Will stumbled out of the cab with his things, still groggy, and looked up the driveway of Generals’ Hill. The whole sky was red and orange and filled with black smoke. He saw his Corvette, still there where he had parked it. Then he saw his house.
There were flames shooting from every window in the huge Civil War mansion. Will started sprinting up the driveway. He could see that the roof was also on fire. He heard himself scream, “No, no, no, no!”
In the background he heard the cabbie shout that he would call 9-1-1. Then he yelled, “Is there anybody in there?”
Clarence! Clarence was still in the house. Will ran to the front door. It was black with soot, and smoke was billowing out from around the corners, from under the bottom.
He snatched up his raincoat from the ground where he’d let it fall, wrapped it around his hand, and grabbed the large iron doorknob. When he opened the door, a blast of smoke and fire blew through the opening, hitting Will and throwing him straight back as if he had been hit by a bomb.
As he was scrambling to his feet, the flames retreated back into the house, and he could see something lying on the floor just inside the door. It was Clarence.
Shielding his head with the raincoat he raced up to the entrance and reached around ahead of him into the black smoke and furnacelike heat. Then his hand felt the fur and body of his golden retriever. He moved his hand up to the collar and began dragging the dog out of the smoke and the fire.
He pulled Clarence down onto the front lawn. Will looked down—Clarence’s eyes were open, but staring straight ahead. His large pink tongue was caught, hanging out slightly, between his clenched front teeth. He was not moving. Will stroked his head and felt something wet. In the flickering light of the fire he could see that it was blood.
Looking closer he saw the blood was centered around a black bullet hole in Clarence’s skull. Will patted the head of his dead dog, and smoothed his ears down. After a minute, he rose to his feet.
Will stood before the house, which was now starting to collapse into the inferno. The walls, the wood shutters, the draperies and furniture, the floors and all else that had been there was being consumed. The great house, with its towering white pillars, and broad front porch, fan-shaped windows, and the charm of a century long past, was forever gone, incinerated in the raging ball of fire rising higher and higher into the night sky.
Out of nowhere Will began to feel it all fall away. The furniture he and Audra had picked out. Her artwork, which still decorated several of the walls. The photo album of their life together. The books. The clothes. The small things of a lifetime, each collected at a place, and carefully preserved for a reason. The photographs he had of his father when he had served in the Navy during World War II. His boyhood things: the old baseball glove, the trophies, the high school and college yearbooks. Love letters from Audra. It was all gone. And Clarence…
As Will stood in front of the wall of flames that roared upward he could hear the sirens of the fire engines in the distance, coming down the country road toward Generals’ Hill.
Tears welled up in his eyes. He shook his head, engulfed with rage and sorrow.
Will’s head hung down as if some invisible sinew had just snapped. Like a bull whose snorting and charging was now over. Worn and bloodied and receiving the final thrust of the sword from the matador. From the blade that pierces the tough hide and plunges down into the back of the neck, where it brings the bull, slumping and stumbling, down to his knees, and down to bloody defeat. Down into the dirt of the roaring arena.
38
UP IN HIS GLASS-AND-MAHOGANY OFFICE SUITE, J-Fox Sherman had assigned his multiple associates in the Reichstad case to two different tracks. His strategy would be like a combination of land invasion and air strike, exquisitely coordinated.
On one team, several of the lawyers in the firm, under his supervision had researched, drafted, and now completed a lengthy Motion for Summary Judgment. Such a motion can be brought when the facts are not in substantial dispute—and the law can be applied to the facts by the judge, thus bringing the case to an end without ever going to trial.
Sherman was asking the court to review the facts that had already been established—relying primarily on Angus MacCameron’s own sworn deposition testimony. He would argue that the facts dealing with two issues were certain, clear, and undisputed. The first issue Sherman wanted the judge to decide was whether MacCameron had been reckless at the time of the printing of his article against Reichstad. Sherman felt that through MacCameron’s own deposition testimony, recklessness had been established.
Sherman would also ask the judge to decide the second issue, the defense of truth—whether there was a substantial amount of truth in what MacCameron had said about Reichstad. Sherman would contend that there was no hard evidence that MacCameron could produce to support what he had written.
The Motion for Summary Judgment was the “air strike.” If Sherman won both of these arguments, the case was over—except for his right to have a jury calculate the enormous damages that he also hoped to prove. In addition, he would argue his motion for attorney’s fees against Will Chambers: that the defenses Will had presented at the beginning of the case were so lacking in evidence that he should be punished by having to pay the quarter-of-a-million dollars in attorney’s fees to Sherman’s firm. That would be the coup de grace—the final, decimating blow—Sherman’s response to Will Chambers’ obstinate and aggressive defense.
The second team of Sherman’s lawyers were working on the “land invasion.” They were preparing for a full-blown jury trial in the event that Judge Jeremiah Kaye did not rule in their favor on all of the issues. The attorneys had lined up several scholars in archaeology, papyrology, and cultural anthropology who would testify as expert witnesses in support of Reichstad’s interpretation of 7QA. They had done a thorough review of MacCameron’s background and were preparing a crippling cross-examination for him at trial.
As the commanding general, Sherman was ready for war. The Summary Judgment motion was five hundred pages long. Will Chambers would only have fourteen days to respond. Judge Kaye would hear arguments in open court the next week after that, and probably give his ruling from the bench.
A copy of the motion had been sent by Sherman to his client. At his research center, Reichstad scanned the thick packet of papers, but his mind was elsewhere.
Dr. Reichstad had only five days left before he had to produce the original 7QA fragment to MacCameron and Chambers’ expert witness. Until now, Reichstad had been successful in jealously protecting the fragment from the outside world.
Reichstad had insisted that Sherman find a way to block the production of the fragment. The lawyer had told his client it was impossible—all he could do would be to delay it by filing motion after motion with Judge Kaye, asking him to issue orders that placed multiple layers of restrictions on MacCameron and Chambers—preventing them from doing any testing that affected the paper or the writing, or that had any effect on the humidity and barometric pressure inside the glass case which housed the 7QA fragment.
In addition, for reasons unknown even to J-Fox Sherman, Reichstad refused to have the opposing experts do their evaluation of 7QA on the grounds of his own research center. He insisted that it be transported by armored car to some neutral site in the D.C. area. He also demanded that his own staff be present during the defense’s evaluation of the fragment.
Reichstad rose and examined himself in the full-length mirror in his office. He was preparing to drive to the studio to begin filming a TV documentary on his discovery of 7QA and its revolutionary effect on Christianity. The film would be titled, The Dead Jesus. Because the project would not air until after the trial date in his lawsuit, he had not bothered to tell his lawyer about it. After all, Sherman seemed forever preoccupied with holding Dr. Reichstad back in his meteoric climb to greatness.
Reichstad was certain that he could retrieve information from MacCameron that would destroy, and bury, two thousand years o
f religious history concerning Jesus. Only then could he move onward to the final project—one so daring and so dangerous that Reichstad could scarcely believe it was now within his reach. A project that would change not just two thousand years of Christianity, but more than five thousand years of Judaism—and which had the potential to shift the balance of world power to the Middle East.
Yes, Reichstad thought to himself, he was right not to tell his lawyer about the documentary film. No lawyer was going to rob him of his place in world history.
39
WILL CHAMBERS HAD NOT RETURNED HIS phone calls for the three days since the fire. He was now renting a room at a cheap motel, and putting in very little time at the office. He did check his voice mail—but there were no calls from MacCameron about paying Will’s overdue legal fees.
From the beginning, Reichstad vs. MacCameron and Digging for Truth Magazine had been a bad omen in his life, Will concluded as he sat down on a bar stool at the Red Rooster. Now that MacCameron could not pay his bills, this was the time for Will to file a petition with the court to permit him to withdraw from the case altogether.
From the first day that the case had come into his life, he mused bitterly, it had been one catastrophe after another: kicked out of his law firm; all but one of his cases taken from him by his former firm; losing his staff as well as his friend and associate Jacki Johnson; his secretary quitting; his office broken into; and now his home burned to the ground and his dog cruelly killed.
After the fire the fire marshal and the fire inspector met with him and told him it was almost certainly arson. The fire appeared to have been set in several places on the first floor. The multiple sites of the fire’s origin plus the gunshot to the dog’s head made it clear this was no accident. Clarence’s body had been analyzed for traces of evidence, and the bullet from his head was now at the crime lab.
But Will knew something about arson, and he knew that in this case they were not going to find the perpetrator. Whoever had done this was too clever and too determined. Will was convinced that because he’d left his Corvette outside it had given someone the impression that he was in for the night. After dark that person had gained entrance through the front door—it had been unlocked when he had tried to get in during the fire. Poor Clarence was shot in the head to make sure he didn’t give off a warning bark. Will had already heard from the crime lab that markings on the bullet indicated, at least preliminarily, that it might have come from a gun with a silencer.
Will believed that the fire had been set by someone who thought he—Will—was upstairs, asleep in bed. Someone wanted him dead.
Will was looking at the glass of whiskey and water in front of him. He hadn’t touched liquor for weeks. Now it really didn’t seem to matter. Will was still staring at the glass when Jack Hornby walked in the door and sat down next to him.
“Hey, how are you? Too busy to call a newspaperman back?”
“Yeah. Real busy,” Will replied sarcastically.
“You have a minute?”
“I’ve got a whole lot of minutes. But I’m not sure I want to spend them with a reporter.”
“Oh, I think you do.”
“You think so?”
“Yes I do,” Hornby said.
“How’d you find me here?”
“Well—a little birdie told me.”
“Don’t be cute. I’m really in no mood for cute,” Will said, staring straight ahead.
“Look, reporters—good ones—gravitate to people who have two things: a story to tell, and a reason to tell it.”
Will thought about it for a second. “You talked to one of my former partners?”
“Nope. But getting close.”
“Betty Sorenson, my former secretary.”
“Yes, sir. I located her. I said to her, ‘Where can I contact this guy. He’s not in the office and he’s not at home.’”
The reporter continued. “She said, ‘If you don’t find him at either of those two places’—and this is a quote—‘then check out the bar stools at the Red Rooster.’” And with that Hornby chuckled.
Will pushed the glass away from him and turned to Hornby.
“Why shouldn’t I tell you to get lost? You know, you never ran the story on our lawsuit even after I gave you a beautiful quote.”
“Look—Betty told me she’d read in the paper that your house had burned down to the ground. A pre–Civil War mansion. I feel for you, buddy. That’s a rotten break. I’m sure you’re in no mood to talk to a reporter. But I’m not just a reporter. I can be a help to you here, Will. Really, I can. I’m not supposed to say this—we all worship at this altar of ‘objective journalism’—but I really am on your side. Whatever that means to you. I’m asking you to trust me a little bit. You give me some information, and I think I might be able to help you in return.”
“Prove it.”
With that, Hornby pulled out his notepad with the triangle diagram on it.
Then Hornby pushed the notepad over to Will and asked him, “Do you see the answer to this puzzle? Because I sure don’t. But I will tell you this: You give me something that helps answer this puzzle, and I will tell you what I know. And after I do, I swear you are going to be able to make some big waves in your defense of the Reichstad case. I’m talking tidal-wave proportion. I’m talking about tsunami-type monster waves.”
Will looked at the notepad and said nothing. Hornby was leaning from his bar stool, looking at Will expectantly.
Will realized that the pieces were now right there in front of him. He just did not want to see them. He wanted to grunt that he was tired, and disgusted, and then just walk away from all of it. But he couldn’t. Not now. Down in the dark tunnel he was starting to see a small shaft of brightness. He had to start digging toward the light. Toward the truth.
Will took out his marker pen and drew a line connecting STATE DEPT./SHARPTIN to REICHSTAD LAWSUIT and pushed the notepad back to Hornby.
“What is the connection between Sharptin and your case?” Hornby asked.
“I recently found out from a real insider source that the State Department has been watching me. It’s my conclusion that the State Department has some interest in my handling of the Reichstad case.”
“Alright. Fair enough. Let me tell you,” Hornby said in return, “that I found out from a very reliable source that the U.S. government is trying to establish unprecedented ties with the Arab nations. Militarily and economically.”
Will took the notepad and drew a line connecting STATE DEPT./SHARPTIN to OIL/WHOSE POCKET? and slid it back to Hornby.
“Well,” Hornby responded, “that’s no flash of brilliance. I figured that one myself. Sharptin has an interest in cutting Americans into the oil monopoly of the OPEC nations. That much I know already. Now, what I need to know is how NUCLEAR SCARE fits into this picture—or whether it’s just a red herring.”
Hornby pushed the notepad back over to Will. Will then took his pen and crossed out NUCLEAR SCARE and rewrote it—but right in the very center of the triangle. Then he drew lines connecting it to all three points of the triangle—to the Reichstad lawsuit, to Sharptin and the State Department, and to the issue of oil.
Hornby’s eyes widened, and he said, “I’m listening.”
Then Will explained everything he had been told on his trip to New York City about the missile incident—how it was a phony deal—how it was not really connected to Abdul el Alibahd—how the executions in Saudi Arabia had probably been showpieces to appease Americans over the Wall Street bombings. How the arrests in Iran connected with the ‘nuclear threat’ were also a put-on. And how all of this was done for the purpose, apparently, of convincing the American people that the Arab nations were America’s best and last hope against terrorism and for global economic security in the oil markets.
After Will was finished, Hornby was silent for a moment. Then he slowly began to explain that he was going to trust Will with some highly sensitive information. Hornby told Will how the story he had writt
en about the Reichstad lawsuit had been squelched because of an upcoming merger between the Washington Herald and a subsidiary of an oil company owned by billionaire Warren Mullburn. His investigation had shown that Mullburn, for some reason, did not want publicity about the lawsuit to surface—at least not now.
Hornby concluded by telling Will that he had traced millions of dollars of funding from one of Mullburn’s many business enterprises to Dr. Reichstad’s research center.
Will took the notepad once again and drew a line, this time connecting OIL/WHOSE POCKET? to REICHSTAD LAWSUIT.
Then Hornby wrote down—underneath the word OIL—the name “WARREN MULLBURN.”
Will looked at the finished diagram.
“There is only one problem in this little picture,” Will commented. “The fact that we have a three-way benefit to the people in the three corners of this triangle doesn’t mean we’ve got some kind of conspiracy.
“Mullburn supports Reichstad financially,” Will continued thinking out loud. “The State Department—for whatever reason—wants Reichstad’s lawsuit to be successful; Sharptin at State wants a new economic and political alliance with the Arab nations, as does Mullburn because of his oil interests. That’s not enough.”
“There is one more thing,” Hornby said.
“What?”
“Mullburn has never directly intervened in any political campaign. Until now. I have found out that he has spent millions of dollars on a public-relations campaign to ensure that Sharptin wins the nod for the vice-presidential slot at the upcoming convention. Something is driving all of this,” Hornby said, tapping his finger on the notepad.
Will glanced over at the bartender and said, pointing to his glassful of whiskey, “Dump this and give me a ginger ale, will you?”
Then Will looked at Hornby, managed a smile, and asked him, “It’s interesting that you should have come here when you did. Do you believe in fate?”
“No. I believe that things happen for a lot of different reasons. People just call it fate.”
The Resurrection File Page 24