Nomad (31 page)

On the stone table in front of her, she had a world map from Giovanni’s office spread out. She spent the morning scribbling on it, red dashed lines for major faults lines, hash marks at geologic hot spots. There were over a thousand potentially active volcanoes spread across the Earth. As a geologist, she dredged as much as she could from memory, never having suspected she might need to use her knowledge like this.

Nuclear war in the Middle East.

In another time, the news would have shocked her, but she was already numb. Just another nail in a coffin already going into the ground. It surprised her how easily her mind seemed to absorb news of the death of millions. It had to be millions. The announcer hadn’t said, hadn’t even hazarded a guess, because it didn’t matter anymore.

Even a nuclear war was a sideshow to the coming main event. These wars were one last chance to enact revenge, one last chance to show God was on their side.

Celeste grew up Catholic, her mother and father devout followers of the Pope. She’d gone to church on Sundays, read the Bible, but it had faded as she got into college, more so after she met Ben. Passing the Vatican four days ago, hearing that the Pope was going to speak, she had to admit she felt a thrill, wanted to join the crowds.

The destruction of the Vatican had an effect on her she hadn’t expected. Terrified, of course, horrified at the carnage she’d witnessed. Now she found herself praying, to a God she’d abandoned, to a God humans seemed determined to destroy.

But she’d lived a good life, hadn’t she?

She just wished she’d spent more of it with Jess. And Ben.

Celeste took a red marker and drew hash marks from Lebanon to Iran to Egypt, her guess at areas already destroyed.

When Nomad passed, major fault lines were sure to slip. She circled the Pacific Northwest of America, drew a thick line down the San Andreas and across the New Madrid fault running through the Midwest. Staring at America, with her thick red marker she circled the supervolcano under Yellowstone.

She looked at Europe, then stared at the view in front of her. Italy had its own recently active volcanoes. In the distance, a flat-topped mountain—Monterufoli—was ten miles away, maybe fifteen? A volcano almost next door.

A wind rustled the leaves above her, and she could have sworn it whistled her name. She listened hard, but heard nothing more. Sitting back she refilled her coffee and dried her tears. It was a beautiful day for the end of the world.

Ben leaned his head out of the farming truck’s open window, looked up through the olive trees at a beautiful blue sky. The truck bounced along a gravel road, climbing up the side of the mountain. The farmer had picked them up in the morning, after they'd spent last night walking five miles off the main A1 highway that ran from Milan to Rome. Roger sat beside Ben in the back seat, on a long bench of torn green plastic in the back of the old Chevy. Wedged between them was Ben’s backpack, the one with the tape spools and CDs of old data. Roger had a bandage taped over his right eye, and a bloody cloth tied around his left arm.

They’d managed to salvage Ben’s laptop from the wreck when their car slid over the railing. Roger was still upset about Ben trying to rescue the backpack before saving him. They walked the last five miles, over the top of Gotthard Pass out of Switzerland, and then managed to hitchhike their way down the other side where the highways started into Italy.

They had their cell phones, but there was no service, not since Switzerland. Ben sensed it was more than just overloaded circuits. While half the world burned from riots and war, the other half had gone home to loved ones. Communication networks still needed humans to maintain them, and the humans were gone. Not there today.

And probably not tomorrow or ever again.

A clearing opened in the olive trees. Stone walls rose into the sky. “
Castello Ruspoli
?” he asked the driver.

“
Si
,” the old farmer replied, his face tanned and creased old leather. He held out a shaking hand. “Ruspoli.” He stopped the truck.

Ben could hardly believe they made it. Still twenty-two hours to Nomad. Time enough to talk to Celeste, to talk to Jess, to get ready. Could they survive it? Maybe for a few days. That was all he could hope for right now.

“Can you walk?” Ben asked Roger.

Roger nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Ben knew he wasn’t fine, but nodded and got out of the truck, grabbing his backpack with his laptop and the data spools. Roger jumped out behind him, wincing as he hit the ground, shouldering his own bag. The farmer waved and put the truck into gear to crunch off across the gravel. Ben started walking up the roadway to the castle walls, a closed entrance not more than a hundred yards away.

“What’s so important about that old data?” Roger asked. “Christ, I almost died back there.”

“You almost killed yourself getting your own bag. I could ask you the same thing.”

Roger dusted himself off and shrugged. “Just reflex, I guess. But you practically crawled over me to get to your pack.”

Ben kicked a pebble from the packed earth underfoot. He looked into Roger’s eyes, studied him for a moment. “When we were in Darmstadt, I said not all the data was in that paper I published thirty years ago, the one you read…” He looked down and kicked another rock. “I made a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“I was just a grad student, still learning the ropes. I didn’t transform the coordinates of the location of the flashes properly in the paper I submitted. I realized it after I sent it in, but when it wasn’t accepted for publication…”

“You didn’t make a correction.”

“I didn’t see the point at the time.”

“And so the data in that backpack,” Roger continued Ben’s thoughts for him, “might contain the only record of the
location of Nomad thirty years ago. Which might be the only way to calculate its trajectory accurately.”

Even with Gaia and Earth-based observatories, they would only be able to get an approximate location of Nomad as it got closer. Once it reached the Sun, radiation from solar eruptions would cripple any observatories and satellites. Scientists might be able to pinpoint a location of Nomad, but to get its exact trajectory, they’d need a long axis point.

Ben turned to Roger and smiled. “Exactly.” He turned to the castle wall, banged on the wooden door, and searched for a buzzer or button. Nothing. He slapped the wooden door again. “Celeste! Celeste, are you there?”

Looking around, he found a staircase that led down. Jumping down the stairs, he saw that it led into a half-basement of poured concrete with no doors. Maybe he’d have to climb the walls. He dropped his backpack into a dark corner of the cellar for safe-keeping and jogged back up the stairs. The place looked abandoned. A sinking feeling settled into Ben’s gut. They'd better be here.

“Hello?”

Ben spun around. A man stood beside Roger, smiling. Roger shrugged.

“Ah, this is Castello Ruspoli, yes?” Ben asked.

“Yes, it is,” the man replied in very good English.

“I’m looking for Celestina Tosetti and Jessica Rollins,” Ben added.

The man nodded, still smiling. “And you are…?”

“I’m Jessica’s father, Ben Rollins…I’m Celeste’s husband.” Ben wagged his head. “Or, well, we’re separated…and this is Roger, my student.”

“A pleasure,” the man replied.

Ben frowned. “Are they here?”

The man paused, squinted. “Yes, yes, of course.”

32

I
SOLA
G
IGLI,
I
TALY

BARE ROCK WALLS supported rough-hewn beams, the room empty except for a metal-framed cot covered with a gray blanket. Jess paced around the room, not more than ten foot square, stopping to hammer on the wooden door again. “Let me OUT!” she screamed, her fist raw and red.

Still no response.

A prisoner in a castle for a second time this week. Italy was getting on her nerves.

She circled the room, limping on the awkward prosthetic. Goddamn thing, it scraped her stump on every step. A single window mercifully let in some fresh air. The window was open with no bars or restraints, about two feet wide and three high. It didn’t need bars. She stopped to look out—she could easily squirm through, but a fifty-foot sheer cliff of stone and brick sloped away beneath it. Below that, a guard stood watch, almost directly below her window.

Peering left and right, she estimated the island was half a mile long, a craggy rock rising up from a base of stone and sand. The whine of an engine. Looking down, she saw a man with a rifle slung over his shoulder pull up on a dirt bike. He chatted with the guard stationed below her. Doing the rounds. The engine whined again, and the man wound his way down a zigzag trail, through the trees near the water and out onto the dock. He parked the bike and got onto the fishing boat.

Jess watched the boat pull away from the dock, water churning behind it. On the way in, she watched for any other boats. There was just the one dock. The rest of the island was jagged rocks into the water. She looked at the boat pulling across the water, watched the sandy bottom refract through the waves.

She craned her neck further out of the window. The sun was low on the horizon. Past seven o’clock. She looked back at the dock. It should be high tide. Squinting, she could just make out the rocks, seaweed hanging off their tops. At least two or three feet below the high tide line.

So her father’s timing was right.

A knock on the door.

Jess pulled her head inside.

The door opened and Enzo walked in, a grin spread from ear to ear. “Ms. Jessica, I must apologize for the accommodations, and for our—”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Jess sputtered. “Look, I’m sorry about not telling you about Nomad, about hiding it—”

“This has nothing to with that.” Enzo raised both hands and wiped his eyebrows, adjusted his pork pie hat. “As I was trying to say, I never meant for
Antonio
to hurt you or steal your leg in Rome. And I apologize for the room here. We had to remove everything, after hearing how…violent you can be.”

Jess stared at Enzo, her emotions unbalanced, unsure of how to react.

Why was he apologizing? Enzo never struck her as very intelligent. This wasn’t making any sense. Was this just a kidnapping scheme gone sideways?

“Is this about money? Giovanni has gold, in the castle.” She pointed out the window. “I know you don’t believe me, but something terrible is about to happen, destruction you can’t imagine will kill us all in a few hours.”

Enzo took a step toward her. “You are right, a terrible thing has happened, and I am fixing it.”

“Fixing it?” Jess’s bewilderment rose with her eyebrows. “Why did you follow me? Attack me in Rome?”

“It wasn’t my intention to
attack
you,” Enzo replied. “We just needed to keep you here.”

Keep her here? Jess’s mind raced. “So it was you that texted me from Giovanni’s phone?”

Enzo frowned. “Text?”

“Yes, the messages to my phone. You texted me from Giovanni’s phone? Told me to come back to the castle.”

His face brightened. “Ah yes, I was text to you.”

Did he just not understand English very well? She didn’t bother to correct him. “Why?”

“Why?” Enzo took a step toward Jess, their faces not more than two feet apart. “So he never told you? The
Baron
never told you?”

Jess was beyond tired of this. “Told me
what
?”

Enzo leaned toward her, waved a hand between them. “There has been a fight between our families for hundreds of years. The Ruspoli wiped us out, and it was here on Gigli that they signed the papers that took our villa a hundred years ago.”