I took it from him. It was blank. “Maybe,” I started, “it means your future can’t be revealed to you yet."
3
Connor Mackenzie
“Egypt?” my stepfather asked, unable to believe what I'd done.
I shook my head. “We’re realists, Edward, you and I,” I said calmly. “We both know if I stay here, it’s only a matter of time before they find me. If you don’t want to provide the funding, I’m perfectly willing to do it myself. But it will look more legitimate if it comes from the Foundation.”
“It’s not that, Andrew.”
“It’s Connor now, Edward,” I reminded him. “We have to be careful about this.”
“That identity was only created to bring you safely home.”
“Perhaps, but you knew I’d have to use it again.” I stood at the window in Edward’s office, not really paying attention to the view. I was preoccupied with planning my next move. I believed Dr. Raven's need for funding was the answer to my own problem as well as hers. “This is the perfect solution,” I insisted.
My stepfather wasn't yet sold on my proposal. “I suppose,” he conceded. “But to leave now, to go off and live in some desolate place, far removed from civilization—”
“They, too, are staying beneath the radar. Out of necessity,” I revealed. “Dr. Raven got her permits from the Egyptian authorities under false pretenses. Apparently, the last thing the Egyptians want is proof that Moses actually did outwit their ruler.”
Edward still looked unconvinced.
“I’m doing what I have to do,” I maintained. “It will be the last place anyone will be looking.”
“How long?” Edward asked. “How long will you stay there?”
“As long as is necessary.” I picked up a news magazine lying on his desk. It was opened to a story on a racetrack scandal involving a genetically engineered horse. Our horse. I waved it at him for emphasis. “It’s become a witch hunt, Edward. A bloody witch hunt! If they’ve become this fired up over a horse, can you imagine what they’d do if they knew everything we’ve accomplished?” I asked, throwing the paper back down on the desk. “If anyone were to find out about me—”
“Sarah rang me up earlier. She seems to think you have certain ideas regarding the archaeologist,” Edward commented with mild amusement.
I wasn't going to deny it. I did find her quite attractive. The idea of getting her into bed had indeed crossed my mind. “I may need to stay for some time. I might as well make the best of a difficult situation.” I couldn't help smiling at the thought of the possibilities.
“Are you sure that’s all there is to it?”
“Have you ever known me to lose my head over a woman, Edward?” I asked, feeling a bit insulted.
“Leave it to you to find a way to mix business with pleasure,” Edward observed, lighting his pipe. The scent of his expensive imported tobacco filled the room.
“You’re not going to fight me on this, are you?” I asked, turning again to face him. “If you have a better solution, I’m willing to listen.”
“No. I don’t,” Edward reluctantly conceded as he drew his pipe from between his lips.
“What about the funding?” I wanted to know.
“Whatever you want. I’ll give you a blank check,” Edward surrendered.
I nodded. “Thank you.”
“You’ll stay in touch?” he asked. “We do have deadlines, people to answer to, you know.”
“Of course,” I said.
“And you’ll put everything on hold?”
I nodded. “For now,” I said. “Can’t have anyone uncovering the truth before we’re ready now, can we?"
4
Caitlin
"What are you two looking at?" I asked the two gawking idiots following my every move in the corridors of the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building in DC.
I'm used to men staring at me. I don't do anything to invite it, but they stare anyway. They always have. I may look like a runway model to them, but I'm not hesitant to remind them that I'm a special agent with the FBI. Before that, I was a New York City cop, like my father. But that was a lifetime ago…before 9/11.
I'd like to be able to remember my dad as he looked that sunny Tuesday morning at home. He was smiling, laughing, talking about the family reunion I'd missed that weekend because I was on duty. But the truth is that the last mental image I have of him, the one that will always be burned into my memory, is of the way he looked as we were separated by falling debris trying to get people out of the north tower of the World Trade Center. I went ahead, herding the others outside to safety. I was about to go back for him when I heard a loud roar. The earth shuddered violently seconds before the tower collapsed…
I realized as I stood there, watching it fall, that my father was dead. There was no way he could have survived that.
It was six months before I was deemed psychologically fit to return to duty by the FBI's designated shrink, who I came to affectionately refer to as Dr. Douchebag. Yeah, I'm being sarcastic. I hated the SOB. He'd held my future in his hands, and I hated it. I hated not being in control of my own life. Not being in control was frightening. Not being in control had prevented me from saving my father's life.
I've had to work twice as hard as anybody else since then, had to work my ass off to prove myself. I was damaged goods. I had to prove I wasn't going to cave in if placed in another situation like that on 9/11.
“All of the children in question were conceived by in vitro fertilization,” Jack was saying.
“Coincidence,” I stated more than asked.
“Too many so-called coincidences,” Jack maintained.
“They didn't all conceive through the same clinic,” I reminded him. “What makes you think they’re connected?” I wanted to know.
Jack sucked in a deep breath. “Think about it, Caitlin. It’s too much of a coincidence for all of those kids to be test-tube babies.”
“You’re talking about three abductions in three states at three different clinics here.” I reminded him. “It doesn’t make any sense. Even if you’re right, even if there had been some kind of tampering with the embryos, what reason could there be for all of the kids to be abducted?”
“Destroying evidence, perhaps?”
I was surprised by the suggestion. “You think these kids were taken so there would be no proof of illegal tampering?” I asked. “What do you suggest they’ve done with them—you think they’re dead?”
“Desperate measures,” Jack reasoned. Out of habit, he reached for the cigarettes he’d given up a month earlier, frustrated when he found his pocket empty.
“I don’t know, Goober—murder to cover something that would be in itself a much lesser charge?” I still wasn’t convinced.
He gave up trying—for the moment. “C’mon. Let’s go grab some lunch. I’ll buy.”
I looked at him, my expression sober. “You’ll buy? Is the world about to end or something?” I had to get out of there.
He laughed. “Insulting me won’t get you fed, pardner,” he drawled.
“Let me guess.” I stood up, anxious to go. “The hot dog stand again?” I asked.
“I like hot dogs,” he defended himself.
“You live on hot dogs, Goober.”
“C’mon, it’s a beautiful day. And you look like you could use some fresh air.”
He had no idea.
“If you believe in God, boy, how can you say you also believe in UFOs?” An old man challenged a young preacher in a group discussion on the Mall. It was unseasonably warm for November, and the people gathered had shed their coats.
The young preacher grinned. He looked more like a hippie than a man of the cloth, with his long hair and worn-out jeans. “What makes you think the two are exclusive of each other?” he wanted to know.
“The Bible says nothin’ about little green men!”
“Means nothing,” the preacher maintained. “The Bible is God’s word to the people of this planet. If he creat
ed life here, then who is to say he didn’t create life on some other world? How are we to know there isn’t a race of men—men, not little green creatures—somewhere out there? And how are we to know God didn’t create them millions of years before he created us?”
“You’re talkin’ weird, boy,” the old man scoffed.
“How do you account for the dinosaurs on this planet?” a disbeliever in the group wanted to know.
The young preacher smiled patiently. “Like I said, the Bible only accounts for human history and man’s interaction with God,” he said. “There’s nothing to say the earth wasn’t around long before man—in fact, we know that it was—or that God didn’t play around with his design before he got around to creating us. There’s a passage in the Bible about the Tower of Babel—how God created different languages so we couldn’t communicate with each other. Has it ever occurred to anyone that he might have been doing so to separate people of different planets as well as those of different nations?”
“The Bible says six days! The world was created in six days!”
“Six days in God’s time is probably like six billion years in ours,” the preacher said. “God is infinite, remember? He always was and always will be.”
“What makes you think you know so much?” a young woman challenged.
“I don’t claim to have the answers,” the young preacher defended himself. “These are only my personal theories. I don’t happen to believe faith and science have to be exclusive of each other.”
“Makes sense.”
“You’re sure not like other preachers I’ve heard, boy.”
“Are you listening to this crap?” I asked, parking myself on a bench as Jack paid the vendor for the hot dogs and drinks. ”Now I’ve heard everything.”
Jack sat down on the bench next to me and unwrapped his hot dog, inhaling it at length before taking a bite. “I don’t know what it is about eating hot dogs cooked outdoors, but they taste so much better,” he observed.
“Can’t you think of anything but your stomach?” I brushed my hair out of my face and continued to watch the group. “That preacher—he looks more like a hippie than a real preacher.”
“I didn’t think you considered preachers to be real.” Jack popped the ring on his soda can.
“You know what I mean,” I said, annoyed. The breeze kept blowing my hair in my face, making it difficult to eat. I got hair with every bite I took. Of all days for him to want to eat outdoors. “This guy’s claiming God made aliens and sent them here to populate the planet.”
Jack shrugged. “Maybe God is a Scientologist.”
I finished my hot dog. “Or maybe he’s a fraud.”
“God didn’t kill your father, Blondie,” Jack said, watching the young preacher continue to mesmerize the crowd.
“How could he?” I asked. “He doesn’t exist.”
Jack turned to look at me, puzzled. “How can you be so angry at someone you don’t believe exists?” he asked.
I took a deep breath and let it out forcefully. “I’m angry at the lunatics who kill in His name,” I said, crushing my soda can in my hand. The remaining soda inside gushed out, spilling over my hand and my new white slacks. I muttered an expletive and slammed it to the sidewalk in frustration.
Jack said nothing as he picked up the crushed can and tossed it into a trashcan. He knew who I really blamed for my father’s death. I blamed myself.
5
Connor
“Have you ever been here before?” Lynne asked as we stood in line in Customs at the Cairo International Airport.
It was late afternoon and the terminal was crowded. I wondered how long we'd be kept there. I shook my head. “Never. How far is the excavation site?” I asked, handing my passport to the customs agent.
“A little over two hundred kilometers—on the eastern side of the Sinai peninsula,” she said. “We’re just south of the Jebel Hashem al-Tarif.”
I opened my carry-on, waiting while the agent inspected the contents. My passport was stamped and I was allowed to move on. Lynne took out her passport and presented it, automatically unzipping her small carry-on for inspection.
“We’re not going to be living in tents, are we?” I asked, in an attempt at humor.
Lynne shook her head. “Nothing that luxurious,” she deadpanned.
I looked at her, not sure if she was joking or not.
Once we were finished, we made our way to the baggage carousel to retrieve our checked luggage. Again, there was a large crowd. It was at least fifteen minutes before the bags from our flight started to appear. “That one’s mine,” Lynne told me, pointing to a large bag coming our way on the conveyor.
As I reached for it, my hand collided with that of another traveler, a young woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties, attractive, casually dressed. I recoiled, my eyes meeting hers. What I saw there unnerved me. My pulse was racing.
“Sorry,” I said uneasily.
“I am sorry also,” she responded in heavily accented English.
Lynne saw the look on my face. “What’s wrong?” she asked as I passed her bag to her and scanned the carousel for my own.
I shook my head. “Nothing.” I retrieved my bags. “Which way to the taxi stand?”
I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone what I had just discovered…or how. I couldn’t call attention to myself, couldn’t risk exposure….
We checked into a small, seedy hotel in the heart of the city for the night. It was deplorable. I took one look at the yellowed, peeling wallpaper and stained carpet and said, “You should have let me make the hotel reservations.”
“I’ve been on a nonexistent budget,” she reminded me.
“Not anymore.”
When she suggested we have dinner at a pizza parlor on Tahir Square, I thought she was joking at first. “Pizza—in Egypt?” I asked.
“Egyptian pizza,” she said. “Much better than the American knock-offs you might find here.” She looked at her watch. “I have some calls to make. We can meet in the lobby in an hour.”
“Sure.”
I went to my own room, not bothering to unpack. Normally, I would have made sure everything was on hangers in the closet or neatly folded in the drawers before I’d even go to dinner—but here I didn’t want to remove anything from my luggage unless it was absolutely necessary. I wondered if we might be better off with sleeping bags out in the square.
The bugs I killed in the tiny, antiquated bathroom were bigger than any I’d ever seen before. The bed linens were threadbare, and the wallpaper splotched with brown stains. Room service was nonexistent. It was a far cry from the accommodations to which I was accustomed.
Things were getting off to a questionable start. I shook dust from a battered pillow, one of two on the bed that were nearly flattened and smelled of sweat. I was nearly choked by the stench. I didn't care to imagine who might have previously slept there.
I rang up Edward and told him about the incident at the airport. “You have to alert the authorities,” I insisted.
“And tell them what?” Edward asked impatiently. “That I know there’s a bomb on that plane but I can’t tell them how I know? Do you have any idea how they’ll respond?”
“If that plane takes off, two hundred people will die when it begins its descent to JFK,” I reminded him.
“There’s nothing we can do,” my stepfather, always the isolationist, maintained.
“You think I’m having seizures again, don’t you?” I asked, frustrated.
“How else would you explain it?”
“And if I’m right?” I demanded.
“Let’s hope you’re not.”
6
Lynne
I was waiting for Connor in the lobby when I was approached by a well-dressed, middle-aged Egyptian man unwilling to take no for an answer. I tried to ignore him, but when that didn’t work, I took a firm stance. “La-a,” I kept repeating, to no avail.
“Imshee!”
I
turned to see Connor coming toward me. “Sorry I’m late, darling—the overseas telephone service is deplorable,” he said, slipping an arm around my waist. What was he doing? He kissed me deeply, taking me completely by surprise. I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t pull away with the other man watching us. Was Connor out of his mind?
Finally, the man turned and left us alone. Connor released me, smiling. “Think he got the message?”
“I’m sure he did,” I said, “but you goofed. Big time.”
“How?”
“You’ve mastered the language, but you’ve got a lot to learn about the culture,” I told him. “That sort of intimacy in public is considered immoral in Arab countries.”
“At least it got rid of him,” Connor pointed out. “How was I, by the way?”
He was clearly enjoying my discomfort. I rolled my eyes heavenward, determined not to let him see that he’d gotten to me.
“Convincing. Let’s leave it at that.”
“It’s called fatir,” I explained over dinner. The Egyptian pizza, made of sauce, cheese, vegetables and meat on a flatbread that resembled filo dough, was delicious and filling. “Tim—my partner—will send someone to pick us up around noon tomorrow,” I went on.
“Partner?” Connor asked, suddenly concerned.
“Professional partner,” I said. “He’s also an archaeologist.”
Connor nodded. He seemed relieved by that bit of information, though I wasn't quite sure why.
“We all currently live in Taba,” I explained. “Tim and his wife, Isabella, have three kids, so space is at a premium at their place. You can get a hotel room at Taba Heights, or you’re welcome to use my spare room.” Even as I made the offer, I wondered if it was a bad idea. He’s saving the dig, I reminded myself. Whatever his reasons, we need him.
Chasing the Wind Page 3