The Eye of God (46 page)

Vigor allowed his fingers to touch that sacred bone, to lift the skull from the golden reliquary.

Gray stayed at his shoulder. As Vigor cradled the relic of St. Thomas in his palms, his friend shone his flashlight to the bottom of the chest.

In a sculpted gold bed rested a simple black cross.

It looked heavy, metallic, as long as an outstretched hand.

“The cross of St. Thomas,” Gray mumbled. “But can we be sure?”

Despite the gravity of the moment, Vigor smiled.

While Vigor had no
doubt,
Gray needed
proof
.

“Duncan will know,” Vigor said.

Gray checked his watch. “We only have an hour left. I’ll go check on their status.”

“Go,” Vigor said. “I’ll wait here.”

Gray squeezed his shoulder and quickly departed.

Only then did Vigor sink to his knees, cradling the relic of St. Thomas in his lap.

Thank you
,
Lord
,
for allowing me this moment
.

Still, despite his reverential awe, a flicker of fear remained. He was still haunted by the eyes of the shaman—and his warning.

You are suffering much
,
but you will suffer more.

9:04
A
.
M
.

Gray skidded his ATV out of the tunnel’s mouth and into the bright morning sunshine. The vehicle spun a full three-sixty on the ice before coming to a stop. He had dared not waste a minute and needed to be outside the cave for his satellite phone to work.

He punched Monk’s number. It was immediately picked up.

“Where are you?” Gray asked.

“On a bus. Driving across the ice. We’re just about to the island.”

Gray bit back a groan. The others were running behind schedule. “I need you to come straight here. I’ll call Seichan in a moment and have her do the same. I’m three miles north of Burkhan Cape, along the coast, out on the ice at the entrance to a sea tunnel. I’ll leave my ATV in the sunshine as a marker.”

“Did you find the cross?” Monk asked.

Flustered, Gray realized he hadn’t even mentioned that. “Yes. But we need Duncan to confirm it.”

And the Eye brought here.

In the background, he heard Jada call to Monk, “
Tell him not to move the cross.
”

“What’s that about?” Gray asked.

“I’ll let her tell you. I’m going to see about a shorter route to your coordinates.”

“What are you—?”

But Monk was gone and Jada came on the line. “You haven’t moved the cross since you found it, have you?” she asked, sounding scared.

“No.”

He hadn’t even wanted to touch it without corroboration.

“Good. I think the best chance for us to break the quantum entanglement between the cross and the comet is to keep the cross at its current spatial coordinates.”

“Why?”

“Because the cross is currently fixed to a
specific
point in the curve of the earth’s space-time. I want
time
to remain the only variable. I can show you my calculations, but—”

“I’ll take you at your word. Just get that Eye here in time.”

“Monk is working on—”

In the background, Duncan could be heard yelling, “
That’s your plan!
”

Gray heard a rising commotion, people yelling. “What’s going on?”

Jada answered, flustered, but clarifying little, “We’re on our way.”

The connection abruptly ended.

Gray simply had to trust that they knew what they were doing. He called Seichan next. After a longer than expected delay, the connection was picked up.

“Where are you?” Seichan demanded, sounding angry.

Not having the time to analyze her curt response, he simply told her and ended with, “Come straight here.”

She cut off the connection just as brusquely, not even bothering to acknowledge him.

Gray shook his head and headed on foot back inside.

He would have to trust she would do the right thing.

29

November 20, 9:06
A
.
M
. IRKST

Olkhon Island, Russia

Seichan didn’t know what to do.

Pak leaned close to her face. She smelled the tobacco on his breath from the cigarettes he had been chain-smoking since he got here.

“Tell me what they said! Where are they?”

He still held her phone in his hand. Behind Pak, the stone-faced North Korean unit leader—whose name she had learned was Ryung—continued to hold a pistol to Rachel’s chest. Pak had forced Seichan to find out where Gray was, then ended the call before she could warn him in any way.

Both of the North Koreans were clearly losing patience.

Pak stalked across the common room of the inn, angrily puffing on a cigarette. Ju-long hung back by the fire, looking none too pleased about any of this. Seichan got the feeling he was under some coercion. He was a man driven by money and position in Macau. For him, there could be no profit in what was happening here.

Not that such sentiment would lead him to help them.

Rachel was bound to a chair across from her. Both of them had been expertly immobilized by Ryung’s men. There was no magical way to free themselves from this situation. No secret knife, no way to break the chair or slip her bonds.

Seichan knew the reality of the situation. They were both at Pak’s mercy—an emotion she doubted existed in the man.

Recognizing this, Seichan had told them earlier where Gray and the others had gone, to Burkhan Cape. If she had failed to do that, they would have shot Rachel. She had no doubt of that. She only had to stare over to the innkeeper’s legs sticking out the kitchen door, one shoe fallen off, sprawled in a pool of blood, to be certain.

So she told them about Gray’s sunrise meeting at the coast. She sought to buy time, hoping to create a long enough delay for Monk to arrive at the inn and possibly upset the scenario, maybe even rescue them, or at least allow Seichan a possible opportunity to free herself and Rachel during the chaos.

After her earlier confession, Ryung had dispatched a handful of men to Burkhan Cape. They returned thirty minutes later, getting confirmation that Seichan had spoken the truth. But while they were questioning the shaman, the man simply stepped out of the mouth of his cave and threw himself to the rocks below, never revealing
where
Gray had gone from there.

The North Koreans had to accept she didn’t know either—not that they didn’t use the time to rough the two women up. Rachel and Seichan had matching cigarette burns on the back of their hands as proof.

Then came the damned call.

Pak had used the opportunity to get an update.

“Don’t tell them,” Rachel said around a split lip. “You know what’s at stake.”

Clearly growing frustrated with Seichan’s delaying tactics, Pak stubbed out his cigarette and returned from his angry stroll around the room. He came back rubbing his palms, a gleam of dark amusement in his eyes.

Seichan went cold.

“Let’s make this interesting, shall we?” he said.

Parting his palms, Pak revealed a North Korean silver coin in his hand. On the surface was the smiling visage of the dictator Kim Jong-il.

“You know I am a betting man,” Pak said. “So a game, a wager.
Heads
. We shoot your friend.
Tails
. She lives.”

Seichan glared at the man’s needless cruelty.

“I am going to keep flipping this coin until you tell me,” Pak pressed. “The first
head
that comes up, she dies.”

Ryung fixed his pistol more firmly to Rachel’s chest.

Stepping back, Pak flipped the coin high into the air. It flashed silver in the lamplight.

Seichan relented, knowing she could delay no longer. “Fine! I’ll tell you!”

“Don’t!” Rachel warned.

The coin struck the floor and bounced until Pak trapped it under his boot, wearing a mean smile, enjoying this way too much.

“See, that wasn’t so hard,” he said. “Now tell me.”

She did, telling him the truth, changing tactics. If stalling no longer worked, her best hope was to get them all moving. Once under way, she might find an opportunity to break free.

“Very good,” Pak said, pleased with himself.

He lifted his shoe.

The fat-cheeked face of Kim Jong-il smiled up from the floor.

Heads.

“Looks like you lose,” Pak said and signaled his man.

Ryung stepped back, aimed his gun, and shot Rachel in the chest.

Horror as much as the blast made Seichan jump, rocking her chair back, almost toppling over.

Equally stunned, Rachel stared down at the blood welling through her shirt—then back up at Seichan.

Seichan gaped at Pak, at his betrayal.

He shrugged, looking surprised at her response. “It’s the usual house rules,” Pak said. “Once the dice are in the air, all bets are final.”

Across the way, Rachel’s head slumped to her chest.

Seichan despaired.

What have I done?

9:20
A
.
M
.

Cold darkness enfolded her.

All her strength and heat seeped out the single hole in her chest, taking at last the fiery pain with it. With each fading breath, she felt a small ache remaining, more spiritual than physical.

I don’t want to go . . .

Rachel struggled to stay, but again it was not a fight of muscle and bone, but of will and purpose. She had heard the others leave the inn, abandoning her to her death.

But Monk would come . . .

She held on to that hope. She knew he could not save her, not even with his considerable medical skill. Instead, she clutched to that thinning silver strand of her existence for one purpose.

To tell him where the others had gone.

Hurry . . .

She drifted deeper into that darkness—when the creak of a door, a rush of footsteps, held her a moment longer from oblivion.

A hand touched her knee.

Down that dark well, faint words fell to her, nearly unintelligible, but still the desire rang through.

Where?

She took her last and deepest breath and told them, hope slipping from her lips—not for her, not for the world.

Instead, she pictured storm-blue eyes.

And was gone.

30

November 20, 9:22
A
.
M
. IRKST

Olkhon Island, Russia

“This is nuts!” Duncan yelled.

“This is
faster,
” Monk said.

Duncan could only watch as his partner hauled on the wheel of the bus, careening its long length around a point of the coastline. He fishtailed across the shore ice, coming close to clipping an ice-fishing hut. Then he was trundling onward.

After Gray’s call, Monk had commandeered the bus, sending passengers and driver fleeing out the door. Monk then got behind the wheel and headed west from the southern tip of the island, blazing his own trail across the open ice. Monk must have anticipated this earlier, as he had spent much of the bus ride from Sakhyurta talking to their driver, asking about the thickness of the frozen shelf, how far it stretched from the coast this time of year.

Duncan somewhat understood his partner’s reasoning. Both of them had plenty of time to study a map of Olkhon Island after landing in Irkutsk. A topographic chart showed that the road from the ferry station to the village inn was circuitous and winding. It would be a slow slog.

Additionally, the island was crescent shaped, bending toward the west at its northern end—where they needed to go.

So the most direct path, from point A to point B, was as a crow flies—or rather a seal swims. By traveling straight across the shore ice, they could halve their time in reaching Gray’s team.

Still . . .

Jada clung to her seat, her eyes huge.

Ice boomed under them. Cracks skittered in the wake of their passage. People watched from the shoreline, pointing at them.

This far out, the thickness of the ice was questionable at best, so they dared not slow. Momentum was their best hope.

“That must be Burkhan Cape!” Jada yelled, pointing to a craggy promontory sticking out of a forested bay.

Duncan spotted the timbered houses of a small town hugging that same bay.
Must be Khuzhir
.

“Three more miles!” Monk called and pointed to the windows on the right side of the bus. “Gray said he’d left his ATV parked on the ice as a marker for the sea tunnel. Keep watch for it!”

Duncan moved to that side as Monk finally began angling closer to shore, where thankfully the ice should be thicker. After another long tense five minutes, Jada hollered, making him jump.

“There!” she called out and pointed. “By that big rock shaped like a bear!”

With rounded ears and stubby muzzle, the boulder did look like a grizzly’s head. And past the granite beast’s shoulders, a black dot marked the presence of a lone ATV, a small flag waving from its rear.

“That’s gotta be it,” Monk said.

As they drew nearer, the mouth of a tunnel appeared in the cliff, lined by massive icicles. Duncan thought he spotted movement in the woods at the top of the escarpment, but with the sun rising on the other side of the island, the forest was in deep shadow.

If anyone was up there, it was probably stunned onlookers come to watch the bus.

The brakes squealed as Monk slowed them—or at least, he tried to.

The bus spun sideways, skidding across the ice.

They broadsided the ATV and bulldozed it in front of them, pushing it back toward the mouth of the tunnel.

Duncan and Jada both retreated to the opposite side of the bus as the cliff wall came rushing toward them.

But the vehicle finally slowed to a shuddering stop, coming to rest ten yards from the mouth of the sea tunnel.