by Brad Meltzer
“What’re you doing, taking notes?” Zig asked.
She was drawing. Always drawing, sketching, visually capturing the moment. Nola learned long ago, this was how her brain worked. Mongol…Faber…Staedtler…Ticonderoga…Swan.
“I’m guessing the woman from the plane crash…the one everyone thinks is you,” Zig said, “I take it she was a friend?”
Nola didn’t answer, still sketching, recreating in fuzzy pencil lines the open back door of the hearse and the coffin that was sticking out from it like a wooden tongue.
“I worked on her, y’know. In the mortuary, I took care of her,” Zig added, approaching the car.
Nola whipped around, holding the pencil like a knife.
“Easy,” Zig said. “I just—” He crouched, picking up the American flag that was on the ground. He started folding it carefully.
“Sorry about the flag,” she offered. She meant it. Her whole life, Nola knew she wasn’t like most people, didn’t even like most people. It was no different in the military, where during her first few weeks, she was quickly singled out for stabbing a key into the hand of a fellow private who touched her ass. Still, in the Army she found a consistency, a regularity, that had been missing from her own uncertain life. Plus, they let her kill those who did harm in this world, and man, did Nola excel at that.
“Can I ask you another question?” Zig said, though he didn’t wait for an answer. “How come you haven’t asked how I know you?”
Again, no response. Apparently, he wasn’t as stupid as she first thought.
“Nola, back in the room…when you first saw me…you recognized me, didn’t you?”
Nola kept sketching, head down. Mongol…Faber…Staedtler…Ticonderoga…Swan. “Maggie’s dad. The mortician.”
Zig stood up straight.
Right there, Nola saw it. A flash of light in this desperate old man’s face. He hadn’t heard those words in so long, he’d forgotten how good they felt. Maggie’s dad.
“Call me Zig,” he said far too excitedly as he extended a handshake.
Nola ignored it, still focused on her sketching. She had finished drawing the hearse and the coffin. She flipped the page, sketching something new. Sketching Zig himself.
“You remember saving her, don’t you? My daughter?”
Again, silence.
“Listen, I meant what I said,” he added. “If you tell me what happened, I can help you.”
Nola stayed quiet, her pencil a blur.
“Can you at least tell me her name? Your friend… To be here, you obviously care about her,” Zig said.
More silence; more sketching. The likeness was okay, a serviceable first draft. But as usual, her art—the actual process of drawing—it always showed her something…more. She could see it in her rendering of Zig’s eyes. Not just sadness. Loneliness.
“Nola, you do realize someone took this woman’s body—and if they don’t know you’re alive already, it’s not gonna take them long to figure ou—”
“Where’s her body now?”
“I don’t know. They took it.”
“Who’s they?”
“No idea. We were waiting for the Longwood hearse to show up, but another hearse came in first, pretended to be Longwood, and swiped it.”
“So why’d you come here?”
“You switched to Longwood last night. I figured there had to be a reason why. At the very least, whoever was behind this, if they thought we had the body, maybe they would come running. I can tell you this, though—whoever’s doing this, I’m assuming it’s the same people who faked your friend’s fingerpri—”
“I need to go,” Nola interrupted, flipping her notepad shut. She hit the garage opener with her palm. The door yawned open. “My apologies again about the flag.”
“Nola…”
No response.
“Nola, please wait!”
Still nothing. She was already outside.
“Nola, she left you a message. Your friend…in her stomach…I found a message for you.”
Nola stopped mid-step. “What kind of message?”
20
And this was in her stomach?”
“Found it myself,” Zig said as they stood there in the closed garage. Nola looked at him. This was truth. “She must’ve swallowed it when she knew that the plane was, well…y’know.”
Nola nodded. She knew all too well. For three days now, she’d been replaying those final moments in Alaska, when she was leaving the small airfield and suddenly, people were yelling, crying, the wave of emotion so strong, she felt it across the parking lot before she even heard it. People were pointing. Sobbing. In the far distance, across the plain of snow, was a twirl of faint black smoke.
“And that was all the note said?” Nola asked, staring down at the picture on Zig’s phone. She read the words, then read them again.
Nola, you were right.
Keep running.
“I assume that means something to you?” Zig asked.
On-screen, Nola enlarged the photo with her fingertips, studying the shaky handwriting and the bumpy stippling that comes from writing on an airplane’s plastic tray table. She couldn’t help but think about the moment these words were written, about the terror that propelled them.
Nola had faced death before, most recently in a helicopter that was forced to make a crash landing in a qat field in Yemen. At the time, as the pilot was screaming things no one could understand, Nola’s thoughts were about how she somehow expected a…better death for herself, something more meaningful than an inconvenient electrical short.
Today, she wondered if her friend had a similar feeling as the plane went down in Alaska. Yet as Nola reread the note, a sadder truth emerged: In those final frantic moments, her friend wasn’t worrying about her own death, or even herself. She was worrying about Nola.
“Kamille,” Nola blurted.
“Excuse me?” Zig asked.
“Kamille. That’s her name. The woman on the plane—the body everyone thinks is me. Kamille Williams. Staff sergeant assigned to Army Special Ops. Twenty-seven years old. From Iowa.”
“She was a friend?”
Nola turned toward Zig, giving him a good long look. But she said nothing.
“Nola, when you’re on a plane that’s about to crash, do you know the number one factor when it comes to who survives?”
“Be near the exit door,” Nola shot back.
“No. That’s number two. Number one is: Be a male. Yes, proximity to the exit door will decide who survives. But when the plane is going down and everyone rushes for that door? We become animals. We’re always animals. To survive the crash, be a male,” he said, his voice slowing down. “Kamille somehow got out. I’m wagering she was not a pushover. Now do you want to tell me more about her?”
Nola stayed silent, again hitting the button for the garage door, which again rolled open. She was leaving.
“I know you painted her,” Zig called out as Nola headed outside. “I saw the canvas in Kamille’s personal effects.” It didn’t slow Nola down. “I also looked up your job—Artist-in-Residence—that’s what they call you, right? The Army lets you travel the world, painting soldiers in Afghanistan or relief workers in Bangladesh. You can go anywhere, can’t you?” Zig added. “Yet what I can’t understand is what you were doing out there in Alaska. Did you go just to paint Kamille, or was there something else going on there?”
Nola kept walking. She didn’t like Zig, didn’t like the subtle tone of accusation in his voice.
“Can you at least tell me why Kamille was flying under your name? You switched spots with her, right? Was that her idea or yours?”
Nola was outside, scanning the block and heading for the car that she’d hidden around the corner.
“What about Houdini?” Zig said.
Right there, Nola stopped.
“You think you’re the only one who found the names of the other victims?” Zig asked. “Rose Mackenberg. Clifford Eddy. Amedeo Vacca—they
were all on the plane with your friend Kamille. But all three of them died fifty years ago.”
Nola stared down at the driveway, at a thin crack that zigzagged across the concrete. Not enough water in the cement mix. Such an avoidable error. “They were cover names,” Nola finally said.
“I know what cover names are. What I want to know is what they were covering. To be that far out in Alaska, this was a group that clearly didn’t want anyone else around, yet there you were, right at the center of it with your paintbrushes. So why don’t we start over, Nola? You saw something out there in Alaska—something that I’m guessing made you stay off that plane. So. What was it?”
Up the block, an old man was walking a far too small dog. The kind of dog that no one in their right mind would put on a leash. “This doesn’t concern you, Mr. Zigarowski. Have a nice life.”
“No. Don’t Mr. Zigarowski me. That note Kamille left…whoever took that plane down, if they were aiming for you—”
“I had no idea they were aiming for me. I still don’t know.”
“But you’ve got a feeling. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t still be hiding like this—or scanning the street like the bogeyman’s coming.”
Nola looked away from the street, away from the man and his little dog. Zig was staring straight at her.
“Nola, whatever’s going on, you owe it to Kamille to find the truth. I can help you with that.”
“I’m not twelve anymore. I don’t need your help.”
“You sure about that? You’re officially deceased. That means your IDs won’t work, and neither will whatever classified security clearances you once had. At least with me, whatever doors you’re planning to bang on next, you keep the element of surprise, which, far as I can tell, is the only thing you’ve got going in your favor right now.”
Nola glanced back down at the crack in the cement. “Why’re you doing this, Mr. Zigarowski?”
“The same reason you changed your PADD and tried to bring Kamille’s body here instead of sending it to Arlington Cemetery. You wanted to get Kamille to her family, didn’t you?”
“That doesn’t tell me why you’re doing this.”
“Nola, I put people to rest. That’s my job. So your friend Kamille…”
“You keep calling her my friend. She wasn’t my friend.”
“Either way, she’s someone’s daughter. She’s a member of our military.” He looked Nola deep in the eyes, firing up the charm. With a quick lick of his lips, he touched his tongue to his right incisor. “I need to put Kamille to rest.”
Nola knew it was a lie. Or at least a half-truth. No way was Zig risking all this just to help some girl from his old neighborhood. No one would. So was this about what Nola did all those years ago at the campfire?—tackling Maggie?—was he doing this out of guilt or to repay some perceived debt? If so, he was more reckless, and more wounded, than she thought. But Zig was right about one thing: Nola’s movements were definitely limited. If she wanted to figure things out, she’d need someone who could move around in the light of day, especially considering where she was going next.
Nola thought about the pencil sketch she just drew of Zig…of the loneliness on his face. Did she like Zig? No. Did she trust him? No. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t use him.
“How’d you like to go to Washington, DC?” Nola asked.
21
Fairfax County, Virginia
ID,” the soldier insisted.
Leaning an elbow out of the driver’s side window, Zig teed up a grin and handed over his Dover mortuary ID.
“I have an appointment,” Zig said, eyeing the guard—and the second guard behind him, both of them armed with MP5 assault weapons.
At the front gate of most stateside military bases—including here at Fort Belvoir—the guards carried M9s. Standard handguns. For them to have MP5s, they’re on alert, looking for something. Or someone.
“You in yet?” Nola asked in Zig’s ear, through one of those Bluetooth earpieces that made him look part robot, part business-traveler-from-2006.
“Busy day, huh?” Zig called out to the guards.
Neither responded. The taller one, whose teeth were perfectly white but crooked like toppled buildings, was still studying Zig’s ID.
The other guard pulled out a long pole with a round mirror at the end of it, and ran it under Zig’s car. Even from here, Zig could see the Airborne patch on his uniform with the sword and three lightning bolts. Forget military police. These were Special Forces.
“Two years ago, my sister-in-law came through Dover,” Crooked Teeth finally said, handing back Zig’s ID. He pushed a button, raising the arm for the security gate. “Thanks for what you do. Welcome to Fort Belvoir.”
Zig nodded his thanks and hit the gas.
“Told you the Dover ID would work,” Zig said to Nola.
She didn’t respond. No surprise. The entire ride here, Silent Nola barely said a word. Was it smart for him to be here? Of course not. But was he breaking the law? Not yet.
“Drive straight,” Nola said as Zig weaved through the tidy streets, past the base’s long white warehouses and redbrick buildings.
Located half an hour outside of Washington, DC, Fort Belvoir may look like a typical Army base, but it housed some of the Defense Department’s top secret-keepers. The Army Intelligence and Security Command was headquartered here. So was the real-life Big Brother, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. To put it in context, Fort Belvoir had almost twice as many employees as the Pentagon. And in that final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where they put the Ark in the massive warehouse with the rest of the government’s unmentionables? That’s what they call this place right here on base, in the exact location Zig was now headed—the nondescript beige building with a sign out front that read:
Museum Support Center
Center of Military History
Inside this wide government building was the cleanest air in the Washington, DC, area, filtered down to the particulate level and kept at a perfect 70 degrees. To protect the treasures hidden inside, they even charged the air with positive static energy, so that contaminants would be pushed out rather that stay inside.
“Last space on the right has a blind spot,” Nola said as Zig pulled into the parking lot and glanced up at the pole camera that apparently couldn’t see him.
Keeping his head down as he got out of the car, Zig headed quickly for the building’s glass front doors.
“1083,” Nola added in his ear as Zig picked up the black telephone on the wall and entered the number into the intercom. It rang three times before—
“Barton here,” a voice answered with a Kentucky drawl.
“We spoke earlier. I’m the investigator,” Zig said. It was a lie, but not too far off. “From Dover—”
Click. That was all it took.
There was a loud buzz. Zig shoved the door open. It was late now—almost 7 p.m.—the wide atrium was dark, everyone gone for the day.
“What’s with the car?” Zig whispered to Nola.
In front of him, in the center of the lobby, was an antique automobile, complete with fancy spare tires on the side, like you see in old movies and Scrooge McDuck comics.
“General Pershing’s limousine from World War I. His Locomobile,” Nola said, even though she couldn’t see him. The car was clearly a museum highlight.
Zig cocked an eyebrow at her sudden helpfulness. The whole ride here, she barely said a word, Silent Nola in full effect—though it wasn’t just silence. Zig watched her carefully. Heart or no heart? Jury was still out. There was an impatience about her, a hidden rage. If she was now suddenly being talkative, she wanted something.
“I need to ask you a question,” she added.
“Do it quickly. Your pal Barton is almost here.”
“How badly was she burned?”
Who? Zig almost asked. But he knew. The woman whose body he worked on yesterday—the body that was now missing—and that Nola was chasing. Kamille.
“Were they chemical burns or—?”
“Not chemical.” Zig knew what she was getting at. When a missile hits a plane, people’s skin will have chemical burns, caused by caustic fuel. If it’s a bomb, the body comes apart, creating fragments. “Kamille was intact. Broken legs. Burned on her right side only.”
“You think she jumped,” Nola said.
“That would explain her legs. And with no signs of chemical burns or fragmentation—”
“No bomb, no missile,” Nola said. “She knew what was coming. That’s why she ate the note. Soon after takeoff—maybe even during it—she knew the plane was going down.”
Zig nodded. “Can I ask you a question now?” he said, approaching the front grille of the limousine. Up the hallway, a figure turned the corner. Zig didn’t have much time, but with Nola suddenly being talkative… “Tell me something about Maggie,” Zig blurted. “My daughter.”
There was a pause. “Mr. Zigarowski—”
“Zig,” he insisted, forcing a laugh. “You have to call me Zig.”
“I didn’t know her well. I only lived in Ekron a year.”
“Still, you did Girl Scouts together…and at the campfire, you saved her—”
“I knocked her out of the way. That doesn’t mean I—”
“Who knows what would’ve happened if you weren’t there. Thankfully, though, you were. And after that, you and Maggie…you walked the same halls…sat in the same classes. You had to’ve seen each other somewhere. Just tell me one thing—anything you remember about her.”
For a solid five seconds, Nola was silent. Until… “I remember her being in the car when you took me to the hospital. She kept saying thank you over and over. Otherwise, we really didn’t spend any time together.”
“C’mon, even just something stupid you might remember. Anything,” Zig said, fighting hard to keep the pep in his voice. “Anything at all.”
Another five seconds. Zig was listening so hard, he started leaning forward, his shins pressing against the shiny front bumper of the limousine.
