by Josie Brown
“Whatever it took.” He tosses me the golden VIP key.
“With…Ivan?” I shake my head in awe. It’s true he puts country before anything.
He glares down at me. “Hardly, old girl. I never thought you doubted that I’m into birds! So is he—the big-breasted of the species.”
“Next you’ll tell me she was guarding the key.”
“She was doing nothing of the kind. Naked as a jaybird, in fact.”
“What excuse did you give her for being there?”
“I told her one of us was in the wrong cabin. Like me, she thought we could make the best of it.” He shrugs. “Alas, I think she’s much too exhausted for Ivan.”
“You’ve always gone above and beyond the call of duty,” I mutter. “Jack, where do you stand?”
No answer.
“Jack, can you hear me?”
Laughter rings through my ear piece.
Not Jack’s.
Carl’s.
“Sorry, sweet Donna, but your boyfriend is all tied up.” Carl’s voice is suddenly vicious. “If you want to see him alive, you’ll need to bring those keys with you—now.”
Carl is out front of his cabin, on one of the Adirondack rockers that grace its wide front porch. He is whittling a short thick stick with a Swiss pocketknife. Already, the point is sharp.
I’d love to stab him in the heart with it.
Instead, I ask, “Where is Jack?”
He nods toward the door. “Inside, waiting for you.” As I move toward the threshold, he says, “Nope, not yet.”
I stop cold.
“You might as well, wifey. I’ve got the three that were in Jack’s possession, so it’s game, set, match.” He smiles slyly. “Besides, you want to see him alive, don’t you? Timing is of the essence. Or as they say in Wonderland, ‘tick tock, tick, tock.’”
“You’ve got him tied to a bomb?”
He shrugs. “Couldn’t help it. When you’re in the wilderness, you have to improvise. I was saving the big bang surprise for the Lark’s closing night nerd fest—you know, a ‘last supper’ motif, as it were. It was to be blamed on The Clark Kent League and its motley crew of cypherpunks, out to avenge the Mad Hacker’s death. Instead, they’ll get blamed for blowing me to kingdom come. That’s okay. I wasn’t cut out to be a desk jockey anyway.”
“Good riddance,” I mutter as I toss him the game keys and start for the door.
He slips them into his blazer pocket. “Now, the key to the boat.”
I hesitate. Finally, I toss it to him too.
“Where will I find it?”
“Follow the footpath on the right to the tennis courts. You’ll see another one marked deer crossing, also on the right. It’ll be tied to the pier.”
He grabs me roughly by the wrist. “Of course, you’ll have to play first mate. I can’t have witnesses who claim I’m still alive.”
I struggle to pull away. My reward is a slap across the face.
“Hey, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself, little ‘Lucy.’ That’s your name this week, isn’t it? You always want to be in the show.” His Ricky Ricardo accent leaves a lot to be desired. “Time to blow this joint.”
I try to wrench my arm away, but he holds tight, laughing. “Chillax! It’s just a figure of speech!” He hands me a cell phone. “He’s safe—as long as you’re the one holding the detonator, right?” He bows toward the path. “After you, milady.”
Carl makes me walk in front of him on the dark path. There is no moon out tonight. The stars are bright, but their light barely penetrates the canopy of fir branches above us.
When I trip, he snickers.
He never was much of a gentleman.
The boat is dark. Arnie and Abu could see my dilemma via my lenses, so they know the score. No need to be caught in the crossfire. They must stay to fight another day.
Sort of like a video game.
If they haven’t gotten to Jack as of yet, perhaps Dominic has, and I’ll be out to sea—
With Carl.
They’ll never find the body, be it his, or mine.
He shoves me off the pier, onto the boat’s deck. I land on all fours.
He whistles appreciatively. “Doggie style. Love it.”
He unties the rope at the stern before jumping down himself and tossing it at me. “If you get the urge to hang yourself, I promise I won’t talk you out of it.”
“Fuck you.”
He laughs. “I thought you’d never ask.”
The engine purrs as he backs it away from the pier. When he has a wide enough berth, he turns the wheel so that we head in the opposite direction.
We’re only a hundred yards or so from shore when we hear the blast—coming from behind us.
My head whips around in time to see the blaze, barely above the treetops.
I charge toward him, fists flying. “You son of a bitch! You said…you said I was holding the detonator!”
He slaps me. I stagger backward. “And for once you believed me. Go figure.” He shrugs.
Jack is gone.
He was there for me from the start, and had my back until the end. He was the only man who loved me without question. He was my most passionate lover.
He was a true father to my children.
And if Dominic and Abu and Arnie were with him, I’ve lost my dear friends and colleagues too.
Right now, I wish that rope were around my neck.
Better yet, Carl’s.
My fist will have to do.
I rise too fast for him to react. I aim for his Adam’s apple. The punch leaves him gasping. While he’s doubled over, I bang his head into the console—a couple of times, in fact, just to make sure he gets the point that I’m more than a little upset with him.
Carl is too groggy to fight me as I take the intel keys—the five game keys, and the master thumb drive— out of his blazer pocket.
His windpipe is bruised enough that his breathing is labored. If I had a plastic bag handy, I could stop it altogether.
At least I have the rope—somewhere topside.
I scurry up the ladder leading to the deck.
I’m on the last rung when I feel Carl’s hand grab my ankle.
But before he can yank me backward, I toss the intel keys overboard with all my might.
Like me, he hears six splashes as the keys hit the calm surface of the sea.
His howl of rage echoes over the water.
It is the last thing I hear before my head hits the galley floor, and I black out.
The icy water shocks me out of blissful unconsciousness and into my hellish reality.
Carl has hog-tied me. My hands are bound together behind my back, as are my legs, which are folded so that ankles can be tied to my wrists.
His voice is raspy but he still shouts, “I’ll make sure that the children remember you fondly.” He waves to me as the boat roars away.
I’m still face up, but I know I’ll soon be sucked down into the deep, dark abyss below the water’s surface, so I try to fill my lungs with as much oxygen as possible.
Easier said than done when the next explosion takes place several moments later. The blast is like a comet, only the fireball flies skyward. The force of it tosses me into the air, too. My flight is only a few seconds, followed by an eternity of dread as I plunge back into sea.
By the time I rise to the surface, my lungs are ready to explode. I’m caught in a an undertow that sucks me down then spits me back out. If I spot stars overhead, I take it as my cue to breathe deeply.
I pray that Carl did not survive the blast, but if so, that the roiling tide is pulling him under, too.
I’d like to think that his final breath comes before mine.
“How does it feel to die?” Hal wonders.
“Don’t ask,” I whisper.
“Must we be maudlin?” Dominic opines.
“Are you here, too?” I struggle to open my eyes, but my lids are weighted with pain.
And with the fear of
what I will find when I open them.
No longer tied, my hands shoot out in front of me. I don’t know if I should take this as a good sign or not. My children aren’t in heaven, so being there without them would be a living hell.
I’m afraid to ask, but I must. “Did Jack…did he make it?”
I am answered with a kiss.
I’d recognize those lips anywhere. They are my heaven.
The kiss has lifted the weights from my eyes. I see stars all around.
We are floating through the air.
When I shift my gaze to the left, I find myself staring into Jack’s soft green eyes.
Over the steady chop of blades slicing clouds in the cool night sky, I hear myself ask, “How did you survive the cabin blast?”
“Dominic,” he answers as he nuzzles my cheek. “He was smart enough to look in the window and climb through it, as opposed to opening the door, which was attached to a trip wire.”
Carl stopped me from going inside.
Carl saved my life.
Still, that doesn’t excuse him for being the most awful person in the world.
“Unfortunately, our host, Gaylord, wasn’t as lucky,” Dominic says. “When he went looking for Carl—a.k.a., Charles Babbage—he took the more civilized entrance.”
I shake my head. “The front door.”
“Word is already out about his untimely demise, and Gryphon’s stock is in free fall,” Hal informs us. “Rumor has it that i.Me will acquire—that is, if anyone can get ahold of Milton, so that he can put it in play.” Hal sighs. “I guess the sharks will be circling i.Me next.”
“Jack, how did Carl ambush you?” I ask.
“He never left his cabin. He opted to eat in his room,” Jack explains. “He heard me jiggle the knob and hid behind the door. He hit me with the butt of his gun. When he saw me with Milton’s face, I’m sure he panicked at the thought that he’d knocked out one of his bidders. But, at some point he realized I was a fake. In fact, he’d previously met Milton at a Catherine Martin for President fundraiser. When Abu and Arnie heard you were on your way to the boat with Carl, they rigged it to blow when it reached a certain speed. They left the i.Me tablet on the boat. If you had seen it and signed in, Hal would have told you to jump.”
I grimace. “I didn’t see it. I was too busy fighting Carl.” I think for a moment. “If the tablet with Hal blew up with the boat, how can he be here, too?”
“Remember? I sync’d your iOS to my iPad while I vetted it,” Arnie explains. He holds it up.
“Miss me?” Hal asks.
“Yes,” I answer earnestly. “And you”—I point to Abu—“and you”—I point to Arnie—“but not you.” I point to Dominic.
“Bugger off,” he mutters. His wink means I’m forgiven.
Jack frowns. “I guess Carl did you a favor by trying to kill you.”
“Don’t tell him that,” I retort.
It dawns on me that neither of us will ever get a chance to tell him anything, ever again.
I should be happy about that. Instead, I feel empty.
Without him, I would never have had Mary, Jeff and Trisha.
And for better or worse, he made me who I am today.
For that I owe him something.
Chapter 19
PostScript
“PostScript” is a computer language for vector graphics, used in desktop publishing programs. Without PostScript your screens would see gibberish, and your printed manuscripts would look like hell.
“Postscript” (lower-case “s”) is a paragraph, or phrase added to a letter that has already been concluded and signed by the writer.
A mother’s last thought is always about her children.
Needless to say, she will always have the last word.
Just sayin’.
I can no longer look at stars in an indigo night without thinking of death and salvation.
Carl’s death was my salvation.
At least, this is what Lee Chiffray is trying to convince me. “Problem solved—for both of us.”
We are standing side by side, drinking wine on the terrace of the New York penthouse.
If what Lee says is true, it is our rendezvous spot for the last time.
“The Coast Guard never found his body,” I insist.
“The explosion at sea left no shred of evidence. Everything sunk—even the boat’s steering wheel. The water is deep, and filled with all sorts of large fish and predators.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “Carl is the biggest predator of all. You know that firsthand.”
“If he is alive, after what he pulled he has nowhere to go,” Lee insists.
“He has friends in Russia and China and North Korea and Dubai,” I counter. “Those are big places where it’s easy to hide.”
“Why would he resurface? Better to be thought dead, than hunted down again.” Lee pauses, and adds, “And for political purposes, it allows the U.S. to save face as much as those we trust the least.”
“Yes, well, I presume the DOD will want to keep the breach a secret.” In other words, business as usual in Spooklandia.
He laughs. “You guessed right.” His smile disappears. “Donna, if the decision were yours, would you want it known that Carl Stone sabotaged his country yet again for money and power?”
I wince. “You know very well, that’s a trick question. As much as I’d personally love to see him back in jail, now that my children know of his existence I’d hate for them to suffer the shame of being the progeny of a known traitor and terrorist.”
“Your children will be affected, either way—even if they were told he was killed serving his country. So, how would you want to see it played out?”
I shrug. “In any event, the decision isn’t mine to make.”
“It may not be yours, but it’s mine,” he says.
“Are you saying my wish is your command?” For this I down the rest of the great cabernet in my glass.
He turns to me. “Let’s pretend it is. How would you want to play it?”
It breaks my heart, but I have to say it. “The truth. Always.”
“Thought so.” He shrugs. “As it turns out, you’ll get your way without any assistance from me. Just before I came here, I got a call from Ryan. Acme’s cryptography team broke the Mad Hacker’s Vigenèr cipher. It led to a secure cloud file with a perfect cyber trail and full documentation of all of Carl’s actions regarding the stolen intel. And get this—the moment the cloud opened, it automatically released emails to press outlets all over the world, which document the break-in and the intel theft. The article was the work of the Clark Kent League.”
“Under whose byline?” I ask.
“Mike Willoughby and N.M. Hacker,” he answers.
At least their lives weren’t taken in vain.
“So, the decision wasn’t either of ours to make.”
He nods.
I wink. “Good. I would have hated it if you had disappointed me.”
“I pray I never do.” Lee isn’t laughing. “At least there’s the Clark Kent League to keep me on the straight and narrow, along with every other head of state.”
“Glad to see you’re such a fan. Does this mean you’re open to, say, an Edward Snowden pardon?”
He pauses, then says, “My goal is to assure that the Edward Snowdens of the world need not run first, in fear of retaliation for exposing the truth.”
“Spoken like a true politician.” Suddenly, a thought hits me. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
He frowns. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re the money behind the Clark Kent League! You protected the Mad Hacker. You told her about the existence of Project Clark Kent.”
He says nothing. He merely grins.
But the smiles fade soon enough for both of us at the thought of Nymphette.
I lay my hand in his. “This is good-bye.”
He squeezes it. Then he puts it to his lips. “Do you know why Carl took the intel?”
>
I laugh. “Because he was always a greedy son of a bitch.”
Lee shrugs. “Yeah, okay, that’s one reason. But there was another one. When Nymphette learned from Susan the role Carl played in the missing intel, she broke into his personal computer to find it.”
I nod. “Yes, she told me. Apparently he had a file the size of Kansas, just on me.”
“She found my blackmail file too,” he admits. “She erased it.”
“Without it, it was only a matter of time before Carl was back behind bars,” I reason. “Congratulations. You’re now a free man.”
“If you have a conscience, you’re never free from your guilt. Particularly not in this job.”
I tip my wine glass toward his. “Long live Nymphette.”
We savor her memory over a three-hundred-dollar bottle of Domaine du Pégaü Châteauneuf-du-Pape Cuvée Réservée.
Without her, even the best wine is bittersweet at best.
I have just walked off the plane and toward passenger pick-up when the Caller ID on my cell phone shows that Emma is calling. “So, um, what’s your ETA?”
I look at my watch. “I’m walking out of the airport now. Why do you ask?”
“Damn it. Not good enough. My water broke, and it hurts like hell! We’re on our way to the hospital now.”
I do the math. “Oh, my God! Emma, aren’t you a few weeks early?”
“I know! Aren’t first babies usually late?” She’s breathing heavily. “It happened the minute Arnie presented me with the wedding rings he designed for us!” Now she’s sobbing. “They are so beautiful!”
“Quit crying and keep breathing! The second Jack gets here, we’ll head directly to the hospital—I swear.”
“Good,” Emma sighs with relief. “Listen, I need to put you on speaker. Hal is trying to convince Arnie that home delivery may be better for the baby. In fact, Hal insists the two of them could deliver this kid without a doctor, let alone a doula.”
Suddenly, I’m glad I gave Hal a new home. “I think it’s time you pull the plug on Hal.”
Emma stops heaving long enough to gasp, “I would, but he’s just downloaded all these wonderful nursery stories for the baby, and it would be a shame to—”
