle East. Beyond the impact of these religions and their subsequent spin-off faiths on history, another important factor needs to be considered.

  The Grail is said to do two things — grant immortality and give knowledge. But what knowledge? For a long time I thought this simply meant knowledge of the Truth, the tariqat that I was upon — the truth of mankind’s past and origins, of the aliens who came to our planet. But on my travels around the world I have met many wise men and women, and studied various cultures. And it came to me, not in a flash, but like a slow tide of awareness seeping into my brain so that I cannot state clearly the moment at which I was aware of it.

  This awareness? It is that perhaps the knowledge the Grail gives is not an accumulation of facts or history, but a different way of thinking. And perhaps some of that has already made its way into our societies.

  Think about it, my friend who reads these words. The earliest civilizations thought differently than we do now. For them, life was an endless cycle of birth and death and birth. Their thinking was cyclical, more concerned with the whole than the parts. Time was a wheel that each generation trod upon only to return to the same place.

  When did that change? Where did this change come from?

  I believe it changed with the Jews, and this was continued with the Christians and Muslims. Think about the concept of faith as these religions espouse. Think about the way they change the view of time itself. No longer circular, it is now linear. There is a progression from birth, through life, to death, to an after-life. With such thinking, a new concept emerges — something called hope. Hope for a better life, that things can improve. That life can be better.

  And they made another change, one that I do not know the ultimate effects of. These religions focused on one God, and that God was removed from immediate contact with man. Certainly this is better than when men worshipped the Airlia, but perhaps it also saps some of our belief in ourselves? I do not know.

  For almost ten thousand years human civilization did not change, but in the past two thousand, it has grown in leaps and spurts. There has been progression. Toward what end I do not know. Whether this is a good thing, I know not either.

  But I do believe that the Grail changed these people. Just knowing of its existence changed them and all of us who follow. Think what a powerful icon it has been, and then imagine what the reality of it must be.

  Where did the Grail go when the attempt to use it failed?

  Joseph of Arimathea, along with Nicodemus, took the body of Jesus and buried it. It is said he also came into possession of the Grail, which had been in Jesus’s hands and brought out at what the Christians call the Last Supper. It is at this event that Jesus was arrested — but why at that moment when he had been preaching for so long? Perhaps because he was bringing the Grail out and was going to share of it with his followers? That is my suspicion.

  And who would want to stop him and take the Grail for their own? I suspect The Mission, The Ones Who Wait, and the Watchers.

  There was a Roman named Tacitus, a military man, whose name I have discovered written in many old documents. I believe this is the name Aspasia’s Shadow used during this time. He was in Jerusalem in A.D. 33, and sought to get control of the Grail.

  There is another twist that came from this that I have investigated, that of the Sang Real.

  There are scholars who believe the Sang Real to indicate that Christ had children and that his bloodline exists to this day, hidden perhaps by some secret cabal of the Vatican. However, it is much more literal than that.

  When I was in the Himalayas, I talked to an old monk who told me of a small group of people he called the ubyr. He said they were men and women who drank the blood of others searching for the elixir of life. In Russia they are called upyr. In Eastern Europe they are known as vampir. In the many places I have traveled I have asked about such people, and I am amazed at the number of legends in far-flung places concerning them.

  And what do the blood-drinkers seek? Eternal life.

  This is what I believe the Sang Real is — the desire to drink of the blood of a person who has touched the Grail and try to gain eternal life out of their blood.

  “Remember he wrote this decades before Bram Stoker corrupted the image of the vampire into what is our modern myth,” Che Lu said. “In, fact, from what Isabel wrote, it appears that Stoker got the idea of vampires from talking with Burton.”

  Yakov ran a hand through his thick beard. “There are stories that Stalin had his secret police performing experiments on prisoners, draining their blood, searching for some rare strain that would bring longer life. And Von Seeckt told us of the SS’s fascination with blood. He was injected with some alien blood in a ceremony of the SS.”

  “This gives us a little insight into the Grail,” Che Lu said. “It must affect the blood somehow, perhaps adding something to it that improves the health and life span of the recipient. And the concept has made its way out into the world and been corrupted by these people who drink the blood of others.”

  “Perhaps the Grail simply injects Airlia blood into human and mixes them,” Yakov said. “We know The Ones Who Wait are human-Airlia clones, so there is some compatibility.”

  “Do you know how unlikely it is that our DNA could be mixed with that of an alien race and produce a viable life-form?” Che Lu asked.

  “That i
s not my area of expertise,” Yakov said.

  “It isn’t mine either,” Che Lu said, “but common sense says the odds would be extremely low of a compatible match.”

  “But the Airlia have technology we don’t know about,” Yakov said. “Perhaps they could manipulate the material on both sides to find a match in the middle.”

  “It is more likely that—” Che Lu began, but then she stopped herself. “What were you going to say?”

  Che Lu shook her head. “I will wait to find out more before I say anything else on this matter. Let us read on.”

  Joseph of Arimathea secretly left Jerusalem with the Grail. He undertook a most perilous journey, traveling far to remove himself and the Grail from the reach of the Roman Empire and Tacitus, a most difficult task in those days. He left behind agents who spread misinformation about the location of the Grail, hoping to keep Tacitus and The Mission focused in the Middle East while he took it far away.

  He finally came to Britain, an island that had resisted Roman invasion for many years and, truth be told, a land with little to offer a conqueror. A land where the Watchers had established their headquarters after the destruction of Atlantis. I read his report on his arrival in England, one of the Watcher scrolls, and there is no doubt Joseph was a Watcher, trying to put right what had been thrown askew by the appearance of the Grail in the Middle East.

  It seems that Joseph’s decision to leave the Middle East was a wise one and his agents did a most credible job of making The Mission believe the Grail was still there — perhaps too good of a job, as Tacitus continued to press his search using the Roman army as the blunt force to do so.

  In A.D. 67 Jerusalem was overrun by the Romans under the command of Titus, with his military adviser Tacitus at his side, after fierce fighting. It is said that over a million Jews were killed or sold into slavery. The Temple was destroyed, taken apart stone by stone, the city ravaged.

  But the Grail was safe and disappeared from sight for several centuries, protected by the Watchers at Avalon.

  Che Lu cleared her throat to say something, but she was saved from doing so when Major Quinn entered the conference room. “We’ve had to stand down the exfil choppers. There’s no way they can make it near the Nile without being spotted, especially since we’ve lost the AWACS ability to jam radars. Our government is protesting the destruction of the plane and the loss of the crew to the Egyptians, but it’s a confused situation to say the least. The Egyptians are countering that we’ve invaded their country twice now.”

  “What can we do?” Yakov asked.

  “I’ve managed to get a live feed from a surveillance satellite over the area. We can try to keep track — that’s about it.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The Giza Plateau, Egypt

  Turcotte slowly splashed his way down the tunnel, the water of the Nile urging him along. His shoulders were slumped and his step was heavy. The men he had led were dead, Duncan was gone with Aspasia’s Shadow, and the Grail and Ark were with him. The mission had been a complete failure.

  When the clatter of metal on stone came from behind, he found it difficult to increase his pace. The clicking noise was getting closer and the ceiling was sloping down, the channel growing tighter. In the dim glow of the flashlight he could see the little airspace he had now was completely gone in twenty meters.

  The noise from behind had stopped, but he was caught between the foo-fighter sentry and the water-filled tunnel ahead. He moved forward until his face was turned up, pressed against the rock ceiling. It occurred to Turcotte that something might have changed in the past hundred years since Burton went this way, but he didn’t care.

  Turcotte took several deep breaths, then he pulled his head down and went with the current, legs kicking to add speed, but the effort felt wasted as the water took control. He was tumbled about, hitting the wall of the tunnel several times.

  Just as he thought he couldn’t last any longer, he saw daylight above. He kicked, using the last of his air. Turcotte broke the surface, gulped in air, and blinked in the harsh rays of the sun, trying to get his bearings. He tread water, turning away from the sun, and saw the pyramids, the Great Sphinx before them, farther upstream and to the west.

  Turning, Turcotte saw an Egyptian patrol boat, forward machine-gun manned, heading straight toward them from upstream. He was too tired to even attempt to swim away, not that he could outswim the boat anyway.

  Qian-Ling, China

  Lexina ran her hands across the High Runes etched in the surface of the black tube. “It is not Artad’s resting place.” She turned toward the black wall which had just stopped its slow retreat across the chamber after clearing the end of the tube. “He rests further within. This—” she tapped the tube “—is a guard who must awaken before the wall goes any further.”

  “How do we open it?” Elek asked.

  “We don’t.” Lexina stepped back. “The process is automated and works on its own schedule. This is beyond us.”

  “Perhaps if we access the guardian—” Elek began, but his words were cut off as the black surface slid open, revealing a silver material that immediately peeled back in several layers until all that was left was a body encased in a clear material.

  “It is not Airlia.” Elek pointed out the obvious. The body was human, less than five and a half feet tall; a male with Chinese features. He was dressed in a richly embroidered silk robe, dragons breathing fire swirling about the material. Lying next to the man’s right hand was a spear, the head of which was of highly polished metal, a replica of the Spear of Destiny that Lexina had used to access this chamber.

  The air inside the tube crackled with electromagnetic static as the field which had preserved the body for thousands of years was slowly reduced in power.

  The Mission

  Every cell of Lisa Duncan’s being was in pain. It had started with her hand inside the Black Sphinx chamber. Then up her arm, into her chest, and throughout her body. On the helicopter ride, all she could see was the top of the cargo bay through the haze of tears brought on by the agony as the pain spread through her entire body.

  She had no idea where she was, although she was vaguely aware she had stopped moving and been taken off the helicopter. She was on her back, of that she had some sense. But the pain — she had never experienced anything even remotely close to it.

  Her brain could tolerate it no longer, and her conscious mind shut down as she slipped into a state closer to a coma than anything else.

  Across the room, Aspasia’s Shadow looked at her body on the bed. The priestly accoutrements had been removed and were neatly piled next to him. They were inside a small room, the walls carved out of brown rock. The Ark rested on the floor and Aspasia’s Shadow’s eyes shifted from Duncan to the Grail’s container. He was tempted. Such a temptation he had not felt in a long time, but he had waited millennia to gain possession of the Grail — he could wait a while longer to see if it still functioned, to see what it did to Duncan, if the ancient prophecies would be fulfilled. In the meanwhile, he removed his black cloak and dressed in the priest’s clothes.

  Reluctantly, he left the room. One of the two guards on the outside came inside, standing just inside the door, to keep watch on Duncan. Aspasia’s Shadow checked for the third time, making sure the man knew his order — to call as soon as there was a change in Duncan’s condition.

  Then Aspasia’s Shadow went down the corridor and entered another chamber hewn out of the brown stone. In the center a golden pyramid glowed — a guardian computer. A chair, more a throne, was set just in front of the guardian. Aspasia’s Shadow sat down and the golden glow encompassed him.

  Through the alien computer he made contact with Easter Island to be updated on all that had happened there since he had left The Mission to pursue the Grail. He saw that the forces there were just about ready for action. He issued orders to be implemented as soon as all preparations were completed.

  Easter Island

  The rebuilt F-14 did what d
esigners at Grumman had known it was capable of but never expected to see — execute a double digit G-force turn. The fact that the maneuver snapped the neck of the man in the cockpit didn’t bother the guardian computer controlling the plane in the slightest. Pilot-less, the plane nosed over and crashed.

  Taking the data into consideration, the guardian prepared the next pilot better, enclosing him in a suit it designed to take the forces involved. Another rebuilt F-14 went up and began running through the same tests.

  The plane made several more high-G maneuvers, then lined up on the Easter Island runway and came to a landing any carrier pilot would have been proud of. It taxied down the runway and came to a halt beside the full complement of F-14s that had been captured on board the Washington, all modified to the same specifications.

  A mile off the south shore of Easter Island, the Jahre Viking loomed like a half-mile-long wall. Smaller boats from the Washington had been commandeered to bring the people who were needed ashore. Others worked at menial tasks on the ship as a flow of nanomachines did the bulk of the important work.

  The nanomachines were building two huge doors by the expedient method of removing metal atom by atom. Behind the doors they were preparing they built a watertight seam at the same level. The first several compartments behind the doors were dissolving, the metal being used to reinforce the hull around the large open space being designed inside. The forward quarter of the ship was being prepared as a large open space, accessible through the doors.

  Deep under the Rapa Kara volcano, Kelly Reynolds became aware of a new presence communicating with the guardian. A force that was issuing commands to the alien machine, something she had not experienced before, even when it had been in communication with the guardian on Mars.

  For a moment, the link from Mars spiked in activity, trying to shut down the new link, but the new connection was more powerful, closer. At first Kelly thought it was the master guardian reestablishing its control, but then she picked up the presence of a mind, a human mind, behind the new guardian and she realized that was the controlling force.