Acton paused. “So, you succeeded?”

  “In creating the fire, but not the water.”

  Acton’s eyes narrowed as he puzzled out the metaphor then he smiled as everything fell into place. “That’s what this has been about the entire time, hasn’t it? You knew you were close to the breakthrough, so you faked your death so no one could get their hands on it. You finished your work and then have been trying to create a countermeasure to it.”

  “Laura, you married a smart one.”

  She smiled. “Yes, I did.”

  “James. May I call you James?”

  Acton chuckled. “Laura calls me James. Everyone else calls me Jim.”

  Palmer laughed. “Well, then, let’s go with Jim. Jim, you’re right. I’ve completed my work and can now defeat pretty much any encryption currently in use by anyone. I’m working on the technology that would block it, but I’m years away. My intention was to release both solutions to the world so that everybody could enjoy the benefits without the risk.”

  Acton smiled. “Fire and water. Well, that all being said, if you hand yourself over to the Americans, you might be able to work out some sort of deal where they let you finish your work before you hand anything over to them.”

  “That would still leave them with the technology that they could then use against anyone. Would you trust your government with that kind of power?”

  Acton grunted. “Hell, no. Perhaps an agreement could be reached where you release the water to the public and the American government keeps the fire.”

  “That wouldn’t work. Unfortunately, in this case, the technology that the defense is built upon is the same technology as the offense. You can’t have one without the other.”

  Acton bit his lip. “So, if you release the defense, then whoever can make it work would automatically be able to defeat current encryption methods.”

  “Exactly. The Americans will never agree to releasing the defense, because it’ll mean handing over the ability to crack any encryption not employing the defense.”

  “How did you intend to get around that chicken and egg problem?”

  “The intention was to release a ready-made product that governments and institutions could install on their networks and backbones to prevent their systems from being compromised. It would take time for anyone to reverse engineer it, at which point I’d be releasing the plans to the world so that all of mankind could make use of it. But none of that matters right now. All that matters is that a hostile power doesn’t get their hands on it first, or their hands on me.” He sighed. “Perhaps it’s time I spoke to your friend.”

  58 |

  Director Morrison’s Office, CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  Leroux sat in Morrison’s office as the agreement with Palmer was hammered out. Several department heads were in the room including the CIA director herself, plus the Secretary of State, and the head of the NSA, whom Palmer would be working for.

  Morrison leaned toward the phone. “Mr. Palmer, I think we have an agreement.”

  “I trust you’ll put that in writing?”

  “Absolutely, but that’s going to take some time, time we don’t have. We need to get you and the others to safety immediately.”

  “And you have a plan to do that?”

  Leroux suppressed the urge to cringe as Morrison confidently replied. “Yes, we do. It will be coordinated through our operative. Rest assured, Mr. Palmer, we’ll have you, your sister, and the others safely out of there in short order.”

  “Very well. I look forward to meeting you.”

  “As do I.” Morrison ended the call and looked at the others. “An inauspicious start, unfortunately.”

  Secretary of State Michelle Jenkins looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “We don’t have an extraction plan.”

  She gave him a look. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, ma’am, that we don’t have a finalized plan. But now that you’re in the loop and we’ve made an agreement with this man to save his ass, it’s your turn to do your bit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve got a carrier strike group sitting off the coast. Our people are on the top floor of a very tall building. All we need to do is put a Black Hawk on the roof, and we can get them all out. Normally we would send them in there with fighter escorts and attack helicopters, but if we do that, something tells me the Qataris are not going to be happy. But if you get permission to land that chopper on the roof to extract our people, then we have an extraction plan.”

  Jenkins cursed and shot to her feet, heading for the door. “My God, Leif, you could have told me this sooner.”

  Morrison shrugged. “We didn’t have an agreement sooner. Everything is in place. We just need sign-off from their government and it’s a go.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” She headed out the door, her phone already pressed to her ear as CIA Director Gladys McQuay chuckled.

  “If you ever did that to me, Leif, I’d have you gelded.”

  Leroux involuntarily winced.

  “She’s not in my chain of command, ma’am.”

  McQuay rose. “Well, Leif, you’d better hope this works out, or you might have made an enemy of the White House.”

  Morrison gestured at Leroux. “It’s his plan, ma’am. Anything goes wrong, shit rolls downhill.”

  The others in the room laughed as they headed out the door. Leroux rose, not sure how he felt about being hung out to dry. Morrison indicated for him to wait. The door closed, leaving the two of them alone.

  “You do realize that was a joke, right?”

  Leroux shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, sir. But do they?”

  Morrison roared. “They do, son, they do.” He pointed toward the door. “Now, get out of here. I want you in the ops center. Secretary Jenkins is very good at her job and just might have that permission sooner than you think.”

  “And if they won’t agree?”

  “Then we switch to Plan B.”

  Leroux sighed. “Plan B sucks, sir.”

  “That may be, but it’s better than Plan C.”

  “We have a Plan C?”

  “No, we don’t, which is why Plan B is better than nothing. Just be prepared for both scenarios and pray we get that permission before it’s too late.”

  59 |

  Charles Palmer Residence

  Doha, Qatar

  Palmer pushed back from the table and rose. His sister gave him a hug. “You got everything you wanted.”

  He disagreed. “No, but I got the best I could get. Now, before we leave I have a few things I need to take care of, but there’s something I think you’ll like to see.”

  “What is it?”

  He smiled and jerked his chin toward a nearby door. “It’s through there. Jim, you’re going to want to see it too since you’re an archaeologist.”

  Laura took his hand. “Now you’ve got me really curious.”

  He laughed. “Then go satisfy your curiosity. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Laura and her husband headed for the door. She opened it and tentatively poked her head inside then exclaimed, “Oh, my God! How did you manage this?”

  He flashed her a smile as he headed for his lab. “I’ll explain later.” He entered his code then the system scanned his retina, the door hissing open after his identity was confirmed. He stepped inside and closed the door, heading directly for his computer. He logged in and brought up the recording of the call he had just had with the Americans. He ran it through a voice stress analyzer as he pulled several drives from one of the racks that contained all of his latest research. He placed them in a hardened case, then closed it, entering a code that activated the security features which would wipe the drives if the wrong code was entered three times.

  His computer beeped, indicating the analysis of the conversation was completed. He stepped over and was disappointed that it confirmed what he suspected. He had been lied to. The Americans seemed sincere about the agreement but were lying about the extraction plan. The question was, what was the lie? They obviously had an extraction plan of some sort, so why the deception?

  He initiated a wipe of all his systems. There was no going back now. He entered a code on the wall panel and the robotic arms behind the glass leaped into action, pre-programmed for this day. Four arms rapidly dismantled his creation, placing each piece into specially designed cases.

  He checked the computer to see the progress of the system wipe, then sat, the fingers of his left hand drumming on his chest. The computer analysis of the phone conversation had indicated deception. Deception wasn’t necessarily a lie. Since they absolutely had to have an extraction plan, the only thing he could think of was that they didn’t have confidence in the plan or that the plan hadn’t been finalized. Both made sense, considering the CIA had known for barely an hour where he was and where the others would be. The Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans were already after him. Even if he hadn’t reached an agreement with the Americans, he couldn’t stay here.

  His cover was blown.

  His secret was out.

  He had planned for this, but never had a solution for how to protect Laura, though that wasn’t necessarily true. There was one solution, though he considered it the nuclear option.

  The panel on the wall beeped and two large briefcases emerged containing his life’s work. His computer chirped, indicating the wipe of the system was complete and that it was now overwriting everything with random zeros and ones. It would continue the process until stopped, and the longer it was given, the less any data restoration was likely. He was ready to go. He had everything he needed to continue his work in the United States.

  But there was one last thing he had to do.

  Laura slowly circled the tall vase, shoulder height. Several large pieces of it were missing, as was to be expected, but the restoration job was as expert as any she had seen, and she recognized it the moment she saw it. It was from Sodom. It was the artifact she had been excavating when her brother was supposed to have been killed.

  James was on a knee staring at the artwork painted on its surface. “This is incredible. The depth, the realism. I’ve never seen anything like it from this time period.”

  Laura agreed. “Whoever the artist was, they were far ahead of their time. Millennia. To think that someone with such skill lived in a place like Sodom is mind-boggling.”

  Milton leaned in. “How can you be sure they were from Sodom? Maybe somebody purchased it elsewhere?”

  James disagreed. “Just look at the subject matter. If that’s not an orgy, I don’t know what is.”

  “Whoever painted this might not have been from Sodom. Perhaps Gomorrah or one of the other city-states believed destroyed by God or an asteroid impact,” said Laura.

  This piqued Tommy’s interest. “Asteroid?”

  “Yes, there’s evidence to suggest that the entire area where Sodom and Gomorrah were believed to exist was wiped out by an asteroid impact, which back then was interpreted as the wrath of God, so a narrative was created around it. There’s no actual proof that Sodom and Gomorrah were sinful, since all the recorded history is hearsay. We were only a couple of weeks into our dig, and I was quite confident that from what we were seeing and from historical records that it very well could be Sodom.” She indicated the painted figures, their bodies entwined in erotic embrace. “And this would certainly suggest that we were right, considering the subject matter.” She stepped back, shaking her head. “But how did he get it?”

  “After the dig was shut down. I had a team sent in to recover it.”

  Everyone spun toward the voice. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  Her brother shrugged. “I knew how excited you were by finding it and how you said it was solid evidence that you may indeed have found Sodom. I didn’t want that lost because of what I was forced to do.”

  “But how?”

  “I had Mary send in a team to retrieve it. They shipped it to an address they were given by her. It was then forwarded to a team that did the restoration work, then the end result was finally shipped to me. It took a couple of years, and my intention was to give it to you as a gift when we were finally able to reunite. Unfortunately, my work took far longer than I expected, and now it’s too late.”

  Laura’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  He waved his hand, dismissing the question. “It doesn’t matter. What does matter, however, is the proof you were seeking.”

  James rose. “Proof?”

  Her brother smiled. “Proof that you found Sodom, proof that this is from Sodom. I found absolute proof.”

  Laura exchanged an excited glance with James. “How could you possibly have found proof? All we can do is surmise that this was from Sodom based upon where it was discovered and its subject matter.”

  Her brother wagged a finger. “Ah, but you’re forgetting one thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Ego.”

  “Ego?” asked James.

  “All artists sign their work.”

  Laura gasped. “Wait a minute. What are you saying?”

  Her brother stepped forward then took a knee beside the vase, pointing near the bottom at a cluster of ancient Hebrew letters. “Do you know what that says? I know I didn’t.”

  Both Laura and James dropped to their knees and she gasped. “Idit. Oh, my God. That’s Lot’s wife!”

  “What you can’t see there with the naked eye are the other characters that were worn away. But my people were able to scan it and detect slight pigmentation.” He pointed at a photo hung on the wall that Laura hadn’t noticed before. Her jaw dropped as she rose. Idit’s name was much larger, and next to it were three more words, the full inscription reading ‘Lot and Idit Pottery.’

  Laura’s shoulders heaved with a cathartic release, her suspicions proven ten years later.

  “This is unbelievable,” said James. “You’ve proven it. You found Sodom.”

  Tommy stepped closer to the photo. “I’ve heard of Sodom and Gomorrah, but who’s this Lot and what’s her name?”

  James gave Tommy a look. “Maybe you should attend some of my classes on Bible history.”

  Tommy held up both hands. “Hell, no. Why don’t you just jump to the end of the semester and give me the answer?”

  Laura dried her eyes. “According to the Bible and several texts, Lot was the nephew of Abraham and was sent to Sodom to preach God’s ways to the sinful citizens there, but they rejected him. God decided to wipe the slate clean and sent the angels Raphael and Gabriel to warn him and urge him to leave Sodom before it was too late. There are all kinds of different accounts, some saying his wife opposed leaving, some saying he had two daughters, some four. Some that they were young, others married. You have to remember, this story is thousands of years old. But Lot was married to Idit, that part is not really disputed, and for both those names to be on this is simply too much to be coincidence. Whatever happened all those years ago, we’ll never really know. How accurate the stories surrounding it are, it’s impossible to say. But now, we have proof that two people named Lot and Idit made pottery, and that matches up too perfectly with what was handed down over thousands of years.”

  Mai examined the vase. “I wonder who the artist was, Lot or Idit?”

  Laura turned back toward the vase. “We’ll likely never know, but whoever they were, they were a rare talent, far ahead of their time. I’m guessing it was Idit, because all the history has her dying and Lot surviving. If he were the artist, you would think there’d be more examples of his work, and he would have taught his techniques to others. It could have advanced artistic capabilities by thousands of years if she had been given the chance to take on apprentices.” She turned toward her brother. “We have to get this to a museum.”

  Kane stepped into the room. “There’s no time for that. I just got word the Qataris have agreed to our extraction plan. A Black Hawk is being sent in, ETA fifteen minutes on the roof.”

  An alarm sounded and her brother cursed.

  “What is it?” asked Laura.

  “Building security has been breached. We may not have fifteen minutes.”

  60 |

  Charles Palmer Residence Lobby

  Doha, Qatar

  Yan stepped through the front doors of the luxury condominium. The lobby was impressive, everything you would expect in a place such as this. A handsome young man smiled from behind the reception desk, but before he could say anything, Yan put two bullets in his chest. Yan jogged over as the rest of the strike team rushed through the entrance, executing the team lead’s plan. They already had files on the building as there were several Chinese nationals of interest to Beijing living here, and so far everything matched. He grabbed the pass key off the dead man’s belt as his team raced out of sight, down a nearby corridor that led to where the on-site security team waited on standby.

  Someone shouted in Arabic and two shots rang out. A small explosion followed a moment later. More shouting then a large explosion followed by sustained bursts of gunfire that then fell silent. If all had gone according to plan, his team had blown the door, then used a grenade to incapacitate the enemy before eliminating them.

  “This is Team Leader. Security team has been eliminated.”

  Yan smiled at the voice in his ear then headed for the security booth with the camera feeds. An alarm sounded and he cursed as he broke into a sprint, several of his strike team joining him. They had to review the footage to see where the Americans had gone when they arrived. The building was far too big to search unit to unit, and with the sounding of the alarm, they were now on a tight clock.

 

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