The God Complex: A Thriller (21 page)

The trip back to the airport was like a journey through space and time. The clarity of the night sky was enhanced by their elevation and the barrenness of their surroundings was nothing short of awe inspiring.

“You can see why they settled here,” said Sophie, straining to look straight up from her back seat vantage point.

“And why they were fascinated by the stars,” said Cash. “That’s more than I’ve ever seen before.”

“And yet
only a tiny fraction of what’s out there.”

“It is beautiful, no?” said the taxi driver, looking at the sky.

Rigs, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, was nowhere near as impressed. He tapped the taxi driver’s steering wheel. The message was clear, he was being paid to drive, not enjoy the scenery.

Cash leaned into Sophie.
“He doesn’t like not being in control,” he whispered. A laugh that was forming dissipated when the smell of her skin, a memory he had forgotten, came flooding back. She smelled exactly as she had all those years earlier. It was a smell that had driven him wild then. He daren’t move as he breathed in the beauty of her natural fragrance.

A gentle shove killed the moment
and awkwardness returned when Sophie moved subtly but deliberately away.

“I’m sorry,” breathed Cash.

“It’s fine,” said Sophie. He could hear her breath catch as she spoke. She had felt it too.

“Hold on
!!!” Rigs screeched, throwing his hands into the dashboard to stop himself going through the window.

Cash threw his arm across Sophie, protecting her from hitting the back of Rigs seat while he clattered into the back of the driver
’s seat when the taxi skidded to a halt, barely stopping for the steward who had jumped out in front of them.

“Oh my
God!!!” screamed the steward hysterically. “Are you okay?!”

Cash
got out of the cab in time to grab Rigs as he went for the steward.

“Rigs, it
’s fine! There must be a good reason why he just risked his life,” reasoned Cash. “Sophie, you okay?”

She nodded while the taxi driver hurled abuse at the steward
.

“What the hell were you thinking?” asked Cash
. The driver quieted, although continued to curse under his breath.

Rigs
had gripped the steward by the neck and wasn’t ready to let go, and the steward struggled to speak.

“Rigs?”

Rigs relaxed his grip a little, resulting in a gasp from the steward followed by a barrage of single words.

“Police, plane, waiting, wanted, attack, president.”

Rigs relaxed his grip completely. People often labeled him stupid because of his difficulties with interactions but he was as quick if not quicker than most. The steward was protecting them.

Rigs stepped away
. He knew how intimidating his brooding silence could be, although in truth, his six foot two powerful frame was just as intimidating.

“
Please repeat that,” Cash said, “but fill in the blanks.”

The steward looked warily
at Rigs. Cash gestured for Rigs to move away further.

“We
saw the news while you were away,” the steward said.

“
Okay,” said Cash.

“We heard all about the failed attempt to kill the
President and half the government.”

“Failed attempt on half the government?” asked Cash
. That was new, the last he knew half the government had tried to kill the President.

“Some elaborate plot,” he waved his hands around in the air in an attempt to convey it was all too complicated
. “Anyway, your faces came on the screen, saying the reports of your death were incorrect and that you had also been framed and were innocent of all charges.”

Cash
smiled broadly. “Okay, so what’s this all about?” he asked, pointing at the steward standing in front of the taxi.

“I wanted to make sure it was you before I stopped you,” he explained
. “It was a bit dark and I spotted you a little late.”

“Yes
, but why stop us?!”

“
Because they said you were innocent!” he explained, as though Cash was stupid.

“Yes
, but why did you stop us
here
?” interjected Sophie.

“Because of the police
.”

“What police?”

“Oh,” said the steward. “I thought I’d said. The police are waiting for you at the plane.”

“But we’re innocent?”
asked Cash.

“Exactly, so that’s why I’m here
. They’re not friendly looking policemen.”

“Did they say what they wanted us for?”

The steward shook his head. “No.”

“And they’re definitely police?”

“I think so, they had four police cars which they’ve hidden.”

“And they let you go?”

“I unnerved them. Big angry men with guns make me nervous. They told me to go and wait in the lounge area in the terminal.”

“How many?”

“Six, well six that I saw.”

Cash looked
at Rigs who was already moving. The terminal was off to their left, a half mile away down the private approach road.

“Kill the lights
!” Cash called to the taxi driver. There was no other traffic on the road. Their taxi’s lights were the only ones on the road and they had been stationary on the road for a couple of minutes. Cash could make out their plane in the distance. If he could see it, they could see them.

“Sophie, get back in the taxi,” instructed Cash
. “You too,” he said to the steward.

He climbed into the passenger seat
. “We’re going to drive slowly towards the plane but take the road to the terminal where we’ll stop briefly and drop them off,” he said, pointing at Sophie and the steward. “Just at the point we’re out of sight of the plane. Then we’ll continue slowly towards the plane.”

“We’re not getting the hell out of here
?!” asked Sophie, stunned.

Cash shook his head
. “This could be a lead.”

“Are you mad?”

Cash shrugged, this was what he did. He urged the taxi driver on.

The taxi driver remained stationary. He was old enough to remember the brutal reputation of the Bolivian
secret police, protector of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie for many years.

“No se
ñor.” He shook his head.

Cash reached back to Rigs bag and pulled out a pistol, placing it at the taxi driver
’s head.

“Cash!” shouted Sophie in disgust while the steward screamed in panic.

“Drive,” ordered Cash, ignoring them. A couple of minutes later, Cash enjoyed the silence brought on by dropping off the passengers. Sophie had chastised him all the way, not holding back on how little she thought of his abuse of power over the taxi driver, to whom she repeatedly apologized.

In silence
, they approached the plane, which sat alone at the far end of the terminal in a special area of the apron reserved for private aircraft.

“
Stop here,” said Cash.

Cash sat and waited, making no attempt to move. He’d wait all night if need be. The police were going to have to come to him.

Seconds became a minute, a minute became five. Still, Cash sat in the seat not willing to move. Five minutes became ten. Still he waited. He kept his eye on the clock on the dashboard. He sat motionless, not even moving his head. He didn’t want it to look as though he was watching the time.

After twelve minutes
, the police cracked. They moved. Two exited the plane tentatively, followed by another two. When the first two hit the bottom of the stairs, Cash flicked the door handle and shouted at the taxi driver to accelerate.

As the taxi accelerated towards them
, the police dived out of the way, while Cash rolled out from the car to the far side of the plane, his trailing foot kicking the door shut as he braced for impact onto the apron. He rolled over and over into the semi-darkness afforded by the spacing of the floodlights directed onto the plane.

While Cash lay prone
, the first bullets pinged at the policemen’s feet. Rigs, off in the darkness with a silenced rifle, had four of the policemen at his mercy, caught cold in the openness of the apron. Any attempt to run back to the plane, the only cover they had, was met with a clear warning. Bullets pinged in three burst shots mere feet away from them.

“Throw your weapons down and no one gets hurt
!” shouted Cash, his body barely visible as the police struggled against the glare of the floodlights. His pistol was pointed directly at their bodies and he wasn’t going to issue warning shots.

The four policemen dropp
ed their weapons.

“And the two in the plane!” Cash
snapped. “You’ve got three seconds!”

“
Okay, Okay, don’t shoot!” The two policemen’s guns flew out of the plane door, quickly followed by their owners.

Cash stood
up and walked over slowly, his pistol sweeping across the men.

“Rigs
!” shouted Cash needlessly, as Rigs appeared out of the darkness.

“On the ground,” Cash
demanded.

“Cash Harris?” asked the oldest policeman in the group.

“Grab the concrete!” Cash ordered forcefully.

“Travis Davies sent us,” the policeman
said, but nonetheless complied with Cash’s order.

“How do I know you’re not lying
?” asked Cash warily.

“He said you’d ask that,” said the policeman
. “And he told me to say, he’d expect nothing less.”

Cash withdrew his pistol
and Rigs slung his rifle around his shoulder. Travis always talked of how he expected nothing less of the two. It had become a bit of a catchphrase.

“Apologies,” said Cash
, offering his hand to help the officer up. Rigs held back. His rifle was on his shoulder but could be back in action with the simplest of movements.

“It’ll teach us a lesson,”
said the elder policemen. “I assume the whiny steward alerted you?”

Cash nodded.

“Amateur error,” he said, dusting down his uniform. “Frankly, we couldn’t listen to him any longer but I didn’t think he’d go running to help you.”

Cash shrugged
. “So what does Travis want?”

“For you to call him.”

“And that takes six men?”

“He thought we’d be safer in numbers, one or two and you might have just shot us.”

“Good point,” said Cash, watching Rigs nod in agreement.

The conversation with Travis had started out short, sweet and to the point. He didn’t want Cash and Rigs anywhere near the agency. He was cutting them loose. Before Cash could respond in outrage, Travis silenced him with one comment. They were the only two in the whole fucking agency he could trust and for that reason, he didn’t want them anywhere near it. The agency was rotten; the whole intelligence network was rotten. It had to be, there was no way twenty Afghans could have pulled off that operation without a network of support. And there was no way that size of operation should have been able to elude the entire US intelligence operation.

“It’s worrying,” agreed Cash, relaxing into the seat on the plane as they prepared for takeoff.

“The scariest part is I think I’m the only one that’s actually worried. Everyone else seems to be relieved,” sighed Travis.

“We’ve got a couple of leads, they’re a bit out there though,” said Cash, raising an eyebrow from Sophie, who had barely looked at him since the taxi driver incident.

“Anything is one hundred percent more than we’ve got, but wait, you might be able to clear something up. Senator Albert Noble, or Bertie Noble. How well do you know him?”

“We’ve gone before him a couple of times in Senate hearings, other than that
, not very well.”

“He mentioned your father was friends with his niece at university?”

Cash scanned his memory. “Nope, don’t remember him ever mentioning it to me, do you know her name?”

“It’ll be something Noble
. You know their name tells you how senior they are within the family?”

“How does that work?” asked Cash perplexed.

“If their first name begins with an A they’re more senior than the one’s with a B then the next level down’s a C,” he nodded.

“Bullshit,” said Cash
. “That’s just some conspiracy theory rubbish surely.”

“I don’t know but trust me
, the higher in the alphabet their name, the more power they have! Atlas Noble, Antoine Noble and his son’s called Alex. A bit like different levels of royalty I suppose, King, Prince, Earl, Duke…”

“It’ll just be a coincidence
,” suggested Cash halfheartedly.

“Wait a minute
, there’s something else. They’re all Noble. Come to think of it, they really are all called Noble…”

“Well
, they
are
the Noble family,” said Cash, not getting what Travis was alluding to.

“Yeah
, but you’d normally find other surnames. You know, the daughters marrying someone else? Anyway, sorry I don’t know her name but your father never mentioned a connection to the Nobles?”

“My father and I hadn’t really spoken much
for some time…” said Cash quietly.

“Yes
, of course, sorry. Anyway it’s no big deal. It all seemed a little off but the Senator was almost killed as well, so it’s a bit of waste of time.” He stopped himself, bringing the conversation back on track. “You mentioned a lead?”

“
It’s a bit tenuous,” Cash began slowly, as he didn’t quite understand it himself. “Hold on, I’m going to put you on speaker.” Once he did, he spoke again. “With me is Sophie Kramer, she has a doctorate in…”

“Astronomy,”
Sophie said, saving Cash the embarrassment.

“She’s been going through my dad’s research work and…” he motioned for Sophie to take over the conversation.

“Professor Harris had a theory, I think Cash referred to it earlier as being a bit out there and to be honest, he’s probably right,” she conceded, blowing a silent raspberry to Cash. “But if we start with the principle that Hubble 2 was the target, his theory may hold some credence.”

Travis
was keen to hear more.

“He believes there is a great secret about our future,
one that ancient civilizations were aware of but were wiped out in order to protect it.”

“Wiped out?”

“He believed there are guardians who are protecting the secret and who will go to any lengths to protect it.”

“Does he know what the secret was?”

“Oh my God!” Cash exclaimed.

“What?” came a chorus from everyone
, including Rigs.

“The message from my father’s deputy, from the observatory before he was killed. He said my father was right.”

“About what?” asked Sophie.

“
About everything, but then the line cut out.”

“And James, his deputy was working with Hubble 2!” Sophie’s level of excitement was reaching fever pitch. “Which was shot out of the sky at the same time the observatory and all of its data was destroyed and James was killed.”

“Protecting a secret!” said Travis.

“Exactly.”

“We would need Hubble 2 to see it,” said Rigs under his breath to Cash.

“Of course,” said Sophie
. “They destroyed it for a reason. They’ve not destroyed any other telescopes.”

“How long to build another Hubble 2?” asked Cash
, trying to rebuild hope.

“Ten to twenty years
,” Sophie said flatly.

“We don’t know
if we need Hubble 2. Perhaps the timing was coincidental?” said Rigs.

“Rigs, you’re a genius
!” exclaimed Sophie. “
Timing
. Professor Harris’s research talks about a window of time. It’s marked out by the ancient ruins, they map the timing of the event.”

“It sounds like you’re about to go into details my brain will struggle to comprehend
,” said Travis. “I also think, given recent events, that we’ll keep what you’re doing between us.”

“Good idea.”

“Cash, do you remember that old Hotmail account?” Travis asked.

“Yes,” replied Cash.

“Same as previously, we’ll correspond through the drafts. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know, otherwise I’ll leave you guys to it. How are you guys for transport?”

“Rigs
’ trust fund is taking a pasting,” replied Cash.

“I’ll leave a draft email with the details of an untraceable account to use, reimburse Rigs for what he’s used so far. Good luck guys!”

Travis hung up.

“So where to?” asked Cash, looking
at Sophie. She opened the laptop.

“Machu Picchu, Peru
,” she said, barely able to believe the Director of the CIA had bought into the idea. She felt a shiver run down her spine. She had a horrible feeling they were about to open a Pandora’s box and once opened, there was no way to shut it.