by Brad Meltzer
“Fine,” Jack says, but it’s not. Because now he wonders if Ingrid really is in that copter. Wonders what he’ll tell Skip. This whole situation, it’s a nightmare. This boy. This boy. He must get this boy out while there’s still time to save him.
“What’s his name?” Jack asks, unhooking the boy from his IVs, from the oxygen.
“Darim,” Tariq says.
Darim’s eyes are still open and they dart about the room.
As Jack undoes the last IV, he makes a decision that he hopes he won’t regret. He reaches down and scoops Darim up into his arms, cradles him against his chest, holds him like he’d hold his own child. Whatever Darim has, if it’s communicable, Jack figures someone in America knows how to stop it. Why else would they make this deal in the first place?
“Let’s go!” Jack shouts, rushing from the room. Tariq is right behind him. “Skip, follow me! Let’s go!”
Jack gets two steps before he realizes no one’s running behind him.
“Skip, c’mon!” Jack growls, but as he turns, he sees that Skip hasn’t moved at all. Tariq’s holding him by the arm. “What the hell is going on?”
“We trade. The boy stays,” Tariq says.
“What’d you say?” Jack asks.
The guard steps in front of Skip, blocks him from leaving.
“Dad, what’s going on?”
“Tariq, he isn’t part of this,” Jack warns.
“He is. He is a part,” Tariq says. “I need to make sure I get my son back.”
“Dad…?”
“I’m afraid I don’t trust your country to do the right thing,” Tariq adds. “You get my ‘page’; I get yours.”
Jack looks down at the boy in his arms, this boy who clutches onto Jack with tiny fingers, Jack able to feel Darim’s jagged nails digging into the skin on his shoulder. “Please don’t do this. I give you my word. I’m helping Darim.”
“Return my son healed,” Tariq says, “and your son will be returned, unharmed. This was the agreed-upon condition.”
“Agreed? By who?”
“Your country. Your bosses.”
Jack wants to drop Darim now, throw him to the ground. But he can’t.
“Daddy, what’s happening?” Skip screams. “Don’t leave me!”
Jack looks over his own shoulder, looking for Ingrid, for a rescue. No one is there.
Mona’s crying now too, and then there’s the whoop-whoop-whoop of the helicopter just outside the window. This is madness, Jack thinks. Madness.
Skip crumbles to the ground, sobbing, and Jack doesn’t know what to do. Drop the sick boy? Rush the security guard? Be shot here, in this hallway, beside his son? Jack knows only one thing. He’s not leaving his boy.
Jack thinks of the knife on his ankle. He is an adventurer. Adventurers always carry a knife. If he could get to that…
“Tariq, let’s just talk about this like rational—”
“You leave now!” Tariq roars. “You leave now, or I kill your son!”
Darim goes limp in Jack’s arms.
Jack’s mind keeps scrambling, searching for more options. There is the knife, yes, but Jack is a performer, an entertainer. He isn’t a killer.
“Dad, don’t leave me!” Skip cries.
“I won’t leave you! I’m not leaving you!” he calls back. He means it. He can’t even see Skip behind the bodyguard. “Tariq, if you touch my son—!”
“LEAVE NOW!” Tariq screams.
“If you want blood, kill me instead!”
“I will! I’ll kill you both!”
“Do it then! Take me instead of him!”
“I shall! Your bosses will—”
“Huuuk.”
The guard makes a noise, a cry, like an animal caught in a trap, then drops to one knee, then flat onto his stomach.
The guard’s face smacks into the floor with a sickening crack, his nose collapsing, a pool of blood spreading out around his face immediately.
There’s a tactical knife sticking into the guard’s back. The knife that had been holstered on the guard’s hip. Someone grabbed it, used it. Someone behind the guard.
“Skip…?” Jack asks.
Mona is screaming. The helicopter is still going whoop-whoop-whoop.
Skip’s face is covered with blood. It sprayed him after he grabbed the knife off the guard’s belt and sunk it in.
“H-He was scaring me,” Skip says. “I was scared. He said he’d kill you. That he’d kill us both.”
“It’s okay,” Jack says to his son, still cradling Darim. “Everything is going to be fine. It’s make-believe. It’s just make-believe. Like what we do on the show. It’s not real.”
Across from them, Tariq seems frozen in place.
“You hear me, son?” Jack says, looking Skip right in the eyes. “It’s not real.”
Skip nods.
“Take my son’s hand,” Jack says to Mona, and she does. “We’re leaving. Tariq, I give you my word. We’ll be back.”
But they won’t. Because in three months, Tariq will be dead.
Jack cradles Darim with one hand, tugging Skip and Mona with the other as they all run out of the house. The beating rotors of the Chinook helicopter make it impossible to hear anything. Inside the copter, Ingrid is already buckled in.
Seconds later, they’re in the air, Sirte disappearing beneath them. The radio engineer hands Jack a headset.
“Jack, can you hear me?” Moten says through the headset. “We’ll get Skip back. I promise. I know you’re probably confused, but it’s politics—we had to do it this way.”
“I have him,” Jack hisses. “You son of a shit, I have him. We’re on our way. All of us.”
Jack takes off the headset and hands it to the radio engineer, gives him a thumbs-up, because everything is fine, it’s just fine. He’s Jack Nash, after all, the man who solves the greatest mysteries of our time.
He unbuckles his seat belt and slides in beside Skip.
“He won’t tell me what happened,” Ingrid says. “He’s covered in blood, Jack. What the hell happened?”
Jack ignores her.
Skip is seven years old. What does Jack remember about being seven? What has he retained? He remembers The Story, and when was he told that? Six? Seven? And there it is, right in his head, a man with a Benedict Arnold bible buried in his chest, and Jack sees The Story for what his own father, Cyrus, the great radio entertainer, intended it to be. A primer, a lesson, for this very moment, his father preparing him.
When Jack was a child and first heard The Story, his dad never told him the solution: that when you’re faced with the impossible, it’s usually because someone’s lying, trying to trick you.
Cyrus forced Jack to figure it out himself, as a way to guide him into the adventurous life he loved so much. Cyrus relished his secret identity and the way he could use his public persona to help solve America’s problems, the world’s problems.
But when Jack had his own kids, he knew better than his father did. The world had changed. Today, it was more brutal, more dangerous than anything in his father’s time. World War II had a clear mission, a clear enemy. In Jack’s wars, from the sixties and seventies—with Nixon and Vietnam—clarity was an endangered species. No way would Jack throw his kids into that secret life. He swore it.
Indeed, that was the only reason Jack finally decided to tell Skip The Story—and eventually, the solution—a few years ago. He wanted Skip to know the truth, that it was all a trick. For Skip, The Story was no primer. It was a warning. If Skip ever heard The Story, or anything like it, from anyone, he should know he was being lied to. He should know he should walk away.
For that reason, Jack always made sure that Skip’s involvement with the show was pure show business. Sure, Skip was a ratings boon, but there were limits. For years, Jack kept Skip far away from his secret.
Now, he’d broken that rule, and they were paying for it. They’d be doing so for the rest of their lives. God, how could I be so stupid? For years, Jack
thought his father was the naïve one. But it was Jack who was the fool—for thinking he could bring Skip so close to the sidelines and not expect him to wind up on the field.
Right there, Jack swore that Skip would never be on another episode. That was another lie.
“Nicholas,” Jack says to Skip, and decides he’ll never use that name again, will forbid anyone to utter it. “That was fun, wasn’t it? That even looked real. But it wasn’t. None of this is.”
“It isn’t?” Skip says.
“All make-believe,” Jack says. He licks his thumb and wipes a speck of blood from Skip’s cheek. His clothes, Jack thinks, we’ll need to burn them. “Where did you learn that trick with the knife? How did you know how to do that?”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No, no,” Jack says, knowing that the real trouble is just beginning. Jack will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, waiting to see who’s coming for his children, coming for him. “You could never be in trouble for make-believe. But tell me, where did you learn that?”
“Mom showed me.”
85
New Haven, Connecticut
Today
That’s not— That story’s bullshit.”
“I wish it were,” Ingrid said. They were sitting in the parked car, still staring out at the warehouse. It had a roll-up door that was covered in graffiti and tall enough for an eighteen-wheeler to unload cargo. A simple padlock made it look like there was nothing of value inside, but the row of cameras Hazel spied along the roofline seemed to indicate the opposite.
“It can’t be,” Hazel insisted. She looked over her shoulder. Leon was back in his shed. No one else was around. “If Skip did that, I’d know about it. It didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen.” Even for Skip to be here a few weeks back, it had to be chance.
But as Hazel Nash knew from her studies in her former life, chance was rarely so easily quantifiable.
It was what had turned her to anthropology in the first place, what had made her focus her study on the rituals of death and dying. Around the world, entire cultures had developed similar rituals without ever knowing of each other—like the Chinese and Egyptians, who, despite a 6,000-mile gulf of land and water between them, adorned tombs nearly the same way. They even adopted similar views of the afterlife.
Was that coincidence? Or was humanity learning to build coping mechanisms at the same time, the human brain expanding to combat sorrow and longing and confusion, the 150 million people on the planet slowly grasping the same ideas at the same time?
Her brother being in that room in Libya all those years ago, then so recently in Arthur Kennedy’s warehouse? That was not simple chance, that was no sudden collective dawning.
That was intention.
As Butchie said, Nixon and Kennedy had been looking for each other. But Skip had been looking too.
“Polosis 5,” Ingrid said. “That was the drug they think killed your father, yes?”
“How’d you know?”
“If anything, the Polosis 5 was keeping your father alive.” Ingrid reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a bottle of pills, no label on it. “I’m not supposed to bring these inside the hospital,” she said, “because Polosis 5 isn’t exactly FDA approved.” She flipped the top off the bottle, shook a pill out into her mouth, swallowed it dry, then tossed the pill bottle into her purse. “I’ve been taking it for over thirty years. I imagine your father was too.”
“What’s it do?”
“In small doses, it counteracts the infectious disease we were exposed to,” Ingrid said.
“In Libya.”
Ingrid sighed. “You were always the smart one.”
“So all this time, it wasn’t my father who was being blackmailed, wasn’t my father who lured Nixon up to Canada. You think it was Skip. Skip, protecting the one secret that could destroy his life.”
“Destroy all your lives. If the world heard what your brother did—”
“Skip acted in self-defense!”
“Is that what you think the press would say? You think they’d judge Skip fairly—or would they call him a sociopath? Your father did what any father would do. He protected his son. He buried it and made sure no one heard a word. Think, Hazel. Think what the press would do with that story today. You’d all be destroyed, including your father. Perhaps this is no different than what we did in Russia, Belfast, and even in Libya, when we rescued those children, the so-called ‘pages’ in the bible. Something for the greater good.”
“This isn’t the greater good. Someone died—someone was killed! We’re Americans!”
“Then you don’t know your history very well,” Ingrid said. “If one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants had a sick child, and you could help save the child’s life in exchange for information that would prevent 9/11, would you walk away from that?”
“You made off-book deals with people trying to kill us. That’s…that’s…”
“Treason,” Ingrid said.
“Exactly,” Hazel said. “That’s treason.”
“We also saved lives, I can tell you that. Years later, the world watched as the Libyans shot down an American plane. But thanks to the deal we made, there were three other planes, maybe more, that kept flying through the sky.” Ingrid’s voice was strong, but her hands were starting to shake.
“The ones you brought back here, were they always children?” Hazel asked.
“Sometimes children. A few adults. You’re the anthropologist. It shouldn’t surprise you that even the worst monsters will go to extraordinary lengths to protect their family.”
Hazel looked back at the security shed. Was the guard still there? She couldn’t see from this angle. “So Dad’s show, it was all a front? It was just there so you could play secret agent?”
“Hazel, that show fed you. It kept a roof over your head. And the fame it provided your father gave him access to kings, queens, heads of state, and yes, even dictators. Who wouldn’t want to have a meal with a worldwide TV star?” She paused. “Even El Chapo let Sean Penn come visit. The great Jack Nash’s most precious secret was what he could do once he was invited inside.” Hazel again checked the shed. There was still that feeling, of being watched. They needed to get moving.
“Was there ever a bible?” Hazel asked. “An actual bible? Or was that always some ancient code name?”
The old woman made a tsking sound. “I think so. I hope so. George Washington had to send his messages in some form,” she said, taking the tin and rolling paper. Her hands were shaking now, so she dropped them in Hazel’s lap. “Be a dear,” Ingrid said, “and make me a bit more cancer. No sense putting it off now.”
When the cigarette was made, Ingrid lit it, got out of the car, and started limping toward the warehouse.
“Were there others?” Hazel asked, a few steps behind. “Doing the job, I mean, for the government? Were there others rescuing other children?”
“I don’t think they needed anyone else. We were a wretched motley crew.”
“My brother wasn’t. Not until you dragged him into that hellhole in Libya. Then it turned him into something else.”
“You think we wanted that? No one wanted that. But take my word, whatever Skip did to Nixon and Kennedy, they were blackmailers. He did you a favor by murdering them.”
Hazel tried to imagine how Skip saw it—more important, how he saw it back then in Libya, what all this looked like to a young boy. What would it do to a young boy? And what would it do to him now if the story got out?
“Just keep walking,” Ingrid said. When they got to the door, Ingrid took a safety-pin from her purse and within five seconds, the padlock was open. She motioned for Hazel to lift the door. As it rolled up, Ingrid ushered Hazel inside. “Go. Don’t look back.”
But Hazel couldn’t not. She imagined Skip standing where she was standing, imagined him coming to this warehouse owned by Arthur Kennedy. At first, she thought Skip came here because Kennedy found out his greatest secret. Bu
t now…was Skip searching for something else?
Hazel stepped inside and looked around. The warehouse was as clean as an operating room. Along the south wall was a Home Depot’s worth of tools, each one hung on an individual hook, then shelves of power tools, car batteries, duct tape, plastic tubing, even an engine block.
There were also floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with boxes and wooden crates, complete with a rolling stair-ladder. Hazel was suddenly a little kid at home, sitting between her mother and Skip, watching on TV as the Ark of the Covenant gets stashed away.
In the middle of it all was a car.
Pristine black, the paint so flawless it looked like amethyst. It was old, from the late 1970s, early ’80s maybe. Hazel couldn’t really tell; cars weren’t her thing.
Ingrid let out a little gasp, a sound of honest surprise.
Hazel looked back through the open roll-up door. No sign of Security Leon.
That wasn’t a coincidence either. Someone wanted Hazel and Ingrid to be let into this place. Someone wanted them to see the car, the shelves, everything. It was too easy.
“What is this?” Hazel asked.
“A Volga,” Ingrid said. She brought the cigarette to her mouth and Hazel could see that her hand was shaking more visibly now, her head had a little tug to the right too, like she wasn’t lining everything up.
“It says Bonra on the dashboard,” Hazel said, peering through the passenger window.
“No,” Ingrid said, “that’s the Cyrillic alphabet. What they used in the Soviet Union.”
There was a noise from outside, by the sidewalk. A man ran by, hood up over his head. His stride was long—six strides and he was gone, around the block. Hazel couldn’t see his face, but his body reminded her of something.
When Hazel turned back around, Ingrid was standing in front of the car, her reflection visible in the hood.
“This car,” she said to Hazel, and then didn’t say anything more for a long time. “I have seen it before.”
“When?” Hazel asked.
“With your father.”
86