The Alignment: Ingress ta-1 Read online

  Hank’s official explanation for his sudden departure was that he had found something on an intel map and was off shooting the pilot for his new “Nomad” TV series.

  The real story, however, was that he had traced “exotic matter” or XM patterns with a Reverse Big Bang Algorithm to the site — evidence of a significant portal. Portals were transdimensional anomalies through which ordered data was transmitted via XM. Nobody knew what was contained in this data, only that it was sequenced and thus engineered by some intelligence.

  All of which begged the question of who or what was on the other side of these portals? Again, nobody knew. For the time being, whatever they were had been coined with the term “Shapers,” because it appeared that this ordered data in exotic matter had for centuries been shaping human thought and influencing human civilization. The existence of the world’s ancient shrines, monuments and cities around XM portals made the link indisputable.

  A portal this big and this old in the jungles of Africa promised ancient ruins. For whatever reason, deposits of exotic matter seemed to be linked to religious shrines and cultural landmarks around the world, as well as rare earth minerals.

  Those ruins, in turn, were probably hiding the famous gold mines.

  If his hunch proved correct in Africa, Hank would call in Conrad to help him explore what was buried below. Conrad was about the only specialist from the outside he trusted for this sort of operation, even if Conrad dismissed exotic matter as a marker of ancient ruins in favor of his astronomical alignments.

  Probably the same difference at the end of the day, and cosmically linked in some way.

  Everything is.

  * * *

  On the train to Zurich, Hank texted his colleagues Calvin and Devra back at Niantic that he was sorry he hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye before setting off for his TV pilot. Especially since he had planted the idea in their heads that he wouldn’t be leaving until a few days later on the 26th. This way he’d have a jump on any tail they put on him.

  Hank had many masters — Niantic, IQTech and others— but in many ways that made him the master. His cross-agency work gave him a unique drone’s-eye view of global intelligence and geopolitics.

  It was a far cry from the narrow silos most operatives existed in, never sharing “their” intel with other agencies. How many inter-agency task force meetings had he attended where he was fully aware of the vital intel each agency knew but that none felt the others “needed” to know?

  From his perch at least he could connect the dots that others missed. Ironically, this was the very reason he was so valuable to his different employers. Despite their distinct and at times competing agendas, each master knew what they were getting in Hank Johnson. His primary challenge then was keeping his stories straight with his respective master and not crossing his lines of communications.

  He settled back in his seat and looked out the window at the gleaming caps of the Swiss Alps as the train slid through the wintry wonderland. The Congo promised an entirely different backdrop for his pilot, he thought as he pulled out his tablet from his pack and studied the coded image of the Queen of Sheba reclining in her garden.

  The Queen of Sheba was just Hank’s kind of girl: straightforward on the surface, but more mysterious the deeper you go.

  In very similar accounts, the books of First Kings and Second Chronicles in the Bible simply state that the Queen of Sheba, who has no name and comes from an otherwise unknown land, heard of the great wisdom of King Solomon of Israel and “his relations to the name of the LORD.”

  So she appeared before Solomon in his spectacular Temple, bearing gifts of spices, gold and precious stones. She also tested him with questions. The accounts don’t record her questions, only that Solomon answered every one of them. In return for his wisdom, she paid Solomon with gold — more than four tons of it.

  Straightforward story, except it didn’t make much sense. Why bring gold to somebody as rich as Solomon? What wisdom could be worth that much? Why hide the Queen of Sheba’s true home? The Bible, so specific with so many locations, is silent on this one. Did Solomon not know? Did he conceal it for a reason?

  Ever since biblical times, guesses have been made as to the location of the Queen of Sheba’s mines, ranging from Atlantis to Australia and even the Solomon Islands. But Hank always felt the pre-Islamic tradition was the most plausible, based on his research into ancient Arab trade routes in Africa. That tradition spoke of what was now Zimbabwe. But Hank doubted the Arab traders would have given up the location of the Queen of Sheba’s mines any more easily than the Incas would have given up El Dorado.

  It was Hank’s obsession with these early Arab trading routes — and the notion that key mines and points of distribution would be kept secret — that ultimately led him to the coded Queen of Sheba painting.

  Now, together with Conrad’s star charts, this painting was pointing him to the Congo as the location of the Queen of Sheba’s mines.

  Hank leaned back, closed his eyes and thought about her predicament for a moment. If she came from sub-Saharan Africa, she had to pass through mighty Egypt without having her treasure confiscated or taxed and without encouraging a greedy Pharaoh to torture her for the source of the gold and take the mines for himself. So she had to conceal the location of the mines, hence a circuitous route.

  Hank opened his eyes and studied the picture on his screen. It was probably copied from some earlier stele through contact stamping. That meant the image on the papyrus or paper was reversed. Using that orientation, the painting revealed that the two flower clusters behind the Queen of Sheba represented locations in the Congo, which Hank believed to be her gold mines. The green ferns, then, represented an elaborate network of trails to transport the gold. And blue flowers represented falls, or headwaters of the Nile, where the gold would be placed on barges.

  So the gold was transported up the Nile in small amounts where it was refined and processed. This was where Conrad’s theory about the location of her palace — and lost tomb — in Meroe came into play. Arab tradition did indeed corroborate modern-day Sudan as the site of her palace. It was entirely possible that her palace was in Meroe, or at least some royal outpost, and that from there the gold was refined and smuggled up the Nile in the form of bricks or jewelry. At last it escaped Egypt by boat or caravan and arrived at the tree, which symbolized Jerusalem — all under Pharaoh’s nose.

  But it started somewhere in the Congo, Hank was sure.

  His XM maps told him there was something there. And Afghanistan had taught him a deep secret about ancient XM finds: they had a funny habit of happening in places where there was also great mineral wealth. He didn’t know why. Maybe exotic matter affected minerals. Maybe it affected anything. It was just a theory. But this find could conclusively prove it.

  A ping from his phone broke Hank’s trance. It was ADA, Niantic’s A.I. interface with a female voice.

  Leaving so soon, Hank Johnson? Where are you going? When will you return?

  Just then he noticed a reflection in his window as a passenger walked by, the young face looking down in the direction of his tablet. Hank looked up in time to catch the passenger’s backside before he slipped through the sliding glass doors into the next car of the train.

  Rosier. So he’s the tail.

  Hank liked the kid, but he was green and clumsy. Then again, ADA probably just wanted to remind him that she was watching and that Rosier was a warm body he could use in the field.

  Hank smiled and replied to her text, informing her that he would return to Niantic in a couple of weeks, give or take a few days, and would have much to report.

  Standard stuff, ADA. No worries.

  * * *

  By the time Hank’s plane from Zurich landed at the N’Djili International Airport in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he was a new man: Loud American Reality Star. “I am NOMAD!” was his mantra, and he wanted everybody to know it upon his arrival and to spread the word.

  Nothing
grants access like celebrity, he had learned long ago. Every step observed and accounted for. His cover was no cover. He was Hank Johnson, soon-to-be celebrity TV host. He had his film poster and the series’ pitch document to flash at customs. He had a column from Showbiz Buzz about his series going to pilot. Most of all, he had a crew — two Americans supplemented by locals, waiting for him at the terminal.

  Hank had been around long enough to know that media, especially Hollywood media, opens doors around the world. Everybody likes to get close to the red carpet, even if it’s thousands of miles away. His stated pursuit of lost cities conjured romance in the heads of starstruck state officials who were already spending potential tourism dollars. High officials invited him to dinner. Bureaucrats were helpful, and Hank had a stack of greenbacks from his mixed bag of murky sources for any skids that needed further greasing.

  Right now in the airport terminal he had to deal with the country’s new director of tourism, a slim and wide-eyed man by the name of Emmanuel Garamba. The bureaucrat looked excited as they reviewed arrival times for several cargo planes that would be hauling in “ancient ruins” directly from a warehouse in Los Angeles for the shoot in the jungle.

  Hank could have had his military patron General Montgomery drop the sets in by chopper, but he wanted the show. He wanted the natives to see, and to know, that the production was a fake — Hollywood magic.

  “These props will enhance my great discovery in your country, Emmanuel,” he told Garamba.

  A wide smile broke out on Garamba’s face as he nodded, clearly believing Hank’s “discovery” was a complete fraud and this was all a purely commercial transaction between his country and Hollywood. Glamour without the grunt politics of real archaeology, rare earth minerals and conflict threats.

  “The DRC welcomes you and your team, Doctor Johnson, and offers you our full cooperation in your production.”

  “The pleasure is ours,” Hank said, handing Garamba a thick envelope stuffed with American dollars. “Thank you for the permits. By the way, I’d love to get you on camera for a quick interview before we wrap.”

  Garamba practically glowed, like in his head he was already handing out government jobs for wardrobe, hair and make-up to his relatives. “It will be my pleasure.”

  “Great. Now here is where I’ll need those props delivered.” He handed Garamba a carefully marked map.

  The smile dropped from Garamba’s face.

  Hank hoped it was for all the right reasons. “Something wrong, my friend?”

  “There is a reason locals have not exploited this area,” Garamba began. “And it is not because it is a disputed tribal region. There is an ancient legend about this particular part of the jungle. There are said to be monsters.”

  “Monsters?” Hank smirked.

  Garamba chose his words carefully, as if wanting to avoid any association with the uneducated class. “Locals don’t talk about it much. But they say that it is a place of ‘bad death.’ Medieval Muslims wrote of it as the haunt of the Jinn, and Christian missionaries have reported hearing tales of demons in the region. Local officials cannot confirm the tales of people going into this jungle and never coming out.”

  The only fear Garamba betrayed was that he might have scared this rich American production away.

  “I love it!” Hank assured him, slapping the man’s slight shoulder. “This will be perfect for the show.”

  For where there be bogus monsters, Hank Johnson believed, there be real treasures too.

  CHAPTER 3

  Meroe, Sudan

  The sands of time had erased any trace of the lost palace of the Queen of Sheba. But the stars above revealed an illuminated path for Conrad Yeats to follow in his open jeep across the desert of Sudan to the Nubian pyramids of Meroe.

  Every now and then he’d glance up to check the location of the three “wise men”—the alpha stars Arcturus, Spica and Regulus — which formed a triangle framing the constellation Virgo. The “Virgin in the Sky” was a celestial map of the ancient pyramid fields on the ground, which Conrad believed were built to hide the even earlier ruins of the Queen of Sheba’s palace. And where there was once her palace, surely he’d find her tomb below, and inside her tomb the answers he had been searching for his whole life.

  For all his achievements as a “post-modern” archaeologist in academia — Conrad believed that the information ancient ruins revealed about their builders was more valuable than the ruins themselves — he was still considered something of a smash-and-grab artist in the field.

  This rap disturbed him. Especially as what he was about to do in Meroe would only confirm the worst suspicions about him.

  He pulled off the road for a minute, stuffed his pack with the Glock pistol and C4 under his seat, and then drove on.

  It was true he often went into a site alone, without a full field crew, to avoid drawing attention and to go for the kill in a single dig. That meant he wasn’t digging holes all over the world like the rest of them. Measure twice, dig once was his motto. So, in effect, he was preserving Planet Earth, if only environmentalists like Serena Serghetti would notice.

  And, yes, it was true that once he had “smashed” a find and “grabbed” all its information, he split. He didn’t take artifacts with him, and he wasn’t concerned about “credit” for a find like the university suck-ups. He certainly wasn’t up for sticking around the ruins like they were shrines, or engaging in the endless, self-justifying work of cataloging his discovery for years afterward, publishing paper after paper for research dollars. Or, worst of all, condemning grad students to his digs like chain gangs to bolster his legend.

  But what bothered him most was how the irony of it all was lost on his critics: They would have nothing to complain about without the archaeological treasures he left behind for them.

  This area of the Nile valley known as Nubia was home to three Kushite kingdoms during antiquity, the last of which was centered in the “Island of Meroe.” It was debatable as to whether or not it actually was an island in the Nile at some point, or whether it appeared that way due to its unique position between the Nile and two other rivers. It had been a thriving city of 25,000 with a great Temple of Isis, a rich gold and iron trade with India and China, and enough wealth and power to rival its northern neighbor Egypt in the ancient world.

  The real mystery was where the people of Meroe came from, and why they vanished from history.

  Nobody knew.

  All that remained of the once-great civilization were the 200-plus Nubian pyramids Conrad could now see rising along the east banks of the Nile like black heaps of rubble against the starry night.

  The sandstone block pyramids were much smaller and more sharply angled than those built in Egypt 800 years earlier. Many stood at only half their height thanks to the notorious 19th-century Italian explorer Giuseppe Ferlini who smashed the tops off 40 of them in a quest to find treasure. Despite a haul of some notable jewelry from one of the queen pyramids, however, Ferlini discovered that the graves had already been plundered in ancient times and left to the elements.

  Conrad had set off from Sudan’s capital of Khartoum as soon as his plane landed, not stopping to pick up a visitors permit for the pyramids from the Antiquities Service, but drove the whole day, the road following the railway line along the Nile, until he reached the town of Shendi, where he had turned off toward the pyramid fields.

  Now at last he arrived at the gate with only his bogus ID from the German Archaeological Institute.

  “Entrance fee,” he told the gatekeeper in German, flashing some euros.

  The gatekeeper took the money and said, “No cafes, no toilets.”

  Conrad nodded. The infrastructure was poor because tourists were in short supply here in Sudan compared to the big pyramids in Egypt. Visitors rarely topped 30 a day, if anyone bothered to show up at all.

  Which was exactly what he was counting on tonight.

  “I have my own food and drink, and plastic bags,” Conrad told
him in Arabic with a made-up German accent.

  “You should have the place to yourself,” the gatekeeper said and waved him through.

  CHAPTER 4

  Congo

  After a few days of collecting crew and gear at the site, the City of Sheba set was almost finished. It looked just the way it was supposed to: convincing and interesting to the average viewer and absolutely bogus to the scholar and analyst. Hank Johnson had learned years before that the best way to conceal any truth was to make it appear fake. The ancients were masters of deceit.

  Hank glanced over the script again in his trailer. It was exactly what he wanted. Pure reality show fare. The beginning was him presenting a theory. The middle was him “looking for the site”—drone shots mostly, along with some machete stuff through bushes. Some dark caves. A couple brushes with death. Shots of any weird creatures he’d found. Then, at the end of the first act, he would “discover” something. And no recaps. He hated the reality show recaps.

  Hank stepped out of his trailer and onto the set and smiled.

  Everything was in place. Now, to find the holy grail of adventure archaeology since H. Rider Haggard speculated on it in his novel King Solomon’s Mines:

  The legendary mines of the Queen of Sheba.

  * * *

  “We’re 500 miles from any other known stone structures of similar size and intricacy, yet there does not seem to be any evidence of a nearby civilization.”

  As he spoke Hank looked into the lens of a Sony PDW 530 news broadcast video camera. His camera assistant Dow Scott posed in front of some overgrown, fiberglass “stone” ruins. The red light of the camera signaled they were recording.

  “In short, somebody came out here in the middle of nowhere, built a wonder of the world and then vanished. Why? But before we get to that, let me tell you about how I found this, because it’s nearly as fascinating a story as the dig itself.”