by James Barney
“Da?” he answered.
“Vlad, it’s Sashko,” said a man in Ukrainian. Alexandre “Sashko” Melnik was Krupnov’s most trusted lieutenant and was currently in charge of all of Krupnov Energy’s operations in the United States. “We just picked up two more signals from Thurmond,” he continued.
“The Soviet team?” asked Krupnov, switching seamlessly from his native Russian to Ukrainian.
“Yes. It appears so. We’re going out to find them now. I just wanted to let you know before you got on your flight.”
“Excellent. They may have valuable information for us, maybe the material itself. Make sure you bring them in alive. And, Sashko?”
“Yes?”
“Do not fuck this one up, understand?”
“Tak. I understand.”
“You bring them in immediately no matter what you have to do. Is that clear?”
“Yes. The men are assembling now, and we’ll have a chopper in the air within twenty minutes.”
“Make it ten. I will not tolerate another mistake like you made with Malachi. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And speaking of Malachi, any sign of him?”
The man on the other end of the line hesitated a moment. “No,” he replied quietly. “We’re still looking for him.”
Krupnov cursed under his breath and terminated the call. Why is this so difficult? He leaned forward and tapped Misha on the shoulder. “Step on it. I don’t want to miss my flight.”
22
RESTON, VIRGINIA
A shrill noise pierced the silence of Ana Thorne’s darkened one-bedroom apartment. She awoke immediately, her adrenal glands quickly jumping into action. A moment later, the same shrill sound repeated itself. The phone. She picked it up before it could ring a third time.
“Thorne,” she said in a raspy voice that belied the fact that she’d gotten only two hours of sleep. It was 4:35 A.M., and she knew perfectly well who was calling. Middle-of-the-night calls used to rattle her, but not anymore. Not since the fateful call that had arrived in this apartment two and a half years ago, informing her that her fiancé had been killed in Afghanistan during a covert CIA operation. No, these days, if someone called in the middle of the night, she could be damn certain it was work. Who else would it be?
“Ana, it’s Bill. Can you come in?”
“What is it? Is it Mike? Have you heard from him?”
“No,” said McCreary glumly. “It’s something else.”
“On my way.” Ana hung up and was out the door in less than five minutes. If her CIA training at Camp Peary had taught her anything, it was how to dress and egress quickly. But before turning off the lights and closing the door to her apartment, she paused and quickly surveyed the living room. She’d lived in this apartment for more than three years. Yet, in all that time, she’d never managed to hang a single picture on the wall. What’s the point? The place was clean and sparsely furnished, like a hotel room. Which essentially it was. There didn’t seem to be any point in trying to personalize it.
Not anymore.
Thorne arrived at CIA headquarters just after 5:00 A.M. and proceeded directly to Bill McCreary’s office on the third floor of building 1. The placard on the door read: DTAI TEMPORARY OFFICE. Wishful thinking, she thought with a crooked smile. Ana knew that McCreary was still hoping for a bigger space, having arrived at the CIA from DARPA several months ago. But she also knew he wasn’t going to get it, at least not anytime soon. There was a certain pecking order to this place, and DTAI was currently at the bottom. She took a deep breath and knocked three times on the door.
“Come in,” McCreary yelled.
Ana entered and immediately noticed the hulking presence of Steve Goodwin, McCreary’s administrative assistant. Goon, administrative assistant, whatever. He was six feet three and made of solid muscle. “What, he’s read into this program now, too?” she asked.
“As of last night, yes,” said McCreary. “With Califano . . . uh, missing, we’ll need some extra analytical help. Steve has some experience with data mining, so I figured he could take over where Califano left off. Granted, our program’s not as powerful as his, but it’ll have to do. For now, anyway. Until he comes back.”
“Is he coming back?”
McCreary shook his head and exhaled. “Honestly, I don’t know.”
“Why can’t we just send someone down there to look for him? Hell, I’ll go.”
McCreary frowned. “You know we can’t risk that.”
Ana nodded reluctantly because she knew he was right. “How’s Admiral Armstrong taking it?”
“Not well.”
“Yeah. I figured as much.” Ana was sympathetic but, of course, didn’t show it. She’d noticed the close relationship that Admiral Armstrong and Mike Califano seemed to have. Almost like father and son, or mentor and mentee. She didn’t understand it, but she had no doubt it was genuine. Which was why she felt bad for Armstrong. It was tough losing someone you cared about. On the other hand, this was the agency, and sometimes people died. Or sometimes they just disappeared—like her fiancé—and you didn’t even have the satisfaction of knowing what had happened to them. Either way, you had to move on and finish the mission. The mission always came first.
“So, what’s up?” Ana asked, looking back and forth between McCreary and Goodwin.
“Holzberg’s dead,” said McCreary.
“What?” Ana had hoped they might be able to extract more information from him after his wound healed—something better than the gibberish they’d gotten from him so far. “When?” she asked.
“About two hours ago. I’ve ordered an autopsy to confirm the cause of death, but I’m guessing it was old age. Med staff said his organs just started shutting down one after the other. Same sort of progeria effect we saw earlier with his hair and fingernails. As if he’s aging from the inside out.”
“Well, I’m sure the gunshot wound didn’t help, either.”
“Probably not.”
“Did he say anything else while we were gone yesterday? Anything useful?”
“You can review the tapes yourself,” said McCreary. “But I don’t think he did. He was pretty far gone and never really recovered after Friday night.”
“Too bad. He might have been our last hope. How about our mystery man in Frostburg? Any luck finding him?”
“Not yet. I’ve got the FBI on it, and we’re monitoring their live feeds.” McCreary nodded toward Steve Goodwin, who was now wearing a pair of headphones and was seated at a computer workstation on the far side of the room.
“So, what now?” Ana asked.
“We’re still working on the stuff we picked up yesterday. The police lifted several dozen prints from the motel room in Frostburg. No surprise, the place was filthy, so we got lots of prints. Unfortunately, we aren’t sure whose they are or how long they’ve been there. I had the FBI run all of them through IAFIS last night.”
“Anything?”
“Two matches, but I don’t think either is our guy. One was a truck driver named Leonard Goff, whose prints were on file from his service in the marines back in the nineties. FBI tracked him down at his home in Chattanooga last night. He’s not our guy. Just a forty-three-year-old trucker with a wife and three kids, and no criminal record.”
“How about the other guy?”
“Gal,” McCreary corrected. “Angelina Jones. The county cops were very familiar with her. She apparently spends a lot of time at the Huntsman Motel. Said they wouldn’t be surprised if her prints were in every room of that place. Again, not the person we’re looking for.”
“Okay, so what about the fifties? Anything on those?”
“Got Treasury working on those. First of all, they’re genuine. Two 1970 series and two 1971. Ran the serials through the FBI and Treasury databases—no hits. Which means they were never reported stolen from a bank. As for the age of the bills, fifties and hundreds are taken out of circulation about every five years or so. But it’s not unc
ommon to find older ones still in circulation. The folks at Treasury estimated that about five percent of all 1970- and 1971-series fifties are still in circulation today. But the odds of finding four of them together . . .”
“Yeah,” said Ana, nodding. “I’m betting this guy came from the lab. But somehow he went in at a different time from Holzberg . . .” Her voice trailed off as she pondered that fact.
“Want to hear what we’ve got on Jasher?”
“Absolutely,” said Ana.
McCreary motioned for her to have a seat on the opposite side of his desk.
“You can skip the basics, though. I looked it up online last night.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Ana nodded and quickly rattled off what she’d learned from the Internet. “The book of Jasher is one of the so-called ‘lost’ books of the Bible. Mentioned two or three times in the Old Testament, but a genuine copy has never been found. You’ve got something else?”
McCreary smiled. “Well, we’ve got one thing I know you’ll be interested in.” He seated himself at his desk and shuffled through a large stack of papers until he found the particular sheet he was interested in. He adjusted his glasses, skimmed the page for a few seconds, then spoke. “The most prominent mention of the book of Jasher in the Bible is in Joshua, chapter ten, where it says: ‘So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the people had revenge upon their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.’ ”
Ana was nodding her head. “Uh-huh. And people have speculated for centuries that God somehow stopped the rotation of the earth for an entire day. I read all about that last night. Ridiculous, of course.”
“Okay. But don’t jump ahead.”
Well, don’t waste my time.
“Let’s just focus for a minute on what the book of Joshua is all about. Have you read the entire thing?”
“No,” Ana conceded with a shrug.
McCreary gave her a bemused look over the top of his glasses, as if to say: See, you were jumping ahead. Then he continued. “The book of Joshua is a very important part of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament. It tells the story of how the Israelites, having escaped slavery in Egypt and having wandered in the desert for forty years with Moses, finally entered the promised land. The land of Canaan, which they believed was promised to them by God. But when they got there, there were people already living there. Lots of them. Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, and other tribes. The book of Joshua is really the tale of how the Israelites, under the command of Joshua, defeated all these other tribes, slaughtering many of them, and driving the rest out of Canaan. It’s a book about warfare. And conquest.”
“Okay . . .”
“So you’re wondering why our carjacker from Thurmond is apparently so interested in this stuff?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, what does any of this have to do with what was going on in Thurmond?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” McCreary confessed. “But hear me out.” He riffled through the stack of papers and extracted another sheet. “Okay, another mention of the book of Jasher in the Bible is in second Samuel.” He adjusted his glasses and skimmed the sheet with his finger until he found a particular spot. “After Saul and Jonathan are killed in battle, David is mourning their deaths. The writer of Samuel mentions at this point that David instructed his men to teach the sons of Judah ‘the bow.’ And then, as if to add credence to this assertion, he says, ‘Behold, it is written in the Book of Jasher.’ ”
“Isn’t there some debate about what ‘the bow’ is referring to there?”
“Yep. Some translations have it as ‘the song’ or ‘the song of the bow.’ Others have it as ‘the bow’ or ‘the use of the bow.’ So it was either a song or a weapon. Pretty big difference if you ask me. Anyway, what I find interesting is how the writer of Samuel felt the need to refer to the book of Jasher, an external source, as an authority for this particular point.”
“Does anyone know who Jasher was?”
“Actually, it’s not who but what. Jasher wasn’t a person. Most experts who’ve translated the original Hebrew Bible think that ‘Jasher’ means ‘Upright,’ which would mean these two references in Joshua and Samuel were to something called the ‘book of the Upright.’ Some later Latin translations used ‘Liber Justorum,’ which means ‘book of the Upright Ones.’ Whatever it means, the book of Jasher was apparently an important, authoritative book at the time Joshua and Samuel were written.”
“Which was when?”
“Sometime around fourteen hundred B.C.”
Ana let out an ironic laugh.
“What’s so funny?” McCreary asked.
“I don’t know, it’s just . . . why are we sitting here talking about stuff that was written, what, three thousand years ago? I mean, Thurmond National Laboratory was built in the 1950s. The particular event we’re interested in took place in 1959. The director of the lab was Franz Holzberg, one of the most brilliant scientists of the twentieth century. Do you really think he cared about what some desert scribe wrote down in fourteen hundred B.C.? I mean, seriously . . .”
“I know. I know. I’ve had the same thoughts running through my head all night. But someone in that motel room wrote down the word ‘Jasher.’ ”
“Yeah, but how do we even know it was our guy? Could have been someone else. Hell, maybe the happy hooker—what’s her name, Angelina—maybe she was interested in biblical mysteries. Who knows?”
“Yep, I considered that, too,” said McCreary. “But trust me, there’s a connection.”
“Well, get to it already!” With just two hours of sleep last night, Ana was in no mood for riddles.
“Okay, I guess I’ve kept you in suspense long enough.” McCreary pulled a half-inch-thick stapled bundle of paper from his stack and slid it across the desk to Ana. “Steve found this in an online academic database.”
Ana picked it up and read the title: The Book of Jasher: Word of God or Work of Fraud?
“It’s a doctoral dissertation,” said McCreary. “Written in 1961 by a divinity school student at Princeton. Check out his name.”
Ana’s eyes darted to the bottom-right-hand corner of the cover page. “Thomas J. Reynolds,” she said quietly to herself.
“Recognize it?”
It took a few seconds before it suddenly hit her. “Dr. Reynolds. Michael mentioned that name on the radio yesterday. He said that Holzberg had wanted to contact someone named Dr. Reynolds . . . at Princeton.” She was excited for a moment, but her enthusiasm quickly began to wane. “But Reynolds is a pretty common name.”
“Sure it is. But Jasher, Reynolds, Princeton. How many coincidences do you need?”
Ana nodded. He was right. “Plus the date,” she said. “Reynolds would have been a Ph.D. candidate in the 1950s, within the same time frame that Holzberg was at the Institute of Advanced Studies.”
“In Princeton,” added McCreary.
“Right.” Ana churned this information in her head for a few seconds. “So is this guy still alive? Do we know where he is?”
“Way ahead of you.” McCreary pulled a sheet of paper from his stack. “Thomas J. Reynolds is alive and well. He’s eighty years old and lives in Satellite Beach, Florida, with his wife, Betty. Here’s the address.” He handed her the paper, then looked at his watch. “If you leave now, you can be there by breakfast.”
“What, you’ve already set it up?”
McCreary nodded. “There’s a plane waiting for you at Landmark Aviation.”
Ana stood to leave but hesitated. “What about—”
McCreary cut her off. “Let me worry about Mike. You, go.”
23
SAVAGE RIVER, MARYLAND
Everything was happening in slow motion. A man in a gas mask was spraying machine-gun fire in every direction. Bright flashes emanated from the gun’s muzzle as the man swept the weapon back and forth, mowing down everyone in its path.
There was screaming and scraping and scuffling all around. And blood. So much blood. Yet the dreamer himself couldn’t move. His feet were fixed to the floor of the laboratory, his eyes focused intently on the shooter. He waited for the man to turn in his direction. He had to see the man’s eyes. He had to know. The shooter turned slowly, as if suspended in time, until his eyes gradually came into view through his visor.
Malachi awoke with a start, breathing heavily and sweating despite the cold. Obviously, he’d drifted off. But for how long? “Damn,” he whispered, surprised that it was already light outside. He quickly scanned his surroundings and was relieved to find nothing of immediate concern. He was still alone in the rustic cabin he’d broken into last night, deep in the Savage River State Forest, about twenty-five miles southwest of Frostburg.
There was no heat or electricity in this cabin, nor furniture for that matter. Malachi had slept in a sitting position on the pine floor, with his back propped against the rough-cut interior wall of the cabin. With great effort, he rose and stretched his stiff and aching limbs. His legs, especially, were painfully sore from yesterday’s fourteen-hour trek through the woods, which he’d accomplished using a series of hiking trails that ran along the Savage River, darting off into the woods whenever he heard an approaching hiker.
After yesterday morning, he’d decided he could not risk hitchhiking or stealing another car. Not around here. Not after seeing a team of policemen rifling through the car he’d stolen the night before. His instincts were telling him that he had to keep running. He needed to find his contacts . . . and avoid getting caught in the process.
Malachi peeked through one of the grimy windows of the cabin and saw an endless forest of spruce trees, awash in the dim gray light of an early morning October sky. Then he quickly looked out the other five windows of the cabin and saw the same terrain in every direction. Now what?
As he pondered that question, he shook a cigarette loose from his pack and pressed it between his lips. He lit it with a flick of his lighter and drew in a deep, satisfying breath. The warm smoke felt good in his lungs and helped clear his mind. He could tell his memory was improving, although very slowly. For instance, he could now specifically remember entering the Thurmond lab on a moonless spring night. He remembered that he was on an important mission, that he had an objective, that there were specific rules he was to follow. He lingered on that last thought for a moment. Rules. Something about time. It was important to check his watch. He tried to hold on to that particular memory, but it quickly evaporated into nothingness.