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“Explain it again. To me.”
“When we were at the Jaguar Temple, they called it the power of the kem äm, the Mayan word for ‘spiderweb.’”
“And it is . . . magic?” Wright prodded.
“I don’t know,” Roth said honestly. “I can’t explain the physics of it. Maybe they can’t either. A science-fiction author coined the phrase ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’” He tapped the photo. “The kem äm can be woven into a shield and used as a barrier. It repulses force used against it, repulses it harder than the initial force. Like a baseball.”
Wright wrinkled his brow. “Say more.”
“A baseball pitcher can throw a ball around eighty-five miles per hour. A typical baseball bat speed is around seventy miles per hour. The energy of the swing combined with the energy of the pitch results in the ball traveling around a hundred miles per hour. So a bullet hitting the kem äm comes back faster than what was shot at it. It may be uncanny, but it follows the laws of physics. We can’t explain why yet, but my daughter can control it. And maybe my wife.”
Wright cocked his head slightly and smiled, that same smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I thought you were a history professor, Mr. Roth.”
“I settled on history,” Roth said. “I’ve been interested in many different subjects. Like the fact that modern engineers can’t figure out how the pyramids of Giza were actually built, or how precisely they were measured and configured. Same with the pyramids down in the Yucatán. Same with ancient ruins built on other continents as well. The structures align to the zodiac stars, to planetary orbits, to the sun and moon, even to the jiggle in the earth’s rotation.”
“Jiggle?” the director asked.
“The technical term is ‘obliquity,’ but most people don’t know that word. The Maya measured it accurately. And they were far more accurate than they should have been able to be thousands of years ago. Sorry for the digression. I can’t help myself sometimes. Now, there was no footage of Calakmul at the Bozeman airport, was there? These are your first photographs of him?”
“Indeed. We have the NSA scanning world databases to match it, but that will take time. Time we don’t have.” He paused and looked down at the photo, then back at Roth. “Everyone in that room was an FBI agent that I personally selected for this dangerous assignment. They knew that shooting him would be ineffective. Agent Sanchez has always been clear on that. But someone fired a weapon anyway out of sheer terror. Others tried using chairs as weapons, it appears, judging by the haphazard clutter in the room. Our backup detail couldn’t get in. My agents couldn’t get out. Except for one.”
Roth felt confused. “Who?”
“Every other agent I put in there is dead. But EAD Brower is missing. After the smoke cleared and the Situation Room was secured again, although I hesitate to say it will ever be secure again, we found the remains of everyone else.”
Roth met his gaze. “Why would Calakmul show up to a room full of FBI agents when he was expecting to find the president?”
“Every agent was wearing a disguise. They were impersonating the cabinet. It was a trap.”
That was a plot twist that Roth wasn’t expecting. Senator Coudron had made the call approving this mission.
“Brilliant,” Roth murmured. “You saved the president’s life.”
“Yet we continue to suffer enormous casualties every time we face even one of these people. The sniper unit in the helicopter. My section chief from Salt Lake and his team. The agents who went to your house, Mr. Roth. Agent Garcia will reveal nothing about how the kem äm works. I’m tempted to send him to Guantanamo for some unorthodox interrogation methods. I will admit to you that I’ve been very skeptical up until now. The bodies of the agents killed in the hangar at Bozeman . . . I thought it possible that a sufficiently twisted killer could make a body seem to be eviscerated by an animal. But there was no time to arrange for such a thing in the Situation Room. And from your account, added to what we’ve seen, I have to suspend my disbelief and assume everything you’ve told us is true. I lost my friend today, as well as a team of highly trained special agents, all experts in hand-to-hand combat and situational creativity. How can we take these people down if we cannot touch them?”
Roth was pleased the director wasn’t doubting anymore. Getting past a person’s natural cynicism was always the hardest part in pushing new ideas.
“As I said, my daughter can get past it,” Roth advised.
“How?” Wright asked, leaning forward intently. The smile was gone.
“When we escaped Calakmul’s resort that first day, we were lost in the jungle for a while. We stumbled onto a pyramid temple, the kind the Maya built, and when we went inside, we found crates of gold. The crates were the big black plastic ones, the kind you can get from Walmart. But they were full of treasures. My daughter grabbed a bracelet because she’d seen it glowing. I couldn’t see it. There’s a genetic component to all this, I believe. My wife’s family was originally from the Yucatán Peninsula.”
The director looked at Monica. “Where’s Suki right now?”
“We don’t know, Director. Steve Lund went to get her.”
A frown. That was the immediate reaction on hearing Lund’s name. There was more bad blood here. Personal enmity could derail any hope of cooperation.
“I hired Lund to be my—”
“I know,” Wright said, cutting him off. “So you’re telling me a seventeen-year-old girl and your wife are our biggest hope of stopping a terrorist who wants to destroy Western civilization?”
“Calakmul was impressed by her ability to use the magic,” Roth said. “So yes, that’s pretty accurate.” His insides twisted with worry, but he felt he had to mention something else. “My boys also have some sensitivity to it.”
“Oh?”
“Just yesterday, when we left the Dirksen building after meeting Senator Coudron, they saw a glyph on the exterior wall. I couldn’t see it. But they could.”
