The Sign

by Raymond Khoury

  He would have much preferred not to kill the producer. The risk of detection was high. Equally dangerous was the risk of disrupting a plan that had been working smoothly up until then. The news team had done everything that had been expected of them. They couldn’t have done a better job had they been a covert unit themselves. Finch’s death had disrupted that. They worked well as a team. They saw things and reacted the way they had been expected to. They were professionals, and professionals who knew what they were doing could be counted on to follow a well-thought-out methodology—and to listen to reason and act accordingly. Finch had been an integral part of that. With him gone, a new door had been opened. One that led down an untried path. Someone else would have to replace him. A new producer. A hardhead who might not be as easy to steer as Finch had been.

  Still, he’d had no choice. There was no way out of it. He knew Finch wouldn’t have bought into anything he could have come up with to explain his having a satphone, much less one that was encryption-module equipped.

  He turned and glanced at Gracie. She was now sitting alone, her shoulders slightly hunched, looking out her window. He knew she wouldn’t bow out because of Finch’s death. She was a pro too. And like all pros, she had drive. Ambition. And the cold, rational ability to compartmentalize tragedies like her producer’s death and carry on.

  Which was good.

  She still had a role to play. An important one.

  HALF AN HOUR after the Gulfstream had taken off from the airport at Alexandria, another aircraft had followed it into the sky and was now shadowing it, a couple of hundred miles back, headed in the same general westerly direction.

  The plane, a chartered Boeing 737, was a much larger, and older, aircraft. It had enjoyed stints with various airlines over its twenty-six years of service, though none were as unusual as the one it was undertaking today.

  The jet’s hold carried a highly covetable selection of state-of-the-art technology. It included a long range acoustic device, canisters of nanoengineered smart dust, and ultra-silent compressed air launchers. Also stowed there was some decidedly less sophisticated, but equally effective, gear: sniper rifles, silencer-equipped handguns, tactical knives, camouflage gear. The jet’s cabin held a load that was no less exceptional: seven men whose actions had entranced the world. Six of them were highly trained professionals: a three-man team that had spent over a year in the desert, another that had endured extreme weather all over the globe. The seventh was an outlier. He wasn’t highly trained, nor did he share their sense of purpose.

  Danny Sherwood was only there out of fear.

  He’d been their prisoner for close to two years. Two years of tinkering, of testing and double-testing, of waiting. Two years of worrying, of coming up with devious, complicated plans of escape, of fantasizing about them, of ditching them. And then, finally, it had begun. It was why they’d kept him alive. It was why they needed him. And now it was in play.

  He didn’t know what their plans were or how it would all end. He’d heard snippets of talk. He thought he knew what they were up to, but he wasn’t sure. He’d thought of sabotaging it, of screwing up their plans, of re-jigging the software so that a giant Coca-Cola or Red Sox sign appeared instead of the mystical sign they had designed. But he knew they were keeping a close eye on his work, knew they’d probably figure out what he was up to before he got a chance to use it. He also knew that if he tried it, it would mean a death sentence for him, and, probably, for Matt and for their parents. And so he thought about it, he mulled it over and dreamed of it and enjoyed the brief satisfaction it gave him to imagine it, but he knew he’d never go through with it. He wasn’t a fighter. He wasn’t a tough guy.

  If they’d taken Matt, he knew things would have been different. But Matt wasn’t there. He was.

  He sometimes wished his survival instincts hadn’t kicked in just as the Jeep was launching itself off the canyon’s edge. Wished his hand hadn’t lunged out and pushed that door open. Wished he hadn’t leapt out of the Jeep just as its front wheels ran out of ground. Wished he hadn’t ended up clinging to life at the very edge of the abyss, staring up at the circling bird of prey that was about to land and take him away.

  But he had. And he was here, now, shackled to his seat, headed for another corner of the planet, wondering when his nightmare would ever end.

  Chapter 60

  Framingham, Massachusetts

  The hamburgers were big and juicy and grilled just right, the buns soft but not crumbly, the coleslaw freshly cut and crunchy, the fries thick, crisp on the outside and the right side of mushy on the inside, the Cokes—in glass bottles, not cans—nicely chilled and served in tall, curvy glasses filled with ice cubes that weren’t in a rush to melt. It was the perfect meal for Matt and Jabba, given their day—a solid, comfortable meal, a reassuring meal, the kind of meal that dragged one’s mind away from troubled times and pulled it back to better days, a meal that drew one into its own comfy world with its hearty offerings and put all thoughts of heavy conversation on indefinite hold.

  They sat facing each other in a booth in a small diner in Framingham, about fifteen miles west of Brookline. It was far enough, and busy enough, for them to feel relatively safe. They’d polished off a burger each and hadn’t spoken more than ten words throughout. A lot had happened. It had been a charged day, a bad day right on the heels of another bad day. They’d seen a guy get crushed in half, another get his legs mangled up by a Japanese import. Bullets had whizzed by inches from their faces. Matt had shot several guys, possibly—probably—killing one or more of them, which was not something he’d done before. Not even close.

  Thinking about it, revisiting those images in his mind’s eye, he found it hard to accept it had all really happened. That he’d done all that. He didn’t recognize himself. It all felt surreal, like he’d been on the outside, watching it. But it all became real again once he focused on the overwhelmingly good thing that had trumped everything else that had happened: the discovery that his kid brother was still very much alive.

  They sat in silence. A small, wall-mounted TV over the cash register was set low. It was on a local channel and had been screening a rerun of an old Simpsons episode, one Jabba knew by heart and one Matt couldn’t have been less interested in. The end credits eventually gave way to some staggeringly unimaginative ads before segueing into the evening news, starting with the latest update from Egypt. It brought reality roaring back into Matt’s face in a flash.

  The volume was too low for him to hear what was being said, but even before the waitress turned it up, the visuals themselves were deafening enough. A loud banner on the bottom of the screen informed them that Father Jerome hadn’t been seen since the sign had appeared over him earlier that day. Another added that unconfirmed reports had said that he had actually left the monastery for destinations unknown. Reporters and pundits around the world were scrambling to figure out where he was and where he could have gone to. They wondered about whether he might be headed to Jerusalem, or the Vatican, or back home to Spain.

  Elsewhere, gargantuan crowds were still massed in St. Peter’s Square, in São Paulo, and in many more cities now, holding vigils and praying. The world was holding its breath, waiting for Father Jerome’s next appearance. Pockets of violence had cropped up in Pakistan, in Israel, and in Egypt, where men and women of all religions who had taken to the streets to proclaim their faith in Father Jerome had clashed with mobs of unswayed and unwavering believers who were sticking to the rigid tenets of their holy books. Riot police had been deployed, cars and shops had been set alight, and in each case, there had been deaths.

  Matt stared at the screen for a moment, then finally said, “Wherever that priest’s going, that’s where we’ll find Danny.”

  “You want to go to Egypt?”

  Matt shrugged. “If he’s still there, hell yeah.”

  Jabba’s shoulders sagged. He took one last bite and pushed his plate off to the side of the table. Wiped his mouth and cast a glance acro
ss the diner, then turned his attention back to Matt. Their fates were now intertwined, there was no escaping that. And though he hardly knew the man, he’d seen enough of him to recognize that look—a distant, frowning look that indicated something was bothering him, some kind of itch he needed to scratch. Jabba studied him for a beat, then prompted him by asking, “What is it, dude?”

  Matt nodded his head a fraction, to himself, wheels visibly spinning in his mind. After a moment, he said, “We need Rydell. They screwed him over. They’ve got his daughter. Right now, he’s real angry. Which makes me think he could help us get Danny back.”

  “Not as long as they’ve got his daughter,” Jabba reminded him.

  “Maybe we can change that.”

  “Dude, come on,” Jabba protested.

  “She’s got herself caught up in this thing just like we have,” Matt argued. “Through no fault of her own. You think this is going to end well for her? You think her dad’s gonna kiss and make up with these guys? They’re hanging onto her to get him to play nice. Once they’re done, they’re not going to let them live.”

  Jabba gave him a look.

  Matt just batted it back. “You like the idea of Maddox and his storm-troopers keeping her locked up somewhere?”

  Jabba smiled despite himself and said, “Look, just because you throw in a Star Wars reference doesn’t mean—”

  “Seriously,” Matt interrupted. “We need to do this. Besides, maybe that’s where they’ve been keeping Danny too.”

  Jabba tilted his head at him, dubiously. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Not really,” Matt conceded. Then he gave Jabba a slight grin. “What, you got something better to do?”

  Jabba shook his head in defeat. “Even if I did, this is bound to be so much more fun.”

  JUST OVER THREE HOURS LATER, Maddox took the second call that night from his contact at the NSA.

  “I just got another hit,” the man from Fort Meade told the Bullet. “Very brief. Under twenty seconds.”

  “They know we’re trying to track them.”

  “For sure. They’re being very careful. But not careful enough.”

  “Location?”

  “Same place,” the caller told him. The GPS lock had placed Jabba’s iPhone on a busy little commercial strip leading out of Framingham.

  “Okay. Keep me posted. In real time. We’re in progress.”

  Maddox hung up and hit a speed-dial key. The man on the other end picked up the line before it had completed its first ring.

  “How far are you?” he asked.

  “Should be there in less than ten,” the operative replied.

  “Okay,” Maddox said. “We just got another lock. Same location. They’re probably in a hotel or a motel on that block. Let me know what you find.”

  Chapter 61

  Boston, Massachusetts

  The presidential suite on the sixth floor of the Four Seasons was as comfortable as it got in the city, or pretty much anywhere else in the world, but as far as Rydell was concerned, he could just as easily have been sitting in a cramped motel room with a coin-operated vibrating bed that didn’t work. His mind wasn’t registering his surroundings right now. It was elsewhere, stranded on a totally different plane. Grappling with a new reality.

  He’d returned to his house after getting away from Matt. It had been swarming with cops and armed response guys—and Maddox. He’d managed Rydell into giving the cops a bullshit story about an attempted kidnapping. Rydell had told them he didn’t know who was behind it, saying the men had worn balaclavas. He told them he’d managed to escape from his captors when they’d tried to transfer him from the garbage truck to another car and hadn’t operated the compactor properly. He’d left it at that and, wanting to avoid the inevitable paparazzi onslaught, had checked into the Four Seasons. His lawyers could deal with the rest.

  Maddox had arranged to have two of his men stationed outside the suite. That angered Rydell, but there was nothing he could do about it. Not as long as they had his daughter. And ever since, he’d been busy reliving his meeting with Drucker, Matt’s intrusion, and grinding over what the two men had said.

  If they haven’t killed you yet, it means they also need you for something, Matt had told him. Which rang true. Worryingly true. But what did they need him for? When Rydell had threatened Drucker and told him they couldn’t do it without him, Drucker had agreed. But that wasn’t true. Not really. Rydell had left there believing his own bluff. With a rising dread, he now realized that actually, they could. And were. They had the technology. They knew where the smart dust was being manufactured and stockpiled. They could easily secure the facility. They had Danny.

  They didn’t need him to make it happen. Not anymore.

  And yet they hadn’t gotten Maddox to pump a couple of bullets into him.

  The realization pulled his doubts regarding what Drucker had in mind back into focus. They’d gone into this together, brothers-in-arms, united for a worthy cause. Was that still the case? It suddenly dawned on him that maybe they weren’t after the same thing anymore. Maybe the others were after something else. And in the process, they’d created a messenger that transcended the message. That dwarfed it and buried it in its shadow. The media’s shifting focus confirmed his fears.

  The story wasn’t about God’s warning anymore. It was about His messenger.

  Drucker wouldn’t make such a mistake. Unless he had a different message in mind.

  Think of what we can make people do, Drucker had said. The phrase reverberated inside Rydell’s head again.

  A final thought confirmed his worst fears. Again, it was born out of something Matt had said.

  Me, I’d take it as a definite sign that you guys are now enemies. That’s what he’d said. And it suddenly dawned on Rydell that Matt was right. There was no way this was ending well. Not for him. Nor for his ill-fated alliance with those bastards. They had Rebecca. There was no point in glossing over it. In pretending that it was a temporary difference of opinion. There was no going back from that. No way to salvage it. It was over.

  They were the enemy.

  His cell phone rang. It was Drucker. It didn’t take long for him to voice the main question.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “All he wanted to know was what happened to his brother,” Rydell said vaguely.

  “And?”

  “I told him I thought he was still alive. I told him I didn’t know where he is. Then I ran.”

  Drucker went silent. After a moment, he said, “Nothing else?”

  “Don’t worry, he doesn’t care what you’re up to,” he lied. “He doesn’t know about you, for that matter, although maybe I should have mentioned it.”

  “Wouldn’t have been ideal for Rebecca,” Drucker reminded him coldly. He paused, clearly putting the news through its paces, then said, “All right. Stay at the hotel and avoid the press as much as you can. We might have to find you somewhere more discreet to stay until you can move back into the house.”

  Rydell hung up and thought about Rebecca again. Matt’s words rang through his mind.

  He was right. They were enemies now.

  And maybe Matt was the only one he could turn to in order to do something about it.

  Chapter 62

  Skies over the eastern Mediterranean

  The sea stretched out as far as Gracie could see, a cobalt-blue quilt snugly tucked in around the very edge of the planet. Up ahead and to the left, the sun was teasing the horizon. She leaned forward, right against the glass, and drank in the tranquil view. Although she hopped on planes as often as people took the subway, looking out from an aircraft at high altitude never failed to instill a sense of wonder in her. It was an almost mystical experience—looking out at the planet, the clouds, the sun, the infinite expanse of space beyond what she could see. She never tired of it. She’d normally just sit there and stare out and let her mind wander in all kinds of directions, enjoying that fleeting moment of bliss
ful isolation before getting pulled back into the land of the living by some intrusion.

  This time, the intruder was a question, voiced in the dulcet tone of Father Jerome. “How are you feeling?”

  She looked up at him. It felt surreal. To be there, talking to him. After what she’d witnessed. When she wasn’t sure what he really was.

  She managed a partial smile and a soft shrug. “Frankly . . . a bit lost. Which is not a feeling I’m used to.”

  “You’ve been lucky,” he commented. He looked uncomfortable, slightly stooped in the cabin despite the fact that its ceiling was an inch or two over six feet high and he wasn’t a tall man.

  Gracie noticed. She gestured at Dalton’s empty seat. “Please. Won’t you join me?”

  He nodded, and as he sat down, Dalton came back from the galley.

  “I’m sorry, I’m in your seat,” the priest apologized.

  “No, that’s fine,” Dalton replied breezily as he handed Gracie another coffee. “I need to talk to the pilot anyway. Find out what the plan is.” He glanced back at Gracie to make sure she was okay with that, then moved forward toward the cockpit.