The limo slowed and turned off the highway onto a road running parallel to the outlying fence of a private airstrip; fifty yards down, a solitary booth rose from the wire fencing, a separate entrance reserved for the airport’s special clientele. Once again, the car slowed to turn, no exchange as the guard recognized the plates and waved the black Lincoln through, nodding at the smoked glass as the limo bumped its way up onto the tarmac. A hundred yards to the left, a private jet waited, two red lights flashing under each wing. Sarah’s attention shifted to the man sitting directly across from her. He continued to peer out the window, aware of her gaze, happy to ignore it. She would find no answers there.
Five minutes later, she sat belted comfortably in one of six chairs in the plane’s main cabin, her two companions at either side. She wondered if her exploits in New York were responsible for their caution. Unknown and out of control. Capable of anything. They would watch her, but from a distance. It was a long drop from six miles up.
The quick acceleration of takeoff helped to relieve some of the tension in her shoulders, g-force strapping her against the soft cushioning of the upright chair and allowing her back to realign itself from the sheer physical pull. Even as a child, Sarah had loved the moment of explosion, the engines revving beyond all measure, and then the slight uplift as the nose broke free, the soft climb that seemed to stretch an unseen rubber band, drain it of its elasticity, until, with a final surge, all thoughts of a ground below would disappear in the soft blanket of clouds and sunlight. Now, as the plane leveled off, Sarah turned her head to the left and peered out the small oval window. A yellowed mist dusted past them, a cold sun bathing the wing in a metallic glow. They were heading southeast. She had always had an uncanny sense of direction. She closed her eyes.
Votapek. A first line of attack.
Stein was managing on very little sleep. They had picked up Trent through Jaspers, then lost them both somewhere in Florence due to “unforeseen complications” near the San Marco monastery. The on-site analyst had been unclear as to the snafu, even less helpful as to why the two had visited a Professor Pescatore in the first place. Of course, there hadn’t been time to set up full surveillance in Europe, which meant that Jaspers had slipped conveniently out of the picture. Luckily, they had reestablished Trent at Dulles sixteen hours later, solo and on her own passport. Her message clear: Follow me; leave him alone.
Bob had done just that, even though some rather alarming news had begun to float in from Italy several hours later. Pescatore was missing, thought dead, his office in shambles, bloodstains in evidence. Early Italian news reports made no mention of the two unlikely visitors, but the police were playing everything close to the chest. Even well-placed Committee sources had been unable to unearth specifics. Bob found it very difficult to believe that either Trent or Jaspers had had anything to do with the disappearance; then again, he was having trouble understanding why a virtually unknown Italian political theorist would be linked with Schenten and his associates. Too many variables were bouncing around to prompt any meaningful conclusions.
Those sorts of twists and turns, however, were par for the course. What was causing trouble was the way he had been instructed to handle the op: the breakfast meetings with O’Connell—all off-line—the hedging whenever Pritchard asked for an update, the sudden overuse of his office safe for materials he would have happily left on his desk only a week ago. He couldn’t be sure if he was getting caught up in some high-level power play, or if there was reason to suspect an internal breach. And to add to it all, O’Connell had become tight-lipped, mulling over reports, never inviting the usual dialogue that brought meaning to the otherwise-lifeless words on the page.
For some reason, the Irishman was pulling back. Bob had lived through similar mood swings—the worst after Amman. Then, Stein had chalked it up to a strange sort of empathy. O’Connell had been too close, too much aware, the onetime operative seeing himself reflected in the lost expression of a woman fighting her way back from the edge. He had retreated into himself—a two-week vacation, far longer than the usual two-day binge. Bob hadn’t asked; O’Connell hadn’t discussed it. And now Stein had to wonder: Would the Irishman slip away again?
That was why Bob had shut himself in his office, staring at his computer terminal for hours on end, bags of cheese balls littering the area around his wastebasket. Not that concentrated periods of seclusion weren’t the norm, but this time he felt completely isolated, all links to the two other offices on the sixth floor severed with a strange sort of finality. Rattled by the recent shake-up, Bob had allowed himself to get lazy, step away from the information, consider the personal side of it all. Now, he was trying to find his customary indifference to turn the real-world intrigues into an insulated and anonymous game. He was letting too many factors compromise his capacity to play.
The answer had begun to fall into place about forty minutes ago when he had decided to refocus the search. Instead of tying everything into Schenten, he began to trace even the most remote connections among each of the central players. The cross-referencing had provided one very bizarre possibility: Eisenreich, a hypothetical manuscript that Pescatore had spent half his life researching and which seemed to unravel the girl’s dying word in Montana. Somehow, the connection among Tieg, Sedgewick, and Votapek was wrapped up in a little book that no one had ever proved to exist.
Uncharacteristically, Bob had decided to keep things to himself.
The price for such resolve, however, was the burden of responsibility—the onus to piece together information that somehow explained the probable death of one academic, the disappearance of another, and the reemergence of an operative so fragile that she might not come back this time round.
It was a role he was not accustomed to playing.
The gentle drop of descent woke her, the slight shift in her stomach enough to unsettle a light sleep. She hadn’t dreamt—at least nothing to get in the way—but she knew her subconscious mind had continued to sift through the pieces that had begun to come together. Always sifting. Always alert. She maintained a curious faith in her subconscious, recognizing that she, like everyone else, used no more than 3 percent of her brain at any one time. She trusted the other 97 percent to get the job done if left to itself. That’s why sleep had always been so important.
The trouble was that, most of the time, her subconscious kept the answers hidden, so much so that she would have to rely on instinct to reveal the necessary truths at the appropriate moments. That meant working on her feet, trusting herself to tap into the arsenal waiting just below the surface.
It was the way she had always worked. She recalled Berlin nine years ago, an arctic night when she had discovered one Oskar Teplic, a diminutive lieutenant in the East German Stasi, a man who had slipped through, evaded the Soviet net drawing in its faithful as the wall came tumbling down. Even then, Teplic had given the empire only two years. He had tracked her, told her he needed a way out, but not to the West—just out, to a life he could control on his own. And he would be grateful. Sarah had seen the possibilities at once. Three days later, Teplic had died at her hands, and Feric had been born. A plan of simplicity in the abstract, of pure instinct in practice. Invented intrigues, official papers—information revealed at crucial moments to confuse the easy dupes of a crumbling East German secret police. Facts—incomplete as they might be—with which to prod, surprise, weaken her opponent. They might be only distant reflections of a greater truth, but they were enough to convince an adversary that he stood at a disadvantage. Enough to create fear and self-doubt.
Enough from a miserly brain that liked to hoard the discoveries of the subconscious ninety-seven.
Xander rubbed the back of his neck, the touch of icy fingers to tender skin a jolt to his system. His hands had always been that way, reduced to frozen pincers when lost in the turning and scribbling of pages. The dim glow of the lounge’s overhead lights was making the notes a bit difficult to read, more so given Xander’s impatience to board
Lufthansa 202, the 5:35 flight to Frankfurt. He was tired, but satisfied, having managed all but two of the twenty-four pages, the Italian quite readable.
The first volume of the manuscript had come together far more quickly than he had initially thought, Feric granting him an hour before shuttling them off to Heathrow. At first, he had simply given himself over to the novelty of discovery, the excitement of first view, but his enthusiasm had been short-lived. Had there been nothing to distract him from the easy fascination of scholarly analysis, he might have enjoyed the reading. But his thoughts returned again and again to Votapek, Tieg, Sedgewick—the men who meant to violate the theory by channeling it into practice. It was all too easy to see how Washington had been merely a dry run, a twentieth-century extrapolation of a sixteenth-century theory. No longer a missing link in the neat canon of political thought, On Supremacy stood apart as a manual of manipulation and dominance, its modern ambition coloring every page with a dark reality that corrupted Eisenreich’s daring and savvy.
Once or twice, Xander had allowed himself to look beyond the theory to the man. And each time, he had been forced to admit that there was something compelling, a certainty in the way the monk had organized his ideas. As if he truly believed it was God’s will that he set it to paper. Xander had to hope that no such divine inspiration was driving the most recent trio of disciples.
More troubling, though, was the reference to a fourth man, someone behind the others—someone who pulled the strings. What he read made Xander all the more wary, not just for himself, but for Sarah. He knew she had stepped into something more dangerous, more immediate than either of them had imagined. “Don’t worr y about me.” He was finding it more and more difficult to do.
“They are opening the gate,” piped in Feric. “Put the papers—”
“I know … put them away.” Xander had heard the phrase perhaps half a dozen times in the last hour, Feric insistent that the manuscript remain out of sight. So be it.
“I hope they have something other than the peanuts,” mumbled Feric as the two men joined the line for boarding. “Very messy. Pretzels are so much neater.”
NEW YORK, MARCH 4, 12:18 P.M. The view from the Brooklyn Bridge was splendid, lower Manhattan rising in clipped angles from the concrete. Traffic was light, the single-lane detour causing only minor delays. Behind the cones, three men worked with purpose on a huge tear in the tarmac, an emergency repair before rush hour. Strangely enough, the men had anticipated the call. Perhaps it was because they had been the ones to create the gash two hours earlier—a small device dropped from a speeding car. Two of the men had been with road repair for over three months. Somehow, their schedules had made them the most logical choice for the bridge maintenance. The last of the trio had flown in this morning. Demolitions expert.
They had carved out a neat sliver of road—four feet wide, two feet long—with a two-inch gulley running from it to the center of the bridge. No more than six inches deep, the hole now held four briquettes and a tiny black box, a rubber antenna stretching from its side to the surface. The gulley oozed with a yellow liquid resin, already beginning to gel. Slowly, the men began to spread a thick mixture of tar and gravel over everything, careful to keep the antenna flat along the rising surface. Within ten minutes, they had completed the repairs, only a tiny nub of antenna—nestled just below the guardrail—evidence of their work.
The demolitions man picked up his bag and started for the car parked at the entrance to the bridge. He knew it would be a long day. After all, Manhattan had so many bridges and tunnels in need of such repairs.
They had changed planes somewhere in the Carolinas for the hop to Votapek’s island, a double-prop aircraft fitted with water skis that now bounced along the surf toward the waiting pier. The single house, flat and wide along the bluff, seemed to rise from the rocks as the plane coasted in. A gentle rap of metal on wood told all that they had come to the end of their journey; thick air invaded the cabin as the door opened, a peach swath of sun angling its way onto the curtain that separated passengers from pilot. Once outside, the rocking of the dock helped to propel the three arrivals along, the even roll of wood and water sending them from side to side. Above, a steep incline of jagged rock climbed toward a grass plain that spread like thick swirling carpet in front of the house. The only access, a funicular that waited to the left at the end of the dock.
It was close quarters on the ride up, sounds of cable straining under the weight. As the car jolted to a stop, the smaller of the two men slid back the glass-paneled door and directed Sarah toward a gravel path. The house, perhaps thirty feet back from the cliff, eyed her silently as she moved along the narrow strip that seemed unwilling to break either in or out, content in its mindless circularity. As the front of the house disappeared to her left, an open gazebo came into view, a man-made jetty extending beyond the cliff.
There, between two far columns, stood a lone figure, his narrow shoulders rigid as he peered out at a tranquil sea. He turned. His eyes seemed to convey a certain restraint, his body unnaturally stiff as he moved to greet her. He was a far cry from the Anton Votapek Sarah had expected.
“Good evening, Ms. Carter,” he said, pointing a wiry hand toward the two floral-print chairs—thick plastic with overstuffed backs—that stood on either side of a small metalwork table. Sarah noticed a pitcher and two glasses at the ready. “Won’t you have a seat?” he asked.
She nodded and moved to the chairs. Carter, she thought. He must have tapped the phone when I called Alison. A second man appeared and pulled the seat out for her; she sat as he retreated to a shadowed corner. Votapek remained standing, clearly uncomfortable with the preliminary introductions. His suit and tie, though out of place in the tropical surroundings, were perfect for his slight frame, a body ill-designed for polo shirts and Bermuda shorts. She could tell he disliked the scrutiny. “I trust the trip wasn’t too difficult?” he asked.
“Not at all.”
“A bit unexpected, I would imagine.”
“The location perhaps.” Sarah settled into the chair. “We needed to meet. Where and how weren’t all that important.”
He stared at her; he had not anticipated her candor. “I see.” He sat and poured himself a tall glass of the lemonade. “Can I offer you some?”
“I’ve had my fill for the day,” she replied.
“Yes, of course.” He placed the pitcher on the table and sat back, content to gaze out at the clouds. “Alison is very fond of lemonade. Mine is a bit sweeter.”
“I’m sure you didn’t bring me all this way—”
“True,” he broke in, his tone haltingly casual. “I brought you here because … I’m somewhat concerned about your visit with Ms. Krogh.”
“Somewhat?” Sarah replied. “You’ve gone to a great deal of trouble for something you’re only somewhat concerned about.”
“Perhaps,” he answered, adjusting his jacket. “Perhaps more than that.”
“As I recall, you were far more than only somewhat concerned during our first encounter in New York. Granted, it’s more pleasant here, but I’m sure the message is the same.”
Votapek turned to her, a creasing of his brow. “Excuse me?”
“Your first warning,” she answered, “in the alley. I trust those men have recovered.”
He continued to stare at her. “You have me at a loss, Ms. Carter.”
Sarah returned the stare; Votapek looked genuinely perplexed. “And I suppose you’re equally unaware of events in Florence.”
His expression had not changed. “Florence? … Is this leading somewhere?”
Again, she waited. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
He blinked several times. “None.” He brought the glass to his lips.
Sarah watched his movements; they remained stiff, but no more so than before. She had learned long ago to detect even the smallest traces of deception—the subtle shift in the eyes, in the choice of words, even in the angle of the body. But Vota
pek displayed none of the telltale signs. It was as if he truly knew nothing of her two run-ins with Eisenreich. “I find that hard to believe,” she said, suddenly far more wary.
“What you believe is not my concern. Nor is your private life.”
“So you flew me down here—”
“I’ve told you why I brought you here,” he continued, his gaze far more pointed as he turned to her, an impatience in his voice. “I’m interested in Ms. Krogh. I’ll ask again—how did you find her?”
Sarah had to make sense of the last three minutes. Florence, Pescatore, New York—could they actually mean nothing to him? Could he possibly …
Out of the loop. The phrase broke through, a flash of the subconscious ninety-seven to lend order to the questions stumbling through her mind. Out of the loop. A lifetime ago, she had described herself in the same way in order to distance herself, remain a free spirit disentangled from structures and systems. Amman. An operative secure only when autonomous. For Votapek, though, it made no sense. He was a vital part of the Eisenreich structure. Separation would only blur his focus; lack of communication would only open him to attack. So how was it that he could remain unaware of the mad scramble that had been the last week of her life? How?
The man in the shadows shifted, a stretching of shoulders that drew her attention. He had a strong upper body, thick neck, though his head seemed too small for his large frame. Oddly serene, he stood off to the side, oblivious to the cat-and-mouse game playing out in front of him. The perfect disciple, she thought. The perfect tool.
Sarah glanced back at her host, his lips pursed at his glass. And in that look, instinct and fact joined together to offer one resounding answer: Votapek was no different from the man in the shadows. In that instant, Sarah saw the world of Eisenreich as it was, as it had to be: designed to keep each man insulated and thus protected. Tieg, Sedgewick, and Votapek. Men who were isolated; men unaware. Votapek didn’t know about New York or Florence because he didn’t have to know. Someone else had managed that.
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