World Without End (19 page)

Conway had been glued to the floor by the rubber foam; he couldn't have been just picked up.

Rombardo was lying. He wasn't from the IWAC group and he hadn't been sent here by Bouchard. Conway felt a cold sweat break over his body.

Smiling, Rombardo said, "So, what really went down inside the lab?"

He won't kill you here, Conway thought. He'll pump you for information first and then report back to Angel Eyes. Just play it cool and make him disappear, and then get on the horn to Bouchard.

The keypad with the nurse call button was lying just inches from Conway's hand. He didn't take his eyes of Rombardo.

"Steve?"

"What?"

"What happened inside the lab?"

"I don't know," Conway said and then thought, Too quick, I should have paused.

"You must remember something."

"I just woke up. My head… it feels like a fog."

"Well, take a minute or so and think it through. This is important."

Conway took a few minutes. He thought about Jonathan King's suspicious heart attack in the middle of the night. So many chemicals existed that could mimic a heart attack and then disappear in your blood. The autopsy report would never catch it. That's what those two dicks were saying in the air, remember? Inject him behind the ear so it looks like a heart attack.

"I can't remember," Conway said.

"What's the deal?"

"The deal?"

"Yeah, why are you being so evasive?"

"I've never met you before."

"I just told you who I was."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Rombardo's head tilted to the side, his eyes narrowing, his face quizzical. When he turned to put the coffee cup down on the tray, Conway grabbed the keypad, shoved his hand under the blanket and pressed the call button for the nurse.

Rombardo stood up, his knees cracking, and sat down on the bed next to Conway's waist.

"I think you're failing to grasp the reality of your situation here,"

Rombardo said, his tone low.

"You're supposed to be in our morgue looking like something left on the grill too long. Only you lucked out. You survived. Now what, exactly, do you think is going to happen next? You think, what, you're going to go back to sleep and when you wake up it's all going to be over? That you're going to walk out of here? Angel Eyes doesn't leave loose ends, Steve. He knows you're alive. You need me to help you. I need some answers. Now."

The door opened and the nurse walked in all bright and sunny.

"Everything okay, Mr. Conway?"

Conway didn't say anything, didn't take his eyes off Rombardo.

"Everything's fine, nurse," Rombardo said.

"Will you excuse us for a moment."

"You can stay right here," Conway said.

"Detective Rombardo is on his way out."

Rombardo took in a deep breath through his nose and sighed. Then he ran his tongue over his front teeth, making a sucking sound. He stood up.

"Nurse, do me a favor. Call the doctor and ask him to examine Mr.

Conway's head. I think he's suffered some serious brain damage."

Rombardo removed a business card from his shirt pocket. He placed it on Conway's chest and then leaned into his ear. Conway could smell the coffee and sour milk on the detective's breath.

"Call me when you find your brain," Rombardo whispered.

"But if I were you, I wouldn't take too much time. I have it on good authority that Angel Eyes and his boys are still in town. The next time you close your eyes might be your last."

Rombardo winked, straightened up, and sauntered out of the room.

Lunch was a dry tuna salad sandwich on rye bread served on a plate with a bag of chips, the obligatory soggy pickle, and a brownie so dry it crumbled like dust in his mouth. He ate it eagerly and washed the awful taste away with a Dr. Pepper. When he was done, he read the past three editions of the local Austin paper.

The airport explosions were being called "a random act of terror" generated by what was believed to be the elusive leader of a global terrorist unit, a man who counterterrorism experts from the CIA and FBI called Angel Eyes. Sources close to the investigation revealed that the random attack was done to "wake America up to their vulnerabilities," and that the FBI and CIA were in the process of exploring a number of different leads.

The papers didn't mention any specific reason for the attack, but compared it to Oklahoma. Without any specifics on Angel Eyes, the papers and media tried to keep interest in the story alive with bold, dramatic color photos and recorded footage of the airport carnage and close-up pictures of the terrified, shocked, and crying faces of the wounded and the lost. Personal profiles of the sixteen people who died from the explosion were written. None of the people mentioned were Delburn employees.

The Praxis fire had also been front-page news, but, with no mention of the bomb call and the fake firemen and bomb technicians that had scoured through the lab, the story had died. And no mention of Randy Scott's death.

Behind the lines of black text, Conway could see the CIA at work, using its influence and various sources and favors to plant false leads with the hope that the story would die down. And it probably would as long as no one made the connection between the Praxis fire and Angel Eyes.

The story that dominated the news was the discovery of CIA-counterterrorism-expert John McFadden who, over a twenty-year period, had launched a one-man spy war that led to the loss of priceless spy craft technology and major assets a CIA term for valuable double agents. McFadden's victim list, they believed, stretched into well over thirty. Conway read the papers and then followed the story on CNN and found it a perfect match to Rombardo's earlier words.

Conway was exhausted. He had been out cold for three days, and all he wanted to do was sleep. He fought it and kept reading the stories until his eyes started to shut. Conway tossed the newspapers on the chair where Rombardo had sat earlier. Just close your eyes and get a quick rest. Right. A quick catnap. That wasn't really sleeping. He would rest and then watch CNN again, see if they had discovered the truth. Conway closed his eyes and within minutes drifted off to a deep sleep.

In the dream he was trapped in the deepest part of the ocean; the water around him was black and as thick as paint and so cold that it chilled him to the bone. Small pairs of green eyes the size of marbles glowed in the murky water and disappeared. From somewhere in front of him he heard someone screaming, muted by the water. It was Pasha's voice. She was screaming for help. Hang on, Pasha, he thought as he swam toward her. Pasha's screams grew louder. Hang on, I'm almost there. Out of the blackness came the extended jaws of an enormous great white shark, its jagged, arrow-shaped teeth just inches from his face. Conway tried to swim away, but the jaws had already snapped around his body with a terrifying force. He was being ripped apart, about to be eaten alive, chunk by chunk.

Steve Conway did not wake from the dream. The drugs that had been placed in his food guaranteed he would stay under for several hours. He did not stir when the door to his room began to open.

The badge with the photo ID pinned to his white doctor's coat announced him as Dr. Peter Bensen, a visiting neurologist from Houston. Amon Faust wasn't prone to worry or concern the way most people are and, as a result, moved through life with a rare brand of steely confidence. If he was stopped, he could easily answer questions on neurology, and, if someone decided to investigate, a quick call to the Brazosport Memorial Hospital in Houston would verify that Dr. Bensen was indeed a member of the staff.

The door closed with a soft click. Stephen Conway lay still in the bed, his mouth parted open, as if posing a question. The combination of Valium and the sleeping medication Zolpidem that Gunther had mixed into Stephen's lunch and soda would keep Stephen under for several hours. What Faust needed to do would take less than a minute.

The semidark room was lit up with slivers of moonlight. He walked toward the bed, breathing in the air laden with viruses that were now deep inside the soft tissue of his lungs. The thought didn't unnerve him. True, he wished he could be wearing his biohazard mask with its excellent filtering system, but one did not travel outside wearing such things unless one wanted to draw attention.

Next to the bed now and close to the smell of Stephen's body odor and bad breath, packed with dead tuna and disease, too close to the sickening plague of whatever germs lay incubating on the bed sheets.

With his latex-covered hand, Faust reached underneath his white coat and removed the thin eight-by-ten-inch envelope wedged between the back waistband of his white pants. He placed it on the nightstand and rested the envelope so that it faced Stephen.

In the sliver of moonlight Stephen's eyes fluttered behind closed lids, moving in all directions, as if trying to sight an invisible enemy that would at any second descend from the sky and destroy him. He swallowed, his brow furrowing. A sweat had broken out on his forehead.

What nightmare has gripped you this time, Stephen?

We never outgrow our childhood pain and fear; we merely catalogue it and, when it becomes visible in our adult life, if we are educated and lucky, we can talk away the anger. Faust did not often reflect on his childhood, but now, staring at Conway, he was aware of the common stigma they both shared: They were both orphans. They had overcome their miserable conditions and had emerged victorious. We are warriors, you and I. We are gladiators.

Faust bent forward until his eyes were inches from Stephen's. Gently, he cupped the man's face in his latex-covered hands and using his thumbs pulled back Stephen's eyelids. Stephen Conway stared back at him.

"You don't have to travel this road alone, Stephen. I will be there with you. I will keep you safe. I won't let them hurt you. You have my word."

Faust took notice of the bandage on Stephen's forehead, directly above the eyebrow. He leaned in closer and, on a clean patch of skin, kissed Stephen on the forehead. Faust eased Stephen's head back against the pillow and exited the room.

Gunther was dressed as an orderly and was still regaling the two plump nurses at the nurse's station with an animated story when Faust walked up the hall. He could feel Stephen's sweat his essence lingering on his lips.

An orderly stopped emptying the trash to stare at the odd, euphoric look on Dr. Bensen's face. Amon Faust didn't see the man. He was lost deep in the warm beating drums of his heart, enraptured with the thrill of joint exposure, this act of coupling, of becoming one with Stephen, the memory of this shared, intimate moment now forever sealed inside the great expanse of his scarlet kingdom.

John Riley leaned back in his swivel chair and rubbed his eyes. For the past two hours he had been working on an Excel spreadsheet on the computer monitor set up in the Pottery Barn walnut armoire that acted as his desk. Numbers danced in his head. The window on his left was cracked open, and he heard the giggles and laughter of children. He opened his eyes, turned his chair around and leaned forward and pressed his head against the cold glass. It was Halloween night, and kids dressed up in their costumes marched up and down Mount Vernon Street with their parents under the glow of old-fashioned streetlights on Boston's Beacon Hill.

Three years ago, Riley would have been out at a bar getting shit-faced.

He'd pick up one of those pretty college girls found in abundance at the local bar, The Hill, and then would invite her back to his old place, drink some more, maybe do a little blow. The next morning he would wake up naked and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, his mind would be howling.

Those days were gone, he reminded himself. A thing of the past. He had shut the door on that world. Forever.

It was all about second chances. That's what his mother had told him.

No matter how bad yesterday was, tomorrow was a chance to start over.

His mother was full of such sayings. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Don't grow old alone. If you can't love yourself, you can't love anyone else. And his all-time favorite: It's all about choices.

As a kid, even as an adult in his early twenties, John Riley had never paid much attention to her words. They seemed the byproducts of another era, some sort of weird Leave It to Beaver universe where your dad was an actual physical presence in your life, this warm, caring dude who wore cardigan sweaters and asked you how your school day was while smoking a pipe and petting the happy dog wagging its tail at his feet. Right. Real life was your dad dying in an auto accident just before you were born. Real life was a cramped, two-bedroom apartment with cracked ceilings spotted with brown watermarks, worn tread marks in the dark blue carpet, the windows opened to that awful city smell and neighbors arguing in Spanish and Vietnamese in the armpit of the universe, downtown Lynn, Massachusetts, a place where his mom had to work hard for simple things like food and clothes and school supplies.

And you know the amazing thing? She never complained about it. During those awful early years, she had to work two jobs just to make ends meet. She would drive him to school and then park at Wonderland and then take the Blue Line into downtown Boston to her job as a secretary for an insurance company that gave her flex time and health and dental insurance but couldn't provide the money for the extra things that always popped up, the problems with the Buick station wagon with the big rust pockets what his friends loved to call the Ass Mobile. Three night-shifts a week and weekend mornings at the local Dunkin Donuts covered the numerous car breakdowns but never enough for a new car. But she never complained. The grind of the second job left her with permanent dark circles under her eyes, but she always came home with a smile and would help him with his homework or just talk. After Sunday morning church, she would take him to Friendly's for cheeseburgers and, if there was money left over at the end of the month, she would take him to a ball game instead of doing something nice for herself.