White Jade (The PROJECT) (13 page)

"
I know. More alive.
"

"
Even the colors are brighter. I
'
m glad I
'
m alive.
"
She looked out the window, then over at
him
.
"
I
'
m glad I
'
m here with you.
"

She drank coffee
. He didn't know what to say. She was an unknown force he hadn't expected. H
e
couldn't think of
something to say that wouldn
'
t sound stupid.

Time to call in and see what was on Harker
'
s mind. Maybe they
'
d found something at the house.

Chapter
Nine
teen

"
No bodies
. Lots of
forensics
."
Harker said.
"
We
'
ve got casings, blood trails, tire impressions, prints and DNA from a wine bottle.
"
             
"
Selena
'
s and my prints are on that bottle.
"

"
We know that. There are others. Where
'
s the book?
"

"
In a safe here at my cabin.
"

"
I want you two back here
now
. I
'
ve
sent
a plane to pick you up at Beale Air Force Base. You know where it is?
"

"
Yes
. It
'
s
about
an hour from here. When do we leave?
"

"
1800 hours. An escort will pick you up at
your cabin at
1600 and take you to the base. Ronnie will meet you
when you get in
. It will be late
. I want you to stay at
the apartment
here. We
'
ll meet tomorrow at 0700.
"

The
a
partment at
the
Project
building
was
for
keeping out of sight.
Carter
had
never
had to use it.

"
Anything more from the FBI?
"

"
Jordan
sent over more photos. You can look at them when you get here.
Wait for your transport. I
'
ll see you in the morning.
"

S
he clicked off.

Selena gestured at the porch, past the screen door.
"
You have a cat?
"

Pawing at the door and looking in through the screen was an enormous, beat-up orange tomcat.

"
That
'
s Burps
. It's more like
he has me. He
'
s a different sort of cat. A neighbor feeds him when I
'
m away
, which is most of the time
.
"

The cat
was
part Maine Coon, part whatever. He weigh
ed forty pounds at least and had
a pair of cojones that would make many a larger animal proud. His ears
were
notched and scarred, pink scars mar
red
his orange fur and his tail
was
half as long as it should be. He
had
one
long,
sharp front tooth
. T
he other one
was
missing.

"
Big, isn
'
t he?
"

"
He
'
s a regular tiger. Let
'
s sit outside.
"

Carter
opened
two cans
of
cat
food, put it in
a
dish and took it out
side.
Burps
began chomping it down.
They
took a seat
on the porch
.
T
he cat
paused mid-chomp and gave out a loud belch.

"
U
UUURRRPP.
"

"
Did he just do what I think he did?
"

"
That
'
s why I call him Burps.
"

"
He always does that?
"

"
All the time.
"

"
I
'
ve never heard a cat burp. He
'
s loud.
"

"
Prime TV material. I
'
m thinking I
'
ll get him on American Idol.
"

Burps belched again, finished his meal and wandered over to
them
. He began rubbing his head against Selena
'
s leg and purring.
It reminded
Carter
of
a chain saw.

Selena stroked him behind the ears and Burps
held up his paw and
closed his eyes, arched his neck, purred louder and drooled through his tooth onto the deck.

"
He
'
s cute.
"

Cute
was
n
'
t how
Carter
would describe him
, but who was
he
to argue?
He
told Selena what the Director had said.

"What did you do to that guy's wall?"
he asked.

"Kuk S
ool
Won. It's a Korean martial art. I've been doing it since the tenth grade."

"What's your rank?"

"Seventh degree black."

"Remind me not to mess with you."

"I think y
ou already did.
"
She scratched Burps on top of his head. He jumped up in her lap and
she grunted. He
began kneading her leg. She grimaced.

"
I've been thinking about the book.
The language is archaic but the calligraphy is elegant and I can read it. Whoever copied it took his time, so that
'
s not a problem. The problem is the section in Linear A.
I need to compare what
'
s in the book to other examples and to Linear B. We can
read some of that
variant.
"

"
The Project
has some big Cray
computers
. Steph can help you there.
"

"
Steph?
"

"
Stephanie Willits. She's Harker's deputy and a
genius with
computer
s
.
We can scan the book into the system.
"

"
That solves some problems. Once it
'
s in the computers, we won
'
t need to lug it around with us. We
'
d have access anywhere.
"

She took a sip from a glass of water.

"Tell me about Director Harker."

"She was part of the post nine eleven task force
at Justice
. She pissed off
a lot of big shots
by
insisting
it
wouldn't have happened
if the right hand had known what the left was doing. No one wanted to hear that, back then. It stalled her career. When Rice got elected he tapped her to head up the Project."

"What is the Project? You've got Crays, then you have resources. What do you do there?"

"It's the President's brainchild, a counterweight to the big intelligence agencies.
Project is an acronym. Presidential
Official
Joint Exercise for Counter Terrorism. The joint part doesn't work too well
, though, except for NSA
.
Harker's
job is to
cut through the smoke and mirrors
tossed out by the big agencies
and
tell
the President
what's really going on.
She's not afraid to speak her mind and s
he's a brilliant analyst.
The
three letter agencies d
on't
like her.
She answers only to the President, so t
hey c
an't
control her or tell her what to do
.
That d
oesn'
t stop them from trying.
"

"You're not an analyst."

"No. Ronnie and I
get sent into the field to find things out. Sometimes to
clean up messes that wouldn't have happened if CIA and the others had been doing their job.
"

"That's why you carry the gun?"

He looked out at the coastal range in the distance. The mountains formed blue ridges in the haze.

"Sometimes
people shoot at us
.
"

Selena put Burps down and stood up. He meowed loudly, gave her an insulted look and stalked off under the deck.

"
Let
'
s look at
the book
,
"
she said.

They
went inside and
he
got the book
from
the safe.
A
t the kitchen table Selena began reading
.

He got a kit out and began cleaning his pistol. He
watched her turn the ancient pages
.
She was concentrating, the tip of her tongue exposed between her lips.

When Megan died he'd shut down any thought
s
of letting someone get close again.
Selena brought up old feelings, feelings he'd thought were dead and buried.
He wasn't sure
it was a good idea
to bring
those kinds of feelings
back to life. He wasn't sure he wanted to let Selena in. You let someone in, it
made you vulnerable.
You weren't in control anymore.

S
elena
looked up.

"
There's a list of
some
ingredients
for
an
elixir
of immortality
, like cinnabar and gold
. And there's
a map to someplace in Tibet
.
"

"
Cinnabar?
"

"
Th
at's what
you make mercury from. Mercury was
in a lot of the
Chinese
immortality formulas.
It probably killed most of the people who took them.
It might even have killed the Emperor.
But
China
has
known
high grade deposits of cinnabar
. T
hey wouldn
'
t care about that.
"

He
held a bore light in the chamber of the
.45
, looked down the barrel.

"
There
'
s a reference to
'
burning
silver
rocks
'
in the formula that I don
'
t understand
,
"
she said.

He
ran a cleaning brush through the bore.

She turned another page, studied it.
"
Do you think the Chinese government is behind this?
"

"
No.
I think it
'
s Yang acting on
his
own. Maybe
he's
just nuts, looking for an elixir of life.
"

Selena brushed hair back from her forehead and frowned.

"
There has to be a rational purpose behind all this. I
'
ll feel a lot better when we know what it is.
"

Carter watched her studying the text
.
She had retreated onto familiar ground, the expert linguist. 

He'd
had his share of beds but he'd
never been a woman chaser.
Besides, t
he Corps was hard on relationships
. Then he'd met Megan and
knew she was the one
.
It was a
miracle
to him
that she'd felt the same way
.
When
she died
i
t left a hole
inside him, big enough to pull him in and cover him up if he let it.