by Nick Cook
‘Doctor Cain, Gapes’s connection to you is the best lead we have. Why did he single you out? If you didn’t come across him in Iraq or through your clinical work, perhaps he and Mr Kantner encountered each other during the war.’
‘What has this got to do with my wife?’
He glances at his watch, a flicker of annoyance in his eyes. ‘We’ll be landing shortly, so I suggest we pick this up again when we’re onsite.’
The engine note changes and the plane starts to descend.
North Central West Virginia Airport is a military-civilian field the Service uses when it wants its movements within the state to remain sub-radar.
We turn off the runway and aim for a hangar where a helicopter waits, beacons and blades turning. After a twenty-minute low-level flight, we pull up and over a ridge and throw a hard left turn. The rotors struggle for lift in the thin mountain air.
The lake is powder blue under the midday sky. It looks very different from when Hart and I got here last night.
Trees have been cut down to make way for a landing pad.
There’s a small squadron of helicopters on the ground. To its north is an olive-drab tent big enough to house several platoons, linked to the cabin by a muddy trail. Cables snake their way up the hill.
On the ground, last night’s silence has been replaced by the rumble of generators. It has rained here too. The scent of earth and fresh pinesap hangs in the air.
The filaments of an industrial heater glow bright red inside the tent. Graham guides me toward one of the smaller ‘rooms’ and closes the flap-door behind us. It contains two whiteboards, a table and four chairs. Hetta is sitting on one of them.
‘Hey.’ She puts down her coffee, gets to her feet and stiffly offers me her hand. ‘How was the flight up?’
‘Bumpy. How are you?’
‘Cold.’ She draws her camouflage jacket more tightly over her shoulders. She doesn’t look at me.
‘Hetta, I’m sorry—’
‘Lefortz?’ She wipes her nose with her sleeve. ‘Bad call, I guess.’ She pats the weapon on her hip. ‘If he’d asked me to go to D.C. ’stead of you, maybe he’d still be alive.’
I’m back in Hetta’s world of black and white and say-it-like-it-is.
I put my briefcase on one of the chairs.
The left-hand whiteboard contains a rundown of Gapes’s career alongside mine. Arrows point to areas of intersection in Iraq.
The right-hand board is blank except for the words ‘Layer 1’ and ‘Layer 2’, and a vertical line between them.
‘Hart suggested we subject the walls to infrared,’ Graham says. ‘To see if there’s anything beneath the surface layer. And there is. In what you called the sanctum; the part he constructed behind the drape.’
He picks up a marker pen, draws five rectangles under ‘Layer 1’ and numbers them. They correspond to what Hetta and I ID’ed as the patchwork of themes Gapes had built around Thompson and me.
‘Left-hand panel.’ Graham turns to me. ‘Panel 1A depicts an image of the Crucifixion. Panel 2A is devoted to nothing but images of the President.’
He writes ‘3A’ on the next panel, the one filled with sketches of the ‘hijacker-priest’ and ‘4A’ on the one that appears to lay bare my entire life. Finally, there’s the area devoted to the Jerusalem skyline, taking in the holy sites of the three religions: the Dome of the Rock, the Western Wall, churches, dominated by two prominent towers atop the Mount of Olives. Above this, he scribbles ‘5A’.
‘We’re using your nomenclature. So, from left to right: God, Threat, Proof, Mac, Jerusalem.’
He turns to face us again.
‘When we did the infrared scan we found a single image beneath each of the five panels. Under Rembrandt’s painting of the Crucifixion is another of his, looks like Christ in Heaven I guess, but hey, I’m no fucking expert. You’ll see it when we take you up there.’ He writes ‘1B’ in the right-hand column, beside ‘God’.
‘Next, beneath the pictures of POTUS, we have one word: ‘Church’. Why a word and not an image? Church … He chose a church to reveal himself to you. The Church of the Presidents. We’re redoubling our efforts to search the area around St John’s for anything that constitutes a threat.’ He writes ‘2B’ in the right-hand column, beside the word ‘Threat’.
‘Then we have our mystery guy, Rasputin hair and beard, killer blue eyes, and beneath him that one word in Arabic. The word transliterates as Al-Mohandis.’
‘It means “Engineer”,’ I say.
Graham’s expression tells me to shut the fuck up and leave this kind of talk to the experts. ‘Underneath it there was another word, this time in Cyrillic. The word is Pitnatsat. Any idea why?’
‘I don’t speak Russian.’
‘It means “fifteen”.’
Graham scribbles ‘15ski’ and ‘3B’ in the right-hand column, next to ‘Proof’.
He looks back at the board, clearly pleased with himself.
‘I’m now going to skip to the final panel. I’ll come back to panel four momentarily.
‘Beneath Jerusalem, we found an image of a church – gold domes; ornate, like a wedding cake. Russian Orthodox, the Church of St Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives.’ He writes this down next to ‘Jerusalem’, and labels it ‘5B’.
‘Any of this make sense to you, Colonel?’
‘No.’
Apart from the emergence of a Russian theme, the standout, for me, is the ‘Proof’ panel.
‘Did you run the Engineer through face recognition?’ I ask.
‘Yes. Nothing so far. And maybe it is nothing. Gapes was here months. Possibly for all of the three years that he was on the run. And on his own the whole time. So, what did this place mean to him and how did he get a hold of these images? What are they? And where did they come from? But here’s the thing, Colonel: you were integral to his thinking from the start. I agree with Hart, except “Mac” isn’t shorthand for you alone. It also includes those close to you.’
He continues before I can get a word in. ‘There’s little hard science on what makes an assassin. Eighty-six per cent are men; seventy-seven per cent are white; forty-four per cent had a history of depression; twenty-three per cent had been evaluated by a mental health professional. Only ten per cent had voices in their heads. But nearly all had suffered a recent trauma. And more than fifty per cent of those strongly identified with other victims of trauma and perceived injustice. The road traffic accident that killed your wife, Colonel, also killed the driver of the truck. And there were questions, too – questions local detectives raised—’
‘They were unable to reach a conclusion about the Highway Patrol’s tire mark analysis.’
‘I was referring to the Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office’s investigations into your mental state at the time.’
I struggle to maintain my composure. ‘What has that got to do about anything?’
‘A number of your colleagues referenced the fact you were stressed. You’d just returned from Iraq. There were reports of higher than usual alcohol consumption, of possible trauma reactions …’
For the first time since we’ve been together, Graham smiles to temper what he’s just said. ‘Look, Colonel, if it hadn’t been for your diligence, we wouldn’t be where we are with Gapes. Nobody wants to turn the spotlight on you. My director has made that very clear. We just want to get to the truth. So, if we can back up to the night your wife was killed, we can be done with it and move on.’ He pauses. ‘You’d been with the Kantners, hadn’t you?’
‘Yes. Reuben had just been hired by Senator Abnarth. We were celebrating at a restaurant near Lakeland, halfway between our two homes.’
‘And this was …?’
‘Eight months after we both returned from Iraq.’
‘You were at MacDill?’ Graham looks at the timeline on the left-hand board.
‘Yes.’
‘So, this celebration, was it really only about Kantner landing a job in D.C.?’
&n
bsp; ‘What do you mean?’
‘Just answer the question.’
I look at Hetta, who avoids looking at me.
Then I glance at the empty fourth panel.
Whatever’s beneath the surface layer is the reason I’m here. I ask Graham to get to the point.
‘OK. This is a hard thing to ask, Colonel. And a lot harder, I guess, to answer. Your wife, sir … is there any way Gapes could have known she was pregnant when she died?’
19
BEFORE LEAVING THE TENT, I THROW A TYVEK SUIT OVER MY CLOTHES and, at Graham’s request, hand over my phone. Hetta does the same. It’s a secure site – no photographs, except by the forensic team. I didn’t take any pictures. Hetta erased hers.
We put on latex gloves and plastic overshoes and head into the cabin. The odor of decay has been replaced by the smell of chemicals and powders. The deer carcass has gone. The creosote lingers. The light from four arc lamps, each directed into a corner, is blindingly bright. A female specialist, lying on her back, is shining the beam of her flashlight up the chimney. Another, looking for hairs, prints and fibers, directs a UV lamp across the floor. A male photographer, standing on a metal ladder, shoots away at a cluster of images to the right of the fireplace, close to the inverted printout of the old man in the engraving. I can’t keep my eyes off the sketch of the office building which provided poor Jimenez with his vantage point, so have to turn before Graham spots my point of interest.
A catalogue is being made, I hear Graham explaining, as he gestures to the walls and the ceiling. Multiple cyber breaches and four deaths equals conspiracy, which has the Secret Service on high alert.
‘Once the images have been digitized they’ll be crunched through the PIAD mainframe, searching for patterns,’ Graham says. ‘Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.’
Patterns …
I look at Hetta.
She hasn’t told him.
Graham asks if anything is wrong.
‘I was wondering if you’d reached any conclusions about the imagery.’
His eyes narrow. ‘We’ve ID’ed three types. The bulk are printouts – images he’s pulled off the Internet. We found a laptop, a printer and a prepaid cell under the floorboards, and reckon he must have had a place in Blacksoil, a lock-up, where he could plug in, download and print this shit. The sketches are unquestionably his. Handwriting’s matched the strokes with known examples of his work.
‘And then there’s the third category.’ He points to the banal, everyday stuff – people at work, lying in bed; men and women sleeping, talking, picking their teeth in traffic, watching TV or scrolling down their phones. ‘They all lack definition, as if the device or sensor was lo-res or filtered.’
‘Our best guess is that they were taken by a surveillance system, a very sophisticated one – nano-drones maybe,’ Hetta says. ‘So how did he get a hold of them?’
We follow Graham to the sanctum wall.
The surface layer of pictures has been carefully removed and stored, to reveal what Gapes had hidden beneath it.
Somebody has pinned printed labels in two-inch-high lettering to the tops of the panels. I stop when I get to ‘Mac’.
Beneath the label is an intricate sketch of a fetus.
‘We checked with the Hillsborough Medical Examiner. The autopsy did not reveal the fact your wife was pregnant.’ Graham gives his pen another double click. ‘But her medical records show she attended a holistic clinic close to the beach where you used to live. And that they scanned her.’ He pauses, to give emphasis to what follows. ‘Gapes couldn’t have hacked the scan, because the clinic hadn’t at that time digitized its records.’
‘I told you, Graham – the dinner was a celebration of Reuben Kantner’s impending move to D.C.’ I look him in the eye. ‘Nobody knew about the pregnancy apart from Hope and me.’
It’s only in the helicopter on the way back to the airport that I realize that isn’t true. Reuben and Ted knew. I’m sitting next to Hetta, in one of the bucket seats. We don’t talk. We can’t because of the rotor noise, and anyway, she’s busy with her keyboard.
Graham sits opposite, his head against the bulkhead. As far as I can tell, he’s asleep.
Hetta passes me her iPad and indicates I should scroll.
Colonel, I’m off the investigation – back to number-crunching at HQ. And someone is out to bury you also. If this isn’t clear to you, it should be. Remember what I said about Cabot – about image, not substance? He doesn’t trust you.
He knows there is something going on – something between you, Kantner and POTUS. Cabot needs a quick win on this, a scapegoat, and you need to tell me what’s going on, about the deal the three of you made with SAIC Lefortz – then I can help.
I type: What deal? and hand it back.
She looks at me, pulls a face, then starts to type furiously: Lefortz assigned me to you that night. He never said why. You have history with Reuben Kantner. She stops, thinks for a second and adds: You’re the White House Doctor, but I don’t see you doing a whole lot of doctoring.
I type: OK.
She indicates I should scroll on.
Point Two. Did you notice anything different about the cabin?
I glance up. Graham’s eyes remain closed.
No.
She leans across me. I smell her hair. She’s showered – and used something a little more tantalizing than the stuff they provide in the field to fight off bacteria, parasites, fungus and chiggers.
Some of the images are different.
I respond: More images with numbers?
She shakes her head.
Different in what way?
She leans in to me again. Some of them have been removed.
They’re huddled at the bottom of the stairs, between a fridge and a shrapnel-scarred wall. Three women, all in black, and five children: three girls, two boys.
Our flashlights pick out the torn flesh on their legs, heads, bodies and arms.
‘Shit …’ Reuben drops his gun.
They’re all dead.
No, they aren’t.
I sense rather than see the movement.
The woman is lying on her back in a pool of blood, several meters from the others. She’s young. Eighteen or nineteen, maybe. She stares at me. Kohl is smeared across her face. She’s trying to say something.
I don’t speak Arabic, but I’m willing her to tell me.
She points to her stomach.
Reuben shines his light. I throw off my helmet and my Alice pack.
The guy who blew the hinges off the door is standing beside me. He’s still holding the shotgun. The one who tossed in the grenades is standing beside him. They both look like ghosts in the darkness. I point to the pack.
‘There’s a plastic sheet in there. Spread it. Find my instruments, place them on the sheet and pour spirit over them.’
Reuben does so.
I make a small cut in the abaya with my knife, then rip a hole in it.
She has a one-centimeter bullet wound in her abdomen and two other injuries that I can see: a shrapnel entry site in her right hip and another in her right thigh.
At that moment, she arrests.
I start applying CPR, but thirty seconds in I know I’m not going to get her back. She’s lost too much blood; she’s gone into hypovolemic shock.
Two minutes later, I call it.
Time and place of death: zero dark thirty, Fallujah, Iraq.
I sit in the silence, my back against the fridge, and close my eyes.
When I get to my feet, Reuben is still standing over the body. He’s numb with shock. Everybody is.
I can’t rid myself of the look on her face before she died. Eyes wide. Pleading.
Pleading.
‘Give me some light!’
For a moment, Reuben remains rooted to the spot. I yell at him again and he does so.
I make a vertical incision in her abdomen wall, from her navel to a point just above her underwear, then cut into her
uterus. Hemorrhagic fluid washes out of it. There’s a liter of blood in the peritoneal sac. An intestinal perforation, too, because I can smell it.
Her baby girl is almost full-term. The 5.56 round entered her jaw and exited via her thorax …
For a moment, I have no idea where I am.
Then I hear the whine of the engines and the rattle of the overhead bins and slowly pull things into focus: the cigarette burns on the seat opposite, Hetta asleep in the one beside it, and Graham, his back to me, across the aisle.
I have relived this scene many times, in flashbacks and dreams, but never in a dream that was a flashback; because, like I told the President, dreams that incorporate flashbacks are vanishingly rare.
I only just make it to the head before I throw up. I try to flush it, then remember: damn thing’s broken.
The sights, sounds and smells of that night continue to haunt me as I sit in my office, trying to focus on the backlog of work that has built up in the thirty-six hours that I’ve been away. Molly comes and goes – she asks if I need coffees or sodas; if the thermostat is turned too high; whether I would like her to go talk to the Deputy Chief of Staff, who’s chasing me for updates on the Moscow medical mission. She doesn’t know I was present when Lefortz was killed – and, unless it leaks through the media, she never will. But she knows what’s wrong with me goes beyond the shock, pain and grief I feel for him.
I press the intercom button. She picks up before I hear her phone ring.
‘Is there still no word from Reuben Kantner’s office?’
‘No, Doctor Cain.’
‘But he is in today?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘I spoke to his assistant. Five times, to be precise. He’s in. And he’s aware it’s urgent.’
‘And what about Admiral Byford?’
‘Her office is aware you’re trying to reach her, too.’
‘Is she in today?’
‘I do believe so, Doctor Cain, yes.’
‘Would you take a letter to her for me?’