by DB Carpenter
"My thesis?" Sarah asked. How'd he get a copy? She never even finished the damn thing. "How –"
"I was given a private sneak peek from your mentor, Maurice Andleman."
"What?" Sarah exclaimed. "Maurice gave you my work? I don't believe it."
"It was brilliant, Sarah."
Sarah's face flushed. This certainly wasn't how she anticipated this meeting going. Her instinct as a scientist was to get angry, her privacy had been violated, her not-fully-formed intellectual ramblings stripped naked for an outsider to peruse and lay some sort of half-ass claim to.
"You were going in a radical new direction. I could see it. It was rough, raw but fantastically stimulating. The solution I sought was buried in your work. What you needed was time, money and the freedom to work it out."
"Why did Maurice give it to you?"
"Maurice was, is, a good man. One of the best at the University and he liked you, Sarah. No, let me take that back – it was more than that. He loved you, your intellect. He repeatedly expressed just how rare a mind like yours was – free-thinking, unbounded, preconception wasn't part of your makeup, a pure scientist – like Oppenheimer. And beyond that, you understood the practical applications of the technology. Your computer model blew me away. The simulation showed just how far off the current aid efforts were but no one would buy into it. You would have been labeled a nut or worse if you'd taken it public. The culture of the aid organizations is too entrenched across political and religious spectrums. They're perceived as above analysis, above reproach because of their goody good intentions –"
"You saw my model too?" Sarah tried to stay calm but couldn't. "I don't understand, Camilla. What's going on here?"
"Cool down, Sarah, this all happened a long time ago. Phillip saw what he saw but that's why we're here – plain and simple. I understand what you're feeling but at this point it's all water under the bridge."
Sarah seethed. Maurice, the one man she trusted unequivocally back then had betrayed her. Son of a bitch! The model was brilliant, as was her thesis but it was not finished and she had not wanted it made public until she had fully completed it and earned her doctorial. Maurice had repeatedly pushed her to publish it as it was, but she hadn't been ready. There had been more work to do, much more research before it was ready to be laid bare. To find out he had shared it after all was a complete betrayal of trust.
The conversation paused as Albert walked in and served the drinks – his stare darting from the pouring liquid to Sarah in spastic flits. His face looked strained, as if the lemonade pitcher weighed a lot. Sweat beaded up on his bald scalp. He glided out of the room once all of the glasses were filled.
"I'm sorry if this is upsetting you, Sarah," Phillip said as he took a sip from the glass. "Maurice was under intense pressure to show me a reason why creating a twenty-five-million-dollar endowment in the name of Phil Junior was a good idea. I almost pulled out. I wanted to see the value; just like I do in any business venture and you were it."
"So it was for money," Sarah said.
Phillip studied the distressed woman until she met his gaze, then he turned away. Silence filled the room. Sarah was untangling the different scenarios presented by this surprising bit of information and the big one that jumped out at her was Camilla. Her relationship with Phillip's son was well known. She was certainly not the only young woman who fell under Phillip Junior's well-practiced charms.
It had been the savage murders of Phillip's twenty-four-year-old son and Camilla's idealistic parents, the public faces of Phillip G. Spencer III's upstart foundation, that had brought these two together – him out of guilt and her out of a completely understandable desire for sanity under insane circumstances.
Phil Junior's foundation, In Your Hands, had been his brain child, his passion and his way to give back some of his vast privilege to the world. IYH was solely dedicated to providing reproductive services to the developing world – a nontrivial task given the political, religious and cultural considerations but Phil Junior wasn't the type to back away from a challenge, particularly one he was passionate about.
Philip Junior had been smart and very well connected and he knew that sharp, crisp and culturally sensitive marketing coupled with recognizable and beautiful figureheads were critical to the sustainability of any charity. He very pragmatically used his connections to win over the support of Camilla's parents who were Hollywood royalty and instantly recognizable around the world. He offered them seats on the Board and the opportunity to churn out what, for the very volatile couple, would be supremely positive PR in return for the relatively simple contribution of their faces and little snippets of their time.
One of the first of these snippets was for the gala grand opening of the first IYH field office on the African continent in Abuja, Nigeria, ground zero in the population explosion on the continent and a conflicting religious environment with almost an even split between Christians and Muslims. Phil Junior couldn't have picked a more challenging country but he believed deeply in what he was doing. The well refined message, the noble reasoning and the opportunity to nudge the nation toward manageability and sustainability. He had done his homework, had all the facts and figures, had the money and the plan but he dramatically underestimated the reaction on the ground.
That night after the celebration, Camilla's mother, father and Phil Junior had been kidnapped from their hotel rooms and ultimately hacked to death in a remote field by unknown assailants. Their naked bodies hadn't been found for four days. The viciousness of the attack and the ever-present four-legged African scavengers had ensured a horrifically gory scene.
The murderers were never caught, although rumors and conspiracy theories ran rampant about who had done it – the nastiest of which ended up on the doorstep of the Vatican. That theory always sounded far-fetched but there was no shortage of freaks convinced that giving women personal control over their reproductive systems was a terrible thing. She had always suspected that it had been Muslim fanatics – jihad peddling, Insh'Allah chanting hate mongers with apparently limitless sexual issues.
But if Phillip knew about Sarah's work before Camilla had come to school… Sarah turned to Camilla, "You were sent to recruit me?" She exclaimed. "You conniving –"
1:15 pm Over Aroostook County, Maine
The state police chopper was airborne in a matter of minutes. The dark stone peak of Mt. Katahdin was immediately visible, jutting out of the hilly timberland like a stone schooner under full sail on the horizon, and they raced toward it as if it were their destination. Pell sat up front with the pilot, and Chris was in the backseat enjoying his second helicopter ride ever. He had always loved to fly. One of the items on his do-before-I-die list was take pilot lessons and own a private plane. He had the cash for both now but not the time.
"Is he going to be able to set this thing down in the river?" Chris asked Pell who turned to the grizzled pilot and repeated the question.
"Shouldn't be a problem. I've done some hairy LZs before. How far up the river did you say it was from route eleven?"
"About seven miles," Chris replied.
Forty-five minutes after leaving the airport the ground below them became familiar. Instead of flying up the river, as he had expected, the pilot had simply cut over the forest to just below his cabin.
"That's my camp," he said pointing out the window. "It's up the river about a quarter mile."
The pilot slowed the chopper, and they descended as they came around the bend in the river that David had rounded just over twenty-four hours ago. As they cruised up the waterway, Chris looked for a place to land while the two men up front scanned for the crash site.
"Are you sure that this is where it was?" Pell yelled over the thump, thump, thump of the rotor.
"What?" Chris asked.
"The plane," the pilot said. "Are you sure that this is where it went down?"
"Yes, I'm sure. It was right back there, you must have missed it."
The pilot and Pell exchanged
glances.
"We need to turn around?" Chris said. "Somehow we've gone right over it."
The pilot banked the chopper around, and they eased down the river.
"It's going to be there on the left," Chris said. As the chopper hovered exactly above where the plane should have been, there was nothing below them but nature.
Pell glared at Chris, his eyes narrowing to angry slits before he turned around and grumbled something to the pilot.
"I don't understand," Chris shouted into the microphone on his headset. "Someone must have moved it. I'm telling you it was right there."
"So what do you want to do?" The pilot asked Pell.
"Let's land," Chris pleaded. "They must have removed the wreckage, but they couldn't have totally cleaned up the mess. There's got to be some tell-tale signs down there."
Pell looked out the window again, scanning the area. "I don't see anything. Nothing! Let's get the fuck out of here," he said to the pilot, who rolled his eyes.
"Wait a second!" Chris screamed. "I'm telling you that a plane went down right there not twenty-four hours ago."
"I know what you told me, Chris. I believed you, that's why I'm out here on this wild goose chase," Pell snapped as he turned and made a quick motion with his head that said 'fly' to the pilot.
The pilot pulled back on the stick, and the chopper started to rise. Before Chris could think about what he was doing, he swung open his door, unbuckled his seat belt, and jumped out, falling the twenty or so feet into the river with a scream.
10:21 am PDT Malibu, California
Camilla shook her head violently, "No, it wasn't like that, Sarah."
"Wasn't like what? I always wondered how you managed to get into Harvard with your grades. You bought her way in, didn't you, Phillip? Was that part of your endowment deal too? Get her in, get her close to me, take me on a world tour over that summer that just happens to pass through the most desperate shit-holes in the world, indoctrinate me good. Is that what it was? Fuck!"
The more she spoke, the more pieces fell into place. Sarah had been used from the beginning. Her guts twisted into a knot and she resisted the temptation to hurl her glass at the massive window.
"Camilla, can you excuse us for a minute?" Phillip said. His voice was smooth, his tone even. Phillip G. Spencer II did not get rattled easily.
Camilla opened her mouth to say something but then closed it again as she rose and left the room without looking at Sarah who leveled her hard stare at Phillip. Billionaire be damned. He was a bastard.
"I knew you'd figure this all out. I wanted you to," Phillip said. "Now that you've done it and we're finally ready to move forward, we don't need any skeletons in the closet. We have to own up to our past, clear the air and move forward as a team. I don't want to spend my last days on the run or in jail and you've got more days left than I do."
Sarah pursed her lips and crossed her arms on her heaving chest. She did not like Mr. Spencer and her opinion was going downhill each time he parted his wrinkly, prune lips.
"You've got a right to be pissed off. I did send Camilla to find you, to recruit you, although I'd argue that those words are pejorative, but I can tell you right now, without any doubts or reservations, she fell in love with you. That wasn't in my plan. It worked, granted, but it wasn't part of the deal. She's motivated just like I am. Her parents truly believed in Phil's vision, they might not have believed enough to put their lives on the line but shit happens, even to the beautiful people, and they did sacrifice and so did Camilla and so did my son. Phil was brilliant. I can only imagine what he could have accomplished through his natural philanthropic leaning."
"He wanted to make a difference. If I were completely honest, I'd say his motivation was me. Don't' get me wrong, I wasn't an inspiration, he was doing it to make amends for how I've lived my life."
"Oh, come one," Camilla said. "That's a bit harsh."
"I don't think so but we'll never know will we?" Phillip licked his lips and was clearly upset but he continued. "He'd seen it all. Christ, he traveled to more countries than I can count. He truly believed that if we could control the population, we could give these places an opportunity to dig themselves out of their holes."
"Like I started to say earlier, on the one-year anniversary of his death I was standing at his grave when I had an epiphany – hit me like a vision from the bible. His death opened my eyes to what's really important. Too late for sure but I finally understood that money isn't the be all and end all. I picked up Phil's cause and carried it forward, not in the public way he did but in my own way. I did it because he was my son but also because I believe. I've spent a lifetime studying the dynamics of economies – micro and macro – and I know that the only way to move the entire world forward is to address the fundamental issue of overpopulation. It's an inescapable trap for the third world – an uncontrollable, self-sustaining cycle that will keep them down forever."
"When I saw that your simulation proved eradicating the bacterial and viral diseases plaguing the third world actually compounded their problems in the mid-term, I knew you were the one. You got it. Christ, how many people would understand that death by disease is necessary – particularly in the third world – it's natural selection, nature taking care of business – unpleasant as that business may be."
"I know Camilla came to the same conclusions. Her parents gave their all, willingly or unwillingly – it doesn't matter – and she's fulfilling their dreams. Her job was simply to see if you would be willing to work with us. She did much more than that and what she did, she did on her own. Talk to her about it. She has no regrets and neither do I. So many things happened to get us to where we are today. Some bad, some good, some calculating and some naïve but we can't change any of it. If some sick sons of bitches hadn't murdered Phil and the Haywood's, we damn sure wouldn't be sitting here right now and I most certainly wouldn't have poured thirty-five million dollars into a high-risk project like this."
He paused to take a drink. His gaze locked on Sarah as he raised the glass in a toast, "And here we sit. Salut."
Sarah stood up, stomped over to the window and stared off beyond the horizon, through the atmosphere and into deep space. She felt like she had been sucker-punched. Everything she had believed was now in question – the fundamental thought process that had spawned The Cause and the relationship that had changed her forever. A shudder rolled down her body as she rested her forehead against the window. She shut her eyes and let her mind follow the many thought threads. Why? Why now? How had she missed it? Had it been love?
It was over-whelming but she kept coming back to Phillip's speech – 'we have to move forward as a team.' It rang true. He was sincere but that didn't mean that it didn't still hurt. Her first true love – the first to show Sarah the previously hidden path to the beauty and power of opening yourself up totally to someone, the first to show her the capabilities of her own sexuality, the first in so many wonderful ways – but Camilla had been a plant, a Trojan Horse, or a Trojan Whore, snuck inside Sarah's carefully constructed emotional walls for nefarious purposes.
Sarah turned from the window to find Camilla sitting quietly back in her chair. She had no idea how long she had been standing against the window. Camilla looked at her as she always did, she had nothing to hide – she was who she was, who she always had been. She offered Sarah a somewhat sheepish smile and raised her eyebrows as if to say 'Well?'
Sarah sat down again and said, "Any more bombshells?"
1:47 pm Over Aroostook County, Maine
The depth of the river varied from under a foot too much deeper, and, fortunately, he landed in a spot that was about ten feet deep. He still hit the bottom, but had lost enough momentum to avoid getting hurt. When he broke the surface, he saw the chopper hovering down the river. Pell's and the pilot's headphone-encased faces were visible in the window staring down at him.
He waved to them and then swam toward the bank. The chopper rose above the trees and descended into a clearing
in the woods.
Climbing out of the water and into the woods, he was relieved to see that there were irrefutable signs of a plane crash. Someone had done a decent job of cleaning up the mess so that it couldn't be easily spotted from the air, but they couldn't fix the broken tree limbs and other indications of the crash, particularly the smell of fuel. Chris looked under bushes for a piece of solid evidence as he listened to Pell plowing through the woods like an enraged bear.
"Foster!" Pell yelled as he got closer.
His search became more frantic as Pell approached. Finally, under a bush, stuck into the ground, he found what he was looking for – a large piece of the prop that had broken off. He grabbed onto it and yanked it out of the ground like King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone. Holding it up, he turned to Pell who was now just a few feet away.
"What do you call this?" He asked as he waved the piece of metal in the air.
Pell's scowl fell away, his fists unclenched and his jaw dropped open as he stopped and stared at the piece of prop.
"Look at this, Pell," Chris said. "The thing isn't even rusted. I'm telling you the truth about what happened, and the fact that whoever these people are removed the wreckage tells me that they want to keep their secret."
Pell nodded as he reached out and took the prop. He held it and looked around at the trees and ground.
"Look at all of this," Chris said as he pointed out broken limbs and a massive gouge out of the trunk of a tree. "Can you smell the fuel? Do you believe me now?"
Pell let out a long slow whistle as his gaze drifted from the physical evidence of the crash back to the piece of metal in his hands. He sniffed at the air. "What the hell is going on? Where's the plane?"