Three Jack McClure Missions Box Set (20 page)

“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.

22

“Every action invites a reaction. No, no.” Kray rocked slightly from one foot to the other. “Every action
causes
a reaction. The religious right’s infiltration of the federal government finally has had its proper reaction: us, the enemy. The missionary secularists, the Army of Reason.” He laughed. “It seems ironic, doesn’t it, that without
them
there would be no
us.
They created us; every extreme gives rise to the opposite extreme.”

He bent down, untied Alli’s wrists. “Hold your arms over your head.”

It was phrased as a suggestion rather than a command. Nevertheless, Alli complied, but after only a few seconds she was obliged to fold them in her lap.

“I … I can’t,” she said. “I don’t have the strength.”

“I have a cure for that.”

Kneeling, Kray unbuckled her ankles and legs. With his arms around her waist, he helped her to her feet. She stood, wobbly as a toddler, her weight against him from her hip to her shoulder.

With his coaxing, she took one tentative step forward, then another,
but her legs buckled and Kray had to hold her firmly lest she collapse onto the floor like an invalid.

“I think you might have to teach me to walk all over again,” she said with an embarrassed laugh.

“You won’t need me to do that, I promise.” He took her out of the room that had been her home for several days. He helped her shower and dress, and she felt neither embarrassed nor ashamed. Why should she? After all, he had watched her defecate and urinate; possibly he’d watched her sleep. Could there be anything more intimate?

There was not an inch of her he didn’t know. It had taken just over a week for him to become a part of her.

In the kitchen, he pulled out a chair for her. She sat with one arm on the table, where cartons of orange juice and milk, and several water tumblers stood in a precise cluster. He poured her a glass of orange juice with pulp, the kind she liked best.

He waited until she had drained the glass. “After lunch, we’ll go for a walk around the house. You’ll get your strength back in no time, you’ll see,” he said. “Now, what would you like to eat?”

“Eggs and bacon, please.”

“I think I’ll join you.” Kray opened the refrigerator so that the door to the interior was outside of Alli’s field of vision. The other girl sat folded, as if she were performing a contortionist’s trick. He pulled out a carton of eggs and a stick of butter from the shelf on the door. A pound of thick-sliced bacon was on the lower shelf near the girl’s stiff, blue feet. Her skin looked bad now; it was starting to slough off like snakeskin. Very soon now, Kray knew, he’d have to move her, either to the freezer in the basement—though that would necessitate cutting her up into sections—or somewhere else, a landfill or an empty lot, perhaps. But not yet. He was reluctant to let her go. She’d been so useful to him. He’d sedated her while he cut off her hand so as not to cause her pain. She didn’t deserve that; she had a home here now, and
he didn’t want to abandon her. It wasn’t her fault that he’d needed her to make sure the authorities knew Alli wasn’t dead and buried. He was on a strict timetable. He required the urgency only a search for a living girl would bring.

Arms full, Kray kicked the refrigerator door closed, lined up the ingredients on the counter next to the stove, placed a cast-iron skillet on the burner, turned on the gas. So as not to expose his fingers to grease, he used one of the gleaming knives on a magnetic wall rack to peel off six slices of bacon, then laid them side by side in the skillet. Turning up the heat made them sizzle. The rich scent permeated the kitchen.

When the bacon was golden brown, he set the slices on a paper towel, drained off the fat from the skillet. Without washing it, he sliced off a thick pat of butter, plopped it in the skillet to melt. Then he put the carton of eggs, a stainless steel bowl, and a whisk on the table.

“How about you scrambling the eggs?”

Once again, it was a suggestion rather than a command. Alli knew she was free to say no. But she didn’t want to say no. She opened the carton, broke six eggs one by one on the rim of the bowl, poured in a dollop of milk, then began to whisk the mixture.

“I don’t know how anyone can eat those Eggbeaters,” she said idly.

“Or an egg-white omelette, for that matter,” he answered.

Quite quickly her arm began to tire. But she rested it briefly, then began again, bringing a pale yellow froth.

“Ready,” she said.

Kray took the bowl from her, added three twists of salt, two of pepper, then tipped the contents into the skillet. He stirred the eggs a bit with a white plastic spatula.

“White bread?”

“Whole-wheat today, I think,” Alli said.

“In the pantry.” He put down the spatula, went into the small room. Immediately he turned around, stood watching her from the shadows.
She rose, one hand supporting herself on the tabletop. Then she walked over to the stove. Her hand passed the knives in the wall rack, picked up the spatula. She stirred the eggs in the skillet. She hummed to herself.