by Churton, Alex; Churton, Toby; Locke, John; Lustbader, Eric van; van Lustbader, Eric
Nina said, “I feel I should warn you that if Hugh Garner got wind of our roles in his task force, he’d find some way to discredit us with the powers that be, so that even the president-elect couldn’t save us. That’s what a political animal would do.”
“I don’t concern myself with politics,” Jack said, his mind still engaged by Emma.
“I’m with you on that, but you’d better give it some attention now.” Without her coat Nina shivered against the advancing chill of evening. “Hugh Garner is a political animal, par excellence.”
Jack took off his coat, but before he had a chance to sling it across her shoulders, Nina shook her head.
“Alli’s life is beyond adversarial parties, beyond politics altogether.”
“I suppose it would be,” Nina said dryly, “in another universe.”
Nina looked around at the thick stand of old oaks, gnarled into fantastic shapes, the sly shadows moving in and out beneath the cathedraled branches. “This place reminds me of something. I almost expect the devil to come bounding through the trees.”
“Why d’you say that?”
Nina shrugged. “Ever since childhood, I’ve expected dreadful things to happen that I can’t escape.”
Jack inclined his head. “It’s only the path the students take into the heart of the trees.”
“Who knows what goes on here?”
They picked their way through the failing light into the clotted shadows of a dense copse of trees. The heavy rain had thickened the underbrush considerably, made the ground springy, in places almost marshy, impeding or slowing their progress. A moment later, ducking around a low-hanging tree limb, they burst out into a tiny clearing. The last rays of slanted sunlight turned the copse’s heart a reddish gold, as if they had stumbled upon a coppersmith’s workshop. An immodest west wind molded Nina’s skirt to her well-muscled thighs, provoked eerie sounds from the interweaving of branches that spread weblike all around them.
At the base of a tree, where the root flare rose up just above the ground, was a mound of freshly dug earth.
“What have we here?”
She followed Jack as he knelt beside the mound of earth. Scooping the earth aside revealed a recently dug hole. Jack pulled out an odd-shaped item six or seven inches on a side wrapped in oilskin.
Nina’s mouth opened. “What the hell—?”
Carefully, Jack brushed off the dirt and skeletal leaves that had adhered to the oilskin, peeled back the moist covering, revealed inch by inch what was inside.
Pale, almost opalescent flesh appeared to bleed in the ruddy sunset light. It was a hand, smallish, delicate of fingers, ringed, nails blunt-cut like a boy’s. Nevertheless, it was the hand of a young girl—a young girl who had been immersed in water, judging by the deeply wrinkled flesh of the fingertips.
Nina looked at Jack, said, “Dear God, is it Alli Carson’s?”
Without touching the hand, Jack scrutinized the gold-and-platinum ring on the pale, cold third finger.
“This is Alli’s ring,” he said. “I recognize it.” He pointed. “Also, look at the nails, no polish or clear lacquer. Alli’s nails are square-cut, like a boy’s.”
“God in heaven,” Nina said. “She’s been drowned.”
9
“I’ve just been reading over E-Two’s latest manifesto,” the president said when Dennis Paull entered the Oval Office. He had to make way for the National Security Advisor, who was just leaving.
Paull took a seat on the plush chair directly in front of the president’s desk. The flags against the wall on either side of the thick drapes shone their colors in the burning lamplight. He felt as tired as they looked. Everyone around him did. In perpetual crisis mode, only the president, who leaned heavily on the advice of his close coterie of neo-conservative consultants, appeared sparkly eyed and rested. Perhaps, Paull thought, it was his faith, his vision, the absolute surety of the path his America was on, that made him burn so bright. Paull himself was ever plagued by doubts about the future, guilt about the past.
“The National Security Advisor brought it over himself.” The president raised the sheets of paper. “This is pure evil, Dennis. These people are pure evil. They want to bring down the country, weaken it, make it more vulnerable to foreign extremists of every stripe. They want to destroy everything I’ve worked toward for eight long years.”
“I don’t disagree with you, sir,” Paull said.
The president threw the papers to the carpet, trampled them underfoot. “We’ve got to root out E-Two, Dennis.”
“Sir, I told you before that in the short time left us, I didn’t think we’d be able to do that. Now I know it for a fact. We’ve been scouring the country for months without the slightest success. Wherever they are, we can’t find them.”
The president rose, came out from behind his desk, paced back and forth across the thick American blue carpet. “This reminds me of 2001,” he said darkly. “We never found the people responsible for those anthrax attacks. That failure has stuck in my craw ever since.”
Paull spread his hands. “We tried our best, sir, you know that. Despite millions of dollars and man-hours, we never even got to first base. You know my theory, sir.”
The president shook his head. “Blaming a rogue element inside the government is mighty dangerous speculation, Dennis. Just the sort the National Security Advisor guards against. And he’s right. We’ve all got to work together, Dennis. Circle the wagons. So let’s not hear any more of that kind of treasonous talk.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, if we can’t find even a trace of E-Two—” The president held up his hand. “We require a change in tactics. Forget about a direct assault on E-Two.” His eyes narrowed. “We must make an example of these people. We’ll go after the First American Secular Revivalists.”
Paull was careful not to let his concern show. “They’re a legitimate organization, sir.”
The president’s face darkened. “Goddamnit, in this day and age we no longer have the luxury of allowing terrorists to hide behind the banner of free speech, which is for good, honest, God-fearing Americans.”
“It’s not as if they’re being funded by a foreign power.”
The president whirled. “But maybe they are.” His eyes were gleaming, always a dangerous sign. “President Yukin, who, as you well know, I’ll be seeing in a few days, has just announced that he wants to stay on in power.” The president grunted. “Lucky bastard. They can do that in Russia.” He waved a hand. “With the evidence in the Black File you’ve provided me, I think I can get more out of him than concessions on oil, gas, and uranium.”
Paull, truly alarmed, stood. “What do you mean, sir?”
“I think Yukin is just the man to provide whatever evidence we need that the Chinese are funneling funds to these missionary secularists.”
Paull smelled the National Security Advisor all over this. The president didn’t have the mind to come up with such a scheme.
“I mean, what could be more obvious?” the president went on. “You yourself told me that Beijing is in the process of setting up a Godless state. Americans have a long history of bitter antipathy toward mainland China. Everybody will be only too willing to believe that Beijing is attempting to export that Godlessness to America.”
Jack had tried Egon Schiltz’s cell, but it was off, and he knew better than to leave a message on his friend’s voice mail.
Egon Schiltz was not an old man, but he sure looked like one. In fact, give him a passing glance and he might be mistaken for seventy, instead of fifty-nine. Like a hairstylist, he was round-shouldered, with prematurely gray hair so thick, he preferred to wear it long over his ears. In every other way, however, Egon Schiltz appeared nondescript. One curious thing about him: He and his wife had tied the knot in the ME’s cold room, surrounded by friends, family, and the recently and violently departed.
He and Jack had become friends when Jack was asked to investigate missing cartons of fry, as embalm
ing fluid was known on the District’s streets, where it had become one of a number of increasingly bizarre drugs illicitly for sale. On anyone’s list of bad drugs, fry was near the top, one of the long-term side effects of ingesting fry being the slow disintegration of the spinal cord. Certain bits of evidence were leading the police to suspect Schiltz himself of trafficking in fry, but after a long talk with Schiltz, Jack didn’t like the ME as a prime suspect. Jack went looking for the middle man, in his experience usually the easiest to latch on to, since he was usually less off the grid than either the thief or the pusher. Using his contacts, Jack found this particular fence, put the hammer to him, and came up with a name, which he gave to Schiltz. Together, they worked out the way to trap the thief, a member of the ME’s staff too impatient to wait for his state pension. Schiltz never forgot Jack’s faith in him.
Schiltz’s offices, sprawled on a stretch of Braddock Avenue in Fairfax, Virginia, were in a low, angular redbrick government building in that modern style so bland, it seemed to disappear. Using mostly the Innerloop of the Capital Beltway, it took Jack just over twenty minutes to drive the 16.7 miles from Langley Fields to Schiltz’s office.
“Dr. Schiltz isn’t here,” the diminutive assistant ME said.
“Where is he?” Jack demanded. “I know you know,” he added as her lips parted, “so don’t stonewall.”
The AME shook her head. “He’ll take my head off.”
“Not when he knows I’m looking for him.” Jack leaned in, his eyes bright as an attack dog’s. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
She bit her lip, said nothing.
“Call him,” he said now, “and tell him Jack needs to see him, stat.”
The Indian woman picked up a cordless phone, dialed a number. She waited a moment, then asked to speak with Dr. Schiltz. In a moment, he came on the line, because she said, “I’m so sorry to bother you at dinner, sir, but—”
“Never mind,” Jack said, hustling out of the office.
Egon Schiltz was an Old Southern type. His meals were sacred time, not to be interrupted for anyone or anything. A creature of habit, he always ate his meals at one place.
The Southern Roadhouse, set back in a strip mall as nondescript as Schiltz himself, was fronted by gravel ground down over the years to the size and shape of frozen peas. Its mock Southern columns out front only added to the exhausted air of the place. At one time, the restaurant had had a platoon of white-gloved attendants, all black, to greet the patrons, park their Caddies and Benzes, wish them good evening. It still had two sets of bathrooms at opposite ends of the U-shaped building, one originally for whites, the other originally for blacks, though no one connected with the place spoke about their history, at least not to strangers. Among themselves, however, a string of ascendingly offensive jokes about the bathrooms made the rounds like a sexually transmitted disease.
Jack walked in the kitchen door, showed his ID to the chef, whose indignation crumbled before his fear of the law. How many illegals were in his employ in the steamy, clamorous kitchen?
“Dr. Schiltz,” Jack said as they made room for the expediter, bellowing orders to the line chefs. “Has he finished his porterhouse?”
The chef, a portly man with thinning hair and watery eyes, nodded. “We’re just preparing his floating island.”
“Forget that. Give me a clean dessert plate,” Jack ordered.
One was produced within seconds. The chef nearly fainted when he saw what Jack put on the center of it. With a squeak like a flattened mouse, the chef turned away.
Holding the plate up high in waiterly fashion, Jack put right shoulder against the swinging door, went from kitchen to dining room with snappy aplomb, and immediately stopped so short, the hand almost slid off the plate. Egon Schiltz sat at his customary corner table, but he wasn’t alone. Of course he wasn’t. He made it a point to have dinner with at least one member of his family even when he was working late. Tonight was his daughter Molly’s turn. Same age as Emma, Jack thought. Look at them talking, laughing. Is that what it means to have a daughter? All at once, his eyes burned and he couldn’t catch his breath. Jesus God, he thought, it’s never going to get any better, I’m never going to be able to live with this.
Molly, catching sight of him, leapt up, ran over to him so quickly that Jack had just enough time to raise the tray above the level of her head.
“Uncle Jack!” she cried. She had a wide, open face, bright blue eyes, hair the color of cornsilk. She was a cheerleader at school. “How are you?”
“Fine, poppet. You’re looking quite grown up.”
She made a face, tilted her head. “What’s that?”
“Something for your father.”
“Let me see.” She rose on tiptoes.
“It’s a surprise.”
“I won’t tell him. It’s in the vault, I swear.” She put on her most serious face. “Nothing gets out of the vault. Ever.”
“He’d tell by your reaction,” Jack said. You can say that again, he thought.
She waited a moment until she was sure Jack really wouldn’t let her in on the surprise. “Oh, all right.” She kissed his cheek. “I’ve got to go anyway. Rick’s waiting for me.”
Jack looked down into her shy smile. She still had her baby fat around her jawline and chin, but she was already a handsome young woman. “Since when have things become serious between you and Rick?”
“Oh, Uncle Jack, could you be more out of the loop?” She caught herself then. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”
He ruffled her hair. “It’s okay.” But it wasn’t. He heard a sharp sound, was sure it was his heart breaking.
Molly turned. “Bye, Daddy.” She waved and was off out the front door.
Schiltz sighed as he flapped a folded copy of today’s Washington Post. “Speaking of Rick, I was just underscoring to Molly how religion and adherence to God’s commandments will protect her against the wages of sin, which these days are all too evident. Senator George is the object lesson du jour. I suppose you heard that august Democrat has been exposed as an adulterer.”
“Frankly, I haven’t had time for Beltway gossip.”
“Is that why I don’t see you anymore? How long has it been?”
“Sorry about that, Egon.”
Schiltz grunted as he slipped the paper into his briefcase. He nodded at the plate Jack was holding aloft. “Is that my floating island?”
“Not exactly.” Jack placed the plate on the table in front of the ME.
Schiltz redirected his attention from Jack’s face to the severed human hand on the dessert plate. “Very funny.” He took up the plate by its edge. “Would you tell Karl I want my floating island now.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Your presence is needed elsewhere.”
Schiltz glanced at Jack. Carefully, he placed the plate back down on the immaculate linen tablecloth. Not even a crumb of roll marred its starched white surface. The same could be said, in terms of emotion, for Schiltz’s face. Then he broke out into peals of laughter. “You dog, you,” he said, wiping his eyes. He stood up to briefly embrace his friend. “I’ve missed you, buddy.”
“Back atcha, Slim.” Jack disentangled himself. “But honestly, I need your help. Now.”
“Slow down. I haven’t laid eyes on you for months.” Schiltz gestured for Jack to sit on the chair vacated by his daughter.
“No time, Egon.”
“‘No time to say hello, good-bye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!’”
Schiltz quoted the White Rabbit in Bugs Bunny’s voice, which no matter his mood made Jack laugh.
“There’s always time,” he continued, sobering. “Give the hysteria of logic a rest.”
“Logic is all I have, Egon.”
“That’s sad, Jack. Truly.” He took a Cohiba Corona Especial out of his breast pocket, offered it to Jack, who refused. “I would have thought Emma’s tragic death would have taught you the futility of a logic-based life.”
Jack felt swe
at break out at the back of his neck. His face was burning, and there was the same sick feeling in the pit of his stomach he’d had when he’d seen Emma in Saigon Road. In order to steady himself, he turned the chair around, pushed aside his holstered Glock G36, sat straddling the seat. “And you think faith is better.”
“I know it’s better.” Schiltz sat back, lit the cigar, turning it slowly, lovingly between his thumb and first two fingers as he took his first tentative puffs. “Logic stems from the mind of man, therefore it’s limited, it’s flawed. Faith gives you hope, keeps you from despair. Faith is what picks you up and ensures you keep going. Logic keeps you lying facedown in the muck at your feet.” He waved the gray end of the cigar. “Case in point: I’m certain you’re convinced that Emma’s death was senseless.”
Jack gripped the table edge with both hands.
“I don’t. She left us for a reason, Jack. A reason only God can know. I believe that with all my heart and soul, because I have faith.”
Say what you want about Schiltz, he knew how to hunt and he smoked only the finest cigars. These attributes were sometimes all that kept Jack from strangling him.
“Jack, I know how much you’re hurting.”
“And you’re not? You knew Emma as well as I know Molly. We had cookouts together, went camping in the Smokies, hiked the Blue Ridge together.”
“Of course I grieve for her. The difference is that I’m able to put her death into a larger context.”
“Egon, I need to make sense of it,” Jack said almost desperately.
“A quixotic desire, my friend. The help you need you will find only in faith.”
“Where you see faith, I see doubt, confusion, chaos. Situation normal, all fucked up.”
The ME shook his head. “I’m saying this as a friend: It’s time to stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
