Zhou could take no more. He charged and there was a long rippling, a CRACK of thunder!
Franklin’s hands shot up, something popping across his throat. Fingers trying to cling to the branch above as the branch they stood on broke, stripping bark down the trunk. “TING!” Zhou cried, and fell with it!
A tremendous THUD, and the sound of a large egg cracking. The sound of Zhou’s head against the wide flat stone.
So weak — only force of will had kept Franklin going. The gray around his eyes tunneled in again. Lost too much blood.
Maybe, if I fall just right.
As his hands slipped, with his last bit of energy, Franklin swung his feet as he fell, smashing down on the giant’s body. CRUNCH!
Franklin fell off onto his back alongside Zhou. The man’s head lay on the rock, oozing from the back. Blood down the rock’s sides, into the ground. Zhou was dead.
“He’s gone,” Franklin whispered as the light went dim. “At least . . . I got him,” he said softly, and the world disappeared. “At least I got him . . .”
He was done.
The light did not return.
Night fell on Pittsburgh. From the trees inside Adlans’ Aviary, birds of every color, every size, disquietly chittered. More than empty water bottles and feed dishes, an odd feeling filled the air.
Two bodies sat against the trees, the man, the woman facing toward the jungle’s front entrance. Above necks washed red by secondary smiles, the faces of Dean and Sally Adlan peered through a jungle of cooing, chirping, singing, flying creatures. Eye sockets empty, filled with blood.
And on the jungle floor, the bodies of two men.
One huge.
One slim and muscular with long dark hair.
They Will Never Do This Again
“We believe at least some of your atomic materials have fallen into enemy hands. Possibly those of the Taliban,” said President Christopher Wall over the encrypted connection.
“That is not true.”
“I’m sorry, sir. We do not believe you,” Wall replied. “We now request — strongly request — that you allow our people in. To ensure proper security, to take joint-control of your weapons, your systems, nuclear fuel and reactors at . . .” Wall read from a list of facilities.
“I’m afraid my people would see such trespass as the basest of infringement upon our national sovereignty,” the voice on the phone replied indignantly.
Inside the New Oval Office, Admiral Thompson, Marc Praeger, William Sloat — and his field op, along with Fed Chairman Gunt, FCC Chair Willows and several Cabinet members, were witness to the President’s attempt at diplomacy.
Five fruitless minutes later, Wall put down the phone on Bladum Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Wall looked at the men around the room.
Fed Chair Marion Gunt nodded, mouth pulled in, “Some of our Arab friends were able to get a phone call through to me. They asked about the status of their gold reserves in New York.”
Admiral Thompson spoke up, “The New York Fed is covered by radioactive debris. Probably so flooded with radioactive water from Upper New York Bay, it’ll be years before —”
“So? What did you say?” Praeger cut Thompson off, studied Gunt’s eyes.
“I told them, ‘Your gold in New York is secure. We just can’t get to it right now.”
“How’d they take that?” Praeger asked.
“They took it. Strange though. Almost like it didn’t really matter.”
Gunt turned back to the President. “You see, sir, we have information the Arabs and Pakistanis are attempting to manipulate the world gold markets. Huge buys in Chicago and London we’ve seen so far. They’re buying every ounce thrown at them. Of course our man in the Chicago pit tasked with keeping prices down is selling. Countering their buys.”
“The Pakistanis think having their own nukes makes them bulletproof,” commented Thompson.
“Well, we’ll just see about that!” said Wall tersely. The President growing irritated, his right eye gave a single twitch. “William?”
“Yes, we’ve got something for you, sir.”
At a nod from William Sloat, senior CIA field-op Greg Claus said, “Two days ago, a small boat washed up on a north Florida beach. The boat’s only occupant carried a wallet card with his picture. We ID’d him as Pakistani nuclear engineer Ahmad Hashim. He’s on the list of top people at PINSTECH — the Pakistani Nuclear Authority. He appears to have died — not from the sharks that had chewed off his hands — but from radiation poisoning.”
Claus checked with Sloat. The Director pursed his lips and pushed his sagging toadlike chin in the President’s direction.
“Mr. President,” Claus continued, “we’ve back-tracked some pretty solid satellite imagery. Despite heavy cloud cover left over from Hurricane Thomas, the infrared shows what we believe to be, with a high degree of certainty, the ship this Ahmad Hashim’s small boat came from.”
“So?” Praeger said.
“We believe that ship was off New York, and the Virginia coast, shortly before those bombs exploded.”
Sloat spoke up. “With the lab data we’ve got on the Paki plutonium, combined with that desert recording of their future plans . . .” Sloat let his conclusion dangle.
“They’re hoping to destroy us,” the President finished for him.
“Hold on one minute, sir!” Marc Praeger cut in.
The President’s jaw clenched. His right eye twitched several times. “We’ve got to see that they NEVER. DO. THIS. AGAIN!”
“But Mr. President,” Praeger tried.
“Admiral Thompson,” Wall ignored Praeger — his Chief of Staff’s interruptions apparently fueling a manic resolution. “How soon can we launch?”
An Unpleasant Reality
His eyes refused to cooperate. The right one cracked open.
In a state of mental twilight he found himself lying on something — moving? . . . green . . . something across my mouth . . . stiffness in my right arm —
His jacket was gone. His shirt cut up the sleeve. His shoulder felt tight where it had been pulled back together. Stitches?
Wide green leaves flowed past. Red blotches on the green. Two white-coated paramedics were taking him out — through the double doors, into the front office. The room was crowded with police. One paramedic looked down.
“Hey! Lieutenant! He’s waking up!”
The gurney halted by Sally’s desk. A wide face with thin lips, a full chin, a day’s speckled beard leaned over.
“I’m Lieutenant O’Neil, Dr. Reveal. How are you feeling?”
Franklin pushed the transparent mask off his mouth and nodded slightly. Took a slow deep breath. “How do you know my name?”
“The driver’s license in your wallet — and the cover of TIME magazine of course. You’re not exactly unknown, are you? Can you tell me what happened here?”
Franklin blew out a hard breath, shaking his head, blinking. “He’s dead isn’t he? That huge Asian man — Zhou. Back there on the rock.”
“Yes, he’s dead.”
Franklin let out a long breath. Part satisfaction, part worry, “I thought he was Korean . . . he’s Chinese, or . . . Japanese . . . who called you?”
The paramedics shot impatient looks at O’Neil. He chin-pointed them off toward the aviary doors.
“They’re bringing his body out next. What can you tell me about him?” O’Neil asked, the cop ignoring Franklin’s question.
“What do you want to know?”
“There was a big rock coated with blood under him. The blood’s his?”
“Mostly. I’m sure some of it’s mine.”
“What do you know about him?”
“He — well you’ve seen him. He tried to kill me,” he said filled with guilt over Dean and Sally. “It had something to do with his owl.”
“Owl?”
“The owl I found in New York, apparently it was his.”
“The owl on the cover of TIME?” O’Neil frowned. Wrote something down.
Franklin went on, “He was like a sumo wrestler, unstoppable. A giant . . . six-five? Six-six? Probably three-fifty, maybe four hundred pounds.”
“Yes, we know all that.” O’Neil stopped writing, flipped a page in his pad. “The curved knife was his?”
“Yes.”
Franklin felt something slippery on his finger tips. He looked down. There were traces of black ink. “Fingerprint ink? You thought I killed the Adlans — then cut my own throat?”
“It’s been known to happen. You’re the only one who made it.”
Franklin touched the left side of his neck. A wide strip of cloth, a bandage of some kind, pulled on his skin.
O’Neil made a note.
“The blood on your shirt looks worse than it is. Just missed an artery. That cut on your neck may have saved your life though. Your attacker probably thought you were dead. Something kept you from ending up like those people in back.”
Franklin’s jaw clenched. An image of Dean and Sally’s kind faces flashed through his head. He let a long breath slide between his teeth. Closed his eyes.
“Seems their attacker did the same to them he thought he’d done to you. The paramedics apologized for having to tie that cloth around your neck. They’re using strips of sterile sheets. So much of their tape and stuff has already gone to New York. You’re very lucky.”
“I don’t feel very lucky.”
Franklin opened his eyes.
“I saw him drive past, along the front windows — before he pulled into the parking spot closest to the door,” he pointed. “He was driving a gray — Taurus, I think. I could see his license plate through the front window. The plate isn’t Pennsylvanian, is it?”
The cop raised his eyebrows. “And you know this how?”
“Pennsylvania plates are white, light blue and yellow, dark blue letters. I could see his front plate through the windows.
“There aren’t any front plates in Pennsylvania.”
Franklin closed his eyes and thought back. “Ontario? A white plate with dark blue letters — 6FR-something . . . my initials.” Franklin gently passed a hand over his bruised scalp and tried to sit up. For the third time that day, tiny stars twinkled across his vision.
“Hey! Take it easy! We’ve got the car. Don’t worry about it.” The detective put a hand on his back.
Franklin waited until his eyes cleared. Shook his head in small side-to-side movements.
“Anything else you can remember?” O’Neil asked.
“He must have been talking about Harry — his owl. He called Harry Ting. He used some English and Chinese. When he got wound up though, it was all Japanese. I’ve never seen him before, but from the moment he saw me it was instant rage. You should track that car. Find out how he got into the country.”
“I’m sure we will.”
Franklin hesitated. “You probably get a lot of this but —”
“What?”
“I think he’s responsible, at least partly responsible, for New York. And Virginia Beach.”
The cop gave him a condescending smile. “What makes you think this guy had anything to do with the bombings?”
“He was upset about Harry. He said Harry — Ting — was his owl. He said —”
But what had he really said?
“He said, ‘Never would Zhou have released the fire!’”
“The fire?” O’Neil staring at him. “Did he say he had anything to do with one of the bombs? Specifically? Like he set one off in Virginia Beach Tuesday night or something?”
“I can’t explain exactly —”
“R-i-i-i-ght . . . do you know how many calls we get like this? A day? The FBI . . .”
An unusual bird, Franklin thought, found in an unusual place? The fire? . . . The big man’s rage? But it was something more . . . Who would believe . . . a feeling? No, the radiation too.
He was still groggy.
Franklin reached over, dug a finger under the tape inside his elbow and pulled the IV needle out of his arm.
“Hey — hold on there!”
He struggled to rise from the stretcher. “I want to see them. Dean and Sally Adlan, right now.”
The huge body was covered by a sheet. Franklin stepped aside into the plants as they pushed the gurney past. It barely fit along the trail.
Franklin lifted the sheet from Zhou’s face. The monster almost looked alive. If only I could have gotten a little more information out of him.
He let the sheet drop.
The heavy arms hung down to either side. They caught on various plants as the gurney passed. The paramedics struggled to push them back up under the sheet as they moved for the doors.
Here and there back in the trees, police technicians were gathering samples from the aviary’s beach.
The front of Dean Adlan’s Hawaiian shirt, Sally’s white top, were soaked in red. Their eyes had been cut from their faces.
Franklin shuddered. He walked over. Took a deep breath and picked the bloody crumpled report out of Dean’s pocket. He wanted to throw up.
“Hey,” another detective yelled, “That’s evidence!”
But O’Neil stepped silently over to Franklin and looked at the bloody page. “What’s that supposed to be?”
“It’s a radiation report. From Harry, the owl on the cover of TIME with me — the dead owl on Dean Adlan’s exam table in the back. Zhou claimed the bird was actually named Ting and Ting was his.”
O’Neil looked at the columns of numbers. With a tight-lipped vanilla smile, shook his head and said, “I don’t know, Reverend. You’re trying to claim this ties that big guy to New York and Virginia Beach?”
“Dean told me it shows Harry received a huge dose of radiation, prior to the New York bomb —” Franklin stopped. Let out a long sigh. O’Neil wasn’t listening and Franklin wasn’t the one to explain it.
“Well,” O’Neil huffed, taking the report, “we’ll hang onto it. It’s evidence. Of what I’m not sure.”
Something forced Franklin to look at Dean, at Sally. Why the eyes? He ran fingers across his own eyes. Why would Zhou do that? A bizarre obsession. He’d heard of it somewhere. Dean and Sally must have interrupted . . . He found his leather jacket and something else that belonged to him lying on the floor and picked it up. He frowned. Walked back to O’Neil. Something was beginning to bug him.
“You didn’t say what you’re doing here, Lieutenant. How you got here. Who called you?”
The cop took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. We were called by the Erie Police Department.”
Franklin stared at him, fear tightening into his hands, circling his wrists.
“I’m sorry to say, something really terrible happened at your church.” Gently as he could, O’Neil told Franklin about Marjorie Stemple. Franklin stood there, clamping his jaw muscle, tears welling in his eyes.
Another cop pulled O’Neil aside. Franklin listened to them arguing.
“His prints weren’t on the knife,” O’Neil muttered softly.
“So what, then, we just let him go? There are other knives on one of the lab benches back there.”
“Like he said, what — he killed them both, cut his own throat, then wiped off the blade and put it back on the table — then passed out next to the giant on the rock — which, by the way, is the only body with no slices on it? Come on! He’s not a suspect. The tech guy says something with a sharp curve. None of the other knives are even the right shape.
The other detective stood there, thinking.
“Why would he do it? What’s his motive?” O’Neil added. “Do you know who this guy is? What he did in New York? You’ve seen him on TV. He’s a minister, for Christ sake! Give the poor guy a break. Think of what he’s got to deal with when he gets back to Erie. They were close friends.”
O’Neil looked around. “Where’s that minister?” he asked a uniformed cop.
“He was right h
ere, Lieutenant.”
No one knew where he was. He was gone. And outside in the Adlans’ parking lot so was the old black jeep.
A white television van roared into the aviary parking lot. Local press people were already on the scene. The police had them taped off to one side.
Sheila Koontz jumped out of the passenger seat, ran up to the tape and yelled, “What’s going on?” at a uniformed officer and another man — obviously a plainclothes dick checking the lot for something.
“I hear that New York rescue minister Franklin Reveal was involved in a triple homicide here!” Sheila shouted.
The cops ignored her. But one of the local press people said back to her, “Word is he just left. Nobody knows where he went.”
Sheila thought a minute. Looked up the road at the distant freeway overpass. Nodded, softly to herself, “His secretary. I bet I know where he’s gone. And this time he’s going to talk to me, dammit!”
She jumped back into the van’s passenger seat.
“Drive, Herb, drive!”
Millar’s Call
In an isolated room deep inside the Mormon Temple, Hyram Millar held the phone to his ear while the line rang. Six times . . . seven . . .
On the eighth ring, a heavy voice answered. “Yes?”
“We have a problem,” Millar said.
“What problem?”
“Uh — is he ready?” Millar asked.
“He’s ready. Are you?”
“Everything’s in motion. It’ll be tonight. Uh, that’s not actually why I’m calling. That minister — the one with the owl, the TIME guy? He broke a corner off one of the Plates yesterday.”
“We’re aware. Hold the line.”
Silence.
Two clicks. “So?” the voice came back.
“I got rid of him,” Millar said. “Sent him home. I think we’re okay,” he added cautiously.
“Think?” a new voice, silky smooth, the barest tinge of anger.
Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2) Page 43
