by Mark Alpert
Larson grimaced. “Don’t worry, we’ll find them.”
“No, you won’t. And you won’t find Rogers, either. Not without my help, at least. And I bet you still want to find him, probably more than ever. Now that he’s in all the newspapers, you better fucking catch the asshole, right?”
The agent raised his eyebrows. “So you know where Rogers is?”
“Look, I’ll be honest with you. I hate the fucker. Some of the John Does he killed in Brooklyn were friends of mine. And it’s true, I needed some help to track him down. But I wasn’t bullshitting you about his meth connections. Rogers is a major player. His supplier is one of the biggest methamphetamine labs in the country.”
Sullivan paused, enjoying the moment. He was toying with Larson, pulling his strings. The agent was already convinced that Rogers was a killer and a drug dealer, thanks to the evidence Sullivan had planted in the junkie’s house and Rogers’s apartment. The next step was obvious.
“So where is this lab?” Larson asked.
“You’re in luck. It’s near a town called Pickford, less than twenty miles from here. And Rogers is there right now.”
“And why should I believe any of this? How do I know you’re not playing games with me again?”
Sullivan reached into the pocket of his bomber jacket and pulled out a small digital camera. “The meth lab’s in the middle of a giant, fenced-off farm. It’s the perfect place to conceal the operation. A couple of days ago I posted one of my boys near the farm’s gate, in a hidden spot in the woods, so he could monitor who was going in and out.” He turned on the camera and displayed an image on its screen, the only image stored on the camera’s chip. “He took this photo twelve hours ago.”
Larson grabbed the camera and enlarged the image. It was a picture of seven people, five of whom seemed to be Amish men. The tallest and huskiest—Conroy Fury, Master of the Guardsmen and one of Sullivan’s least favorite cousins—carried Ariel on his back. The only man without a beard was John Rogers, who stood in the middle of the group, just his head and shoulders visible.
Larson stared openmouthed at the photo. “What the fuck’s going on? Are those guys Amish?”
“Yeah, their farm’s on Route 129. The past few years have been tough for farming, and they needed to find another way to make some cash. So they got into the meth business. They let Rogers and bunch of other assholes build an underground lab beneath one of their barns. A really, really big lab.”
“Amish farmers making meth? Are you fucking serious?”
Sullivan shrugged. “The money’s good. They don’t use the drug themselves, it’s only for outsiders. So in their eyes, I guess that makes it okay.”
The agent shook his head as he stared at the camera’s screen. Then he looked over his shoulder and gestured at the man standing behind him, the nervous one in the green windbreaker. “Uh, Captain Dunn? Can you take a look at this?”
The man came forward and Larson handed him the camera. Sullivan noticed that the man’s windbreaker had the words WHITE STAR FERRY printed on the chest. This was the captain of the ferryboat that Ariel and her paramour had hijacked. He studied the camera’s screen for a few seconds, then pointed at the display. “That’s him, all right,” he said. “That’s the one who took the Ojibway. And that’s the young lady who helped him. Except she was disguised as an old lady when I saw her.”
Larson said, “Okay, thanks,” and Captain Dunn retreated to the back of the barn. Then the FBI agent turned back to Sullivan. “You know anything about this woman? Is she Rogers’s girlfriend?”
For once Sullivan didn’t have to lie. “Yes, she is. And she’s making a big mistake.”
Larson took one last look at the photo, then ejected the camera chip. “You mind if I borrow this? I think I’ll pay a visit to that farm on Route 129.” He slipped the chip into his pocket and returned the camera to Sullivan. “I’ll ask the longbeards why they’re hanging out with a drug dealer from Philly. If they’re smart, they’ll give him up. If not, we’ll just have to sit tight and watch them.”
Sullivan frowned. Larson’s strategy didn’t sound promising. “You sure that’s the best way to do it? You might scare him off.”
The agent seemed amused. He put his hands on his hips. “You got a better idea, Van?”
“Yeah, I do. Send in a SWAT team and raid the farm. It would be the biggest drug bust in the fucking history of the state.”
Larson laughed. “I wish it were that simple. But unfortunately we need a search warrant. And we don’t have enough evidence to convince a judge to give us one.”
“What if I could get the evidence for you?”
A hungry look flickered in Larson’s eyes. The agent was ambitious. That was his weak point. He was willing to disregard his doubts because he wanted Sullivan to be right. “And how would you do that?”
“Just give me a few hours. I’ll figure something out.”
Larson spread his arms wide, like a priest offering a blessing. “Hey, I won’t stop you. We both want the same thing, right?”
Sullivan nodded, although he couldn’t imagine anything further from the truth. The FBI agent wanted a promotion. He wanted the governor of Michigan to pin a medal to his chest for arresting the man who’d hijacked the Ojibway. What Sullivan wanted, on the other hand, was much grander. He was going to change the world, turn it upside down. And the key to achieving his goal was a chemical formula that had been translated into ancient runes and inscribed in the pages of Ariel’s Treasure. For a few minutes yesterday he’d held the formula in his hands, only to see it snatched away by his bitch of a sister. But he would get it back soon. The Elders of Haven would gladly surrender it to him once they realized what the alternative was.
He smiled once more at Larson. Even though they wanted different things, they could still work together. “Nice doing business with you.” Sullivan turned to leave the barn. “I’ll be in touch.”
THIRTEEN
John’s room was a luxurious prison cell. He lay on a queen-size feather bed with silk sheets and goose-down pillows. The walls were decorated with paintings in magnificent gilt frames, the kind you usually see only in art museums. Next to the bed were a mahogany night table and a gorgeous antique grandfather clock. But the room had no windows and the door was locked.
According to the clock, it was 10:00 A.M. When John awoke an hour ago he’d found a breakfast tray on the night table—scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, all of it delicious—but no one had come to his room since then to pick up the dirty dishes. As he lay in bed he carefully surveyed the walls and paintings, looking for a hidden surveillance camera. His room was in the same pyramidal building as the Elders’ council chambers, and he wondered if Elizabeth Fury was watching him right now, monitoring the outsider who’d dared to come to Haven.
Finally, he heard a knock on the door. “Can I come in?” It was Ariel’s voice.
John hesitated before answering. He was still angry at her for turning him in. But she’d also won him a reprieve. She’d convinced the Elders not to execute him, at least not right away. He supposed he ought to thank her. “I gotta warn you, I’m naked,” he said. “Someone stole my clothes while I was sleeping.”
“We washed them,” she replied from the other side of the door. “Now I’m bringing them back. Just get under the covers.”
He tossed a satiny blanket over himself as Ariel unlocked the door and opened it. To his surprise, she was on her feet. She wasn’t walking normally yet—she hobbled on a pair of crutches, wincing as she entered the room—but she wasn’t helpless, either. “Holy shit,” he marveled. “Your bones are healed already?”
“Not quite.” With a grunt and a final stride she reached his bed. She wore jeans and sneakers and a plain white blouse. “But I’m making progress. Fury women heal quickly, that’s part of our genetic inheritance. I’ve also taken more of our herbal medicines, and you’ve seen what they can do. How are you feeling?”
John massaged his ribs under the blanket. C
onroy’s men had given him another dose of the moldy water last night before he went to bed, and now his chest felt much better. When he touched his nose, there was almost no pain at all. “You’re right, you got some good medicine here. The food ain’t bad, either.”
Nodding, Ariel dropped a brown-paper bag on his bed. “Here are your clothes. I’ll turn around while you get dressed.”
Technically, there was no need for her to turn away. She’d already seen him naked. But now the emotional distance between them was so great, it was like looking at a stranger. John stared at her back as he opened the bag and found his pants and underwear. All he felt was bitterness. “Wow, laundry service too. This place has everything. It’d be perfect if it weren’t for the locked doors.”
“The Elders insisted on that.” Her voice was cool and even. “You’ll have to earn their trust.”
“And what about you? Do you trust me?”
“I know you’re not stupid. You’re smart enough to realize you can’t escape Haven. You don’t know the codes for the exits.”
He put on his underwear, then stepped into his pants. “But that’s not the same thing as trust, is it?”
Her back stiffened. She started to turn around, but then stopped herself. “I understand. You’re upset that you didn’t have a choice in this matter. And I’m upset, too. I didn’t want this to happen.”
“Right, right. But you were bound by your oath.” He zipped up his pants and reached for his shirt. “That was more important.”
“Things are different here, John. In your world, the most important thing is personal freedom. That’s the philosophy of the whole country, the American way. But here in Haven we see ourselves as servants of the community. Our duties are more important than our freedom. We all work toward a common goal.”
He grew impatient as he buttoned his shirt. Ariel was spouting platitudes. He wanted more than that. “Really? So what’s your goal?”
“Remember what I said when I met you? In that bar in New York City?” Now she turned around. Her eyes startled him, they were so avid. “Our goal is to turn ourselves into angels and turn the earth into paradise. So we can bring God into the world.”
John remembered. That’s what made him fall for her that night, what she’d said about God. At the time he’d assumed she was speaking figuratively, waxing poetic. But now he wasn’t so sure. “I don’t get it. How can you—”
“Put on your shoes. I’m going to take you upstairs.”
“Upstairs?”
“To Aunt Cordelia’s office. Where she sees the future.”
Ariel took him on a roundabout route, guiding him along the zigzagging corridors of the building, which was called the Pyramid, naturally enough. As John had guessed, the building was Haven’s command center and communications hub. First, they walked down the hallways of the ground floor and passed enormous rooms full of computer servers and fiber-optic lines. Then they took an elevator to the library on the second floor, where they walked past bookcases holding thousands of rare and ancient manuscripts. Then they ascended to the third and fourth floors, which held the offices of Haven’s government, the hundreds of people who carried out the orders of the Council of Elders.
The great majority of the workers they passed in the corridors were women. The few men they saw wore Amish clothes and stared curiously at John as he walked by. The women, in contrast, mostly ignored him, averting their eyes. The news of his arrival must’ve spread throughout Haven by now, and fewer people seemed shocked by his presence.
He sidled closer to Ariel, who was moving amazingly fast for someone on crutches. “There’s more women than men here,” he noted. “I guess that’s because the women don’t die, right?”
She frowned. “First of all, our women do die. Staying young isn’t the same thing as being immortal.”
“Okay, okay, let me rephrase it. You rarely die.”
“That’s not true, either. Until a few hundred years ago the average lifetime of a Fury woman was only twice as long as a man’s. They didn’t age, but they died in plagues, they died while giving birth. Because we can keep bearing children as long as we live, childbirth was our number-one killer.”
“Wait, I thought your mother was a thousand years old. How did she live so long?”
“She avoided having babies. Besides Basil and me, she had only one child, a girl named Lavender. She died in infancy eight hundred years ago.”
“Okay, but things must’ve changed a lot in the past hundred years, right? I mean, no one dies from plagues or childbirth anymore.”
Ariel nodded. “It’s true, our death rate is very low now. All we have to worry about are accidents and homicides. But our birth rate is also low. Procreation can be a challenge when all your men are infertile and you have to seduce strangers under difficult circumstances.” She looked John in the eye, as if to remind him of their own difficulties. “And we have other problems too. The extra gene in our DNA affects pregnancy as well as aging. Our bodies will reject any fetus that doesn’t have the extra gene in one of its X chromosomes. Because we mate with outsiders who lack that gene, at least half of our pregnancies end in miscarriages.”
She seemed at ease talking about genetics. John remembered what Gower had said about Ariel, how her greatest passion was for science. “So you go to all that trouble to find a paramour, and most of the time it doesn’t even work?”
“Exactly. About fifty years ago many of our women started using donor sperm to become pregnant, and that’s certainly easier. But some of us are uncomfortable with that method. We want to at least see the men who will father our children.”
Her voice quavered. She was thinking again of her own attempt to get pregnant. John decided to steer the conversation back to generalities. “Okay, your birth rate is low and the death rate of your women is very low. So if your men die at a normal rate, eventually you’re gonna have a lot more women than men, right?” He gestured at the dozens of women striding in and out of the offices along the corridor. Only a handful of men were among them.
Ariel sighed. “Yes, there’s an imbalance. And it’s getting worse. Right now we have seventeen hundred women and four hundred men, but almost half of our men have left Haven to join Sullivan.” She stared at the women in the hallway, some of whom nodded a greeting at her before marching past. “Sometimes I wonder if the imbalance is partially to blame for the rebellion. Maybe our men felt diminished as they became a smaller portion of our community. They’re still an important part of the Guard and the Ranger Corps, and we rely on them to work the farmland aboveground, but there aren’t many men in leadership positions in Haven.”
“Didn’t you say that the men rebelled because they were getting impatient? Because you weren’t working fast enough on a new kind of medicine?”
Before she could respond they reached the end of the corridor. In front of them was another elevator, with a glowing keypad on the wall beside it. Ariel tapped the keys, opening the door, and they stepped inside. “Aunt Delia’s office is in the capstone, the very top of the Pyramid.” The door closed and the elevator lurched upward. “After we talk to her, I’ll try to answer all your questions.”
When the door opened John saw a room full of computer screens. Dozens of flat-screen monitors covered the sloping, triangular walls, which converged at a point directly overhead. Some of the screens showed familiar things that John recognized immediately: a weather report, a CNN broadcast, a scrolling list of share prices on the New York Stock Exchange. Other screens displayed video feeds from overseas, news reports in Chinese and Spanish and Arabic. Still others showed digital maps of the world, with various regions highlighted in cold blue or flaming red. In the center of the room was a circular desk holding half a dozen keyboards, and next to it were three office chairs on rolling casters. Elder Cordelia Fury sat in one of the chairs, her wooden left hand resting on the desk, her flesh-and-blood right hand poised over a keyboard. She wore the same long-sleeved, ankle-length black dress she’d worn in the
council chambers, and her face also looked the same: pale and vacant. But instead of staring into space, now she gazed at the largest screen in the room, a jumbo-size monitor on the opposite wall. It displayed the text of what looked like a scholarly article. The title at the top of the page was Oxford Journal of Archaeology.
Ariel hobbled into the room. “I did as you asked, Auntie. I brought my paramour.”
Cordelia didn’t turn her head, but her pale lips curved into a smile. “One moment, child. I’m reading a new study of an archaeological site in southeastern Turkey. Please, take a seat. I’ll be done soon.”
Rolling her eyes, Ariel led John toward the circular desk. She sat down in the unoccupied chair to the right of Cordelia, and John sat in the one to her left. He glanced at Cordelia’s wooden hand, which rested on its side. He noticed that the wood was a little too dark to be lifelike, and there was a small carving of a butterfly etched on one of the knuckles.
As they waited for Cordelia to finish reading, John listened to the jumble of audio from the various news reports playing on the screens overhead. With all the cacophony in the room, he couldn’t imagine how Cordelia could concentrate on anything, and yet she seemed content. Ariel, though, was getting annoyed. She furrowed her brow and lowered her eyebrows as the minutes passed. Finally, she let out an exasperated groan. “Auntie, you said you wished to speak to John.”
Cordelia kept reading. After a few seconds, though, she raised her wooden hand and pointed its stiff fingers at the screen. “These archaeologists claim that a Stone Age tribe occupied the site in Turkey approximately twenty thousand years ago. According to our oldest Treasures, our family originated in the same region, near the Euphrates River. This site may be one of their first dwellings.”
Ariel shook her head. “You said you had important matters to discuss, Auntie.”
“Aye, and this is one of them. We can’t predict the future without understanding the past. How many times have I told you that, child?”