The Network

by L. C. Shaw

  “What do you mean?”

  Jack looked at her.

  “My fingerprints are all over that cabin and so are yours. Since we got away, they’ll make it look like I’m a murderer and a kidnapper.” He hit his hand hard on the steering wheel. “I don’t understand how they found us. It’s my friend Craig’s cabin, and he’s the only person who should have known we were there. I just tried calling him again before we left, but there was no answer. If he was alive, he would have answered my call.”

  “If Malcolm knew about the cabin, maybe whoever killed him did, too,” Taylor said.

  Jack bit his lip. “Maybe. The guy said he was the doctor I’d asked for. So somehow he knew about the conversation I had with Craig.”

  “Could Craig’s phone have been tapped?”

  “Doubtful. It’s a burner. And no one should have been able to trace the call—we didn’t talk long enough.”

  He had a sinking feeling he knew what had happened. “Someone must have tapped into my conversation with Craig. His house may have been wired without his knowledge. Whoever we’re up against must have one massive intelligence network. If they’ve investigated my background, they’d know Craig and I worked together in Colombia. After they heard the details, they could have gotten to him before he had a chance to call a real doctor.”

  “This is unreal. Who are these people?”

  “I wish I knew. Damn it! I know in my gut that they killed him. He would never betray me. We can’t reach out to anyone, Taylor. Not your dad. None of my friends. I won’t be responsible for putting anyone else in harm’s way.”

  They had even less time now. By tomorrow morning Jack’s face would be all over every news station, every paper, every media outlet. He might even make the FBI top ten. If they arrested him, Taylor would be on her own—an easy target. His thoughts turned back to Taylor.

  “How are you feeling? Any more spotting?” he asked, worry suddenly flooding him.

  She shook her head. “No, not since yesterday morning. I’m hoping it was a fluke.”

  “I wish I could take you to the doctor, but we can’t take a chance right now of being found.”

  He felt so impotent. He’d promised Malcolm he would keep her safe. How was he supposed to do that when he couldn’t even make sure she received proper medical care?

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  She cleared her throat. “What happened with the baby?”

  He felt the color rise to his cheeks, and he tightened his grip on the wheel.

  She pressed on. “I read about it and followed the trial. Did you have any idea she was capable of something like that?”

  He sighed. “Things were bad for a long time. I tried to help her, but she didn’t want any help. All she wanted was an audience for her suffering. I was ready to leave her when she told me she was pregnant, and then I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving a child alone in her care. She was five months along by the time she told me. She was so thin I couldn’t even tell.”

  “Did you tell her how you felt?”

  “She didn’t care how anyone else felt. I don’t think she even wanted kids. It was just another way for her to manipulate me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He didn’t want to rehash it all, but she was looking at him with that expression, the one that said you can tell me anything. “She refused to take her prenatal vitamins. Once I came home and found her doing a line of coke.”

  “What? That’s horrible. I can’t imagine. Couldn’t you talk some sense into her?”

  “I tried. It backfired. She held that baby hostage, and I had no choice but to go along.”

  “Tell me the rest,” Taylor whispered.

  Jack shook his head. “I can’t talk about it, Taylor. Please.” Jack was sorry for what he’d put Taylor through, but it was a long time ago. She had no right to go dredging up memories that he wanted to keep buried.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  THE INSTITUTE, OCTOBER 1975

  MY MOUTH DROPS OPEN.

  “You’re serious?”

  “This is a waste of time. The girl knows nothing.” Dunst leans on his cane and struggles to a standing position. As he stands, his eyes roll back in his head, and he faints. Damon catches him just before he hits the floor.

  “How long has that been happening?”

  Damon lays him on my bed and pushes the button next to it to call for help.

  He narrows his eyes at me. “Why do you care?”

  “I think he’s been misdiagnosed.”

  “What are you talking about?” He whips around and looks at me.

  Before I can answer, the door opens, and a large man pushes a wheelchair in. Dunst has started to rouse and is mumbling. Damon helps him to a sitting position, where he falls back one more time until, finally, he begins to stabilize. They settle him into the chair and wheel him out. He looks straight ahead, completely ignoring my presence, embarrassed, I assume, by his show of weakness.

  Damon escorts him to the hallway and I hear the murmur of conversation. A few minutes later he returns.

  “What do you mean you think he was misdiagnosed?”

  I see hope in his eyes, an expectation perhaps of good news. What I have to tell him is not good—not for him or Dunst—but I feel no sympathy for either of them.

  “The dry eyes, the skin discoloration, fainting upon sitting up or standing—they are symptoms of something more. I believe he has multiple system atrophy, MSA. It mimics Parkinson’s but is much more aggressive and debilitating.”

  He rushes toward me, his hands poised to strike me, and I shrink back.

  “You’re wrong.” He pulls back suddenly and appraises me as if seeing me for the first time. His voice is calmer now. “Why didn’t his neurologist figure it out?”

  “When was he diagnosed?”

  “Nineteen fifty-seven.”

  “MSA wasn’t fully understood until 1969. And it looks much the same as Parkinson’s in the beginning. The fact that he stopped responding to Levodopa is a red flag. Did he continue to see his neurologist?”

  Damon shakes his head, looking at the floor.

  “When the medicine stopped working, he went a few more times, but there was nothing else they could do. He said it was a waste of time.”

  “One thing I don’t understand, though, is how he’s walking. If he’s had the disease for almost twenty years, he should be completely bedridden by now.”

  “It has to do with the coins,” he says.

  “What?”

  “During the war, Friedrich was part of a unit that specialized in religious relics. He was Himmler’s second-in-command and was responsible for finding artifacts and relics for the cause, and he came across the set of coins.”

  I shudder. The fact that Dunst worked directly for Himmler chills me to the bone. “What does that have to do with his health?”

  “The coins have . . . special properties.” He walks over to the table and pours a glass of water for himself. “Friedrich has been trying to find them for over thirty years. In the hands of someone who knows how to use them, they are powerful indeed. Friedrich dispatched a team to search for them after the war. He found ten, and that was enough to heal him. For a while.”

  The manner in which he conveys this information is shockingly banal, as if the story is commonplace. “How could coins heal him?”

  He ignores my question, sits down, and crosses his leg, leaning back into the leather chair and clasping his hands together.

  “I will get to that. He found out about them through his work with the Ahnenerbe.”

  “The Ahnenerbe?”

  “The Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society. It’s a group Himmler started. Friedrich led the charge in searching for relics in Romania and Greece. Before that, he had worked in their top-secret section, the Institute for Scientific Research for Military Purposes, doing scientific experimentation. But he found the occult more compelling. When he learned about the coins, he kn
ew he had to have them.”

  “Why are the coins so important?” I ask.

  “Judas ended up regretting his actions after he betrayed Jesus. When he saw that they were going to put Jesus to death, he went back to the chief priests, returned the thirty silver pieces, and confessed his sins, but it was too late. So he hanged himself.” He shrugs. “The chief priests decided they couldn’t keep the money in the treasury, as it was blood money. Instead, they used them to buy the potter’s field—a burial place for strangers—called the Field of Blood to this day.”

  “So the man who sold the field to them took possession of the coins. What happened to them after that?”

  “According to legend, he didn’t want to keep the coins, so he threw them into a fountain in Solomon’s temple. They were taken from there and paid to the guards stationed at Jesus’s tomb. When Mary Magdalene came to the tomb to tend to Jesus’s body, they were in such shock that he was gone that they gave the coins to her. Mary then handed them over to Peter, who kept ten and gave ten to Matthew and ten to John.”

  “The same Saint John who wrote the Gospel?”

  He nods. “Yes. But then that John gave them to John of Patmos, the author of Revelation. During the war, when Friedrich was stationed on the island, he searched the cave where Saint John had lived and ordered an archaeological dig of the area around it, but they couldn’t find the coins. He found the ten that Peter hid while he was in Ephesus, but nothing on Patmos. Their healing power got Friedrich out of his wheelchair, but he knew it wouldn’t last forever. He suspected that someone on the island was hiding them. He went from house to house with the soldiers, but his search was interrupted by the end of the war.”

  “Where are the other ten?” I ask. “The ones Peter gave to Matthew.” It feels surreal to be sitting here talking about the saints from the Bible as though they are people I know.

  His face clouds over. “They are supposed to be in Jerusalem. We are still searching, and we will find them. But he needs more time. We know your parents have ten. That will be enough to help him for now.”

  “How can you know that my parents have them?” This seems utterly preposterous to me.

  “I went back on Friedrich’s behalf, when I was eighteen. Took a tour of the monastery and visited the site where Friedrich believed one of the islanders may have buried them after the war was over. It was obvious that it had been disturbed, that someone took them. I talked to the locals, got a list of all the families who had left. I’ve spent the past ten years interviewing them. I found out something very interesting at the last stop.”

  He doesn’t wait for me to say anything.

  “I found out that your mother was the sister of one of the monks at Saint John’s monastery, and that your uncle had been entrusted with guarding the coins. I am told he gave them to her to take to America.”

  It can’t be true, I think. My parents are just regular people.

  “I have been watching them, and so I was delighted when you decided to pursue the fellowship we offered you.”

  “You lured me here because of this connection?” I sputter. “I know nothing of these coins. They have nothing to do with me.”

  “On the contrary, Maya. You have history in your blood. You are related to one of the monks in service of Saint John. My child will have even more power when he comes of age and holds those silver pieces. He will rule the new order.”

  “I hope you never get your hands on any of them. And just so you know, Friedrich’s decline will be swift and brutal. He won’t have the ability to rule anything, not even his own body.”

  He lunges toward me, his hand coming so fast that I feel the slap before I see it. The sting is so sharp; I feel my cheek vibrating. But I don’t regret speaking up. The look of anguish my words have caused him was worth it.

  He is on his feet within seconds, striding to the door. “What a pity for the world that your keen diagnostic talents will die along with you,” he throws over his shoulder as he leaves.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  BRODY HAMILTON HELD A CHAIR FOR RITA AVERY. EVEN though Rita knew him well, and there was no need for beating around the bush, he wanted to have a little fun. He smiled at her.

  “Well, my dear. What have you got for me today? What new deceit awaits the good people of this country?”

  “Now, Senator, that’s not fair. I’m just trying to make sure my clients stay solvent so that we can continue to enjoy the fruits of their labor.” She paused and pulled a plastic container from her purse, took out a pill, and swallowed it. “Case in point—without these antibiotics, I’d be home in bed right now.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  She continued. “We would like to remove the contraindications handed out with medicine. It’s a huge waste of money—no one reads them anyway. Not to mention that it’s ecologically irresponsible, having to kill all those trees for every prescription in the country. Instead we want to put a web address on the bottle’s label where customers can look them up.”

  It started as a chuckle, but within seconds, he was doubled over laughing. “Ecologically irresponsible? Oh, my dear. You have hit a new low.”

  She waited for him to finish.

  “Ah.” He sighed. “I needed that laugh.” He became serious again as he spoke. “Well, I’m just a small-town country boy, but I have to wonder, what about folks who don’t have a computer? You know, the majority of your market, those over seventy-five?”

  Her shiny, glossed lips parted in a fawning smile. “There will also be the option to request the literature from the pharmacist.”

  Sipping his Johnnie Walker Blue, he rubbed his chin with his free hand. “Just a suggestion, but maybe you ought to lead with that. Tone down the altruism. Ain’t nobody gonna believe the drug pushers give a whit about the planet. That dog won’t hunt. Make it about efficiency. Cost savings passed down to the customers. Have it to me by the end of the week.”

  She nodded in agreement. “Thank you, Senator.”

  He fidgeted with his fountain pen after she left. It would be easy to get this one through. She was right: no one did read the inserts. This bill was only the beginning. The framing for what was to come later. One step at a time, as his grandma used to say. Everything that happens starts one step at a time.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  AS THEY DROVE IN THE DARKNESS, MORE MEMORIES RUSHED back to Taylor, moments she hadn’t let herself relive in ages. Jack was inextricably entwined with her past. Some of her most cherished memories of childhood included him. Of course, it wasn’t all good. There were the times Jack had come running to her house, the pain fresh in his eyes, after a shouting match with his father when he’d forgotten a chore or hadn’t completed it to his dad’s standards. She’d wanted to make it all better for him, make him feel loved. When they were still little, she’d grab his hand and pull him outside; then they’d jump on their bikes and race to the park, pedaling as fast as they could. That always got his mind off things. When they were finished, her mother would make them chocolate milkshakes, and they’d drink them and giggle, as if nothing were wrong.

  As he got older, the stakes increased. No matter what he did, it was never enough for his father. Jack had to go out for the varsity football team, make the honor roll, and hustle to get more lawns mowed or driveways shoveled than anyone. But the thing that had infuriated Jack the most was his father’s insistence on Jack being an altar boy and pushing him toward the priesthood. As the only son of a large Catholic family of five girls and him, his parents pinned all their hopes on Jack becoming a man of the cloth. What they didn’t realize was that he’d given up on the church long before he’d graduated from high school. He confessed to Taylor that he’d lost faith in a religion that spat out rules with no regard to how they affected its members. He’d watched his mother battle depression his entire life and refuse to get any help. Her friends and her priest told her to pray more, to give her problems to God. It wasn’t until years later that Taylor realized it was p
ostpartum depression made worse by her almost constant state of pregnancy.

  When he’d gotten an acceptance letter from Columbia University, his sisters and Taylor had been the only ones cheering for him. If it hadn’t been for the football scholarship, she doubted he would have been able to go, despite the fact that his father’s grocery store chain had grown to include chains in ten states, and they could easily have afforded it.

  She remembered that his father had made a spur-of-the-moment trip to Jack’s apartment in New York the weekend before he died. But they hadn’t talked about it at the funeral—she’d known better than to press him. She’d meant to draw it out gradually, over the months following, but never got the chance. He’d met Dakota soon after.

  “Jack?”

  “Hmm?”

  “That weekend when your father visited you in New York . . . I’ve always wondered, did you resolve things with him?”

  He gave her a quick glance, then his eyes went back to the road. “It’s strange. But I think maybe he knew, somehow, that he was on borrowed time. You know, he never once came to see me at school, except for graduation of course. Then out of the blue he calls and says he wants to come see my apartment.”

  Taylor waited for him to go on.

  He sighed. “I asked if he wanted to see the sights. But no, he said, he just wanted to spend some time with me. We went to McSorley’s and threw back some beers. He told me he was proud of me.” He cleared his throat. “That’s the first time I ever heard him say that.”

  “That must have made you happy.”

  Jack shook his head. “It pissed me off. Why did he have to wait twenty-four years to tell me? All my life, I was never good enough, and then suddenly he’s proud of me? We spent the rest of the night talking sports.”

  She was sorry to hear it, but she supposed it was unrealistic to expect one weekend to undo years of strife. “He loved you, Jack. In his own way. He did the best he could.”

  “Sure.” He paused. “There was something else.”