They were equally unsuccessful with those. The organization that had cleansed the files knew exactly what they were looking for.
By the time she and Locke realized that nothing would be gained by further searching, it was 9:45.
“Are you hungry?” Locke asked.
Dilara had been so caught up in the search that she hadn’t even thought of food. But as soon as he mentioned it, hunger pangs thudded in her stomach.
“Starving.”
“We’re done here. Do you like seafood?”
“Anything cooked. Sushi makes me gag.”
“And I’m allergic to shellfish, but we’ll figure something out.” They locked up the office and found one of the bodyguards waiting in the lobby. The three of them got in the car with the other one.
After a stop at the grocery store, it only took ten minutes to reach his home in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle. She had been expecting a bachelor pad apartment in a high rise. Instead, they stopped outside a Mediterranean-style mansion that was perched on a cliff overlooking Puget Sound.
The bodyguards took up a post on the street outside. After Locke disabled the alarm and made sure no one had tampered with it, he let Dilara inside. The lights inside the house were off, but moonlight flooded through floor- to-ceiling windows at the back of the house. Then he switched on the lights, and she saw a home that looked like it could have been featured in
Bamboo flooring extended as far as she could see. The living and dining rooms featured highly polished antiques, and an immense kitchen showed off shiny granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. The effect was sleek without being sterile, the decorations and wall hangings chosen to give the house a comfortable feeling. It certainly didn’t look like the home of a single guy who was never home. The only thing that marred the effect was one white living room wall that was painted with five two-foot by two-foot squares, all various shades of yellow. Then it hit her. His deceased wife must be responsible for the interior decor, and the unfinished wall had been her project.
Suddenly, the house didn’t seem so perfect. It felt more like a mausoleum, as if it was preserved in the state it was the day she died.
Locke noticed her eyeing the color swatches.
“Karen’s work,” he said, confirming her suspicion. His voice was tinged with regret. “She liked the sunny feeling of the yellow on a cloudy day. She never told me which one she preferred. I keep thinking I’ll paint it, but I can never choose one of them.”
Locke picked up a remote, and a Vivaldi concerto wafted from hidden speakers. Dilara wandered over to the windows. A patio door led onto a deck that thrust to the edge of the cliff. The twinkling lights of downtown Seattle provided the perfect backdrop for the Space Needle. She could see a ferry plying the waters of Elliott Bay.
“On clear days,” Locke said as he unloaded the groceries, “Mt. Rainier is right behind the skyline.”
“It’s an amazing view.”
“It’s the main reason Karen and I bought the house.”
Again, she could hear the sadness in his tone. He went back to preparing dinner. Dilara sensed the awkwardness.
“Can I help?” she asked.
“Here,” he said, showing her where the knives and cutting board were stored. “You can cut the ends off the green beans.”
Dilara watched him work. He handled himself deftly in the kitchen, smoothly choreographing his every move. A couple of times, she saw him unselfconsciously nodding his head to the music. This was a man who enjoyed life, even with the grief that weighed on him at times. She couldn’t deny that his attitude and competence were attractive, but those thoughts were ridiculous considering their current situation. She caught herself looking at him more than she should and focused again on the green beans.
Other than a couple of questions about where things were, they were silent. Her mind drifted back to what they had found in the email message. Finally, curiosity got the better of Dilara.
“What’s Whirlwind?” she asked. He stopped chopping the potatoes and looked at her. His expression was unreadable, but she got the feeling that the word itself bothered him.
“Sorry,” she said. “That came out more bluntly than I planned.”
He went back to chopping. “It’s a top secret Pentagon project I worked on briefly.”
“You mean the Defense Department is behind all this?”
“The people who hired me said it was a Pentagon project. It’s the reason I was initially hesitant to tell you. But now that I think about it, I’m not so sure it
“I don’t understand. How can you be unsure?”
“When you work on a black project, everything runs through dummy corporations. You can’t just call up the Pentagon and ask to speak to the project manager. They’d deny its existence, so there’s no way to confirm that it’s really a government operation. But the way these guys were throwing money around, I had to assume they were with the government.”
“What kind of money are we talking about?”
“The project was budgeted at $400 million.”
Dilara whistled at the figure. “What was the project? A space flight to Mars?”
“A bunker. The reasoning was that the old nuclear fallout shelters for the government were outdated and susceptible to new types of biological and chemical attack. Instead of retrofitting the old bunkers with the latest hardware and computer systems, they wanted to build in a new, undisclosed location with everything up to date and upgradeable. It was going to be the most advanced bunker ever designed. It’s the kind of challenge that makes any engineer salivate.”
“But they fired you?”
“I was going to be the chief engineer on the project,” Locke said while he grilled the salmon. “We had just begun to get a handle on the specs and schematics. Then two months after they awarded the contract to Gordian, they pulled out. Said Pentagon budgets had been revised and there was no money to fund the project. It seemed fishy to me at the time. You don’t just cancel a project worth almost half a billion dollars out of the blue. But they paid our hefty cancellation fee, and we moved on. I assumed it bit the dust and didn’t think about it again until today.”
“But they didn’t cancel it. They just hired Coleman’s firm and changed the name to Oasis.”
“Apparently. We’re talking about a bunker big enough to sustain over 300 people for at least four months. Self-contained power, water desalination plant, air filtration, extensive food stores, and every amenity you’d expect at a five-star resort. All built underground. It was even supposed to have room for animals and hydroponic gardens.”
The mention of the animals made Dilara flash back to the man who’d dropped from the Space Needle.
“All flesh has corrupted his way upon the earth,” she said.
Locke stared at her. “That’s what the gunman said just before he let go. I asked him why. Why he was after us.”
“They’re building a new ark. But instead of a boat, this ark is subterranean.”
“What?”
“That phrase,” Dilara said. “It’s from the Bible. Genesis chapter eight.”
“The Flood story?”
“It’s what God told Noah just before he decided to wash away the sins of man and beast.”
“I’m not a biblical scholar,” Locke said, “but as I recall, God said he wouldn’t do that again. It was a one- time deal.”
“You’re talking about his covenant with Noah. ‘And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.’”
“Sounds ironclad to me. Of course, this group may not believe in God.”
“Do you?”
“As I told you, I’m a skeptic.” He stopped there and waited. He obviously wasn’t going to say more.
“On the other hand, they could very well believe in God,” Dilara said. “Many people take the Bible literally,
