“The idiot cut me in two.” Then Raeder collapsed.
Now Rominy could hear explosions in the rooms above, shouts, doors slamming. It sounded like a battle. She had to hide! She no longer knew whom to trust, except Sam, who had somehow miraculously escaped Wewelsburg only to fry here! Should she stay with him? Take a gun?
Then she saw motion at the far end of the balcony they’d used to get to this chamber. She recognized the silhouette with sick dread. It was Jake.
A voice came into her head, a presence she’d never felt before. Take the staff. She flushed and felt renewed from a burst of energy. And knew, instantly, that she’d heard the voice of Benjamin Hood.
She looked around. Was he here?
Nothing. But his spirit? That was present. Take the staff.
She hesitated only a moment. Then she seized the crystalline rod, stood, and began a stumbling run into the tunnel where the big blue pipe ran. The rod vibrated slightly, making her palm tingle. Jake must not get his hands on the staff, not when it might have absorbed the necessary energy. So she fled in the only direction she could, straight down an apparently endless tunnel. She didn’t know where else to go. She began running faster as the shock wore off, carrying the ancient artifact. The tunnel gently curved, she realized, just as Jake had said it would. How long had he said the tube was? Seventeen miles?
She had to be marathon girl.
But there was no end, really. She could run and run, and just get back to where she started, again and again.
With Nazis after her. Now she did begin to sob.
“Rominy!” It was Jake’s shout, far behind.
And then she saw a bicycle.
55
Large Hadron Collider, Geneva, Switzerland
October 4, Present Day
For the first time Rominy felt hope. Bicycles must be how the collider staff got from detector to detector. She was pedaling madly down the endless tunnel, the Shambhala staff jutting forward from her grip like a knight’s lance. It glowed. All she had to find was some exit from which she could escape and hide in the woods. She had no idea what was happening elsewhere in the giant machine, but it was a battle she wanted no part of. She’d done enough.
Kurt Raeder was finally dead.
Jake hadn’t fired at her. She’d heard him running, shouting, but not shooting. Was there a glimmer of feeling there? Or was it too dangerous down here to shoot? In any event, there was only one bike. Now she pedaled madly away in the red glow of emergency lighting, lungs heaving, terrified and exultant, leaving him behind.
Where was everybody? Why was she the only one down here?
Then she remembered Raeder had said something about radiation, and Barrow had prudently retreated.
Was the radiation gone, now that the power had blacked out?
Or was she irreversibly poisoning herself?
I just have to live long enough to hide, Rominy thought. She’d sneak through the woods like an animal, not chancing a meeting with anyone, afraid of her own shadow, staff in hand. Then, if she could find Lake Geneva, she’d hurl the cursed thing into the deepest part and let it sink like Excalibur, drowned like the rest of Shambhala.
Then she could finally grieve, for an identity and a past in tatters.
The tunnel debouched into another large machine like the one where she’d descended, another temple of physics painted in brilliant colors. She considered ascending to the surface there. But it seemed too close to the battle behind her, and too close to Jake Barrow. Balconies led her past it and onward to the tunnel on its far side. Particle detectors seemed to be spaced every few miles. She’d try the next one.
It felt good just to pedal and flee.
The tunnel was lit the color of hell, Klaxons blaring in the distance, pipes extending to infinity. She’d entered the mythical underworld.
Mile followed mile.
She was gasping now, as weary and sore as she’d ever been, and her bicycle slowed. Surely Jake was far behind. The opposite side of the ring would be, what, nine miles away? Less as the crow flies, but any farther would just bring her around and closer to the Nazis again. Could she guess how far that was? As she rode she noticed that blue lights in red boxes gave a flash as she passed them, and they seemed spaced about every half mile. Say eight miles… how many had flashed? Ten, perhaps, or five miles. When she got anywhere close to sixteen and there was a way up, she’d try that.
And after Lake Geneva? She had no money, no passport, no clothes, and no friends. Sam was probably dying. The police, perhaps. But who knew how many millions of dollars of damage she and Sam had caused or deaths they’d initiated? Would the authorities be in on the conspiracy, too? Yet prison, if it came to that, seemed a snug refuge right now. Or would they just take her into a courtyard and shoot her, like in the movies?
Or put her in a cell with Nazis?
Another blue flash.
It came on only when she whizzed by.
Was her passage triggering the lights? She looked down. The bicycle had a small metal box attached with two screws to its frame. It was blinking, too.
Like a beacon. An airplane transponder. An ankle bracelet.
Oh, no.
The blue lights were tracking her.
U p on the surface, Kurt Raeder’s Mercedes screeched to a halt at the Compact Muon Solenoid detector, at the far side of the collider ring. Ursula Kalb had driven like a madwoman to let Jakob get ahead of Rominy and descend to cut the American off. Now he leaped from the passenger seat and leaned in for final instructions.
“Our second Fuhrer is dead, but the staff has been energized. We’re going to have to start over, Ursula, but we’ll be able to demonstrate its potential for key allies. We’ll have more powerful backers than ever.”
“If you can get the staff from the girl.” Even from here they could hear sirens. The burning propane tanks threw lurid light into the sky. Police lights blinked from the Atlas complex and they could hear the rattle of gunfire. The Nazi plan had turned into a disaster, but she didn’t say that. Her life, her love, had turned into disaster, too, but she didn’t say that, either.
“The cause is not lost,” Jakob said. “Trust me, Rominy still has feelings for the man she knows as Jake. I’ll persuade her. I’ll subdue her. And when I come back to the surface with the staff we’ll go into hiding to reorganize.”
“You must kill the American girl.”
“No. She’s still a breeder.”
Kalb looked out the windshield with gloom.
“Wait for me. I won’t be long.”
“If you are, I won’t wait.”
“Understood. If I don’t return…”
Ursula nodded. “I have the cyanide.”
She watched him jog toward the CMS detector building. As he entered to take the elevator underground, a helicopter roared over the Mercedes, stabbing the grounds with a searchlight.
Ursula Kalb looked up. Kurt had moved too fast, with insufficient preparation, and had refused to listen to her caution. The staff’s recovery had excited him too much. She admired his keenness, but it had eroded his discipline. The night was another Stalingrad. Now, catastrophically, her lover was gone. So as soon as the door closed behind the young believer, she lowered the window and pitched out the poison pills and her Fellowship identification. She didn’t want to have to answer awkward questions if stopped.
Yes, they would start again. But not with a damned American girl bred to Kurt Raeder.
