by Jon Land
Kimberlain nodded very slowly and knew the blind man could sense the gesture. He might have responded verbally if Kamanski hadn’t appeared through the doors leading out onto the west deck of the promenade to join them.
“The lockers were empty,” he reported, which drew a sigh from Zeus. “But the C-12 had been inside them all right. The traces were clear but fading. Report says they were emptied between forty-eight and seventy-two hours ago.”
“Any way of telling how long the explosives had been stored prior to their removal?” Kimberlain asked.
“Best estimates say at least two weeks.”
“The final missing batch of the C-12 was lost three weeks ago almost to the day,” Zeus noted gravely.
“They must have moved it when we started to catch on to their plan,” Kamanski said. “Your visit to Mendelson must have spooked them because of what he might have said.”
“Mendelson didn’t know a damn thing about the explosives,” Kimberlain said. “He must have used the same lockers as a drop point when he delivered the unassembled components of the water cannon. He was just trying to give us a lead. The C-12 being moved had nothing to do with him at all. It was moved just as the schedule had dictated all along.”
“But that would mean it was going to be used here. In New York.”
“A million will die before fifty million,” Zeus reiterated.
“That’s right,” the Ferryman acknowledged. “They’ll die unless we stop it.” He moved to the viewfinder and rotated it, with Zeus’s quarter still clicking away, until he found what he was looking for. “I couldn’t figure out what Jason Benbasset was doing in a rented suite at the Times Square Marriott on Thanksgiving Day. It just didn’t make sense until I read his file. The answer was in it plain as day. Three years ago this Thanksgiving—next Thursday—was the day he was allegedly killed. He and his family took the suite so they could watch a parade go by down Broadway. Here, see for yourself.”
All the breath seemed to leave Kamanski as he focused on the view Kimberlain had left for him. “Jesus Christ, Jared. Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”
The sight the viewfinder was focused on was a bold marquee with a banner running beneath it:
M
A
C
Y
’
S
THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE JUST 4 DAYS AWAY!!
Chapter 23
COMMANDER MCKENZIE BARLOW had drifted off to sleep in his quarters on board the Rhode Island when he was jolted awake by the sound of the door bursting open.
“I’m disappointed in you,” Jones said, closing it again so they were alone.
“Excuse me?”
“You underestimated me, Commander. I hate many things, but I hate being underestimated most of all. Others underestimated me once before, and soon they will be made to pay as well.” His eyes had sharpened to match the edge in his voice. “Did you really expect me to allow you to send that follow-up message? Did you really expect me to believe that the ‘repeat status grade’ request from your COMSUBLANT had not been engineered by you somehow in a previous report so you could send a more accurate message to them?”
Mac felt himself go cold, the elation of what he had felt certain had been a successful ploy sliding down into his gut like a poorly chewed piece of meat.
“You told them your ship had been hijacked,” Jones continued. “Interesting code, the way it keyed off the numbers in the coordinates you supplied. Very simple to break, however.”
“You switched off the sending relay,” Mac said, suddenly realizing the truth.
“But I wanted you to go through with your show. I wanted you to feel the desperation you feel now in the wake of what you felt so sure was success. It hurts, doesn’t it? I wanted you to feel that so you don’t dare try it again.” Jones paused. “Even if your message had gotten through, they wouldn’t have known where to look for us.”
“They would have known something was up. That would be enough for starters.”
“Would it? I think not. They can’t track us, and they have no conception of where we are because you don’t.”
“But since no reply was sent to their ‘repeat status grade’ request, they’ll fear us lost. They’ll comb the ocean. Sure, there’s lots of water to cover, but at least they’ll be trying.”
“Trying to find a ship which by definition cannot be found. I’d say you’ve outsmarted yourself.”
“Which places us in an interesting dilemma, Mr. Jones,” Mac said, and he knew then that he was about to say more than he should. “If I don’t give you the enabling codes for whatever reason you want them when we get where we’re going, you’ll kill my family. But in the meantime you can’t contact the goons who are holding them while we’re on deep lie passage, especially now that we’re probably thought lost, which means I’m free to do anything I can to stop you before we reach our destination.”
“You want me to tie you up, is that it, Commander?”
“You can’t bind my mind, Jones, and even if you could, you wouldn’t for fear of what the effects might be. I’m too valuable to you for you to take chances with my well-being. So you may have me by the balls, but my fingers aren’t far from yours, either.”
Mac had expected anger in response, even rage, but what he got looked to be sadness. “Keep reaching, Mac,” Jones said placidly. “You won’t find anything because mine had already been clipped off. Years ago. You think I don’t know what it feels like? You think I took your ship simply because I was ordered to do so by some all-powerful force? I only wish it were that simple. But it can’t be, because what I’m doing was set in motion so far in the past. Maybe this will help you understand,” he said as he rolled up the sleeve of his charcoal-gray turtleneck. “Maybe this will make you see how similar we really are.”
Mac’s eyes fell on what first looked like a blackened smudge just below the elbow but then sharpened into a swirl of letters that drove a numbing sensation through him inside and out.
It couldn’t be! It just couldn’t be!
He wouldn’t have thought things could have got any worse, but they just had.
From the Empire State Building, Kimberlain went straight to Roosevelt Hospital, where Dr. Simon Kurtz, the assistant chief of emergency medicine, was waiting to see him. Kurtz had been the chief resident on duty the Thanksgiving morning Jason Benbasset and the others had been brought in.
“Do I remember that day?” Kurtz asked, repeating Kimberlain’s question as he shoveled the overly long hair from his forehead. “I still have nightmares about it. I never saw war, but thanks to that day I know what it must look like.”
“How many people died as a result?”
“I can only give you the figures from this hospital. A hefty number were taken to St. Vincent’s as well. But there were thirty-seven DOA here, and another dozen within the next twenty-four hours. It was hell here. An ungodly mess.”
“Do you remember Jason Benbasset being brought in?”
“I heard talk. Never did examine him personally that I recall. No one was asking names. There wasn’t time. And as for faces, well, several of the bodies brought in didn’t have any to speak of. Benbasset was one of the DOAs, I believe.”
“He and the others, their bodies would have been claimed by the next of kin here, correct?”
“Or as close as we could find,” Kurtz said. “Remember, a lot of the victims were from out of town. It wasn’t pleasant making all those phone calls, and add to that the fact that identification in many of the cases was impossible.”
“But all thirty-seven were claimed eventually.”
“I can’t say for sure but—”
“You can’t.”
“The numbers, I mean. I can check for you. It’s all on the computer.”
“Do it.”
Kurtz turned to his computer terminal and started punching keys. It was two minutes before the information he requested came up on the screen. He looked at the white-on-green message quizzica
lly, as if trying to change it with his eyes.
“That’s odd,” he said without turning back toward Kimberlain.
“What is?”
“It’s probably just a foul-up in the paperwork, or maybe my memory’s going on me, but I show only thirty-six bodies claimed from those labeled DOA. Hold on, let me cross-check the death certificates.” A new set of letters and numbers appeared on the screen. “No, thirty-seven death certificates were issued for the DOAs, but only thrity-six bodies were claimed.”
Kimberlain just looked at him.
“I don’t know what you intend to make of this, but you weren’t there. You can’t know what it was like. There were hundreds of wounded that needed to be treated, on top of the dying and the dead. Mistakes could have been made, were made, I’m sure of it. People didn’t have time to keep their clipboards up to date. It was inevitable that certain inconsistencies in the paperwork would show up, but they’re meaningless, I assure you.”
“Maybe,” Kimberlain said matter-of-factly, pulling a photostat of Jason Benbasset’s death certificate from his pocket and handing it across the desk to Kurtz. “I can’t make out the signature on this.”
Kurtz examined it quickly. “Howard Poe. He was one of the neurosurgeons on call that day.”
“Where can I find him now?”
“Private practice on the East Side. Does quite well. One of the best in the business, most say.”
Kimberlain stood up. “Thank you, Doctor. You’ve been very helpful.”
“What was all this about, Mr. Kimberlain? What are you after?”
“Ghosts, Doctor.”
Howard Poe had risen as usual on Sundays at ten A.M. He went into his study to switch on his stereo before doing anything else.
“Hello, Doctor,” came a voice from a chair by the window as he reached for the switch.
“Who are you? How did you get in here?” he demanded, backing up toward the door. There was a revolver in the next room. But the stranger suddenly stood before him, and Poe’s bravado vanished.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“To help you, Doctor,” the Ferryman told him.
“What are—”
“Where did the money come from to start your office?” Kimberlain asked before Poe could finish. “I find the timing of your move to private practice interesting. Four months after a certain terrorist strike three years ago. You remember the strike, don’t you?”
Poe’s heavy swallow spoke for him.
“Your signature is on Jason Benbasset’s death certificate. Only he didn’t die. You or somebody else fabricated his death after somehow saving his life. Make a nice story for the newspapers. Maybe even television.”
Poe stood very straight. “Are you here to blackmail me?”
“All I want is the truth.”
“How’d you find out?”
“That’s my business.”
“Why is this important to you?”
“Stick to the issue at hand. You saved Jason Benbasset’s life and then you signed a fake death certificate, correct?”
Poe winced. “I saved him, but then I … lost him.”
“You mean he died?”
“I mean I lost him.”
Poe told the story from a soft leather chair set next to a wall of cherry-wood bookshelves holding an extensive collection of leather-bound medical books. He still hadn’t turned any lights on, and only a little sunlight penetrated the cracks in his half-drawn vertical blinds.
“I was working on another patient when a pair of men grabbed me. They seemed to know who I was—I don’t know how. They said they were with Jason Benbasset at the hotel when the explosion happened. Or maybe they were waiting for him in the lobby—it’s been so long I can’t remember for certain. Anyway, Benbasset had just been brought in—or more accurately what was left of him had. His injuries were … extreme. He was behind one of the partitions, and as soon as I learned who he was I went to him immediately.”
Poe stopped for a moment to take a deep breath.
“I looked at what was left of him and thought surely he was dead. He had to be, right to the glazed eyes. But then the eyes blinked. His lips moved. He was conscious, damn it. Don’t ask me how. Medically I can’t account for it, but there he was, trying to talk. I lowered my head so that my ear was next to his mouth, and I heard him speak. The words bubbled up inside him, but they emerged clear enough: ‘Save me.’ ”
“And did you?”
“I tried. I’ll spare you the technical details. There wasn’t much left to work with, but with the help of machines I stabilized him. I tried to tell the two men how futile it was, how cruel it would be to prolong his pain when there was no chance of survival. But they were adamant. Obviously Benbasset had issued his orders to them as well. I’ve never seen such loyalty.”
“It must have taken hours,” Kimberlain said, “and required an entire surgical team.”
“Right on both counts. We never could have spared it under the circumstances, but the men fixed things. I never asked how. I didn’t want to know. In all the chaos, I suppose anything was possible. After I failed to persuade them against the surgery, one of them handed me a death certificate that had already been filled out for Benbasset. All I had to do was sign it, perform the operation, and I would be taken care of. I didn’t really understand what that last phrase meant, so I stood my ground and refused to falsify a document.”
The breaths were coming harder now.
“They pulled out a piece of paper with an address on it, the address of my current office. They said it and the practice of the man then occupying it would be mine if I signed. Beneath the note was a folded check. The amount was staggering. There it was, my dream placed within reach, and I grabbed for it because it didn’t seem to make a difference. There was no way Benbasset could survive even the night. I wouldn’t really be lying about anything except the time of death.”
Now Poe’s breathing slowed.
“After the surgery I went back downstairs and worked for hours more on the incomings. It was well after dark when I returned to Benbasset’s room. He was gone without leaving a trace. It was as if he had never been there. No life-support machines. Fresh sheets on the bed. Nobody knew anything. I asked them. I confronted a few of the nurses who’d been on the surgical team. They looked at me like I was crazy, pretended they didn’t know what I was talking about. That’s what I meant when I said I’d lost Benbasset. Literally. I tried to tell myself he died after the surgery while I was downstairs. But then why would the nurses be covering up? Then I realized he did die. The death certificate with my signature was already filed.”
Kimberlain assembled the facts in his mind. He looked for openings, holes in the story he had just been told. “Thirty-seven DOAs were recorded that day, but only thirty-six bodies were claimed,” he noted.
“And I’m sure if you check the log at St. Vincent’s, a similar anomaly will show up in the form of a body that vanished before the family could claim it.”
“Then substituted for Benbasset’s …”
“It wouldn’t be hard,” Poe said, “once they found a corpse with reasonably similar wounds. So long as the facial features were obliterated, no one would know the difference.”
“You’re telling me Benbasset survived. That’s what all this comes down to.”
“He survived that day, yes, but he couldn’t have held out much longer. Physically it wasn’t possible. There just wasn’t enough of him functioning to support life. Both his legs were crushed. One of his arms was gone, and the other was close to it. The right side of his neck was … Well, you get the idea.”
“Yes,” said the Ferryman, “I think I do.”
Kimberlain considered it all in the time it took the elevator to arrive and then descend back to the lobby of Poe’s building. Jason Benbasset had survived the attack that claimed his family through sheer force of will, a will that would have formed a purpose for him in survival even then. Those who advanced the technology
of the military would have to be punished for perpetuating the world that had destroyed him. On that level his desire for vengeance would be intensely personal, as if Lime, Lisa Eiseman, and the others had somehow rigged the bomb at the Marriott Marquis.
Benbasset’s pattern of thinking was linear, predictable in the same ways as that of the killers he had stalked previously. Peet, Quail, and the others had created a purpose for their actions until the actions came to justify themselves. His strike on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade would have evolved with the actualization of his own power. A symmetrical and logical progression culminating in a twisted but fitting end. The difference between the madman and the sane one is that the madman can rationalize anything he wants to do and as a result can do far more.
The elevator doors slid open, and Kimberlain emerged into the lobby. If all this was going to be stopped, the search for Benbasset had to begin as soon as possible. The possibilities would be analyzed, reduced, investigated. A good start would lead ultimately to a satisfactory finish.
The doorman was holding the door open for him, and Kimberlain noticed that he was a different man from the one he had passed not even an hour ago. He was already lunging for the man when several others sprang forward from the lobby’s recesses and alcoves. His gun was drawn now, but the doorman managed to lock it against his body as the figures converged upon him. The Ferryman felt the sting of something in his shoulder and then the long fall into darkness.
In a month long past …
The Mind had stirred after fighting for rest. Long ago, in the first life, its rest would have been called sleep, but the rest no longer felt like sleep—it felt more like sliding into a daydream that runs on and on. Often, too often, the daydream had presented surreal visions of what had been, as if to taunt the Mind with memories of what was now so far removed as to seem never to have been. In the memories there was still the body, so incomplete, so utterly helpless against the shapeless wrath of man.