Panacea (46 page)

Clotilde held out her hand. “Give me your knife, please.”

“I don't think so.”

“Having it will only tempt you to use it. They will have guns and will outnumber you. You will die.” She fluttered her fingers. “Please.”

After a moment's hesitation, he pulled it from its sheath, gripped it by the blade, and passed it to her handle first.

“I hope I don't regret this.”

“You must trust me to handle them,” she said, slipping the knife into a drawer. “The All-Mother has foreseen this. She has been guiding me and will continue to do so. Do what they tell you to do and all will be well. The All-Mother will see to it.”

Oh, well, Laura thought, that makes me feel
so
much better.

Outside, the
thrum-thrum-thrum
grew louder.

 

2

The pilot's voice crackled in Nelson's headphones. Even with the volume turned up to maximum, he could barely hear him over the noise of the helicopter's engine and rotors.

“I can't land!”

Nelson could see why. All that camouflage fabric and the poles that supported it would foul the rotors if they tried to put down. The fabric might fool the commercial satellites but it hadn't fooled the Company's or NSA's recon birds. Bradsher had been able to follow the course of Hayden's rental launch from hundreds of miles up—even through the fog.

“You'll have to use the winch,”
the pilot added.

The winch … this Huey was primarily used for rescue, so it had a heavy-duty winch installed on the right side of the cabin. Riding that down was not quite the last thing Nelson wanted to do, but very nearly. His head felt ready to explode and the insane noise of the copter only made things worse.

But he said, “Fine. Let's just get on with it.”

“I'll go first,”
Bradsher said.

In less than two minutes he had the cabin door slid open, the winch arm extended, and himself in the harness. He swung out over the AGM-114 attached just below the hatch and made the short, twenty-foot descent look easy. He unslung his HK MP-5 and held it at ready as the winch rolled back up.

“This doesn't change anything,” Nelson told the pilot. “Follow the plan we outlined.”

He nodded and gave a thumbs up. “Got it.”

Nelson descended next. Chayat, also armed with an MP-5, followed. As soon as the Israeli undid the harness, the copter roared away. It would hover off the south end of the island and await instructions.

Nelson praised the Lord for the relative peace and quiet as he slipped off his headset and stowed it in a pocket.

“Infrared scanning indicated some sort of habitat that way,” he said, pointing.

“I believe I see it already,” Chayat said.

Indeed … straight ahead an older woman stood in a doorway set in a stone wall, set itself in an earthen mound. She was beckoning to them.

“Come! I've been expecting you.”

“Be very careful,” Nelson said as he led the way forward. “Be ready to shoot on an instant's notice. We don't know how many are in there.”

The infrared had detected a generalized heat signature but, because of the insulation supplied by the thick layer of dirt over the structure, individual signatures were not appreciated.

Nelson stopped before the woman. He didn't bother showing his credentials. What for? They carried no weight here.

“How many people besides you are present?”

“Two others. I believe you are familiar with them both, Brother Fife.”

The use of his name jolted him but he refused to acknowledge it.

He pointed to the open doorway behind her. “Lead on.”

He stood aside and let Bradsher and Chayat follow her with their assault weapons ready, then stepped in behind them.

Dr. Fanning and Hayden stood a dozen feet back from the door, both sets of hands in plain sight.

“Fife?” Hayden said. “Jesus Christ! You're behind this?”

Nelson pointed to him. “Pat him down and cuff him. Take no chances with him.”

The only reason Nelson did not have Bradsher and Chayat drag Hayden outside and terminate him immediately was because that would inject panic and fear and anger into whatever followed. Much easier to have a semi-civil conversation-interrogation, learn what he could, then start adding to the body count.

Wisely, Hayden offered no resistance. Chayat kept the muzzle of his weapon pressed under the ex-agent's chin while Bradsher searched him and then cuffed his hands behind his back.

“Look!” Bradsher said, his expression fierce as he held up a handful of zip ties. “These are what he used on Miguel.” He leaned into Hayden's face. “I can't wait till I have a little one-on-one time with you.”

“Gee, that's just what your mother said the last time I saw her.”

Bradsher reddened and punched him in the face, rocking his head back.

Hayden shook it off and said, “Your mother punches harder than that.”

Bradsher cocked a fist, but before he could throw another punch, Nelson said, “Step away from him. Now.”

Bradsher reluctantly complied.

Nelson couldn't lecture Bradsher now, but couldn't he see that Hayden's childish remarks had succeeded in getting him riled? That had been the whole purpose: Emotionally riled people make mistakes.

“I know what you were doing,” Nelson said, stepping before Hayden and unbuttoning his own shirt. “If you think you can turn the tables on me, think again. I am always one step ahead of you.”

“Like when you framed me for selling intel to the Israelis?”

How did he figure that? Nelson thought. No matter.

“
Someone
sold it. I still don't know who, but no matter. Someone needed to be blamed. The Company was better off without you so…” He shrugged.

Hayden mimicked his shrug. “I was ready to get out anyway. The accusations were the convincer. It all worked out, so no hard feelings.”

No hard feelings
 … His eyes said otherwise.

Nelson continued unbuttoning his shirt.

“What is this?” Hayden said. “A strip-tease?”

“No. I want to show you something.” He pulled it open to reveal the device taped to his chest. “This is a monitor-transmitter. It monitors my heartbeat. If that heartbeat should stop, or if this should be removed from me, a signal will be transmitted to the helicopter hovering outside, causing two AGM-114s to fire at my last known location.”

“Hellfire missiles?” he said. “Isn't that overkill? I mean, just a little?”

He began rebuttoning his shirt. “Mutually assured destruction. I know you were nearly suicidal when you returned from Dusseldorf, but I also know your sense of duty. You wouldn't want anything to happen to Doctor Fanning on your watch, would you?”

Hayden shook his head and lowered his voice nearly to a whisper. “Hardly a deterrent when it's clear that you and your two goons will be the only ones leaving this island alive.”

Was the man a mind reader? No, the options were narrow and obvious.

“Not so,” Nelson said. “The jury is still out on the good doctor.”

That ought to keep him from trying anything stupid.

Hayden raised his voice again. “You were always a son of a bitch, Fife. But I didn't know you were crazy too. You're really a member of 536?”

“Most of my life.”

“And this Israeli too?”

Nelson turned to see Dr. Fanning staring at Chayat.

She said, “Weren't you…?”

Chayat smiled and bowed. “Noam Chayat, at your service.”

“But you said you were with … what was it?”

“Shin Bet. I am. But my first loyalty is to the Brotherhood.”

She shook her head, obviously baffled. “But … but you're an Israeli and 536 is Christian.”

“Bereshit, the first book of our Torah, is Genesis in your Old Testament. You learned of mankind's banishment from the Garden from us.”

“Then it was you who sent those raiders after us.”

He laughed. “Hardly. Your na
ï
vet
é
is so charming, Doctor Fanning.”

She looked puzzled. “I don't get it. You're telling me those dead men did
not
have ‘536' branded on their arms?”

“Of course not.”

“Why would you lie about that? For what purpose?”

“To keep you off balance.”

“Enough chatter,” Nelson said. “The Lord singled out Doctor Fanning to be our Pillar of Fire, leading us to our goal.” He turned to the woman. “To a priestess of the cult.”

“We don't use that term. We prefer a more traditional designation:
urschell
.”

“I don't care what you call yourself. I am more interested in where you are in the hierarchy of your cult.”

“I suppose I am at the top.”

The high priestess herself. This was getting better and better.

“Do I have to tell you why we are here?”

“Call me Clotilde,” she said with a sweet smile.

She did not seem the least bit nervous or apprehensive. In fact, she seemed completely composed and relaxed, as if welcoming friends for coffee and cake. That bothered Nelson.

“I call you pagan and witch, and I've come to put a stop to your sacrilege.”

“Gimme a break,” Hayden said. “Did we just walk onto the set of a Syfy Channel film?”

Clotilde shook her head. “There are too many of us. You cannot stop us. You may stop me. But someone else will take my place. We shall go on.”

We'll see about that, Nelson thought.

An obvious candidate for the Leviticus Sanction, she would not be leaving the island either.

“I've also come for the secret of your potion.”

“You mean that after all the
sylyk
you've killed, you still don't know the secret?”

Was she toying with him?

“No, we don't. Especially since your members now seem to be able to stop their own hearts.”

Dr. Fanning said, “I still find that hard to believe.”

Clotilde nodded. “The Brotherhood would subject our
sylyk
to the tortures of the damned. If they get caught they know they are going to die horribly, so they have the option of avoiding the pain and ending it right there.”

Nelson raised a hand. “Never mind that. Is sudden death what we can expect from you as well?”

“Perhaps. But I am not a
sylyk
and I have no problem telling you the secret. I am one of the few who knows it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The
sylyk
couldn't tell you the secret, no matter what you did to them, because they were never told.” Clotilde shook her head sadly. “Centuries of torture … all that pain inflicted on people who could not divulge a secret they did not know.”

She's lying, he thought. She must be.

“But they make the potion.”

“They simply follow instructions.”

“We have followed those same instructions—to no avail.”

She smiled. “So … you have tried to make the cure. I thought it was an affront to God, an act punishable by death.”

“Do not question my commitment, woman. It has merely been a matter of ‘know thine enemy.' The more we know about your infernal potion, the more efficient we can be in combating it.”

“If you say so.”

Nelson waited for her to go on, but she merely stared at him.

“Well?” he said finally. “What have we been missing?”

“You have killed the
sylyk
and burned their bodies, you have uprooted their plants and cultivated them in your own plots, you have followed the instructions for boiling and filtering, just as they described them to you between their screams, but the result was no more effective than a sip of water.”

Nelson's pounding headache, blurred vision, and queasy stomach had drained his meager reserve of patience.

“Tell me something I
don't
know.”

“The answer has been written on the back of every
sylyk
.”

“The tattoo?” Dr. Fanning said.

Clotilde turned to her. “You know the meaning of the shooting star and the staff. What is left?”

“The snake?”

The old woman shook her head. “It is not a snake.”

Fanning said, “I thought it was meant to represent the message on the belt.”

Nelson leaned closer. “I know about the belt, but what message?”

“It doesn't matter now,” Clotilde told him, somewhat dismissively, he thought. She turned back to Dr. Fanning. “Do you know the origin of the staff of Asclepius?”

“He was the Greek god of healing. He's always pictured with a snake coiled around his staff. And one of his daughters was…” Nelson saw her glance his way. “Panacea.”

Clotilde nodded. “What most people don't know was that the creature wrapped around the staff was originally a worm.”

“I'm sure this would make a fascinating lecture sometime,” Nelson said, “but what does it have to do with—?”

“It has everything to do with the ‘infernal potion,' as you call it. Humans in ancient times were plagued by parasites, and worms were the most common—in the gut and under the skin. Ancient doctors couldn't do much for intestinal round worms and tapeworms, but they had a way of ridding people of the ubiquitous
Dracunculus
—the guinea worm.”

Dr. Fanning was nodding. “It's confined to Africa pretty much. I've never seen a case in the flesh, but I've seen pictures.”

“Yes, confined to Sudan and Chad and thereabouts now, but in ancient times they were a plague all around the Mediterranean. You could see them moving under the skin.”

Nelson swallowed bile. His already queasy stomach threatened to heave. “What does this—?”

Clotilde continued as if he hadn't spoken. “Doctors of those times would make a slit in the skin ahead of the worm's path and when its head appeared, they would grab it and remove it from its victim by slowly winding its body around a stick. It could take a while because some worms run as long as a man's arm.”