“Is it always like this for you?” she asked. “I mean, at parties. Do they always pounce on you as the Yank?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been here long enough.”
“Fiona Isaacs.” Her handshake was firm, a clasping of wirelike fingers.
“Xander Jaspers. Conspicuous American.”
And with that, they had spent the entire evening talking, laughing, the obvious trappings of instant attraction. Both had given in without a thought, something so new for him, something she would help him to accept. The phone calls, the long walks, his total disbelief that things were actually working out well, his writing never better, and the hint of lilac that was always there even without her. Month slipping into month, and a growing need for her that somehow felt right, perfect for the simplicity of it all.
“I can’t fall in love with you. You know that, don’t you?”
“And why’s that?”
“You’re far too beautiful. Dad told me never to marry a beautiful woman.”
“I see. Well, your loss, then.”
The wedding had been simple, a small ceremony in a garden, suit and white dress, drinks and finger food, two weeks in Greece. No one had quite understood the speed of the whole affair. And yet, they had all understood.
When she began to feel ill, sudden headaches and overwhelming fatigue—early signs of the cancer that would take her within the year—his heart broke and he cried. And she held him, because she knew he would have to live beyond it.
The day she died, she was again cradling him, allowing him to bury himself in her, until her hands no longer had the strength to rest on his shoulders.
She had died in the afternoon, which was somehow even more unfair. Not even the cover of darkness to comfort.
The car pulled to a sudden stop, sending several people into Xander’s back, and forcing him to steady himself with a hand to the ceiling. His eyes glanced around, a slow realization that the station had arrived, that he would have to push his way through the throng. Stepping to the sticky heat of the underground platform, he quickly rubbed away the wet patch clinging to the edge of his eye, allowed himself a deep breath and the welcome relief from the cramped, if pungent, subway car. The English were not famous for their rigor with a shower and soap.
Fiona had always recommended the bus. Too slow, he had always answered. Too slow.
The bag of cheese balls sufficed as breakfast. Bob Stein licked at the neon orange on his thumb, dabbing his moistened fingers into the plastic for what few pieces remained. He was looking for somewhere to toss the empty bag when he noticed O’Connell just the other side of the reflection pool. Bob opted for his coat pocket, then began to brush the grit from his hands as O’Connell neared the bench. A pair of National Guardsmen—ubiquitous since the recent turn of events—ambled along in front of the Lincoln Memorial, hardly taking notice of the Irishman. Their arrival had brought an uneasy serenity to the city, a furtiveness Stein found unnerving. Still, they were there to serve and protect. Normalcy at a price.
That is, if one could ignore the aftershocks. The news this morning had been filled with stories of the tremors, no saga quite so devastating as the deaths of the forty-three children from Spain, killed in a midair crash over Dulles. Cut adrift for nearly twenty minutes due to the tower shutdowns, the plane had circled into a thick cloud cover, colliding with a 727 out of Miami. The group of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds—a church choir—had been scheduled to perform at the White House, their names and pictures once again in the news because of a letter from King Juan Carlos to the Post. Overwhelmed by the tragedy, he was insisting that he accompany a special envoy to retrieve what remained of the bodies; the State Department, however, was advising otherwise. As yet, they could not guarantee his safety.
Bob recalled several of the names, faces on a screen. Heartbreaking as the news was, he had no time for it.
“The last contact was Milan,” he said as O’Connell sat.
“She knew we were there?” asked the Irishman.
“As far as we can tell, yes.”
“Wonderful. That means we won’t find her again unless she wants us to.”
“We still have people in Milan—”
“Trust me, Bob. We won’t find her. She gets in very deep. It’s her special talent.” He paused. “It’s why she was so damn perfect for Amman.”
Stein removed a second bag from his pocket and pulled it open. “I’ve never actually been all that clear on what happened there.”
“Join the crowd.” O’Connell let out a long breath. “No one has. It was supposed to be a basic op—for her. Infiltrate Safad’s inner group, get comfy, then pull the rug out from under them. It was all going according to script until Safad told her he wanted Ambassador Conlon’s daughter eliminated—a show of good faith. Sarah’d done that sort of thing before, but never with a kid. We told her we’d get the girl out. Never happened. Something with the timing. Sarah showed up with two of Safad’s men, expecting to find no one, but the girl was still there. Sarah had no choice but to kill Safad’s boys; after that, things went a little crazy.”
“And that’s how we lost the girl?”
O’Connell nodded. “The pickup never happened. No one’s ever been quite clear on that—whether it was Sarah’s fuckup or something else. In the end, it came down to stopping the coup or saving the girl. Not much of a choice, really. The girl was dead before Sarah could get back.” He stared off at the Lincoln Memorial. “I was the lucky son of a bitch sent in to retrieve our Miss Trent when it was all over.” His eyes remained distant. “Not a pretty sight.” He shook his head slowly, then turned to Bob. “We have no idea why she’s in Italy, do we?”
“We have no idea why she’s doing this at all,” answered Stein. “Why didn’t she just come in?”
“Why indeed.” O’Connell reached over and grabbed a handful from the bag. “I just hope to Christ she can keep herself together. She crashes again, who knows how much of her would be left to come in?”
The entrance to the Institute hadn’t changed a bit. He had stayed away for obvious reasons, but he had expected at least a little something different in four years. Nothing. Even the porter looked the same, the all-too-familiar tap of the cap as Xander walked past the gate. Reaching the long outdoor corridor that connected the University of London library to the Institute, Xander paused. The logical choice would be to the left and the larger building with its impressive stash of books. Where better to start the search than with the card catalog or computer, if they had finally put everything online? Instead, he turned right through a pair of swinging doors, again right, two more doors, until he nearly walked into a small table, a guard at his station, the final barrier between Xander and his old stamping grounds.
Digging into his coat pocket, he pulled out a rather ancient-looking identification card, the signature too faded to make out the name. Even so, the Institute’s crest was clear enough, the dates evidently irrelevant; the guard asked him to sign in. Xander scribbled something illegible and proceeded through yet another set of doors, finding the old stairs and the slow mount to the third floor.
The smell of scholarship met him at once as he pushed through into the European history wing. Like wet cardboard sprinkled with dust, the air had a definable taste. Taking in a nice whiff of the familiar, he nearly ran into a young woman, her brisk stride the sure sign of academic administration. Only his ability to flatten himself against the wall saved him from the open field tackle. He smiled and pressed on. Few lights were on, the rooms surprisingly empty. There was no reason to question his good fortune. He was distinctly less inclined, since Florence, to presume any sort of security within the walls of academia. Carlo’s office. The mad dash through the subterranean tunnels. Lessons well learned. He had even gone so far as to alter his appearance. Sarah had mentioned a few things—in New York, they had seemed silly—but he was now serving caution rather than his own naïveté. He had moved the part in his hair from left to right, shaped several d
ays of growth into the semblance of a beard, and worn two extra T-shirts to give his slim frame some added bulk. Certainly nothing that would deceive a professional, but enough to make him seem unfamiliar to a colleague of a few years ago.
Moving down the hall, he arrived at the second door on the left. Placing a finger to the glass, he watched as the room opened up in front of him. Three neat columns of shelves, along with the ceiling-high wall brackets, housed several hundred books, some the recent beneficiaries of long-needed care, others crumbling toward a slow and painless death. A sense of home. Of place. As ever, the little sun that managed its way into the room bobbed atop his old desk, the light from outside caught in the trees as it cascaded through the window. Books everywhere, yet all he could see were the alcove, the desk, the chair. And for a moment, caught by the flickering light, he was back, sitting, her small hands gliding over his shoulders to his chest, her cheek sliding by his.
His head flinched, the room suddenly darker, airless. She was not there. No soft caress, no scent of lilac to dispel the longing. Xander stared into the open space and slowly moved toward the alcove. He began to trace his finger along the hard edge of the wooden chair. Two years. He had lost two years of his life after Fiona. Not in the usual sense. There had been no wandering off, no extended holiday lost in self-pity. Instead, he had given himself entirely to his work. Machiavelli had once again taken focus, only to become his springboard to the New Right. A sudden obsession. He hadn’t bothered to ask why. It was enough to be distracted. Even Lundsdorf had approved. Ironic, he thought. Tieg and Sedgewick. They had brought him full circle, back to the Institute, back to the alcove.
The fluorescent lights flicked on and Xander spun around, his eyes momentarily at odds with the sudden change.
“Sorry. I did not mean to startle you.” A small man nodded in Xander’s direction, his eyes darting about the room before settling on a shelf along the far wall. Xander watched him sidle along, thumbing his way down the long row of books, every so often stopping, humming before moving on. The pattern continued for several minutes until, with a long “Aah,” he pulled the sought-after volume from the shelf and rested it on a nearby table. Examining a few pages, the man seemed so typical of the place—the weathered jacket, the slight hunch in the shoulders, the utter disregard for anything and anyone within a hundred feet. Save for the slicked-back hair. That seemed an odd touch, a hint of vanity unusual within the hallowed halls. The man looked up and caught Xander’s eyes. There was nothing kind in the stare, nothing of the cheerful nod hello. And then suddenly a smile. Thin lips curling through sunken cheeks.
“It is not what I am looking for,” he said, his accent northern European. Dutch, Swiss, German—Xander couldn’t tell.
“Pity.”
“Yes.” He shut the book and placed it on the shelf. He then ran a hand through his hair. “Wrong room, I suppose.”
“Yes.” Again, they stared at each other, the man’s eyes empty of all response. “Sorry to have disturbed you.” He moved to the door, turned for a final nod, and then stepped into the hallway. The door closed behind him.
Xander’s hands were trembling as the sound of the footsteps receded, a reaction, he knew, driven less by the man’s appearance than by the place itself. He had allowed himself an indulgence. It was something he knew Sarah would never have permitted.
On the steps down to the main floor, his mind was already turning over the pieces of information he had begun to decipher from Carlo’s notes. A brisk wind greeted him as he picked up his pace through the colonnade, its rush providing a much needed shock to his system. Lock it away; leave it up in that room. The numbness returned, all too familiar, all too reminiscent of the same distance he had seen only yesterday—in Sarah, in her eyes.
CHICAGO, MARCH 4, 5:14 A.M. Janet Grant clamped the man’s lifeless fingers around the gun, positioning his hand on the pillow as she had been told. She had never taken a life on her own, the deaths in Washington rationalized as something beyond her control. This morning’s activities, however, could not be so easily dismissed. The old man had called it “her penance.” For Eggart.
She scanned the room, the computer still purring away, screen after screen of files melting away to oblivion. She had not been told why it was necessary to erase everything; it was not her place to know.
She sat in a chair and waited, staring at Chapmann’s lifeless corpse on the bed. An apparent suicide. A man who had questioned the process.
It was a lesson Janet Grant would not soon forget.
Sarah had flown in late from London the night before, but by 6:45 A.M., she had already had a very productive morning. Finding her old friend Tommy Carlisle—head of the Criminal Division at Justice—at the Old Ebbitt Grill had been easy. The 6:00 breakfast of kippers and strong black coffee—made ready at so early an hour for the Grill’s special clientele—was a part of his daily routine. As was his perfectly tailored suit and crisp bow tie, famous among certain Washington circles. He had been the obvious choice, given what she was after.
“I need to see some files,” she began.
“And naturally, you’ve got clearance from State.”
Sarah smiled. “Tommy … I said it was a favor, not business.”
He paused, then nodded. “I see. And what kind of files would they be?”
“Old ones.”
“How old?”
“The type they don’t put on the computers.” Now she waited. “The ones stored in D-five.”
His eyes showed a moments reaction. “D-five,” his own smile distinctly strained. “And how would you know about that?”
Sarah said nothing, her eyes on his.
After a few seconds, he began to shake his head. “Sorry, dear. That’s slightly out of favor jurisdiction. Not to mention the mess this past week; security’s been punched up everywhere around town. We’re all being rather cautious.”
“I won’t take a thing, Tommy, I promise. All I need is a level-seven—”
“I don’t think we’re having this conversation.”
“You’ve got the clearance, don’t you?” She waited, studying his face. She then spoke very deliberately. “You’ve got it on you right now.”
Their long hug good-bye had given her ample opportunity to lift his ID from his pocket and replace it with a well-crafted fake. With Tommy out of town for a few days—her source of information on Carlisle had been top-notch, worth at least another thousand—she’d known he’d have no reason to use it, no way to discover the forgery. That she was about to breach the State Secrets Act was another matter. The boys at Justice would no doubt want an explanation; she was banking on the aftermath of Eisenreich’s first trial to keep them busy for a time. At some point, though, she knew they’d be sending out a few friends to … convince her to come in and chat. It would make things a bit more complicated, but it was a risk worth taking.
Now, she stood outside a nondescript door, one of only two along an isolated corridor tucked deep within subbasement four at Justice. The plaque on the glass read D-FIVE. Thus far, Carlisle’s card had maneuvered her through three separate checkpoints, each manned by a marine in full uniform. Recent additions. She had not bothered to ask. None of the young men had said a word, relying on various scanners to confirm her clearance. She had known before coming just how lucky she was; Justice remained a little behind the times—no retina scans as yet. Then again, she couldn’t imagine who else would want to see the files on Tempsten, or, more to the point, who would have taken the time to track them this far. Sensitive, but outdated. That’s what Tommy had said. Evidently, the combination was making her visit possible.
She placed the card on the unmanned scanner; six seconds later, the door clicked open, and Sarah stepped through, nearly bumping into a shelf no more than two feet from the door. Fluorescent lights immediately came on overhead, revealing D-five as nothing more than a very long hallway, files piled deep in ceiling-high shelves along the entire length of the corridor. She closed the door and
noticed a small chart affixed to the near wall, arrows and boxes designating different years for every shelf. Nineteen sixty-nine stood three from the end.
It took her less than five minutes to locate the two thin folders on Tempsten, each filled with no more than five or six sheets, some of them handwritten, others hastily typed, smudge marks in evidence throughout the files. It was clear that no one had taken a look at them in a very long time.
The explanation for their placement in D-five was summed up in a few short sentences at the bottom of the first page. Sarah read:
The tragedy known as the Tempsten Project remains problematic. Those affected by it are between the ages of eight and eighteen; to subject them to further scrutiny in a public forum would no doubt have serious repercussions. It is, therefore, the judgment of this commission that all records of names, dates, and any other personal data be sealed for a period of no less than fifty years.
It was the next few lines, however, that put the commission’s apparent concern into proper perspective.
We also believe it vital to maintain a close eye on the progress made by those children. From time to time, these pages shall therefore be updated with information relevant to that purpose.
Monitoring in the guise of caring. A classic ploy. The rest of the file was a detailed rundown of the events that had taken place in 1969.
At approximately 3:00 A.M. on the eighteenth of August, two children (estimated at ten and twelve years of age) arrived at the Tempsten Sheriff’s office, bloody and beaten. Neither spoke for several hours, no explanation for their appearance. In response, the sheriff sent three deputies to retrace the boys’ tracks; they led to an isolated compound, consisting of four cabins and a small house, three miles inside the Highridge forest. Arriving at daybreak, the sheriff described the scene as “beyond imagination, children running rampant, knives, bats, anything they could find for weapons.” This was confirmed by several others in the party. By 6:00 A.M., they had rounded up all of the children, two of whom were dead, victims of apparent head injuries sustained prior to the arrival of any of the sheriff’s deputies.
The Overseer Page 15