Blown

by Francine Mathews

  “Thanks.” Tom turned abruptly away from Kaylie Marks. He had to get back to Headquarters; he needed to pull those background files.

  “Sir!” the forensic technician called after him. “Sir! There’s one more thing!”

  He stopped short. “Well?”

  With the air of an art dealer unveiling a particularly choice piece, Kaylie held up a small square card between her fingertips.

  “Prints,” she said. “A nearly perfect set of somebody’s right hand. We found them on the underside of the back door handle.”

  For the first time in nearly a year, Rebekah felt the singing, light-headed joy of the Lord’s presence as she plunged the truck through the ruts of the unpaved road. She was buoyed by it, this return of the Savior and the enfolding love that steadied her hands as she gripped the steering wheel. When He had struck down her Dolf in His terrible mercy and carried him off to Glory at His right hand, she had not understood His infinite wisdom or the plan that lay so clearly marked out before her. She had turned her back on the Lamb. She had wailed in the desert against the hardness of this misery, this brutal, wrenching loss that cut the living heart from her body. She had sunk deep into the abyss of her grief, had wanted self-murder, wanted the pain of torn flesh and violence, as though in bleeding herself she might understand what her boy had endured before the end.

  She had sinned, again and again, in the treachery of her disbelief. He had tested her will and her allegiance and she had failed every test. But the Lord had returned, to show Bekah just how much His love could stand; this time, she was ready. She could lift up her face and welcome Him with open arms, because He had seen fit to give her a second child, washed new in His blood.

  The Savior was riding shotgun at this moment beside her while the sleeping boy wedged behind her seat moaned in drugged dreams. His Divine Love governed Bekah’s every move, and she knew now, with the certainty of this singing joy, that no one had seen them. No one would follow. They had delivered the boy from his enemies, and they would protect and rear him against the final assault of the End Times.

  “. . . washed new in the blood of the Lamb,” she muttered aloud. “Washed new in the blood of the Lamb.” She would fix Dolf’s favorite meal—ham and potato salad and baked beans—and this boy, this Son of the Leader sacrificed to His Enemies, would eat and be glad.

  Ahead, in the dirt pullout beside the switchback that led toward the farm, a motorcycle was waiting. Daniel. When he caught sight of the truck, he stepped out into the road, his arms waving. A slight figure in his old field jacket and wool cap, his sharp-featured face neither welcoming nor touched with Glory. Bekah frowned, her fingers white on the wheel. What was he doing here? It wasn’t part of the plan. But she must Trust in His Goodness. Must shut her mind to the voice of the Devil, the voice of Reason, which was as nothing to the sword of Faith.

  She pulled over behind the bike.

  “Well?” she asked as she rolled down the window.

  “Get out, girl.”

  “But, Daniel—”

  “Take the bike home. I’ll call you from the road.”

  His strong blunt hand was on the doorframe and she saw what he meant to do—how he meant to take the boy for himself and head out into the night with his bloodshot eyes and his face lined with weariness from the long hard servitude under the Lord—and all her agony welled up inside her. The singing light-headed joy melted into desolation. My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?

  “Come on, now,” he snapped, “I ain’t got all day.”

  “What about the boy?” she whispered. “He needs dinner.”

  Daniel glanced into the back. “Don’t know which end is up, looks like. You go on home. I’ll be in touch.”

  She jumped from the truck’s running board to the ground. He brushed past her, not a word or a look of comfort. There was blood on his field jacket, she could see it now, and the smell of sweat rose from his unclean skin. How long since he’d sat down in his own house? How many days? She’d lost count.

  “Where’s Norm gone?”

  He didn’t answer. The truck door slammed.

  “Daniel—I asked you where my brother is!” she shouted over the sound of the ignition.

  He lifted his hand in salute, broad flat fingers swerving out from his forehead like he’d been taught by the Zoggite masters. She pounded once on the hood of the truck but he surged forward, arms roving over the steering wheel, and that quickly she was alone. Dust in her nostrils. Darkness falling. And the first spattering of harsh rain.

  Chapter 28

  BERLIN, 7:14 P.M.

  Wally Aronson eyed the dark-haired man lounging on the opposite side of the conference table and compiled a mental dossier. Ernst Haller, thirty-nine years old, born and educated Heidelberg, grandfather a Luftwaffe pilot World War II shot down over British Channel, grandmother killed in bombing of Dresden. Despises Americans. Christian Democrat by birth, BKA by training, reputed fascist by inclination. Boss already fired at last week’s government ouster; our boy Ernst has little or no future in the present climate. He badly needs a victory.

  “I’d like to extend the thanks of the entire U.S. government, Herr Haller, for your resourceful and dedicated pursuit of a man I can only describe as one of the most dangerous, violent, and sought-after criminals of the past decade,” Wally said handsomely in the German that was mother’s milk to him.

  It was probable Haller had a similar mental dossier on Wally and knew exactly how many members of his extended family had died at Dachau sixty years before, which might account for the nostrils pinched as though sniffing the acrid air of the ovens; but the BKA’s finest smiled swiftly and bowed his head, an angel submitting to benediction, basking for this instant in the ardent gratitude of the last foolish superpower on earth.

  “It was simply a matter of solid police work,” Ernst replied in English, a false politeness designed to demonstrate his immunity to all American blandishment. “And, naturally, the cooperation of yourself, Herr Aronson. But for your phone call—”

  Wally waved a hand distractedly, as though to say Just doing my job, when in reality it was unheard-of for the U.S. embassy to throw away one of their own without first summoning the FBI, and any self-respecting federal policeman should have known as much and smelled a rat—“We have a number of details to discuss, I’m afraid.”

  “Jurisdiction,” Haller suggested delicately.

  “Well—yes. I realize you badly want this man up before one of your federal judges on a charge of murder, and I completely understand the desire to see justice done—I mean, that poor woman with her neck broken, lying like so much trash on the floor of the terrorist lab—I suppose there’s no question she’d entered it legitimately? She must have had access, I mean? Possibly . . . a member of the terrorist cell herself?”

  “A receptionist,” Haller said primly. “Most respectable. It is unlikely she had the slightest inkling of the true nature of the company’s operations.”

  “No. Surely not,” Wally mourned. “Although the hour at which the alleged murder took place was, I understand, somewhat unusual for a receptionist? The middle of the night, I think your medical examiner said was the time of death—?”

  Haller shrugged. “Murder is still murder, no matter what hour of the day it occurs.”

  “Of course. I merely wished to suggest that this loss, however regrettable, came nearly a week after the kidnapping of our vice president. That crime—and Mrs. Payne’s subsequent death—might be considered to outweigh or supersede, purely in prosecutorial terms, of course, the unfortunate death of this . . . receptionist.”

  “Meaning . . . ?”

  “That I have been authorized to formally request the extradition to the United States of . . . Nigel Benning, Michael O’Shaughnessy, whatever he calls himself . . . as soon as humanly possible. You understand, Herr Haller,” he added appealingly. “The American public needs some kind of resolution. A sense of closure. A culprit for the enormity visited upon Mrs. Payne
. They need to see justice done.”

  Haller steepled his hands. “You want the man delivered to the airport tarmac at five o’clock in the morning so that a chartered plane may depart without the notice of the enraged German populace, which blames this terrorist for the recent destruction of a piece of historic Berlin?”

  “Exactly,” Wally returned affably. “The United States government understands you wish to earn full publicity value from this arrest. The President is willing to offer his official thanks to the new chancellor. Your own name will be highly praised in letters of appreciation to your department head for the efficiency of your entire operation. But we want the man returned.”

  “That is not what your boss has told me.” Haller’s eyes gleamed with wicked amusement from the opposite side of the table, and abruptly Wally sat back in his seat, as though momentarily puzzled.

  “My boss?” he repeated. “I’m afraid I have no superior in Berlin. You’re speaking to the top of the food chain, Ernst.”

  “No, no, no,” Haller returned softly. “I refer to your agency’s counterterrorism chief. Your . . . Mr. Sorensen. He telephoned me only this afternoon. But a few hours ago.”

  “I see.” Wally trailed his pen indolently over the notepad in front of him as though the information were unimportant.

  “It is Mr. Sorensen’s ardent wish—and the wish of your entire organization, as he so forcefully assures me—that this man should be tried and sentenced in the German courts.” Haller’s bland gray eyes stared innocently at Wally. “Now will you tell me, Herr Aronson, exactly what kind of game you are playing?”

  Eric lay on the thin mattress that covered the concrete slab jutting from his prison wall. The room was roughly six feet wide by ten feet deep, and in addition to the bed held a toilet bolted to the floor. He had been stowed in the twenty-four-hour-lockdown section, where the most dangerous men were kept; his wrists and ankles were shackled. Unlike a regular cell, which admitted light and air through the bars of its cage, this one had a solid steel door. A square foot of grille served as the only window on the cell block corridor.

  The prison sat in the eastern sector of Berlin on the outskirts of Prenzlauerberg: It had once served as a madhouse under the Communist regime. Communist East Germany did not admit that criminals existed—merely perversions of a mental or philosophic nature that could be ascribed to unrepentant capitalist mania. Unification had returned the madhouse to its proper usage, and West German funds had spiffed up the paint and the drains. The steel box still reeked of urine and fear.

  In his solitary confinement, Eric had leisure to see that his predecessors in lockdown had whiled away the hours by scratching graffiti into the steel with the links of their chains. It was painstaking work; and all with an end to the most banal of expressions. Sternheim sucks dog cock. He closed his eyes. He had a lot to think about.

  Did you kill that woman? Wally had asked as he paced the length of the interrogation room, his hands in his pockets and his balding head shining with the discomfort of his situation.

  “She came at me with a scalpel.” He’d pointed to the ragged wound in his neck. “Nearly cut my fucking head off.”

  “Are there any others? Thirty April survivors?”

  “I don’t know. None I’ve found.”

  He had wanted to scream in agony at the man. Why did you do it, Wally? Why did you turn me in? but there would be microphones embedded in the walls, and surveillance cameras. Any kind of real communication was impossible. Wally was playing a part. He hadn’t looked Eric in the eye since the moment he’d returned to Sophienstrasse with the federal police in his pocket. Wally knew the answer to every question he’d asked; they had rehearsed this, in the high-ceilinged room with the gray shadows, while Wally rolled tape around Eric’s ribs. Something was going on—Eric could smell deception like a dog scented heat—but whatever it was, Wally wasn’t telling.

  “You’ll be provided with a German lawyer,” the station chief had offered at parting. “And you can expect a U.S. debrief team. I’d tell them everything you know. It’s your best hope, Mr. O’Shaughnessy, regardless of whether you’re tried in this country or extradited.”

  Everything you know. Which of the stories was Wally expecting? The cover lies—or the truth? There was very little to choose between them—Eric had lived his cover too well. There was the child he’d shot in Bratislava. The break-ins and kidnappings all over Europe. The murders he’d witnessed and failed to stop. The voice of conscience he’d strangled in his sleep.

  He’d called that life a necessary compromise. If he’d showed squeamishness—hesitated even once to carry out 30 April’s orders—he’d have died long ago. And he wanted to live, wanted to baby the trust he’d earned until the moment he could betray 30 April from within. For years, he and Scottie Sorensen had agreed: It is impossible to penetrate a terrorist group and destroy it without becoming a terrorist yourself. But the American public refused to understand this brutal truth. On the one hand, they demanded perfect human intelligence of coming threats. On the other, they screamed at the CIA’s habit of buying information from known killers. Scottie’s methods would never have stood up to Capitol Hill’s scrutiny; he was dirtying his hands. And so he and Eric had agreed to complete deniability. Complete operational silence.

  Why had it all mattered more than anything else in life? Eric could no longer remember. Because Scottie had chosen him? Because a plane blew up and friends of his died? Whatever it was—this passion that had killed every raw feeling in his soul—it was over now. He just wanted to go home.

  With a screech of metal, the bolts on his door were thrown back. He rolled to an upright position, his eyes narrowed at the dazzling flood of light.

  Wally stood there, a guard at his elbow. The station chief held a pad of paper casually toward Eric. Scrawled on it in black marker were the words Cell’s bugged.

  “Good evening, O’Shaughnessy,” Wally said. “I’ve come for a chat. We’ve got exactly fifteen minutes.”

  Chapter 29

  WASHINGTON, D.C., 5:03 P.M.

  Steve Price was used to working on very little sleep. He had covered two wars and three national elections for the Washington Post during the nearly fifteen years he’d worked in the capital, and since his divorce seven years earlier he’d earned the reputation of a hard partyer. He’d been known to arrive at his cubicle in the National section of the vast newsroom before dawn, still wearing black tie and reeking of Scotch-laced cigarette smoke; but his personal life rarely affected his prose. He might be one of the most sought-after dinner guests among Georgetown’s league of ambitious hostesses—he might be privileged to call no fewer than seventeen senators by their first names and to fly-fish with three Cabinet members—but Steve was a pro. He would answer his cell phone in the middle of an orgasm, if necessary, and be on the scene of a story twelve minutes later, smelling faintly of semen and already composing his lede. He could write through a missile attack and required no editing.

  His managers at the Post were terrified he’d be seduced away from the political fold with a foreign correspondence offer from the New York Times; as a result, Steve was paid the earth and given his choice of Paris or Moscow. So far he’d refused both. Nobody was sure why he preferred to remain in Washington, but nobody bothered to ask too many questions. Steve was entitled to his secrets. His employers were simply glad he stayed.

  By four o’clock that afternoon he’d filed four stories, two of which had already gone up on the Internet edition as breaking news; all four would appear under his byline—though one of them was shared—in Tuesday morning’s paper. Dana Enright, Speaker’s Wife, Dead at 37 was one; it recounted the midnight scene at Sibley Hospital and the fact that the ailing marathoner had provided the FBI with the killer’s composite currently being broadcast all over the country. A companion piece updated the appalling statistics of the latest ricin victims, fifty-three dead and seven hundred ninety-eight in critical condition; it was accompanied by a heartrending photo
graph of a mother holding her son that some people were already calling “the Terrorist Pietà.” Director of Central Intelligence Assassinated in Georgetown Home included interviews with the medical examiner and the FBI’s Tom Shephard, and suggested vaguely that Dare Atwood’s killer might well be a former military sniper. Finally, Price’s favorite piece: Administration Flounders in Face of New Crisis. Every journalist alive dealt to a certain extent in schadenfreude—the ghoulish appreciation of another person’s misery—and Steve was no exception. He enjoyed making Jack Bigelow squirm.

  Even Jonathan Wills, the Post’s hard-bitten managing editor, would agree that Steve Price had done his bit for the glory of the rag during the past sleepless two days; so that when the reporter yawned prodigiously and kicked his chair away from his desk, announcing to the journalistic world in general that Fuck I’m tired I’m going home to get drunk and screw, nobody argued. Some wondered who he was planning to fuck, exactly, and others started a furtive betting pool on likely candidates; but none of them attempted to teach him his job. If Price wanted to walk away and miss the breaking shit in the war going on down there in the rush hour Monday streets, the mounting deaths and the panic among policymakers and housewives alike, so be it. They could all write circles around Steve Price anyway.

  As he swung out of the newsroom, he was thinking how pissed they’d all be when they saw his exclusive interview with Caroline Carmichael the next morning. He intended to e-mail this crowning glory to Jonathan Wills in a few hours. But Wills called him back before he reached the escalator. Ricin Boy’s latest fax had just come across the wire, announcing to the world the rescue of 30 April’s anointed one. Jozsef Krucevic had vanished.