CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Nine hours later
September 29—3:21 A.M.
Downtown Denver, Colorado
Alex woke with a start. Her heart pounded against her rib cage. She had no idea where she was, or what had awakened her. She was simply awake in the dark. Sitting up, she noticed that she was in a hotel room. She patted the bed next to her. John wasn’t there. Moving to sit on the side of the bed, she heard the sound again.
The phone was ringing.
She reached to turn on a bedside lamp and then realized she didn’t know where the light switch was located. Her hand fumbled around for a few moments before she gave up. Standing up, she moved toward the light under the door to the hall and clicked the light switch on the wall.
Ah shit. The light brought a round of Ketamine-induced nausea and head-splitting pain.
There has to be coffee here somewhere.
She was in the bathroom when the phone rang again.
Ah well, they’ll call back.
Turning on the bathroom light, she blinked at the bright light and grimaced at her reflection. She was wearing panties and someone’s big T-shirt. Her fake hair stood straight up in some places and flat in others. It looked like she had gone to sleep with wet hair . . .
Oh, right. Alex remembered that she was at the hotel in downtown Denver. Her one bag of clothing was in Paris. Glancing at the half-open suite door, she saw that Raz was across the suite. She nodded at her reflection. Turning on the faucet, she wet her hair in an attempt to flatten it out.
She and Raz went to dinner at Elway’s. They ate steak, drank wine, and laughed. Alex insisted they eat some salad, which they fed to each other. Raz ordered every chocolate dessert on the menu. Groaning and laughing, they managed to eat them. She smiled. She had such a good time with Raz.
When they returned, he ran a bath for her, set his T-shirt on the bed, and left for a date. She scratched her head, trying to remember who he saw last night. She could probably just go across the suite to find out who was there. She chuckled to herself.
The phone started ringing again.
Fuck.
Getting up from the commode, she went back into the hotel room to look for the telephone. She had never used the phone in this room. The clock’s red digital letters cast light on the phone sitting on top of the desk.
The phone’s over there!
Feeling like she had accomplished something, Alex picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hello, my dear,” Eleazar’s voice purred in Hebrew.
Alex set the phone down. Dropping into the chair next to the desk, Alex stared at the telephone. She hadn’t expected that.
She knew she should get Raz. She knew she should call into command. She knew she should have the call traced. She knew that she should not pick up the telephone.
But when the phone rang again, she picked it up.
“What do you want?” Alex asked in Hebrew.
“Now is that any way to speak to an old friend?” Eleazar purred.
“You are no friend of mine,” she said.
“How are you feeling?”
“What do you want?” Alex yelled into the phone.
The door to the suite banged opened, and Raz stood in the doorway wearing white boxer shorts. He scowled, and walked over to her. He wrenched the phone from her hand. He listened at the earpiece and then slammed the receiver down into the phone.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked. “That was Eleazar. God damn it, Alex. What are you thinking?”
Leaning her elbows on her knees, Alex shook her head.
“Your mind is fragile from the Ketamine.”
The phone rang, and Raz pulled the phone line from the wall. Alex looked up at him and blinked. She had no idea why he was so angry.
“I can’t help myself,” she said. “I feel compelled to speak with him, to find out what exactly it is that he wants.”
“Alex, he planted that in your mind. All of those phone calls conditioned you to want to speak to him again. It’s classic psychological programming. You know that.”
Alex nodded. Her cell phone began ringing. She put her hands over her ears.
Realizing that his anger was also hitting her fragile mind, he pulled her up into his arms. “Oh honey, I’m sorry. Let’s do it together. Give me two minutes.”
When he released her from the hug, Alex plopped back into the chair. Dropping her head into her hands, she rubbed her forehead back and forth against her hands. She looked up to see Raz return, wearing blue jeans and talking on his cell phone. She watched the muscles in his taut abdomen move side to side as he walked toward her.
Sensing movement in the sitting area, Alex looked past Raz to see a woman moving across the suite.
That’s our server from Elway’s.
Alex raised a hand to say, “Hello” to the woman. She winked at Alex and let herself out of the suite.
“I’m sorry, Raz. Your date just left.”
Raz looked down at her and nodded, “I need your phone.”
Alex dug around in her clothing, piled next to the bathroom, to find her cell phone. She gave him the phone.
“What did you tell her?”
“Cops,” he said. He put his hand over the mouthpiece of his cell phone. “I asked her if she would mind leaving. She was delightful.” Turning his attention to the phone, he said: “That’s what I thought. Can you check on that?”
With the phone propped against his chin, he said to Alex, “We’re looking for terrorists. She didn’t want to get involved.”
“Will you see her again?”
“Probably,” he said. “I seem to be in Denver a lot these days.”
Alex smiled. There was a tap on the door.
“I ordered some coffee for you,” he said.
Alex’s entire being brightened, and Raz laughed. She answered the door for room service. She didn’t move from the door until she’d finished a cup of coffee with a little cream.
“All right, thank you,” Raz said, disconnecting his telephone. He watched Alex’s complete absorption with her coffee, and laughed. “Happy?”
“Very.” She poured herself another cup of coffee.
“Let’s go into the suite,” he said, and answered his cell phone.
Alex moved into the sitting area, and he followed. Sitting down on the couch, she remembered that the coffee was in the other room. She jumped up and ran back into the bedroom, where she grabbed the thermos of coffee, a cup, and raw sugar for Raz and returned to the sitting area.
“What’s going on?” Alex asked. She poured a cup of coffee for him and stirred in the raw sugar.
Disconnecting from his phone, he took the cup and smiled at her generosity. Alex would never think of keeping something special to herself. He took a long drink of the warm coffee, fixed exactly as he liked it.
“Eleazar went underground last month. He’s been in Jordan, visiting his mother, as King Abdullah told you. Rather than returning to Jerusalem, he seems to be traveling through the Middle East. We believe he’s been recruiting people for an operation here in the States, but we don’t really know.”
“How did you know that was Eleazar?”
“Ben said that Eleazar would try to get to you before the Ketamine wore off. Prior to viewing the vault . . . Do you remember the vault?”
Alex nodded.
“You believed Eleazar killed your team. He wants you to believe that he killed your team. Ben thought he would contact you to clarify or convince you that your memory was wrong.”
“That Ben is a smart guy.”
“Like his daughter,” Raz said.
Alex’s cell phone began to ring again.
“Go ahead,” Raz said. He waited until she answered the phone before connecting through his cell phone. He would listen to the conversation while tracing the call.
“Hello?”
“You are hard to get ahold of,” Eleazar said in English.
“A girl’s
got to keep her distance from all the handsome men who want to talk with her,” Alex said. “What is it that you want?”
“I wanted to hear your lovely voice,” he said. “You want to tell me how to get into the vault.”
“I do?”
“You’ll tell me how to get into the vault.” Eleazar’s voice was silky smooth.
“What do you know about that vault?” Alex asked.
“Why?”
“I’m the only one who can get into that vault. I can give you a code, but you won’t be able to open the door. Why don’t you tell me what you want, and I’ll retrieve your property for you?”
Eleazar clicked off the telephone, and Alex threw the cell phone away from her.
“I feel dirty,” she said.
“I bet,” Raz said. “Is that true about the vault?”
Alex nodded. “Charlie could get in, too.”
“The Army tried for a month to get inside.”
“Who closed the door?”
“They removed Jesse last. The door has some kind of automatic mechanism. As soon as they moved Jesse’s body, the door swung closed. There was a guy inside who just managed to squeak out.”
“Huh,” Alex shrugged.
“They tried to force the door . . .”
“You can’t do that,” she said.
“Why so much security?”
“I was usually there by myself. I felt like that vault was the safest place on the planet, but Charlie worried. I was supposed to close the door when I was there alone.”
“Did you do that?”
“Mostly,” Alex said. “Sometimes I was running in to drop cash or a book, and I’d leave the door open, but usually I closed the door. That’s what’s weird, Raz. What could possibly be in there? I was there every single time the vault was opened.”
“And why didn’t they get what they wanted after they killed everyone?” Raz asked.
“I wish I knew,” Alex said.
“How does the lock work?”
“There are four spots that scan for hand prints. One spot for each of my hands and each of Charlie’s hands. If I put my hand in the wrong spot—Charlie’s spot for example—the door cannot be opened for seven days. Mess up more than once, and the security has to be over-ridden.”
“How?”
“In a long and very painful process. The keypad is a complicated mechanism of fingerprint scanning and code. The codes are sort of random. Charlie had the system made some place in Asia . . . Laos, I think.”
“I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”
“Yeah?” Alex asked. “The door used to just have the keypad lock, but, around the time Joseph left, Charlie changed the door. He set the codes to random and added the handprint scans. He also added a bunch of security inside the vault. There are compartments in the floor that only I can get into.”
“Why did he do that?”
“I don’t really know,” Alex said. “Joseph and Charlie had been friends for more than twenty years. When Joseph left, Charlie became increasingly anxious. He would stay up after everyone had gone to bed as if he were guarding us. He didn’t want anyone to go anywhere alone. I guess that’s why we were in the vault. We usually roamed Paris and met at the apartment to change and stuff.”
“I remember. And you don’t have any idea what was going on?”
“With Charlie? No. I asked him, more than once, but he would just assure me that everything was all right. Joseph told me that he noticed the change in Charlie, too.”
“When did Joseph see Charlie?”
“We routed through Denver to meet his twins after they were born. Joseph said he asked Charlie what was wrong. Charlie made an excuse and changed the subject.”
“Was that like Charlie?”
“Charlie? Oh, yeah.” Alex looked over at Raz. “Charlie was like a big Dad. He took care of every worry, every problem. He said our work was hard enough to have to worry about bullshit.”
“Maybe the journals will give you some clues,” Raz said and yawned.
“Maybe. I’m going to need help transcribing them.
“Transcribing?
“They are in a code based in Navajo.”
“You mean that someone has ten years of your journals in a code? In Navajo?”
Alex nodded. Raz laughed and yawned.
“Are you going back to bed?” she asked.
“I didn’t get much sleep.”
“I’m glad.”
Raz smiled. “Wanna snuggle?”
“That sounds very nice, but I should work on maps for a while. I haven’t listened to the map phone messages in at least a week. The Intelligence Center added video, so that should be interesting.”
“Will you wake me if anything . . . ?”
“Of course,” she said.
She stood and hugged him. “Thanks.”
He kissed her cheek and went into his bedroom.
Alex went back to her bedroom with her cup and pot of coffee. She closed the door all the way and waited to see if Raz would complain. When he didn’t, she sat down in an armchair by the window. She fell into deep thought, remembering and reliving, as she watched the night turn into day. As the sun began to reflect off the mountains, Alex promised herself that no one else would be injured by Eleazar.
Not again.
Never again.
F
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