Gillian Anderson - A Vision of Fire

It was Caitlin’s turn to say, “Hunh.” She placed her papers on the “to put away” stack. Her drawing of the face was on top and Joe picked it up to look at it. He laughed.

“Where in the hell did you see this?” he asked.

“Do you recognize it? I think it’s some kind of Polynesian tiki figure.”

He grinned. “It’s not often that I get to tell you you’re wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

He patted her hand and held up the drawing. “This is from your ancient past, kiddo.”

Flora Davies, the forty-year-old chairwoman of the Group, was locking the airtight door of their basement on Ninth Street. The founder of the Group, Otis Davies, had purchased this grand mansion on the corner of Fifth Avenue early in the twentieth century. Named the Global Explorers’ Club, ostensibly it was a home for travelers who came to the city and needed a place to rest before leaving. Here they could relax among fellow adventurers, swap tales, study maps and rare books in the library, or leave treasures they had found to be collected at some future date. Treasures that the Group examined thoroughly. Statues, vases, tablets, and other finds that might have writing or images, carvings, or paintings that fit their particular interests served the Group’s highly secret need. It had proved a worthwhile arrangement. All the results of the Group’s efforts, previously scattered throughout the world in bank vaults and secret warehouses, were now consolidated in this basement.

Flora emerged from the side of the building and walked up the steps to the quiet street. She was heading to her apartment with the intention of getting some long-overdue sleep before Mikel arrived with his latest artifact from the Falklands. Other members would be arriving within hours to study it, and there would be much to do. Each new find was a key, and this particular key could well be the one that exponentially expanded what they knew, confirmed what they suspected, and ultimately narrowed their ancient search.

At this moment, however, Davies’s mind was not on the artifact. She stood at the top of the steps that led from the well of the basement door to street level and looked south toward the park. Something was wrong. She heard voices in the park, which was not unusual even at this hour, and dogs barking, which was also not uncommon. What she could not understand was why she didn’t see the towering white marble arch that was built to celebrate the centenary of George Washington’s inauguration as president. It was gone.

At a fast clip she walked toward the park where the Washington Square Arch used to be. As she neared it she realized she was wrong; the arch was there. Only it wasn’t white. And it wasn’t marble.

Through the center of the arch she saw a dozen or so students backed well away, standing by the fountain toward the south. They were looking, pointing, taking photos and cell phone videos—not that they would convey the real-time creepiness of a nearly eighty-foot structure covered bottom to top with rats.

When Davies realized what they were she stopped dead in her tracks and gasped. There must have been hundreds, even thousands. She had never seen, never heard of anything like this. Her first thought after her brain unfroze was that it was some kind of stunt, something concocted for a reality show or a guerilla cinema project by film school students.

That has to be it. They couldn’t be real, could they?

Suddenly spots of white appeared beneath the undulating carpet. First small and then larger, unevenly shaped patches. The students on the other side began to scream and as Davies started to realize that the rats were leaving their perch in great heaving swaths, someone jokingly cried, “Stampede!” The creatures raced in all directions, with one tidal wave of them rolling unswervingly toward her. A charge of dark gray fur pushed down the center of Fifth Avenue and along both sidewalks. She stood transfixed, not so much with fear or revulsion—though she felt both as the rats rushed over her feet—but because the rats were real, there were no cameras, and though her heart was racing, her mind was working harder still, trying to figure out what on earth was going on.

She turned protectively toward the club and that was when the real horror struck.

The concrete recess outside the basement door was overflowing with pile upon pile of the surging vermin. Were they trying to get in the door? They were squealing, scratching, and tearing at each other to get higher still as they formed a roiling triangle in the doorway. Under the streetlight she could see tufts of fur floating upward and the occasional streak of blood. Those that could not get into that small area flowed into the garden that fronted the structure. All the rats that couldn’t fit in the stairwell were facing in one direction, aligned as much as possible to the north and south.

Davies got as close as she could without making further contact. With shaking fingers she retrieved her cell phone from her shoulder bag and began shooting video. The rats’ activity was inexplicable indeed, but what challenged and distracted her was that this behavior was not entirely without precedent.

As lights flicked on in surrounding apartments, people rising to check out the shouts coming from the park and the strange thumping and scratching taking place right outside their doors, Davies switched off her video and stepped into the shadows.

She thought back to the call she had received from Mikel when he landed in Montevideo. The field agent had mentioned something strange—a flock of albatrosses that had flown directly at the plane from the north.

Davies put her cell phone away and walked up the vast stone steps to the front door of the Global Explorers’ Club. There would be no sleep tonight.

Under orders from Joseph P. O’Hara, Caitlin was allowed to send exactly one e-mail about the drawing before she went to bed.

“That’s it, little lady,” he’d said in a voice she recognized from those old, old days when he let her make a phone call or have a Scooter Pie before retiring.

She had to tell Ben, and she had to tell him now; it couldn’t wait. Caitlin took her tablet into the bedroom, sat cross-legged against the headboard, prepared an e-mail with attached notes from her trip and a photo of Gaelle’s sketch, then wrote:

You might think I’m crazy but forget Polynesia. That’s not what I drew. Dad recognized it: a Viking longship. The teeth are either circular shields on the hull or people sitting inside it; the eyes are the tall, curved carvings at the prow and stern. He’s been dabbling in genealogy and our Irish roots are all mixed in with Scottish and Norse. He hit a few museum collections online and he saw a brooch design very similar to this. Gaelle sketched a symbol too—see the jpeg—that seems Celtic to me. Could the ship be connected to Gaelle’s almost drowning? I know that sounds nuts and you’re probably too busy to meet but call if you can tomorrow. I mean today. Tuesday. Thanks. —C xo

Caitlin set the tablet on the floor and crashed. Her mind and energy and body had all hit a wall and she had no trouble sleeping through the night.

She awoke feeling rested but restless, with a readiness to prowl through this mystery. Her father dropped Jacob off at school on his way out of the city and Caitlin looked over her work schedule. There was nothing until noon, after which the day was packed. To her surprise, Ben had not only called early and left a message but had time to meet. She called him back as soon as her “lads” were gone.

He picked up on the first ring.

“Hey, Cai.”

“That’s not good news, is it? That you have free time?” She didn’t really have to ask; his solemn voice said it all.