Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Page 6

Human or demon.

  At this moment, staring at what man had created, Indy doubted there was any difference.

  TEN

  HOURS LATER, Indy stood naked in a decontamination room on the military base. Four soldiers took sadistic pleasure in scrubbing him with bristled brushes, discovering creases and crevices he never knew were there. As they scoured his flesh raw, the soldiers continued an ongoing humiliating commentary on the state of his body. It was not flattering.

  So he had a few scars. Who didn’t? Each one told a story from a life lived at the shadowy edge of history. Over the past decades he’d traveled to every continent and most countries; he’d scaled high mountains and rooted through subterranean tombs; he’d survived in rainy jungles, sun-blasted deserts, and snowy tundras; he’d fought everyone from cannibals to Nazis—though of the two, he preferred the cannibals.

  But today . . .

  The bristled brushes scrubbed his skin as if trying to erase his past.

  Hours earlier, a passing helicopter had discovered Indy wandering out of the atomic blast zone, nearly delirious in the desert. Upon coming here, he had been pumped with fluids, had pints of blood drawn, and had been forced to drink some salty-tasting slurry of potassium iodide to protect his internal organs.

  Finally the brutal scrubbing ended, and a small doctor approached with a Geiger counter. He passed its wand up Indy’s front side and down his back. There were, thankfully, only a few clicks.

  “You have someone watching over you,” the doctor said.

  “Yeah. The good folks at King Cool.” Indy accepted a robe and slipped into it—gingerly. Every square inch of his skin burned; he felt as if he had been flayed alive.

  Still, he should be grateful. He was alive.

  Which didn’t seem to please the two black-suited figures who had watched his humiliation silently from across the room.

  They were two of a kind, cut from the same governmental mold, down to their polished patent-leather shoes and stern expressions. Indy had learned they were called Smith and Taylor. Apparently they didn’t have first names. At least, not ones they cared to share.

  As Indy crossed toward them, a soldier stepped through a side door into the room. He marched stiffly to Smith and passed him a slip of paper. The man read it and handed it to Taylor, who also read it, then neatly folded it into fourths and tucked it into the breast pocket of his suit.

  Both their gazes settled on Indy.

  Smith waved him to a chair next to a steel table. Though Indy would have liked to sit down, he remained standing. It was one of those sorts of situations.

  Smith spoke first. “It appears your story checks out, Dr. Jones. But I’m still mystified as to why you were in the Russians’ car in the first place.”

  Indy sighed. How many times did he have to go over this?

  “First, I was in the trunk. As I already told you, I was captured, drugged, and kidnapped from a dig in Mexico.”

  “Along with your good friend, George McHale?”

  Indy felt the wind knocked out of him. The sting of that betrayal would take years to fade. If it ever did.

  He shook his head. “I had no reason to believe Mac was a spy. He was MI6 when I was in OSS. We must have gone on twenty to thirty missions together, both in Europe and the Pacific. We even—”

  Taylor cut him off. “Don’t wave your war record in our face, Colonel Jones. We all served.”

  “No kidding? Whose side were you on?”

  Taylor glowered while Smith took over again. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of your situation. You aided and abetted a KGB operative who broke into a top-secret military installation, right in the heart of the United States of America.” He punched a thumb against his red-white-and-blue tie. “My country.”

  Indy refused to be baited. He changed the tack of the conversation. “So then what was in the steel box they took?”

  Taylor leaned a fist on the table. “Why don’t you tell us? You’ve seen it before.”

  Indy glanced between them. “You mean that air force fiasco in ’47? They tossed me in a bus with blacked-out windows—along with twenty other people who I wasn’t allowed to talk to—hauled me out to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night for some urgent recovery project, and showed me . . . what? Some piece of wreckage and an intensely magnetic shroud wrapped around—” He shook his head, still unsure. “—mutilated remains? But none of us were ever given the whole picture, and you threatened us with treason if we ever talked about it. So you tell me—what was in that damn box?”

  Taylor looked slightly shook up. “This process works best when we ask the questions, Dr. Jones.”

  Indy remembered the term Spalko had used. “Mummified remains,” he said aloud.

  It was Smith’s turn to tighten his lips, then force them to relax. “Our records don’t indicate anything of that nature was housed there,” he recounted stiffly.

  Taylor underlined the threat. “You must be confused, Dr. Jones.” He stressed the word confused with all the weight of the US government, hinting at the threat of great bodily harm if he should be contradicted.

  Smith nodded. “The only thing that facility stores is replacement parts for B-series aircraft. Nothing more.”

  Indy opened his mouth to argue—but he was saved as the door behind the two suits banged open. A barrel-chested man strode through. His face reminded Indy of a bulldog looking for a fight. He wore an army uniform with two bright stars adorning his epaulets. The general was a big man with a bigger voice.

  “General Ross,” Smith said, straightening swiftly.

  The suit was ignored. The general crossed to Indy.

  “Thank God, Indy! Don’t you know how dangerous it is to climb inside a refrigerator? Those things are death traps!”

  His words were followed by a belly laugh, ripe with good humor.

  Indy grinned. It seemed like years since he had last smiled. Still, the expression quickly faded, weighed down by his exhaustion and his exasperation at the situation.

  He shook the general’s hand. “Good to see you, too, Bob.”

  “Sir—” Smith interrupted.

  General Ross turned to the two suits. “At ease, boys. I’ll vouch for Dr. Jones.”

  Indy finally sank into the offered chair. “Bob, what the hell’s going on? KGB on US soil? Who was that woman?”

  “What woman?” Taylor asked and flipped out a pad. “Describe her.”

  Indy glanced from Taylor to General Ross. His friend nodded. “Go ahead, Indy. What did she look like?”

  “She was tall, thin, midthirties. She carried some kind of sword—a rapier, I think.” He rubbed at his throat. “Knew how to use it, too.”

  Smith and Taylor shared a look—clearly, they recognized the description. With the barest nod from Smith, Taylor quickly exited the room.

  General Ross swung to Smith, amazement in his voice. “Sounds like Irina Spalko.”

  Smith opened his briefcase on the table and produced a thick file. The topmost sheet was a surveillance photo. He slid it over to Indy. Though she was younger and wore a Russian uniform in the photo, it was the same cold woman.

  “Yeah, that’s her,” Indy confirmed.

  Through an observation window in back, Indy spotted Taylor in a neighboring office. The suit picked up a phone and turned away.

  “You’re sure she’s here?” Smith asked, drawing Indy’s attention back to the questioning.

  “Here and gone, I imagine. Why? Who is she?”

  Smith returned the photograph to his file, and the file to his briefcase. As answer, he snapped his case closed.

  General Ross was not as reticent. “She was Stalin’s fair-haired girl. His favorite scientist—if you can call psychic research science.”

  Smith frowned. “General Ross,” he said warningly.

  “She’s leading teams from the Kremlin all over the world, scooping up artifacts she thinks have paranormal military applications. She’s—”

  “General R
oss . . . sir! I must insist.”

  A glare answered him, but this time Smith did not back down. “You can vouch for Dr. Jones, sir—but who can vouch for you?”

  General Ross faced Smith. “Back off, Paul.”

  So Smith did have a first name.

  The general continued, “Not everyone in the army is a Commie. And certainly not Indy.”

  Indy was familiar with the witch hunts being run across all levels of government and the military, led by a certain Wisconsin senator, Joseph McCarthy. Especially following the deaths of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed for passing nuclear secrets to the Russians. Since then, hearings and trials had spread beyond Washington and crossed the country, reaching even Hollywood.

  He sat straighter, understanding the tack of the accusations but not the details. “By the way, what exactly am I being charged with, other than surviving a nuclear bomb?”

  Through the rear window, he noted that Taylor had hung up the phone. A moment later the suit returned to the room.

  Smith answered Indy’s question. “No charges yet, Dr. Jones. But frankly, your close association with George McHale calls into question all your activities, including those during the war.”

  General Ross’s face turned a threatening shade of red. “Are you nuts? Do you know how many medals this son of a bitch won?”

  “A great many, I’m sure. But does he deserve them?”

  Taylor interrupted the start of another angry outburst from General Ross. “Dr. Jones, let’s just say for now that you are a person of interest to the Bureau.”

  Smith nodded. “Of great interest.”

  Indy could not believe his loyalty was being questioned. Righteous indignation and cold disbelief warred inside him. How many of those freshly scrubbed scars had been earned protecting this country?

  “Look,” he said, sputtering, “you got any doubts about me, call Congressman Freleng. Or Abe Portman in army intel. Hell, ask anybody! I’ve got friends throughout Washington.”

  Taylor crossed his arms, his threat plain in his next words. “I think, Professor, you’ll find you might be wrong about that.”

  ELEVEN

  THREE HUNDRED MILES AWAY Irina Spalko stepped into the operating room at a private research facility. She wore blue hospital scrubs, and her face was half hidden by a surgical mask. Her hands were already gloved in latex.

  The patient lay on a stainless-steel table. Her assistant, an expert in anatomy flown in from East Berlin, already waited there. A trio of bright lights, the size of garbage can lids, hovered over the surgical table.

  The room was otherwise unoccupied.

  No anesthesiologists or nurses were necessary.

  Not for this patient.

  The only other people in the room were three older men in suits, uniformly gray, uniformly stoic and stony-faced. They wore surgical masks and stood with their arms behind their backs.

  Though they wore no name tags and their passports spoke of nationalities in France, Brazil, and Italy, Spalko knew them to be representatives of high-ranking members of the Soviet Politburo, known now as the Presidium. She knew they wielded the true power in Moscow.

  With a nod to the men, she crossed to the table.

  The New Mexico specimen recovered from the Nevada hangar had been carefully disinterred from the metal coffin. It lay on the table, wrapped in its metal cocoon. They had already attempted to x-ray it, but nothing had showed up.

  “Are you ready?” the anatomist asked in German.

  “Ja.”

  She had waited years for this chance.

  The anatomist reached to a movie camera on a tall tripod and switched it on. Together the two carefully peeled and shed the outer layers of the metallic, silvery cocoon. The strange material fell away easily, but once discarded it returned to its original shape.

  They carefully packed each sheet away for further study.

  The last silvery layer was extracted with even more care. The movie camera buzzed behind Spalko, but the pounding of her heart drowned out almost everything else. She caught a whiff of something indefinable as the last layer was lifted. An organic mix of orange spice, licorice, and a deep musky earthiness. Yet she also caught a whiff of something electric, something metallic, like a fuse box that had short-circuited.

  As they freed the last layer of wrapping, the shape slowly revealed itself.

  Her fingers hovered over its small form, its spindly arms and swollen knees, its large ovoid eyes and smooth, pale grayish skin. The anatomist took coundess measurements. Spalko concentrated on the head. She noted the elongated cranium, the small mouth and slitted nostrils.

  After a full hour, the anatomist nodded to her and picked up a scalpel.

  Spalko’s body shuddered—not in revulsion, but in anticipation.

  She picked up another scalpel.

  Over the next six hours they performed a slow and meticulous dissection. With as much care as they had used peeling away the silvery wrappings, they dissected the body layer by layer. Measurements were taken, samples were collected; each discard was preserved in formaldehyde. Finally they were left with only the skeleton: skull, tiny rib cage, pelvis, arm and leg bones.

  Spalko stepped back in awe.

  The lights shone down upon the wondrous sight.

  The entire skeleton was made of crystal, translucent and glowing in the bright surgical lights. The bones cast an iridescent rainbow of fractals and reflections. The strange light sang of places beyond this world, beyond normal comprehension.

  Spalko circled the table, once, twice, three times.

  She soaked it all in.

  Motion behind her finally drew her eye.

  She had all but forgotten the presence of the three Soviet representatives. They remained expressionless, if perhaps a bit brighter-eyed. Each spoke to her as they moved toward the exit, the matter settled in their minds.

  “Do what must be done,” the first one said.

  “Let no one stop you,” said the second.

  The last man’s words sounded like a threat. “Do not fail.”

  As they filed out, Spalko returned to the wonder on the table.

  Her mind spun on the possibilities, the potentials—but she knew one certainty above all else.

  She would not fail.

  TWELVE

  Marshall College, three weeks later

  INDY STRODE PAST THE BLACKBOARD, its surface chalked with Celtic glyphs and ciphers. The desk at the front of the classroom was piled with archaeological artifacts from Northern Europe, borrowed from both the university museum and his own personal collection: rune stones, crude hand axes, knives scrolled in Celtic symbols, a Viking shield, bits of silver jewelry, and larger pieces of pottery.

  On the far side of the cluttered desk, rows of college sophomores tracked Indy’s movements as if at a tennis match. Back and forth, he paced as he lectured, dressed in a tweed jacket, patches on the elbows, and sporting black-framed eyeglasses.

  Gone native, as his old friend and former Marshall College dean, Marcus Brody, used to quip before he died. Assuming full academic regalia to fit in with the local tenured tribe.

  But some things Indy couldn’t mask so easily.

  He limped his way to the other side of the room. He’d only been back three weeks. While the bruises on his face were mostly faded, he was far from recovered. He raised his pointer—hiding a wince from his strained shoulder—and tapped a series of photographs tacked up along the board. They depicted the Neolithic ruins of Skara Brae set among the rolling green hills of Orkney, against a backdrop of the Bay of Skaill.

  “—along with the use of Grooved Ware and the beginnings of modern drainage, which we also see in Skara Brae, on the west coast of Scotland. Skara Brae dates back to 3100 BC and was occupied for about six hundred years until its apparent abandonment in 2500 BC. Like many lost civilizations, there’s no solid evidence as to why—”

  As he turned, Indy spotted a newcomer to the class. The older man—balding, gray-haired, wit
h an air of dignity—had slipped silently into the room. He stood stiffly at the back of the class in a pressed herringbone suit that was currently about two decades out of fashion.

  Dean Charles Stanforth.

  Indy stumbled a bit at his presence. Something was wrong. Only dire circumstances drew the dean from his lofty mahogany-paneled tower.

  With the barest nod, Stanforth acknowledged Indy. The man’s eyes flicked toward the door in a silent request to interrupt the class and attend to a private talk out in the hall.

  Indy laid his pointer on the lip of the chalkboard. “Let’s stop there for a moment,” he told his class. “Open up Michaelson, chapter four. We’ll discuss emigration versus exodus when I get back.”

  Stanforth headed out into the hall. Amid a bit of grumbling from his students, Indy followed and joined the dean in the empty stone hallway. Arched windows on the far side framed a handsome campus: manicured lawns, ivy-covered gables, and a banner announcing the upcoming homecoming game.

  Stanforth, ever formal, shook his hand as they met. “Henry.”

  It took Indy a moment to realize the dean was referring to him. To Stanforth, he was never Indiana. Stanforth always referred to Indy by the name stenciled on his office door: PROFFESSOR HENRY JONES JR.

  “I have some rather disturbing news,” the dean continued. “The FBI showed up this morning. They ransacked your office, searched your files, and—”

  “Wait!” Indy stepped back and lifted an arm. “What?” His voice was louder than he intended.

  “They came with search warrants and federal identification.”

  “But you’re the dean of the school. Why didn’t you stop them? They had no right.”

  Stanforth lifted a sharp eyebrow. “They had every right. You know that. Besides, the college is not going to let itself get embroiled in that kind of controversy, not in this political climate.”

  Indy scowled. What a bunch of spineless bureaucrats. The old dean, Marcus Brody, would never have sat idle while a tenured professor’s office was violated.

  “And I’m afraid the news gets worse,” Stanforth said.