Sara thought of all the people dead or missing. “I wish a lot of people were still with us.”
“Of course.” The Secretary returned to his chair, pulling out a white handkerchief and extending it to her. She took it and wiped her eyes, then grasped the white cloth in a tight fist.
“Sara, I have to ask you something now. I have to know. We’ve got to lay it on the table and get it out. So tell me. Do you trust me? Can I trust you?”
She shifted in her seat, her eyes boring into him. “You tell me,” she answered with a question. “Fuentes? Is he your friend?”
Marino shook his head. “Sara, do you understand the line of succession of the presidency?”
“I understand.”
“Do you realize that I should . . .”
“ . . . be the president? Yes. I understand that.”
“Fuentes is my enemy. Our enemy. But he isn’t alone, Sara. He has many, many friends. And he isn’t the ringleader, I can promise you that. I don’t think Fuentes could lead a Scout troop across a parking lot if he had a map and GPS. No. He’s not their leader. He was in the right place at the right time and willing to sell his soul. Maybe he sold himself for money. Maybe not. Maybe all he got in return was the opportunity to keep on breathing in this world.” Marino hesitated, thinking of the shootout at his daughter’s house, knowing they would have found Fuentes quivering under a blanket in the closet if they had come for him the same way. “The man has all the courage of a rabbit,” he continued. “I don’t know what he’s thinking—none of us can know or judge him yet— but we know that we can’t trust him. And he shouldn’t be the president.”
“Then stand up!” Sara shot back. “Stand up and claim the presidency. I have been waiting to hear your name in any of the news. They said you were dead. That had to be the only explanation, but now I find you hiding here. Do you realize, Bruce, how much they need you out there!” She jabbed her finger, pointing to the outside world. “It’s slipping away, Bruce, do you understand that? We need you. We need you to make a stand. You don’t have much time. You’ve got to take action. Why are you hesitating? I don’t understand why you won’t act! You are the president, not Fuentes. What are you waiting for!” Her voice was agitated, even angry. “Neil said that I could trust you. He said you’d do the right thing. He warned me about Fuentes, all the others. He warned me about . . .” She caught herself and stopped, her dead husband’s words almost sounding in her ears. Go slow. Be careful. Don’t say anything until you are certain. Don’t trust anyone. I don’t trust anyone. Think before you talk!
She fell silent. She’d said too much already. She almost bit her tongue.
Marino watched her, smiling. “It’s good to have the old Sara back,” he grinned.
She looked away and blushed. “I’m sorry, Bruce,” she muttered awkwardly. “I have no right to talk to you that way. I’m embarrassed for myself.”
Marino smiled again, then stood up. “It’s all right. I hold no grudge.”
“And I shouldn’t call you by your first name. What should I call you? Mr. Secretary? Mr. President? You should be the president, and I should call you that.”
He didn’t disagree. She probably should. But it wasn’t true, not yet, not formally, and the last thing he wanted was the perception of presumption. “There’s so much you don’t know yet,” he went on. “So much you don’t understand. I know Neil told you a little bit, but I’m certain he didn’t tell you everything. For one thing, he didn’t know. For another, he would have been very careful about what he told you, knowing it would only make things more dangerous and difficult.”
Sara sighed. “I don’t know how much more difficult it could possibly have been.”
“Trust me, it could have been worse. You don’t even want to know.”
“All right,” she straightened suddenly, “what have I to do with this?”
Marino hesitated. “Maybe more than you think.”
She stared at him blankly.
“Surely you realize what an exceptional effort it took to find you.”
Sara’s mind shot back to the military spy outside her
window in Chicago, the night run through the city, being trapped atop the building. She shuddered as she thought.
Marino saw her shoulders tremble. “From what I hear, it’s a good thing that we did,” he added.
“But why? Why did you bring us here?”
“Because I need your help.”
Sara caught Marino’s anxious glance toward her son. Up to this point, Sam had been quiet. Intimidated by the Secretary—no, not just the Secretary, the president of the United States— he had hardly dared to speak. But he sat forward now, his back ramrod straight. “I’m a soldier, sir. You’re the Secretary of Defense. I’ll do anything that you tell me to.”
“I know you will, lieutenant.” Marino turned back to Sara and smiled again. “If your son is anything like his father, he’ll soon be leading his own army. There’s no question I can rely on him.” He leaned toward the soldier’s mother. “It’s you that I’m worried about.”
Sara hesitated. “I don’t understand.”
“I need you, Sara.”
“Me! You need me? Come on, Bruce . . . Mr. Secretary, what could I possibly do for you? What could I possibly do with any of this?”
Before he could answer, the back door to the conference room slowly opened and they turned. Azadeh slipped inside, pulled the door closed behind her, then stood, her shoulders slumping, her eyes always on the floor. She seemed to melt into the wall, her face betraying her desire to be swallowed by the concrete floor. Following the instructions she’d been given, she waited without speaking by the door.
Turning back to Sara, the Secretary went on, his voice low but powerful, overflowing with emotion. “I do need you, Sara. The presidency needs you. Your country needs you. I need you more than you could know. The plan we’ve put together is going to scare you. It’s going to be down in the trenches, filthy, gruesome work. And I can’t promise you a favorable outcome. I can’t promise you that we’ll be successful or even that any of us are going to live.”
The room fell into such deep silence that Sara could hear herself breathe. She thought, her mind racing, her hands growing damp with sweat.
“I need you all,” Marino finished. “I need Azadeh. I need your son. I just can’t do it by myself.”
“You are the president!” she whispered to him. “You have all of the power of the United States behind you. If you’d just come out and claim the presidency . . .”
“ . . . I’d be dead. If I do that, they will kill me, there’s not a shred of doubt. Before I step foot off this base, I’ll be dead. Now, I’m okay with that, the good Lord knows, and I don’t mean that in a profane way, I mean He knows that I’m not afraid of death. But my passing would eliminate the last chance we have of putting a legitimate presidency in place. I can’t do that. There is far too much at risk.”
“Mr. Secretary, I simply can’t believe that we have slipped that far. Do you really think that they will do . . .” she couldn’t say it, “you know, do what you say?”
“Of course they will. Two of my predecessors have been killed already. I would be the third. But, as it is, they think I ran away, choosing to get out of the race. They think I cut and ran, willing to cede the presidency to them. As long as they think that I’ve gone into hiding, they’ll keep their focus somewhere else. And that’s the most powerful weapon we have against them, the ability to work behind the scenes. So we take advantage of the time they give us. We grow a few cells of patriots, a very select group of people we trust, people they won’t be looking for.”
Sara reached across the padded armchair for Sam’s hand. “Okay. I understand that much. But what I still don’t understand is what you could possibly need from us.”
The secretary opened a manila folder and dropped a picture on the table, tapping the dark face with his finger. “King Abdullah is the one who did this to us.” He kept his eyes
on Sara while motioning with his head toward Azadeh and Sam. “So your son is going to take a team and snatch him and bring him back here. Azadeh is going to help them.”
Sara’s face turned white, and her breathing became labored. She gripped the handkerchief as if it were a lifeline, keeping her from going under. The Secretary nodded solemnly. “They’re going to go and get him, then we’re going to put him on trial for the things he has done.”
Sara opened her mouth but no sound came out. “You’re a fool,” she finally muttered. “You’re talking about the king of Saudi Arabia, the most powerful, the wealthiest man in the world. He has entire armies that protect him. No one could even get close.”
Marino shook his head. “Abdullah is about to do something very foolish. We think we can take him then.”
Sara didn’t believe it for a second—the look on her face made that clear.
The Secretary didn’t give her time to think. Pulling out another picture, he dropped it on the table. Three men. Close together. Intense conversation. Their faces tight. The interior of a small café. Foreign cars out on the street. “These are the men behind Fuentes, the men who conspired and murdered to put him in place. Now, listen to me, this is important: Did these men help to plan or carry out the attack against our country? No, I don’t think so. Did they know it was coming? You bet your life they did. Could they have stopped it? Maybe. Probably not. But did they see this as the opportunity they’d been waiting for to make their grab for power? There’s no question that’s the case. We need to find them. We need to stop them. And we don’t have any time.”
Sara reluctantly lowered her eyes to the table. Staring hopelessly at the second picture, she sucked a sudden breath, her face draining of color, her hands trembling on her lap. “No,” she almost groaned. “No, no, please, not him.” She lightly touched the middle man in the picture, then looked up, her eyes wet, her face exhausted. “He was our friend. We both loved him.” She sounded like she might break down. “Neil and I would have trusted him with our lives.”
“Exactly!” the Secretary answered, his face patient but still determined. “You trusted him. He’ll still trust you! We can use that trust against him as long as he doesn’t know.”
Sara bent her head again and swallowed. It was simply too much to comprehend. Too much betrayal. Too much treachery. Too much disloyalty from those they’d loved. Her mind was on the edge, tilting toward the dark, and she was mute as she fell into despair.
The Secretary let a few seconds pass in silence, then leaned toward her. “It’s a nasty thing we have to do. And heaven knows that I can’t force you. If you can’t do it, I’ll understand. But there are so few people I can turn to, so few people I can trust, so few people who can really help me. Sara, you are one. Was it a coincidence that we were able to find you?” He tapped the second picture. “Was it a coincidence he is your friend?” He nodded to the dark-haired girl pressed against the wall. “Was it a coincidence your son was with you? A coincidence that you are with a young girl from Iran, which is where we have to go? Was any of this a coincidence? I don’t know. You’ll have to make that judgment for yourself. It seems to me unlikely. And if it wasn’t some lucky happenstance, then you have to ask yourself, Why are we together now? And what does God want us to do?”
He stopped and took a breath, exhaling with a sigh. “Is this an ideal situation? Certainly not. But you go to war with the army you’ve got, not the army that you wish for. What I got is what I got. And if we’re going to save this country, I’m going to need your help.”
Epilogue
Teancum walked, the mountain sloping up before him, the trees swaying two hundred feet over his head. It was a perfect morning. It had rained the night before, and the air was cool and damp and smelled of rain and wet grass and flowers in bloom. He reached a break in the trees and looked up. The morning sky was so deep and blue it felt like he was looking into space. As he worked his way across the clearing, his steps were strong and quick, and though he didn’t fail to see the beauty of the morning, his thoughts were somewhere else.
He sensed it now. No, it was more than that, he knew it, what the future had in store.
Looking up the trail, he doubled his pace.
Would his good friend be there waiting? Had he the wisdom to sense it too?
The mossy trail wound up the back of the mountain, spongy and giving under his feet. Higher and higher he climbed, never growing weary, never slowing down. As he ascended, the trees grew smaller and then thinner, then completely disappeared, leaving a well-defined tree line as the
backside of the mountain opened up. There were more rocks along the trail now, less greenery and more low brush. An expansive meadow lay before him, the slope much more gentle. Granite peaks, snow-capped and steep, jutted out on both his left and right. The trail cut across the meadow and then stopped suddenly.
Teancum looked but didn’t see him. He kept walking toward the cliff and was almost upon him before his old friend finally came into view, sitting below a large boulder. The man was looking out on the enormous valley. The low clouds hung over the shoreline where the rising sun cast a golden line across the water, a billion diamonds flashing from the cresting waves. The father looked up, then stood as Teancum drew closer.
“I knew I’d find you here,” Teancum said.
The father gestured to the morning. “I’ve been waiting here a long time.”
Teancum put his hand on his shoulder. “I knew you would.”
The father looked at him as if awaiting his instructions, and Teancum broke into a smile. “Come, we’ve got to hurry.”
Without another word, the father turned and started walking.
They were his children, and he loved them even more than he had loved them in the mortal world. He watched them. He shared their pain and joy. And he knew they needed him now.
Clear As the Moon
Clear As the Moon
© 2008 The Shipley Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Deseret Book Company, P. O. Box 30178, Salt Lake City, Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Deseret Book Company.
Deseret Book is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.
Visit us at DeseretBook.com
All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stewart, Chris, 1960–
Clear as the moon / Chris Stewart.
p. cm. — (The great and terrible ; v. 6)
ISBN 978-1-59038-994-2 (alk. paper)
eISBN 1-60641-623-5 (eletronic)
1. Terrorism—Fiction. 2. Religious fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.T4593C55 2008
813'.54—dc22 2008031145
Printed in the United States of America
Worzalla Publishing Co., Stevens Point, WI
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
“ . . . in this the beginning of the rising up and
the coming forth of my church out of the wilderness—
clear as the moon, and fair as the sun, and terrible
as an army with banners.”
—D&C 5:14
“And now, my sons, remember, remember that it
is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which
is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon
if men build they cannot fall.”
—Helaman 5:12
Prologue
Arlington National Cemetery
Washington, D.C.
The two angels stood on the highest point within the sacred cemetery and looked east, taking in the destruction of the once-mighty city. Behind them, on the west side, below the crest of the hill and thus protected from the nuclear blast, were rows and rows of untouched marble markers surrounded by grass and trees. Farther on, beyond the borders of the cemetery, the capital struggled still to live, but before them, on the blast side of the hill, the center of the city was nothing more than ash, the cinders so light and feathery they were caught up in the slightest breeze. The center of destruction was utterly bare, smooth as black glass—no trees, no grass, no living thing, certainly no people. Farther from the center of the destruction, the shattered buildings became somewhat recognizable. Here and there, a few marble pillars protruded from the landscape, and the roads were still identifiable by the lines of tumbled cars. Two of the main bridges across the Potomac River lay in a ruin of twisted steel and black cement, but the north bridge was still open although the downtown portion of the city had been abandoned and might never be reclaimed.
Behind them, crowds of people filled the cemetery, for the grassy knolls and open grass had become a makeshift sanctuary. Farther west, the city looked fairly normal, though it was not nearly as busy as it used to be. One in ten people who once lived here had remained. Others were leaving now, but some were returning, too, having discovered there was little reason to go elsewhere. There were no safe havens in other places. Wherever they went, things were pretty much the same.
Overwhelmed with emotion, the two men didn’t speak as they took in the devastating scene. Overhead the sky was dark and lonesome, a flat-gray plate of clouds that capped the sky. Finally, after nearly half an hour of earthly silence, the father turned to Teancum. “Too many cities have been destroyed now.” His voice was strained.
The Great and Terrible Page 141