Killing Time by Caleb Carr Read Free Book Online

offer any help. "I—think, Colonel," Tressalian said through
gritted teeth, "that I'd better rest for a bit. If our guest will excuse
me ..." His breathing became labored as Slayton pulled one of his arms
around his own neck and lifted his disabled body as if it were weightless.
"I'm sorry, Doctor, I know you want answers," Tressalian gasped.
"Dinner—we'll talk at dinner. For now—remember—" He brought his head
up and, through his agony, gave me a look that I will never forget: it was full
of all the mischievousness of his sister but at the same time conveyed a dark,
terrible urgency. "Remember," he went on, "what you saw on the
door ..." And with that, Colonel Slayton whisked him away.
    Tressalian's sudden attack,
combined with the images on the screens at the table as well as the ongoing
combat outside—not to mention the fact that I was now alone—served to turn my
growing anxiety into the beginnings of what I feared would soon become panic. I
tried to calm myself by focusing on what Tressalian had said, by forcing my
mind to delve deeper into the Latin I'd learned so long ago in order to come up
with an answer to the riddle of the legend on the door.
    I don't know how long I stood
there, watching Larissa decimate our pursuers and mumbling to myself like an
idiot. "Mundus vult decipi," I repeated over and over, as
bullets streamed around the ship. "Mundus, 'the world,' yes. Vult, 'wills'? 'Wants'? Something—"
    And then I froze at the sudden
sound of a pulsing alarm that echoed throughout the vessel: not a harsh tone,
exactly, but enough to let me know that something big was happening. I scanned
the horizon in all directions, trying to catch sight of what might be prompting
it—and looking forward, I got my answer:
    The wide expanse of the Atlantic
Ocean had appeared on the horizon.
    I spun around when a voice I
recognized as Julien Fouché's began to speak over some sort of shipwide address
system:
    "Thirty seconds until system
transfer ... twenty-five ... twenty ..."
    We showed no sign of slowing our
approach to the water as Fouché continued to count down, in five-second
increments, to "system transfer," whatever that might be; and then I
experienced a startling chill as, in the midst of my mounting fear, I succeeded
in translating the legend.
    "Mundus vult
decipi," I said aloud. " 'The world wants to be deceived'!"
    Not yet realizing the potentially
threatening connotation in the words, I felt a sense of triumph—one that
quickly reverted to terror as the ship sped over the shoreline and dived into
the open sea beyond.
     
CHAPTER 12
     
    As soon as the vessel was
completely submerged, a series of powerful lights on her hull's exterior came
on, offering an extraordinary view of the coastal Atlantic depths as we turned
north along the line of the continent. What I saw outside, however, was not an
idyllic scene of aquatic wonder such as childhood stories might have led me to
expect but rather a horrifying expanse of brown water filled with human and
animal waste, all of it endlessly roiled but never cleansed by the steady pulse
of the offshore currents. Sometimes the trapped filth was identifiable—great
stretches of medical waste and the detritus of livestock husbandry were particularly
disturbing—but for the most part it all blended into one indistinguishable mass
that I, left alone to watch and ponder, found utterly disheartening. I knew, of
course, that in the years since the '07 financial crash, environmental cleanups
had been deemed unaffordable luxuries in most countries; nevertheless, to be
presented with this sort of firsthand evidence was shocking.
    After what seemed a very long
time, I was escorted to my quarters not by Larissa Tressalian (who I assumed
had joined her mysteriously stricken brother) but by the curious little man
called Dr. Leon Tarbell. Alone among the crew, the "documents expert"
Tarbell was unknown to me by either sight or reputation, a fact that made him
all the more intriguing;