Deception Point (58 page)

Gabrielle remained in the doorway.

Sexton walked to his desk and set Gabrielle’s Pepsi down on his blotter. He motioned to his leather chair—the position of power. “Have a seat. Enjoy a soda. I’m going to go stick my head in the sink.” He headed for the bathroom.

Gabrielle still wasn’t moving.

“I think I saw a fax in the machine,” Sexton called over his shoulder as he entered the bathroom. S
how her you trust her.
“Have a look at it for me, will you?”

Sexton closed the door and filled the sink with cold water. He splashed it on his face and felt no clearer. This had never happened to him before—being so sure, and being so wrong. Sexton was a man who trusted his instincts, and his instincts told him Gabrielle Ashe had been in his office.

But how? It was impossible.

Sexton told himself to forget about it and focus on the matter at hand.
NASA.
He needed Gabrielle right now. This was no time to alienate her. He needed to know what she knew.
Forget your instincts. You were wrong.

As Sexton dried his face, he threw his head back and took a deep breath. Relax, he told himself.
Don’t get punchy.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply again, feeling better.

When Sexton exited the bathroom, he was relieved to see Gabrielle had acquiesced and come back into his office.
Good
, he thought.
Now we can get to business
. Gabrielle was standing at his fax machine flipping through whatever pages had come in. Sexton was confused, however, when he saw her face. It was a mask of disorientation and fear.

“What is it?” Sexton said, moving toward her.

Gabrielle teetered, as if she were about to pass out.

“What?”

“The meteorite . . .” she choked, her voice frail as her trembling hand held the stack of fax papers out to him. “And your daughter . . . she’s in danger.”

Bewildered, Sexton walked over, and took the fax pages from Gabrielle. The top sheet was a handwritten note. Sexton immediately recognized the writing. The communiqué was awkward and shocking in its simplicity.

Meteorite is fake. Here’s proof. NASA/

White House trying to kill me. Help!—RS

•   •   •

The senator seldom felt totally at a loss of understanding, but as he reread Rachel’s words, he had no idea what to make of them.

The meteorite is a fake? NASA and the White House are trying to kill her?

In a deepening haze, Sexton began sifting through the half dozen sheets. The first page was a computerized image whose heading read “Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR).” The picture appeared to be an ice-sounding of some sort. Sexton saw the extraction pit they had talked about on television. His eye was drawn to what looked like the faint outline of a body floating in the shaft. Then he saw something even more shocking—the clear outline of a second shaft directly beneath where the meteorite had been—as if the stone had been inserted from underneath the ice.

What in the world?

Flipping to the next page, Sexton came face-to-face with a photograph of some sort of living ocean species called a
Bathynomous giganteus.
He stared in utter amazement.
That’s the animal from the meteorite fossils!

Flipping faster now, he saw a graphic display depicting the ionized hydrogen content in the meteorite’s crust. This page had a handwritten scrawl on it:
Slush-hydrogen burn? NASA Expander Cycle Engine?

Sexton could not believe his eyes. With the room starting to spin around him, he flipped to the final page—a photo of a rock containing metallic bubbles that looked exactly like those in the meteorite. Shockingly, the accompanying description said the rock was the product of oceanic volcanism.
A rock from the ocean?
Sexton wondered.
But NASA said chondrules form only in space!

Sexton set the sheets down on his desk and collapsed in his chair. It had taken him only fifteen seconds to piece together everything he was looking at. The implications of the images on the papers were crystal clear. Anyone with half a brain could see what these photos proved.

The NASA meteorite is a fake!

No day in Sexton’s career had been filled with such extreme highs and lows. Today had been a roller-coaster ride of hope and despair. Sexton’s bafflement over how this enormous scam could possibly have been pulled off evaporated into irrelevance when he realized what the scam meant for him politically.

W
hen I go public with this information, the presidency is mine!

In his upwelling of celebration, Senator Sedgewick Sexton had momentarily forgotten his daughter’s claim that she was in trouble.

“Rachel is in danger,” Gabrielle said. “Her note says NASA and the White House are trying to—”

Sexton’s fax machine suddenly began ringing again. Gabrielle wheeled and stared at the machine. Sexton found himself staring too. He could not imagine what else Rachel could be sending him. More proof? How much more could there be?
This is plenty!

When the fax machine answered the call, however, no pages came through. The machine, detecting no data signal, had switched to its answering machine feature.

“Hello,” Sexton’s outbound message crackled. “This is the office of Senator Sedgewick Sexton. If you are trying to send a fax, you may transmit at any time. If not, you may leave a message at the tone.”

Before Sexton could pick up, the machine beeped.

“Senator Sexton?” The man’s voice had a lucid rawness to it. “This is William Pickering, director of the National Reconnaissance Office. You’re probably not in the office at this hour, but I need to speak immediately.” He paused as if waiting for someone to pick up.

Gabrielle reached to pick up the receiver.

Sexton grabbed her hand and violently yanked it away.

Gabrielle looked stunned. “But that’s the director of—”

“Senator,” Pickering continued, sounding almost relieved that no one had picked up. “I’m afraid I am calling with some very troubling news. I’ve just received word that your daughter Rachel is in extreme danger. I have a team trying to help her as we speak. I cannot talk in detail about the situation on the phone, but I was just informed she may have faxed you
some data relating to the NASA meteorite. I have not seen the data, nor do I know what it is, but the people threatening your daughter have just warned me that if you or anyone goes public with the information, your daughter will die. I’m sorry to be so blunt, sir; I do it for clarity’s sake. Your daughter’s life is being threatened. If she has indeed faxed you something, do not share it with anyone. Not yet. Your daughter’s life depends on it. Stay where you are. I will be there shortly.” He paused. “With luck, senator, all of this will be resolved by the time you wake up. If, by chance, you get this message before I arrive at your office, stay where you are and call no one. I am doing everything in my power to get your daughter back safely.”

Pickering hung up.

Gabrielle was trembling. “Rachel is a hostage?”

Sexton sensed that even in her disillusionment with him, Gabrielle felt a pained empathy to think of a bright young woman in danger. Oddly, Sexton was having trouble mustering the same emotions. Most of him felt like a child who had just been given his most wanted Christmas present, and he refused to let anyone yank it out of his hands.

Pickering wants me to be quiet about this?

He stood a moment, trying to decide what all of this meant. In a cold, calculating side of his mind, Sexton felt the machinery beginning to turn—a political computer, playing out every scenario and evaluating each outcome. He glanced at the stack of faxes in his hands and began to sense the raw power of the images. This NASA meteorite had shattered his dream of the presidency. But it was all a lie. A construct. Now, those who did this would pay. The meteorite that his enemies had created to destroy him would now make him powerful beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. His daughter had seen to that.

There is only one acceptable outcome,
he knew.
Only one course of action for a true leader to take.

Feeling hypnotized by the shining images of his own resurrection, Sexton was drifting through a fog as he crossed the room. He went to his copy machine and turned it on, preparing to copy the papers Rachel had faxed him.

“What are you doing?” Gabrielle demanded, sounding bewildered.

“They won’t kill Rachel,” Sexton declared. Even if something went wrong, Sexton knew losing his daughter to the enemy would only make him more powerful still. Either way he would win. Acceptable risk.

“Who are those copies for?” Gabrielle demanded. “William Pickering said not to tell anyone!”

Sexton turned from the machine and looked at Gabrielle, amazed by how unattractive he suddenly found her. In that instant, Senator Sexton was an island. Untouchable. Everything he needed to accomplish his dreams was now in his hands. Nothing could stop him now. Not claims of bribery. Not rumors of sex. Nothing.

“Go home, Gabrielle. I have no more use for you.”

I
t’s over,
Rachel thought.

She and Tolland sat side by side on the deck staring up into the barrel of the Delta soldier’s machine gun. Unfortunately, Pickering now knew where Rachel had sent the fax. The office of Senator Sedgewick Sexton.

Rachel doubted her father would ever receive the phone message Pickering had just left him. Pickering could probably get to Sexton’s office well before anyone else this morning. If Pickering could get in, quietly remove the fax, and delete the phone message before Sexton arrived, there would be no need to harm the senator. William Pickering was probably one of the few people in Washington who could finagle entry to a U.S. senator’s office with no fanfare. Rachel was always amazed at what could be accomplished “in the name of national security.”

Of course if that fails,
Rachel thought,
Pickering could just fly by and send a Hellfire missile through the window and blow up the fax machine.
Something told her this would not be necessary.

Sitting close to Tolland now, Rachel was surprised to feel his
hand gently slip into hers. His touch had a tender strength, and their fingers intertwined so naturally that Rachel felt like they’d done this for a lifetime. All she wanted right now was to lie in his arms, sheltered from the oppressive roar of the night sea spiraling around them.

Never,
she realized.
It was not to be.

•   •   •

Michael Tolland felt like a man who had found hope on the way to the gallows.

Life is mocking me.

For years since Celia’s death, Tolland had endured nights when he’d wanted to die, hours of pain and loneliness that seemed only escapable by ending it all. And yet he had chosen life, telling himself he could make it alone. Today, for the first time, Tolland had begun to understand what his friends had been telling him all along.

Mike, you don’t have to make it alone. You’ll find another love.

Rachel’s hand in his made this irony that much harder to swallow. Fate had cruel timing. He felt as if layers of armor were crumbling away from his heart. For an instant, on the tired decks of the
Goya,
Tolland sensed Celia’s ghost looking over him as she often did. Her voice was in the rushing water . . . speaking the last words she’d spoken to him in life.

“You’re a survivor,” her voice whispered. “Promise me you’ll find another love.”

“I’ll never want another,” Tolland had told her.

Celia’s smile was filled with wisdom. “You’ll have to learn.”

Now, on the deck of the
Goya,
Tolland realized, he was learning. A deep emotion welled suddenly in his soul. He realized it was happiness.

And with it came an overpowering will to live.

•   •   •

Pickering felt oddly detached as he moved toward the two prisoners. He stopped in front of Rachel, vaguely surprised that this was not harder for him.

“Sometimes,” he said, “circumstances raise impossible decisions.”

Rachel’s eyes were unyielding. “You created these circumstances.”

“War involves casualties,” Pickering said, his voice firmer now.
Ask Diana Pickering, or any of those who die every year defending this nation.
“You of all people should understand that, Rachel.” His eyes focused in on her.
“Iactura paucorum serva multos.”

He could see she recognized the words—almost a cliché in national security circles.
Sacrifice the few to save the many.

Rachel eyed him with obvious disgust. “And now Michael and I have become part of your
few?”

Pickering considered it. There was no other way. He turned to Delta-One. “Release your partner and end this.”

Delta-One nodded.

Pickering took a long last look at Rachel and then strode to the ship’s nearby portside railing, staring out at the sea racing by. This was something he preferred not to watch.

•   •   •

Delta-One felt empowered as he gripped his weapon and glanced over at his partner dangling in the clamps. All that remained was to close the trapdoors beneath Delta-Two’s feet, free him from the clamps, and eliminate Rachel Sexton and Michael Tolland.

Unfortunately, Delta-One had seen the complexity of the control panel near the trapdoor—a series of unmarked levers and dials that apparently controlled the trapdoor, the winch motor, and numerous other commands. He had no intention of hitting the wrong lever and risking his partner’s life by mistakenly dropping the sub into the sea.

Eliminate all risk. Never rush.

He would force Tolland to perform the actual release. And to ensure he did not try anything tricky, Delta-One would take out insurance known in his business as “biological collateral.”

Use your adversaries against one another.

Delta-One swung the gun barrel directly into Rachel’s face, stopping only inches from her forehead. Rachel closed her eyes, and Delta-One could see Tolland’s fists clench in a protective anger.