Fortune Favors (40 page)

Annie nodded.

The sight held him rooted in place. He could vaguely recall what he had felt after tasting the water, and thought he had at least a rudimentary grasp of the principles at work. It was probably beyond the grasp of science to explain, but there was certainly no magic to it. But what was happening in the center of the Fountain was like nothing he could have imagined.

Then he recalled something else, the thing Leeds had truly sought—the Seed.

He turned toward the elevated dais, and that was when he saw the man standing next to Elisabeth.

It had been twenty years since their last encounter, but he recognized the man as easily as if it had only been yesterday.

“Hauser!”

It was a barely a whisper, but somehow the man standing on the platform and likewise captivated, heard him.

Kismet felt a cold chill wash over him that had nothing to do with the cataclysm building in the pool.

Ulrich Hauser.

That was what the man had called himself—the man from Prometheus—the man who had somehow known all about him.

You are their grand experiment
.

Ulrich Hauser had left him to die in Iraq—

Or had he?

Kismet, if I killed you, your mother would have my head
.

Hauser had said that, all those years ago, just before leaving him on his own—he and Higgins had been captured, tortured—and then, for no apparent reason, they’d been allowed to escape. Had Hauser, or someone else acting on his orders, orchestrated that?

Higgins was right
, he realized.
I’ve never been anything but their bloodhound, their puppet. I found the goddamned Fountain of Youth, and here they are
—
here he is
—
to take it away.

Kismet had wondered if Leeds might be an agent of Prometheus; how else to explain his knowledge of a society so secret that twenty years of searching had not revealed to Kismet even a single clue regarding its existence. Leeds had used his knowledge of Prometheus to coax Higgins into joining his cause, and neither man had suspected even for a moment that their agent was already in place; the beautiful blonde—the disillusioned Sultana, the actress, the professional liar.

In hindsight, it all made perfect sense now. Elisabeth’s sham marriage to the Sultan, at the height of her career—the pirate raid on the cruise ship—there was a commonality there: the relics of the ancient world, illicitly acquired by the Sultan’s father. And then Nick Kismet—the great experiment—had wandered onstage.

She had tried to kill him, or had she really? She had seduced him—why? And then she had joined forces with Leeds, subtly goading both men into a rivalry that would not only add yet another fantastic treasure—a Seed of the Tree of Life—to Prometheus’ secret storehouse of mysteries, but would also give them a chance to put their grand experiment to the ultimate test.

God, she’s good
.

“Hauser!” he shouted, getting to his feet. He felt strong, surprisingly so, given what he felt sure he had just gone through. “Not this time, Hauser. You’re not taking this one away.”

The blond man stared back at, turning his head a little as if to bring something distant into focus, and for good reason—his left eye was covered by a square of black cloth.

Well that’s new
.

He started running, only peripherally aware of the tongues of fire scorching the air above him, licking the cave walls, shattering the limestone with their kiss. Hauser lurched into motion, turning back to his goal.

Kismet knew he wasn’t going to make it time, but he tried anyway.

Elisabeth stepped into his path, aiming a compact semi-automatic at his forehead. “Don’t,” she warned. “I don’t know if a bullet will even kill you now, but I’ll pull the trigger if I have to.”

There was just enough hesitancy in her voice that he believed her. “What about your experiment? What would my mother say?”

She cocked her head sideways. “You really have no idea what’s going on, do you?”

A retort was on his lips when Hauser erupted in a string of curses. His rage was so palpable that even Elisabeth winced, dropping her guard for just a moment. Kismet took the chance and brushed past her, vaulting up the steps. He ascended the dais just as Hauser wrapped his arms around the base of the altar, picked it up, and hurled it into the pool.

It took Kismet a moment to understand the reason for the other man’s rage.

It’s not there. The Seed is gone. Did Leeds...? No, someone else
.

His mind turned the possibilities like the pages of a flipbook.

“Where is it?” Hauser raged. “Where in the hell is it?”

“Looks like you were late to this party,” Kismet remarked. “No Seed. The Fountain of Youth...” He glanced back at the pool and the storm; the cavern was about to implode, and when it went, that would be the end of the Fountain of Youth. “You lose. I imagine that’s a new experience for you.”

Hauser wheeled on him. “Where is it, Kismet?”

“Why should I tell you?”

For a moment, the other man just glowered at him. Then his lips pulled back in that Big Bad Wolf smile that Kismet remembered so well. “You know where it is, don’t you? What say we make a deal? You tell me where it is, and I let the girl keep on breathing.”

Kismet glanced over a shoulder and saw Elisabeth moving toward Annie, the pistol already trained on her. Higgins just stood there, rooted in place.

Kismet wanted to scream at the man.
Damn it, Al. Stand up to them; she’s your daughter for God’s sake
!

He turned away. “You were probably going to kill us all anyway, right? Oh, maybe you’d let me live for the sake of your great experiment, but as I recall, you have no qualms about leaving me in a room full of dead people. So why should I tell you anything?”

Hauser leaned close, nostrils flaring. “Because there are worse fates in the world than death.”

Kismet matched his stare for a moment. “Promise me that you’ll leave her alone, and I’ll tell you.”

The lupine lips curled ever so slightly. “I swear on my mother’s life.”

“Is that some kind of joke?”

Lightning crackled between the stalactites and a chunk of stone the size of Smart Car crashed down and obliterated a section of the walkway on the far side of the pool. The impact sent a tremor through the entire cavern, opening gaping fissures in the walls, from which water began to pour.

He didn’t trust Hauser, but in a few minutes, it wouldn’t matter. “Fontaneda took it back to Spain with him.”

“How do you know?” Hauser pressed.

“He wrote that he planned to hide it in the Alhambra Palace in Granada.”

Hauser fixed him with a single-eyed stare, looking for any hint of duplicity. Then, without another word he turned and fled down the stairs.

Kismet started after him, but Elisabeth warned him off. “Not another step.”

“You promised, Hauser. No harm.”

“A promise I intend to keep,” the one-eyed man assured him. “As long as you stay the hell away from me.”

He bent down and seized Annie’s arm, pulling her erect.

Kismet took another step forward, but Elisabeth waggled the gun meaningfully.

Another thunderous discharge shuddered through the cavern. The pool was boiling now, and at its center, a hideous mass of wriggling flesh continued to grow.

“Then go!” Kismet shouted. “Get the hell out of here before we all die.”

Hauser pulled Annie after him and headed for the exit where the last remnants of his commando force waited. Elisabeth however lingered. “Alex? Are you with us?”

The question seemed to perplex the former Gurkha. He stared back at her, and then turned his desolate gaze on Kismet. His lips formed words:
I’m sorry
.

There was only one thing left to say. “Take care of her, Al. Keep her safe.”

Higgins nodded and moved to follow Elisabeth.

“Hey, Al.”

Higgins paused but didn’t look back.

“See you in the next life.”

NINETEEN

As soon as Higgins and Elisabeth passed through the exit, Kismet started a mental ten count. He only got as far as three, when Hauser reappeared in the doorway, holding what looked like a woman’s shoulder bag, sewn of olive drab fabric.

“You probably won't die right away,” Hauser shouted. “In fact, you might not die for several years. Enjoy your stay!”

With that, he dropped the bag and took off running.

Kismet ran too, back toward the relative safety of the cairn. He threw himself flat behind the piled rocks an instant before the satchel charge detonated.

The explosion was tremendous. Kismet felt the concussion ripple through his body. He’d kept his mouth open slightly the whole time so that the overpressure wouldn’t rupture the membranes of his inner ear, but the blast left him stunned.

Because the bomb had gone off almost exactly in the entrance, fully half of the explosive energy had been directed away from the cavern. Nevertheless, the half that had blasted inward was more than enough to finish what had already begun. The already gaping cracks widened, and between them, huge sections of the wall began moving independently, undulating—collapsing.

Suddenly, Kismet’s wildly long hair bristled up on end, surrounding his head like a halo, alive with a crackle of building static. Something big was about to happen.

He threw himself flat on the shattered floor.

A bolt of pure blue-white lightning arced between the ceiling and the center of the Fountain. Overhead, the few remaining stalactites began to vibrate violently and explode in a spray of deadly fragments.

In the pool, the thing that had once been Dr. John Leeds exploded in a geyser of blood and tissue.

* * *

Annie followed unwillingly but without resistance as the one-eyed man—the man Kismet had called Hauser—led her through the cave with the bats.

Most of the winged creatures were gone, frightened from their dwelling by the release of energies from the nearby cavern, though a few still flitted about overhead. The fleeing group barely took notice.

As they passed beneath it, Annie saw that the opening overhead was larger now, giving her a much-needed view of the sky above the surface world, where she desperately longed to be.

Like the other chamber, the bat den was being reshaped by the cataclysm. The walls, riddled with fissures, were groaning, shifting back and forth like earthquake fault lines. But even more ominous was the sound of rushing waters.”

“Hurry!” Hauser urged. “The entire cavern is flooding.”

Water began to pour in; just a trickle at first, like a leak in an old roof. The tremors had uncovered ancient reservoirs—pockets of groundwater that would have naturally seeped through the rock and into the nearby lake—and was diverting them into the hollow channels of the cave network. The limestone walls were but a thin membrane, holding back a tremendous underground deluge, and as those walls fractured, an irreversible chain of geological events would transform the labyrinth into a sinkhole, ultimately expanding the boundaries of Lake George.

Though it would be no more significant than any other fishing hole on the lake, the Fountain of Youth was about to be revealed to the outside world.

None of Fontaneda's traps remained to slow their flight, but when they reached the corridor where the boulder-sized stone block traps had earlier daunted Leeds’ group, they discovered that the fragile cement holding the remaining block in place had crumbled, triggering the last of the Spaniard's defense mechanisms. They had to crawl over both of the stone blocks to escape. This time, Annie felt not even a twinge of claustrophobia; they were heading for the surface and that was good. If she hesitated, she would die, crushed by stone and water, so the only option was to keep moving.

Suddenly, a massive detonation from deep within the cavern split the length of the tunnel wide open. Annie was knocked flat by the violence of the tremor, which was an order of magnitude more powerful than the satchel charge Hauser had left behind to kill Kismet.

Nick
?

She tried to thrust that thought from her mind. She couldn’t do anything about it now; she had to get out of this place. But before she could raise her head, water began pouring from the walls, and a freezing wave engulfed her.

* * *

The climactic blast lifted Kismet off the floor and flung him against the cavern wall, fifteen feet from where he had been standing. He felt as though his body had become a single massive bruise, though as he struggled to rise, the pain receded quickly, replaced by a tingling in his nerves.

He recalled Hauser’s parting shot, and wondered how long the potency of the Fountain's water would remain active within him? What if he survived everything—the crushing collapse of the cave, the rising flood of water—and wound up trapped forever, unable to find even the release of death.

Screw that
.

A gleaming piece of metal lay nearby; it was his flask. The container was nearly full of water from the Fountain and the metal tingled beneath his fingertips. He stashed it in his pocket, then turned to survey the damage caused by the explosion.

Where the Fountain of Youth had once existed, ablaze with seemingly supernatural energy and a promise of rejuvenation, there was now only a void. A smoking crater, deeper than Kismet's eyes could penetrate, marked the place where it had flourished.

The mass of flesh and organic matter—otherwise known as Dr. John Leeds—had been completely immolated in the eruption. The walkway around the crater was almost completely gone, shattered beyond recognition, impassible, and littered with enormous chunks of rock falling out of the walls and down from the ceiling overhead. The pieces were falling all around Kismet; the next one might, without even a hint of warning, smash him to a bloody pulp.

He had to get out of here.

As he searched for an exit, he realized that, despite the fact that the plasma storm was no more, he could still see. Daylight was streaming in through a rent in the fabric of the cavern's dome. The explosive force of that final discharge had blown a hole in the roof directly over where the Fountain had been. It was ten feet across and getting wider as the edges continued to crumble away. As he watched, a huge block of stone, larger than the original hole, pulled away with a splitting noise. It seemed to hang indecisively for a moment before succumbing to gravity, plunging into the depths of the crater below. The floor trembled with its impact.