I wasn’t surprised, but I had another priority. “Karen Oaten. Can I see her?”
“I’m sure you can, Mr. Wells, but I don’t know when.” He gave me an encouraging smile. “Why don’t we just take one thing at a time?”
“Okay,” I said. I was too tired to argue.
I followed him onto dry land. I was thinking of Gwen Bonhoff. If she hadn’t turned on Rothmann, I would be the one floating in the Potomac right now. I wondered if she had survived to make it ashore, or if the currents were carrying her body toward the sea.
Later it came to me that one of the reasons I hadn’t written novels featuring cops was the job’s never-ending bureaucracy. The questioning seemed to go on forever, though Chief Owen’s team had finished with me by midday. Then I was taken to the FBI building and grilled by Peter Sebastian and his people. Though Clem and Versace hadn’t exactly talked him up, I thought he was competent enough-thorough rather than nitpicking, but seriously lacking in a sense of humor. At least he wasn’t set against me any longer. Randy Bonhoff had been operated on and was expected to make a full recovery in time-whether he would come round from the coffining would be another story. He was still woozy from the anesthetic and hadn’t been told about his sister’s wounding or her disappearance from the boat. He didn’t know about his father’s death, either. I wouldn’t be volunteering to be the one who passed all that information on.
“All right,” Sebastian said at last, gathering up his notes. “We’ll get back to this tomorrow, but right now there’s somewhere we’ve got to be.”
I thought he meant the canteen, so I didn’t show much enthusiasm.
“Come on, Matt,” he said, giving a rare smile. “The Bureau’s putting on a party for your Karen.”
That was more like it. I’d have preferred to meet her in private, but apparently there were some important people who took priority. I borrowed a clean shirt from one of Sebastian’s team and then followed the FBI man to the elevator. When we got out on the top floor, we had to go through another X-ray machine. It seemed the bosses got a higher level of security, as well as a better view.
The party was already under way when we got there. The room was crowded by men in suits and the occasional woman in the female equivalent. I didn’t see Karen immediately. She was surrounded by people who were shaking her hand and patting her on the back. She looked calm and collected, as if she’d been at a health retreat rather than in captivity. I wondered if she’d been through what I had and how she’d got out. Then she caught sight of me and smiled, which made me feel better. I started to push my way through the mass of bodies toward her, but a blast of feedback from a microphone signaled the beginning of the formal proceedings. I kept on sliding past bodies toward the front as the FBI director started to talk from a podium.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said with the smile of a man who finally had some good news to report, “I won’t keep you long. I’m delighted to welcome Detective Chief Superintendent Karen Oaten back from her ordeal. I’m also delighted to report that, in accordance with official policy, no ransom changed hands.”
There was polite laughter.
“Ms. Oaten is one of the London Metropolitan Police’s most talented officers and we look forward to her completing her work with us.”
This time, there was polite applause. Presumably Gavin Burdett’s death hadn’t come to light yet-Karen wouldn’t have much to do in Washington without him as her target. Then again, maybe Rothmann had been lying. I didn’t think that was too likely. He was the kind of arrogant smart-ass who didn’t bother with blatant untruths.
“Before Ms. Oaten says a few words, I’d like to invite the justice secretary to the microphone.”
I craned forward and made out the short figure of the woman who was in charge of all American law enforcement. As she passed Karen, she took her hands and kissed her on both cheeks. She seemed to be genuinely moved to see Karen. As the politician began to speak, I watched my beautiful girl. She was standing next to the podium, her head at the same level as the justice secretary’s because of her greater height. She had a cardboard file under her arms and she was fiddling with a pen.
I wanted to be in the front row when Karen made her speech, so I nudged past a couple more bodies. Now I could see her clearly. Karen was looking intently at the politician beside her, but she was still playing with the pen. I didn’t recognize it, which struck me as odd because I’d given her an expensive pen for her birthday earlier in the year. I knew for a fact she hadn’t had it with her when she disappeared because I saw it in her belongings afterward. Those must have been returned to her by now. Where did she get this one? It looked unusual and was only the length of a finger. It looked like she was trying to make it longer.
Then everything came together. Whatever Karen had said when she reappeared, I knew from Irma Rothmann that she’d been at the camp in Maine. She was in no condition to scale the wire and she would only have been allowed to leave if the Rothmanns thought her ready…for some kind of action. That meant she had been coffined and was under mind control, and she was about to do something disastrous.
I shouted her name and ran forward, colliding with a Secret Service man with very wide shoulders. I could still see Karen as he grabbed at me, then she disappeared from my view as I hit the floor. When I looked up, the pen had disappeared. The justice secretary was peering down at me curiously.
Peter Sebastian came up. “What’s going on, Matt?” he demanded. “Couldn’t you wait a little longer to see Karen?”
“I thought…I…” I let myself be led away to the side of the room. I was vaguely aware of the speeches being concluded and the noise of conversation increasing. The man who had grabbed me was still holding my arm.
“What did you think?” Chief Owen said, appearing between Sebastian and the big man.
“I thought…” My mind was like mush. I must have been imagining things. Karen was perfectly normal. I looked around, trying to catch sight of her, but I couldn’t see her anywhere.
“You need rest,” Peter Sebastian said. He turned to Chief Owen. “Can I leave him in your charge?”
Owen shrugged. “Okay. I was heading over to the hospital to check on Simmons and Pinker.”
Sebastian nodded. “Why don’t you get him checked out, too?”
By the time Owen and I made it to the door, there was no sign of Karen. I asked a woman with a clipboard where she’d gone.
“Ms. Oaten went with the justice secretary and her people, sir.” She eyed the temporary pass Sebastian had given me on the way in. “Can I help?”
“That’s all right,” Chief Owen said. “I’ll handle this.” He led me toward the elevators.
“But I want to see Karen,” I said feebly, tugging against his grip.
“Let it go, buddy. You can’t mess with the Justice Department.” Owen smiled at me. “Besides, your girl’s a London cop. How’s she going to feel if you screw up a meet with the justice secretary of the United States of America?”
He had a point there. Karen would not be impressed if I messed with her career. So I let him take me down to his car and drive me to the hospital in the northern suburbs. Just before we got there, he got a call. He listened, then cut the connection and glanced at me.
“They found Gwen Bonhoff’s body in the Potomac,” he said. “We’ll have to wait for the postmortem for the cause of death-and we’re a medical examiner short right now-but there’s a potentially fatal chest wound, like you described.”
“What about Rothmann?”
Chief Owen shook his head. “No sign. Let’s just hope the currents sucked him to the bottom. We don’t need motherfuckers like him around.”
He was right there. But as far as I was concerned, no body meant that the Auschwitz doctor’s son was alive and well.
There was good news at the hospital-Gerard Pinker had just come out of his coma. He was still groggy and visitors weren’t allowed, but his prospects had suddenly got a whole lot better. We went to see C
lem. He looked tired, but he was in good spirits because of his partner’s first move toward recovery. They took a dive when he heard about Gwen and Rothmann.
“Shit. That girl deserved better.”
“She and her brother stuck a knife in Versace and beat the hell out of you, Clem,” I reminded him.
He shrugged. “Those Nazi scumbags screwed with their brains.” He glanced at me. “What was that word the queen bitch was screaming? Barba-something?”
My head was suddenly filled with the roar of crowds and the thunder of marching men.
“Hey, Matt?” I heard Clem say. “You okay?”
I managed to push aside the confusion. “Yeah,” I muttered.
“Everything you’ve been through is catching up on you, man,” Clem said. “You need to get some rest.”
I sat back in my chair. There was a TV on the wall, images flashing but no sound coming. I made out a large silvery-gray building with three imposing towers. Then the camera moved down to the crowd gathered outside an entrance with a Gothic arch. When the camera zoomed in, I saw that many of the people were elderly and in uniform.
“What’s that?” I asked. I was aware of a quickening throughout my body and a faint, high-pitched sound like a whistle that would normally only be audible to dogs. “What is that place?”
Chief Owen looked up at the screen. “Washington National Cathedral.”
“What about the people?” I said, my eyes locked on the pictures. “Who are they?”
Clem grunted. “They’re our heroes, man.”
I took in shrunken men in wheelchairs, with military caps on their heads and medals on the chests. They were surrounded by proud families in their finest clothes, and most of them were black.
“World War II veterans from the minorities,” Owen said. “The president’s taken a special interest in them.”
“About time somebody did,” Clem said. “They’ll all be dead soon.”
Chief Owen nodded. “That’s why they’re having the memorial service-to acknowledge the men before it’s too late.”
Those last words echoed in my mind-before it was too late. Too late for what? Then I found myself thinking of other things: the gargoyle’s head, the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant, Rothmann’s hatred of what he called subhumans, the Nazis and their war on civilization, Karen…
I stood up. “Did someone mention the president?”
“Yes,” Owen said. “The president and first lady are attending the service.”
“How about the justice secretary?” I asked, my lungs suddenly tight.
The chief shrugged, his eyes widening. “I guess she might be there…I think a lot of the government is going.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Karen.” I moved quickly to the door. “Come on,” I said, looking round at Owen. “She’s in danger, I’m sure of it.”
The two men exchanged glances, then Owen headed toward me.
“Has the memorial service been arranged for a long time?” I asked, as I led him to the elevator.
“Can’t help you there,” the chief said, putting his hand on my arm. “Not my department.”
I tugged myself free. “Answer me this,” I said, stabbing at the call button. “Can you think of a better occasion for a group of Nazis to strike against this country than a service commemorating the role of blacks, Hispanics, Chinese and I don’t know who else in the destruction of the Third Reich?”
Rodney Owen’s jaw dropped. “No, I don’t think I can,” he said. Then he pulled out his phone and started rapidly hitting buttons.
Forty-Five
Washington National Cathedral, the world’s sixth largest, was basking on the summit of Mount St. Alban, the city’s highest point. The late-afternoon sun was reflected strongly by the blocks of Indiana limestone, causing many of the people on site to wear dark glasses. The trees in the fifty-seven acres of gardens that surrounded the building were a picturesque mixture of russet, yellow and brown. The central tower of the structure topped three hundred feet, giving the Secret Service men and Army snipers a fine panorama. To first-time visitors to Washington attending the service, the cathedral was a surprising vision of the medieval, with pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses and stained-glass windows. There were perhaps not enough gargoyles on the walls to achieve the full Gothic effect, but the plentiful decorative pinnacles made up for that. From every gallery and vantage point, personnel in dark fatigues ceaselessly scanned the cathedral vicinity, weapons at the ready. The president and first lady, accompanied by six cabinet members, were expected in thirty-five minutes.
Inside the building, there was an atmosphere of controlled alert. Clergy from the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, dressed in their most formal robes, moved about their duties with studied calm. They were accustomed to state occasions, even though there were more military and plainclothes security people around than they would have liked. This was the house of God, after all, and the United States’ greatest men were commemorated here, with separate bays for presidents and wartime leaders from George Washington to Woodrow Wilson, Abraham Lincoln to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. By the north transept was a bay with a likeness of Martin Luther King Jr., proving that all men were brothers in this, the great stone tabernacle of the nation.
One of the six men in the honor guard flanking the high altar watched as a deacon made his final checks. The cleric took out a handkerchief and wiped a minuscule blemish from the surface of one of the hundred and ten carved figures surrounding the statue of Christ. Nearby, a stone from Mount Sinai had been encased in the floor. The guardsman looked up at the great rose window in front of him, the reds and blues of the glass illuminated gloriously. To his right, ranks of wooden pews led toward another rose window at the far end of the nave. By any standards it was a wonderful spectacle, but the soldier was unmoved. He had no time for a religion that saw all men as equal and gave encouragement to members of the subhuman races. He had seen the carving called Creation above the main entrance on his way in, mankind being formed out of chaos. That was a perversion of reality. The overwhelming majority of mankind had never, and would never, rise beyond chaos-that was the destiny only of the chosen few.
The members of the honor guard stiffened even more as their commanding officer approached. Everything had been rehearsed over and over again-there was no need for spoken commands. The organist started to play and service personnel representing all the minorities filtered into the cathedral from various entrances to take up their positions. The guardsman kept his eyes to the front, showing no emotion as various minorities, all the scum of the earth, formed up close by him-no doubt there would be Jews in attendance, too, they got everywhere. But no Germans. They weren’t a minority. They had been the U.S.’s biggest immigrant group, but now they were fully integrated-they had become part of the majority. They had even served in their hundreds of thousands against the Fatherland.
That mistake would never be repeated. The Fuhrer would see to that, starting today.
The security checks started long before we got anywhere near the cathedral. Chief Owen’s clearance got us through initially, with him vouching for me. But soon that wasn’t enough. We were asked to get out of the vehicle halfway up the slope that led to the great church, and I was patted down.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the perfectly turned out master sergeant said to the chief. “You and your…friend need special authorization for the ceremony. I can’t let you proceed any farther.”
“But it’s an emergency,” Rodney Owen said, taking out his phone.
I briefly considered trying to get into one the cars that were being allowed to drive on, but decided against suicide-the soldiers at the checkpoint had their assault rifles at the ready. I’d spoken to Peter Sebastian and he had said he would spread the word, but I hadn’t heard anything more. I crushed my nails into the palms of my hands. Karen, I thought. Our son…
“Chief Owen! Wells!”
I recognized Sebastian’s voice. I turned and saw the FB
I man get out of a car on the other side of the checkpoint. He held up his badge.
“These two are with me.” He lowered his voice. “Code Treadstone 23.”
The master sergeant called it in and then waved us through.
“Thanks a lot,” I said, as we got into Sebastian’s car. “I thought we were going to be stuck there. What’s going on?”
The FBI man looked round at me from the front passenger seat. “Relax, everything’s under control. There’s almost as much security up there as there was at the president’s inauguration-secret service, army, marines, special forces, take your pick.”
I stared at him. “That’s the point. If people have been coffined…I mean, brainwashed like Marion Gilbert, they could be part of any or all of those. Did you make that clear to whoever is in charge?”
Sebastian nodded. “Of course I did. It was even passed to the president’s people. The man himself said he wanted things to go ahead as planned. The service is very important to him… Besides, it isn’t as if we have a lot of hard evidence about Marion Gilbert’s state of mind. I mean, I believe you, Matt, but you’ve got to admit, it’s all a bit circumstantial.”
I grabbed his arm. “Circumstantial? She killed four people, for God’s sake. And Rothmann came clean about the conditioning process.”
“To you, and you were a suspect for a while, with a lot to gain by blaming Marion Gilbert,” Sebastian said.
“Fuck!” I slammed my head against the seat back. “What more do you guys need? It wasn’t only Marion Gilbert who was brainwashed. Gwen and Randy took out the detectives.”
“I know, but you can’t blame the official channels for some healthy skepticism. Besides, you said that Rothmann got to you, too, Matt. Have you any idea how lucky you are to be here? If it wasn’t for Karen Oaten, I’d have left you at the checkpoint back there.”
I sat back, thinking about what he’d just said. “If it wasn’t for Karen? What do you mean?” He didn’t answer, keeping his eyes off me. “You bastard. You don’t trust her, do you? You think she could have been conditioned, too.”
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