52

Her body lay in repose, more or less the way children’s books depicted the fate of Sleeping Beauty, placed on a gilded coffin in the center of the room. Preserved to perfection not ten feet from him, Cooper found himself staring at the real-life version of the priestess depicted by the golden statue from his bungalow-the only clue to her inanimate state the moonlike pallor of her skin, exposed as it was by the beam of the Maglite. Otherwise, the woman looked as though she’d simply nodded off.

If this wasn’t the real-life person represented by the golden statue-which Cooper gauged to be all but impossible-she presented as close a match as you’d find. Cooper had to assume that Sleeping Beauty here was a descendant of the tribe from the Guatemala rain forest crater, massacred by the Pentagon lab spill.

But the resemblance seemed even too uncanny for that.

Oh, yeah, Cooper, came a caustic, hollow whisper he recognized immediately as the voice of the golden priestess. Make no mistake-it’s me you’ve found. Been callin’ you here, and now I’m found. Only you’re too fucking late, old man. And ain’t that too bad? But it doesn’t matter…and it never did. You were the one calling yourself back-

Cooper shook off his latest flirtation with insanity and closed himself in the room. He turned, steeled himself against the reek, and came back around with the flashlight. Time, he thought, to conduct a more rational examination of the mausoleum you’ve just stumbled into-maybe I can even determine whether I’m hallucinating, or I’ve managed to stumble into a new phase of my nightmares.

He came in and took a look around.

Like its new door, the room too had been updated with recent construction. Peering at the ceiling, corners, and walls, Cooper thought for a moment he was feeling some kind of déjà vu aftershock, a residual rhyming vibe put out by Sleeping Beauty or her golden priestess statue counterpart-but then snapped out of the dream state and realized where he’d seen this place before. Almost to the inch, it matched the main room of the subterranean crypt he and Borrego had found beneath the rain forest village. The key difference being the decor: the crypt in Guatemala, when they’d found it, had already been pillaged by Borrego’s intrepid grave robbers; here, the sort of gold artifacts found in Cap’n Roy’s lost stash of goodies remained fully intact and on glorious display.

The treasures had been kept, or installed, or meticulously re-created-however they were put here, Cooper thought, this place is loaded. Designed as some kind of honorable burial for the woman.

He walked a circuit around the room, finding a series of pedestals between the walls and the elevated coffin, some holding candles that appeared recently burned, some propping up statues or other gold loot. Along the walls, designed with indentations similar to those in the Guatemala crypt, stood more artifacts-mostly statues depicting Sleeping Beauty in one pose or another, sculpted in identical tradition to the golden statue in his bungalow.

He’d heard that statue call out to him for help-calling him to Guatemala and now here, where he’d seen what he was meant to see. But Cooper knew it hadn’t been the statue, or Sleeping Beauty, who’d really been calling. He knew he hadn’t been called here by a ghost, or statue, or Julie Laramie and the people she worked for.

He’d called himself here-or, he thought, the ghost of your MIA-POW self had. That long-abandoned chunk of your soul, gone missing, replaced, in your everyday existence, by pain and medication, but still alive and well here in these dungeon hallways. Haunting the chambers beneath the mansions and forts-calling you back for an assist.

Fine. I’m here-I’ve heeded your call. Some fucking good it’s done the both of us-trapped right back where we started. You happy?

He passed a tapestry and came to a marble slab embedded in the wall. Upon closer examination, the slab appeared to represent some kind of memorial: a long list of names had been carved into the slab. It felt to him a little like the Vietnam Memorial in Washington-only the marble on the wall here was of a lighter hue, and all of the memorialized names were either Spanish or, well, native sounding, he thought, that odd, almost vowel-free spelling of Mayan people and places. Cooper ran his fingers across some of the names before continuing with the remainder of his once-over mausoleum survey.

Then he stopped and came back to the marble slab.

He counted the names, then counted them again. The number of names on the slab, both times he’d counted, came to one hundred and seventeen. This number didn’t mean anything to him particularly, but the feeling he’d just got about what he was looking at did.

He turned and looked over at Sleeping Beauty.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

He knew it could have been any of a number of duties for which the names on the marble plaque had been honored. And he knew there wasn’t anything pointing specifically to what had just occurred to him. But sometimes you just had a feeling-a bad feeling-and you goddamn well knew the feeling was right.

He thought of the terror book, and the scenarios the CDC had laid out for the potential spread of the filo epidemic. He remembered a reference in one of the reports to “ten, or twelve, or twenty” suicide bombers, and the potential spread of hemorrhagic fever that could result.

Ten, or twelve, or twenty, the report had said. Too bad, though, he thought: it isn’t twenty-or even fifty.

If my sense of what this memorial is all about is right, then it’s one hundred and seventeen.

He reflected that most of what he’d just encountered-everything he’d encountered during the past month, in fact-defied explanation. He knew he wouldn’t necessarily get all the answers. Maybe, he thought, you’ll get none of the answers. But last time he was here, he’d been sent on a fool’s mission-dispatched to accomplish nothing, a pawn in some political chess match that ended in a useless draw. And despite the relative success of his assassination effort, he’d been ruined for his trouble.

Maybe this time, his trip could actually turn out to be worthwhile.

He found among the crushed implements in the pouches of his paratrooper suit a scrap of paper and something with which to write. Propping the Maglite between his left arm and rib cage, he copied all one hundred and seventeen names, reading and writing carefully, getting the spelling of every man and woman precisely right.

If his instincts proved correct, then Laramie and her Three Stooges could probably do something with this goddamn list-trouble being how I’m going to get it out of here.

That was when he heard another noise.

This one had definitely come from the hall. He killed the Maglite and kneeled down to hide behind Sleeping Beauty; the sound, which he interpreted as footsteps and the opening and closing of another door, came again. He guessed it had come from slightly above and very nearby. He considered again that this section of the subterranean labyrinth must be close to the house-at least some part of the house.

Another door opened and closed and the sound of footsteps grew louder, coming now from somewhere just outside the door.

Cooper drew his pistol, knowing he’d be better off using it in the tight quarters of the crypt than the MP5. He rotated the strap of the assault rifle so the gun draped from his back, out of the way but still handy.

He heard the metallic clink of the handle as it was engaged from out in the hall. Iron scraped against stone, the edge of the door brushing the floor of the room as it pushed open.

Then somebody came into the room.