Gloria nodded mutely, her eyes glistening as Gershwin cleared his throat again in preparation to read the second message from the mystery benefactor.
“Dear Gloria,
“You walked up to me on the beach in Santa Monica many years ago and said you had a sixth sense for ‘deep, unprocessed grief.’ You said I had the look of someone who had given up on life and was ready to cross to the other side. You were right, even though I didn’t speak a word that day. I just listened.
“You never pried about what misery had led me to the edge. Instead, you shared with me the horrific stories of the women you rescued, and how they were able to rebuild their lives through microscopic rays of hope in their soul. Maybe you didn’t intend to have that effect on me, but these stories inspired me to find meaning and direction for my own existence, after suffering the greatest loss anyone can endure.
“On that day, you slipped your business card in my shirt pocket and asked me to call you if I ever needed a friend.
“That’s exactly what I did. When Orapan needed a safe place, I took her to your shelter, knowing she could find no better guardian.
“No amount of money can inspire anyone to be as selfless and as pure as you, Gloria. You spread light and hope in the universe because of the sort of human being you are. That’s your nature. The gift I’m giving you is intended to make your work just a little easier so you can sleep better at night.”
“End message.”
Gershwin shuffled papers, then turned his attention to Amelia.
“Last but not least, Ms. Ridgley. My client is granting your organization, the Spring Roy Sharm El Sheikh Memorial Trust, the sum of fifty million dollars. This is to be divided equally amongst the surviving family members of the 2005 terrorist attacks in Sharm El Sheikh. The payments should also include the victims of the first attack on the old town, not just the resort.
“And...”
“Yes?” Amelia said.
“The wives and children of the two men convicted of the crime, Tarek Nabulsi and Hassan Madi.
“My client is also entrusting you with an additional sum of one hundred million dollars to be used for three separate activities. The first is to set up a micro funding organization for young men and women in Egypt and Jordan with twenty-five million dollars in seed funding. My client believes abject poverty and material need create the perfect environment for the spread of hatred, intolerance, violence and terrorism.
“The second is to set up a twenty-five million dollar scholarship endowment for brilliant young Egyptian and Jordanian students who would not otherwise be able to afford to study in the United States. My client is of the opinion the contempt and hatred poverty can breed is enabled by ignorance. The light of knowledge and convergence of cultures can force hatred and intolerance to give way to love and acceptance.”
“A third tranche of twenty-five million dollars is to be donated to the City of New York, earmarked for the New York Police Department.
“Finally, twenty-five million dollars to be divided equally among the one hundred most destitute weekend child care centers across America. These facilities offer vital support for struggling working parents who embody the indomitable spirit of working-class America, refusing to give up.”
Gershwin picked up the last paper in his pile and started to read the message intended for Amelia.
“Begin message.”
Can I see another’s woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief,
And not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow’s share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?
Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan, an infant fear?
No, no! Never can it be!
Never, Never can it be!
“End of message.”
THIRTY-TWO
Present day—10:00 a.m.
Faulconbridge, New South Wales, Australia
Four hundred yards away from his final stop, Blackwell switched off his navigation system and turned a sharp right off Redheap Road into Chapman Parade. The rented Toyota Kluger he’d picked up from Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport was handling the dirt road well.
Having barely slept on the fourteen-hour flight from Los Angeles, Blackwell didn’t expect to feel so alive.
He slowed down as he approached the entrance of the house. The final destination of a journey he had started on the small Caribbean island of Anguilla when Sam Morgan summoned him to Manhattan. The events that followed had transformed his life forever.
Blackwell emerged from the car holding a small tote bag. He pushed his sunglasses to the crown of his shoulder-length hair to absorb every single detail before him.
Now at the peak of the Australian summer, the sun was already scorching down well before midday.
The sky light had an unusual whitish hue typical of this part of the world, which the travel guides warned would take some getting used to.
The main structure was extremely basic with an adjacent guest house. A rusting tractor parked further afield spoke of days when the property may have been a working farm. But other than the trimmed lawn, there was no sign now of any viable agricultural activity.
A small animal dashed in front of his eyes and disappeared. A possum, he thought, but it was too fast for Blackwell to tell for sure. Then a white butterfly with crimson spots landed on his shoulder and inspected him for a while before it fluttered off, as if it too was part of the welcoming committee.
“Hello?” he bellowed out in the open, then waited for a response that never came. Absent was any gate or fencing around the property, or those passive-aggressive signs threatening would-be trespassers. No parked cars either. Blackwell proceeded with caution anyway.
As he approached the main house, classical music piping from inside drew him in. When he got to the doorstep, he recognized the piece as a cello and guitar arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Valse Sentimentale. A deeply melancholic piece, especially with the weeping cello.
He knocked, rang the bell and then waited before poking his head inside what appeared to be the living room.
“Anyone home?” His voice was perfectly punctuated to come at the very end of the musical piece. No answer, but the music looped from the beginning a few seconds later.
He stepped in, gingerly.
A threadbare but comfortable-looking green couch sat on a round monochrome beige rug, facing a large plasma screen on the floor. The space seemed to have been configured for functionality, with only the essentials. No welcoming seating for guests or decorative touches hinting at the owner’s sense of style, or their appreciation of art or furniture design. Nothing in the least bit to suggest this was someone’s home. Just a place where someone lived.
Blackwell wandered into the kitchen, following the smell of fresh coffee. A good-sized breakfast table converted from an antique timber door took up most of the floor space. Unlike the living room, the kitchen felt warmer and more inhabited.
Large windows wrapped around the walls, allowing ample sunlight to flood in, and water and food bowls on the floor indicated a four-legged friend shared the house.
A white fridge was covered with photographs and post-its. Mostly pictures of Maya and Ryan Morgan from birth until the few weeks before they traveled to Sharm El Sheikh.
The recipes, notes and post-its must have all been plucked from Sam’s Toluca Lake home in Los Angeles. A time capsule of the life Sam and his family had lived there.
The schedule for Maya’s piano lessons, a reminder for Ryan’s next vaccination appointment and a handmade countdown of the days left until the start of the family’s holiday in Sharm El Sheikh. The fifteen days prior to the start of the trip had all been marked with Xs in al
ternating florescent pink and green markers. And the final day itself had smiles, hearts, exclamation marks and little drawings of boats and fish around it.
The contrast of how this vacation turned out sent electric currents down Blackwell’s spine. Why would he have it there, tearing at his heart every day? Maybe that was exactly the purpose. A reminder.
On the top part of the fridge, now starting to fade, was an eight-by-ten photo of the whole family. Sam and Angela had their arms around each other, with Ryan and Maya on their laps. All four of them were smiling with infectious happiness.
During the Exertify affair, Sam had asked him if he had any idea what a father feels when he loses a child. With Tchaikovsky’s notes tugging hard at his emotional seams, Blackwell understood Sam had been talking about himself. Not some abstract war cry of a disgruntled terrorist. But the very real, soul-crushing pain of a father who lost his own flesh and blood in the most savage way.
He stuck his hand in the tote bag he was holding and pulled out a tiny antique Georgian bronze bell and placed it on the kitchen table. He then scribbled a short note on a post-it and stuck it on the bell.
Thank you. Alexander Blackwell.
He was about to walk out of the kitchen when he remembered something else. A printout of the photo of the UPC bar code he had taken when he’d seen it underneath a power outlet in Maya’s room in Los Angeles.
The clue that had ultimately led Blackwell to Sam Morgan’s hiding place fifty miles west of Sydney. He placed it next to the bell.
After he’d met with Danny Zimmerman and realized it was Sam who had taken Leviathan, Blackwell had run out of leads and was just about ready to give up on tracking him down.
A few weeks ago, he stumbled across the image of the bar code while clearing out his phone. He had completely forgotten about it, mostly because he never thought it would amount to anything. But in a final, desperate attempt, he converted the bar code to a series of numbers and realized they weren’t attached to any product, as he had initially assumed. They didn’t mean anything.
He labored over them for many days and almost considered contacting Zimmerman to pick his code-breaking brain, but the thought of getting in deep with the NSA was hardly one he could stomach.
In the end, it was his son who cracked it for him.
Milo’s social science teacher had given her students geographic coordinates and asked them to use Google Maps to find the various cities she had assigned to each of them. Milo’s coordinates were for the city of Adelaide in South Australia. When he showed it proudly to Blackwell, the similarity in the number sequence to the numbers from the bar code triggered waves of electric energy through Blackwell’s body.
The numbers from the bar code were geographic locations.
He looked it up and found this house staring at him on Google Earth, in the small town of Faulconbridge in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney. When he traced the ownership records, he found iron-fisted secrecy where there shouldn’t have been. Its original owner died in 2004, and it was inherited by a heavily shielded corporate trust. The house remained uninhabited for five years. In 2009, a newly formed corporation based in the Isle of Man rented the property. The D Bell Corporation. Blackwell required no further proof this was Sam’s.
Why was that bar code left there?
It didn’t make one bit of sense that Sam would have left this clue on purpose for Blackwell. After all, his message to him was clear.
Stop looking for me. Or was the other alternative so unthinkable? Ever since he’d come into contact with him, Sam Morgan liked to say one thing, but really mean another. Yet another question to justify this trip to meet him face to face.
Blackwell took another tour around the house until he began feeling uneasy snooping. Wandering around Sam’s abandoned Toluca Lake home was one thing, but this was different. Someone lived here and it just didn’t feel right.
He stepped out and decided to return after breakfast. It had been many hours since they last fed him on the plane.
Before leaving, he took a quick look at the smaller building.
The door of the guest house was locked and he didn’t want to coax it open. He circled around it for anything else interesting to see. A large communication dish was attached to the rooftop. This far out in the wilderness, it had to be for Internet connectivity.
All the windows were shuttered except for one at the back. Through venetian blinds left slightly ajar, he cupped his hands on the glass to block out the glare of the sun and spied inside.
The space was gutted, like it had been converted to some sort of warehouse. He counted at least sixty boxes of varying sizes neatly stacked on one end of the rectangular space.
On the other side, an empty workbench spanning the entire length of the wall had been set up with a lone office chair. There were no computers, no monitors, and nothing to indicate what purpose it had once served. Just a series of empty cork boards hung on the wall, dotted with hundreds of colorful plastic pins. Whatever had transpired there had now been completed, or at least suspended.
Back in his car, he blasted the AC on full and punched into the navigation system the address of the nearest brasserie to get some coffee in him first, then breakfast.
He circled inside the lot and drove away on Chapman Parade.
In the distance, another vehicle was veering in from Redheap Road with a cloud of red dust hovering above it. A navy blue pickup truck with a barking dog back in the bed.
The truck stopped in its tracks for a short while as if the driver was assessing the situation. The dog, on the other hand, continued to bark its head off, as if it had drawn its own conclusions about Blackwell’s trespassing car and was goading its master to take necessary action.
Blackwell flashed his headlights and waited, hoping this would convey to the driver he meant no harm. The other truck continued to do nothing. The dog continued to bark like crazy, and Blackwell continued to wait.
This went on for a few minutes.
Then, the truck started approaching slowly until the two vehicles were side by side. The dog, a German Shepherd, was fully baring its teeth and snarling at Blackwell.
Every cell in Blackwell’s body lit up.
Every part of him that could pulsate, did.
He removed his sunglasses and looked straight in the eyes of Sam Morgan.
Every question he had wanted to ask this man was drifting fast through the rapids of his mind.
His heart racing, he wanted to know why Sam had chosen him.
And how he knew to come for him when he was attacked in Toluca Lake by the Egyptian goons.
Why did you save me?
Was it Sam who had designed Leviathan, as Blackwell was almost certain he did? All that money—the bonds and stocks from Balmoral Westwood, and the billions locked in Leviathan—what had Sam done with it? And who else was part of his crew? Just hired guns who were in it for the payout, or believers like Sam seeking a higher calling? Revenge.
Blackwell wanted to know Sam’s feelings when he pulled the trigger and took the lives of Nabulsi and Madi. What had those men told him before they died, other than ratting on Demir Salimovic? And before he too had met his fate at Sam’s hands, had Salimovic put him on another hunting trail for the real killers, the masterminds behind the attacks on the resort?
What price does a man pay to avenge his loved ones by shedding even more blood?
Does your humanity stay intact?
That’s what he wanted to know—the extent of the moral metamorphosis required for all-out retribution. The thoughts rushing through a man’s mind when he plants a few bullets in the heads of the people who butchered his family. What do you become?
He wanted to meet the guy who’d pretended to be a terrorist, gotten inside his head and outsmarted him. Outwitted the FBI, and outclassed the US government in its war on terror. The father and the husband who h
ad lost his family and waited seven long years to do right by them. Blackwell wanted to stand in front of him and speak on behalf of a government he no longer represented and tell him, “Sorry we failed you.”
But perhaps his most burning need was to stare straight into Sam’s eyes and take a long hard look at his soul and ask himself the most important question of all.
Would I have done the same thing if my own family was murdered?
Sam removed his sunglasses, eyes fixed on Blackwell, with a tiny, knowing smile formed on his lips.
Quietly.
Patiently.
Even the dog had settled down now, in tune with its master’s infectious serenity.
A rush of calm engulfed Blackwell’s heart.
All he could hear was silence.
All he could see was clarity.
All he could feel was closure.
Blackwell nodded at Sam and smiled back, then pressed his foot on the accelerator and drove away.
Acknowledgments
I started writing this novel after my daughter was born and finished it with the arrival of my son. My love for my children is the primary source of inspiration for this novel. With that said, everything I know about being a good father flows from the endless stream of nurturing I received from my own parents. I am grateful to them for raising me to see the world for the beautiful place that it is, and to reject intolerance and injustice.
I thank my wife for being my creative soul mate. Without her patience and support I would never have the space and luxury to dream.
Jodie Renner edited the first edition of this book. Working with her has made me a better writer. My trusted proofreader Sharon Baker cleaned the manuscript spotless.
I am fortunate to have many brilliant friends who give unconditionally.
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