Pandora's Temple (39 page)

And seal Pandora’s Temple forever.

Captain Seven stood onshore, unable to see anything so far at sea while still being struck by the odd feeling the deed was done at last. Something shifted to his right, and he turned to find the old wild-haired hippie he remembered from his last visit to Athens standing beside him. He was smiling serenely, his eyes looking larger now that they seemed to be showing more of the whites.

“Yo, Pat dude, what brings you out here?”

“Same thing that brought you.”

“You come bearing more of that primo weed?”

“No, my friend, but I have another gift for you.”

With that he produced an iron mason’s square, or “angle” to the Greeks from which it had descended, formed of two legs of unequal length set at an angle of ninety degrees. A crucial tool for builders from ancient times.

“A token of my appreciation,” the man continued.

Captain Seven took it, turning from the sun so he could see the square better; he was surprised by its heft and pristine condition. “But what did I do to—”

The captain stopped when he saw Pat walking away from him into the sun.

“Deserve it?” the man finished for him, turning. “You helped finally end this. And now it’s over, over at long last so I can finally rest.”

“Fucking A!” Captain Seven shook his head in disbelief. “You’re not . . .”

“Yes, I am,” the man said, continuing on. “And my mission is finished at last.”

“Pathos Verdes,” Captain Seven muttered, looking down at the mason’s square that had helped construct the now entombed Pandora’s Temple.

He turned back toward the wild-haired man’s dwindling shape, holding a hand to shield the sun from his eyes as the builder vanished, disappeared, lost to the present just as he had been lost long ago to the past.

Since his first book was published in 1983, Jon Land has written twenty-eight novels, seventeen of which have appeared on national bestseller lists. He began writing technothrillers before Tom Clancy put them in vogue, and his strong prose, easy characterization, and commitment to technical accuracy have made him a pillar of the genre.

Land spent his college years at Brown University, where he convinced the faculty to let him attempt writing a thriller as his senior honors thesis. Four years later, his first novel,
The Doomsday Spiral
, appeared in print. In the last years of the Cold War, he found a place writing chilling portrayals of threats to the United States, and of the men and women who operated undercover and outside the law to maintain U.S. security. His most successful of those novels were the nine starring Blaine McCracken, a rogue CIA agent and former Green Beret with the skills of James Bond but none of the Englishman’s tact.

In 1998 Land published the first novel in his Ben and Danielle series, comprised of fast-paced thrillers whose heroes, a Detroit cop and an Israeli detective, work together to protect the Holy Land, falling in love in the process. He has written seven of these so far. The most recent,
The Last Prophecy
, was released in 2004.

Recently,
RT Book Reviews
gave Jon a special prize for pioneering genre fiction, and his short story “Killing Time” was shortlisted for the 2010 Dagger Award for best short fiction and included in 2010’s
The Best American Mystery Stories
. Land is currently writing
Blood Strong
, his fourth novel to feature Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong—a female hero in a genre which, Land has said, has too few of them. The second book in the series,
Strong Justice
(2010), was named a Top Thriller of the Year by
Library Journal
and runner-up for Best Novel of the Year by the New England Book Festival. The third,
Strong at the Break
, will be released this year, and the fourth,
Blood Strong
, will follow in 2012. His first nonfiction book,
Betrayal
, written with Robert Fitzpatrick, tells the behind-the-scenes story of a deputy FBI chief attempting to bring down Boston crime lord Whitey Bulger, and will also be released in 2011.

Land currently lives in Providence, not far from his alma mater.

Land (left) interviewing then–teen idol Leif Garrett (center) in April of 1978 at the dawn of Land’s writing career.

Land (second from left) at Maine’s Ogunquit Beach during the summer of 1984, while he was a counselor at Camp Samoset II. He spent a total of twenty-six summers at the camp.

Land with street kids in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which he visited in 1987 as part of his research for
The Omicron Legion
(1991).

Land on the beach in Matunuck, Rhode Island, in 2003.

In front of the “process trailer” on the set of
Dirty Deeds
, the first movie that he scripted, which was released in 2005. The film starred Milo Ventimiglia and Lacey Chabert.

Land pictured in 2007 with Fabrizio Boccardi, the Italian investor and entrepreneur who was the inspiration for his book
The Seven Sins
, which was published in 2008.

Land emceeing the Brunch and Bullets Luncheon to benefit Reading Is Fundamental at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in the spring of 2007.

Land and his classmates and fraternity brothers celebrating their thirtieth class reunion during Brown University’s Commencement Weekend in 2009. He was a member of the Delta Phi fraternity.