by Ted Dekker
“Oh? Are you dissatisfied with my work, Dr. Piper? Or is it just this image thing that has you in stitches?”
That set the gray-haired British import back a few inches. His eyes expanded. “I’m not sure you understand the nature of this review, Miss Blake. We’re here to discuss your behavior, not ours.” His accent bit off each word precisely and Sherry found herself wanting to reach out and shove something into that mouth. A sock, maybe.
Her mind was urgently suggesting she retract herself from this insane course. After all, interns sucked up. It was a skill learned in med school. Suck-up 101.
“I apologize, Mr. Piper. I spoke too soon.” She attempted a polite smile, wondering if it looked more like a snarl. “I will pay more attention to the way I dress, although in my defense, I’ve worn boots and T-shirts only once, last week, on my day off. I came to visit a patient who needed a hand to hold.”
Director Moreland watched like an eagle from his side perch, not unfriendly necessarily, but not friendly either. Park, the last of the trio, spoke. “Just watch your dress, Miss Blake. We run a professional institution here, not a recreational park.”
“Professional? Or militant? Dress isn’t an issue in most hospitals anymore. Maybe you should get out a bit more.”
Piper peered over the bifocals he’d mounted on his nose and cleared his throat. “It seems we have a matter of slightly greater importance to discuss. In the past two weeks you’ve fallen asleep three times while on duty. One of those times you missed a patient call.” He paused.
“Yes,” Sherry said, “I’m sorry about that.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s as simple as sleep, Miss Blake. I think it has more to do with the lack of sleep.” Sherry’s fingers felt suddenly cool, drained of blood. Where was the Brit headed with this?
“You see, lack of sleep is a problem with our profession. Tired doctors make mistakes. Sometimes big ones—the kind of mistakes that kill people. And we don’t want to kill people, do we now?”
“What happens to me out of this place is none of your business,” she said.
“Oh? You’re denying you have a problem, Miss Blake?” Piper queried smugly.
She swallowed. “We all have trouble sleeping now and then.”
“I’m not speaking of now and then. I’m speaking of every night, my lady.”
“I’m not your lady, Piper. Where did you hear about this?”
“Just answer the question.”
“I don’t think it’s any of your business whether or not I have trouble sleeping. What I do in my home is my problem, not yours.”
“Oh? I see. So if you come to work sloshed, we should just turn an eye as well?”
“I’m not coming to work sloshed, am I? I intend on finishing my internship with full honors. Someday people like you will report to people like me.”
“You are out of line!” Piper whispered harshly. “Answer my questions! Isn’t it true, Miss Blake, that you depend on medication to keep you awake at work? For all practical purposes, you’re a drug addict!”
Sherry sat speechless, trembling behind her calm facade.
“Is this true, Sherry?” the director asked from her left.
She looked past him, through the window. A horn blared in the parking lot—some patient on edge. “I’m not a drug addict. And I resent the suggestion. I’ve had my problems with insomnia,” she said, swallowing again. For a moment she thought her eyes might water. That would be a disaster.
“But it hasn’t kept me from getting this far,” she said evenly.
“How long have you had this condition?”
“A while. A few years. About eight, I suppose.”
“Eight years?” Park spoke again.
“How bad are the episodes?” Moreland asked.
“By what standards?”
“By any standard. How much sleep did you get last night?”
She blinked, thinking back to the restless night. An easy night, all things considering. But they wouldn’t think so.
“Two hours.”
“And the night before?”
“Maybe two.”
He paused. “And that’s normal?”
She shifted her eyes to him now. “Yes, I guess it’s fairly normal.”
“For seven years of medical school you’ve averaged two hours of sleep a night?”
She nodded. “Pretty much.”
“How?”
“A lot of coffee . . . And medication when it becomes unbearable.”
“So how did all this begin?” Moreland asked.
His sympathy would be her only hope now, she thought. But she’d never done sympathy well. The realization that she was lowering herself into those waters with these sharks made her swallow.
On the other hand her boat was about to capsize anyway.
“When I was seventeen, my parents were killed,” she said, looking back out the window. “They were missionaries in Venezuela, among the Yanamamo. Guerrillas wiped out the mission and a plantation nearby. I was the only one who survived. They killed my mother, my father, a good friend, and his parents.” She cleared her throat.
“I spent a few days locked in an underground box without realizing that it opened to a tunnel that I managed to escape through. I think I may have slept through two or three nights since.” She shrugged and looked at Moreland. “The memories keep me awake. Posttraumatic stress disorder.”
“I’m sorry,” Moreland said. “Have you had any progress?”
“For short periods, yes. But never without relapse.” Memories of therapy drifted through her mind—hundreds of hours of the stuff. Each hour spent carefully retracing her past, searching for that switch they hoped would turn all this off. They had managed to pull the shades a time or two, but never a switch.
Sherry looked at Piper and saw that his lips no longer pressed together. His eyes had softened. Maybe the human being in him was surfacing. She looked away, not wanting to see his pity.
“You lived with family after that?” Moreland asked.
“I lived with my adopted grandmother, Helen Jovic, until I went to med school. My uncle’s mother-in-law, if that makes any sense. She was the most helpful despite all her antics. More helpful than all the quacks since then.”
“But none of this has helped?” Moreland pressed.
“No,” Sherry answered. She suddenly wondered if telling them would be her undoing. The whole hospital would be buzzing with rumors about the intern who woke up screaming each night because her parents were slaughtered when she was a kid. Poor girl. Poor, poor Sherry.
She shifted in her seat. “And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d really appreciate you keeping all this to yourselves. I’m sure you understand.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t quite that simple.” Piper, the Brit, was speaking. “I’m afraid you have more to fear from yourself than from others.” Sherry faced him and saw the dispassionate look in his eyes. Heat flared up her back.
“Meaning what?” she asked.
“Meaning, irrespective of what others think or say of you, Miss Blake, the fact remains that you are a danger to your own career. And to others. A condition as severe as yours that depends on a regular dose of uppers will one day kill a patient, and we simply cannot have that at Denver Memorial.”
“I’ve given my life to becoming a doctor. You’re not actually suggesting—”
“I’m suggesting that you need a rest, Sherry. At least three months. We’re talking about the lives of patients here, not your precious little ego. You missed a call last week, for goodness’ sakes!”
Sherry felt a chill wash over her skin. Three months for what? To see one more quack? She stared at the man for a full ten seconds, thinking she was losing her mind. When she spoke, her voice held a tremor.
“Do you have any idea how many hours of study it takes to finish at the top of the class, Mr. Piper? No, I suppose you wouldn’t because you finished near the bottom, didn’t you?”
A twitch in his right eyebrow indi
cated she had struck a chord there. But it didn’t matter now. She had gone too far. Sherry stood to her feet and turned to Moreland. Every bone in her body wanted her to scream, “I quit!”
But she couldn’t, not after seven years in the books.
She drilled him with flashing eyes, spun on her heels, and strode from the room, leaving all three doctors blinking.
CHAPTER NINE
THERE WAS only one living soul who knew of Shannon Richterson’s true fate. Only one man who knew how he’d really died eight years earlier. He knew because he, too, had come from Venezuela, farther down the same river that Shannon had fallen into after being shot. What he knew about the killers who had attacked the jungle that fateful day might have done wonders for Sherry Blake.
There was only one problem. Even if he had known about Sherry, he was not exactly the sensitive kind of guy who cared. In fact, he himself was a killer.
His name was Casius, and while Sherry was stomping out of Denver Memorial, he was standing at the end of a CIA conference table in Langley, Virginia, glaring at three seated men, suppressing a sudden urge to slit their throats.
For a brief moment, Casius saw a familiar black fog wash into his vision, but he blinked and it vanished. If they’d noticed, they hadn’t shown it.
They deserved to die, and one day they would die, and maybe, just maybe if things fell his way, he would do the killing. But not today. He was still playing their game today.
That was all going to change soon.
He turned away from them. “Let me tell you a story,” he said, walking toward the window. The thin one, Friberg, was the director of the CIA. He wore thin lips under a bald head. His eyes were dark.
Casius faced the group. “Do you mind if I tell you a story?”
“Go ahead,” Mark Ingersol said. Ingersol, the director of Special Opera- tions, was a heavyset man with slick, black hair. David Lunow, Casius’s handler, just stared at him with an amused glint in his eye.
Casius met Ingersol’s gaze. “Last week you sent me to kill a man in Iran. Mudah Amir. He lived in a rural house and spent most of his time with his wife and children, which made the task a challenge, but—”
“He was a monster,” Ingersol said. “That’s why we sent you.”
Heat flashed up Casius’s spine. Ingersol was right, of course, but he had no right to be right. Ingersol himself was a monster. They were the worst kind of monsters, the kind who killed without bloodying their hands. “Excuse the observation, but I don’t think you know what a monster is.”
“Anyone who blows up one of our embassies is a monster, in my book. Get on with it.”
“You send me to kill. Does that make you a monster?”
“We don’t send you to kill innocent—”
“The innocent always die. That’s the nature of evil. But it doesn’t take a man foaming at the mouth to fly a plane into a building. It takes a man dedicated to his war. An evil man, maybe, or a godly man. But evil is not exclusive to the Mideast. The monsters are everywhere. Maybe in this room.”
“And I’m a monster?” Ingersol said.
Casius ignored him. He turned from them and closed his eyes. “I had to wait two days for the wife and children to leave before I killed Mudah Amir, but that wasn’t the point.”
He took another deep breath, calming himself. In truth if Mudah was a monster, then so was he. Yes, a monster.
“Mudah didn’t die quickly.” He turned back and stared at them for a few seconds. “Do you know how easily a man can be made to talk when you’ve removed a finger or two?” Casius asked.
“Mudah told me of a man. An Abdullah Amir—his brother, in fact. He spit in my face and told me that his brother, Abdullah, would strike out at America. And he would do it sooner than anyone might suspect. Not an unusual threat from a man about to die. But what he told me next did catch my attention. Mudah insisted that his brother will strike at American soil from the south. From Venezuela.”
Director Friberg’s eyes flickered, but he held his tongue.
Casius walked back to the table and rested a hand on the back of his chair. “I wouldn’t bother you with the sole confession of a man about to die. But I have more.”
Casius took a settling breath. “You know of a man named Jamal Abin, I’m sure.”
The name seemed to still the room. For a moment they replied only with their breathing.
“It’s our business to know about men like Jamal,” Ingersol finally said. “There’s not much to know about him. He’s a financier of terrorism. What does he have to do with this?”
David spoke for the first time. “I believe Casius is referring to the reports circulated that Jamal was behind the killing of his father in Caracas.”
“Your father was killed in Venezuela?” Ingersol asked. It hardly surprised Casius that the man didn’t know. His history was known only by David, who’d first recruited him.
“My father was a mercenary employed in the drug wars in South America. His throat was slit in a Caracas nightclub, and yes, I believe Jamal was ultimately responsible for his death. Not personally, of course. Jamal isn’t one to show his face much less kill someone himself. But now he’s left a trail.”
They sat there, not comprehending.
“After I killed Mudah, I searched his flat. I found a safe stashed under the bed in his room with evidence that ties Jamal to him and his brother, Abdullah.” Casius pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it carefully, and slid it across the table.
“What’s this?” Ingersol asked.
“A receipt for a million dollars delivered to Mudah, earmarked for Venezuela.”
They studied the wrinkled sheet and passed it around. “And you’re saying this J is Jamal’s signature.”
“Yes. It ties Jamal, the ‘financier of terrorism’ as you call him, to Mudah’s brother, Abdullah. I would say that this lends some credibility to our dying man’s confession, wouldn’t you?”
No one responded.
“It’s not really that complicated,” Casius said. “Jamal is a known terrorist. I’m holding evidence that ties Jamal to Abdullah, who evidently has a base in Venezuela. I say that’s a pretty strong case.”
Ingersol frowned and nodded. “Reasonable.”
“There’s more. The safe also contained a document that detailed the location of Abdullah’s base. Interesting enough by itself. But the location in question, an old plantation, was overrun by an unidentified force roughly eight years ago. A Danish coffee farmer, Jergen Richterson, and his family were killed along with some neighboring missionaries.” Casius fed them the classified details and watched Friberg’s eyes narrow barely.
“According to your own records, there was no formal investigation into the attack. Of course there were no survivors to push the matter either. Unusual, don’t you think? I believe the information I have leads to Abdullah Amir, and I believe that Abdullah will lead me to Jamal.”
Casius paused. “I want Jamal.”
“Do you snoop around our files on a regular basis?” Friberg asked quietly. “Where’s this document that supposedly shows Abdullah’s base?”
“I have it.”
“You’ll turn it over.”
“Will I? I want the mission.”
“I’m afraid that’s out of the question,” Friberg said. “The fact that Jamal may have been involved in your father’s death creates a personal link that precludes your involvement.”
“Yes, that’s your policy. Still, it’s what I’m demanding. You either assign me to run a reconnaissance mission to the region, or I do my own.”
“You do nothing on your own, boy.” Friberg’s neck flushed red. “You do what we tell you or you do nothing. Is that clear?”
“Crystal. Unfortunately, it’s also unacceptable.”
Casius faced Friberg down. He’d thought that it might come to this and a part of him welcomed it. He had hoped they would let him go—Jamal was a high-profile threat. But if they refused he would go anyway
. That was the plan. That had always been the plan.
“Do you have the location with you?” Friberg asked.
Casius smiled, but he said nothing.
“Then you have twenty-four hours to turn it in. And don’t push us.”
“Is that a threat?”
“That’s an order.”
He had done well up until now, playing by their rules. But suddenly the heat in his head was mushrooming and the black fog was swarming. Casius felt a small tremor race through his bones.
“Good. Then I won’t threaten you either.” His voice was shaky and his face had grown red—he could feel it. “Just a word of caution. Don’t push me, Director. I don’t do well when pushed.”
Silence engulfed them like hot steam. David glanced nervously at Ingersol and Friberg. Ingersol looked stunned. Friberg glared.
Casius turned and headed for the door.
“Twenty-four hours,” Friberg said.
Casius walked out without responding.
It had started. Yes, it had definitely started.
CHAPTER TEN
Tuesday
ON MOST nights, Sherry read until one or two in the morning, depending on the book, depending on her mood. She would then nibble on some morsel from the kitchen and climb into bed, prepared to endure the last waking hour before sleep introduced the evening’s haunting dream—the same one that had presented itself to her every night for the past eight months. The beach one.
But not tonight.
Sherry’s roommate, Marisa, had come home at eight and heard an earful about Sherry’s review before the board. After storming out of the hospital, Sherry had roamed the park, trying to make sense of this last wrench thrown into her cogs. She’d nearly called her adopted grandmother, Helen, but then she discarded the idea. There was no living soul wiser than Helen, but Sherry wasn’t sure she was ready for a dose of wisdom.
All in all, the day had been a disaster, but then so were most of her days.
Marisa had gone to bed at ten and Sherry had curled up with a novel just after that. But that was where the familiar ended and things started going topsy-turvy.
The room lay quiet below her. That was the first topsy-turvy thing. Not that it lay quiet, but that it lay below her.
