Island of the Sun (24 page)

That brought quiet into the room, which lasted a few moments, and then Watkins returned.

“We have some decisions to make,” he said. “Hard decisions, I'm afraid, but necessary ones.”

“I've made mine,” Dr. Powers said.

“Simon . . . ,” Eleanor's mom said.

“Indeed you have, Dr. Powers,” Watkins said. “And you, Dr. Perry?”

“I haven't made any decisions,” she said.

“No?” Watkins said. “I'm surprised you would put your daughter in such danger.”

Eleanor froze, while her mom frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Watkins glanced at Eleanor with a hint of a smile and that same meaningful look. “She knows.”

Helplessness and rage set Eleanor quivering. She knew how her mom would react to this. She knew what this would mean.

Her mom turned toward her, and so did Uncle Jack. “Sweetie, what is he—?”

“Allow me to explain,” Watkins said. “Shutting down the Concentrators comes at a dangerous price for your daughter, Dr. Perry. A price for many people, including your brother, who shares her ability. Perhaps the ultimate price, if they're all shut down.”

“What are you saying?” Eleanor's mom grabbed her hand. “Is this true?”

Eleanor couldn't speak.

“It might be,” Luke said quietly. “I had to carry her part of the way out of that tomb.”

“Mom,” Eleanor said. “Please, don't—”

“I knew it.” Her mom closed her eyes and shook her head. “I knew it all along, and I didn't stop you.” She opened her eyes and looked at Eleanor with a fierceness that almost frightened her. “Well, I will not allow you to endanger yourself anymore.”

“Mom, please. We'll find another way.”

“What other way is there?”

Eleanor didn't know. She didn't know how she could shut down the Concentrators if doing so meant hurting Uncle Jack, or anyone else. Watkins had twisted things around so much, she wasn't even sure what was true. But the one thing she did know was that the Preservation Protocol was still completely wrong.

“Please, Uncle Jack,” Eleanor said. He would understand. He knew her better than anyone. “Tell her.”

“Ell Bell, listen to me.” He cupped one of her cheeks with his broad, warm hand. “I still don't quite understand what's happening here, but I know I don't like this Preservation Protocol any more than you do. If I knew of a way out of this, I'd take it. They've got us over a barrel.”

It was as though the bottom had fallen out of the room, and the walls had rearranged themselves. No one spoke. Eleanor was too stunned to make sense of where she sat now, but she wasn't in the same place she had been a moment ago.

“An accurate assessment, Mr. Perry,” Watkins said. “Thank you. And now—”

Hobbes entered the room, interrupting him before he could finish. “Sir, there's a situation developing. We need to get you out of here. Now.”

“S
ITUATION?”
W
ATKINS SAID.
“W
HAT KIND OF SITUATION
?”

“I'll explain on the way,” Hobbes said. “Let's move.”

“They are coming with me,” Watkins said, pointing at Eleanor and her mom.

“Yes, sir. What about the others?”

“Watkins,” Dr. Powers said. “We had a deal.”

Watkins squinted at them. “So we did. I suppose we should bring the others with us.”

A slight twitch beneath Hobbes's left eye was the only sign of irritation he displayed. “I'll have two cars brought around. Wait here.” He left the room, speaking into his wrist.

“I truly have no idea what this is all about,” Watkins said.

Eleanor believed him and wondered what could possibly be happening that might pose a threat to him or the G.E.T.

“But not to worry,” Watkins said. “I'm sure it will be fine. I've yet to encounter a problem for which Hobbes is unprepared.”

The agent returned a few minutes later, beads of sweat on his brow. “We're clear, but the window is closing. Let's move out.”

“You heard the man,” Watkins said.

Everyone rose from the table and proceeded out of the conference room, through the tent, and outside into the sun. Eleanor smelled smoke. Then she saw it, a thick column rising up on the far side of the encampment, and she heard the roar of a large crowd. Hobbes opened the doors of two black SUVs parked in front of the tent.

“I want Eleanor and Dr. Perry with me,” Watkins said.

“Uncle Jack, too,” Eleanor said. “Or I'm not getting in.” She wasn't going to be separated from him again.

Watkins rolled his eyes. “Fine, the uncle as well.”

Hobbes nodded and ushered Eleanor, her mom, and Uncle Jack into the backseat of the rear vehicle, with
Eleanor on one side of Uncle Jack and her mom on the other. Luke and Betty went with von Albrecht, Dr. Powers, and his two sons to the forward car. Hobbes shut all the doors and then climbed into the driver's seat of Eleanor's SUV, speaking into his wrist again, while Watkins took the front passenger seat next to him.

“Proceed to route alpha forty-one,” Hobbes said. “Let's roll.” Once they were moving through the encampment, he seemed to relax a little and glanced back at them in his rearview mirror.

“Can you explain the situation now?” Watkins asked.

“Local mob,” Hobbes said. “They started mobilizing about an hour ago. Preliminary assessment this morning determined it was just another protest, one of the usual. Nothing to worry about. But the climate took a hostile turn. They broke down the gates and set fire to a couple of our tents.”

“Good lord,” Watkins said. “Was anyone hurt?”

“Not yet,” Hobbes said. “Egyptian security forces are on their way. They'll have the mob dispersed soon. But in the meantime, it wasn't safe for you to be there.”

“I see,” Watkins said. “Well, I trust your judgment implicitly, Hobbes.”

The SUVs reached the edge of the encampment,
where the rioters weren't as numerous. But Eleanor saw them staring and shouting at the vehicles, making hurried calls on cell phones. Armed guards opened a gate, and the vehicles plowed through, then charged forward into the streets of the city at a speed that made Eleanor nervous, bouncing down narrow roads, scattering pedestrians and animals. After hearing the way Youssef and Samir had spoken about the G.E.T. presence at Giza, she wasn't surprised to hear the protest had turned violent, and she hoped it wouldn't get any more dangerous or destructive than it already had.

“Where are we going?” Eleanor asked.

“Secure location” was all Hobbes would say.

“And why did you want us in your car, specifically?” her mom asked Watkins.

“It was Eleanor I wanted,” he said.

“What? Why?”

“You don't realize how useful she is.”

Eleanor's mom leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

“Why are we slowing?” Hobbes said into his wrist.

Eleanor looked ahead of them and saw the forward vehicle's brake lights, and ahead of that car, an approaching mob of men that had completely filled the street. It seemed the protesters on their cell phones had quickly organized a roadblock.

“Back up, back up!” Hobbes ordered, but when Eleanor craned her neck, she saw that another group had closed in behind them.

They were trapped.

Hobbes got on a radio and spoke loudly in Arabic, while Eleanor watched the crowd squeezing in on them, anger evident on their faces and in their voices as they chanted things she couldn't understand. Her heart pounded in her ears and throat.

“It's going to be okay,” her mom said. “Stay calm.”

“Indeed.” Watkins swallowed. “Hobbes, what's the plan here?”

“Security forces on their way,” he said. “Six minutes out.”

The crowd had completely surrounded them, and Eleanor flinched at the first pounded fist against her window. More pounding followed, against the hood, the doors, the windows.

“Six minutes?” Watkins said. “Will we even last six minutes?”

“Let's hope so.” Hobbes pulled a pistol from his holster and brandished it, which sent some of the rioters scattering away, like a receding wave, only to have the mass of people crash up against the car again with renewed strength.

Eleanor had lost sight of the forward vehicle and
hoped Luke and Finn and the others were safe. She avoided making eye contact with any of the people right outside her window, keeping her gaze trained straight ahead at the back of the seat in front of her.

“We should be safe in the vehicle,” Hobbes said. “It's armored and bulletproof. Just sit tight—”

Something smashed against Watkins's window, a brick or a stone, and he yelped.

“Sir!” Hobbes shouted. “Get down!”

The impact had left the shatterproof glass frosted white, fractured in thousands of pieces, but intact. But then someone smashed Eleanor's window, and then her mom's. Eleanor couldn't see out them anymore, could only hear the repeated bashes, again and again, until the claw of a crowbar poked through, leaving a sliver of clear light that widened with each successive impact.

“Hobbes!” Watkins shouted. “The girl!”

Hobbes pivoted in his seat to point his gun at the opening in Eleanor's window, but then her mom screamed as they broke through her side. Hobbes swung his gun in that direction.

“Careful where you point that!” Uncle Jack shouted.

When they breached Watkins's window, Eleanor knew it was hopeless. The gap in her mom's window was now big enough for an arm to reach in, toward the
lock. Uncle Jack reached for it, roaring as he seizing it with both hands.

But then a second hand slipped into Eleanor's window, and before she could react, it had unlocked her door. She screamed as the mob wrenched it open, and several men clawed inside and pulled her out.

“Eleanor!”

She felt Uncle Jack grasping for her, his hands slipping away, and then she saw him charge out of the vehicle toward her as the mob carried her, but he was quickly surrounded and cut off. Hands gripped her arms tightly, and she was surrounded by angry faces of men she didn't know.

A gunshot split the air, echoing off the rising walls of the narrow street, and the mob recoiled from Hobbes, who stood by the vehicle with his pistol aimed upward. Watkins stood behind him, her mom next to him.

“Stand down!” Hobbes shouted over the sudden silence.

The mob replied with renewed shouts of anger but kept some distance from the SUV. Uncle Jack was still trying to fight his way toward Eleanor, buffeted on all sides by the protesters. But now that Watkins had exited the vehicle, the rioters seemed to be directing
most of their fury in his direction, and Uncle Jack eventually reached her side.

“Let her go!” he bellowed at the men holding her, and they did.

Sirens wailed in the distance, and the rioters reacted to that with another pause, like they were all taking a collective breath. Then something at the edge of Eleanor's sight caught her attention, someone waving, and she turned to look.

It was Youssef. He stood a little back, out of the thick of the mob, waving at her and
smiling
.

She couldn't help it. She waved back.

He motioned for her to come toward him, to go with him. Eleanor shook her head, but he didn't give up.

“Who is that?” Uncle Jack asked.

“That's Youssef,” she said. “Our taxi driver.”

“What does he want?” Uncle Jack asked.

Youssef's waving had become more urgent, and he started shouting something Eleanor couldn't quite understand. But he kept repeating it over and over. It sounded like “escape,” but she didn't know what he could mean by that until she saw Samir standing behind him. With him were Luke, Finn, and von Albrecht. They had left the forward car, and they were waiting for her. She had to make a choice. She believed
there was a way to set it all right somehow, but she knew she wasn't going to find it with Watkins and the Preservation Protocol.

“We have to go with them,” she said to Uncle Jack.

“Go?”

“You said if you knew a way out of this, you'd take it.”

“But—” He looked toward Eleanor's mom as the sirens drew closer, and some of the rioters began to disperse.

“She won't understand,” Eleanor said. “You have to trust me, Uncle Jack. It's now or never.”

He frowned for another moment of indecision, and then nodded. Then he helped push their way through the surging crowd toward the others.

“Hurry!” Samir called to them. “This way!”

When Eleanor and Uncle Jack reached them, Luke gave her a relieved nod, and Finn smiled. Over her shoulder and over the roar of the mob, she heard her mom screaming her name. But Eleanor didn't turn to look.

“Let's go,” she said.

Samir then blazed a path for them through the throng, with Youssef coming behind them, and one street over they all reached the edge of the mob and found a van waiting for them.

Youssef hopped into the driver's seat. “Get in, get in!” So they piled into the vehicle, and Youssef turned the key and floored it, shooting off in the opposite direction from Watkins's SUVs, leaving Samir waving good-bye to them from the street.

“Took you long enough to get the hint, kid,” Luke said to Eleanor.

“I had no idea,” Eleanor said. “How did—”

“It was Nathifa,” Betty said.

“What? How?”

“She wasn't the one who got on the laptop,” Finn said. “It was me. I was trying to find out about my dad. When she realized what I had done, she told me to act like it was her, no matter what. She said that was the only way she could stay free and help us.”

“So she didn't betray us?”

“No,” Finn said. “She rescued us.”

“She call Samir,” Youssef said. “She said we need big G.E.T. protest. This is an easy thing, because everyone
hate
the G.E.T. And then she tell us where to watch to get you out.”

“Wow,” Eleanor said. “She . . . she's my hero.”

“Mine too,” Uncle Jack said. “And I've never met her.”

“Where is she now?” Eleanor asked. “Will she be okay?”

“She be okay,” Youssef said. “We take care of her.”

“And what about us?” von Albrecht asked. “Where are we going?”

“To my plane,” Luke said.

They reached the airport without incident, but across the desert they could still see smoke rising from the G.E.T. camp near the pyramids.
Consuelo
waited for them on the tarmac, faithful and ready as always. They thanked Youssef, told him to thank Samir and Nathifa, and said good-bye. Then they boarded the plane, and this time, Eleanor took a seat next to Uncle Jack, and as Luke prepared for takeoff, she asked Finn if he had said anything to his dad.

“When?” he asked.

“When you left him back there.”

“Oh,” he said. “I just told him that everyone fits. No matter who they are.”

Eleanor nodded. “I think that's true.”

Luke called back to them from the cockpit. “We're just about ready, kid! Let's get this show on the road. Where we going?”

Eleanor had no idea. She didn't know how to shut down the Concentrators without paying a painful price. But she wasn't ready to give up. Not yet. She looked around the cabin at Uncle Jack, and Finn, and then she looked at von Albrecht.

“Didn't you say the first Concentrator that Watkins found was the master of the others?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then that's where we're going,” Eleanor said. “To the Himalayas.”