That caused a light bulb to go on in Kasogi’s head. “Morton — you are descended from Dudley Morton, the Commander of the Wahoo?”
It was now Mush’s turn to be impressed. “Yes. I never got to meet him, so studying sub tactics and the war was a way for me to understand him, and why and how he died.”
“As I remember, he was lost at sea?”
“He was on his nickel patrol, went out, just never came back.”
“I am sorry, nickel?” Kasogi said.
“I apologize; slang for his fifth war patrol. In the Sea of Japan he sank four enemy, uh, Japanese ships, before the Wahoo was sunk on October 11, 1943, in La Pérouse Strait; she went down with all hands. My granddad received his fourth Navy Cross, posthumously of course, for that patrol.”
“I am sorry. My grandfather died almost exactly a year later, when the Musashi was sunk by aircraft; over one thousand men died. They posthumously promoted him to vice admiral.”
“Many men, boys actually, from both our countries died. Many didn’t have the chance to have children or grandchildren,” Mush said as he looked down at the table.
“Yes, we owe much to our forefathers.”
“Amen, Captain Toshihira.”
Mush was well aware that he was sitting across from the grandson of a man who would not have hesitated to kill his grandfather, and he knew his granddad would have risked all to put two or three fish into the Jap battlewagon. Given the same situation, if he and Kasogi had met in battle, one of them would surely be dead. Yet here they were, speaking as brothers, in reverence of men whose blood and dedication they shared, understanding the ideals by which their antecedents gloriously lived and died, long before they were born. As Mush wiped the thought of Kasogi as a “Jap” captain from his mind, he could only conclude, War perverts humanity.
The moment hung almost as a silent prayer; then Kasogi the ‘truck driver’ noted, “Still I envy you to be the commander of a nuclear submarine.”
Mush finally relented. “Yeah, it’s a pretty sweet command.”
Brooke entered the room, and the energy shifted from the two offspring of mortal enemies brought together by a new, common enemy. “The Intelligence guys will be here in twenty minutes.”
“Where is the bathroom?” Kasogi asked.
“Left, then a left,” Mush said.
Kasogi exited and Brooke looked at Mush. “How have you been, Mush?”
“Better now! I seem to have gotten a clean bill of mental health and I am five feet from you.”
Brooke closed the door. “That’s too far.” She walked toward him as he stood. They embraced and did what could best be described as a Hollywood kiss. Every sleepless night, every longing sigh over the memory of each other’s faces, bodies, and smells was squeezed out from between them, leaving them both enwined in each other’s contours. After the longest kiss of her life, Brooke rested her head on the shoulder-board of his dress khakis and breathed deeply. “How long do we have?”
“Depends if he drank a lot or…”
“No, silly, I mean us.”
“A week.”
“Mmmmm a week! I can work with that.” She nestled in tighter.
She pulled and back touched his jaw, “You shaved! I like it.”
“Yeah, no sense giving the judges something to bitch about.”
They hazarded one more kiss and then reluctantly separated, lest they shock Toshihira upon his return, which happened seconds after they released one another.
∞§∞
After Bill spoke with Joey, he started to consider things he had never dwelled on before. He always thought church was a local thing. Although he was aware of the Pope and Rome, somehow he had never really connected the Pontiff to the local priests, other than as a figurehead. Now a new and somewhat more sinister, if that was the right word, configuration was forming. To that end he asked Marilou to enlighten him on what was becoming the opposing team.
“So Marilou, I want you to take the position of a zealot, a fanatic. I want you to help me understand what I might be dealing with here.”
“I understand.”
“Good. Okay, first question: why would the Knights be operational instead of just ceremonial?”
“The artifacts could be considered the riches of the Church, with their monetary value unfathomable, but their spiritual significance at the heart of Christianity. Rome would go to war to keep them.”
“Actual war?”
“Yes. The Church is very capable of this. Look at the history: the Inquisition, the brutal Holy Wars, death on a grand scale.
“But those conflicts and victories all pre-date the modern era and the current Pope.”
“True, but the power to declare holy war still resides in the Papacy today.”
“The world is much different now,” Bill said.
“Only to you newcomers. We have a long lineage that dwarfs any modern government. The papal realm preceded British royalty by almost nine hundred years. Even the office of president of the US has only been on the world’s stage for some two hundred-plus years. Popes go back almost twenty centuries, to 33 AD.”
“So then, to Rome we are just the upstarts; they never conceded world control. They just let the world be, as long as it didn’t bother them,” Bill said.
“Again, I am speaking in the role of a zealot, but the reason the Roman ruins and remnants of the Caesars have never been touched, left right where they fell, is because the Church wants all who see them never to forget that they won and the pagans, with their mighty edifices, lost.”
“Thanks Marilou, you’ve given me a lot to think about.”
∞§∞
At 7 p.m., Brooke was getting dressed. At 8 p.m., Brooke was still getting dressed. She and Mush were only two floors apart at the Washington Marriot.
The phone rang. “Should I swing by and pick you up?”
Brooke was nowhere near ready, and in fact she was in the middle of her fourth outfit change. She was about to say, “Give me a half-hour more,” when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She still had the new boots on, but had removed her dress. Looking at herself she said, “Yes, I’m ready. Come get me.”
She ran to the bathroom and checked her makeup. She gave the hair one more brush, checked her teeth for lipstick smear, gave herself one more look over, and headed for the door. On the way she tenuously reached for the hotel robe. As she held it in her hand, she considered it and then placed it back on the bed. At three steps from the door, she turned to retrieve it. There was a knock, she started to put it on, but then carried it to the door. She thought to check the peephole lest she give some poor bellboy a very wrong message. Even distorted by the fisheye lens of the peephole, Mush looked good. She breathed in and went for it.
∞§∞
Mush had his hat in his hand and was fingering the brim. When the door swung open, he was walloped with a thud of invisible energy that literally knocked the air out of him. The hat hit the floor. It took a half a second, but he managed to shut his mouth and put his eyes back in their sockets. Standing before him was the object of many nights of desire. His circuits overloaded as he took her in, in her lacy black bra, panties, and tall boots with giant heels. She was pure sex. The epitome of every male fantasy he had ever dared dabble in. Her physique was cut but not bulky, her curves were perfect and the shape of her legs and tapered thighs just invited him to explore — but instead he stepped into the room, shut the door with his foot, grabbed the robe, and draped it around her. “We need to talk.”
∞§∞
Brooke’s heart immediately stopped. Oh, God, he is married. Shit! Then just as fast and to her amazement, I don’t care I want him, now! Although she had just been embarrassed to the depth of her soul, his eyes were soft and kind, and devoid of any negativity. They actually soothed her, even though in her mind she was melting down. How could I have been so stupid? I blew this.
He grabbed her by her robe covered shoulders and in a slow motion she focused on his lips a
s he started to speak.
“Brooke, I can’t believe I am about to say this. It could be grounds for kicking me out of this man’s Navy.”
Oh no, he’s pulling rank? Fraternization? “What do you mean?”
“There ain’t a sailor on earth who would stop what we both want to have happen right now. But…”
“But what, Mush?”
“Have you thought this through? You are not just some girl. I can’t and I don’t want to be casual with you. Things that start fast don’t last.”
Brooke started to speak, “I …”
He placed his finger on her lips. “This is hard enough, let me get it out before I give in. Brooke, I am sworn to duty, a job that takes me away half the year. I am stationed seven thousand miles away. The Navy has spent tens of millions training me, nearly half of that on evaluating me before they let me cruise around the ocean with twenty-four ICBMs. My hitch isn’t up for five years, Brooke. I have been able to do it for the last twenty because I didn’t know anyone like you. I still don’t really know you — ”
Brooke had an impulse to jump in, he was distancing himself, committing self-quarantine as if she were a disease infecting his life. She was on the verge of feeling awful, her stomach started churning; she felt the blood warming her ears. She held her tongue. She thought he had finished.
“ — except that I can’t stop seeing you everywhere on the boat. I swear, sometimes when I am in my bunk, I can still smell you. Being a love-bitten, horny teenager isn’t a good career move for a fleet-boat captain with nuclear-release authority, you know what I mean? ”
She melted into his arms. He held her. “Oh, Mush. We are both committed, but how many chances like this are we going to get in this life to have everything we want in one person.”
“Brooke, intellectually, I was hoping you would agree with me…”
Ice started to form around his tone. Brooke was suddenly aware she was clinging to him like the lifeboat in the ocean. He placed his hands on her shoulders and separated them enough to see her eyes, “…but, God, how I was praying you felt the same as I do.”
They kissed, a long, deep kiss. Neither pulled away; they just kept adjusting their embrace, getting closer and closer, contouring into each other more and more. It seemed like it lasted for five full minutes until each started to involuntarily laugh through the kiss. Finally, they came up for air.
“Aren’t we supposed to be above this? Isn’t this too normal for our jobs?” Mush said.
“You mean, if we weren’t working for the government…”
“We’d be on a beach somewhere…”
“A secluded beach…” She said as she pulled him in for another long, deep kiss.
∞§∞
In the morning, the hotel’s housekeeper was confused. Her rules of engagement were clear and based on whether the dangling doorknob card requested privacy or maid service. She didn’t know what this meant. Sometime during the night, a passerby had hung the captain’s hat over the doorknob to the room. She was about to knock when a passing Air Force major advised her, “I wouldn’t disturb the man, miss.”
∞§∞
Raffey had lost fifteen pounds from his already wiry frame and he was beginning to look emaciated. The hopelessness of his reality reared up into a shuddering series of anxiety attacks, as he found no safe harbor for his thoughts. There was no good side, no peaceful thought upon which he could land safely, and he fought hard not to spasm again. His best defense was the avoidance of thought. That avoidance was easier when his mind focused on work. At the lab, with its many distractions, he had fewer episodes; every hour though, he focused on what it was they were going to ask him to do. His worst nightmare was that the people who took his sister and niece didn’t have a political or religious rationale in their desire to cause a calamity at the site, but simply wanted to start Armageddon; the destruction of everything, for some unfathomable reason.
He was tortured with conflicting emotions, one moment wanting to flee and keep running ahead of the screams and horrors they would inflict on his sister Leena and his niece Kirsi and another moment he would decide to play along and help them destroy the machine. Today his mind quickly went to the third extreme. If they were in it to destroy creation, then everyone, everything, was dead, including Leena and Kirsi. So what was the point? Suddenly the path became more clear. He now had a decision point, and his logical, organized, engineering mind was able to crystallize a plan of action. If they were just interested in disabling the machine, he’d play along. If their goal was the end of all, then he’d kill himself, and seal the fate of his loved ones. But the math worked. Three dead in exchange for all that ever existed or would exist, for all of forever! It was as if someone had opened a window in a stifling room. He suddenly inhaled and exhaled as a free man. He had his operational model.
XVI. BEANTOWN BUST
Bill was taking a Special Air Missions flight from Dulles to Logan so he could be there when the ATF busted the South of Roxbury branch of the Knights of the Sepulchre.
The State Department was totally against this raid; their thinking was that the Vatican should be notified prior. Bill vetoed that idea and had to pull rank by invoking his presidentially bestowed authority as head of all of the Homeland Security departments. It also didn’t hurt that the President had backed Hiccock’s position, agreeing that the Vatican might be compromised by zealots with sympathy for the late Father Cleary’s cause.
The operation had been green-lighted by Bill only twenty-four hours before. Here is where countless exercises by ATF in conjunction with state and local police paid off. Giving him “off the shelf” options with which to fill in the operational gaps in the hastily hatched plan.
The location was the Dublin Pub, a tourist trap, long forgotten by the Boston Convention and Visitor’s bureau and apparently a few health inspectors. No doubt, its Teflon shield was buttressed by the expatriate Irish community’s deep inroads into Boston politics. For that reason, Bill insisted on a cover story to be used to all local and state resources employed in the raid. One block away was a check-cashing store. Bill quickly got the IRS, through Treasury, to claim that the honest business was a money-laundering ring to Bolivian drug lords. The BPD and Massachusetts State cops were not told that the actual target was the Dublin Pub. In fact, until the evening roll call, nobody in Boston knew there was even a raid planned for the check-cashing joint.
As he waited in an up-armored SUV three blocks from the pub, he wished he had Joey by his side. This field stuff was Joey’s happy place. Bill’s mind went back to last weekend and the corporal who had been glad to take little Richie under his wing in an effort to stave off the separation anxiety he was feeling over his own son. The fact that Corporal Bradley was dead only an hour later still stung Bill.
He looked at the Secret Service agents and members of the FBI HRT as they prepped and went over the takedown details for the twentieth and final time. Do any of these agents or Hostage Rescue Team members have kids? Of course they do, he thought as he reached around and patted the Glock he’d been carrying for a few months now. Although his protective detail hated the idea of another gun in the mix, a gun carried by an amateur to boot, he had promised only to carry it in situations like this. If President Mitchell decided to show up on a whim, either his head of detail or Bill’s own, would ask that he surrender his weapon until the president was no longer in the area. That was okay with him. So although it rubbed most security types the wrong way and was against their instincts, Hiccock was strapped.
Bill had never felt the macho impulse for a gun. However, along with the resolve that no one was going to force his son to grow up without a dad came the need for Bill to have a chance to vote against it — fifteen votes with a full magazine!
The agent in charge appeared at the rear window of the war wagon Bill was sitting in. Bill lowered his bulletproof window.
“We go in one minute, sir! You are requested to stay at least two hundred feet back from the op
eration, sir.”
“Agent Simms.”
“Yes sir?”
“You married, got kids?”
“Er… yes, two girls…”
“Be careful, okay?”
Simms didn’t know how to respond; he didn’t expect that kind of sentiment from a superior. “We are all going to get home tonight, sir. Good men, well trained and well-armed.” He left to lead the assault.
Boston Public Works employees and phone men stood at key points in the circuitry, with a federal agent on a walkie-talkie ready to cue them when to pull the plug and ditch the phones. A vehicle with a special transmitter similar to those used in Iraq to block cell-phone-activated bombs would start blocking all cell phone signals on cue.
As Bill’s vehicle rolled up to his safe perch seventy-five yards from the pub, he watched as the two-man assault teams started from each end of the block, sweeping all civilians and securing all building entrances and in general making sure no members of the public could be caught in the line of fire. Also locking down the street insured that none of the citizens would tip off the men who, if the confidential informant to FBI was right, were having a meeting inside the pub to plan their next moves.
As the lead men advanced, local BPD took their places securing those doorways and civilians. The lead guys with the battering rams hit the doors of the pub hard. Five helmeted men went through the door, shouting commands. Forty-five seconds later, agents in suits went in. To Bill, this was a good sign. These were the guys who would collect the evidence and interrogate the people inside, and they would have only gone in once the bar was secure and everybody safe. They would set up a legal triage so the next move could be planned instantaneously.
The God Particle Page 20
