Nomad (12 page)

A third box opened on the screen with a blond-haired, tanned man in his mid-thirties. The news anchor introduced him: “This is Professor Hallaway with the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.”

People around Jess had their phones out. They tapped on their screens. Dozens of conversations erupted, breaking the near silence that had descended on the concourse moments before.

“G’day,” said the blond man on the TV screen, nodding.

The news anchor nodded in greeting. “Professor Hallaway, can you confirm what Dr. Menzinger is saying?”

The blond Professor Hallaway took a deep breath before responding: “I can’t confirm what he’s saying, but we are seeing a disturbance in the orbit of Uranus. Something is happening.”

“You see!” Dr. Menzinger shouted on-screen. His video box was grainy, and faded out and then back in. “You don’t need to trust me, go and look for yourselves.”

The anchor turned his attention back to Dr. Menzinger. “So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that the planet Earth has, at most, months before utter destruction.”

Around Jess, shouting started, people yelling into their phones to be heard above the rising background noise.

“Call Ben.”

“What?” Jess pulled her eyes from Dr. Menzinger ranting about black holes and Roche limits tearing the planet to shreds.

“Call your father,” Celeste repeated.

Jess’s phone was in her hand, her father’s number on it. She’d been distracted in the middle of calling him. She pushed the
call
button and held it to her ear. Busy signal. She tried again. Busy signal. She looked around at the people around her, all of them on their phones.

“The cell networks are jammed,” Jess whispered in horror.

People mobbed the airline desks. There was no way they’d get seats on the 3 p.m. flight. She doubted they’d be getting on
any
flight.

Not anymore.

12

R
OME,
I
TALY

“WHAT DO YOU mean, he’s not registered here?” Jess demanded.

The little man behind the huge marble reception desk checked his computer again. His pencil-thin mustache twitched, and he smoothed his slick hair back with one hand before looking up. “We have no record of a Ben Rollins staying at the hotel.”

Jess clenched her fists. “But I met him here, four days ago. Check again. Doctor
Ben-Ja-Min”
—she enunciated each syllable of his full name—“Rollins.” She pointed at workers disassembling a booth on the other side of the lobby, an
International Astronomical Union
poster on the wall behind it. “He was here for the meeting.”

Stray bits of papers and packaging littered the deep carpeting of the Grand Hotel’s lobby. Men carrying crates flowed in a steady stream out a service entrance to one side, sky-blue frescoes of angels hanging above.

“I’m very sorry,
signora
, but we have no record of a Dr. Benjamin Rollins staying with us.”

Jess leaned over the desk to try and look at his computer screen. “Do you even know how to use that goddamn—”

“Sorry, it’s been a long day,” Celeste apologized. She hauled Jess back.

It had taken three hours to get from the airport into Rome, normally less than an hour’s trip. Chaos erupted after the news reports, and they waited in the taxi line for two hours. They tried calling and texting Ben on the way, leaving messages for him. Sometimes a call managed to go through on the mobile network, but so far, no return messages. Not since Jess had talked to her father in the airport.

Jess’s phone buzzed. Her heart skipped a beat, hoping it was her father, but it wasn’t. Still, she smiled. Giovanni texted her: Y
ou still here? Saw the story on the news.
She texted back:
Yes, in Rome now.

“Do you have a room available for the evening?” Celeste asked.

The mustache quivered again as the little man winced. “Very sorry, but we are fully booked.”

“Is there somewhere nearby you could recommend”—Celeste inspected the brass nameplate pinned to his suit—“Vittorio?”

Vittorio’s lips mashed together as if he tasted something sour. He pulled a sheet of paper out from behind the counter. “These hotels are close, but I’m afraid they are
all
”—he paused to add weight to the word—“full,
penso
.” He nodded in the direction of the doors. People filled the streets outside. “Many people are coming.”

“My friend Angela lives a few blocks away,” Jess said to her mother. At least she had made
one
friend in her months here. Grunting, she exhaled to let her frustration out. “Did Dad go to the airport?” she muttered under her breath, glancing at her phone’s screen. Almost one o’clock. Maybe her father left to make the 3 p.m. flight?

“He’ll see we aren’t there.” Celeste leaned on the reception desk and turned to face Jess. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

“Can I get the wifi code?” Jess asked Vittorio, flashing him her best smile. She needed to check her email.

“Yes.” Vittorio’s mustache quivered in a forced smile. He produced a slip of paper with the wifi code. “But it’s very slow.”

Jess took the paper. “Thank you.” She opened her phone and texted a message to her friend Angela:
I’m back in Rome - can I stay at your place?
No way they were getting out of Rome again, not today. They might need a place for the night. If the text didn’t work, she could try webmail to reach Angela, and see if her dad had emailed her, too.

“
Scusi
, did you say, Doctor
Rollins
?” asked a uniformed attendant behind Celeste. “You are looking for him?”

Celeste turned to him. “Yes, Dr. Rollins.”

“I saw him, this morning. He left about ten o’clock, three hours ago.”

“Are you sure?”

The attendant stepped back to open the door for two guests arriving from outside. “
Sì
,” he said as the guests passed inside. “Dr. Rollins, the famous TV
persona
. Very nice man. He left this morning, with his friend, the one with the
occhiali
…the eye glasses.”

“He must mean Roger,” Celeste said to Jess. “His research assistant. Did you meet him?”

Jess nodded. She’d done more than meet him. “But why would he just leave without telling us?” She opened her laptop on the reception counter.

“Maybe he had no choice.” The attendant took a step toward them and lowered his voice. “Dr. Rollins was, how do you say…
escorted
from the building by two large men. They left in black limousines,
molti
, all together.”

“Why would you say he had no choice?” Celeste asked in a hushed voice.

The attendant looked left and right. “
Non lo so
. I just work.”

“Thank you,” Celeste whispered to the attendant. “Thank you, very much.”

“
Prego
.” The attendant smiled and stepped back to open the door for other guests.

“What, was he kidnapped?” Jess asked her mother.

Celeste looked as mystified as Jess felt. “I don’t know.”

The web took forever to load on Jess’s laptop. Finally, her browser popped to life.
Cosmic Hoax?
read the top story on her MSN homepage. She scanned the list of articles headlining everything from apocalyptic disaster to conspiracy theories. One image popped out, of riot police lined up behind the flaming burnt out shell of a car:
Riots sparked in Los Angeles blamed on cover-up…

“My God.” Celeste held one hand to her mouth.

Jess glanced out the front doors of the hotel, at the crowds in the street outside. Her cell phone pinged. A message from Angela:
Sure, come over, but I leave in half an hour. Hurry.

Jess checked her webmail. No messages. Her phone buzzed again. A text from Giovanni again:
Are you okay? Where are you staying?

Smiling, Jess texted him back that they were fine, and included Angela’s address—just in case her father managed to get in touch with Giovanni. He knew they’d stayed at the castle.

“Come on, let’s go.” She flipped her laptop closed, stuffed it into her backpack and put it on. “Angela’s home, it’s a ten minute walk. Let’s get somewhere safe.”

“Great.” Celeste grabbed the handle of her rolling carry-on and followed Jess to the entrance. The attendant opened the doors ahead of them, smiling and bowing. “Thank you again,” said Celeste.

An assault of sirens and shouting greeted them outside, cars honking and people yelling. A crush of people walked the street, swamping cars that crept along between them. A policeman on a horse clip-clopped past. A dozen more police wearing white helmets and day-glow yellow vests amassed on the next corner. The Grand Hotel was on a side street next to the Tiber River in the heart of Rome, just a block from the
Via dell Conciliazione
, the wide boulevard that cut from the
Castel Sant’Angelo
all the way to St. Peter’s Square at the basilica in the middle of the Vatican.

Celeste stopped and stared at the crowd, then up at dark clouds threatening rain overhead.

“Come on.” Jess grabbed her hand. “We need to hurry. We’ll cross the bridge over the Tiber. Angela’s place is next to
Piazza Navona
. We need to hurry.”

Jess followed the flow of the crowd, past the knot of nervous-looking police on the corner, onto the
Via dell Conciliazione.
Looking right, the dome of St. Peter’s loomed over the masses. “Hold on a sec,” she said to Celeste.

Next to the UniCredit Banca on the corner was a concrete pylon lamppost, and Jess pushed through the crowd, grabbed onto the ledge of the pylon and hoisted herself up. She looked down the boulevard. A sea of people flooded all the way along it, fed by tributaries of smaller alleyways, all ending in a jammed crowd of tens of thousands inside St. Peter’s Square. Maybe even hundreds of thousands. She jumped down.

“The Pope announced a speech tomorrow,” said an ancient woman sitting on a bench next to the lamppost. She wore a brown suit jacket with matching skirt and a wide-brimmed hat. A strand of fat pearls sat around her neck. “The Day of the Lord arrives, Judgment Day, that’s what they’re saying.”

“Is that right?”

The old lady worked her arthritic fingers together, purple veins showing through her papery skin. “Oh, no, this is all a game,” she laughed. “War of the Worlds all over again, when Orson fooled us. He’s at it again, the clever deceiver.”

Someone crashed into Jess, almost knocking her over.

“Are you okay?” Celeste grabbed Jess’s arm from behind her.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Jess regained her balance and looked back, but the old lady was gone. Disappeared. What was that about? She shook it off.

“Come on, this way.” Jess grabbed Celeste’s hand and pulled her against the flow of the crowd, back toward the center of Rome across the bridge, under Italian pine trees forming an archway of umbrellas against the dark skies.

On the other side of the Tiber River, the crowds thinned, and Jess led her mother through a maze of alleyways. She stopped halfway down an empty cobbled street, at a huge door, ten feet high in weathered wood. Jess inspected a row of brass buttons and pressed one. “This is it.”

The door buzzed a second later, and Jess pushed against it, heaving it open. Celeste followed. Inside stretched a white marble hallway, dusty, half-illuminated by a flickering fluorescent tube twenty feet above. It ended in a set of stairs next to the tiny black metal cage of the elevator, a discarded baby stroller lying beside it. “Up the stairs, third floor,” Jess said. “Don’t bother with the elevator, the thing’s a death trap.”

They tramped up, the noise of their footfalls echoing off the walls. It felt abandoned, empty, a strange transition from the bursting crowds just blocks away. Two entrances led off each landing, the doors studded sheets of metal with three or four locks each. “An old building,” Jess said. “They like to be safe.”

On the third landing was an open door. Jess went straight in. “Angela, sorry about what happened with Ricardo,” she said right away.

A thirty-something woman in shorts and tank top, with long blond dreadlocks, was stuffing a pile of clothes into a suitcase on a dining table. “Don’t worry, he’s an asshole.” A news channel played silently on a TV in the corner.