Fortune Favors (34 page)

Kismet shook his head in disbelief and fixed Russell with a withering stare. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’re just following orders?”

The other man’s refusal to meet his gaze was the only thing about the situation that gave Kismet any cause to be optimistic. If Russell was as honorable as Kismet believed him to be, then he would surely recognize that, orders or not, he was on the wrong side. He only hoped the major would figure it out and call for his troops before it was too late. He decided not to press the point; if Leeds even caught a hint of dissent, he’d probably have his goons kill Russell without a second thought.

Instead, he turned to Higgins. Despite the betrayal, he got the sense that the old Gurkha sergeant actually believed he was doing the right thing. “Al, he’s lied to you. If anyone’s with Prometheus, it’s him.”

The occultist’s smile fell like the blade of a guillotine. “I most certainly am not. They are the very essence of evil; controlling the world like puppet masters, squandering the power of the ancients, hiding the truth about who we are and where we came from. They believe they are gods among men, and seek the power of the gods for themselves.”

“So, they wouldn’t let you join and you’re pissed off?”

Though at some level, he thought it must be true, Kismet had tossed the quip out as a defensive mechanism to hide the real impact of Leeds’ assertions. This man—this charlatan...this vile racist...this murderer—knew about Prometheus. He had the very answers Kismet had been seeking for more than half his life.

Leeds ignored the barb. “I am pleased that you’ve seen the light, Mr. Higgins. But I’m sure you understand that my trust is something you will have to earn, especially after refusing my earlier invitation. You may begin by surrendering your weapon.”

Higgins lowered the pistol, easing the hammer down and thumbed up the safety. He then took a cautious step up, onto the mound, and handed the pistol over to Leeds, who took it in his good hand and studied it with evident curiosity, as if he’d never before touched a gun. He turned it over several times then gestured to his men.

Several of them advanced and took physical control of Kismet and Annie, pushing them down, frisking them with perverse enthusiasm.

“Leave my daughter alone,” Higgins rasped. “That’s my price for helping you.”

“No deal, Mr. Higgins. You are also a prisoner.”

“Dad, why?” Annie’s voice was barely a whispered, and although he couldn’t see her face, Kismet knew she was weeping.

“Then let me prove it to you,” Higgins said. “Give me that gun and I’ll finish this. I’ll kill him.”

Someone let out a low gasp, but Kismet couldn’t tell who. A cold wave of adrenaline had washed over him and set his heart pounding in his ears like a jackhammer. He didn’t believe for a second that this was what Higgins wanted; it was a bluff, had to be. But he knew it was a bluff that Leeds would call.

He was surprised to hear Elisabeth Neuell speaking out in his defense. “John, we don’t need to do this.”

Leeds ignored her. “You would kill your friend?”

“Friend?” Higgins spat the word out like a curse.

The occultist smiled again, but this was his customary cool, insincere smile. “Very well. I accept your terms.”

The pronouncement left Kismet stunned, paralyzing him long enough that, by the time it occurred to him that there was nothing to lose by making a break for it, two of Leeds’ men had already seized his arms, bending them back so that any movement was impossible. He struggled anyway.

Leeds tossed the pistol to Higgins, who caught it one handed. With practiced efficiency, the former Gurkha pulled the slide action back halfway, checking that a round was chambered. He then turned, and without a trace of hesitation, crossed to where Kismet lay face down, took the trigger in a two-handed grip, and pointed it at Kismet’s head.

Only then did Higgins stop, glancing up at Leeds to see if a reprieve would be offered.

Finally realizing the futility of the struggle, Kismet stopped thrashing and twisted around to meet Higgins’ gaze. “Al...”

There were a dozen things he could have said, a score of pleas he could have made, and every one of them flashed through his head, but he kept quiet. Anything he might say would accomplish nothing more than a futile sacrifice of his dignity.

But he did not look away from Higgins.

“Do it!” Leeds’ voice was eager, hungry.

Kismet could see the tendons in Higgins’ hand bulge slightly as he started to exert pressure on the trigger—heard the faint rasp of metal sliding against metal—and then, the loudest sound in the world.

PART FOUR

Depths of a Legend

FIFTEEN

Click
.

For a moment, no one moved. Higgins stood stock still, as if he had expended the last of his motive force in pulling the trigger, and now hadn’t the energy to even lower his arm. The sound of the hammer striking the evidently impotent bullet seemed to echo in the silent stillness. Then a sound intruded; the sound of Dr. Leeds laughing.

“Shit,” blurted one of Leeds’ gunmen, stepping forward and racking a round into the chamber of his pump-action shotgun. “I'll do him.”

“No.” Leeds didn’t raise his voice; he didn’t have to. The man quickly relented, backing away as Leeds continued. “No, I’ve had my little joke. You didn’t think I’d hand you a loaded gun, and take the chance that you would shoot me with it?”

Higgins sagged a little.

“When your end comes, Kismet,” Leeds continued, his voice still dripping with menace, “it will be far more...imaginative...than the swift release of a bullet in the brain.” He turned to his subordinates. “Tie them up.”

“Wait,” protested Higgins, recovering a little of his nerve. “I meant what I said. You have to believe me.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” countered Leeds. “As it happens, I haven’t figured out what to do with you. I’ll admit; your change of heart, if sincere, surprised me. Right now, I haven’t the time to figure out where your loyalties really lie, but soon...Well, I’ll have an eternity.”

One of Leeds’ men produced a roll of silver duct tape and commenced wrapping several thicknesses around Kismet’s wrists—joined behind his back—and ankles. He repeated the process with a scowling but quiet Annie, but then, following a gesture from Dr. Leeds, allowed Higgins to remain free. The former Gurkha chose not to look Kismet or his daughter in the eye, but sank to the ground, and sat with his head resting against his knees as if exhausted or perhaps nauseous.

Kismet still wasn’t sure what to make of the earlier scene. He still couldn’t believe that Higgins had betrayed them; there had to be some other explanation, and yet, he had pulled that trigger. If not for Leeds’ sleight-of-hand, rendering the weapon harmless, Higgins would have taken his life.

 Kismet drew comfort from a single fact: he and Annie were still alive; anything was possible.

As soon as Annie was bound fast, Leeds waved his men off and knelt in front of Kismet. “Now, where is it?”

“Where is what?” Kismet replied with mock innocence.

Leeds calmly extended his maimed right arm and placed the tip of the hook in Kismet’s left nostril. Despite his determination not to give the occultist the satisfaction of a reaction, Kismet instinctively tried to lever his body up and away from the pinpoint of pain that radiated across his face.

“It’s out there,” Higgins said, pointing the lake. “Just offshore. That’s all he knows.”

Leeds stared at Higgins for a moment, weighing the veracity of the admission, or perhaps just trying to decide whether or not to continue tormenting his prisoner, then gave the hook a twist and let Kismet’s head fall away. The occultist rose disdainfully and began snapping orders to his confederates. When he finished, all but two of the men vanished back into the woods. Leeds and Elisabeth remained behind, as did his two newest recruits—Russell and Higgins.

Kismet could taste blood in his mouth, trickling down the back of his throat from the scrape in his nostril,minor though it was, the fresh wound somehow hurt more than the dull throbbing in his leg where the alligator had grabbed him. He spat a bright red gobbet in Leeds’ direction, not quite close enough to invite a reprisal, but nevertheless a gesture of contempt.

“I’m curious about something, Leeds. How exactly do you plan to keep control of the Fountain once you find it? I don’t care how persuasive Lizzy there is, I don’t think the government is going to put you in charge. Or are you and the ‘white power’ boys going to launch the next Civil War from here?”

Leeds cocked his head sideways thoughtfully. “The Fountain? You disappoint me Kismet. I would have thought you’d have figured it out already. The Fountain of Youth is nothing more than an intermediate goal; a means to an end. I thought I explained all this. The Fountain is just a by-product of something far more important.”

“You want the source,” Kismet said, thinking out loud. “A Seed from the original Tree of Life. Take that and you can make a Fountain of Youth anywhere you like.”

“Yes. But it is so much more than that. It is the source of...of everything. Unlimited power.”

“Oh my God,” Annie whispered.

Leeds licked his lips hungrily. “Indeed.”

She blinked at him and then seemed to regain a little of her steel. “I meant, ‘oh my God, he’s a nutter.’”

Leeds just laughed.

* * *

Kismet and Annie, still bound, were bodily carried along the top of the serpent mound to an idling pontoon boat. The craft, a commercial model used for chartered fishing trips, could comfortably seat a dozen passengers and crew, but as they were dropped unceremoniously on the deck, Kismet saw that much of the available space was filled with bright yellow air tanks and other pieces of SCUBA equipment. Four of Leeds’ hirelings crowded aboard; the rest melted back into the woods.

Kismet mentally arranged the boat’s occupants like pieces on a chessboard, testing different strategies for escape. Leeds’ thugs were pawns, but deadly ones, who would probably kill without hesitation. But what about the rest? What about Russell, could he be turned with an appeal to reason? Was Higgins beyond redemption, or would he choose to put his daughter’s safety above all else, even as he had apparently done when deciding to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds? With Russell and Higgins on his side, they might be able to overpower the four hired guns; Leeds and Elisabeth didn’t pose much of a physical threat. If Kismet tried to escape with Annie, would the two men try to stop him, or would they throw in their lot with he and Annie?

When the last of the group had crowded onto the boat, the skipper—one of Leeds’ men—nudged the throttle on the outboard and steered toward the spot where they deduced the entrance to the cavern would be found. The boat had been equipped with a very sophisticated sonar DownScan Imaging Fishfinder; the video screen painted an image of the bottom—and what lay beneath the soft accretion of sediment—in stunning hues of color. But as amazing as the technology was, it only served to verify that Kismet’s earlier conclusion about the site was dead-on; at the exact spot where the serpent mound’s tale and head would have met, the sonar identified a large round hole in the limestone of the lake bottom—a submerged cenote.

There were probably dozens just like it in the lake. Northern Florida was shot through with limestone caves like the holes in a wheel of Swiss cheese. Nevertheless, Kismet knew that this was the one; this was the entrance to the cavern described in Fortune’s letter, the place where Hernando Fontaneda had discovered the Fountain of Youth.

Leeds seemed to recognize it as well. He ordered his man to keep the boat directly above the opening. As they circled the site, Russell took off his uniform, unselfconsciously stripping down to his underwear, and then pulled on a “shorty” wetsuit. Meanwhile, Leeds addressed Kismet.

“Do you know why I didn’t just let Mr. Higgins kill you?” Kismet got the sense that it was a rhetorical question, and before he could even begin to formulate an answer, Leeds continued. “I probably should have. Ian said I should kill you—”

“The big guy with the silver tooth?” Kismet replied innocently. “I noticed that he didn’t seem to like me very much. What did I ever do to him?”

“Ah, under different circumstances, your ignorance would be amusing. Whatever happened to Ian anyway?”

“Search me. Maybe he was jealous of the magician’s new assistant and decided to hit the pavement.”

Leeds’ eyes narrowed a little. “You’re alive because you have the devil’s own luck. No, strike that. Luck has nothing to do with it. You have a touch of the divine in you.”

The comment hit Kismet like a slap.

“They never told you, of course,” Leeds continued. “You are their grand experiment. If you knew what you are truly capable of, it would skew the data, so to speak.”

Kismet felt like screaming at him.
Who? Who is running this experiment? How do you know all this? Who in the hell is Prometheus?
He shrugged, saying nothing.

“Ah, and that’s what I’m doing right now, isn’t it?” The occultist chuckled. “It’s fitting really. They have used you to locate the ancient mysteries so they could hide them, and in so doing, hid your own true nature from you. It’s appropriate, don’t you think, that I should reveal their secret in order to use you for my own ends.”

Russell finished pulling on the SCUBA gear and promptly stepped out over the side of the boat, dropping flippered feet first into the lake. He bobbed there for a few seconds, making final adjustments to his mask and regulator, then swam close to the boat. There was a reel of heavy nylon line attached to his belt and Russell secured the loose end to a grommet on the deck of the boat using a small carabiner.

“’I’m ready,” he announced.

Leeds was still looking at Kismet. He shook his head. “Listen to me, prattling on about irrelevant things. I was talking about why I haven’t killed you. You are still alive because you have a...a talent...yes, that’s the word. You have a talent for delivering the goods.