Chasing the Wind

by Norma Beishir

  54

  Darcy

  “How many times has Ally fired you now?” Charlie asked as we climbed into a taxi at Heathrow Airport. He gave the driver the address of our hotel.

  “I’ve lost track,” I admitted. “She fires me, I act like I don’t give a rat’s ass, then she cools off and offers me my job back, always making me understand that I have to be reprimanded.”

  “You two act like you’re married,” Charlie observed.

  “Ally’s lasted with me longer than any of my wives,” I said. “She understands me better than any of them ever did.”

  “That explains why you two have never been involved,” Charlie said with a chuckle.

  “Ally and me?” I laughed at the thought. “We’d end up killing each other.”

  “You always been drawn to hotheaded women?” Charlie asked.

  “I used to be,” I admitted. “When I was younger, I was attracted to the excitement and unpredictability of a difficult woman. Now that I’m past my ‘use by’ date, I don’t have the fortitude for the fights.”

  “You and the doc—did you two fight often?” Charlie asked.

  I thought about it. “In the beginning, yeah,” I recalled. “She was ticked that I was away so much. We fought about having kids. She wanted ’em, I didn’t. She’d get all fired up and I’d leave. I dealt with our problems by avoiding them, until finally she got tired of it and walked out.”

  "I'm surprised she stayed as long as she did."

  I was silent for a moment. “She was pregnant, you know.”

  Charlie looked surprised. “No, I didn’t know.”

  I nodded. “When we were in Egypt, she told me.”

  Charlie said nothing, waiting for me to go on.

  “There she was, married to a man who was willing to give her that one thing she always wanted, and just when she was about to get it…” I couldn't finish.

  “You want to know why,” Charlie guessed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I want to know why. And then I want to know who, and I want them to pay.”

  “I’ll make some calls, see who’s willing to talk,” Charlie told me when we checked into the hotel. “The Phoenix Foundation. Division of Icarus International. High-profile conglomerate, low-profile founder,” he said. “Edward Rhys-Williams hasn't given an interview in over thirty years. None of their executives ever gives interviews, in fact. Trying to get information out of them is like trying to get information from the CIA. In fact, getting into the CIA would probably be easier.”

  “Makes them sound like they have something to hide, doesn’t it?” I suggested.

  Charlie shrugged. “Howard Hughes was obsessively private,” he pointed out.

  “I rest my case.”

  Charlie stopped at his room and slipped his card key into the lock. “I’ll see if I can get an audience with Stepdaddy.”

  “If he turns you down, we’ll just ambush him outside the stronghold,” I decided.

  “There are no records of anyone named Connor Mackenzie ever having attended Cambridge,” I told Charlie over breakfast in the hotel restaurant.

  “I made some calls, but I was unable to find anything,” Charlie said, adding sugar to his coffee. Noting the way I was looking at him, he defended himself. “What? I need the energy boost.”

  “No wonder you’re diabetic.”

  “You should talk,” Charlie said, reaching for more sugar. “If I die, I die happy.”

  “And get buried in a piano crate,” I said.

  Charlie nodded and sipped his coffee. “Any idea where Mackenzie was born in Scotland?”

  “I recall Duchess saying something about it in passing,” I said, trying to summon up the memory. “Inverness, Inveraray, something like that.”

  “I guess that means we have to turn over every rock in Scotland,” Charlie said.

  “Try Loch Ness.”

  “I called Icarus. We’ve been turned down by everybody who’s anybody there,” Charlie told me.

  “What a surprise,” I said sarcastically. “Did you try the janitor?”

  “Couldn’t even get a peek at the trash.”

  “We could always hijack the trash. Might be worth a little dumpster diving.” I said.

  “You don’t have any other information on Mackenzie?” he asked. “Anything at all?”

  “Just what’s been in the news since that bogus accident,” I said. “And my photographs.”

  “You’re sure? If you can think of anything, even some little thing mentioned in passing, because right now we’ve got nothing,” Charlie said.

  I staked out the Icarus Tower while Charlie continued his search for information back at the hotel. I watched everyone who entered and left the building, armed with one of the rare photographs I’d been able to find of Edward Rhys-Williams. I looked at my watch. I’d been there almost seven hours, with not even a sighting of the man. Does he live in the freakin’ building? I wondered.

  Then, a limousine pulled up to the curb and parked. I snapped to attention as the driver got out and spoke briefly to one of the security guards at the entrance. Moments later, Edward Rhys-Williams appeared, accompanied by a woman who looked familiar.

  “Mr. Rhys-Williams!” I called out. “I need to speak with you!”

  I never got the chance. My path was blocked by two security guards, who held me at bay until my target was in the limo and it had pulled away from the curb. I tried shouting to get the man’s attention, but to no avail. As I turned back to the building, I noticed the woman was still there.

  “Sarah Stewart?” I asked, now recognizing her.

  She nodded. “You’re American,” she said. “Your accent.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I should be flattered that you’ve recognized me,” she said, smiling.

  “I haven’t been here long, but long enough to catch the local TV news,” I said, shaking her hand. “You scored a coup there.”

  She looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  “Rhys-Williams. I hear he never does interviews, but there you were with him,” I said. “How’d you do it?”

  “Nepotism,” she answered. “He’s my father.”

  I couldn’t hide my surprise.

  “My surname’s a bit unwieldy,” she said. “I decided early on to use my mother’s maiden name professionally.”

  “A smart move,” I said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. Phillip Darcy, Viewpoint.”

  “You’re also a journalist, then.”

  “Photojournalist, actually.” I patted my camera case. “Are you free for dinner?”

  She seemed to be about to accept my invitation, then abruptly changed her mind. I looked over my shoulder. One of the security guards was watching us, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, no,” she said. “I really do have to run. It was good talking to you.”

  I watched her walk away. Stewart, I thought. She’s his half-sister. Different fathers, same mother….

  I tried to call Charlie on my way back to the hotel, but there was no answer, either in the room or on his cell. Knowing Charlie, he probably went out for donuts and left his cell at the hotel, I thought. The man had a death wish. He’d been diabetic since his teens, and still he didn’t take the whole thing seriously enough.

  When I returned to the hotel, I saw a housekeeper working on our floor. She was knocking on Charlie’s door. “Housekeeping,” she announced as she took out her passkey.

  I had just unlocked my own door when I heard the woman scream. I ran back to Charlie’s room and found her standing over Charlie, who was lying on the floor. I went to Charlie, dropping to my knees. “Call for an ambulance!” I shouted.

  The housekeeper, struggling to regain her composure, nodded and went to the phone. I patted Charlie’s face. “I told you those damn donuts were gonna catch up with you, buddy,” I said. “Come on, Charlie, wake up!”

  Charlie’s face felt cool. He didn’t appear to be breathing. Instinctively, I pressed two fingers to the car
otid artery. There was no pulse.

  Charlie was dead.

  “Insulin shock,” the doctor told me. “He apparently overdosed.”

  I shook my head. “He was diabetic most of his life,” I said. “He knew what he was doing with the needle. He wouldn’t have made a mistake like that.”

  “Perhaps it was not a mistake,” the doctor suggested.

  “Are you saying—no, that man was not suicidal,” I insisted. “He was a little reckless with his diet, sure, but he didn’t really want to die.”

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor said.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  I had to call Ally. Charlie’s wife had to be told, and Ally would be the one to break it to her. I found a quiet place and made the call to her cell.

  “Darcy, why are you not calling the office number?” she asked. “It is, after all, regular business hours. You didn’t get arrested again, did you?”

  “It’s Charlie, Ally,” I said. “He’s dead.”

  There was a momentary silence on the other end. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”

  “Charlie’s dead.” I told her everything I knew. “I don’t think this was an accident, Ally.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “For one thing, Charlie never made that kind of mistake with his meds,” I said. “I’ve been on so many assignments with him…he played Russian roulette with his diet, but he never made a mistake with the insulin. He had the crazy idea he could get away with eating crap as long as he got the insulin right. And he’d already injected himself, before I even left the hotel.”

  “What are you suggesting, Darcy?”

  “I’m suggesting Charlie was murdered,” I said, anger rising within me. “I’m guessing that whatever Connor Mackenzie is hiding, Charlie was just one more piece of collateral damage.”

  “I want you on the next flight out of London,” she told me. “Let the police deal with this.”

  “No way,” I said stubbornly.

  “You’re not a writer, Darcy.”

  “I’m going to write this story,” I insisted. “I’m going to find out what’s so important that someone is willing to kill for it. Fire me if you want, but I’m staying.”

  55

  Connor

  “Take the child’s mother and go to Christ’s church. There she will be safe. There she will give birth to your son.”

  I slept fitfully, the voices relentless, refusing to leave me alone. I tossed and turned so that I woke Lynne.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing. Bloody nightmares,” I tried to brush it off.

  “Again?”

  “Go back to sleep, darlin’,” I told her. “It’s all right now.”

  “The same nightmare?” she asked, curling up against me.

  “Yeah. I’m still being told to take you to church,” I said, embracing her.

  “Where, exactly, are you being told to take me?” she asked.

  “Just Christ’s church. Not a specific church, just church.”

  Lynne was silent for a long moment.

  “What if it’s not a church but a location?” she asked finally. “Christchurch—New Zealand.”

  I thought about it. “Why Christchurch?” I questioned.

  “I have no idea, but I think we should go,” she said.

  I sat up. “Go to New Zealand because I heard it in a dream?” I asked.

  “No. Go because we’ve both been told to go,” she said.

  “You’ve had the dream?”

  “No. Just before we left Rome, I went to a church. You were out that night. There was an old woman there. We talked. She told me to go to Christ’s church—Christchurch. Connor, this is the only explanation that makes any sense,” she said. “What have we got to lose?”

  “Our lives,” I answered.

  56

  Darcy

  “I’m onto something,” I told Ally. “Mackenzie’s half-sister is Sarah Stewart, a TV news anchor here. They had the same mother, different fathers. She told me she uses her mother’s maiden name professionally. I located her birth record. Mother’s name was Anne Stewart Rhys-Williams.”

  “And?”

  “Stewart, Ally. Not Mackenzie,” I pointed out. “Mackenzie’s not his real name. It’s Andrew Stewart. Once I had the mother’s maiden name, I got his birth record from Scotland. Mother, Anne Stewart. Father listed as unknown.”

  “And do you also know why he’s using an alias?”

  “Yeah. Do you recall a scandal involving a genetically-engineered racehorse a couple of years back?”

  There was a brief silence on the other end. “The Sadowski case.”

  “Joseph Sadowski’s protégé was a scientist named A. J. Stewart,” I said. “Andrew James Stewart, to be precise.”

  I arrived at the Highgate Institute late in the day and bullied my way into the office of the director, Dr. Edgar Fairfield, a portly man in his late sixties with a warm, earthy demeanor that I suspected was just a front.

  “What can I do for you, Mr.—” Fairfield asked as I seated myself across the large mahogany desk.

  “Darcy. Philip Darcy. From Viewpoint magazine.”

  The other man nodded slowly. “American,” he said with distaste. “I should have known.” Then, after a pause: “And what is it that was so important that you couldn’t go through the appropriate channels?”

  “I couldn’t go through channels because you wouldn’t take my calls,” I said. I’d tried everything but a decree from Parliament.

  The man stiffened. “I’m a very busy man, Mr. Darcy. Again, how can I be of assistance?”

  I wasted no time in getting to the point. “I’m looking for information on one of your former students. Andrew Stewart.”

  “I am not at liberty to discuss any of our students, past or present,” Fairfield stated firmly, letting me know there would be no exceptions to the rule.

  I wasn’t giving up. “A genius, wasn’t he?” I asked. “Isn’t that why he was here?”

  “Was? You’re speaking in past tense. Has something happened to him?” Fairfield wanted to know.

  Bingo. The door had been opened. Just a crack, but enough to get my foot inside, to keep it from slamming in my face. I said, “He was killed in an automobile accident last month in Italy.” Don’t let on you know they’re not dead until you know where he stands.

  “I am sorry to hear that. What is it you wish to know about him, Mr. Darcy?” Fairfield asked hesitantly. “There are things I can’t divulge—”

  “How long was he here?”

  “Six years. He went to Cambridge at age nine.”

  I nodded. “Impressive.”

  Fairfield smiled a genuine smile for the first time. “He was without a doubt the most gifted young man alive,” he said proudly, as if Andrew Stewart’s genius were somehow his own accomplishment. “There is no limit to his potential. Einstein himself once said human beings use only a fraction of the brainpower they possess. He claimed anyone who did would become pure energy. This young man comes closer to such a realization than anyone I have ever examined.”

  “Did he have any—problems—while he was here?” I wanted to know.

  Fairfield immediately turned defensive. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean by problems,” he responded cautiously.

  “Problems. Troubles. You know,” I prodded. “Was he difficult?”

  Fairfield leaned back in his chair and seemed to ponder the question. “With genius comes certain difficulties,” he reasoned. “Yes, of course he had his share of difficulties.”

  “Such as?”

  “I can’t discuss that with you, Mr. Darcy.”

  “Mental problems,” I pushed the envelope.

  “I can’t discuss that with you.” Fairfield repeated firmly.

  “Was he ever treated for psychosis?”

  “I said—”

  “I know what you said, Doctor,” I said, rising to my feet. I placed my hands on the desk and
leaned forward. “Could he be dangerous?”

  “I can’t tell you that!”

  “You had better!” I shot back at him. “People are dying, and I believe it’s because of this man. My ex-wife—my pregnant ex-wife—was one of the casualties. My best friend and colleague was another. Let me go on the record by saying I’m not going to rest until I know why.”

  Fairfield’s entire body sagged, and he nodded slowly. “I haven’t seen the young man in many years, Mr. Darcy. I thought he was cured.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “Cured?”

  Fairfield looked up at me. “He lost his mother when he was very young. He didn’t cope well,” he recalled. “He had problems. We did what we could for him, but he was so angry and bitter. We never saw him again.”

  “Maybe you’d better tell me more about his problems,” I suggested carefully.

  Fairfield nodded again. “He had hallucinations.”

  I said nothing, waiting for him to continue.

  “He said an angel was with him, protecting him from us."

  An angel. A freakin’ angel, of all things.

  This just keeps getting more and more bizarre, I thought as I entered my hotel room.

  Mackenzie was apparently regarded as some kind of miracle child, a genius with a real “gift from God.” He was also deeply disturbed. He once believed he’d had an angel who had protected him.

  Angels…the figures in the photographs look like ghosts…spirits…angels?

  Connor Mackenzie, the self-professed atheist, had a guardian angel. Two months ago, I would have scoffed at all of it, convinced it was either a tall tale or the ravings of a lunatic. But now….

  I took out the photographs I’d taken and studied them again, Connor Mackenzie, God’s experiment gone horribly wrong. People are dropping like flies just for being associated with him. And he has someone—something—protecting him.