End of Days (26 page)

“At least you’re not on the top of their official death list,” Parker said.

“They had a death list?” Sheppard gasped.

“Yeah, sort of America’s Most Unwanted. At one point there was a bounty of more than fifty million dollars on you.”

Sheppard shook his head sadly. “How ironic is it that they had to offer money instead of just a place in Heaven.”

“I think the place in Heaven was understood. The money would just make the wait for Heaven more enjoyable. Anyway, you spent most of the last seven years either at the top of the list or in second place.”

“Did I fall or rise in value?”

“Rise. You and Dr. Markell usually occupied those spots.”

Sheppard thought of his friend often. Hard to believe what had happened. He still sometimes expected the door
to his office to pop open and Andrew to barge in with some strange theory or idea, or a bad joke, or a cup of tea. What had driven him to take his own life, to try to destroy the project?

“It’s not your fault that he did what he did,” Parker said.

Sheppard had long been accustomed to Parker reading his mind. He’d found it amusing at first, then confusing, troubling, and eventually reassuring. What Parker didn’t know was that Sheppard could often read his thoughts, too. He supposed that made them something like an old married couple.

“It was unfortunate what happened to him,” Parker said. “Not only the end, but the way he was being excluded from decisions.”

“That’s what led him to that insanity, I suppose. I should have been more supportive, insisted that he remain in the top position instead of me. I should never have agreed to become the head of the project.”

“His demotion was going to happen, whether you agreed to it or not. He was incapable of heading the program, and his mental deterioration was dooming the whole enterprise to failure.”

“As opposed to the success I made of it?” Sheppard asked.

“You did as well as anybody else. Ultimately, I knew you would become the head,” Parker said. “And do you know why?”

“Because the cream always rises to the top?” Sheppard joked.

“You became the chief because everybody knew that you were the best man for the job. You weren’t about
politics, or ego, or ambition. You were about the truth, about the solution. You were trusted.”

That was what Sheppard had always aimed for, but it was nice to actually hear somebody say it. It made him happy and uncomfortable all at once.

“It all seems so peaceful out here,” Sheppard said as he looked out the window at the passing scenery.

“It
is
more peaceful in the country. People grow their own food, heat their houses with wood from the forest. Still, no matter how calm it seems, I wouldn’t want to be stopping to change a flat tire out here.”

“Could this thing
get
a flat tire?”

“It could, but it can also drive over a hundred kilometres an hour on six flat tires, and it’s equipped with twin forty-calibre machine guns and a rocket-grenade launcher.”

“Not standard equipment on that Ferrari of yours.”

“Although the two of them get about the same mileage,” Parker said.

“Try not to run out of gas,” Sheppard joked.

“If I did, I could scramble a Black Hawk helicopter to be here in less than five minutes with a can of gas, so no worries there, either.”

“Then what
are
the worries, if Judgment Day is now dormant?”

“Not dormant, just reduced. They’d still like to capture or kill you. Can you imagine the coverage of them executing you?”

“I think I’ll try
not
to imagine that,” Sheppard admitted.

“But that’s not the greatest risk right now. People are more desperate than ever. They’d happily kill us just for the resources that this vehicle represents. And when they find out about the impact sites, things are going to get even more turbulent,” Parker said.

“It hasn’t been decided if we’re going to make that information public. Making the sites known wouldn’t save anybody. It would do nothing more than provoke mass migration and panic, as people flee the East Coast for the West, or the northern hemisphere for the south, in a false belief that they’ll be spared.”

“I understand,” Parker said. “But sometimes false hope is better than no hope. Maybe I’ll take a little trip to my place in the country. You did say it wasn’t going to be hit.”

“Not hit, but not spared.”

“What if I hid in the basement?” Parker asked playfully.

“I don’t know—is your basement over 250 metres deep?”

“I could bring a shovel, I suppose.”

“Right, well, you start digging, and when you hit 600 metres, let me know,” Sheppard said. “That’s a basement I’d like to see.”

The vehicle slowed down and came to a stop. “We’re here.”

Sheppard looked around. Aside from the trees and rocks there was nothing but a little dirt path running off to the side.

“Where is here? Why did we stop?” He suddenly felt anxious and exposed again.

“Don’t worry, Daniel. I told you, I’m not going to
whack you. This isn’t a gangster movie. We have an appointment.” He looked at his watch. “It won’t be long now.”

Sheppard felt that perhaps he ought to have been worried, scared. But he wasn’t. He trusted Parker with his life. And for the first time, Parker had called him “Daniel.” He supposed, without having much experience in this area, that they had, somewhere over the years, become friends. And he supposed that friends didn’t take one another into the woods to kill them.

Sheppard’s eye was caught by movement. A car—small and simple and old—was bumping along the dirt road toward them. He simultaneously became more alert—who was it?—and more relaxed. Obviously they had nothing to fear when they were inside their armoured vehicle.

The little car slowed and stopped. Two people—an older man, tall, with flaming red hair, and a boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen—climbed out. The man offered a friendly wave and a big smile. The boy did neither.

There was something about the man. Sheppard was sure that he didn’t know him … but somehow he looked familiar.

“Are those people our appointment?” Sheppard asked.

“I believe so. See this button?” Parker said, pointing at a large knob in the centre of the console.

Sheppard nodded.

“That’s the emergency com-link. Hit that and you’ll have help within five minutes. Stay inside the vehicle.”

Before Sheppard could even think to react, Parker had climbed out and closed the door behind him, sealing
Sheppard inside. He was locked in, safe and separated, able to see but not hear what was going to happen next. Able to watch, but unable to do anything about what he might see.

Parker extended his hand, and he and the old man shook.

“It’s good to meet you after all these years,” Joshua Fitchett said. “Your reports have been very helpful in our project.”

“I’m glad. It’s an honour to finally meet you, sir,” Parker replied. He looked at the boy questioningly.

“He’s my bodyguard,” Fitchett explained. “You wouldn’t expect me to come all this way out here without security, would you?” He laughed. Neither Parker nor Billy did.

“Billy, this is Agent Parker.”

Each eyed the other suspiciously.

“Is he in there?” Fitchett asked, gesturing toward Parker’s vehicle.

“As promised.”

“Does he know who he’s meeting with?”

“I haven’t said anything,” Parker replied.

“Is he coming out?”

Parker slowly and carefully surveyed the scene. He couldn’t see anybody or anything out of the ordinary. Maybe that was what troubled him the most. He should have seen some sort of security.

“If you’re wondering about security, you have my word that we are in the very centre of a completely secure zone,” Fitchett said. “I actually did bring along a full team of security on our flight. They are ringing the site.”

Parker had no reason to doubt him. If he had had any real doubts, he wouldn’t have been there in the first place. Even though they’d never met before, he was willing to trust that this really was Fitchett, and that the request for a meeting had been legitimate. He was going out on a limb, knowing how easy it would have been for someone to break through the com-link, to send false messages, to find somebody to impersonate Fitchett, who had been so long presumed dead.

Parker heard the car door open behind him. Before he even had time to react Sheppard was out of the car. Slowly, Parker slipped his right hand inside his jacket to place his fingers against the handle of his gun. If this was a trap, they weren’t going to be the only two people who died today.

“You’re Joshua Fitchett!” Sheppard exclaimed as he rushed toward them, hand outstretched. “It is such a pleasure to meet you!”

The two men shook hands enthusiastically.

“You recognize him?” Parker asked.

“We were at a conference together … well, not
together, really—I was in the audience and he gave the keynote speech—but I’ve certainly seen enough pictures to recognize the man.”

Parker started to remove his hand but then hesitated. It was reassuring to have a weapon that close.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me alive,” Fitchett said.

“I’ve learned to read obituaries with a certain amount of healthy skepticism,” Sheppard said. “Especially after having read my own.”

“Ah, yes. You yourself were dead for a few years, as I recall.”

“The fire that supposedly killed you …?” Sheppard began.

“That was of my own doing,” Fitchett told him.

“But why?”

“I needed to disappear, to be free of the involvement and influence of others. I had work to do, and I didn’t want anybody, including the International Aerospace Research Institute, to interfere with that.”

“But your help could have been so valuable,” Sheppard said. “Who knows, with your contribution we could have—”

“Done no better,” Fitchett said. “Your course of action was completely correct.”

“Had it been correct, it would have succeeded.”

Fitchett shook his head. “Success was never possible. Involving me in the failure would only have stopped me from doing what
I
needed to do, being where
I
needed to be.”

“Where
have
you been all these years?”

“I think that’s what this meeting is about,” Fitchett said.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Parker interjected. “I feel very exposed out here. Perhaps we could talk about this in the safety of our vehicle?”

“I’m afraid not,” Fitchett said. “That would make
my
security team uneasy. Speaking of which, I’ve been asked to request that you remove your right hand from your weapon … slowly.”

Parker complied, pulling his hand slowly from his jacket to show that his hand was empty.

Fitchett turned his head slightly and motioned to an earpiece. “I’m in constant communication with the head of my security team. As I’ve said, we are in the middle of a safe zone, surrounded on all sides. We are far from exposed.”

In a way, that information made Parker feel
more
exposed. If those security forces were able to see him slipping his hand into his jacket, they were also in position to take him out with a single shot.

“No one is here to harm anybody else,” Fitchett offered reassuringly. “In fact, the continued safety of you two gentlemen is of extreme importance to me.”

“Is that why we’re here?” Sheppard asked. “So you can see that we’re safe?”

Fitchett laughed. “First, before we get to the reason for this meeting, I wanted to offer my congratulations on your efforts.”

“Are you being facetious?” Sheppard asked.

“Certainly not, and my sincere apology if you thought I was. What you did was nothing short of miraculous. You
managed to hold together the largest organization ever assembled in the history of the planet, wrestling with competing interests, ideologies, governments, policies, politics, and opinions, and somehow you were able to make a valiant assault on the greatest danger that the planet has ever faced.”

“I would take the credit, if that effort had actually succeeded,” Sheppard said.

“But, Dr. Sheppard,” Fitchett replied, “you
saved
the planet.”

“Sir, you are completely mistaken. All human life will be obliterated.”

“I didn’t say you saved
mankind
. I said you saved the
planet
. My calculations indicate that the original mass of that asteroid, hitting in one location, would have potentially changed both the orbit and the rotation of the planet, almost certainly rendering it incapable of supporting life.”

“There is a body of proof to support that theory,” Sheppard acknowledged.

“But the asteroid was destroyed, deflecting some pieces completely and creating an asteroid field of thousands of smaller fragments, so that the energy absorbed by the collisions with Earth will be spread across a much greater area. The rotation of the planet will absorb and disperse the direct energy, which will result in
no
significant change in Earth’s flight through space,” Fitchett explained. “Thus saving the planet.”

“That will be small comfort to the billions of people who will perish, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of other species that will become instantly extinct.”

“Perhaps more life will survive than you believe, but most important, you have ensured that the environment in which life will be able to exist has been safeguarded.”

“Again, small comfort to imagine that in a few million years we might, potentially, re-evolve as people.”

“I do not wish to insult a mathematician of your renown, but I think your projection of millions of years might, in fact, be off … by millions of years.”

Sheppard looked at him questioningly.

“What would you think if I were to say to you that I believe human life can be re-established as soon as thirty years from the time of impact?” Fitchett asked.

“If it were anybody except you saying that, I would think that they were either unable to accept reality or completely insane.”

“There have always been those who have questioned my sanity,” Fitchett replied.