3 Great Thrillers

by Churton, Alex; Churton, Toby; Locke, John; Lustbader, Eric van; van Lustbader, Eric

  Across the room he sees Gus lumber back toward him from a butter-yellow kitchen. The Magnum is pointed at the floor. Gus says something to him, gesturing emphatically with his free hand, but Jack is still deaf from the aftermath of the gunshots, possibly in shock, and keeps on coming.

  He sidesteps a precariously stacked pile of books, stumbles clumsily over another, larger mound. It has one red mark on its back, like a chalk mark or a brand. Then it hits him. First, his balance deserts him, then his legs turn watery, and he falls.

  On his hands and knees, he finds himself not six inches from a thin, scarred face. The eyes, open wide, stare back at him. Then he becomes aware of the trickle of blood leaking from the corner of the half-open mouth, the horrific stench of offal, and he screams, leaping backwards, tripping over a pair of boots, tumbling onto his backside, his legs in the air. It would be funny if Jack weren’t so terrified. He pushes himself to his feet, smacks blindly into the wall in a desperate attempt to run out of the house. His only thought is to get as far away from the dead man as he can.

  He’s crying, and he’s sick, vomiting onto the floor. He can’t get the sight of those staring eyes out of his mind. He wants only to have time run backwards, to be back in Gus’s air-conditioned Continental, safe and secure, before this all began.

  Then Gus grabs him by the collar, hauls him off his feet. Jack is hysterical, kicking and screaming, and the fact that he’s still half-deaf makes everything worse, as if he’s living out a nightmare from which he can’t pinch himself awake. Nothing is real, and yet everything is all too real: those eyes, the blood drooling out of the half-open mouth, the stench of excrement and death, of a human body letting go of life. It’s all too much. His fists beat a silent tattoo against Gus’s shoulders; his shoes swing back and forth into Gus’s shins.

  Then he’s outside and Gus has let him go and he doubles over, gagging and retching, feeling as if every atom in his body is exploding in pain and terror. He is empty inside. His guts feel as if they have been turned inside out. Every nerve in his body is firing at once, making his limbs jump, his torso twitch.

  The night enfolds him, or is it Gus? Gradually, he comes down from the precipice where shock and terror pushed him. Gradually, he becomes aware that Gus has gathered him into his arms and is rocking him like a baby.

  Then he hears the sirens start up and knows his hearing is coming back. At first they’re a long way off, but quite rapidly they come nearer and nearer.

  “You okay t’go?” Gus asks.

  Jack clings to him tightly, his face buried in Gus’s massive chest.

  With Jack in his arms, Gus gets to his feet. He takes Jack back to the Continental, fires the ignition. They’re just turning the corner onto Sixth Street NE when the rear window is briefly awash in red and white flashing lights. Sirens scream close at hand, then rapidly diminish as Gus puts on speed.

  A dozen gray blocks later, Gus pulls up to a phone booth.

  “I gotta make a call,” he says. “On’y be a minute, kid, ’kay?” His eyes study Jack slowly, carefully. “You’ll be able to see me the whole time.”

  Jack watches Gus squeeze half his bulk into the phone booth, feed the slot. His teeth start to chatter. Chills run through him, and as he imagines that that horrific stench has invaded the car, he starts crying again.

  It’s only when he sees Gus striding back that he wipes his eyes and nose. He hiccups once as Gus slides behind the wheel. They sit in silence for a time. Gus stares straight ahead. Jack tries to piece himself together, but every now and again a half-stifled sob escapes him.

  Finally, he manages, “Was that … was that …?”

  “The Marmoset?” Gus nods. “Yeah, that was him.”

  “What … what …?”

  Gus sighs. “Remember that double murder at McMillan Reservoir Stanz wants me t’help him with? The Marmoset was my man onna case.” Gus looks around. “He got close to the bone, seems like.”

  “Too close,” Jack says with a shiver.

  Gus puts his arm across the seat back. “Anyway, ain’t nuthin’ fo’ you t’worry yo’self ’bout.” His brows converge in worry. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I was thinking of the Marmoset,” Jack says. “I was thinking that he should be buried, not pawed at by people who never knew him.”

  For a long time nothing more is said. At last, Gus fires the ignition. After putting the car in gear, he eases out into the street.

  Jack doesn’t know where they’re headed; he doesn’t care. He has sunk back into the world he knew through newspapers, TV, and the movies must exist, yet could never have imagined. It has come upon him too soon, its implications too much for him to handle. He wonders at all the tears he’s shed because he can’t remember shedding even one before this. He made it an iron-bound rule never to cry when his father beat him, not even when his father slunk back across the apartment and the strains of “California Dreamin’” winked out like a fearful light. He never cried when Andre and his crew took him into the alley behind the electronics store. Tonight, it seems, he can’t stop.

  It takes Gus just eleven minutes to get to 3001 Connecticut Avenue NW, the front entrance to the National Zoo.

  Jack turns, peers out the window. “Gus, it’s night. The zoo isn’t open at night.”

  Gus opens the door. “Who says it ain’t?”

  “Looka how small he is.” Gus stares up through the branches at the tiny black-and-white face staring down at them. There are other marmosets elsewhere in the large cage, but this one, having taken notice of them, has come the closest. The others are busy eating fruit held in their claws or gnawing at the tree with startlingly long lower incisors.

  Jack studies the black eyes staring down at him. The face looks so full of intelligence and insight, as if the marmoset sees a world at once smaller and bigger than he does.

  “What’s he thinking?” Jack says.

  “Who knows?”

  “That’s just it.” Jack’s voice is full of wonder. “No one knows.”

  Gus puts his arm protectively around Jack’s shoulders. “Don’t get too close now, kid,” he says gruffly. “Mebbe these things bite.”

  Jack doesn’t think to ask Gus how he managed to get the zoo open at this hour, because he knows Gus won’t tell him. Anyway, he doesn’t want to spoil the magic of the moment, which has temporarily banished all thoughts of death, thousand-mile stares, the stench of death. There is life here, strange and beautiful, its strangeness making it all the more vibrant. Jack feels his heart beating strongly in his chest, and a kind of warmth suffuses him.

  “Hello, marmoset,” he says. “My name is Jack.”

  20

  Alli Carson, being fed a hamburger, rare, with mustard and slices of crisp Mrs. Fanning’s bread-and-butter pickles, looked into Ronnie Kray’s face, so close to hers. His expression was altogether unthreatening. He might have been a mother bird feeding her chick.

  She savored the tastes in her mouth, then, almost reluctantly, she swallowed. In his other hand he held a coffee milk shake with one of those bendy straws stuck into its thick foam. He brought the straw to her lips and she sucked down the sweet drink.

  “How do you know my favorite foods?” she asked quietly. She didn’t fear him now. She had learned that she was allowed to speak without permission during mealtimes.

  Kray smiled in a way that somehow drew her to him. “I’m like a parent,” he said in a voice as quiet as hers. “I’m the father you always dreamed of having, but never thought you would.”

  She made a motion with her head, and he gave her more burger. While she chewed, her eyes never left his face.

  “I know what you like,” he continued. “And what you don’t. Why would I want to know that, Alli? Because I value you, because I want to please you.”

  Alli sucked down more of the coffee milk shake, swallowed. “Then why am I bound to this chair?”

  “I bought that chair in Mexico seven years ago, at the same time I purchased a painted s
ugar skull, on the Day of the Dead. The chair is my most prized possession; you’re privileged to sit in it. Up until I put you into it, only I have sat in it.”

  Intuiting her hunger, he fed her the last of the hamburger. “Do you know about the Day of the Dead, Alli? No? It’s the one day of the year when the door between life and death is open. When those alive may talk to those who are dead. If they believe.” He cocked his head. “Tell me, Alli, what is it you believe in?”

  She blinked. “I … I don’t know what you mean.”

  He hunched forward, forearms on his knees. “Do you believe in God?”

  “Yes,” she said immediately.

  “Do you truly believe in God—or are you parroting something your parents believe?”

  She looked at him for a moment, her mouth dry. Once again, it was as if he had peered down into the depths of her soul; it was as if he knew her from the inside out.

  “I’m … I’m not supposed to say.”

  “There you have it, Alli. All your life you’ve been walled away from the rest of the world. You’ve been told what to say and what to think. But I know you better. I know you have your own thoughts, your own beliefs. I won’t judge you the way your parents do. And there’s no one here, except you and me.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Ah, the others.” Leaning in, Kray wiped the corners of her mouth. “I’ll tell you a secret, Alli, because you’ve earned it. There are no others. There’s only me. Me and my shadow.” He chuckled.

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  “Lessons need to be learned, Alli. You’re beginning to understand that now. Lessons learned obviate the need for lying. And, here’s another secret I want to share with you: I don’t enjoy lying to you.” He sat back. “You’re special, you see, but not in the way your parents have hammered into your head.”

  Loosening the bonds on her wrists, he took her hands in his and said, “You and I, Alli, together need to undo all the senseless hammering, all the disservice that’s been done to you. Welcome to the beginning. In this place, you’re free to speak your heart. You’re freer than you’ve ever been in your life.” He let go of her hands. “Now, will you tell me the truth? Do you believe in God?”

  Alli studied him. After the whirl of confusion, doubt, and fear, her mind seemed clearer than it had ever been. How could that be? she asked herself. Looking into Kray’s face, she saw that in time she’d have the answer.

  “No,” she said, her voice firm. “The idea that there’s an old bearded man somewhere in heaven who created the world, who listens to our prayers, who forgives us our sins makes no sense to me. That Eve was made from Adam’s rib, how stupid is that?”

  Ronnie Kray regarded her with a contemplative air. “And do you believe in your country—in the United States?”

  “Of course I do.” She hesitated. “But …”

  Kray said nothing, and his absolute calmness soothed her.

  Now the dam broke, and out gushed feelings she’d been holding inside ever since Emma, her only confidante, had died. “I hate how the country’s become a fortress. The president and his people have nothing but utter contempt for us. They can do anything, say anything, wriggle out of any wrongdoing, sling every kind of mud, hire people who slander their political enemies, and no one has the guts to stand up and say they’re wrong, they’re killing hundreds of people every day, they’ve trampled all over due process, they’ve blurred the separation of church and state, because anyone who dares oppose them is immediately branded a traitor, a dangerous left-wing lunatic, or both.”

  “They’ve done that to your father.”

  “Yes.”

  “But he’s survived their slings and arrows to become the next president.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet he hasn’t spoken out, he hasn’t denounced the alliance between the Christian fundamentalists and the Administration. Does that mean he agrees with the present Administration? Did the Administration’s media attack dogs pull their punches in return for his lack of criticism?”

  She could sense him preparing to leave, and she felt a sharp pang of imminent loss.

  “What do you think he prays for when he and your mother attend church every Sunday?”

  “I …” All at once confusion overwhelmed her again. “I don’t know.”

  “Now you have surprised me,” Kray said.

  She heard the sharp disapproval in his voice, and her blood ran cold.

  “I—”

  Kray put a forefinger across his lips. “Mealtime’s over.”

  Retying her wrists, he rose, vanishing into the gloom.

  21

  Nina Miller caught Jack’s call while she was in the middle of the Potomac.

  “Excuse me, sir,” she said.

  “One moment,” Dennis Paull said. “I need to see the Mermaid.”

  Nina squinted into the wind. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “Just set it up,” Paull said brusquely.

  She gave him a curt nod as she walked aft, away from the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. They were on his 185-foot yacht, big enough to contain an aft upper deck that served as a pad on which the small private helicopter that had brought Nina sat, its rotors quivering and flexing in the wind gusts. The pilot inside the cockpit was ready to lift off at a moment’s notice.

  Paull watched Nina out of the corner of his eye as she lit a clove cigarette, her back to him, cell phone to her left ear. He worried about her. He worried whether he could trust her. But then, Dennis Paull worried about every person he spoke to or came in contact with during his grueling twenty-hour days. He was playing a dangerous game, and no one knew it better than he did. Over the years, how many people had he or his people uncovered who were playing their own dangerous games? Of course, he was at the eye of the storm, the calm center from which, like an Olympian god, he could look in all directions at once. But he didn’t fool himself; he didn’t allow his exalted position at the right hand of the president to dull his caution or dim his vigilance.

  He’d been living on a knife-edge for almost two years now, the midpoint of the president’s second term in office. His stomach always hurt; his nerves vibrated so badly that he couldn’t recall the last time he had slept soundly. Instead, he’d taught himself the art of catnapping—five minutes here, fifteen there—during the day. In the dead of night, as one of his days bled into the next, he sipped strong black coffee and carried out the spinning of his web. For good or ill, he was in too deep now to have second thoughts, for if he were to succeed, he needed to commit to his plan absolutely. Any waver of intent would be lethal.

  He put on the smile he used for intimates—if one could use that word for those in his inner circle, because Secretary Paull had no true intimates. This the job had taught him a long, painful time ago.

  His thoughts threaded away on the spume purling from the sleek bow of his yacht as Nina walked back to where he stood just forward of the cabin. It was a blustery day, spitting intermittently. Not a fit day for a boat ride, which was why Paull was here on the water instead of in an office that might very well be bugged or an open space where whatever he said was at the mercy of a parabolic microphone on the top of some innocuous-looking van. His yacht was swept three times a day for bugs, and that included the entire hull. Plus there were sophisticated jamming devices fore and aft installed by a friend of his at DARPA, the Department of Defense’s advanced weapons program.

  To the uninitiated, Paull mused, these precautions might seem the product of paranoia, but as William S. Burroughs aptly said, Sometimes paranoia’s just having all the facts.

  “That was McClure,” Nina said, folding away her phone. “He wants me to meet him at the headquarters of the First American Secular Revivalists.”

  Paull didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s he doing there? FASR is supposed to be Hugh Garner’s responsibility.”

  “Garner’s got it in for McClure.”

  They were into the wind,
no one who wasn’t in spitting distance could hear them, not even the crew, who Paull had made certain were all inside. “What the hell is McClure up to?”

  “I don’t know,” Nina confessed, “but it seems clear he doesn’t believe E-Two is behind the kidnapping.”

  “Then who the hell is?”

  “I don’t know, sir, but I have a feeling McClure is closer to finding out than we are.”

  The secretary looked thoughtful. “From now on, I want you to stick close to him.”

  Nina took a drag on her clove cigarette. “How close?”

  The secretary’s eyes bored into hers. “Do whatever it takes to keep him close. We’re rapidly running out of time and space to maneuver.”

  Nina’s gaze was cool and steady. “How does it feel, I wonder, to pimp someone else out?”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “You’d better get over there pronto.”

  Nina turned, headed aft.

  “And Nina,” he called after her.

  She turned back, pulled her hair off her face.

  “Make sure you start thinking of him as Jack.”

  Inside the polished mahogany cabin, the yacht’s captain ignored the helicopter as its rotors started up. A moment later, it had lifted off with the woman passenger aboard. The captain didn’t know her name, didn’t care what it was. His job was simple and he was doing it now, transcribing onto the tiny keypad of his BlackBerry from scribbled notes he’d taken of the conversation Secretary Paull had just had with the visitor. rowing up with a deaf sister had made him proficient in lip-reading. Finished with the transcription, he pressed the SEND key, and the e-mail was instantaneously transmitted directly to wherever the president was at the moment, no doubt eagerly awaiting its arrival.

  His job concluded for the time being, the captain set his BlackBerry down beside the pair of powerful binoculars through which he’d viewed the conversation in question. Then he got back to maneuvering the yacht through the wind-tossed afternoon. He’d never had an incident at sea aboard any of the yachts he’d captained, and he wasn’t about to start now.