The Nostradamus File (8 page)

The Israelis would never tolerate possession of the Ark by anyone except themselves. Nor would the Muslims, either Sunni or Shia. All three groups would kill each other to obtain it and her team could get caught in the crossfire.

Finding the Ark would just be the beginning.
It was a good thing it wasn't up to her to decide what would be done with it if they succeeded. That would fall on the President's shoulders. Elizabeth didn't envy him the responsibility.

She had enough of her own.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The hospice in Palo Alto was pleasant enough.
Pleasant was better than not, when it came time to die. Nick had seen enough death in places that were anything but pleasant.

His mother had a private room. She lay in the bed, partly raised up. An oxygen tube fed whispers of life into her nostrils. Machines beeped and recorded the irregular beating of her heart. A hanging
plastic bag fed clear liquid into her veins.

Something twisted inside as he looked at her.

The left side of her face was paralyzed and slack. Saliva drooled from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were filmy and unfocused. Each labored breath was a shudder. Nick looked at the husk of what had once been a vibrant human being and thought about how life had betrayed her.

There hadn't been much
joy in his mother's life. Not after she'd married his father, anyway. Nick's father had been a drunk, a womanizer and a bully. Sometimes Nick thought there should be a list for people like his father, labeled
terrorist, domestic
. But people like his father fell into a part of society that could get away with a form of terrorism because he was married. Being married put you in a different category. The culture of acceptance surrounding domestic violence was changing, Nick knew, but too late for him and his mother.

Nick had watched the light fade from his mother's eyes as he grew up, watched her endure beatings and humiliation. His father had done the same to him, until he was finally big enough and strong enough to fight back. That had happened when he was sixteen.

He remembered.

The punch sent his mother sprawling across the kitchen floor.

"Leave her alone!"

"Shut up, you little punk." His father started toward him. Nick's vision turned red, the first time the mist descended over his eyes. The next thing he remembered was his sister screaming and pulling on his arm with all her strength.

"Nick, stop! Stop! You're killing him
! Please, stop!"

His arm was raised in the air, his fist clenched white. He was kneeling on his father's chest. His father was crying and pleading, trying to protect his head, his face covered with blood, his shirt bloody. Blood on the floor. Blood on Nick. He could feel drops of his father's blood on his face.

"Nick. Enough." His mother's voice, frightened, cutting through the red mist.

He looked down at his father and knew what hatred felt like. He lowered his fist.

His father had never touched his mother again.

"Mister Carter? Are you all right?"

The voice of the nurse shocked him back into the present. His fists were clenched tight, like they'd been that day.

"Yes, fine."

"Visiting hours are over."

"All right." He looked again at his mother. He reached out and touched her arm.

"Gotta go, Mom. I'll see you tomorrow."

There was no response. He hadn't expected any.

The next morning she was dead. Nick
could feel that she was gone the moment he walked into the building. His sister Shelley and her husband were at the front desk talking with the head nurse.

"You're too late, Nick," she said. There was something in her voice,
a quiet satisfaction, that set his anger coiling. "Somehow I'm not surprised."

"Now Shel," her husband said.

She turned on him. "Shut up, George," she said. "He's never been around when it mattered. Only when he was beating up on the man who put a roof over his head."

Nick stared at this person who was supposed to be part of his family. His head suddenly felt like someone had put it in a vise and cranked it shut. He wanted to
choke her. With an effort, he controlled the urge.

"You are truly a first-class bitch," Nick said. "You can't let it go even on the day of our mother's death, can you? Daddy's little girl finally gets to balance the books."

"How dare you!" Shelley flushed pink.

The nurse stared at them open mouthed.

"Where is my mother?" Nick said to her.

"She's still in her room, Mister Carter. But I think..."

"I don't care what you think."

Nick pushed his sister out of the way and walked down to his mother's room. Someone had pulled the sheet over her face. He folded it back. Her cheeks had sunken in, all the tension
had gone from her face. It wasn't peaceful, it was just the absence of anything. There was no one there. Whatever she had been was gone.

He sat down next to the bed and stared at the body. He wanted to say something. No, that wasn't right. He wanted to feel something, but all he felt was a kind of numbness.

I'm sorry
, he thought.

Gently, he folded the sheet back over her. He walked back out to the entrance. Shelley and her husband were standing outside. She had always taken their father's side. She still did. Shelley had been daddy's girl. Carter senior had never gone after her, only Nick and his mom. Shelley had spent the last couple of years trying to get his mother moved into a home so she and her husband could get their hands on her house, but Nick had blocked her.

Rage at his sister welled up inside. He didn't trust himself to speak. He walked past her and got in his rental car and drove off. Arrangements for the funeral had been in place for months. There was nothing he had to do. The hospice would notify the funeral home.

Nick decided to drive up to his property
in the foothills. He hadn't been back since the night the cabin burned. He hadn't wanted to come back. For a while the place had been a refuge from the madness of his job. Then the madness had followed him there.

It was past noon by the time he
came up the familiar gravel road and pulled in where he'd always parked. The blackened remains of the cabin rose from the weeds. He got out of the car and walked to where the porch had been. He heard something, a low noise. He listened. It came again, a plaintive meow.

A portion of decking had escaped the blaze, raised off the ground.
Nick got on his knees and peered underneath the scorched planks. An orange shape lay underneath, just beyond the edge.

"Burps," he said.

He reached under the boards and laid his hand on the cat. The fur felt matted and stiff. Nick worked his hands underneath and gently slid the cat from under the ruined deck. Burps began to purr, a raspy, sputtery sound that was half his normal volume.

The thick orange fur was stiff with dried blood. There was a long gash along his hindquarters,
a tear along his side.

Shit
, Nick thought. He stroked the cat behind his ears. He felt a wave of affection for the ragged animal.

"It's okay big guy, I've got you," he said. "You need a
vet. Come on."

He cradled the cat in his arms and stood. Burps had appeared one day out of the woods and adopted Nick and later, Selena
. He'd always showed up when Nick came to the cabin. Nick had called him Burps because he belched like a human, loud. Once it had been loud enough to save his life. In a way, Burps was like a part of the team.

He was a big cat but he'd lost a lot of weight. He kept purring as Nick carried him to the truck. Nick laid him on the seat and pulled a blanket out of the back of the cab. He put Burps on the blanket
and folded it part way over him. He closed the door, got in the driver's side and headed back down the hill.

That evening he called Harker and told her he'd be back after the funeral.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Selena held Burps in her lap. His hind leg was wrapped in a bandage. He purred and drooled on her jeans past his one front tooth.

"He's still weak," Nick said. "The vet said he'd probably been lying there for a few days without food or water. Might have been a dog that got him. It took 20 stitches to put him back together. He's full of antibiotics, too."

"He's getting old," she said. "It was only a matter of time before something caught him. What are we going to do with him? He can't stay here, he's a Tom. Once he recovers he won't be happy inside like this."

She was right. In California, Burps had been king of the woods around Nick's cabin. He'd lived in the open all his life.

"I couldn't leave him in California, he would have died. I was thinking he could live at the Project. Lots of room outside, mice to chase, a fence to keep the dogs away. Trees to climb, if he wants. Kind of a perfect cat retirement home, if you ask me. We owe him. It's why I brought him back East."

As if he knew what they were thinking, the cat looked up at Selena with half-open eyes and gave a loud, contented belch.

"That would work." She looked at him. "What's the matter? You've got that serious look you get sometimes."

"I've been thinking about what you said. About seeing someone. I made an appointment with a counselor for tomorrow afternoon."

"You did?" She was surprised. She hadn't thought he'd do it.

"He's on a list of people with security clearance. He specializes in PTSD and he was in Afghanistan. That's one reason I picked him. I couldn't talk to someone who hasn't been through it. They wouldn't understand."

As Selena petted the cat, she felt uncertainty twist in her gut.
Things are going to change. If he goes to the first appointment. If he keeps going.
She wanted him to go. Things couldn't go on like they had been, she was certain of that. But no one could predict what it would stir up.

She'd have to wait and see.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A spiral staircase behind a three inch steel door led down into the Project operations center. Except for the lack of windows and the absence of external noises, the room could have
been anywhere in the normal world. The walls were painted a light peach color. Soothing landscapes hung on the walls, Selena's doing. The ceiling was high and light, painted off white. The room felt comfortable and spacious. In essence, it was a luxury cave.

Nick, Ronnie, Selena, Lamont and Stephanie sat at a table facing a wall monitor displaying a
large map of Saudi Arabia. Stephanie had a keyboard and laptop in front of her, linked to the Crays in the other room.

North of Saudi Arabia lay Iraq and Kuwait. The northwest was bordered by Jordan and the tip of Israel. West was the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt. South was Yemen. After Yemen came Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. On the west lay the Red Sea and on the east, the Persian Gulf. Iran was not far away.

Nothing but trouble
, Nick thought.

"Here's the problem," he said. "All we've got is speculation and guesses. People have been looking for
the Ark for a long time. Some of them looked in Saudi Arabia and no one's ever found anything that matters. We can pick a volcano, but we might as well throw darts at the map. It's a waste of time without knowing more. Any ideas how we should proceed?"

"If we knew the  route Moses took, we might be able to pin down the mountain
where he got the Commandments," Ronnie said. "He didn't have the Ark before that."

"You're assuming the story in Exodus is true, or at least based on facts."

"We have to start somewhere."

Selena said, "No one knows the route, just that the Exodus started in Egypt. The Israelites head east and God parts the waters of the Red Sea."

"How come this mountain is supposed to be in the Sinai?" Lamont asked. "They wouldn't need to cross the Red Sea to go there."

"Depends on where they started from," Selena said. "If they started in the south of Egypt, they might have crossed it. It's possible they started from an area northeast of modern Cairo. If that's true, they wouldn't need to cross the water. The story about the Red Sea could be just that, a story to illustrate God's power and protection."

"You know," Nick said, "the more I look at this map, the less I buy the idea the Ark is in Saudi Arabia. Put yourself in Moses' shoes."

"Moses didn't wear shoes," Lamont said. "He wore sandals."

Selena rolled her eyes. "What are you thinking, Nick?"

"Moses had thousands of people following him. Women, kids, animals, whatever they could carry."