centers, town squares, and mosques across the Arab world and farther east in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. As always, moderate voices seemed to be either holding back, or crowded out by those of the more radical clerics. Reports were coming in of scattered skirmishes and brawls in several cities, both between followers of different religions as well as infighting among members of the same faith.
Around the world, official reaction was only starting to trickle in, but so far, government and religious leaders had refrained from making public statements about the phenomenon—apart from some fiery rhetoric that a few fundamentalist firebrands weren’t shy to express.
Throughout the coverage, Father Jerome’s face was everywhere. It was plastered across the front page of every newspaper in the country, if not the world. It beamed down from every channel, the frail priest suddenly thrust into megastardom. Every news outlet was locked in on the story. Anchors and talking heads across the language spectrum were struggling to hold back on the superlatives—and failing. The whole world was firmly gripped by the unexplained event.
As Matt drank and ate and watched the screen, Jabba told him what had happened during the night. The caffeine and sugar worked its magic on him again, slowly injecting a semblance of life back into his veins; the wall-to-wall footage from Egypt and from the rest of the world reached the parts the caffeine had missed. And with each new report, with each new video clip, Matt felt a crippling chill seep through him. The stakes were growing exponentially, along with the realization of the enormity of what he was facing.
When the doughnuts ran out, Jabba turned the volume down and filled Matt in on what he’d been up to. He’d been busy. After Matt had conked out and before the breakfast run, he’d gone back out to the reception alcove, handed the weedy receptionist another ten-dollar bill, and worked late into the night, and again this morning.
He’d gotten an update on the tracker’s position, and handed Matt the printouts. They showed that the Merc had left the Seaport district, the last position they had for it, sometime before ten the previous night. It had traveled to the downtown area where the signal had been lost—presumably boxed in by concrete walls deep in the underground parking lot of some building. It had appeared again soon after seven that morning and returned to the same location in the Seaport district, and hadn’t moved since.
Jabba had then spent most of his time trying to beef up the thin sketch they had managed to compile on the doomed research team and its covert project. He’d made more calls to contacts in the industry and had given Google and Cuil’s search algorithms a real workout, and although he hadn’t come up with much, what he didn’t find also told him something.
Even though his experience was in non-defense-related research projects, the secrecy surrounding his and his peers’ work was often military-like in its intensity. And although defense-related projects were even more cloaked, there was often a whisper, a hint, something that had seeped through the cracks and gave an idea, however vague, of what ballpark the project was in. The critical piece of information to protect was more often than not how a goal was to be achieved; the goal itself was, in most cases, at least obliquely known, especially within the most well-connected techie circles. In this case, however, no one knew anything. The project had been born, and had died, in total and utter secrecy. Which told Jabba that it was unlike anything he’d ever encountered. It also spoke to the resources and determination of those behind it, which made the prospect of going up against them even less appealing—if that was even possible.
He had, however, managed to unearth a real nugget, one he kept for last.
“I tracked down Dominic Reece’s wife,” he informed Matt with no small satisfaction beaming across his weary face. “Maybe she has some idea of what her husband and Danny were doing out there in Namibia.”
“Where is she?” Matt asked.
“Nahant, just up the coast,” Jabba replied, handing him a slip of paper with a phone number on it. “We can be there in half an hour.”
Matt thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Sounds good. But let’s see what the tracker’s got for us at the Seaport first.”
Chapter 44
Deir Al-Suryan Monastery, Wadi Natrun, Egypt
Graciehad been doing almost continuous lives ever since the frenzied moment on the roof of the keep.