Wildcard
Page 27
At least Tom was alive. That seemed to be the only bright ray in the darkness that had begun settling over her life the day Grant Lawrence had been shot. Well, that and the fact that Grant was recovering and after a few months of physical therapy would probably be his old self.
If anyone could be his “old self” after surviving an assassination attempt. At least he and Karen could marry now, because a senator could be married to a homicide detective.
So it wasn’t all bad. But Miriam’s heart ached, anyway. When she remembered those she had killed, both in Guatemala and in Montana, Miguel Ortiz’s face floated in her mind’s eye. His and his sister’s. Paper targets? No way. People. Real people. She wondered if she was ever going to be able to live with the ghosts.
And that left her here, in Terry’s arms, the one place she felt even remotely safe. The musky hairs on his chest tickled her cheek as she snuggled against him. The rumble of his voice was soothing, even if she wasn’t hearing the words.
“Honey?” he asked. “Are you listening?”
She lifted her head to look into his deep brown eyes, noting that his ebony brow was slightly furrowed. “I’m sorry, darling. What did you say?”
He chuckled and kissed her forehead.
“I asked if you would marry me.”
The tears fell onto his chest as she nodded.
Rome, Italy
“Nice digs,” Tom said, as he followed Renate into the office. Despite the tawdry and run-down appearance of the warehouse, the inside was an anthill of cubicles, maps and computer projection screens. “You guys live well.”
“We get by,” she said.
She led him through the maze, introducing him to her colleagues, now his. Carlos Pitanza, former antidrug intelligence agent in Colombia. Peter Stone, former MI-6. Margarite Renault, ex-Sûreté. A dozen other names and faces blurred, although he knew he would learn them in time.
“There are another twenty or so in the field,” Renate said. “Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia. Chechnya. Among other places. It’s a busy world.”
“Unfortunately,” he said. “So where am I?”
“Right back here,” she replied, leading him deeper into the warren of cubicles. “Next to me.”
She stepped into her cubicle and returned with a thick red file. Three diagonal stripes crossed the cover, the office code for ultrasecret.
“Harrison Rice is going to get elected,” she said. “Ed Morgan has disappeared, presumed dead. But we both know it’s not over.”
“The Frankfurt Brotherhood,” Tom said, opening the file. “They’ll own a U.S. president.”
“Unless we find a way to stop them,” Renate said. “But first, come with me. It is time you meet the head of our outfit.”
He followed her between cubicles, down a freestanding hallway to a door marked Jefe.
“Chief?” he asked.
“You’ll see why.” She was smiling at him, and for the first time he saw a twinkle in her eyes. He hadn’t known she could be tickled by anything, and the expression brought an answering smile to his own face. It had been so long since he’d really smiled that it felt as if ice were cracking on his face.
Then she threw the door open and said, “Chief? Our newest agent.”
Tom stepped through the door but made it no farther. He stared in disbelief at the man behind the desk. “John? What the fuck?”
John Ortega, the man whose death Tom had grieved only two years ago, launched into his Cheech Marin patter. “I couldn’t let my amigo weether in de federales! This bunch pulled me out of L.A., and next thing I know, I’m running the place.”
An instant later, the two men were embracing and laughing, and slapping each other’s backs.
Still smiling, Renate withdrew into the hallway and closed the door behind her, leaving them to catch up. Sometimes you lost everything to join this group. And sometimes you found something.
Her smile softened a bit and she murmured, “Welcome to Office 119, Lawton Caine.”
Afterword and Acknowledgments
Wild Card is the first installment in an ongoing story, and as such it was an extremely challenging project. No work of this scope could be a singular enterprise, and we are indebted first and foremost to Leslie Wainger and Helen Breitwieser, our editor and agent respectively, whose unstinting confidence, support and patience gave us the courage—and the time, far beyond our deadline!—to undertake this project. You two are, quite simply, the best creative partners any writer could hope for.
This is a work of fiction. Yet what has come to be known as the Conspiratorial School of History offers a wealth of background from which a novelist can work. We do not endorse this theory of history, but we must acknowledge that it is an entrancing and deep mine of mythic potential.
Each of the flashbacks in the narrative is based on a documented historical event, although we have taken great creative liberties to weave them into the tapestry of this series.
An overview of the Conspiratorial School of History can be found in Jim Marrs’s Rule by Secrecy.
For the history of Akhenaten and the Cult of Light, we have drawn primarily from Ahmed Osman’s Moses and Akhenaten, and Erik Hornung’s Akhenaten and the Religion of Light.
The enduring significance of the Battle of Actium is best described in Josiah Ober’s essay “Not By a Nose,” published in What If? 2: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, edited by Robert Cowley.
The theory that Mary Magdalene may have been the wife of Christ, and have borne His child away to southern France, has been explored in many fictional and nonfictional works. We drew primarily from Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, The Templar Revelation by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, and Lost Scriptures, by Bart D. Ehrman.
Intriguing evidence for the existence of Christianity in pre-Columbian Central America can be found in Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages, as well as Maggie Sypniewski’s excellent telling of Aztec and Mayan poetry and the Quetzalcoatl myth on the Bear Clan Web site at Geocities.com.
While the United Nations does have an antiterrorism organization, whose mandate includes support of covert operations, Office 119, as well as its conspiratorial opponents, are complete fabrications.
Last, but by no means least, we are indebted to our dear friend Rolf Winkenbach, whose endless patience with our questions about German culture, government, geography and other matters was essential in the creation of Renate Bächle. Danke, Rolf; Sie sind ein Schatz!
Rachel Lee
April, 2004
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8364-4
WILDCARD
Copyright © 2005 by Susan Civil-Brown.
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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