"Nephilim - 03 - The Revealing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marzulli L A)

Titwell grinned. "You got your watch on, don't you?"
Fitzpatrick looked down at his watch and remembered that it had a global positioning device that enabled its wearer to be found with pinpoint accuracy.
"Emergency, then?" Fitzpatrick asked.
Titwell got out of the car and opened the rear door. "That's why I'm here."
Fitzpatrick knew that Titwell wouldn't know what the call was about. He was just doing his job in finding him.
"Thanks, Titwell," Fitzpatrick replied, as he slid into the back of the limo. "Do I have time to shower and change?"
Titwell put the limo in gear and pulled away from the curb. "Nope."
"The airport then?"
"Yep. Your jet's on the runway waiting for you."
Fitzpatrick settled back in the seat and wondered what was so important that his weekend would be interrupted. He took the satellite phone off its cradle and made sure the voice scrambler was on before he punched in a series of numbers.
"Good morning, Fitzpatrick." A voice with a heavy German accent came over the receiver.
"Good morning, sir," Fitzpatrick answered.
"We've got something that needs your attention immediately."
"I'm on my way," Fitzpatrick replied. "What is it?"
"Let's not go into that right now. Suffice it to say that it's very ancient and at the moment indecipherable."
'Any idea of what language it is?"
"That's why you're headed to the Tank." A pause, then: "Call me when you have any information on it."
"I'll do that, sir."
Fitzpatrick turned the phone off and put the receiver back in the cradle. He didn't trust the man he worked for. He didn't like the way everyone at the Tank was treated as an inferior underling. He took umbrage at the way the man flaunted his wealth and position, and how he went out of his way to make the point that his ancestors were German royalty and had been in the service of the Kaiser. A little over a year ago, the man had wooed him away from a modest university teaching position, offering a six-figure income that Fitzpatrick had found irresistible. Fitzpatrick planned to work for a few years, bank the money, and then retire to Rome, where he could scour the vast archival Vatican libraries.
Fitzpatrick had found the Tank to be an enigma. There were soldiers like Titwell, and military MPs, but they weren't tied into any particular branch of the service he could identify. Fitzpatrick had come to realize that he didn't know whom he actually worked forЧthe United States government, the private sector, a rogue element, or even the Chinese, for that matter. All he knew for certain was that the man he reported to, nicknamed the Hag by everyone in the Tank, was in charge.
Another unsettling fact was the realization that he didn't know what became of his work. Or for that matter, what interest his employer would find in tracking certain prophecies from diverse civilizations, and looking for some universal constant in them. It sobered him to realize that the information that came his way was very classified and was very up-to-the-minute intel.
An hour later his unmarked jet touched down on a special runway near Washington, D.C. Fitzpatrick was hurried to awaiting car and motored to a building just outside the Washington Beltway. Titwell stopped at the gate to the under-ground parking garage and punched in the code. The gate opened and the car went down into the parking area. Several turns later it reached a wallЧat least, what appeared to be a wall. Fitzpatrick looked out his window as the car gave a little jolt, and then the section of the floor that the car rested on began to go down into the earth. After several minutes it came to rest.
An MP opened the door and Fitzpatrick got out and waited, holding his right hand in front of him. The MPs grabbed his hand and slipped it into a machine that covered his hand glovelike, to his wrist. Fitzpatrick felt an almost imperceptible sting, as a needle pricked his skin and with-drew a tiny amount of blood.
Without a word the MP took the sample to a machine that was imbedded into a large stainless steel door. He watched the monitor as the blood sample's DNA was matched.
"You're free to go, Mr. Fitzpatrick," he called, as he keyed a small locked box that had held the release for the door.
Fitzpatrick waited as the stainless steel doors slid noiselessly open. Walking alone down a dimly lit corridor, he nodded at several coworkers he passed. He opened the door to his department, a large room filled with desks and computers. Bookshelves covered three walls, and the fourth wall held a digital map of the world.
Fitzpatrick unbuttoned his sweat jacket and glanced around the room. Two men and two women were busy at the terminals. The Tank, as always, was in session.
"Morning, Fitz," Zach mumbled, as he typed on his key-board. He was the group's statistician, specializing in third-world population growth and the relationships between emerging industry in those countries and the impact on the environment, surrounding nations, and the global economy.
"Coffee?" Mary asked, holding out a steaming cup and smiling.
Fitzpatrick took the cup and sipped. Mary was a tall, blond-haired woman who was approaching forty and had never married. She was still attractive when she wanted to be, and this morning she had taken the time to put on makeup and wear a skirt and sweater that flattered her trim figure. A graduate of Yale Medical School who had served a decade with the Center for Disease Control, she specialized in the research of rare diseases.
"What do we have?" Fitzpatrick asked, as he took another sip of his coffee.
"Look at this," Vinnie answered, using his mouse to high-light an area on his computer monitor that corresponded to the digital map on the wall. The image changed on the digital screen against the far wall.
Vinnie's specialty was supertechnology. While still in college, he had designed a faster computer chip that was bought by a leading company.
"What is it?" Fitzpatrick asked, noting that the images appeared to have been shot with a night-vision camera.
"Infrared satellite image of an incident that happened in Yemen forty-eight hours ago. I think you'll find it very interesting," Vinnie stated.
"You've all seen it then?" Fitzpatrick asked.
"Several times," Joyce offered. "We have some very extra-ordinary footage here."
Joyce, a middle-aged hippy, was an expert in the paranormal. For Joyce to think it extraordinary meant that it was more than the typical UFO footage, or mutilated cattle carcasses, or apparitions of the Virgin Mary.
Fitzpatrick settled in his chair as the footage rolled. A fiery object entered the camera's field.
"Meteor?" Fitzpatrick asked.
"My first guess, but meteors don't stop and start again," Mary offered.
Fitzpatrick watched as the object slowed down and then took off again. "Close-up?" he asked.
"Yeah ... here it comes." Vinnie typed in a command on his keyboard.
Fitzpatrick stared with genuine wonder. "Incredible," he whispered. "It looks like a craft of some kind, but where was it made and by whom?"
"The press is hailing it as the reemergence of the Bethlehem star," Joyce added, "but it's unlike anything I've ever seen."
"People all over the world have heard about it," Zach said. "An Al Jazeera film crew caught it on tape. They've been showing it nonstop."
'And our media picked it up from them?" Fitzpatrick asked. Zach nodded. "Yeah, Fox News and CNN are running with it."
'Any idea as to what it is?" Mary asked.
Fitzpatrick shook his head.
"Anything in the ancient prophecies about it?" Mary asked.