Gabriel Hunt - Hunt at World's End

Daniel looked at her. “What inscription?”

“There were the same words written on the wall,” Joyce said. “ ‘The light at world’s end.’ ”

Gabriel said, “Or possibly ‘The fire at world’s end.’ Your standard apocalyptic stuff—’the end of the world is coming,’ ‘the end is near,’ that sort of thing.”

Daniel pulled at his lower lip in concentration. “But Hittite mythology never had an apocalypse story like Ragnarok or Armageddon. They had no concept of the end of the world.”

“Hang on,” Veda said, “did it say ‘the end of the world’ or ‘world’s end’?”

“Why?” Joyce said. “Does it make a difference?”

“Look, I’m no archaeologist,” Veda said, “I’m just a linguist—but speaking as a linguist I’d say yes, word order does matter.” She folded her arms over her chest. “If you say ‘the end of the world,’ you’re generally referring to a time—the ‘end of days’ if you’re an evangelical Christian, Ragnarok for the Norse, and so forth. But ‘world’s end’ sounds more like a place to me—you know, the edge of the earth, the place past which you cannot venture, ‘here there be monsters,’ all that.”

Daniel snapped his fingers. “Of course! The Bushmen!”

“In Africa?” Gabriel said.

“Yes,” Daniel said. “It’s got to be. The Bushmen—or the San , as they’re properly known—have lived in Africa for some twenty thousand years, since before the Ice Age, in fact. But in part due to the Ice Age, the San never left their territory to explore or become an empire the way so many other ancient cultures did. They stayed in one place and didn’t have any contact with other societies for thousands of years. Throughout that time, they believed there was nothing else out there, that they were alone in the world.” He tapped a finger on the landmass of Africa on the map. “There was a remote area at the edge of the Kalahari Desert, in what’s now Botswana, where the ancient San wouldn’t go. They believed it was the boundary of all existence, occupied by spirits and demons. They called it…well, in their language you might translate it as ‘world’s end.’ ”

Gabriel shook his head. It was all so obvious. These things always were, once you figured them out. “Here, let me have the Star.”

“But we still don’t know what the element is,” Joyce said.

“Yes, we do,” Gabriel said, taking the ancient device from her and switching on his flashlight. Daniel limped over to the wall to draw the curtains. “The Kalahari Desert. It’s not loose soil. It’s sand. ”

Gabriel turned the starburst at the center of the Star to the symbol for dune and, holding the flashlight above it, positioned the Star so the projected symbol lined up with its counterpart on the map below. The light shone through the small red jewel this time, casting a thin, scarlet beam of light.

It struck southern Africa, exactly where Daniel had been pointing.

“World’s End,” he said.

Chapter 19

Edgar Grissom pulled the truck to a stop by the side of the road. They were in the hills outside Antalya, nothing but trees and a narrow road extending into the distance. In the passenger seat, DeVoe, his electronics expert, held a small satellite-linked tracking device, the flashing light on the screen accompanied by a loud beeping that had grown faster and more insistent in the past few minutes. Grissom killed the engine and stepped out onto the road. The back door opened and three men climbed out, their handguns drawn. DeVoe came up beside Grissom, studying the device in his hand. His wide, angular face was pockmarked with acne scars. A black eyepatch covered his right eye.

“You’re sure they’re here?” Grissom asked.

“This way,” DeVoe said, pointing toward the forest beside the road.

Grissom let him lead the way. Just a few feet into the woods, the device’s beeping grew so rapid that it turned into a single high-pitched electronic trill. His men lifted their guns in preparation, but there was no one there. Just trees, shrubs and dirt.

“Sir,” DeVoe said. He pointed at the ground.

Lying on a bed of dead leaves was Daniel Wingard’s cell phone. Grissom stooped and picked it up. Its screen was cracked and the phone’s casing was scraped and dirty. He hurled the phone against a tree, where it smashed into bits of metal and plastic. The beeping from the tracking device stopped abruptly.

Grissom whirled on DeVoe like a snarling animal. “Find them. Do you understand me? I don’t care how you do it, I don’t care who you have to pay off or kill, but you are going to find them. I want to see the passenger manifests of every plane, train, bus and boat out of Turkey! If they’re riding goddamn donkeys across the border, I want to know about it!” He jabbed a finger into DeVoe’s chest. “You do that for me, DeVoe, or I’ll have your other eye. Do we understand each other?”

DeVoe’s reply was quiet, but immediate. “Yes, sir.”

Grissom stormed back to the van.

Gabriel Hunt would not escape again. He wouldn’t allow it.

Joyce sat in the living room only half watching CNN on Veda’s television. Daniel had been the one to turn it on, eager for some news of the outside world, but he’d fallen asleep on the couch shortly after.

Gabriel came in, Veda’s cordless phone in his hand. He replaced it in its cradle by the couch. “Michael’s gotten us passage on a ship to Madagascar leaving tomorrow,” he said quietly. “From there it’s a short flight to Botswana.”

“Why not just fly directly?” Joyce asked.

“Lower profile this way,” he said. “Slightly, anyway. He was able to book it under his name rather than ours.” He looked over at Daniel, who was stirring in his sleep.

“Don’t look at him like that,” Joyce said. “You know he was just trying to protect me.”

“I do know that,” Gabriel said. “I believe it. But it was a terrible decision. He nearly got you killed. And me.”

“And himself,” Joyce said. “I think he’s learned his lesson.”

“Maybe.”

“I wish you’d give him another chance.”

“We’ll see,” Gabriel said.

Vassily Platonov stood in Arkady’s apartment in Samarinda, on the eastern coast of Borneo. It felt strange to be wearing street clothes—dirty, heretical—but in order to get to Arkady’s apartment he’d had to blend in as best he could, and wearing his ceremonial tunic and headdress would have been a poor way to do that.

The meeting had to be here because this was where Arkady’s computer was, and Arkady had insisted that using the computer was the only way to track the movements of their prey. Vassily was skeptical, but he allowed himself to be persuaded. This was the modern world, and one had to accommodate oneself to its devices. For now. Until Ulikummis returned and melted every computer and every cellular telephone and every other modern instrument into so much slag.

But for now, the computer.

He watched Arkady press tiny buttons on the device.

“Look at this, High Priest.” He pointed at a line of characters on the device’s screen. HUNT, MICHAEL it said. 3 BERTHS, AFRICAN PRINCESS, SAILING 10AM.

“This Michael Hunt,” Vassily said, “he is the American?”

“No, High Priest,” Arkady said. “Our man at the airport says the American’s name is Gabriel Hunt. This Michael Hunt is his brother.”

“And you think if we seize his brother…?”

“No, High Priest. I believe he has had his brother make arrangements for him to travel, along with the woman and another—presumably the Japanese who killed Dmitri and Nikolas. He is trying to hide his movements, but he cannot hide from us.”