“A chance to visit your holy lands the way they used to be. Kind of a pilgrimage.”
“Same for you, Chaz. I’m sensing this is more than just another op for you.”
Chaz examined the razor edge of the blade in the light from the ceiling lamp.
“My dad was a deacon. Church of Christ. I turned my back on all that,” he said, studying the silvery gleam off the polished metal. “Thought I had all the answers. Then I joined the army, got deployed, and had my world rocked. I saw shit I couldn’t handle, shit that drinking couldn’t make me unsee. You have to deal with that, right? Well, I went back to my father and begged for his help. I found peace there in The Word with his guidance. Cancer took him three years back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Chaz,” Bat said.
“It’s okay. He went easy. He was right with God. And knowing I was the same gave him his own peace. It was good between us in those last years. I’m thankful for that.” Chaz slid the oiled blade into a leather scabbard.
“He must have been proud of you,” she said.
“I just wish he could see what we’re about to see.” Chaz smiled easy. “The way I look at it, Jesus saved me, and now I’m returning the favor.”
17
Station Five
The mist was growing to fill the well at the center of the chamber.
The tension was high as the technicians waited for whatever would emerge from the veil of icy mist spreading from the black steel array. Any opening of the field was a cause for anxiety. There were so many imponderables, so many opportunities for disaster. They were, after all, playing with the building blocks of the universe here. What lay beyond the chilling fog, growing denser with each passing second, was no abstract mystery. It was real, and it was dangerous.
That’s why armed and armored security waited at the base of the ramp with weapons trained and ready for whatever may exit from the field.
To the more learned technicians, these precautions were childish. The true horror they might unleash by punching a hole into the fabric of time could not be subdued with bullets or bombs. It was the unimaginable power of existence itself that could suck them all into an endless void or cause them to vanish in an instantaneous torrent of light.
Today the strain was from a more particular, more localized, source.
Sir Neal Harnesh himself was visiting the Gallant Temporal Transference Field Generator at Station Five.
The man in the flesh.
The man who financed the experimentation and the construction of the facility and recruited the staff at the costs of billions of euros sat sipping oolong in an observation room set in the mezzanine above the well where the generator was. No one could recall Harnesh ever visiting before, let alone sitting down to watch the device in operation. He was accompanied by Augustus Martin whom they were familiar with.
It was Martin who descended upon them when they “cocked it up,” as he phrased it in his parlance. Like the time they were all herded from the generator well by a gunman and locked out of the facility. When security had cut their way in they found two men dead on the rampway and a control console had been vandalized to the point where it had to be entirely replaced. That was when paramilitary security was brought in from Gallant Security Solutions LTD. From that day on the facility felt more like an armed camp than a scientific operation.
The pressure was on from the plant managers that today’s field opening must be flawless.
They worked through each step and felt the palpable frisson of static in the air, raising the hair on scalp and arms, as the initiating jolt from the shielded reactor in the sub-basement powered the carbon steel rings with megajoules of free magnetic power. The rings vibrated and hummed. A fresh gout of white vapor descended from the ramp. The security men at the bottom of the ramp stiffened. They thrust the butts of their rifles into their shoulders and held the sights unwavering into the cavity of the ring array.
A single figure emerged from the chilled cloud. A man with white hair that was in severe contrast with his deep mocha complexion and silken robes of gold-trimmed indigo. The man wore the costume with authority and gestured impatiently for the guards to lower their weapons as he strode off the ramp. They parted to make a path for him. He stopped to glance up and sighted Sir Neal now standing at a window of the observation room. The robed man climbed the stairs to the mezzanine in a series of eager bounds to be shown into Harnesh’s presence.
“Something to drink, Sumesh?” Sir Neal asked softly.
“Anything with ice!” the newcomer proclaimed, and Gus Martin stepped to a rolling bar cart to prepare a cold drink.
“I take it you have returned with news I will not like,” Sir Neal said.
“What is that saying? ‘You can’t buy an Afghan, but you can rent one?’” Sumesh Khan accepted without comment a crystal tumbler filled with an amber liquid in ice.
“I take it then that the Nazarene is not dead,” Sir Neale said.
“He is not. Neither are any of them. He has been sold into slavery with all the captives. I have taken steps to make certain that the company he travels in remains together. It would not do to have him sold away to persons unknown and taken to places unheard of.” Khan drained a long swallow from the tumbler.
“I wanted to avoid the task of finding and identifying him,” Sir Neal said. “I wanted his death to be not a singular event but a statistic.”
“They may still all be executed as you wish.” Khan gathered the hem of his robe and took a seat. “We have him. It’s only a matter of taking a more direct hand.”
“Something I avoid when possible. I
