Fortune Favors (43 page)

He spread his hands. “And here we are. I want to be done with you, Hauser. If you aren’t going to tell me what you know, then leave me the hell alone.”

Hauser regarded him a moment longer, and then broke into a wolfish grin. “Mother will be so disappointed to hear that.”

Kismet’s confident expression slipped a little. Annie thought he looked like he’d been sucker-punched. In a low voice he said: “Whose mother?”

Hauser threw back his head and laughed. “Very well, I accept your terms.”

Throughout the conversation, Annie had kept waiting for Kismet to do something, pull a rabbit out of the hat, rescue her and keep the Seed out of Hauser’s hands. Now, she saw that he was serious; he was going to give Hauser and Prometheus exactly what they wanted, and he was going to do it in order to save her.

That was unacceptable.

“Nick, don’t.” She wasn’t sure anymore what she could say or do to stop him, but she had to try. “You can’t let them have this. They might hide it away, or they might do something much worse. Power like that...I don’t know what they’ll do with it, but you can’t give it to them, no matter what they do to me.”

Kismet offered a rueful smile, but Annie saw his gaze move slowly toward...her father? “It doesn’t matter, Annie. If it’s not the Seed, it will be something else. If it’s not Prometheus, then some
one
else. But I can do something good, right now. I can get you out of here, and that’s all that matters to me.”

He turned to Hauser. “Just let her go. I’ll put the Seed on the ground and walk away.”

“And your explosive device?”

“Like I said, you should be able to figure out how to bypass the trigger. I’d promise to send you the code to disarm it once Annie and I are safely out of here, but you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

Hauser considered this a moment longer, then shook his head. “No. It’s a fake. Has to be.”

Kismet held the box up. “Elisabeth, do you think I’m lying?”

The actress gazed back at him, almost defiantly at first, but then softened. “No. Subtlety isn’t your style.”

He nodded. “Here’s how this can work. Elisabeth comes and gets the Seed from me. One touch, and she’ll know it’s the real deal. At the same time, Al walks Annie over to me.”

Hauser nodded his assent, and Elisabeth immediately strode across the courtyard, tucking her gun in her waistband as she moved. She reached Kismet a few seconds later and placed a tentative finger on the box.

 “Oh.” Her eyes rolled back in undisguised ecstasy. She stood up a little straighter, as if playing to a hidden camera. “Yes, it’s real. I can feel the energy flowing into me.”

Higgins reached Annie’s side, but she resisted him. “Damn it, Nick. You can’t do this.”

“Come on, Annie girl,” Higgins urged. His voice was strained, like a piano string tuned so tight it was about to snap. “It’s going to be over soon.”

“Is that good enough for you, Hauser?” Kismet called, his fingers tight on the box, resisting Elisabeth’s stolid efforts to take it away. “Now, let her go.”

In the same way that Annie had believed, right up to that moment, that Kismet would play some unexpected wild card to save the day and keep the prize away from Prometheus, she expected Hauser to somehow play false at the end. She was wrong on both counts.

The one-eyed man relaxed his grip on her, and her father reached out to draw her into his embrace. She was too dumbfounded to even resist.

Kismet uncurled his fingers, and surrendered the Seed of the Tree of Life to Elisabeth Neuell.

She almost ran back toward Hauser, holding the box before her with equal parts fear and awe. Higgins, half-dragging Annie, had barely gotten a few steps away when Elisabeth raced past, holding the Seed out to Hauser.

That was when everything started to happen.

Higgins, with preternatural calm, reached out and snatched the pistol from Elisabeth’s waistband. She felt it, and started to turn, but her momentum had already brought her within reach of Hauser, who was unaware of what Higgins had done and too caught up in his imminent victory.

Hauser greedily snatched the box from Elisabeth and hugged it to his chest.

Higgins spun Annie toward Kismet and gave her a shove, propelling her across the courtyard, into his arms. Then, the old Gurkha raised the pistol and aimed it at Kismet.

The rest of the Prometheus security team had instantly come alert and brought their weapons up, but none of them could seem to decide where to aim.

Hauser suddenly gave a low cry and doubled over. Then, as he straightened, he reached up with his free hand and tore the eye patch away. He winced as light flooded into the restored orb, and covered it again with his hand. That was when he caught a glimpse of Higgins, aiming a gun at Kismet.

 “Dad, no.” Annie's pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears, but she did not give up. “Just let us walk away.”

“Do what you have to do,” whispered Kismet, nodding to Higgins.

Hauser fixed both eyes on Kismet. He raised the box with the Seed and waved it triumphantly. “Game, set and match, Kismet.”

“What about the experiment?”

Hauser laughed. “There was only ever one rule to the experiment; do not interfere. Oh, I’ve wanted you dead so bad I can taste it, believe me. I had hoped you would die in that Iraqi hellhole, but someone—” He rolled his eyes—his perfect, unblemished blue eyes—and mouthed a single word:
Mom
. “Decided that I had interfered by blowing up your ride and leaving you stranded, so she pulled strings like you can’t imagine, to ‘balance the scales.’

 “Her interference made it so much easier for me to take over.” He had lowered his voice to a barely audible mutter for the aside, but then spoke clearly again. “But rules are rules. I’m not going to tell Higgins to kill you. But I am certainly not going to stop him.”

Kismet nodded to his nemesis—
brother
? “Then I guess I'll see you in Hell.”

As if Kismet’s words were the signal he’d been waiting for, Higgins’ thumb extended up to pull back the hammer, cocking the pistol and readying it to fire.

Time seemed to freeze. Elisabeth, standing beside Hauser, clutched his arm as if he were a prize she’d finally won. The security team around the perimeter of the courtyard had lowered their weapons again, and were watching as if hypnotized. Hauser continued to stare across the plaza at Kismet, holding the box above his head, as if daring the heavens to take it away...

And in a heartbeat, they did.

Higgins turned, swinging around slowly, almost ethereally, away from Kismet. His movements seemed almost without volition, as if he had been programmed like an automaton. His hand kept moving, smoothly adjusting, elevating slightly, and then he pulled the trigger.

The firing pin was released with a sharp ‘click’ and pivoted forward, striking the primer on the brass cartridge dead-center. The gunpowder charge ignited into a ball of expanding gas, driving the lead projectile out of the barrel at nearly the speed of sound. The bullet screamed through the air, but traveled only about thirty feet before striking its target with unfailing accuracy.

The metal box containing the last Seed of the Tree of Life rang for a split second with the impact of the 9-millimeter round.

An instant later, it erupted with a thunderclap that dwarfed the barely heard report of the pistol.

* * *

The detonation threw everyone aside like so much chaff. Kismet lay stunned in the aftermath, momentarily forgetting who and where he was. His senses returned after a blurred moment and he groped for Annie. She lay, dazed but apparently unhurt, a few feet away. Higgins lay supine, the pistol flung away.

Hauser and Elisabeth were standing, dazed and peppered with shrapnel wounds, locked together at the heart of a blazing inferno of violet light. Hauser’s arm was still outstretched, but it ended at his wrist, which was now just a ragged, oozing stump.

The flames grew around the pair like a blanket, dancing lovingly on the ravaged flesh of Hauser’s wounds. Tendrils of energy, the same hue as that which had burned in the cavern of the Fountain of Youth, caressed his skin, crackling on the stump of his maimed arm, probing into the deep shrapnel wounds, and wherever the flames lit, the injuries seemed to evaporate like smoke.

Kismet pulled Annie to him, and then together they crawled toward her father. Higgins was stirring, apparently unhurt. “Nick?” His voice was a distillation of misery. “I had to do it. Couldn’t let them have it—had to save Annie—it was the only way.”

The words struck Kismet. The betrayal in Florida seemed a distant memory, something he’d managed to push to the back of his mind in order to focus on his sole objective—getting Annie back from Prometheus at any cost. He didn’t want to think about what had motivated Higgins, and didn’t have the mental energy to second guess the man’s desperate decisions.

“It’s okay, Al.”

“I can't see.”

There was a shriek from behind them and Kismet looked up in time to see Hauser, his clothes in burning tatters but his flesh perfectly restored, thrust Elisabeth aside. She stumbled back, screaming as fingers of plasma reached out from Hauser to caress her, and then tightened around her like a cocoon.

There was a flash, and Elisabeth evaporated.

The flames arced back into an exultant Hauser. He stood there, contemplating the power coruscating down his arms and at his fingertips. Energy flowed like liquid into his nostrils and mouth, and for a moment, the fire seemed to be burning from beneath his skin, growing in intensity until the brilliance forced Kismet to cover his eyes.

He recalled something Leeds had told him during their first encounter, an idling speculation about how the miracles of Jesus Christ might be attributable to his possession of a similar Seed. Leeds had hypothesized that Jesus had somehow integrated a Seed into his own body, and that when a Roman centurion had pierced him during the crucifixion, the energies released had transformed the dying Christ into a divine being—an entity of pure energy.

That had been Leeds’ ambition all along. To find the Seed and turn himself into a god. And now it seemed that Hauser was undergoing such an apotheosis.

The Prometheus leader inhaled the potent forces, as if consciously willing them to pervade every molecule of his body, to infuse every atom of his being. As the unleashed power of the Seed grew from a violet flame to a burning white-hot fever pitch, his flesh was transmuted into living energy. Tissue boiled away, replaced by a vague outline of energy that flared brighter and brighter—

And then winked out completely.

EPILOGUE

Paid in Full

For a few minutes, Kismet wasn’t even sure that he was still alive. The light and fury of Hauser’s transformation had reached a crescendo and then...nothing.

He couldn’t see or hear anything.

But gradually, his other senses began filling in the gaps. The air was alive with ozone. His hands were touching something that was both soft and firm, and he recalled that he had been huddled together with Annie and Higgins...yes, he could feel human warmth in his fingertips, and a faint pulse of life.

The darkness was receding a bit. Familiar shapes were emerging out of a brown haze as his eyes began to recover sensitivity, one wavelength of the spectrum at a time. He saw the pillars of the colonnade surrounding the Court of Lions, but for a moment couldn’t penetrate the shadows beyond.

“What just happened?” Annie whispered.

Kismet shook his head; he didn’t have an answer.

Hauser and Elisabeth were gone, but so also was the Prometheus security team, vanished just as surely as if they’d been caught up in the conflagration.

He discounted that idea. It was more likely that, upon witnessing the destruction of the Seed and Hauser’s—death?—they had decided to evacuate the site. With the Seed gone, there wasn’t any reason to stay anymore.

And as Hauser had said, there was just one rule where Nick Kismet was concerned: Don’t interfere.

“Is it over?” Higgins’ asked.

Kismet could tell by the way Higgins’ eyes darted back and forth that his vision hadn’t recovered yet. He had been looking right at the Seed when it exploded, struck blind gazing upon the glory of God...

Something like that anyway
.

Annie was tearfully hugging her father. Kismet wasn’t sure what to think or feel about the other man now. He understood Higgins’ motivations; they weren’t all that different from his own. His decision—his betrayal—had probably saved them all in Florida.

But it still stung like a son of a bitch.

He sighed. Some wounds took longer to heal, even with magic potions.

“It’s over. Come on. Let’s get out of here.” He gripped Higgins’ biceps and started guiding him toward the nearest gate.

“What happened?” Annie asked again, staring in disbelief at the spot where Hauser and Elisabeth stood a few minutes before. There was a faint starburst pattern on the paving stones, as if that place alone had been bleached by the sun, but that was the extent of the damage to the courtyard. “The Seed...what was it? Was it really from the Tree of Life?”

“I don’t know,” Kismet answered honestly. He had examined it briefly after Joseph King had handed it over; it did look like something from a fruit. But it could just as easily have been an artifact, something crafted as a receptacle for the unique energy that had sustained a select few legendary men throughout history and infused the water in a Florida cave with the power to restore life. He had once remarked that it was science, not magic, but now he wasn’t so sure. If it was some application of science, then it utilized principles that were beyond the grasp of anything he’d ever heard about—and wasn’t that the very definition of magic?

“I don’t know if there ever really was a special Tree,” he continued, “Or a Garden of Eden. Maybe everyone got it backwards. Maybe the whole idea of the Tree came from the fact that it kind of looked like a seed.”

“But...how did it do all that? Heal and destroy at the same time? And what happened to Hauser? Is he dead?”