Cosmosis , livre ebook

COSMOSIS -->
ALSO BY RAINER REY

Replicator Run
Day of the Dove
COSMOSIS
A Novel
Rainer Rey
T URNER -->
Turner Publishing Company
424 Church Street • Suite 2240 • Nashville, Tennessee 37219
445 Park Avenue • 9th Floor • New York, New York 10022
www.turnerpublishing.com
Cosmosis, A Novel
Copyright ©2014 Rainer Rey
All rights reserved. This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design: Nellys Liang
Book design: Kym Whitley
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rey, Rainer.
 Cosmosis: a novel / by Rainer Rey.
  pages; cm
 ISBN 978-1-62045-992-8 (alk. paper)
 I. Title.
 PS3568.E86C67 2014
 813’.54—dc23
            2014036434
ISBN: 978-1-62045-992-8
Printed in the United States of America
14 15 16 17 18 19 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For My Wife, Jan—and Her Love of Books
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks to Diane Gedymin, my agent, who shared my vision and who persevered in launching and sustaining my writing career. And to Ed Stackler, whose early editing and encouragement gave shape to this novel. Finally, appreciation to Christina Roth for her diligent polish to its final rendition.
COSMOSIS -->
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Near Huntsville, Alabama August 24th, 1993, 5:13 A.M.

A SEA OF FROGS SANG Arthur Kelton back to consciousness. He heard them as water trickled down his cheek.
     Sensing the chill on his abdomen, he imagined himself sprawled on ice, but the notion was swept away as he opened his eyes and found himself face down in the mud. Sheets of rain passed overhead, spattering the back of his trench coat.
     Arthur shivered. He shifted his weight, causing a rib to unhinge in his upper chest. Searing heat shot through his right shoulder. Something had shredded at the base of his neck. His collarbone had snapped and his right arm lay crumpled beneath his body.
     Then he remembered the tree falling—the skid—the sound of breaking glass.
     Biting through the pain, Arthur strained to lift his chin. He peered back at the wreck.
     In the dim morning light, the overturned Jeep loomed some twenty feet behind. Its one unbroken headlight shot an anemic beam into the woods. Steam rose from the engine compartment, and the upside-down passenger door hung open.
     Where was Carville?
     Perhaps he’d been thrown clear.
     Arthur took a deep breath to prepare to shout Carville’s name, but a sharp ache knifed through his side, and he could only mutter, “Carville, are you there?”
     No response.
     Arthur braced his left forearm in the mud but found he couldn’t rise. He had no feeling in his lower back or hips. As he flexed his thighs, his abdomen gave way. No core strength at all. Everything below his sternum felt like mush. A strange stickiness wadded his eyelashes at the corner of his right eye. He brought his left hand to his forehead. His fingers came away red. Blood gushed from a deep cut in his scalp below the hairline.
     All right, he told himself, you won’t bleed to death. You can still crawl. Then he realized it might be a good idea … he smelled gasoline.
     The Jeep’s tank had ruptured. It could blow.
     “Carville,” he croaked, wishing he had his driver’s help. The Army National Guard corporal had been assigned to transport Arthur through this stormy night.
     More fumes. He had to move. Bracing himself, he flexed one knee and instantly regretted the severe cramp that wracked his left hamstring. He straightened the leg again and used his left elbow for leverage instead. Half dragging himself, he belly crawled through the muck.
     Exhausted after three body lengths, he slumped to the crabgrass and lay still, listening to his own breathing.
     The bog was eerily quiet—just frogs, rain and trickling water. Finally a cool breeze teased his hair, swishing through the long grasses, rustling cattails near the ditch.
     Arthur arched his neck to look across the road. The hulking trunk of a great willow lay across the drenched asphalt, its twisted branches snaking into the gloom. The jeep had rounded the bend as that tangled mass of green crashed down into their headlight beams.
     Carville had no time to stop. He had shouted an obscenity, put the vehicle into a wild skid and careened onto the shoulder, where the left front tire dug into soft gravel, launching Arthur through the vehicle’s canvas roof.
     Had wind taken the tree down? It must have.
     Arthur’s gaze followed the trunk, coming to rest where the roots should have been. In the murky morning, he shuddered at what he didn’t see: no mound of fresh earth, no splintered break—instead, a glistening smoothness at the trunk’s base, as if it had been cut by a chain saw.
     Arthur pushed up on his elbow. Beyond the long grasses near the road, hulking shadows of forest—willows, some elm and bleached birch trees etched the darkness.
     Chain saw. Somebody was out there. Someone had ambushed them. Why?
     The evening’s events had been surreal. Arthur had been forced to leave the NASA Flight Control offices in Pasadena after Davenport’s manic request; after rushing onto that archaic B-52 to Birmingham, then the wild ride with Carville through Alabama’s backcountry had ensued. “Hide the negatives” Davenport had said. “Get them to Huntsville.”
     The negatives.
     Curling his left hand into the flap of his trench coat, he managed to reach under his right arm. The sealed manila envelope was still there—thoroughly wrapped and dry, though his sweat-drenched shirt certainly wasn’t.
     He lowered his head, heaving for air, trying to gather strength. He caught his breath. The frogs had stopped chirping. Something had disturbed them. Above the trickle of water in the ditch, Arthur heard a sloshing in the bog—nearer now, with the sound of tall grass being crushed. Someone was trudging through the swamp near the jeep.
     Was it Carville coming this way?
     Arthur strained to look back. “Over here.”
     No reply. Arthur saw the light, carried by a silhouette that appeared from behind the vehicle. The dark figure plodded toward Arthur.
     “Keep your head down.” It wasn’t Carville.
     “Hey. I need help.”
     “Shut up. Do what I tell you.” The hint of an accent.
     Arthur dropped his head. He looked sideways to his right as the man stepped forward on the gravel shoulder in a pair of striped pant legs and brown Italian shoes.
     “Where’s my driver?” Arthur said.
     “When did you last see him?”
     “I don’t know. I was out cold.”
     A gloved hand holding a gun pointed at Arthur’s head. “Show me your hands.”
     “I can’t move my right arm.”
     “Then roll over. Slowly.”
     Arthur put his left hand under his chest for leverage and pushed off, gasping in agony as he rolled onto his back.
     The gun’s silencer pointed at the bridge of his nose. A broad-shouldered, shaggy-haired blond man in a black raincoat glared down at him as water dripped from the man’s wide-brimmed hat.
     “Who the hell are you?” Arthur asked.
     “Where are the negatives?” The voice rang cold, like the clank of steel. He reached out with his other hand.
     Arthur was stunned. “What?”
     “You know god damned well. The Mars mission.”
     “How could you possibly—?”
     “Give them to me.” The handgun twitched. “If you please.”
     Awed by the exchange, Arthur reached inside his trench coat.
     The envelope was dry against his body warmth. He pulled it out and handed it over, looking up into the rain.
     The gloved left hand accepted it. The gun hand gestured. “Back on your stomach.”
     Arthur winced as he rolled over. Blood mixed with rain dripped off his nose into his mouth.
     Paper crinkled, and Arthur saw the glow of a flashlight illuminate the mud nearby. In Arthur’s lilliputian field of vision, tiny blades of grass sprouted vibrantly green against the darkness.
     The man grunted in frustration.
     Arthur sneaked a glance as one of the gloves was removed and the man reached into his vest, pulling out a combat knife. He severed the heavy cellophane tape at one end of the envelope. Arthur heard the prints being pulled from the folder. “I suppose you thought these shots would support your theories about Mars.”
     “What do you mean? I wasn’t allowed to examine them.”
     “Then you’re a fool. Risking your life without knowing why. Don’t look at me.”
     The light doused. Arthur strained to see as the envelope rustled, being tucked away. The knife was deposited in the man’s front vest pocket. Its steel handle was visible. Could Arthur reach it?
     “Why have you done this? Who hired you?” Arthur asked.
     No reply. One at a time, the man’s expensive-looking shoes stepped a few inches closer. The handgun dropped down next to Arthur’s face. He suddenly realized he might never go home—never see his wife again. The knife in the vest was at arm’s length. “Please don’t kill me,” Arthur said as the muzzle came to rest against his temple. It was colder than anything he’d felt in his life. “Dear God, no.” His six-year-old son could lose a father tonight. “Oh Jace,” Arthur whispered.
PRESENT DAY
St. Mark’s Cathedral Ann Arbor, Michigan

BLANCHED BY THE SEPTEMBER MOON, wispy ground fog crept through the wrought-iron fence, tucking like a blanket around the gravestones. Cold mist drifted across the cemetery grass near the rectory wall, while crickets chanted their anthem to an ebbing Indian summer.
     In the second-floor bedroom of the rectory, Father Navarro had eased into deep slumber, relaxed by the Napa Valley port his sister Inez sent from Sacramento.
     Father didn