Lopez's almond eyes watched Ethan for a moment.

'You're starting to sound like me,' she said. 'I don't want to hear that.'

Ethan looked up at her, one hand on his M-16, and nodded. 'Just this once,' he promised. 'There's no backup for us out here.'

'Heads up,' Bryson said, cutting the engine off as the airboat slid silently across the water toward the shore of a small island of rough sawgrass surrounded by dense tangles of mangroves. With the breeze gone, a heavy blanket of heat settled over them, clinging to Ethan's shirt as beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

Ethan eased his way toward the bow and crouched down with his M-16 held at port-arms as the boat nudged gently up against the thick, twisted mangrove roots. A heron lifted off further down the shoreline, its wings flapping as it climbed away into the distance, but the Everglades remained silent as Ethan watched the waving sawgrass before him, dense thickets of cypress trees listless in the heat.

Bryson vaulted down off the wheel seat and crouched alongside Ethan and Lopez.

'The GPS coordinates place him about a hundred-fifty yards ahead,' he whispered. 'Plenty of cover in there: he could bed down like an Alabama tick and not be seen for weeks.'

Ethan shook his head.

'He's not a soldier. Whatever Charles Purcell is up to, this must be his endgame. He's not running.'

Bryson looked at Ethan. 'So what's your plan, boy scout?'

Ethan didn't take his eyes off the sawgrass.

'Well, Captain Silver, I'm going to head straight in. Lopez, you cover my left flank. The mangroves on our right aren't passable, so nobody's going to come at us from in there.'

Lopez thought for a moment.

'Maybe, but if they already know we're coming and where from, there's not much we can do to defend our position.'

'Best hope that we got here first, then.'

Without another word, Ethan hopped off the airboat's bow and moved in a low run through the grass and into the trees. He heard Lopez jump off the boat and head out through the undergrowth to his left.

Ethan was suddenly overwhelmed by the cloying humidity of the forest as he crept forward, clouds of mosquitoes tumbling on the hot air around him as he moved from cover to cover. He kept one eye open for alligators and pythons coiled in the dense undergrowth as he blinked sweat from his eyes.

A thought occurred to Ethan. Why would Purcell have come out here into an entirely unpopulated area beyond the reach of civilization? The 'glades were notoriously difficult to access, and dangerous for the uninitiated. Purcell was an academic who was likely most comfortable in a laboratory, not suffering the hardships of survival in the wilderness. Yet he had purposely placed himself in this particular spot, as though it were somehow his destiny, his endgame in order to fulfill a prophecy of some kind.

The thought tied in closely with Purcell's supposed knowledge of the future, but the man himself had said that he would die soon. Why willingly fulfill that particular prophecy? Surely he would serve himself better by getting as far away from the Everglades as he could?

'Don't move.'

Ethan froze, and then realized that the whispered voice belonged to Lopez. He turned his head fractionally to his left and saw her crouched with her M-16 tucked into her shoulder and one eye staring like a hawk down the barrel.

'What have you got?' Ethan asked.

'Purcell,' she replied. 'I can see him. Dead ahead, thirty yards.'

Ethan squinted through the forest and slowly a human shape resolved itself before him, standing on a narrow spit of land jutting out into the water. Ethan eased his rifle up to his shoulder and looked down the scope.

Charles Purcell stood beside the edge of the shore, the stones with their message beside him on the sand, and then looked at his watch. Slowly he turned to face the forest, and for a moment Ethan was looking straight into his eyes.

Then Purcell called out.

'Come forward, Mr. Warner. It is time.'

39.

Ethan looked across at Lopez, who raised an eyebrow at him from over the barrel of her rifle and shrugged.

'Whoever else is looking for Purcell hasn't got here yet.'

Ethan got to his feet and, with Lopez following, picked his way through the dense foliage until they broke through onto a narrow beach of sand littered with rotting palm fronds. Before them, standing in dirty beige slacks and a torn white shirt, stood Charles Purcell. Even at first glance Ethan could see that the man was running on empty, his features gaunt and tired, his eyes sunken within darkened rings, and his hair in disarray.

'Charles,' Ethan greeted him cautiously.

'Mr. Warner,' Purcell said, his voice hoarse from dehydration and exhaustion, 'Miss Lopez. Glad you both made it.'

Ethan sensed that whatever Purcell had in mind he was in no state to threaten anybody physically. He lowered the M-16.

'Why are we here, Charles?' he asked.

'Because this is where the end begins,' Purcell replied. 'Everything that happens from this moment is dependent upon the two of you.'

'What do you mean?' Lopez asked. 'How can you know that? How can you see into the future?'

Purcell smiled, a bleak and heartbreaking smile that no one could ever possibly fake. Ethan realized with an unbearable certainty that he was bearing witness to something unique in history: a man who had crossed the boundary of causality and seen his own future. But Purcell's haunted eyes and terminal appearance suggested that his gift was also his curse.

'I have seen one possible future,' Purcell replied, 'and in doing so have condemned myself to follow its path.'

Ethan stepped toward Purcell but the physicist raised his hand to forestall him.

'Please don't come any closer,' he urged. 'Just stay precisely where you are and you will learn everything that you need to know.'

'We need to leave,' Ethan said. 'You're being hunted and it's possible that they know exactly where you are.'

'As did you,' Purcell replied, and glanced up into the sky above him. 'Can I ask how you actually discovered that I was here? I knew that you would come, of course, but I assumed you would arrive by aircraft.'

'Military spy satellite,' Lopez answered. 'They've adapted face-tracking software to search for fugitives and war criminals from space.'

Purcell smiled faintly. 'I'm honored.'

'We don't have time for this,' Ethan pointed out. 'We've got to get out of here.'

Purcell shook his head.

'No, Mr. Warner. You have to get out of here. I must remain.'

'Why?' Lopez asked. 'What difference does it make? You'll be safe if you come with us right now.'

Again the faint smile, as though Purcell were wistfully wishing that it were true.

'Yes, I would be safe. But then everything that I have achieved so far would have been for nothing.'

'The codes, and messages,' Ethan said. 'You left two trails.'

'One for you, designed to help you learn something of what has happened,' Purcell nodded, 'and another for the person who is hunting me down as we speak. He is a fool, albeit a dangerous one who will not stop until he finds me.'

'Why did you write that date and time on the wall of the apartment in Hallendale?' Lopez asked. 'What happens at 8:48?'

'This evening, at 8:48,' Purcell said, 'marks the end of everything and justice for my family.'

Ethan took a deep breath.

'Okay, you'd better lay down what you know for us in a real hurry.'

Charles Purcell reached down to the earth at his feet and picked up a small but chunky digital camera. He spoke slowly, his timbre conveying the gravity of his words.

'You must listen to me extremely carefully, for what I'm going to tell you will often sound impossible or go against your common sense and intuition, but trust me, every word is true.' He waved the camera in his hand. 'In this camera is a drive that contains a digital record of a series of news feeds, and thereafter images captured through the camera's own lens that extend six months into the future.'

The silence permeating the Everglades seemed to deepen around Ethan as he processed what Charles Purcell was saying.

'That camera has seen six months into the future?' Lopez asked incredulously.

'Yes,' Purcell said. 'I have seen everything that has to happen to ensure that those responsible for the murder of my family, and for many other crimes, are brought to justice.'

Ethan took a pace forward.

'Copy the drive,' he said, 'then you won't have to-'

'Freeze!' Purcell shouted, his voice causing a small flock of storks a hundred yards away to take flight, their wings flapping into the distance. 'Don't move another inch.'

Ethan looked down at the ground for any sign of buried mines or explosives, but the sand was unmarked apart from Purcell's own footprints.

'Copying the drive will be ineffectual in altering the space-time continuum,' Purcell went on. 'You must listen to what I have to say whilst there is still time.'

Ethan took a pace back from Purcell, who continued.

'The people who have pursued me, and who appear now to be hunting the two of you, work for a company called International Rescue and Infrastructure Support.'

'IRIS,' Ethan replied. 'We know all about them.'

'Not all about them,' Purcell assured him. 'Joaquin Abell has for years been filtering government and taxpayer charitable donations into the building of a complex beneath the Florida Straits. I was contracted to IRIS as a freelance consultant, working on what Joaquin claimed was a series of electromagnetic devices designed to produce an alternative source of fuel that could save humanity from the impending fossil-fuel crisis known as "peak oil".'

'What's that?' Lopez asked.

'The point where the consumption of fossil fuels totally outstrips supply,' Purcell replied. 'It will start with rising fuel costs, then economic shocks, rapid recessions, and end with the lights going out in all of the world's industrialized nations.'

'Jesus,' Lopez uttered. 'It's already happening.'

'Yes, but the project Joaquin has engineered has nothing to do with generating energy,' Purcell said.

'You had evidence,' Ethan said to Purcell, 'documents you stole from IRIS that contained proof of Joaquin's fraud. They were destroyed in an attack on a courthouse in Miami earlier today. Did you make a copy of them?'

Purcell's features hardened, a brief glimpse of the iron will that still resided within.

'I did,' he replied.

'Where is it?' Lopez asked quickly. 'If we can present it to a court as evidence, then we have a chance to bring Joaquin to trial for what he's done.'

Purcell glanced around him as though somebody was listening.

'That is a secret that I shall take to my grave,' he replied finally. 'Only time will tell.'

'That's not good enough!' Lopez snapped. 'You want this guy to go down for what he's done, then you need to start helping us!'

'Joaquin pretends that he's a philanthropist,' Ethan said, 'and right now the entire world believes that. You knew that wasn't true and you did something about it. Why? What started all of this?'

'Joaquin Abell is not a scientist and has no idea that, to me, his deception was obvious from the moment I started working for him,' Purcell explained. 'When I first visited his site I saw that the electromagnets he had built were enormous and the tokamak structure was clearly designed to contain something of immense power; but nothing that he was doing looked relevant to nuclear fusion. After a couple of years, Joaquin's lead scientist was killed in what was called a "tragic car accident" and I was offered a more permanent, on-site role.'

'What was he really building?' Ethan asked.

'Joaquin had justified his fiddling of the taxpayer's money by saying that a source of free, clean energy would repay humanity back a million times, and most of his employees were happy to believe that. But when I saw what he'd created, I knew that he had no such repayment in mind. What he was building was a device to see through time, and he'd built it purely so that he could see the future and profit from it, both financially and politically. What Joaquin has created is a black hole, here on earth, contained within a vacuum chamber surrounded by electromagnets that keep the black hole suspended in place.'

Lopez stared at Purcell for a long moment.

'I thought that black holes sucked things in and destroyed them?'

Purcell shook his head.

'No. Black holes do not suck anything in at all. They possess such enormous gravity that they wrap space, and with it time, around themselves so tightly that, once you're close enough, all paths lead to the black hole's center. Nothing, not even light, can escape. The point of no return is known as the "event horizon", and if you're stationary alongside the horizon, you would perceive time as being "twisted" along with space. Essentially, the closer you get to a black hole's event horizon, the slower time will run for you, while time beyond your perspective will appear to run faster. Joaquin's genius, if you could call it that, is to get these cameras to do the viewing for him.'

'So why doesn't he just use the thing to win the lottery?' Ethan asked.

'Because it would be too obvious,' Purcell said, 'and because Joaquin's ambitions don't stop at money. He has his eyes on changing the world, with him at its head.'

'How?' Lopez asked. 'Supposedly he's all about helping the needy.'

'That's his cover story,' Purcell replied, 'and one he intends to stick with. However, his plan is not to just wait for disasters to come along so that he can sail in and rescue the needy. His plan is to create the disasters himself, and become the savior of mankind.'

40.