F Paul Wilson - Novel 03

by Virgin (as Mary Elizabeth Murphy) (v2. 1)

  "Why? What for?"

  "It might give us an edge to be in uniform."

  Jerusalem

  Kesev had come to the end of his patience. He was about ready to explode with frustration and start breaking some Hilton property when he saw someone gesturing to him from the Eldan desk.

  Chaya had gone home. Sharon, a brittle-looking peroxide blonde, had replaced her. She was waving a bony arm over her head.

  "We found them!" she said, grinning as he approached.

  Kesev's heart leapt. He wanted to take her in his arms and dance her around the lobby. Perhaps God had not deserted him after all. Perhaps this was just a warning.

  "When? Where?"

  "They turned their rental into one of our Tel Aviv locations just a few moments ago."

  "Which one?"

  "Ben Gurion."

  Kesev went cold. The airport! Merciful God, they're leaving the country!

  He wheeled and ran for the door.

  "Where are you going?" Sharon called out behind him. "You can call from here. They said they'd be there awhile and you could page them!"

  Page them? Kesev groaned as the meaning of her words sank in. The Ben Gurion desk must have blabbered that someone was looking for them. They'd probably be long gone by the time he got there.

  Ben Gurion Airport

  Kesev was sure he made the fifty kilometers to Ben Gurion in record time. For once luck was on his side. The airport was designated Tel Aviv but actually it was in Lod, just east of the city. If he'd had to fight city traffic, he'd still be in his car. But he wasn't looking for a racing medal. He wanted the Ferrises. He flashed his ID at the El Al ticket desk and had them run a computer search for a couple by that name. They found a single. Carolyn Ferris. On a one-way to Heathrow. Seat 12C, non-smoking. Boarding now. Gate 17.

  A single. He was looking for a couple. But this Carolyn was the only Ferris he had. And if he didn't check her out right now, she'd be gone. Kesev ran for Gate 17.

  He wasn't armed so he had no problem with the metal detectors and his Shin Bet ID got him to the boarding area without a ticket. But along the way he picked up a friend: Sergeant Yussl Kuttner of airport security.

  The last thing Kesev wanted at this point was someone looking over his shoulder, but he had no choice. Anything that deviated from normal airport routine was Kuttner's business, and allowing an unticketed man onto an El Al plane, even if he was Shin Bet, was certainly not routine. Kuttner was armed and he wasn't letting Kesev out of his sight.

  "Just what is this passenger suspected of, Mr. Kesev?" Kuttner said, puffing as he trotted beside Kesev.

  "The home office didn't have time to fill me in on all the details," Kesev said, improvising. "All I know is that an archeological artifact has been stolen and that the thieves will be trying to smuggle it out of the country."

  "And Shin Bet believes this passenger in twelve C is involved?"

  "We don't know. We do know one of the suspects is named Ferris. That's why I need to speak to her. You really don't have to bother yourself."

  "Quite all right. Besides, if you want to remove her from the plane, you'll need me."

  Kesev clenched his jaws. This was getting stickier and stickier. If only he'd had more time to set this up.

  Kuttner led him down the boarding ramp to the loaded plane and explained the situation to the stewardesses while Kesev moved down the aisle, looking for row 12.

  He froze, staring. The right half of row 12 held only one passenger. Seats A and B were empty. Seat C was occupied by a nun. A young, pretty nun. Almost too pretty to be a nun. That gave him heart.

  "Excuse me, Sister," he said, leaning forward. "Is your name Ferris?"

  "Why, yes," she said, smiling. She had a wonderful smile. And such guileless blue eyes. "Sister Carolyn Ferris. Is something wrong?"

  What to say? There was no time to ease into this, so he might as well throw it in her face and see how she reacts.

  He flashed his Shin Bet ID and kept his voice low. "You're wanted for questioning in regard to the theft of an archeological treasure that belongs to the Israeli government."

  She reacted with a dumbfounded expression.

  "What? Are you mad? Just what sort of treasure am I supposed to have stolen?"

  "You know exactly what it is, Sister. It doesn't belong to you. Please give it back."

  "Does it belong to you?"

  The question took Kesev completely by surprise. And she was staring at him, her narrowed eyes boring into his, as if seeing something there.

  "No . . . no . . . it belongs to—"

  "Who are you?" she said.

  "I told you. Kesev, with—"

  "No. That's not true." Her eyes widened now, as if she were suddenly afraid of him. "You're not who you say you are. You're someone else. Who are you—really?"

  Now it was Kesev's turn to be dumbfounded. How did she know? How could she know?

  Reflexively he backed away from her. Who was this woman?

  "Excuse me, Sister," said another voice. "Is this man bothering you?"

  Kesev looked up to see a tall priest rising from an aisle seat a few rows back, glaring down at him as he approached.

  "The poor man seems deranged," Sister Carolyn said.

  The priest reached above the nun's seat and pressed the call button for the stewardess. "I'll have him removed."

  Kesev backed away. "Sorry. My mistake."

  The last thing he wanted was a scene. He had no official capacity here and no logical reason he could give his superiors for pulling this woman off the plane.

  Besides, he was looking for a man and a woman, not a nun. Especially not that nun. Something about her, something ethereal . . . the way she'd looked at him . . . looked through him.

  She'd looked at him and she knew. She knew!

  He staggered forward through a cloud of confusion. What was happening? Everything had been fine until that damn SCUD had crashed near the Resting Place. Since then it had been one thing after another, chipping at the foundations of his carefully reconstructed life, until today's cataclysm.

  Kuttner looked at him questioningly as he reached the front of the cabin.

  "Not her," Kesev said. "But I want to check the cargo hold."

  The head stewardess groaned and Kuttner said, "I don't know about that."

  "It will only take a minute or two. The object in question is at least a meter and a half in length. It can't be in a suitcase. I just want to check out the larger parcels."

  Kuttner shrugged resignedly. "All right. But let's get to it."

  Dan quietly slipped into 12A. His boarding pass had him in 15D—they'd decided it was best not to sit together—but Carrie had this half of row 12 to herself so he joined her. But not too close.

  When no one was looking he reached across the empty seat and grabbed her hand. It was cold, sweaty, trembling.

  "You were great," he whispered.

  She'd been more than great, she'd been wonderful. When he'd seen that little bearded rooster of a Shin Bet man stalk down the aisle, he'd prayed for strength in the imminent confrontation. But he'd stopped at Carrie's seat, not Dan's. And then Dan had cursed himself for not realizing that their pursuer would be looking for someone named Ferris. But Carrie had stood up to that Shin Bet man, kept her cool, and faced him down. Dan had only stepped in to add the coup de grace.

  "I don't feel great," she said. "I feel sick."

  "What did you say to him at the end?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, he hadn't seemed too sure of himself in the first place, but—"

  Carrie's smile was wan but real. "We can thank your idea of getting into uniform for that."

  "Sure, but you said something and all the color went out of him."

  "I asked him who he really was. As he was speaking to me I had the strangest feeling about him, that he was an impostor—or maybe that isn't the right word. I think he's truly from their domestic intelligence, whatever it's called, but he's also someo
ne else. And he's hiding that someone else."

  "Whatever it is, I'd say you struck a nerve."

  "I didn't really have a choice. I just knew right then that I was very afraid of the person he was hiding."

  "So am I, though probably not for the same reason. Damn, I wish we'd get moving. What's the holdup?"

  Dan looked past Carrie through the window at the lights of the airport and wondered what Mr. Kesev was up to now. He wouldn't feel safe until they were in the air and over the Mediterranean.

  "And yet," Carrie said softly, "there's something terribly sad about him. He said something that shocked me."

  "What?"

  "He said 'please.' He said, 'Please give it back.' Isn't that strange?"

  Kesev stood at one of the panoramic windows in the main terminal and watched the plane roar into the sky toward London.

  Nothing.

  He'd found nothing in the cargo hold or baggage compartment large enough to contain the Mother.

  That gave him hope, at least, that the Mother was still in Israel. And if she was still here, he could find her

  But where was she? Where?

  He trembled at the thought of what might happen if she were not safely returned to the Resting Place.

  15

  The Greenbriar—Off Crete

  Second mate Dennis Maguire was rounding the port side of the superstructure amidships when he saw her.

  At least it seemed to be a her. He couldn't be sure in the downpour. The figure stood a good fifty feet away in the center of the aft hold's hatch, wrapped head to toe in some sort of blanket, completely unmindful of the driving rain as she stared aftward. He couldn't make out any features in the dimness, but something in his gut knew he was looking at a she.

  They'd run into the squall shortly after dark the first night out of Haifa. Maguire was running a topside check to make double sure everything was secure. A sturdy little tramp, the Greenbriar was, with a 200-foot keel and thirty feet abeam, she could haul good cargo in her two holds, and haul it fast. But any storm, even lightweight Mediterranean squalls like this one, could be trouble if everything wasn't secured the way it was supposed to be. And Captain Liam could be hell on wheels if something went wrong because of carelessness.

  So Maguire had learned: Do it right the first time, then double check to make sure you did what you thought you did.

  And after he wound up this little tour of the deck, he could retire to his cabin and work on his bottle of Jameson's.

  I'm glad I haven't touched that bottle yet, he thought. Because right now he'd be blaming the whiskey for what he was seeing.

  A woman? How the hell had a woman got aboard? And why would any woman want to be aboard?

  She stood facing aft, like some green-gilled landlubber staring homeward.

  "Hello?" he said, approaching the hatch.

  She turned toward him but the glow from the lights in the superstructure weren't strong enough to light her features through the rain. And then he noticed something: the blanket or cloak or robe or whatever she was wrapped up in wasn't moving or even fluttering in the wind. In fact, it didn't even look wet.

  He blinked and turned his head as a particularly nasty gust stung his face with needle-sharp droplets, and when he looked again, she was gone.

  He ran across the hatch and searched the entire afterdeck but could not find a trace of her. So he ran and told the captain.

  Liam Harrity puffed his pipe and stared out at him from the mass of red hair that encircled his face.

  "What have we discussed about you hitting the Jameson's while you're on duty, Denny?" he said.

  "Captain, I swear, I haven't touched a drop to me lips since last night." Maguire leaned closer. "Here. Smell me breath."

  The captain waved him off. "I don't want to be smelling your foul breath! Just get to your bunk and don't be after coming to me with any more stories of women on my ship Get!"

  Dennis Maguire got, but he knew in his heart there'd been someone out there in the storm tonight. And somehow he knew they hadn't seen the last of her.

  Paraiso

  "Charlie, Charlie, Charlie," the senador said, shaking his head sadly.

  Emilio Sanchez stood at a respectful distance from the father and son confrontation. He had moved to leave the great room after delivering Charlie here, but the senador had motioned him to stay. Emilio was proud of the senador's show of trust and confidence in him, but it pained him to see so great a man in such distress. So Emilio stepped back against the great fireplace and stared out at the seamless blackness beyond the windows where the clouded night sky merged with the Pacific. And listened.

  "I thought we had an understanding, Charlie," the senador said. He leaned forward, staring earnestly across the long, free-form redwood coffee table at his son who sat with elbows on knees, head down. "You promised me six months. You promised me you'd stay here and go through therapy . . . learn to pray."

  "It's not what you think, Dad," Charlie said softly in a hoarse voice. He sounded exhausted. Defeated.

  The fight seemed to have gone out of Charlie. Which didn't jibe at all with his recent flight from Paraiso. If he wasn't bucking his father, why did he run?

  Two days ago the senador had called Emilio to his home office in a minor panic. Charlie was gone. His room was empty, and he was nowhere in the house or on the grounds. Juanita said she'd passed a taxi coming the other way when she'd arrived early this morning.

  Emilio had sighed and nodded. Here we go again.

  Fortunately Juanita remembered the name of the cab company. From there it was easy to trace that particular fare—the whole damn company was buzzing about picking up a fare at Paraiso that wanted to be taken all the way to Frisco. The driver had dropped his fare off on California Street.

  Charlie had run to his favorite rat hole again.

  Over the years, during repeated trips in search of Charlie, Emilio had been in and out of so many gay bars in San Francisco that some of the regulars had begun to think he was a maricon himself. To counteract that insulting notion, he'd made it a practice to bust the skull anyone who tried to get friendly.

  But this time he hadn't found Charlie down in the Tenderloin. Instead, he'd traced him to the Embarcadero. Charlie had taken a room in the Hyatt, of all places.

  When Emilio had knocked on his door, Charlie hadn't acted surprised, and he hadn't launched into his usual lame protests. He'd come quietly, barely speaking during the drive back.

  That wasn't like Charlie. Something was wrong. "What am I to think, Charlie?" the senador was saying. "You promised me. Remember what you said? You said you'd 'give it the old college try.' Remember that?"

  "Dad—"

  "And you were doing so well! Dr. Thompson said you were very cooperative, really starting to open up to him. And you seemed to be getting into the spirit of the prayer sessions, feeling the presence of the Lord. What happened? Why did you break your promise?"

  "I didn't break my promise." He didn't look up. He stared at the table before him, seemingly lost in the redwood whorls. "I was coming back. I needed—"

  "You don't need that . . . sort of ... activity," the senador said. "By falling back into that sinfulness you've undone all your months of work!"

  "I didn't go back for sex," Charlie said.

  "Please don't make this worse by lying to me, Charlie." During the ensuing silence, Emilio realized that normally he too would have thought Charlie was lying, but today he didn't think so.

  "It's the truth, Dad."

  "How can I believe that, Charlie? Every other time you've disappeared to Sodom-on-the-Bay it's been for sex."

  "Not this time. I . . . I haven't been feeling well enough for sex."

  "Oh?"

  A premonition shot through Emilio like a bullet. The senador should have felt it too, but if he did, his face did not betray it. He was still staring at Charlie with that same hurt earnest expression. Emilio rammed his fist against his thigh. Bobo! Charlie's pale, feverish look, his weig
ht loss . . . he should have put it together long before now.

  "I've been having night sweats, then I developed this rash. I didn't run off to Frisco to get laid, Dad. I went to a clinic there that knows about . . . these things."

  The senador said nothing. A tomblike silence descended on the great room. Emilio could hear the susurrant flow through the air-conditioning vents, the subliminal rumble of the ocean beyond the windows, and nothing more. He realized the senador must be holding his breath. The light had dawned.

  Charlie looked up at his father. "I've got AIDS, Dad."

  Madre. Emilio exhaled.

  "Wh-what?" The senador was suddenly as pale as his son. "That c-can't be t-true!"

  He was stuttering. Not once in all his years with him had Emilio heard that man stutter.

  Charlie was nodding. "The doctors and the blood tests confirmed what I've guessed for some time. I've just been too frightened to take the final step and hear someone tell me I've got it."

  "Th-there's got to be some mistake!"

  "No mistake, Dad. This was an AIDS clinic. They're experts. I'm not just HIV positive. I've got AIDS."

  "But didn't you use protection? Take precautions?"

  Charlie looked down again. "Yeah. Sure. Most of the time."

  "Most of the time . . ." The senador's voice sounded hollow, distant. "Charlie . . . what on earth . . . ?"

  "It doesn't matter, Dad. I've got it. I'm a dead man."

  "No, you're not!" the senador cried, new life in his voice as he shot from his seat. "Don't you say that! You're going to live!"

  "I don't think so, Dad."

  "You will! I won't let you die! I'll get you the best medical care. And we'll pray. You'll see, Charlie. With God's help you'll come through this. You'll be a new man when it's over. You'll pass through the flame and be cleansed, not just of your illness, but of your sinfulness as well. You're about to be born again, Charlie. I can feel it!"

  Emilio turned away and softly took the stairs down to his quarters. He fought the urge to run. Emilio did not share the senador's faith in the power of prayer over AIDS. In fact, Emilio could not remember finding prayer useful for much of anything, especially in his line of work. Rather than listen to the senador rattle on about it, he wished to wash his hands. He'd touched Charlie today. He'd driven Charlie all the way back from San Francisco today, sitting with him for hours in the same car, breathing his air.