by Meg O'Brien
Abby patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll work it out.”
In fact, she already had an idea. It would require a little act of deception, but she was getting used to that.
First, though, she had to get her hands on a phone and confirm her worst and latest fear: that Jancy was no longer at the Prayer House.
32
It was several minutes before midnight. In his penthouse high above Central Park, H. P. Gerard sat with six men and four women around a polished teak table. Privately delivered memos had gone out to each member of the Matalene Trust early in the morning, calling them here to a meeting “of utmost confidentially and urgency.”
Each member lived within three hours via plane from New York City, and each had formerly been a CEO and board director of their own company. Their portfolios were a stockbroker’s dream. Members of the Matalene Trust could afford to retire and do whatever they wished for the rest of their lives. Money was no object.
The Matalene Trust, however, consumed their days, nights, weekends and would-be family holidays. All the members had lost family or friends in the war against Iraq. One woman’s eighteen-year-old son was killed by friendly fire when the jeep he was driving, one he had commandeered from insurgents, was shot at by U.S. soldiers. Another member, a man, had lost twin sons who had joined the army when their local recruiter promised them a college education.
The man’s grief, and guilt, stemmed in part from the fact that he could have easily provided both of his sons with an education. Instead, in an effort to teach them to be strong and independent, he had told them they were on their own after high school. He had worked his way through college, and toughing it out had prepared him for the real world. Now, he’d told his sons, the “real world” was surreal, and they would be all the better for their experience.
Except that they had turned the tables on him and, instead of getting jobs, had joined the army without even telling him they were going to. And every time Lawrence Jessup passed Harvard now—the school he had hoped his sons would attend—his eyes teared up without warning. Being part of Matalene was the only thing that helped to fill the emptiness in his heart.
At H. P. Gerard’s invitation, each of the people here had come together and formed a watchdog group. Its mission statement was to make sure the kinds of bad intelligence and poor decisions that had led to the war with Iraq never happened again. The name Matalene came from a former New York City jeweler who had designed and sold high-quality watches. H. P. Gerard was a collector of antique and unusual watches; when a name was being discussed in the beginning, he had glanced down at his wrist and come up with the name Matalene, as befitting a “watch” dog group.
Now he folded his hands and looked at each person in turn. “Thank you for coming. I see we’re all here.”
A tall, thin man spoke. “I had to cancel an important meeting. Hopefully, this will be quick.”
“When I tell you why you’re here, Gordon, you won’t be thinking of business,” Gerard said. “At least, not the oil business.”
“Only if the world is coming to an end,” someone cracked.
“It very well could be,” Gerard said in a low, solemn voice.
“What’s going on?” a man with graying black hair and a muscular body asked.
“I’ll get right to the point. I’ve had word that the U.S. is in imminent danger of a bioterrorist attack. This is not rumor, and it’s not just chatter. This is solid information, and it comes from the top.”
A heavy air of tension filled the room, but no one spoke.
“We need to find out where this attack is designed to take place,” Gerard continued. “It could be here on the eastern seaboard. It could be in California or New Mexico. Or, it could be some damned small town in the Midwest that we haven’t even thought of.”
“You’re saying it’s a needle in a haystack,” a man with a Spanish accent commented. “I take it Homeland Security knows about this?”
“They know the ‘what.’ But so far, they don’t know the ‘where.’ I don’t have to tell you that this is the most important presidential commission we’ve had since we formed Matalene Trust. Fortunately, we were able to fend off the planned attack on Los Angeles last spring, as well as the one on Montreal two years ago, and on Japan before that. This one, however, is the big one. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but in all truth, it could decimate the world as we know it.”
After a small silence, another man asked, “How much time do we have?”
“Until tomorrow,” Gerard said. “If we’re lucky.”
There were shocked sounds around the table. “Even with our connections—”
“With our connections,” Gerard interrupted briskly, “we will find out where this is set to happen. If we don’t…” He paused and shrugged. “Odds are, some of us won’t be here next week.”
He scanned the faces around the table and wondered if they believed him. Had he done a good enough job?
He stood. “This is what I know.” Using his hands for emphasis, he laid out the information he said he’d been given two days before by the director of the CIA, the director of the FBI and the president himself.
The meeting had taken place in the Oval Office, he said, and the only other person in attendance was the director of Homeland Security. Gerard told the members of Matalene about the importance of finding Pat Devlin, and he revealed that Devlin was his own father-in-law.
“This IRA guy? The one who bombed the kids’ school bus in the seventies?” one man said disbelievingly.
“He’s Alicia’s father,” Gerard confirmed. “I didn’t know. But speaking of which, any word on Alicia yet?”
A pale man at the end of the table shook his head. “Since we lost track of her at the airport in Phoenix, she seems to have disappeared into thin air. We have to assume someone is helping her.”
“Any idea who?”
“Not yet. Could be that friend of hers, Abby Northrup. After Phoenix, she went back to that place in Carmel Valley where she lives with those nuns. The Prayer House, it’s called. Then, tonight…” He paused.
“Go on,” Gerard prompted.
“Well, Ms. Northrup flew into Houston tonight and drove south. Our investigator, uh, lost her on I-45, but we think she may have been heading for Galveston. That could mean that your wife is there.”
“But you don’t know, right? You don’t know because your investigators lost Abby Northrup on the road! Just what use are they to us?” Gerard said with sudden anger. “They’re supposed to be the best in the world, and they can’t follow a car on a highway?”
“I didn’t say they wouldn’t find them, Gerry,” the other man said calmly. “Sometimes things go wrong. They take time.”
“We haven’t got time!” Gerry said, his voice rising. “Christ, man! Haven’t you been listening? We have no time!”
Nor can I have Alicia and her nosy friend Abby messing around in this. They could ruin everything.
He rubbed a hand over his face and slumped his shoulders. “I apologize. But you must find Alicia—and Abby Northrup.”
“I agree that Galveston is our best lead,” a woman with short red hair said. “After all, there was that tip that Pat Devlin might be there, then Alicia showed up, and now Abby Northrup. It would figure she went down there because she had some lead on Alicia and her father. And what about that mobile home park?”
Gerard thought for a minute. “I doubt that it’s important. Someone who’s been hiding out as long as Pat Devlin isn’t going to be living in a mobile home park. Have you ever seen how those people peek through their curtains at their neighbors?” He laughed scornfully.
“I guess you’ve forgotten, Gerry,” the red-haired woman said mildly. “My company makes modular homes—which is what we call them these days. They’re really quite nice, and so are most of the people who live in them.”
Gerry waved a hand as if to brush off a fly. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard that. Sorry. Now, let’s get ba
ck to business. I want an investigator at every motel in Galveston—tonight—and I want every door knocked on and every room checked out personally, until someone comes up with either Alicia or Abby Northrup.”
“Gerry, have you any idea how long that could take?” Paul Rogers said. “By the time we get all the search warrants we’ll need to do that, it’ll be too late.”
“Screw the search warrants!” Gerard said. “Tell them to proceed as if they’ve got them, and not to take no for an answer from anyone.”
“Hell, Gerry. Need I point out that we could go to jail for that? The FBI—”
“The FBI,” Gerard said tersely, “is powerless against the approval I have. The highest authorities have given me permission to act in any way I deem necessary.”
He stood. “You all know what to do. Thank you for coming. This meeting is adjourned.”
A few of the Matalene members talked among themselves in the hallway, making plans to meet later. Paul Rogers, however, stayed behind.
Gerard looked up from the table, where he had begun to pore through papers. “Something I can do for you?” he asked, though his tone was clearly one of dismissal. He had hoped to avoid a confrontation with the vice president of Matalene tonight.
“You damn well can,” Rogers said. “I want to know how much of this is about Alicia—and you.”
Gerard frowned. “Are you crazy, Paul? We’ve got the possible end of the world on our hands here. You think I’m playing games with this?”
“Look, Gerry, I know you. I’ve known you since Yale. Sure, we’ve got a genuine and very scary emergency on our hands. But you are just too damned anxious to track down Alicia. Sure, she could lead us to Pat Devlin, but there are plenty of other ways—”
“All of which the FBI and CIA are doing,” Gerry snapped. “And as you well know, we have other, more persuasive methods.”
Rogers blanched. “Vancouver was a mistake. I thought we’d put that behind us.”
“Vancouver would be rubble by now if we’d listened to you. And, no—I, for one, have not ‘put that behind us.’ You honestly think I could ever forget what happened there?”
He remembered back to the early days…Vancouver. The Prime Minister’s life had been saved, but not before an innocent clerk had been set up, his life sacrificed “for the cause.” Matalene had needed a boost, something to prove its value to the president and his Intelligence cronies.
Rogers’s eyes narrowed. “What’s going on, Gerry? Don’t try to tell me you haven’t got your own agenda this time. May I remind you that when we formed Matalene, we all vowed never to use the organization or the people in it for personal reasons?”
“I’m not doing that, Paul.”
Rogers stood. “The hell you’re not! Have you and Alicia split? Is that the real reason she’s disappeared? Did she take Jancy with her? I have a right to know, Gerry!”
“I’m telling you, Paul, it’s not like that!” Gerry threw up his hands in a gesture of frustration. “As Jancy’s godfather, you would be the first to know if Alicia and I split up.”
“All right, then. How about this? You’re pulling some power play to take all the credit when these terrorists are caught, and Alicia’s got something to do with that.”
“Like hell. You want the credit, Paul?”
“No. But it sure wouldn’t hurt your run for the presidency.”
“You think I want to run for president?” Gerry laughed. “I don’t know how these rumors get started, but have you taken a good look at our president lately? Presidents don’t have any power, Paul. More often than not, they’re laughingstocks.”
Paul Rogers rubbed his eyes, shaking his head wearily. “Then I can’t imagine what you’re up to.”
“The only thing I’m up to,” Gerry said, “is stopping Pat Devlin from turning that bomb over to the terrorists.”
“Then you’d better be playing this straight,” Rogers said. “Because think of it, Gerry. What happens if we don’t stop these guys?”
“What happens is that you pray they haven’t targeted your hometown.”
“But we’re—I mean, all of us in Matalene—”
“Are from cities with millions of people,” Gerard agreed. “New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles…Paul, if this thing happens, it’s not just the cities. The air will be poisoned everywhere in between. It will drift. And depending on the way the wind blows, it could cross the United States—perhaps the whole planet—within days.”
He shook his head and closed his eyes as if warding off a terrible vision. “We should pray together, Paul, that this never happens.”
33
Except for the whish-whishing of Pat Devlin’s respirator, it was deadly quiet in the home of Alicia’s parents. The only sign of anyone being alive was the shifting light beneath the bedroom door every time Dell moved his feet. It seemed he never slept, and Abby wondered if that would make him easier to handle should the need arise.
They had locked her up in the room next to Alicia’s. She’d been lying here awake and meditating, clearing her mind for what she needed to do. At one point she’d had to sit up in order to stay awake, but she kept meditating, keeping her mind as blank as possible, just letting the inevitable thoughts flow and move on.
Finally, she heard it—the faint knock at the front door and voices, muted. One a woman’s. The door opened, closed, and there was silence again. Then, from Alicia’s room came a soft tap, then two, on her bedroom wall.
Allie’s sign that Linda had picked up the package.
Abby looked at the clock on the nightstand—12:34. She tried not to make a sound as she pulled on the jeans and T-shirt Allie had loaned her. Tiptoeing to the double-hung window that overlooked the backyard, she cautiously unlocked it. Pushing it up, she steeled herself for an alarm to go off.
Silence. Her nerves flashed, like a jolt from a short in an electric cord, then settled back into the earlier calm. Alicia had bypassed this window on the alarm, just as she’d promised. Abby relaxed and slung a leg over the sill, then the other. Dropping to the ground, she looked around.
Her eyes were accustomed to the dark from lying awake in the dark bedroom. But the eight-foot cement-block wall around the backyard looked like Mount Everest compared to her height of five foot four.
“Once you’re over it,” Alicia had said, “head for the trees behind the office. Stay near the outside perimeter of the trees where you can still see the houses. Give it about ten minutes, and then follow the tree line to the left. You’ll come to the end of this street. It’s a dead end, and you’ll find my car there.”
She had handed Abby her keys. “It’s a dark blue BMW. Drive as quietly as you can past this house and out the gate. Then you can push it all you want. It’ll do 140, easy.”
Running over to the cement wall, Abby grabbed the thickest flowering vine she could find and pulled with all her strength, testing it. It held, and she hauled herself up, hand over hand, to the top. She could see over it now—the greenbelt, the trees off in the distance. She let out a sigh of relief and dropped to the ground.
A spotlight big enough to light up Red Square came on, pinning her against the ground. At the same time, an alarm like a shriek from all the souls in hell blasted throughout the park.
Abby scrambled to her feet and ran. She was halfway to the line of trees when she tripped over a fallen limb and fell again, twisting an ankle. Ignoring the pain, she got to her feet and ran as fast as she could, staying clear of the closed park office. She knew they were following her, could hear the pounding of their feet on the hard grassy lawn. She looked back once, saw Dell and, behind him, the other guard—close, too close. She imagined “space” around her ankle, a yoga trick, and after a few moments the pain disappeared. Running faster, she made it to the trees and raced through them, not stopping until she was on the other side.
But ahead of her lay open ground. There was no place to hide here, and no buildings or people in sight. She could almost feel their breath
on her neck as she paused a second, wondering which way to turn. Her chest felt tight, her legs numb, and she cursed herself for not eating that day. This was like the nightmare she sometimes had, where no matter how fast she ran, “they” always caught her. In her dream, she would finally be too tired to run farther. She’d try to fly then, to get away, but she never could get high enough. They would grab her arm or leg and pull her down.
In her dreams, though, that was when she woke up. No such luck now.
Knowing that she could go no farther, she fell to her knees, then crumpled on the ground, pretending to stumble. She could feel their footsteps pounding harder now, the vibration through the hard-packed earth getting stronger and stronger. She could even feel the change in energy, growing darker and heavier as the first one grew closer and then stopped above her.
“I thought you’d learned to mind your own business in Phoenix,” Dell said, breathing heavily. She sensed his hand, reaching for her.
Phoenix? Kris had said that was The Candlelights. Allie’s bodyguard was a Candlelight? Pretending to protect them, and all the while he was actually a spy in the house?
The memory of her hands cuffed to the car steering wheel filled her with rage. In a move that she’d never gotten right before, she turned over, planted a kick in his groin and then flew to her feet, letting loose with a kick to the chest. The bodyguard doubled over, groaning and gasping for breath.
Abby turned to run again, but felt something cold and metallic against the back of her neck.
“Don’t move.”
Once they’ve got you, it’s all over, Ben had said in an exercise.
Without even thinking, she cross-stepped to seven o’clock, then pivoted one-hundred-eighty degrees clockwise to six. Her right arm shot up with her hand open, palm facing in, and shoved the gun past the right side of her head. Quickly, she jabbed with her left fingertips to strike the second bodyguard’s eyes. Stopping just short of plucking them out, she used the jab to inflict pain. He cried out, covered his eyes with his hands and stumbled. But just when she thought he was down, he came at her again. She didn’t try to duck the right punch, but blocked it with her left hand, grabbing his right wrist. Striking down with her right forearm, she hit his punching hand and again went for the eyes.