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“I’ll report back later tonight with more footage of our progress. Congratulations!”
The camera feed ended abruptly and with it, Dr. Vincent Gregory’s face.
Lilith was amazed at how calm the twins appeared. She knew what a great force their mother had been in their lives, yet they’d just seen the place where she’d probably died.
Ajax finally spoke, and Lilith heard wonder, not sadness, in his voice. “This is our mother’s lost site. And the Ark could be there. Imagine what this will mean to the foundation. Think of it, Cassandra, when we find the Ark, everything will change. Think of the power it holds, and it can only be ignited by our family. A century of work, a century of effort.”
Ajax sat back on the couch. “I admit I doubted we’d find it. This is a banner day.” His mood changed on a dime. He rose and walked to Lilith. He took her hands in his. “Tell me you also have word of the Fox?”
“Sadly, no. The Venetian police are looking for her. Interpol has a red notice out for her, their highest level. She can’t go far or stay hidden. Add to that, we have her precious husband. I understand there is great love between them—”
“To be expected,” Cassandra said, “given they’ve only been married for a matter of months.”
“There is that,” Lilith agreed. “It required five highly trained men to restrain him. He’s been drugged and taken to your palazzo in Castel Rigone. He can be easily disposed of after we kill the Fox.”
He gave her a hard fast kiss, rubbed his knuckles on her cheek. Lilith flinched; Cassandra saw it. “See to it, my beautiful Lilith. Now.”
When she’d left the room, Ajax held out his hand to his sister. “Come, let’s pack. We need to go to the Gobi.”
“But first, we need to call Grandfather. He will be overwhelmed by the news of what his magnificent sandstorm has brought us.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
1908: A massive explosion over Tunguska, Siberia, leveled sixty to eighty million trees over 2,150 square kilometers. Blamed on an asteroid or comet, or Nikola Tesla’s Coil.
The Bermuda Triangle
Jason Kohath was drinking a cup of the finest coffee the world had to offer, Black Ivory, which he imported directly from northern Thailand to Cuba. The boys brought it to the island once a month, and he was careful to ration it out, one cup a day—more, and his heart seemed to jump into his throat.
He looked at the line of clocks that gave him local time anywhere in the world, and fixed on Italy. The twins should have called by now.
He took another sip of his coffee, surveyed the screens that surrounded him, some ten feet tall, some only twelve inches. Some showed the oceans, others the sky, others the cities across the globe, others the atmosphere above the earth. Still more held calculations, ran computer models, showed weather patterns spreading across the globe.
They took up nearly all the wall space, and he sat in the center in front of them at his solitary command post, his comfortable chair on wheels so he could easily scoot across to any of the screens he wished. He was proud of his control center, a huge cavern set directly in the center of the island, over a now-defunct volcano. From there, he ran the family business. From here he decided where the next storm would occur. The Gobi sandstorm was his masterpiece, its purpose not to make more millions for the Kohath coffers but to find his precious Helen’s last dig, and he’d bowed to the fact that it had to be done. Now he had to wait to hear if his calculations had been on target.
Why hadn’t the twins called him? He could call them, of course—after all, he owned the satellites, could move them into any place he wished across the planet. No, he wouldn’t call them, that wasn’t the protocol he’d established when they’d turned sixteen.
Jason Kohath sat back in his comfortable chair, sipped the rest of his coffee. From his uncharted island, deep in what was called the Bermuda Triangle, he controlled the skies, the clouds, the oceans.
And he controlled the weather.
He’d once dreamed about controlling the gravitational forces of the moon, but he knew he’d be dead before that could be possible. In the twins’ lifetime, maybe. Ah, the twins. Both were gifted, no doubt about that, but he knew he would have to accept what his beloved daughter, Helen, had finally realized so long ago. The twins had no understanding of humanity and what it meant, and what was worse, they had no desire to gain the understanding. He’d never forget when they’d been seventeen and sent by their mother for two weeks to a dig in Ankara, Turkey, their job to assist the team leader, Dr. Demir, a good friend of Helen’s, an estimable man of excellent character, to learn the ropes and do whatever they were told. They hadn’t wanted to go.
One morning, Dr. Demir had been found dead in his tent, bitten by a black viper. Helen had known they’d put the snake in his tent, she’d known even before she’d spoken to other team members and verified the twins’ uncooperative attitude. The twins had returned to England on the next flight, overflowing with respectful sadness about Demir, and back to Oxford and, Helen suspected, their supply of cocaine.
Now, ten years after their mother had disappeared, he had to accept that they never would become what either their mother nor he had hoped. He thought they saw the world through crazy eyes, something even their respective genius IQs couldn’t fix. They saw the world as theirs to control, to kill without remorse for something they wanted. They would decide on something they wanted, use their clever brains to rationalize it, and then be willing to move the earth to get it, no matter that it wasn’t important, or it was a bad idea, or that people could get hurt, or die. They were very rich and they had a great deal of power, too much of both. For them, that combination was poison, and yet, he still desperately hoped they would somehow change, that they would see themselves as a power for good. But then he’d remember the young Oxford student, dead in an alley, stabbed in her heart with a stiletto. The local police knew Ajax had slept with her for more than six months, but had he killed her? Nothing could be proven. Cassandra had provided his alibi, along with a young man Cassandra had been sleeping with. Odd, but he, too, had died in an accident three months later. Helen knew what Ajax had done, knew Cassandra was complicit, and she’d wept as she’d told her father of the blackness in their souls—such darkness—no remorse, no guilt for what they’d done, only pleasure they’d escaped. She had no more hope, but she knew he did.
If only he could change the past, he would try harder to convince Helen not to marry that crazy David Maynes. But she hadn’t listened. He knew before she’d left for her last dig in the Gobi Desert, she’d finally accepted that her faithless husband had injected madness into the family through his children.
A proximity sensor lit up, flashing red. A boat was nearby. He immediately made sure the electromagnetic net he’d designed was tight around the island. It wouldn’t do for someone to happen upon him. His cloaking device was magnificent, yes, but over the years, a few planes and boats had ventured too close, and he’d been forced to take them down. He’d refined the cloak every time and now had an excellent pop-up storm system programmed into the computers. He launched the storm protocol, saw the lightning strike the water, watched as the seas around the island began to churn and the sky began to darken. The small pleasure craft that had drifted too close was faced with sudden waves too large for it to handle, and so it turned tail and shot away.
He allowed the storm to play itself out; it would look suspicious to have it come up suddenly then disappear with no warning. Besides, he rather enjoyed watching a good storm right outside his front door. Whenever he looked upon a storm he’d created, he thought of England and how he missed the cold, drizzling weather, and the thick gray fog that swirled around the ankles.
He eyed the small maelstrom surrounding his island, wild and beautiful, his own creation. His grandfather, Appleton Kohath, had been undoubtedly brilliant, as was his friend and partner, Nikola Tesla. Jason’s own father, Alexander, and his mother, Babette, had been quite clever, too. But Jason was the genetic masterpiece, and a good thing, too, given what he’d had to do.
But the genetic masterpiece, namely himself, was getting old, and couldn’t be restored. He had to accept the sore joints, the pains in his heart, arthritis in his hands, unlike the twins, not yet thirty, brimming with good health. The twins—always the twins—and what was he to do? Their selfishness amazed him. They’d focused on finding the Ark for the simple reason that they wanted the power to rule the world. It made him shudder. Had any of his predecessors been as ruthless as these two?
Earlier, on his closed-circuit TV, he’d seen Cassandra present ten million euros to some Polish archaeologists. Knowing her as well as he did, he still found himself admiring her show of sincerity, admiring her charm, her obvious popularity with the press. He knew that many believed the twins to be brilliant archaeologists, they had the pedigree and the schooling and the experience, but he knew differently. He’d seen firsthand what was in their hearts, in their souls.
