Silenced

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  Once the kids were finally down, Jae settled into a funk she feared would not lift. She didn’t have the energy to climb the stairs to an empty bed. She left the TV on as she leafed through the paper, realizing she wasn’t really reading but was rather simply willing the clock to move to where she would be too tired to think and able only to sleep. Her greatest dread was that her melancholy would not allow her to sleep, and she was already sick to death of herself.

  When the phone rang she leaped off the couch, hoping it was Paul. But he wouldn’t call at that time of the morning in Bern. Though it was just past 9 p.m. in Chicago, it was after 4 a.m. in Switzerland. They had agreed he would not likely call until the next day.

  The caller was her brother, and he was excited. “Tell me it’s true, Sis.”

  “What, Berl?”

  “Mom says you told Dad you wanted to move to D.C. until Paul gets back, and he might not be back for a half year or so.”

  “A half year? First, he’ll be back long before that or I’ll go get him. Second, that wasn’t my idea; it was Dad’s. And third, it’s about as likely as you going to Mars.”

  “Hey, I’ve got friends on Mars.”

  “Well, are you going?”

  “No, but—”

  “There you go.”

  Berlitz swore.

  “What’s the problem?” Jae said.

  “I wanted it to be true, that’s all. Aryana liked you. Says she could enjoy getting to know you.”

  “Well, I liked her too, but—”

  “C’mon, Jae. I’m usually on the road Monday through Thursday nights. Your man is gone all the time, for now. You know Mom wants this or she wouldn’t have told me about it.”

  “Did she really say it was my idea?”

  “Nah, I was just foolin’ with ya. But she wants it to be your idea.”

  “Did she put you up to calling me?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You mean, is she waiting by the phone to find out what you said? Yeah. Fact, I’m in Cincy tonight, Cleveland and Toledo tomorrow, and then home, and I’ve already heard from Mom, Dad, and Aryana. We want you out here, Jae.”

  “The kids are back to school. They have their friends here. It would just be—”

  “Do you never think of me anymore?” Berlitz said. He sounded suddenly more than serious. “Brie and Connor are the only thing close to kids I’ll ever have. And I hardly ever see them.”

  “You were sure good with them over the holidays.”

  “I’m depressed about getting old, Jae. You wouldn’t really deprive me of my niece and nephew, would you? I might start drinking more, being a worse husband—if that’s possible—neglect my ma, who is also your ma, you remember. I might not even keep trying to be the son Dad wants me to be. I’ll be a drunk, old orphan, divorced three times, and it’ll be all your fault. You could save me with this one little decision.”

  At least he had made Jae laugh.

  5

  PAUL HAD SPENT THE ENTIRE EVENING with Chancellor Dengler, willing himself not to look at his watch. It wasn’t that he didn’t find the whole meeting interesting, but he knew the man wanted to call it a day as much as he did. And he wanted to call Jae if at all possible. But it wasn’t.

  The brief show would not have passed muster in college. It was much ado about little. The greatest intelligence corps in world history had amassed a short list of every Styr Magnor they could find, most of them—of course—residing in Scandinavia. Over the course of the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours, teams of midlevel NPO operatives would make contact with as many of them as humanly possible, eliminating them from the data bank by their alibis.

  “We really have nothing, no leads, do we?” Paul said.

  “Not a thing,” Dengler said. “But Monday you will meet with NPO International here—many of whom I assume you already know. Something wrong?”

  Paul had not been able to hide his concern over the delay. “Should we not take advantage of the weekend? I mean, I hate to put people out, but—”

  “As it is, our field staff will be canvassing the Magnors of the world. If there is another incident, Doctor, everyone on the executive staff is on call to come in immediately. Perhaps I should have marshaled them for tomorrow and Sunday, but I did not. I thought you might appreciate the rest.”

  “I do, but—”

  “You may rest assured that every tidbit of information we have will be funneled to you. And once we have met Monday, until we get something that points us to the right Styr Magnor, I assume you too will want to be in the field.”

  “At the scenes of the attacks.”

  “Right. Any specific order?”

  Paul was still reeling from the decision to waste the weekend. Why had he not just waited and flown in Sunday night? “Yeah, uh, I thought I’d start in Rome, then Paris, then London.”

  “South to north,” Dengler said softly. “How much time in each place?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “We are on the same page as far as the disposition of this madman, I assume.”

  Paul chose to flash his powers of recall. “‘No recourse, no appeal, no grace period, no severance.’”

  Dengler raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Well done,” he said. “You forgot ‘terminated immediately,’ and I did not mean losing his job.”

  “We are together on that, Chancellor.”

  “Excellent.”

  Paul stood, assuming the meeting and the evening were over. He was wrong.

  “I thought we would spend a few more moments and get acquainted,” Dengler said. “But you are tired and I am imposing.”

  “Sir, again, I am here at your disposal. There is nothing I’d rather do—short of being home with my family—than whatever you wish.”

  “Ah, a family man,” Dengler said, settling in, which obligated Paul to do the same. “You may or may not be aware that I am a man who boasts a long marriage. More than forty years. Four grown sons, many grandchildren.”

  Paul had heard. He nodded and smiled.

  “Do you smoke?” the chancellor said.

  “No, sir. No thank you.”

  “Cigars, I mean.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you mind if I—?”

  “Not at all, please.”

  The way Dengler enjoyed a fine cigar, even the smell, made Paul wish he smoked. So far he actually liked this man. He would have to talk with Straight about that. There had been little question that his friend was uneasy about his being in the lair of the enemy.

  “People thought it ironic that the chancellor of a country like Germany—with her checkered record of human rights—had become chancellor of a new international government of peace,” Dengler began.

  Paul knew he was in for a long evening. “You have done quite a job, sir.”

  “Dr. Stepola, I—”

  “Forgive me for interrupting sir, but, please call me Paul.”

  As Dengler studied him, Paul couldn’t read whether he was bemused or miffed. “When you are ready to call me Baldwin.”

  “Dr. Stepola will be fine, Mr. Chancellor.”

  Dengler laughed, took a discreet puff, and carefully exhaled away from Paul. “As you will be reporting to me for a time, allow me to acquaint you with my mind-set. Frankly I thought it a stroke of genius to house the International Government in a nation with a three-quarters of a millennium tradition of peace and freedom. If you know your history—and I know that you do—you know that Switzerland remained neutral throughout all three world wars.”

  “Frankly, Mr. Chancellor, I’ve always thought it ironic that the best-known army knife in world history comes from a country that has been militarily neutral for centuries.”

  Dengler howled. “The Swiss penchant for peace is an amazing record, but I confess that it frustrated me. I was in my midtwenties during the last war, and at that time I had little more regard for the Swiss than I did for the French. France was hardly neutral, bu
t she was so capitulatory—as she had been toward Hitler in World War II—that she might as well have renamed herself Geneva. I still feel that way toward France, Doctor, but as you can imagine these are not sentiments I can voice in public.”

  “Oh, sir, you may be certain that anything said within these walls—”

  “If I were worried in the least about that, you would not be here. In the interest of full disclosure, I am compelled to add that I had my frustrations with Switzerland as well.”

  “Their pacifism?”

  “No, no. I admired their constancy in that. The Swiss were not ready to surrender to or coddle dictators the way I believed the French were. They merely remained free and out of the fights, offering venues for peace talks. What so frustrated me about the history of this little landlocked island was how slow they were to come round on issues of civil rights. Do you realize that women were not allowed to vote in national elections here until 1971? Think of it! A mere seventy-six years! Blacks in America were voting long before that.”

  “Civil rights are important to you.”

  “Of course. And should be to all men of peace. I am most fascinated by your educational background, Doctor, and here is why: I am wondering if you, as I do, see the beauty and—how shall I say it?—the wit of Switzerland being home to an essentially atheistic world government.”

  Paul smiled, hoping only he was aware of his increased pulse. “Essentially?” he said.

  Dengler leaned forward and delicately shaped the hot end of his cigar on the edge of a crystal ashtray. He dipped his head. “All right, a wholly atheistic world government.”

  “You say ‘beauty and wit’ because of Switzerland’s having been the cradle of Calvinism?”

  Dengler nodded. “Excellent. But of course you also know that the Reformation resulted in the fracturing of Switzerland into religious armies—Protestant and Roman Catholic. They actually warred against each other.”

  “Four times in less than two hundred years,” Paul said.

  Dengler was plainly impressed. “So when a country like this agrees to a total ban on religion for the sake of peace, the rest of the world must take notice. And it did. I simply find the dichotomy refreshing and telling.”

  “It is that,” Paul said.

  “It may surprise you to know, Doctor, that I am sympathetic to the yearning of the human soul for something beyond itself.”

  “That does surprise me.”

  “You will not report me, will you?”

  Paul laughed. “To whom?”

  Dengler suddenly fell serious. “I have no illusions as to why man created religion. I have not studied all the religions as you clearly have, but when one delves into them at any depth, it becomes no wonder why they swept up so many millions. There are beautiful tales, truths really, in so many of the belief systems, much we can learn and much we should put into practice.

  “The sad fact is, people are people, and their religious codes of conduct were unable to corral their basest instincts. Rather than mold them into loving, others-minded, altruistic beings, their very beliefs caused them to fight to the death over who was right. And of course, the bottom line is that none of it was true. That must be seen as the saddest fact of antebellum history: that so much of the globe literally believed in the ethereal immaterial.” Dengler seemed genuinely saddened by this.

  Paul nodded, purely from politeness. The stress of sitting here a traitor nearly consumed him, and yet he had to maintain his edge. Faltering here, revealing himself to the leader of the new world, would have unfathomable consequences even compared to his being discovered by his wife or father-in-law.

  “Yet you say you understand that longing of the human soul,” Paul said.

  “Oh, of course. I would not deny even feeling it myself. How wonderful it would be if there really were a supreme being of love and peace and goodness, who watched over us and could help us. But people who believed that wound up killing each other in the name of that being, proving beyond all doubt that their faith had been misplaced. And over the last nearly four decades, I believe we have made greater strides than ever in the history of humankind. We have shown that the eradication of religion results in true peace. We have proven, at least in my mind and in the minds of right-thinking people, that the true source of honor and goodness is found within oneself. My religion? Humanity. Worship the human mind and heart and soul and potential.”

  “You do believe in a living soul then?”

  “Oh, certainly. It is the conscience, the inner person.”

  “So the conscience, in effect, worships itself.”

  “Yes! Very good! There is nowhere else to look, and rightfully so. Men and women are, at their core, loving, giving, caring, achieving people. I would say selfless, and in the sense of thinking of others before oneself that would be accurate. But in fact I know I am talking about selfishness in the best sense. For the selfish person adores the best parts of his own inner being. He sees his own potential and rises to it.”

  Paul wanted to play devil’s advocate, to ask about people who follow their base natures and commit crimes and put themselves above others. But he couldn’t risk it. The discussion would lead back to Styr Magnor and be blamed on evil in the name of God again. And without having met Magnor, Paul would not be able to argue. Whether Magnor was a true brother or a madman, what he had done had almost irretrievably set back the cause of the underground.

  Dengler stood, signaling the evening was finally coming to an end, and Paul was relieved. The older man put a hand on Paul’s shoulder and walked him to the door. “Let me tell you what I consider the greatest stride humankind has made since the war. It has been in the virtual eradication of racism. This from a German who carries the burden of a hundred years of national shame over Nazism. Religion was not the only felon. Nationalism, imperialism, racism. These were religion’s illegitimate children.”

  As soon as Dengler opened the office door, an aide rose with Paul’s coat and hat. “It’s colder and snowier now, sir,” the aide said. “I’ll have you to the Einstein in just moments.”

  Dengler moved between the staffer and Paul and whispered, “I have enjoyed this immensely, Dr. Stepola. It is so refreshing to converse with a man of letters. Get the rest you need, and when you arrive Monday you will have access to anything and everything you need to catch this enemy for us.” He offered Paul a team of six rotating bodyguards for the rest of his time in Europe, but Paul declined. That was the last thing he wanted. How could he fulfill his own agenda and that of the underground with all those eyes on him?

  The following Monday, January 14, after the loneliest weekend she could remember, Jae was about to call Straight when he called her. He said Paul had asked that he check in on her. She was struck that he sounded so kind, not as if he were merely following through on a promise to a friend.

  “So,” he began, “how are you doing?”

  She was tempted to offer a polite lie, but she sensed sincerity in his tone. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Rathe, I’m struggling.”

  “How so? Missing your man?”

  “Exactly. That may be a surprise to you after what you’ve witnessed in our home, but—”

  “Oh no, ma’am. I understood well all the pressures you both were under, and besides, Paul has kept me up to speed on how things have changed around there in the last few months. And of course I noticed that too.”

  Jae was nearly speechless. Had she overestimated the distance she’d felt from this man? Or had he just been shy? Having seen him in action at the hospital poked holes in that theory.

  Jae told Straight that Paul had called her twice over the weekend. “I was wondering, sir, if you would care to come visit, perhaps for a meal.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “The kids. My kids. Brie and Connor miss you already, and I think it would help with their dad being away.”

  “Oh, certainly, yes. Well, I’m at the hospital just now, calling you on break.”

  “They get home fr
om school late in the afternoon, and we have dinner at six. Can I count on you tonight?”

  “Yes, ma’am, and thank you.”

  “I do hope you can stay awhile. I’d like to talk to you privately.”

  “Whatever you wish.”

  “And do you have any dietary restrictions or preferences?”

  “Well, ma’am, as long as you asked, I love fish.”

  “Any particular kind?”

  “Fish.”

  “What type?”

  “Fish.”

  She chuckled. “So I can’t go wrong.”

  “Not with fish, ma’am, no. Now if the children don’t care for it, I’m easy. I’m sure I’ll enjoy whatever you prepare.”

  After an entire day and most of the evening with NPO International, Paul returned to his hotel exhausted.

  “Would you like to be accompanied inside?” his driver asked.

  “Thanks, no. I’ll be fine.”

  Paul hesitated off the lobby near the twenty-four-hour restaurant he had tried the day before—excellent steaks—but decided on room service instead. It seemed less lonely somehow. After ordering and while waiting for his meal to be delivered, he called Jae. It was after 11 p.m. in Bern, just after four in Chicago. He should be able to talk to the kids.

  Jae told him how excited they all were about Straight’s visit in less than two hours. The kids were both shy with Paul on the phone, but it was good to hear them. When Jae came back on, he told her, “I’m headed for Rome in the morning. International seems more than willing to let me shoulder the load over here. I guess their priority is Magnor.”

  “Well, it would help you if they find him.”