Ajax and Cassandra, it is my dearest wish that you study with your grandfather, so you may understand how to continue our family’s honorable profession. Do not ever forget your magnificent calling, a calling that demands honor, obedience, and goodness.
I devoutly pray both of you will follow in my footsteps and become archaeologists. Also, you must study hard to understand the business of the Genesis Group. The Ark will be mine—ours—and the company will need a steady hand to lead once I’m gone: your hands.
Pray for my success. Your grandfather knows exactly where and when to strike to maximize our profits.
I must sleep now. I love you both with all my heart. Wish me luck!
Always,
Your mother
Jason folded the letter, gently placed it back in its folder. He started going through the stacks of old letters. He pulled one out from his father, a letter Alexander had written to his wife, Jason’s mother, Babette. Like Helen’s letter, he never tired of reading the words that had given him this life.
Cuba
1961
Darling Babette,
Forgive me for the shortness of my letter, but Jason and I have made a g
rand discovery. Not Atlantis, like I believed, but there is an island here, about one hundred miles north and west of our Cuban base, that is perfect—perfect!—for our experiments with Father’s Coil, and I suppose I must add Tesla’s name as well. There is a volcano, and a beach, the island is small enough to walk across in an hour.
We were sailing toward the base when our instruments went haywire. We got off course, and that’s when we found it. There is an electromagnetic signature here, coming from the center of the island itself. Jason—our brilliant young man—thinks he can harness it and use it to make the Coil stronger.
We laid claim to this small piece of land and found the most curious things—a decrepit dock and tunnels dug through the mountain. Perhaps the Russians set up a base here, trying to get weapons aimed at America, since it does have the feel of an abandoned military base. We think the electromagnetic interruptions must have been too much for their tools, and they gave up and left. We may never know who founded this place, but it is perfect for our plans. We will develop the island, bring in the necessary equipment. Jason will return to England for more schooling, but I will stay here to oversee the implementation.
Just think, a single place from which we can work. No more hiding. We will be hidden by nature itself.
Your husband,
Alexander
Jason folded this letter, as carefully as he had Helen’s. His father had died here. He himself had found him dead among the rocks on the beach one afternoon, having suffered a heart attack on his daily walk. By then, they’d built one of the most sophisticated weather-tracking stations in the world, with the beginnings of an electromagnetic field that would hide them from prying eyes. They were controlling the weather by balloon launches, but they soon bought their first satellite, and Jason took the Kohaths to the next level, developing the laser that was their bread and butter, the Coil’s most sophisticated iteration yet.
And then he had decided to stay.
No choice really. The moment his father died, it was up to Jason, the future of the Kohaths was his burden to carry. By the time he’d developed the Coil to its current incredibly powerful incarnation, he’d lost his own wife in childbirth. Diana, who’d loved Jason despite his idiosyncrasies, left him alone with a small girl babe he’d named Helen.
Helen hadn’t turned out to be a scientist—no, she was much more; she was an adventurer, more fire in her gut than even their creator, their founder, Appleton Kohath. Helen was the one who truly understood the importance of finding the Ark, of what it could bring the family, and the world. Most of all, Helen was filled with goodness. And, he remembered, smiling, she’d always loved discovering long-ago secrets buried for millennia.
The day she’d left on her first dig, Jason had moved permanently to the island and isolated himself from the world in order to protect their family’s technology, and created himself a home in the island bunker. To keep her safe, to keep the family in money, to keep the Genesis Group at the top, he sacrificed his freedom.
CHAPTER THIRTY
FBI Headquarters
26 Federal Plaza
22nd Floor, Home of Covert Eyes
New York, New York
Ben looked over his notes again, then pulled out his cell, punched in the number Louisa had given him for Melinda St. Germaine in London. Of all things, she was a member of Parliament—did Nicholas know all the muckety-mucks in England? It was a pity her mother, the biographer herself, had died. And so recently, too.
Melinda St. Germaine answered on the first ring. Lovely, no-nonsense voice, with Nicholas’s crisp enunciation. Ben smiled as he said, “Ms. St. Germaine, my colleague Agent Nicholas Drummond gave me your number. He wanted me to ask you if I could come to London to consult your mother’s papers.”
“Nicholas! He sent me a note, and his family sent lovely flowers to Mother’s funeral. And you say you want to come here to look at my mother’s papers?”