The Grail a5-5 Page 5

  “If The Ones Who Wait bring Artad up from the lowest level,” Turcotte said, “it will be interesting to see how everyone in the world reacts. We still don’t know the truth about what happened among the Airlia.” He turned to Quinn. “What else?”

  The major hit another command. The map changed to show the southeast Pacific. “The shield is still protecting Easter Island. What remains of Task Force 78, with the addition of Task Force 79 and the aircraft carrier USS Stennis, has backed off to a range of three hundred kilometers north of the island. We’ve lost all contact with the submarine USS Springfield. It is assumed it has been taken inside the shield and is lost to us. Official policy now is to stand off and watch, which doesn’t please the Navy much.

  “However,” Quinn continued, “the last transmission from Springfield had some interesting data in it.” He hit a switch and a large map of Easter Island appeared on the screen. “We think they found a hole in the shield wall. When the Washington hit the island, it tore up a big part of the ocean floor as it bottomed out. We think there is a very small gap in the shield where it cut through the floor.”

  “Can we get in?” Turcotte asked.

  “Possibly,” Quinn said. “But, as I said, official policy is to stand off and do nothing.”

  “That doesn’t do Kelly Reynolds any good,” Turcotte said. “Can you get some SEALs?”

  “I can’t even get us MPs at the moment,” Quinn said.

  “That’s because the Pentagon knows who’s asking and what they’re for,” Turcotte said. “We still have the ST-8 clearance by presidential decree, right?”

  Quinn nodded. ST-8 was the highest clearance possible and meant that orders issued using it had to be followed as if they came from the National Command Authority.

  “Then I’ll just issue an order to get us some SEALs.”

  “To do what?” Quinn asked.

  “Infiltrate Easter Island.” Turcotte pointed at the screen. “It’s a job the SEALs are trained for. Go in under the shield, see what’s going on, rescue Kelly, and get back. I’ll bet there’s a SEAL team on board one of the ships of Task Force 79. Plus, I don’t think the Navy will put up too much of a fight over the mission. I’ve got a feeling they want to know what’s happening to the Washington and their people.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Quinn said.

  “And the Giza Plateau?” Turcotte had already moved on to more pressing issues.

  “Satellite imagery shows it wrapped up even tighter with troops since your assault. The Egyptian government has closed it off and is complaining to whoever will listen that the United States violated their sovereignty.”

  “We have to go back,” Turcotte said.

  “That might be difficult,” Quinn noted.

  “Of course it will be difficult,” Turcotte said. “But there’s always a way.”

  “What about the manuscript?” Mualama said. Quinn stood. “It’s in the conference room.”

  Turcotte paused. “I need a minute.”

  Quinn nodded and went into the conference room. Yakov put a large paw on Turcotte’s shoulder. “Are you all right, my friend?”

  “No,” Turcotte said.

  “I would have been worried if you said you were,” Yakov said. “No one is all right. Only the smart people know that though. Especially now.”

  “Especially now,” Turcotte acknowledged. “Give me just a minute and I’ll join you.”

  “Da.”

  Turcotte waited until Yakov and Che Lu disappeared. He walked down the hallway to the latrine. There was no one inside. He sagged back against the door, feeling the exhaustion of constant tension in every fiber of his being. He slid down to his knees, then sat on the floor, his back still against the door. He put his right hand out, opened it wide, and stared at the scarred flesh. He could see the pregnant woman who died just before he grabbed the red hot muzzle of his team leader’s gun in Germany as if it had just happened. Another second earlier and she — and her unborn child — would still be alive.

  The fingers of his left hand traced over the scar tissue in the palm of his right hand, remembering his failure. And his most recent failure had cost the lives of three men. Finally, he stood. He shoved the door open and went to the conference room. Inside was one other person beside Quinn, Mualama, Che Lu, and Yakov. Larry Kincaid was their authority on space operations. He was looking through a pile of photographs. Kincaid stood and shook hands as he came in.

  Quinn stood near the end of the table and pushed a button on a lectern. A piece of the wood paneling slid up, revealing a six-by-six-foot video display. Turcotte sat in the leather chair at the head of the conference table, Yakov to his right, Che Lu to his left, Mualama next to her. The screen turned white, and then two lines scrolled up to the center and stopped.

  “This is the prologue to Burton’s manuscript which we’ve scanned into the computer,” Quinn said.

  THE PATH OF A TRUTH-SEEKER BY SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON

  Quinn leaned over and indicated a key on the keyboard embedded under the top of the table at Turcotte’s position. “You hit this to scroll up.” Turcotte pressed it.

  THE SEARCH FOR LEGENDS

  Prologue:

  I, Richard Francis Burton, have lived a long and wondrous life that now winds its way into darkness. What is written on these pages was accumulated over the last thirty-six years when my life took a turn that I could never have imagined. I have tried to organize it as well as I can and I leave it to my beloved Isabel to finish my work after my death. Without her, I would never have been able to complete it; indeed my life would not have been worth living without her light spirit to keep me from falling into the darkness of all I have learned.

  My involvement in the tale began when it reached my ears, in the city of Medina, in the year 1854 of the Christians after the birth of their Lord, that there was a man who knew much of the secrets of the world and the ancients. He was not spoken of favorably but with fear. That did not dissuade me. I had learned early in my life that one must often travel into darkness to get to the light.

  I sought out this man, spoken of only in whispers as Al-Iblis, and was granted an audience. Some said he was a sorcerer, others a creature of the night whom mothers talked of to scare their children into going to bed on time. Others said he was a religious leader, but of what sect no one was certain.

  I could sense much evil in his presence, but he overcame my fear by hinting of strange and wondrous things. He pointed me to Giza, to the plateau of the three great Pyramids and the great Sphinx. He told me to seek out a man named Kaji, who knew further secrets and could show me something my eyes would not believe. He gave me a medallion which he said would gain me an audience with Kaji.

  Al-Iblis wanted me to return to him, to tell him what I had seen, but I knew even as I left his palace I would never be back there and never wanted to be in his presence again.

  He was right in his hints, for at Giza, under the guidance of Kaji, I saw something hidden under the earth, in the bowels of the plateau; something so strange as I can still hardly believe it, and was told a tale even stranger, that every effort of my life from that moment to this as I write, the darkness of death not far from me, has been dedicated to tracking down the Truth. It became my tarigat; my spiritual path leading to the truth.

  I barely survived that first step as Kaji tried to leave me to die under the plateau, but that tale will be told elsewhere.

  The beginning of this path, I eventually learned, revolved around intelligent creatures who were not men, who were not even of this planet. These came to our Earth from the stars before the dawn of recorded history and fought among themselves for millennia, in the process changing much of mankind’s history, most often for the worse.

  I have learned much of these creatures — the Airlia — and their followers who walk among us. Once I overcame my shock at being told of their existence and seeing the proof in the Black Sphinx hidden under the Giza Plateau, I set out to learn as much as I could abou
t them.

  Over the years I have traveled far, read, seen, and heard much. What has fascinated me most are the Legends that man has woven to explain things that could not be explained any other way at the time.

  Artifacts from these Airlia have become part of the lore of many lands, being given various names. Most have been called no more than literary devices by scholars with no basis in fact. I had always thought such thinking naive. Now I know it to be.

  What I have discovered is that the Legends are real, and they date back before the shadows of what those same scholars call the beginning of history.

  On these pages I will write of the Grail, the Spear of Destiny, Excalibur, the Ark, and other objects shrouded in myth and legend.

  Much of what I write on these pages cannot be proven. Most comes from documents that I have translated with great effort from tongues that have not been spoken for a very long time and from another tongue that scholars insist does not exist despite all evidence to the contrary. Other information comes from tales told to me in shadowy rooms by men and women, and even those who are not completely human, whose veracity may indeed be questioned, but I believe it all because of the pieces of the tale I have seen with my own eyes. And because of the efforts that were made both to aid me and to hinder me in this path, too much effort was made to stop me, for there may be some truth in what I have learned, truth that others want to keep buried.

  The story begins before Rome was founded, before the Greeks etched their letters on stone tablets, even before the pyramids themselves were built — before the dawn of recorded time.

  Turcotte hit the scroll key, but nothing happened. “That’s it?” He turned to Quinn.

  “That’s all of Burton’s prologue,” Quinn said. “Inserted behind those first pages were several written in a different hand.”

  Mualama leaned forward. “Do you know of Sir Richard Burton? His life? The controversies surrounding him?”

  “Not really,” Turcotte replied. He was anxious to be moving, to be planning a second assault on Giza and rescue Duncan. He didn’t understand Mualama’s fascination with an old manuscript.

  “Burton translated the Kama Sutra,” Mualama said. “And the Tale of the Thousand and One Nights. He was more than a writer and translator of other’s written works. He was a famous explorer. A man who dared to travel where others feared. He searched for the source of the Nile hidden in the heart of Africa. It has been widely believed that his wife, Isabel, burned a manuscript when he died.” Mualama pointed at the screen. “It appears she burned the only copy of this manuscript.”

  “The next few pages tell what happened on the night Burton died,” Quinn said, “and why she did what she did. It is most intriguing.”

  “Put it on the screen,” Turcotte ordered. The writing that appeared was written with black ink, a thin spidery lettering:

  My love is dead. His body not yet cold.

  I write to warn you. If you read these words and have this manuscript in your possession, you are cursed, as my dearest Richard was.

  As Richard had feared for so many years, the evil creature who started him on his path, his tarigat, came for us last night just as Richard finished the manuscript. I was making a copy, as I always did, of Richard’s work. The opus was complete and Richard felt he had done all he could with the life he had been given.

  The creature came in the dark. Its face was pale, its twisted body cloaked in black. The eyes — I will always remember the eyes. If my sins — and they are many according to those who say they know those things — send me to Hell, I readily expect to see eyes like that again. But is there a Hell? I wonder because I no longer believe in Heaven.

  I wander. My mind is not in this. Richard lies dead just down the hallway. But you must know of the creature who knows not death. Because if you are reading this, then the creature will eventually come for you too.

  The creature wanted the manuscript; the information Richard has so painstakingly translated and gathered over the past four decades.

  It came after dark. Richard was in bed, his body weakened by the disease ravaging him. I was wiping the sweat off Richard’s brow, when I heard the heavy wood door crash open. I ran to the top of the stairs and saw it in the foyer. It looked up at me and I first beheld those eyes.

  They transfixed me. I knew Richard’s guns were in the study, but I could not move. The creature came up the stairs, occasionally staggering to the right, grabbing the railing as if it were drunk.

  It wore a long black cloak, the tail almost touching the floor, and underneath, formal wear, as if it had come from a party. But the cloth was dirty and spotted. It came close to me and I could smell the stench of death on its breath. It opened its cloak. A hand came out holding a surgeon’s blade. It pressed the weapon against my throat. I thought it would rupture the skin. Never had I been so aware of the blood that flowed through my veins, feeling that cold steel against my flesh.

  “Your husband, whore,” the creature hissed. “I want your husband.”

  I wanted to shake my head, but I thought it would finish the work of the blade. “He is not here.”

  “You lie, bitch. You are a whore like all the others.”

  I was startled when Richard’s voice came from the doorway to our room. “I always knew I would see you once more.”

  How Richard managed to get out of bed, I knew not. I felt, and still feel, I had let him down. I should have thrown myself into the blade and ended it there. Perhaps that would have satisfied the blood lust I could feel coming off the creature. We once met a man named Bram Stoker who spoke of creatures of the darkness who drew blood from their victims for sustenance. Richard had been intrigued and talked with Stoker deep into the night until I could no longer stay awake with them. Richard told him of Indian legends of things called vampires and other similar creatures he had heard of in our travels around the world. If such creatures existed, I knew this was one of them. But Richard seemed not afraid of this thing that stood in our house.

  “Leave my wife be. She has nothing to do with this. She knows nothing.”

  The creature pulled the blade away from my neck, and with a movement faster than I could follow, hid the blade deep inside the recesses of its cloak.

  “I don’t care what she knows. She is like all women. A whore. Worth nothing. She deserves what they all deserve. Death. Worse than death.”

  But he took a step away from me, toward Richard, something stronger than his hate for my gender drawing him toward my husband.

  “Al-Iblis.” My husband said the name like it was a curse, and confirmed what unholy creature I was seeing. Richard had written of it extensively in the manuscript. I knew then what I had hoped was just a collection of tales was true. The world as I had known it and been taught by my church, my parents, my schools, was not the world as it was.

  “Sir Richard Francis Burton,” the creature hissed. “I had heard the queen-whore knighted you. You have traveled far since we met in Medina. But you never came back to me like you promised.”

  “You lied to me,” Burton said.

  The creature laughed, like the sound fingernails make on a blackboard, causing my skin to crawl. “I lied? I told you much truth. Enough for you to go to Giza, to find Kaji. So I lied about myself. What does that matter? You will never know the truth.”

  “I know more than I did,” Richard answered him. “I know many of your names now.”

  The creature smiled, revealing yellowing teeth. “You do? Do you know what they call me now?”

  “In the newspapers they call you Jack the Ripper,” Richard said, a name which froze my heart. I had read of the atrocities committed by the shadow the papers had given that title to. To have it stand here in my hallway; I knew we were doomed. I had read how his hate for my gender had been displayed, most likely with the very same blade that he had held against my throat seconds earlier.

  “The Ripper,” the creature repeated. “They are fools. I do not rip. I cut with a precision the best of you
r surgeons could not even begin to imitate, but they ignore that and worry only about the death of worthless scum.”

  “Our surgeons try to save lives,” Burton said.

  “I try to save a life also.” The creature pointed a thin, pale finger with a long nail at the end, at its own chest. “Mine.”

  “You have lived for millennia.” Richard seemed more intrigued than scared.

  I had seen him this way before in dangerous situations, where normal men would have fled for their lives. His only interest was learning more. But this was our house, not a jungle. And this creature — there was no doubt it was more dangerous than any Richard had ever faced on any of the many continents he had traveled to. “Why are you afraid for your life now?”

  “This has lived for millennia!” The creature clawed through his cloak and suit shirt, pulling out an amulet on a thin metal chain. The metal was formed in the symbol of two hands lifted up in praise, but there was no body between. “This—” the creature thumped the pale flesh of his chest, “will die soon.”

  For the first time I picked up something other than hate off the creature as it turned its head looking down the stairs, toward the open front door. Its voice dropped low, as if afraid of being overheard. “They track me. They want me to go with them. To pass on, they call it. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to die! “

  “Why do you hate women so?” Richard asked. “Why do you kill them and cut their bodies?”

  “I am not of woman,” the creature snarled. “I was not born of woman. It is a woman who tracks me, who wants me to pass on. They are all evil. Evil. I need blood to keep me going until — I need parts of their bodies. I cannot—” He fell into silence, as if confused.

  “Tell me your real name.” I had seen Richard stand upright against a charging tiger in India, rifle to his shoulder, waiting until the last possible second before taking the fatal shot, wanting to see the tiger’s eyes, every little detail. If the gun had jammed then, we would not be here today.