location of the sighting, by the Carlsbad Fjord on the eastern coast of Greenland, four hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. The video clip that followed was eerily familiar. The footage was jerkier and grainier than their own. It wasn’t filmed by a professional crew. Instead, the sighting had been captured on tape by a team of scientists who were studying the effects of meltwater on the Arctic island nation’s glaciers. The apparition had taken them by surprise, with the breathless excitement and hectic activity coming through vividly on the screen. One of them, a white-bearded glaciologist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, was then interviewed live, his face heavily pixelated and breaking up from the webcam-linked satellite phone they were evidently using.
“First, Antarctica, and now here,” the offscreen anchorman’s voice asked him. “Why do you think this is happening?”
There was a two-second lag, then the scientist’s professorial face reacted to hearing the question. “Look, I’m . . . I don’t know what it is or where it’s coming from,” he answered with a gruff voice. “What I do know is that it can’t be a coincidence that this—this sign is showing up over what can only be described as disaster areas. I mean, that ice shelf in Antarctica that’s crumbling, and this glacier here—they’re ground zero. I’ve been studying these glaciers here for over twenty years.” He turned and waved a gloved hand at the gray-white expanse behind him. “You’d look out across the land there and it used to be pure white. Nothing but snow and ice, year-round. Now you look at it and it’s more blue than white. It’s melting so fast that we’ve now got lakes and rivers all over the place, and that water’s working its way down to the bedrock and loosening the bases of the glaciers, which is why they’ve started to slide out to sea. And if this one goes,” he pointed out gravely, “we’re talking a three-foot rise in global sea levels. Which could then trigger all kinds of nightmare upheavals. So, you ask me what I think is happening? I think it’s pretty obvious. Nature’s flashing us a red alert here, and I think we need to take that warning seriously, before it’s too late.”
Gracie stood there, rooted in silence, as the report cut away to a montage of reactions to the sign’s second appearance. The images were breathtaking. A large crowd congregated in Times Square, watching the scenes unfold on the huge screen, the crawler underneath announcing the sighting in bold letters. Similar scenes were captured in London, Moscow, and other major cities. What the first appearance seeded, this second one reaped in spades, in terms of impact. The world was sitting up and taking notice.
Gracie glanced over at Dalton and Finch, and felt a surge of trepidation. Something unprecedented was happening, something big and wonderful and baffling and terrifying all at the same time—and she was right at the heart of it.
The satphone startled her and dragged her attention away from the screen. It was Ogilvy, calling from his cell, as per their agreed communication protocol.
“I just got a call from the Pentagon,” he informed her. “Two DIA guys just landed in McMurdo and found out you’d skipped town. They’re pretty pissed off,” he said with a light chuckle.
Gracie frowned. “What did you have to tell them?”
“Nothing. It’s still a free country. Sort of. But they’ll track you to Cairo Airport pretty quickly, if they haven’t done it already. From there . . . who knows. You might want to switch off your phones.”
“There’s no signal out here anyway,” she told him, “but we need to keep in touch. We’re pretty cut off out here.”
“Check your satphone every hour; I’ll text you if anything comes up.” Ogilvy impressed her with his sangfroid.
“We’ll do that,” she confirmed. “And I’ll get you the landline of the monastery too, just in case.”
“Good.” Ogilvy’s voice took on a more serious tone. “Did you meet him yet?”
“No, we just got here.”
“Talk to Father Jerome, Gracie. Do it quickly. The whole world’s watching. And we’ve got to keep our lead on this thing. It’s ours for the taking.”
Gracie felt a hard lump in her throat. She glanced uneasily at the monks as she stepped away and turned her back to them, lowering her voice. “We’ve got to be careful here, Hal. We can’t just announce this without taking the necessary precautions.”