The Furies (31 page)

Large plumes of smoke had been rising from the outbuildings for the past ten minutes. Larson guessed that somehow or other, Van had caused an explosion in the methamphetamine lab beneath the farm. Blowing up a meth lab probably wasn't so difficult; because the drug cookers worked with volatile chemicals, they set off accidental explosions all the time. Although Larson was a bit disturbed by the possibility that his informant had deliberately obliterated the place, he wasn't going to lose any sleep over it. He had little sympathy for meth gangs, Amish or otherwise.

Then they saw the first signs of activity in the barnyard, just as Van had predicted. The surveillance video from the Reaper showed dozens of people running out of the barn and spreading across a grass-covered area. When the drone's cameras zoomed in on the running figures, Larson was surprised to see that most were women. Some wore long, black, Amish-looking dresses, but others wore fancy colorful gowns. He started to wonder if the community was running a prostitution ring as well as a drug operation. But an even bigger surprise was the sheer size of the crowd. After several minutes at least five hundred people had fled from the barn and sprawled on the grass outside. Larson shook his head, unable to figure it out.

And then, after a few more minutes, he got a call on his cell phone. He looked at the caller ID and saw it was his informant. He answered the phone before the second ring. “What the fuck's going on, Van? What's with all the women?”

“Calm down, man. You're gonna give yourself a fucking stroke.”

“You said we'd see evidence of a drug operation, but I don't know what the hell I'm looking at. It's like a fucking ballroom-dancing party down there.”

“If you just shut the fuck up for a second, I'll show you the evidence. Point the cameras at the far left side of the barnyard.”

“Left side? What the fuck do you mean? From what perspective?”

“From the back of the barn. Just look near the yard's southern wall.”

Larson repeated the instructions to Lieutenant Sims, who fiddled with the joystick on his computer. The drone shifted the camera lens until the screen of Larson's laptop showed the area near the wall. About a dozen people were there, most of them on their feet and rushing back to the barn. But one figure in particular caught his attention, a man in Amish clothes lying facedown on the ground. Larson pointed at the screen. “Zoom in on that guy,” he told Sims.

The lieutenant increased the magnification. On the screen, two men approached the prone figure and bent over to pick him up. One of them was Amish, but the other man wore normal clothes. He was big too, and his skin was dark. Larson felt a jolt of adrenaline. “No, this guy!” he shouted, pointing at the fucker. “Zoom in on
him!
”

At just that moment the man raised his head, as if he'd somehow overheard Larson's order. He looked straight at the drone's camera from eight miles below.

It was John fucking Rogers.

TWENTY-THREE

For the next hour John sat in a corner of the barn beside Ariel, Gower, and Claudia. Along with hundreds of other nervous, cranky people, they had to cool their heels on the barn's straw-littered floor, surrounded by hay bales and milking machines and dairy cows that lowed in their stalls.

Conroy and several of his guardsmen took Archibald away, presumably to interrogate him. Elizabeth, meanwhile, rushed to an emergency meeting of the Elders in one of the farmhouses. Ariel was anxious to leave the barn too; she wanted to go down to her lab with John so she could figure out what the Fountain protein was doing to him. But there was still too much hydrogen sulfide in the cavern. Although the flow of steam from the geothermal plant had been shut down and Haven's ventilation fans were flushing out the toxic air as quickly as possible, it would be another hour before anyone could safely go underground.

They sat there without talking. Gower and Claudia didn't even look at John. The mother and son huddled close together, overwhelmed with horror and grief. The revelation that Archibald had sabotaged the geothermal plant and caused Octavia's death was shocking enough, but then they had to watch John pulverize the bastard. Gower and his mother were gentle people, and the savagery of it had upset them. Ariel didn't talk to him either, but after a few minutes she reached out and slipped her hand into his. Without words she was trying to tell him that it wasn't his fault. The problem was in his biochemistry, not his soul. And John tried his best to believe it.

Then Conroy returned to the barn and approached them. His face was grim. “The Council of Elders requests your presence,” he said, pointing at John and Ariel. “Come with me.”

John assumed the worst. His stomach twisted as he and Ariel stood up. “Is it Archibald? Is he dead?”

“Nay. The traitor is alive and answering our questions. The Elders wish to speak to you about a different matter.” He gestured at them impatiently. “Come, make haste.”

They followed Conroy to a door that led to a short walkway, which was covered by a canvas awning that blocked any surveillance from above. At the end of the walkway they slipped through the side door of a farmhouse and went downstairs to its basement.

They entered a room that looked like it was used for prayer meetings. Half a dozen benches were lined up on the concrete floor, all facing a wooden table and a lectern. The room had no windows, and the walls were bare except for a couple of framed, hand-stitched samplers, each showing a sentence written in German. John saw the word “Gott” stitched in black thread on the white fabric, so he assumed they were Amish prayers. The farmhouse, he realized, had been carefully decorated to resemble a typical Amish home, just in case it was ever inspected by the authorities. But John suspected that the house, like the barn, had a hidden trapdoor leading to the cavern.

The three Elders—Elizabeth, Margaret, and Cordelia—sat behind the table at the front of the room. Standing beside the table was the elderly, white-bearded bailiff whom the Elders called Old Sam. In his broad-brimmed straw hat and round, wire-rim glasses, he looked just like a geezer from Pennsylvania Dutch country. The Elders were also disguised as Amish now—all three wore plain black dresses and white bonnets. There was even a German Bible on the table to complete the masquerade. The only out-of-place item was a MacBook laptop on the lectern, which had been angled so that its screen faced the Elders sitting at the table.

Conroy escorted John and Ariel across the room. As they approached the table and lectern, John heard a familiar voice coming out of the laptop. All three Elders were staring at the computer with looks of revulsion. When John got close enough he saw Sullivan's face on the screen. He was speaking with the Elders via a wireless video call, standing in front of his own laptop somewhere and facing the machine's camera.

John glanced at Ariel, who stiffened when she saw her half brother on the screen. Judging from the background, he seemed to be deep in the pine woods. A dozen of his Riflemen stood behind him, including Marlowe, the one who'd broken John's nose and ribs. Sullivan's face still bore the scratch marks that Ariel had given him, but he beamed with pleasure when she stepped into view of the laptop's camera. “Ah, sweet sister! I'm delighted that you can join our conversation. And thank you so much for bringing your paramour. Dear me, it looks like his arms have been parboiled. Did you have some trouble getting out of the cavern?”

Before either John or Ariel could respond, Elizabeth leaned across the table and pointed her finger at the screen. “As you can see, we've fulfilled your request. Now proceed with your statement.”

Sullivan raised an eyebrow. He looked amused. “Aye, my statement. Well, first let me say how pleased I am that you didn't execute the paramour immediately. I suspect that Lily had something to do with this decision. She's taken quite a shine to the Negro.”

“You're trying my patience.” Elizabeth furrowed her brow and narrowed her lone eye. “What does this have to do with our present impasse?”

Sullivan kept smiling. “I assure you, Mother, it's quite relevant. Didn't you wonder how I knew the paramour was still alive? It's because he appeared just an hour ago on the surveillance footage that was captured by the drone hovering over the farm. As we speak, the FBI and other federal agencies are examining this footage and preparing a response. I've been told that a team of several dozen armed agents will pay a visit to Haven shortly after eleven o'clock tonight.”

Elizabeth didn't say anything at first. She just stared at the laptop's screen, without moving a muscle. Margaret, in contrast, swiveled her head back and forth, her eyes darting between her sister and the laptop. Even Cordelia shifted in her chair, disturbed enough to cast an anxious glance at the Chief Elder. But Elizabeth remained frozen. Her face was like a pale block of stone, and her scar was a reddish crack running down its side.

Finally, she shook her head. “You've broken your oath. You've betrayed your sisters and brothers.”

“Nay, just the sisters. My brothers stand with me.” Still grinning, he pointed at the Riflemen behind him. “We only want equality, Mother. We used to think it was magic that kept you young, but now we know better, don't we? It's just a protein, an organic molecule. And you have the power to give it to us.”

“Do you truly believe this is the way to help your brothers? By exposing us to the American government? By revealing our secrets to bureaucrats and intelligence agents who are still barbaric enough to torture their enemies?” Elizabeth was trembling now, shaking with anger. “Once the federal agents ransack our laboratories, we won't be able to give you anything!”

Sullivan shrugged. “Aye, the consequences will be dire, but you have only yourself to blame. For years we urged you to pursue this research. For decades, Mother. And when the researchers finally succeeded, when they finally identified the Fountain protein, what did you tell us?” He stopped smiling. His face darkened and his green eyes turned murderous. “You said Fountain was too difficult and dangerous to manufacture. You refused us because you were afraid of handling a few aborted fetuses. The slight threat to your safety outweighed all our hopes.”

John heard a furious grunt from Ariel. She stepped forward and jabbed her finger at the screen. “Don't change the facts, cur! The threat would be far more than slight. We'd need to process thousands of fetuses every year to make enough Fountain for all our men. It would be impossible to keep the operation secret.”

Sullivan turned, aiming his murderous eyes at his sister. “The fetal tissue is not that difficult to obtain. All you need is cash, which our family has in abundance. With the relatively small number of gold bars we took from Haven's vaults, we established the necessary connections with the medical-waste companies that dispose of aborted fetuses. If you had only given us the catalyst to transform the fetal tissue into Fountain, we could've produced as much protein as we needed.”

“Fool! I could've developed a better way to synthesize Fountain. I just needed some time to—”

“Aye, you have all the time in the world, but unfortunately we do not. We've waited long enough, sister. We can't—”

“
Silence!
” Elizabeth stood up so forcefully, her chair tipped backward and crashed to the floor behind her. She gave Ariel a baleful look, then turned back to the laptop's screen. “Do you realize that your vindictive acts have doomed all of us? Once the federal agents discover Haven, they won't rest until they know everything. They'll learn about the Riflemen too and all your unsavory connections. Your men will be interrogated and imprisoned, just like us.”

Sullivan shook his head. “My actions aren't vindictive. They serve a purpose. After the failure of my last attempt to obtain the catalyst, I decided to pursue a different strategy. But my goal is the same.”

“You're speaking in riddles. What's your goal?”

“Haven is doomed, that's true. But our family can escape this catastrophe.” Sullivan stepped closer to the camera in his own laptop, somewhere in the woods. His face filled the screen. “You've planned for this day, Mother. I know you have. For centuries you've been obsessed with security. I'm sure at some point you developed a contingency plan that would be put into effect if Haven was discovered.”

Elizabeth fell silent again. She folded her arms across her chest as she stood behind the table.

Sullivan nodded, taking her silence as confirmation. “You've placed buried caches all over the country, each filled with currency and weapons and other emergency supplies. Your Rangers operate a transportation network that could disperse our family if it has to flee from Haven. And in all likelihood you've already selected an alternative refuge, a hidden place where the Furies can rebuild their community. I don't know where it is, but for safety's sake it would have to be far away. Beyond the reach of the American authorities, for certain.”

Again, Elizabeth said nothing. She had an excellent poker face. Her expression never changed—it was pure, unrelenting ferocity. But John sensed that Sullivan was right. Elizabeth undoubtedly had a backup plan.

“You face only one obstacle,” Sullivan continued. “But it's a sizable one. The federal agents have surrounded the farm, and their drone is watching you from above. If you try to escape from Haven, the authorities will arrest you. If some of you manage to slip past them, the drone will reveal where you are. And you have less than ten hours before the agents force the issue by breaking through the fence and searching the premises.” He took a step backward, and his face shrunk on the screen. “Your situation is perilous indeed. But fortunately, I'm willing to help you.”

Elizabeth let out a mirthless laugh, finally breaking her silence. “And how would you help us, pray tell?”

“As you know, I've assembled a small army, nearly two hundred men trained for combat.” He pointed again at the Riflemen standing behind him. “And because of my connections with the authorities, I know the details of their operation—where their agents are stationed, how many are at each post, and so on. My men can launch a surprise attack on their positions. We can neutralize the agents, shut down their communications and disable their drone. That should give you enough time to shepherd the Furies out of Haven and send them on their way to the new refuge you've prepared.”