The Artifact

by Quinn, Jack

  “No problem. We’re coming in from the cold.”

  “Whooo-eee!”

  “Where the hell are you,” Harrington growled.

  “Good morning, Kev,” Paula replied sweetly, pressing the speakerphone button while Harrington responded. “I’m just dandy, how are you?”

  “When I catch up with your wrinkled ass,” Kevin’s voice intoned, “you’ll be fending off dykes in Leavenworth for the next twenty years!”

  “Let’s cut to the chase, Kev. They’re going on the air in eleven hours. Can you take them before then?”

  “That’s privileged. And you’re out of the loop, Girl.”

  Paula expelled a weary sigh into the phone. “Well, I know a couple of places they probably are. If you don’t want to hear them, fine with me.”

  Harrington didn’t reply for several moments. “What’s the deal?”

  “Reinstate me and Jerry with total amnesty. We take point and command of the action. You get the perps and the credit.”

  “You can go straight to hell, Najarian!”

  “Fine,” Paula said, and disconnected.

  Jerry picked up the check. “We’d better get out of here, Pal.”

  She placed the phone on the table and took a sip of tepid coffee. “Let’s wait a couple, Jer.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  “Find out if they have a FAX in the back, will you?”

  Jerry slid out of the booth and went to the cashier to pay for their breakfast. When he returned to their table her phone was ringing.

  “Yes, Kevin?”

  “Where the fuck are they?”

  “We have a deal?”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s a deal.”

  “FAX that to me in your handwriting and signature.” She reached out to take the piece of paper from Jerry and read off the diner FAX number. “I’ll call you back as soon as I get it.”

  Clyde Callaghan stood gazing out the bay window of the Rowe lodge at the large white flakes almost obliterating his view of the stand of birches surrounding the hewn-log building. His associates were seated around the living room perusing his broad back in silence.

  Although demonstrations by Christians and non-Christians continued, they began to turn from violent to agitated the day following the last segment of Shimon’s treatise. The finality of the ancient document seemed to have removed some of the anger from the autobiography for many thoughtful Christians, replacing it with awe and trepidation at its implications. Even lax Christians were humbled at the potential ramifications of Shimon’s eyewitness account of his brother’s first century existence, and followed their devout brethren into churches around the globe to pray for guidance. Local police and militias had begun to quell demonstrations by Christians, riotous looters, felons and arsonists. Members of other religions remained smug and ebullient at the Christian dilemma, and the entire world seemed to be waiting for some definitive conclusion to the revelations made in the writings of Shimon.

  “I have prayed for this respite,” Cassandra said. “The thought of continuing riots and deaths because we released the document saddened me greatly.”

  Callaghan spoke without turning. “We couldn’t keep it from them in good conscience.”

  Andrea’s wheelchair stood in the warmth from the fireplace. “IT BELONGS TO THE ENTIRE POPULATION,” her mechanized whisper told them. “DESTROYING OR HIDING IT, LETTING CHRISTIAN LEADERS CENSURE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN CRIMINAL.”

  “Well, it’s done,” Geoff observed. “Now we have other concerns.”

  “One of which is how to wrap this up,” Pulaski said, “so we don’t get lined up and shot for treason.”

  Alvarez lifted his hand like a schoolboy requesting permission to speak. “They know we’d accuse them of complicity if they tried us in court.”

  “That’s not gonna happen,” Conté said.

  “We go on camera telling our story,” Gerlach told them, “we’re gonna sound like wimps making excuses.”

  “We don’t have a story,” Crandall grunted, “without admitting the whole scam was authorized and by who. Names, titles, and dates.”

  Callaghan turned to look at Andrea. “Which is why somebody else has got to explain our actions to the people.”

  “She can’t even talk,” Sammy said, “never mind give a behind-the- scenes report of a momentous event to the entire world.”

  Andrea spoke again through the metallic timbre of her voice synthesizer. “YES, I

  CAN. MY SWAN SONG.”

  “The satellite log showed that somebody had traced the transmission location of our final uplink,” Sammy said. “They can shut us down any time they want.”

  “The Feebs,” Palagi offered. “They’ll bust in here as soon as the visibility improves.

  Callaghan moved from the window to confront them. “We cannot allow them to stop us before we’re through.”

  “I will not permit a shoot-out with the FBI,” Cassandra said.

  “What if we can’t control it?” Gerlach asked. “Look what they did to that Davidian sect in Waco.”

  Peters leaned forward in his chair wringing his hands. “Why can’t we just tape it and walk away?”

  Geoff shook his head dismissively. “And go on the run ‘til they track us down?”

  “There will not be any killing,” Callaghan assured them, “by us or them.”

  “How can you be sure?” Cassandra asked.

  “Charlie?” Callaghan said.

  Geoff stood, stepped to the center of the room, and explained the contingency plan he and Callaghan had worked out the previous night.

  Sammy wheeled Andrea out of the large central common area to her room at the rear of the lodge. He lifted her onto the hospital bed, propped the pillows behind her head and pulled the spread over her inert body up to her shoulders.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “Sit close so I don’t have to use that damned machine,” she whispered.

  Sammy stretched out on the narrow mattress beside her, snuggling close, facing her. “How’s this?”

  “I have a headache.”

  Sammy chuckled and kissed her cheek. “You sure didn’t have one the other night.”

  “What a good friend. You’re going to miss me.”

  “Suppose there is an afterlife, then what?”

  Then I’ll miss you, too.”

  “You’d better!”

  “I sense you’ve kind of connected with Geoff.”

  “He seems like a good man.”

  “Maybe something nice will come out of all this after all.”

  “More than that, I hope.”

  “I probably won’t be around to hear the Fat Lady sing.”

  “Don’t go there, Princess. You could hang in for years.”

  “I don’t want to. Not like this.”

  His voice was hoarse when he finally replied. “Don’t ever ask me that, Andy. I would never do it.”

  “I’ll think of something, if I have to. Get Kevorkian out here.”

  They lay quietly side by side, and Andrea’s eyes closed in a light sleep. Sammy remained immobile on the bed, his mind churning, his moist eyes glued on the flocked plaster ceiling. The importance of the Shimon autobiography had paled for him compared to the rapid progression of Andrea’s terminal illness. He had absorbed the doctrine of the Catholic religion without question in the New Jersey household of his first-generation, hard-working Polish parents. Until his misdirected sojourn in the seminary, after which he stopped going to Mass and hadn’t thought much about God at all since. Was the resurrection of Jesus a hoax that had been perpetrated on the so-called faithful for two thousand years? Is the Supreme Being an uncaring Deity as Shimon contends? Or nonexistent, as Andy believes, even near death.

  Sammy rose carefully from the bed and walked to the window. The snow was still falling in earnest beneath plots of mown grass heaped with an accumulation of at least two feet. He hadn’t expected anything like this when they began searching for the artifact al
most a year ago. He couldn’t help feeling some responsibility for foisting the contentious document onto the public; but what could he do? He couldn’t stop them. Rat them out to the Feds? Or did the world need to grapple with this, bring the issue of God into the forefront of our modern-day concerns, maybe even become a better place for having done so.

  He turned away from the falling snow to contemplate the inert woman on the bed. Previously active and full of energy, lying there shrunken, helpless, desiccated by a horrible disease. Why? Why her? Why Brian, an innocent child, or any premature death for that matter? Is that supposed to be part of God’s great plan? Or is Shimon’s contention valid: that The Almighty has lost interest in mankind and has left us to our own machinations and random fate?

  They were seated side by side in the Jeep with the motor running and heater on in the parking lot of the Leominster truck stop, for nothing better to do, field-stripping their Glock automatics, waiting for the plows to get a head start.

  “Now that Harrington knows Callaghan’s been televising from Rowe,” Jerry said, “we’re going to be hard-pressed to get there before he does, or Callaghan goes on the air.”

  “That’ll be eight o’clock tonight,” she answered. “We have almost ten hours to go

  seventy miles.”

  “What’s stopping Harrington from trashing us right along with Callaghan?”

  Paula finished reassembling her weapon, flicked the safety on, slapped a loaded magazine

  into the butt and slammed a round into the chamber. “Me.”

  She picked up her cell phone, and pressed an instant dial number. Maria Hernandez answered her personal line on the first ring. “Can you talk?” Paula asked in Spanish.

  “I’m fine,” Maria answered in her native tongue. “I am going to visit my brother in Boston to see the Celtics tonight.”

  Paula continued in the same language. “What time is the game?”

  “I think at seven o’clock,” she replied. “The snow is supposed to stop this afternoon.”

  “Gracias, Sister. We will speak again.”

  Paula broke the connection and smiled at Jerry. “We’re in luck. The religious panel is scheduled to broadcast from DC at seven. Harrington plans to hit Callaghan at the same time, when they’ll be engrossed in that.”

  “Now all we have to do is elbow Harrington and probably a hundred agents out of the way to get at Callaghan first.”

  “The general won’t be stupid enough to let either one of us catch him on the crapper.”

  Paula shook her head and snugged deeper into her double-breasted navy wool coat. “Harrington will send some guys in to draw fire, take casualties, if they have to. Then have justification to do the dirty deed.”

  “Jesus, boss, how the hell are we going to stop that?”

  “Saddle up, partner. We’ve got to get into that hideaway before Harrington’s troops,

  who are damned sure going to take Callaghan down with every last one of his people.”

  Us too, Jerry thought.

  At thirty-three years old, Thomas Lowry was a twelve-year FBI agent, more than seven of which

  had been dedicated to Special Weapons and Tactical training and operations. His dense brown hair shaped to a close crew cut, clean-shaven cheeks and muscular body had inspired his squad to refer to him as “Arnold.” The SWAT team leader had assembled his squad of fifteen men in the briefing room at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Standing before them with arms crossed over black coveralls he recalled his meeting with Deputy FBI Director Kevin Harrington that morning, considering just how much he could reveal to his men about the political aspects of their mission.

  “This is going to smell like a damned skunk works,” he had told Harrington.

  “Do it right and you’ll be covered,” the Deputy Director assured him.

  “But no paper. Somebody will have to take the fall.”

  “The world is so pissed at Callaghan they’ll build you a monument.”

  Lowry swallowed that fabrication without comment, realizing that the only person who could save his tender ass was himself.

  “The honchos upstairs don’t want any fallout from these people,” Lowry told his men. “If they fire first, we will respond.” He addressed two men with camcorders at their feet. “Keep those tapes running from the minute we exit the chopper.”

  “I understand a couple of reporters are in there,” an agent said.

  “Can’t be helped,” Lowry answered. “Nobody lives to tell their version of the story.”

  “What about the original document?” another soldier asked.

  “We’ll make sure it goes up in smoke with everything else.”

  “Take no prisoners,” a third man quipped.

  “You got that right.”

  Sammy approached Callaghan, who was huddled with Geoff before the smoldering red/charcoal

  logs the fireplace of the large living room, whose ambient light came from the dull gray winter

  afternoon through bay windows, insistent white flakes pummeling the ground outside in a

  swirling, angled slant.

  “They’ve blocked our access to the satellite, Sammy told them.”

  “Any problem with plan ‘B’?” the general asked.

  “I have a call in to Nuzzo,” Sammy said. “Otherwise we’re set to go.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  Plan ‘B’ entailed the virtually assured cooperation of a major TV network to receive a final announcement from the artifact cadre via computer video and audio, plus their authorization to rebroadcast the message to other TV and radio stations around the world. Andrea was certain that Dick Nuzzo and NBC would jump at the chance to be the first to receive and disseminate the last issue from Callaghan’s group, along with the exclusive scoop Sammy would promise as sweetener. Sammy left the room to set the plan in motion, as Cassandra wheeled Andrea into it, rolling her chair next to Callaghan and setting the brake.

  Cassandra handed Andrea’s copy to the general before taking a seat on the sofa. Callaghan read through the all-caps, double- spaced typed sheets of paper, smiled at Andrea, gave her a thumbs up, then passed the copy to Geoff. Sammy reentered the room with Bucci to set up the camcorder opposite Andrea’s position by the fire, from which the final chapter of their artifact escapade would be played out.

  Geoff riffled the several pages of the statement Andrea would make to a global audience in less than an hour. “Not very positive, is it?”

  “What else would we have wanted her to say?” Cassandra asked.

  Geoff posed a question that had been at the back of his mind for months. “Do you ever wonder if we were wrong in publishing it intact?”

  Callaghan’s reply was immediate and forceful. “Never!”

  “It feels like we’ve tossed a pound of raw meat to a thousand lions,” Cassandra said.

  A cold wind blew in through the front door as Palagi and Alvarez ushered Paula and

  Jerry into the lodge.

  “They just drove up like invited guests,” Alvarez said.

  The two agents were told to take their coats off in the kitchen, where Palagi placed their weapons on the counter before bringing them into the living room and making the introductions.

  “Just the two of them?” Geoff asked.

  “For now,” Paula answered.

  Palagi said, “We’ll go back out and wait for the others.”

  Callaghan gestured toward a two-cushion sofa angled toward the fireplace. “Have a seat.”

  “Just in time for the final act,” Geoff said.

  Paula’s retort was without rancor. “In time to save your asses.”

  “How is that?” Cassandra asked.

  Paula looked shocked. “I thought you’d been killed.”

  “My twin sister.”

  “Phew! For a minute there....”

  Geoff came back to the point. “What’s going down, Najarian?”

  They heard the sounds of helicopters overhead before she could
answer. “My boss is sending a SWAT team in to make sure you don’t go public with any sensitive info.”

  Geoff got up and left the room. “Right on cue.”

  “Which would cause great consternation around the world,” Callaghan said, “preventing a certain degree of closure to this admittedly disturbing revelation, and cast us in the role of criminals. Did you intend to kill the messengers, Ms. Najarian?”

  “Not me. I need to keep you healthy,” Paula said. “For personal reasons.”

  Callaghan smiled at her. “Earn a whole headdress of feathers for bringing us in?”

  “You will be charged with disobeying a direct order, dereliction of duty and treason, for openers,” the agent told him.

  “The only law we’ve broken is an Iraqi prohibition against removing ancient artifacts from their country. A country we’re at war with, whose religious fanatics were responsible for 3,000 American lives on 9/11. They would surely destroy the Shimon biography, a legitimately Christian document, if they ever got their hands on it.”

  “You lied to your superiors,” Paula continued, “and released it without authorization.

  Against specific instructions to keep it quiet,” she added, “and eventually turn it over to your

  government.”

  Callaghan leaned forward in the armchair facing the sofa occupied by Paula and Jerry. “I am not a renegade in this operation. I’ve spent my entire twenty-three year military career following orders, going into battle against the enemies of my country.”

  Paula’s expression was skeptical. “You expect me to believe that your evasion and denial of this artifact theft was authorized by some high government entity?” The agent laughed. “Come on, General, I didn’t just get off the bus!”

  “Suppose it were true. Suppose when I reported the contents of the document to someone in the Pentagon, they told me to quash it. That the world couldn’t handle it, the entire planet would be plunged into an interminable religious war. Then it must have gone upstairs, and higher

  authority reversed that, ordering me to verify, translate it and surrender it to them.”

  “You should have obeyed orders.”