Hunt at World's End (6 page)

“All that business about liking your job,” Gabriel muttered, “and not wanting to make Michael angry…?”

Noboru shrugged. “He won’t like it any more if they kill her back in New York.”

Gabriel nodded. Noboru was right, of course. And so, for that matter, was Joyce. If someone had ever tried to take something like this out of his hands, he’d never have stood for it. But—

“It’ll be dangerous,” Gabriel said. “You might get killed. I can’t promise I’ll be able to keep you alive the next time.”

“—and airplanes can crash, and peanuts can give you anaphylactic shock,” Joyce said. “Life’s a thing of risks. You know that better than anyone.”

“You’re so right,” Gabriel said. “Next time we’re facing a dozen men with swords and a bowl of peanuts, you can deal with the swordsmen, I’ll handle the peanuts.”

They stared at each other in tense, unblinking confrontation till a grin broke out on Joyce’s face. “I’m picturing you throwing yourself on a bowl of peanuts,” she said, “like a soldier on a grenade.”

“Well, we really wouldn’t want you to go into anaphylactic shock,” Gabriel said.

“I wouldn’t,” Joyce said. “That was just an example. I’m not allergic to…”

But Gabriel had already turned away. “You want the first shift or the second?” he asked Noboru.

“Either’s fine with me,” Noboru said. “But first I’d be grateful if someone could tell me just what this ancient treasure is that everyone’s getting so excited over.”

“You mean the Three Eyes…?” Gabriel said.

“No,” Noboru said. “I mean whatever it is that the Three Eyes unlock.”

“The Spearhead,” Joyce said.

“It’s a weapon,” Gabriel said.

Joyce shook her head. “It’s much more than that. Hold on a sec, I want to show you something.” She went over to the corner of the room where they’d piled her books earlier, rummaged through them and pulled one out. She flipped through the pages and said, “When Teshub gave the Spearhead to the Hittites, the first thing they were supposed to have done with it was turn it on their enemies, the Kaska. In 2005, the Kaskan city of Sargonia was excavated in the northern hill country between Hatti and the Black Sea.” She handed Gabriel the book, open to a photograph of the excavated village. In it, Gabriel saw a stone structure, its pillars and walls black and cracked, the rest of it in ruins. “That was a temple,” Joyce went on. “The stone was charred and baked all the way through by some sort of extreme, concentrated blast of heat. And you see that at the bottom?”

There was a reflective pool surrounding the base of the temple. “What, the water?”

“That’s not water,” she said. “It’s glass.”

He looked up from the photograph.

“Whatever destroyed Sargonia was strong enough, hot enough, to turn the sand around the base of that temple into glass.”

Gabriel looked at the photograph again, studying the reflective surface. On closer inspection, he saw what might be faint fissures or cracks—something you wouldn’t see in water.

“Of course, we don’t know what did this,” he said. “We don’t know that it was the Spearhead.”

“Of course,” Joyce said. “But we know something
did. And how many things in the ancient world could?”

“Lightning?” Noboru said, looking at the photo over Gabriel’s shoulder.

“You’re on the right track,” Joyce said. “A bolt of lightning might fuse the sand in a limited area, right where it struck. But not an area that large. A thousand bolts of lightning, though, directed simultaneously at a single target…”

“The wrath of the storm god,” Gabriel said.

“Precisely,” Joyce said. “Teshub was a storm god the way Thor or Zeus were storm gods. He wasn’t the god of rain or wind or hail, he was the god of thunder and lightning. And what is lightning but raw, unbridled electricity? A sufficiently strong blast…it could do to Sargonia what you saw in the photo. If it had the power of a small nuclear reactor.”

Noboru whistled softly. “Sounds like a weapon to me.”

“Sure,” Joyce said, “if you use it to attack a city. But what if you used it to
power
a city? I think the Spearhead is a source of power—not military power, not necessarily, but electrical power. Some sort of natural generator. And according to the descriptions in Hittite literature, it required no fuel to operate, gave off no byproducts—just pure, clean energy.” Her eyes lit up as she spoke about it. “Can you imagine the good that kind of technology could do for the world? Think of it. Cheap, efficient energy. No pollution, no radiation. You could use it to power entire nations. It could power water purification plants, hydrobotanical gardens. It could wipe out the need for oil, coal, gas, nuclear energy.” She touched Gabriel’s hand. “That’s the potential of this discovery. It could change the world.”

Gabriel studied her face. She was sincere. All traces
of the mischievous child he remembered were gone, but there remained a childlike quality, a belief in the potential for a discovery like this to improve the world rather than destroy it.

He handed the book to Noboru. “It’s a weapon,” he said.

“Get some sleep,” Gabriel said. “I’ll take first watch.” They’d moved Joyce into a room whose mattress and window were intact and had dragged another mattress into the hallway outside the door. Noboru was lying on the mattress, his shoes beside him, his knife in its sheath within easy reach. Gabriel sat across the hall with his back to the wall and his Colt in his lap.

“You think they’re going to come back tonight?” Noboru said. He fished a small, square pillbox out of his pants pocket, opened it, popped a pill in his mouth and snapped his head back to swallow it. When he saw Gabriel watching him with a raised eyebrow, he said, “To help me sleep,” and put the pillbox back in his pocket. He rubbed his chest with a grimace and then lay back on the mattress.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “But I don’t like them knowing where we are.”

Gabriel should have been tired, but his nerves were still in tight coils after the fight with the cult. He sat in the dark, facing the door, listening for any sudden noises. Despite the reassurances he had given Joyce, he knew it was a bad idea to stay at the guesthouse tonight. But they didn’t have any better alternative. Joyce needed food and rest after her ordeal and Noboru did, too; in any event, it was too late to make the long drive back to Balikpapan safely. But even one night was a
risk he would have preferred not to take. The guesthouse was the first place the cult would look for Joyce again, and for the Star of Arnuwanda. So Gabriel waited, and listened. Through a narrow window at the far end of the hall he watched the stars grow brighter, then begin to dim as dawn approached. Even with the sun still hours away, the room grew warmer. He peeled off his shirt and used it to wipe the sweat off his face and chest.

Still nothing. No sign of the cult, just Noboru’s gentle snores. Gabriel thought about waking him to let him take second watch, but he decided to let Noboru sleep.

When the stars disappeared from the window altogether and the sky faded from gray to blue, the door to Joyce’s room suddenly swung open.

Gabriel grabbed his Colt, leaped to his feet.

Joyce grinned at him from the doorway. Somewhere during the night she’d used the pitcher and basin in the room to wash herself clean of the mud and grime of the jungle and had donned a fresh set of clothes. Gabriel was once again struck by what a beautiful woman she had become. She opened the door wider and leaned against the jamb. Noboru woke and turned to face her, rubbing sleep out of the corners of his eyes.

“Rise and shine,” Joyce said. “We’ve got a big day ahead of us. I spent the past hour narrowing down the coordinates and I think I know where the first Eye should be. It’s not far from here, maybe an hour’s drive.”

Gabriel nodded. “All right. Pack up your things and bring them down to the jeep. We’ll meet you there.”

“Way ahead of you,” Joyce said. She slung a heavy knapsack over one shoulder and stepped out into the hallway. “See you downstairs.” She headed for the
stairway, then stopped and smirked at him over her shoulder. “Oh, and you might want to put on a shirt. Not that it isn’t a pretty sight, but…the sun can be pretty fierce around here. Wouldn’t want you to burn.”

Noboru drove the jeep out of the village and back onto the same unpaved road they’d taken from Balikpapan yesterday, continuing away from the city toward Central Kalamitan. In the passenger seat, Joyce looked over the notes she’d scribbled in her book. Periodically, she would consult her compass and either nod or give a new direction to Noboru: a bit farther, take the next right. Gabriel sat in the backseat, crammed in beside their suitcases, and wondered what, if anything, they would find. If the map and the Star were authentic, at the very least they could discover a gemstone whose value as an artifact would be enormous. Or maybe, if Joyce was right, they would find the first key to a revolutionary source of energy that could change the world. Either way, his interest was piqued. More than piqued.

The only problem, as he saw it, was Joyce herself. Could he trust her? She’d already lied to her uncle, lied to Michael, and nearly gotten herself killed. She was stubborn and foolhardy, rushing headlong into dangers she didn’t understand. True, he’d often been accused of the same thing himself, but he’d demonstrated he could handle it. Joyce, on the other hand…

Maybe he was just being overprotective. But that didn’t sit any better with him, because it forced him to think about
why
he was being so protective. Was it because she was Daniel Wingard’s niece? Because he’d promised Michael he’d bring her home safely? Or was it something else?

Like the charge he’d felt when she’d looked him up and down in the hallway.

There’d been no shortage of women in Gabriel’s life over the years. But there was undeniably something special about this one…

Pull yourself together
, he thought. He couldn’t let himself become distracted, not with the Cult of Ulikummis still out there. Not only were they still desperate to get their hands on the Star of Arnuwanda, they had also been humiliated in defeat, and that made them doubly dangerous. That the cult hadn’t returned to the guesthouse last night meant nothing, except the likelihood that they were regrouping. If he let himself get sidetracked, if he lost focus, they could all wind up hanging over a fire pit.

“Stop here!” Joyce cried suddenly.

Noboru hit the brakes, bringing the jeep to a halt on the side of the road, and cut the engine.

“This is the spot.” Joyce hopped out of the jeep and gestured toward the trees. “It should be about five hundred yards in.”

Gabriel followed her out, then reached back into the jeep and took a machete from the backseat.

Noboru glanced at the morning sun and loosened his collar. “If it’s that far, you’d better start walking. It’s only going to get hotter out.”

“You’re not coming?” Gabriel said.

“Someone’s got to stay with the jeep and keep an eye out for trouble.” He patted the glove compartment. “If I see anyone coming, especially anyone wearing a skull mask, I’ll send up a flare. You should be able to see it through the trees.”

Gabriel led the way into the forest. The vegetation seemed more tightly packed here. He made judicious use of the machete, cutting away vines and branches to clear a trail. Behind him, Joyce kept an eye on her notebook and compass, shouting directions at him as
if he were a shady New York City cab driver looking to jack up the fare.

“No, wait, to the left,” she said. “We’re getting all turned around.”

“You just said right.”

“Yeah, left. See if you can get those vines out of the way so we can keep going.”

He sighed and started chopping again. “This better be one hell of a gemstone,” he muttered.

The jungle in daytime was just as active as night, only with different kinds of wildlife. Instead of the buzzing of nocturnal insects, the air was filled with the sound of fluttering wings and screeching birdcalls. Proboscis monkeys and long-tailed macaques jumped from branch to branch in the canopy above, barely visible blurs of white, gray and tan hair. The terrain was hillier here too, slowing their progress and forcing them to exert more energy in the rising heat.

Gabriel glanced back. Joyce was breathing hard and fanning herself with her notebook. Her face and neck were glistening. His own body was already soaked in sweat, and the intense humidity didn’t seem like it was going to let up anytime soon.

“Do you want to rest?” he asked.

Joyce shook her head, catching her breath. “No, I’m fine. We should keep going.” She undid the top few buttons of her thin cotton blouse. Gabriel quickly turned away to chop at the vines again.

Stay focused.

“It shouldn’t be much farther now,” she said. “Maybe another fifty yards.”

Gabriel hacked some more branches out of their way. “Any idea what we should be looking for? Did the Hittites say how the Eyes were hidden?”

“The legends say this Eye was ‘buried in the earth’s
embrace, where only the dead shall see its beauty.’ Scholars think this means the gemstone is hidden in a cemetery.” Gabriel remembered Noboru’s comment on their way out from the airport, that Joyce had been asking about a cemetery in the jungle. He also remembered Noboru saying there wasn’t any in Borneo. But Borneo was a big place, most of it covered with jungle. With the right map…

They came out of the densely packed trees into a small clearing, roughly forty yards across. On the far side, the ground rose up in a steep slope before the thick foliage resumed. Gabriel sheathed the machete in his belt. Joyce pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head.

“This isn’t right,” she said, her eyes darting over the layer of twigs and leaves covering the grass. She checked the compass against her notes. “This is the spot. The first Eye of Teshub is supposed to be here.”

“Well, it doesn’t
look
like a cemetery,” Gabriel said.

She shook the compass, as if that would somehow change its reading. She flipped through the pages of her notebook. “It should be here.”

“First lesson of field work,” Gabriel said. “Don’t rely on maps to stay accurate for more than, oh, a thousand years.” He squatted, scanning the clearing. “Even assuming you read the Star right, any number of things could have changed.”

“For instance, a cemetery could get buried, right?” Joyce said. “We’re probably standing right on top of it.”

Gabriel shook his head and ran a hand through the grass. “Maybe,” he said, “but didn’t Hittite death rituals mostly involve cremation? As I recall, only high priests and kings were preserved and buried—and they got huge stone tombs built for them. If something
that size had ever been here, there would still be some sign of it. But there’s nothing.” He stood.

“No.” Joyce shook her head. “It’s here, I know it is. It has to be.”

Gabriel walked over to her. “Look, I know you were excited about your first find, but—”

Joyce grabbed the handle of the machete and pulled it out of his belt so fast he didn’t have time to stop her. She started marching toward the slope at the far end of the clearing. “I’m going to keep looking,” she called back to him. “Come or don’t come, it’s up to you.”

He sprinted up behind her. “Joyce…don’t let yourself be blinded by what you
want
to find. For every legend that points to something real, there are dozens that are just stories. You have to prepare yourself for the fact that sometimes what you’re looking for just isn’t there. Believe me, it’s happened to me plenty of times.”

She ignored him and continued storming up the slope. Nearly at the top she lost her footing amid the twigs and roots littering the hillside. She slipped suddenly, cried out and slid back down toward the clearing.

“Joyce!” Gabriel ran to her. She had tumbled to the base of the hill. When he got to her, her cheek was smeared with dirt, but thankfully she looked okay otherwise. He held his hands out. She glared at him, then cursed under her breath, took his hands and let him help her back to her feet.

“I’m
fine
,” she snapped, yanking her hands away. She bent to pick up the machete she’d dropped. Then she froze and stared at the grass on the side of the hill. “Gabriel,” she whispered. “Come here. Look at this.”

He bent down next to her. “What is it?”

“There,” she said. She pointed at a patch of grass
that had been torn up by her fall. She’d struck a stone with the machete, dislodging it, and where it had been there was now a narrow hole. The sun reflected off of something inside the depression. She pushed the tip of the machete into the hole. It hit something flat, smooth and hard. Gabriel recognized the sound it made right away: the
tink
of metal on metal.

“Something’s buried under there,” Gabriel said.

“The first Eye was given to the earth,” Joyce murmured.

They looked at each other, then back at the hill. Joyce started scraping the dirt away with the edge of the machete while Gabriel dug with his fingers, pulling out divots of soil and tossing them over his shoulder. It was slow work, but after twenty minutes they’d cleared away enough earth to reveal a stretch of dark metal with a long seam in it. A few minutes later, they uncovered the rusty bulk of a hinge.

“It’s a door,” Gabriel said. “There must be a whole structure under here.”

They attacked the hill again, digging faster now in their excitement. Joyce plunged and scraped with the machete like a coal miner working a pickaxe, and Gabriel dug until his fingers cramped. Another half hour passed without his even noticing it, and though his back and shoulders ached and he was tired and drenched in sweat, thoughts of what lay beyond the mysterious metal door kept him going. Joyce didn’t waver either, didn’t even take a break. Finally, they’d cleared away a rough rectangle of earth, exposing the metal door that lay beneath. The seam around it was caked with dirt, as were the ornate carvings that decorated the door. There was no knob or handle visible, but there was a lock.

Gabriel knelt to inspect it. He picked the dirt away
and saw that the keyway was shaped almost like an upward-pointing arrow, with not one but three slots. Above the lock was a rough etching of a skull with a diamond between its eye sockets. Gabriel recognized it right away. The muscles in his back tightened.

It was the same design that had been on the Death’s Head Key.

Vincenzo de Montoya had found the key somewhere in Asia—but no one knew exactly where. Even de Montoya’s own journals were vague on the specifics. Now Gabriel had the answer: Borneo. De Montoya had taken the key with him upon leaving the island and died in the Amazon with it still on a strap around his neck. Five hundred years later, Gabriel had found it, only to lose it again almost immediately.

No, scratch that. He hadn’t
lost
it. It had been taken from him at gunpoint. Stolen by someone who claimed to know what the key unlocked.

“Gabriel Hunt, I presume?” a reedy voice called from behind them.

Gabriel whirled around. A man stood at the tree line where Gabriel and Joyce had entered the clearing. He was not tall, maybe five-foot-five, and dressed in khaki shorts and a beige short-sleeved shirt. A Tilley hat the same color as his shirt rested atop his head, throwing a band of shade across his eyes. He looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties. Behind him stood four men in jungle camouflage, their guns drawn.