The Sign (20 page)

“Father,” Finch said, “please accept our apologies for arriving here like this. We weren’t aware of the, um,” he paused, trying to find the most diplomatic way of saying it, “internal debate going on here regarding how to deal with it all. We certainly don’t mean to inconvenience you or to impose in any way. If you’d like us out of here, just say the word and we’ll head back home and no one needs to know about any of this. But I ask you to keep two things in mind. One, no one knows we’re here. We only told one person back at our headquarters—our boss—he’s the only one who knows where we are. So you mustn’t worry about this suddenly becoming a media circus because of us. We won’t let it happen.”

He paused again, waiting to see if his words were having any effect. He wasn’t sure they were, but thought he detected a softening in the man’s frown.

“Two,” he pressed on, “we’re only here to help you and Father Jerome as you—as we all—try to understand the extraordinary events that we’re witnessing. I assume you know that we were there. In Antarctica. We saw it all happening right in front of us. And if we’re here, it’s first and foremost as expert witnesses. We won’t broadcast anything without your permission. What we see and discuss here remains between us until you allow otherwise.”

The abbot studied him, glanced over at Gracie and at Dalton, shot an unhappy frown at Brother Ameen, then turned his attention back to Finch again. After a brief moment, he nodded slowly as he seemed to reach a verdict, then said, “You want to talk to Father Jerome.”

“Yes,” Finch replied. “We can tell him what we saw. Show it to him, show him what we filmed. And maybe, he can make sense of it.”

The abbot nodded again. Then he said, “Very well.” He then raised a stern finger. “But I have your word you won’t let any of this out before talking to me about it.”

“You have my word, Father.” Finch smiled.

The abbot kept his gaze locked on Finch, then said, “Come.”

He invited them into the most recent addition to the complex, a stuccoed, simple three-story building that dated from the seventies. Finch and Gracie followed while Dalton scooted off down the courtyard. Brother Ameen had told them the monastery didn’t have a television, and they were aching to see the footage from the Arctic and the reaction to it.

Gracie and Finch gratefully accepted a drink of water and a small platter of cheese and fresh dates, and they’d barely had time to exchange casual pleasantries when Dalton popped his head through the door.

“We’re up.”

They rushed out. Dalton had linked his laptop to the foldable Began satellite dish and was on the network’s website. Gracie, Finch, the abbot, and the monk huddled around him while he played the news clip of the sighting over Greenland.

A graphic showed the location of the sighting, by the Carlsbad Fjord on the eastern coast of Greenland, four hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. The video clip that followed was eerily familiar. The footage was jerkier and grainier than their own. It wasn’t filmed by a professional crew. Instead, the sighting had been captured on tape by a team of scientists who were studying the effects of meltwater on the Arctic island nation’s glaciers. The apparition had taken them by surprise, with the breathless excitement and hectic activity coming through vividly on the screen. One of them, a white-bearded glaciologist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, was then interviewed live, his face heavily pixelated and breaking up from the webcam-linked satellite phone they were evidently using.

“First, Antarctica, and now here,” the offscreen anchorman’s voice asked him. “Why do you think this is happening?”

There was a two-second lag, then the scientist’s professorial face reacted to hearing the question. “Look, I’m . . . I don’t know what it is or where it’s coming from,” he answered with a gruff voice. “What I do know is that it can’t be a coincidence that this—this
sign
is showing up over what can only be described as disaster areas. I mean, that ice shelf in Antarctica that’s crumbling, and this glacier here—they’re ground zero. I’ve been studying these glaciers here for over twenty years.” He turned and waved a gloved hand at the gray-white expanse behind him. “You’d look out across the land there and it used to be pure white. Nothing but snow and ice, year-round. Now you look at it and it’s more blue than white. It’s melting so fast that we’ve now got lakes and rivers all over the place, and that water’s working its way down to the bedrock and loosening the bases of the glaciers, which is why they’ve started to slide out to sea. And if this one goes,” he pointed out gravely, “we’re talking a three-foot rise in global sea levels. Which could then trigger all kinds of nightmare upheavals. So, you ask me what I think is happening? I think it’s pretty obvious. Nature’s flashing us a red alert here, and I think we need to take that warning seriously, before it’s too late.”

Gracie stood there, rooted in silence, as the report cut away to a montage of reactions to the sign’s second appearance. The images were breathtaking. A large crowd congregated in Times Square, watching the scenes unfold on the huge screen, the crawler underneath announcing the sighting in bold letters. Similar scenes were captured in London, Moscow, and other major cities. What the first appearance seeded, this second one reaped in spades, in terms of impact. The world was sitting up and taking notice.

Gracie glanced over at Dalton and Finch, and felt a surge of trepidation. Something unprecedented was happening, something big and wonderful and baffling and terrifying all at the same time—and she was right at the heart of it.

The satphone startled her and dragged her attention away from the screen. It was Ogilvy, calling from his cell, as per their agreed communication protocol.

“I just got a call from the Pentagon,” he informed her. “Two
DIA
guys just landed in McMurdo and found out you’d skipped town. They’re pretty pissed off,” he said with a light chuckle.

Gracie frowned. “What did you have to tell them?”

“Nothing. It’s still a free country. Sort of. But they’ll track you to Cairo Airport pretty quickly, if they haven’t done it already. From there . . . who knows. You might want to switch off your phones.”

“There’s no signal out here anyway,” she told him, “but we need to keep in touch. We’re pretty cut off out here.”

“Check your satphone every hour; I’ll text you if anything comes up.” Ogilvy impressed her with his sangfroid.

“We’ll do that,” she confirmed. “And I’ll get you the landline of the monastery too, just in case.”

“Good.” Ogilvy’s voice took on a more serious tone. “Did you meet him yet?”

“No, we just got here.”

“Talk to Father Jerome, Gracie. Do it quickly. The whole world’s watching. And we’ve got to keep our lead on this thing. It’s ours for the taking.”

Gracie felt a hard lump in her throat. She glanced uneasily at the monks as she stepped away and turned her back to them, lowering her voice. “We’ve got to be careful here, Hal. We can’t just announce this without taking the necessary precautions.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, this is a Muslim country. I’m not sure they’d react kindly to something that smells like a Second Coming, especially not in their own backyard.”

“It’s where it happened the first time,” Ogilvy remarked dryly.

“Hal, seriously,” Gracie shot back, “we need to tread carefully. In case you hadn’t noticed, this isn’t the most tolerant corner of the planet. I don’t want to put Father Jerome in any danger.”

“I don’t want to put anyone in danger either,” Ogilvy countered, slightly testily. “We’ll be careful. Just talk to him. We’ll take it from there.”

Gracie didn’t feel overly relieved. She relented—“I’ll call you after I meet him”—then snapped the phone shut and turned to the abbot. She needed to get something out of the way. “The documentary footage they filmed in the cave. Can we see it?”

“Of course. It’s on the
DVD
they sent us—I haven’t watched it as we don’t have a player here.”

“This laptop’ll play it,” Dalton told him, tapping his computer.

The abbot nodded and left them.

Dalton glanced worriedly at Gracie and Finch. “What if the shot we need didn’t make the final cut?”

It was a disheartening possibility neither of them wanted to consider right now, as it meant they would then have to contact the filmmakers for the outtakes. The abbot interrupted their concern by reappearing quickly,
DVD
in hand. Dalton loaded it up and fast-forwarded through it until the screen showed the small film crew climbing up the mountain and approaching what looked like an old door cut into the rock face.

“There,” the abbot exclaimed. “That’s Father Jerome’s cave.”

Dalton reverted to play mode, and the screen showed the cameraman’s point of view as he entered the cave. Gracie watched, heart in mouth, as it tracked through the dark chamber, an ominous, first-person voice-over describing the cave and its sparse, simple furnishings, giving her a preview of what she would imminently be visiting—then the camera banked around and, in a sweeping pan, covered the curving ceiling of the chamber.

“Right there,” Gracie burst out, jabbing the screen with her finger. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Dalton hit the pause button, backtracked a few frames, and played the clip again in slow motion. They all leaned in for a closer look. It was just a brief shot, no more than a passing glimpse at a curiosity within the cave—but it was all they needed. Dalton froze the image on one of the painted symbols. It was an elegant construction of concentric circles and intersecting lines that radiated outward. Despite its simplicity, it somehow managed to convey what they’d seen over the ice shelf and now, on the video, with surprising ease and clarity.

It was unmistakable.

Gracie turned to the abbot. Her nerves were buzzing with anticipation. “When can we go there and meet Father Jerome?”

He checked his watch. “It’s getting late. The sun will be gone soon. Tomorrow morning, first thing?”

Gracie winced, her heartbeat having a hard time pulling back from the frenzied quickening brought on by the footage on Dalton’s screen. “Father, please. I don’t mean to be a burden in any way, but . . . given what’s happening, I don’t think we should wait. I really think we ought to talk to him tonight.”

The abbot held her gaze for an uncomfortable beat, then relented. “Very well. But in that case, we should go now.”

LYING
UNDER
A
SAND-COLORED
CAMOUFLAGE
net four hundred yards west of the monastery’s gate, Fox Two watched through high-powered binoculars as Gracie, Finch, and Dalton, accompanied by the abbot and another monk, climbed into the waiting people carrier.

His Iridium satphone vibrated. He fished it out and checked it. The text message told him Fox One and his team had just landed. On time. As expected.

He locked the phone and tucked it back into his pocket and watched as the Previa drove away in a swirl of dust.

He waited until they were half a mile away before pushing himself to his knees. Crouching low, he carefully folded the netting, stowed it in its pack, then slipped away to rejoin his two men, who waited nearby.

The mountain beckoned.

Again.

Woburn, Massachusetts

T
he motel was grubby and run-down, but it provided Matt and Jabba with the basics: four walls, a roof, and the anonymity of a check-in alcove manned by a weedy daytime television addict who could barely string together a sentence. And right now, that was what they needed most. Shelter and anonymity.

That, and some answers.

Matt was sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed, his head tilted all the way back, resting against the lumpy mattress. Jabba, on the other hand, couldn’t sit still. He was pacing around and making repeated checks out the window.

“Would you stop doing that,” Matt grumbled. “No one’s coming for us here. Not yet, anyway.”

Jabba grudgingly let go of the thin, stained curtain and embarked on another lap up and down the room.

“Just sit the hell down,” Matt snapped.

“I’m sorry, all right?” Jabba fired back. “I’m just not used to all this. I mean, it’s just insane, dude. Why are we even here? Why can’t we just go to the cops and tell them what you know?”

“’Cause what I know is nothing compared to what the cops think they know, and I don’t fancy sweating this one out behind bars. Now do me and this carpet a favor and sit down.”

Jabba stared at him for a beat, then relented. He looked around, frowned at a rickety chair that looked like it would disintegrate if he even thought of sitting in it, and set himself down on the marginally sturdier bed instead. He palmed the remote and changed channels on the small TV that was bolted onto the wall. It matched the room: basic, run-down, but functional. Matt glanced at its screen. The picture was grainy and the set had a meek, tinny sound, but that didn’t matter. He could see what he needed to see.

News of the Greenland apparition had whipped up the media into an even bigger frenzy. Coming on the heels of the Antarctic event, it was an irrefutable confirmation that no one could ignore. It was on every channel—endless blathering that ultimately couldn’t offer any explanation beyond replaying the same clips over and over and exploring past mystical sightings for any relevance. Clips about previous claims, from Fatima to Medjugorje, were getting airtime, only they paled in comparison. This wasn’t a handful of kids claiming to see the Virgin Mary in a field.

The world was, simply, entranced.

Matt tilted his head back again and exhaled wearily. “Tell me what you and Vince talked about.”

“Tell you what we talked about?” Jabba rambled. “We talked about everything, dude. Where do you want me to start?”

“Last night,” Matt specified testily. “What did you guys talk about last night?”

“Last night. Last night, right,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “We were watching this thing,” he said, pointing at the screen. “The first one, anyway. Trying to work out how it could be done.”