by Kyle Mills
“Yeah? Screw you!” Michaels said.
“Jesus, Chet,” Beamon said quietly. “Could you maybe try and be a little more constructive?”
Michaels frowned and bobbed his head as if he’d just been scolded for not taking out the trash.
Beamon looked around him again. The woman with the packages was driving away. The lot was now empty except for them and a bunch of ownerless cars. The man who had spoken a moment before had his firearm aimed at Michaels. The other two guns were on him.
They wouldn’t kill her—Beamon was sure of that. Without the religious mumbo jumbo Sara had attached to Jennifer’s death, she would just be murdering her messiah’s only living relative. A poor career move, particularly with her main enforcer’s recent decision to stop a couple of Beamon’s bullets with his chest.
Interestingly, he himself was safe from immediate execution, too. Sara wanted the Vericomm tapes and undoubtedly planned on making his life unpleasant enough to get him to tell her where they were.
Now, Michaels had problems. His life expectancy had just gone from fifty years to less than an hour.
“Let’s go,” the man said. Ignoring the fact that Beamon had a gun trained on him, he reached out and grabbed Jennifer’s arm, pulling her to him.
“No!” she whimpered, tightening her grip around Beamon’s waist until it actually made it hard for him to breathe.
Beamon grabbed her hand and peeled her off him, letting the man drag her away with a satisfied smirk. “Not quite the man I’d heard you were, Beamon. I expected some theatrics, at least.”
“You sonofabitch,” Jennifer said, glaring at him. “You promised.”
Beamon didn’t see that he had many options. Desperate times demanded desperate measures. In one smooth motion, he cocked back the hammer on his revolver and adjusted his aim to center Jennifer in his sights.
The eyes of the man holding Jennifer widened, but not as much as hers did.
“I got it figured this way,” Beamon said calmly. “You’ve been told not to hurt the girl and to bring me back in one or two pieces—but alive.” He looked over at Michaels. “Him, well, you’ll probably just kill him the minute we get in your van.”
“Great,” Michaels said in a mildly irritated tone. He sounded like he’d come out of the restaurant to find that someone had scratched his car.
Beamon ignored the interruption and continued. “I know what you’ve got planned for her. She’ll be dead on Friday morning and in the days until then, you‘ll have her drugged in some room, alone and scared.” He shook his head. “If I let you guys take her, I doubt I’ll live to find her again. Maybe it’s better that we just end it here. Quick.”
He turned his head away from the increasingly confused-looking man and locked eyes with Jennifer. “What do you think, Jen? Out here in the sunshine, or on some altar with Sara hovering over you?”
She looked to be completely frozen. The two men who had their guns trained on Beamon looked at each other, then back at him.
“Here,” Jennifer said weakly. Her voice seemed to jolt the man holding her and he took a step backward, but he didn’t release her arm.
Beamon was dumbfounded by her answer and struggled to keep his face impassive. He’d asked the question just to add a little more drama to his bluff. He was prepared to go down shooting, yes, but sure as hell not shooting at her.
“You—there’s no way,” the man said. “You’re bluffing.” The slight stammer told Beamon that he’d won.
“What would make you say that, son? If we go with you we’re all dead—and you make the last few hours of my life real unpleasant. And what if I were to survive? I’m out of a job, broke, and branded a child molester. I’d call my prospects limited, wouldn’t you?”
The man looked behind him, but his compatriots weren’t offering any help. “Look into my eyes,” Beamon said. “What do you see?”
The man fidgeted for a few moments and then released his hold on Jennifer’s arm.
She seemed uncertain of what to do, so Beamon grabbed her and pulled her to him. She was probably having a hard time accepting the guy pointing a loaded gun at her as her savior.
“Chet,” Beamon said, dragging Jennifer around the car and stuffing her into the passenger door. “Get in your car and get out of here. Jennifer, slide over. You drive.”
She quickly negotiated the armrest and had started the car before her butt hit the driver’s seat.
Beamon kept the gun pointed toward her and his eyes on the three men standing in the parking lot. He leaned in close to Jennifer and said, “Let’s get out of here before they figure out I’m full of crap.” She looked over at him, her lower lip quivering slightly, and threw the car into reverse.
One of the men was already talking into a cell phone as Jennifer cautiously negotiated the exit to the parking lot and turned out onto the street.
“Let’s pick it up a little, Jen,” Beamon said, watching the men disappear into the distance a little too slowly. “Get back out onto the highway and head south.”
Satisfied that they weren’t being followed, Beamon pulled his address book out of his pocket and found the number for Delta Airlines.
61
“BUT YOU’RE NOT GOING TO LEAVE ME, right?”
Beamon rubbed his eyes with his knuckles as the cab pulled away from them and back into the dark of pre-dawn Washington, D.C.
“Right?” Jennifer repeated, wrapping her arms around herself against the cold and uncertainty.
Beamon put a hand on her back and started toward the dimly lit entrance of the German embassy. She was still in the shorts he’d found her in, though they’d managed to find her a jacket with “Phoenix” stenciled across it in the airport.
“I think we’ve established that, Jennifer—try to relax. You and I are going to sit in this embassy ‘til I can gather together some people I trust. We’ll be safe here. You know how the Germans feel about the church.”
Beamon banged on the front door as Jennifer pressed up against him for warmth. She was starting to shiver, but Beamon didn’t know if it was from the cold or just the stress of the last forty-eight hours. The last month, actually. It was amazing she was still walking and talking.
A dark shape appeared on the other side of the glass, moving quickly toward them. A moment later, Hans Volker pushed the door open.
“Come in. Quickly.”
The German looked a little more haggard than he had the last time they’d met. His meticulously pressed double-breasted jacket and expensive-looking tie were nowhere in sight, and he wasn’t wearing any shoes. But then, it was four in the morning.
Beamon stepped through the door with Jennifer still attached to his hip. She eyed Volker suspiciously.
“Jennifer. This is Hans. It’s his job to watch the church for the German government.”
“So this is Jennifer Davis,” Volker said. He reached out and took Jennifer’s hand. “Goodness. Your skin feels like ice. We’ll go up to my office. You can wash up there and you’ll also be happy to know that I have two big sofas. I’ve availed myself of them a number of times and can vouch for their softness.”
“Is anyone in yet this morning?” Beamon asked as they began to climb a staircase to the second floor.
“Not yet. I’ve called our security people. They should arrive any moment. There’s an office and bathroom that we aren’t using in the basement. You can stay there until you’re able to marshal your forces. While you’re here we’ll have round-the-clock security in the building.”
“I really appreciate this, Hans. I’m going to put some stuff together that you’re going to love.”
“I have every confidence,” Volker said, pushing through a set of double doors and pointing down a short hall that terminated in his office. “After you.”
“Hey, Hans,” Beamon said as he followed Jennifer down the hall. “Could you possibly find Jennifer some long pants—actually, a couple of changes of clothes would be even better.”
“Of cou
rse.”
Jennifer went through the door to the office, but only made it about two feet before she began backing out of it.
“What’re you doing, Jen?” Beamon said when she bumped into him.
There was something unmistakable about the feeling of a gun barrel being pressed into one’s back, Beamon reflected as he felt a cold cylinder bump his spine. Somehow it was easily discernible from any other object—be it pipe, wooden dowel, whatever.
“Please keep moving forward, Mark,” Volker said, giving him a gentle nudge with the gun he must have had lying on his secretary’s desk out front.
Jennifer pushed back against him. “No,” she whimpered.
He didn’t know for sure what was waiting for them in Volker’s office, but a theory was forming in his mind. One that he should have come up with weeks ago.
Beamon wrapped his arms around Jennifer and whispered in her ear, “I’m sorry, this is my fault,” then used his superior weight to force her forward.
To their left, two men stood in the corners of the office. To their right, Sara Renslier was sitting behind Volker’s large desk, flanked by another man Beamon didn’t recognize.
“Good morning, Mr. Beamon,” she said, standing up from behind the desk. “Hello, Jennifer.”
Jennifer stepped back as if the words had struck her a physical blow. She continued to press against Beamon for comfort, though he didn’t have any idea why. She probably would have been better off on her own. He’d made more bad decisions in the last week than he had in the last ten years. The church had his life so fucked up, he didn’t know what the hell he was doing anymore. “Stupid,” he said quietly to himself.
“Excuse me?” Sara said, holding her hand up to her ear. The bandage on her thumb had been joined by one on her wrist. Undoubtedly from her struggling against the cuffs he had used to secure her to her airplane. Beyond that, there was no trace of the woman who had cowered in front of him that night. The armed men surrounding him had revitalized her air of superiority and her condescending tone.
Beamon took a deep breath to try to clear the anger overtaking him. Not at Sara, but at himself. “I said I’m stupid. Your fight with the German government. It’s just a publicity stunt.”
“A bit late, but of course you’re right,” Sara said as one of the men behind Beamon stepped forward to take his gun. “We discovered early on that Germany wasn’t very fertile ground for our recruiting efforts. It just was costing us money, really—churches, recruiting stations, advertising, et cetera. We did bring in a few influential people.” She nodded toward Volker. “But on the whole, there seemed to be something in the German psyche that just wasn’t compatible with the Church on the scale we were looking for.”
“So you changed your tack,” Beamon said. “You used the contacts you’d made to focus your efforts on something you knew would be compatible with the German psyche. The fear of the rise of any insular group to power.”
Sara smiled. “It wasn’t difficult and cost almost nothing.”
Beamon slid his arm around Jennifer’s shoulders. “You knew that there’d be a violent reaction in the U.S. The fear of religious persecution has been bred into Americans for over two hundred years.”
Jennifer shrank away as Sara approached, trying to get behind Beamon.
“I think it’s been my greatest success. We’ve seen a twenty-two percent increase in inquiries from the American public and a fourteen percent increase in new membership. The outcry against Germany and its persecution of the Church has been overwhelming. The media coverage has been far beyond what we projected.”
Beamon was only half-listening to what Sara was saying, instead concentrating on analyzing his situation. It was his considered opinion that he—and more importantly, Jennifer—were screwed. He was outnumbered, didn’t have so much as a paper clip to fight with, and had been hopelessly outma- neuvered. It was that last one that really hurt.
“Come over here, Jennifer,” Sara said. “We won’t hurt you. You’re more important to us than you could possibly know.”
“Don’t let them take me, Mr. Beamon!”
Beamon looked at the faces of the men around him and wondered if they knew that Sara had sold their messiah out. “Now that’s not entirely true, is it, Sara? Jennifer’s Albert Kneiss’s granddaughter and a threat to your power. That’s all you really care about anymore, isn’t it? Your power? This doesn’t have anything to do with God or the future of the church anymore. The truth is, it just has to do with you holding onto the little kingdom you’ve built for yourself.”
Sara looked away from Jennifer and directly at him for a moment. “You just have no understanding of the meaning of faith, do you, Mr. Beamon?”
The pain in the back of his head flared for a moment and he heard Jennifer scream. Then nothing.
62
THE CARTOONS WERE RIGHT—HE REALLY could see stats. They weren’t quite as well defined as the ones on TV, though; more like fuzzy balls of light darting erratically in the darkness.
Beamon moved his fingers and heard a quiet rustling over the hum of the car’s engine. The entire left side of his body was numb and he couldn’t feel his hands, but it sounded like they still worked. Not that it probably mattered much, given his current situation.
The nauseating stop-and-start rocking, the confined space, and the vibration and smell of gas fumes left little doubt that he was in the trunk of a car. On the bright side, though, it seemed to be a spacious Detroit trunk and not one of those cramped little import jobs. The Japanese had just never gotten a handle on how to make a trunk that a kidnap victim could get comfortable in.
His feet were tied with what felt like rope, which was, in turn, looped through the chain between the handcuffs binding his wrists. Hog-tied, they’d have said where he’d grown up.
And then there was Jennifer. The little girl who had held herself together through so much, but now was going to die because he was a fucking moron. Beamon laid his head down on something hard, ignoring the warmth spreading across the back of his head as the gun butt wound reopened.
He’d lost.
By now, Jennifer was probably in the Church’s private jet on her way to the Retreat—an inaccessible piece of land in the vast nothing of eastern Oregon. Even if he were walking into the J. Edgar Hoover Building instead of lying around in a trunk with his thumb up his ass, there would be nothing he could do. By the time he convinced the powers that be not to throw him in jail and, even less likely, convinced them of the church’s involvement, Jennifer would be long gone.
And the Vericomm audio? As good as gone, too.
He was confident that the church would “question” him with the same efficiency and thoroughness that they did everything else. Not that they would have to. At this point, he might as well do himself a favor and make it quick. Tell them about Goldman’s apartment—if they hadn’t found it already themselves—and about where he’d stowed the Vericomm disks.
It was probably better this way, he told himself, rocking over to try to jump-start the blood flow to his side. He hadn’t been looking forward to his new career as the night clerk at some roadside 7-Eleven—a job he’d only be able to keep until the church got around to informing the store’s management about his new history of pedophilia.
He thought about Ernie, transposing his face with hers and imagining himself as a morbidly obese computer programmer trapped in his home by fear and embarrassment. Or maybe holed up in a trailer in the middle of nowhere, hunting what he needed to eat during the day and huddling next to an old wood stove at night, like Jennifer’s uncle.
Beamon adjusted his position again and tried to ignore the inevitable headache that was starting to form as his mind cleared. He closed his eyes, but it didn’t make any difference in the blackness of the trunk.
The stars that had been swirling in front of him were starting to fade and finally burn out as he tried to let his grogginess take him back into unconsciousness. Better to just admit defeat right now and le
t them put him out of his misery.
“Goddammit,” he slurred through the gag in his mouth when the car lurched to a stop and sent him skidding face first into the spare tire.
The brief stab of pain in his nose pulled him from his self-induced daze. What the hell was wrong with him? This was no way to die. He shook his head violently, amplifying the throbbing that had taken hold there. He might not be able to save her, but at the very least he owed Jennifer his best effort at throwing a big wrench into gears of Sara’s church.
Beamon took a deep breath that did little but feed his various aches and pains, and moved his hands toward his pocket. He had to navigate more by sound and resistance than sensation—his fingers felt dead.
The lighter sparked to life and maintained its flame on his third try at spinning the small wheel. Now if he could just keep from setting himself on fire, he might be able to say someday that being a smoker had saved his life.
The red parka that had served him so well for the last month and a half was lying in front of him. Other than that, there were a few books and the spare tire and tools that were fixtures in most trunks.
Beamon tried to pull off the gag secured around his head using the rubber of the tire, but it had been tied too tightly and shoved too deep into his mouth. He twisted to his right until his knees hit the top of the trunk and slid his arms painfully under him. When he heard his fingers rustle against the nylon of the parka, he started the long process of pulling the coat under him. He didn’t know how long it took but he finally succeeded, getting the jacket to where he could access the pockets.
Surprisingly, his cell phone was still in the inside pocket. His captors either hadn’t counted on his hard head, or hadn’t expected the traffic jam they seemed to be mired in.
He passed over the phone, knowing it wouldn’t be much use with the gag. Finally he found what he was looking for: his pen. He unscrewed it and pulled it apart, taking the thin metal tube that held the ink and ballpoint from the cheap plastic cover.
