“I’m not some giggling school girl. I’m a grown woman. Somehow you seem to forget that.”
Abigail was studying her daughter’s posture. Resistant. Arms folded over her chest. Abigail tried the reasonable approach. Sort of. “Of course you’re a grown woman, but I’m your mother. My job doesn’t end just because you’re in the top three of your class at West Point. In terms of your life, maybe Dad and I aren’t president and vice president anymore, but we still serve on your cabinet.”
“Cute analogy,” Deborah sighed, “but I need the freedom to exercise my own judgment when it comes to relationships. Okay?”
Deborah didn’t wait for an answer. She rose from her porch chair. She pretended to study the mountains and the morning sun now rising over the peaks, yet her posture gave her away. She thrust her hands in her jeans, agitated, and rocked back and forth on her toes.
Abigail had a momentary thought as she looked at the empty rustic chair that her daughter had just vacated. It had been fashioned out of intertwined tree limbs. Abigail had lovingly picked it out at a crafter’s shop in the mountains when they first moved in.
How little my children understand the love that went into picking out that furniture—something masculine and rugged that Josh would like; something comfortable for the family in sit in, to dream in, to make memories in.
Abigail glanced over at her daughter and her resistant posture. Yes, you’re a woman, my darling daughter, and I do love you so. But you still have so much to learn.
Abigail had been surprised by her daughter over the last twenty-four hours. Deborah had been glued to Ethan’s side until this morning, when he announced he was taking a jog. Deborah wanted to join him, but Abigail talked her into joining her on the porch. Deborah seemed ready to fall for this man, who was still a near stranger, even if he had been her gallant rescuer. Abigail realized she still had things to learn about her own daughter.
“Deb, sit down.”
“That sounds like an order.”
“Come on. Stop the game playing. Just sit with me for a few minutes.”
Deborah cocked her head with a look of futility and dropped into the chair.
“Darling,” Abigail began again, “all I did was to remind you to guard your heart. That’s all.”
“No, it’s much more than that. I can decipher your mom-talk. Translation: you’re telling me, ‘Don’t get involved with Ethan March.’ Don’t deny it. I know you too well, and that’s exactly what you’re implying. You’ve sized him up and already have a verdict.”
“Not at all. Just take things slowly. You know very little about him.”
“Like what? Mom, this isn’t a marriage proposal we’re talking about. I’m just trying to get to know him.”
“As a Christian, you can’t be unequally partnered with a nonbeliever. The Bible’s clear on that. I didn’t come to the Lord until years after I married your father. He’s a great man and a good husband. But you know how I’ve struggled with the fact that he hasn’t made the same commitment to Christ I have. My advice is to handle first things first, like finding out where Ethan is spiritually.”
“Well, if you cut me some slack and leave us alone, maybe I could do my own personal intel, get some private time with him, and find out.”
“And there’s an age difference. He’s seven years older.”
Deborah gave an exasperated grunt and threw her head back.
Then Abigail spotted Ethan in the distance, running toward them, returning from his jog. She had to talk quickly. “Just take your
time. That’s all. I respect you, trust you, love you. Which means I’ll always give you straight talk, especially about things that are really important.”
As Ethan jogged up to them, he slowed to a walk, hands on his hips as he panted.
Deborah tried not to stare, but she couldn’t help it. Ethan was in a pair of sweatpants and a tank top with the words “Big Dog” in large letters on the front. His arms and torso were well-muscled, almost sculpted. He hadn’t shaved yet. He was handsome, and she had already memorized his slightly skewed nose, but now realized that he had a scar on his left cheekbone.
While Deborah stared at Ethan, her mother was staring at her.
Ethan flashed a big smile. “Good morning, ladies.”
“Good morning, Ethan,” Abigail started. “Have a good sleep?”
“Perfect. Thanks.” He turned and took in the mountains in the distance. “Man, this place is magnificent.”
Before her mother could respond, Deborah jumped in. “Ethan, how about you and I go horseback riding? We could pack a lunch. It’ll be a blast. I bet you haven’t been given the official Hawk’s Nest tour. Come on, I’ll show you around.”
Deborah reached out and took his arm. As they walked away, she threw her mother a look as they rounded the side of the house.
Abigail was left on the porch alone. She knew that her children were, well, not children anymore. Was she having problems letting go? Or did she have fears about her own role in life right now? She had been an accomplished and successful lawyer on Capitol Hill, but being a mother was different. It defined her — down to her soul.
She sat down and put her feet up on the rough-hewn log coffee table, leaning back, closing her eyes, and she did what she did whenever she felt confused — she prayed. There was never anything high church about it, just plain talk to her Heavenly Father. She hadn’t known her own father very well; she was ten when he died. But God was always there, even if she sometimes ached for the Lord to be there in the flesh.
As she prayed, she lost track of time. It must have been a half an
hour later when she heard car tires crunching over gravel. She opened her eyes. Her son, Cal, was climbing out of his Jeep with his suitcase in his hand.
She strolled down the porch steps, gave him a long hug, and peppered him with kisses.
“How’d your art show go? I am so sorry Dad and I couldn’t make it, but you know how proud we are. Your father was fit to be tied when he learned our jet had developed a minor gauge problem. Not a big deal apparently but you know your father. Anyway, by then we couldn’t catch a commercial flight. ”
“Don’t worry about it mom. The show was … oh, interesting, I guess. Where’s Dad?”
“Had to fly to New York at the break of dawn. Finally got the gauge problem fixed. And some security upgrades. Anyway, I know he wanted to see you, but he’s got a real crisis on his hands.”
Cal’s voice was tinged with cynicism. “Dad handling some crisis? Yeah. That’d be something new.”
Abigail replied with a sly smile, “Hey, mister, he’s bailed you out of a crisis or two.”
Cal gave her a funny look. His eyes narrowed. “Yeah. I know. You have no idea how much I still think about that.”
She nodded and waited for more. When it didn’t come, she asked, “Can I fix you breakfast?”
“I’d love it. I’ve been driving straight for two days. I couldn’t wait to get here.”
As they walked inside, Cal seemed buried in his thoughts.
“What’s on your mind?” Abigail asked.
“A question.”
“What?”
“Oh, it can wait. At least ‘til I get some food in me.”
“Come on, don’t keep your mother waiting. If I feed your belly, you have to satisfy my curiosity.”
Cal stopped and set his suitcase down. “The subject’s kind of a
downer.”
“Try me.”
“I keep thinking about it. About almost getting killed.”
Abigail didn’t speak. She just waited, with a look that said she loved him no matter what.
“And it’s about …
him,”
said Cal. “I’ve been thinking about him lately. Don’t know why. We haven’t mentioned his name for a while. I guess we’ve been trying to forget it.”
“Which name?” she asked even though she already knew.
His face twisted a little and his mouth was pulled tight. “Atta Zimler.”
The name belonged to the psychopath who, for one short terrifying moment, had Cal in his grip. It was a name that the family had tried to forget as things returned to normal.
As she looked at her son, she saw the man in him, even though, considering what he had endured in that harrowing episode, her impulse was always to coddle him a bit, try to protect him. Abigail had been a tough, no-nonsense trial lawyer, but when it came to Cal, the risk was always that she would be too soft. She never worried about being too hard on him. She didn’t have to. Josh, with all his good intentions, always played that part well.
Cal kept talking. “I was just wondering. You know … whether Zimler is dead or not. I know the FBI told us he might have been killed, but I need to know …”
His jaw flexed and his face tightened, but Abigail could see that this was not fear. It was a new kind of resolve that used to belong only to his father.
He finished the thought, “… whether he’s still out there somewhere. I need to know that.”
“Mr. Jorgenson, welcome.”
The banker reached out to shake hands with the customer who was carrying a briefcase. The customer looked the part of a Swede. The man’s hair had been dyed blond. He had blue contacts in his eyes and had endured the sacrifice of staying shaded from the sun to keep his skin from tanning. While the customer had been spending the last few days on a rented yacht in the Dubai marina he had to wear long sleeves and a ball cap. What a drag.
The banker continued. “I’m sure you remember the procedures for our safety deposit boxes.”
The customer smiled. “Yes, I certainly do.”
The banker would have no way of knowing how well the man with the briefcase understood the security procedures. In fact, this “customer” had visited the commercial section of the tower before — during its construction. He had cased out the bank, and particularly the safety precautions being installed, even as it was being built. He was a man who kept tabs on potential high-dollar hits like this one, targets that could help fund the lavish globe-trotting lifestyle to which he’d become accustomed. His mobility was necessary for other reasons too — like the fact that Interpol, Scotland Yard, France’s Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire, and the FBI were all looking for him.
“Come this way,” the banker said. He led the customer into a frosted-glass cubicle with a soft chair and a small table. The cubicle
led to a locked steel door, which, when opened, led down a dead-end hallway filled with safety deposit boxes and a video touch screen.
“I’ll leave you to your business. If you need anything, Mr. Jorgenson, just let me know.”
With that, the banker left the cubicle and closed the door behind him.
The customer set down his briefcase and opened it. He took out the credit card of Rolf Jorgenson. He walked over to the big metal door and swiped the card in the locking device. A green light on the door lit up. He heard the heavy click as it unlocked, pushed it open, with the briefcase in his hand, and looked to his right at the touch screen. He tapped in the security code that Mr. Jorgenson had given him — under duress. That was before things got even uglier for the Swedish broker who dealt in precious gems.
Now came the only part that presented a mild obstacle. The customer looked at a box on the screen that read in a dozen different languages: “Place Palm Here for Biometric Identification.”
He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a spray can and a small plastic case. He snapped the case open and pulled out a tissue-thin polymer cutout of a right-hand palm print. It had been taken from Mr. Jorgenson in a manner that insured a painstakingly perfect duplication. The customer carefully laid the tissue-thin imprint across his own hand. Then with his left hand he used the latex spray to mist a fixative over the polymer imprint of Jorgenson’s palm, securing it temporarily to his own.
He placed his palm onto the screen and tapped the button.
For a few seconds nothing. Then the screen lit up. “Identification confirmed. Hello Mr. Jorgenson. You may now proceed to access your lockbox with your key.”
He wanted to say something to the surveillance cameras in the corners of the ceiling but didn’t. Something viciously cynical like, “So sorry Mr. Jorgenson wasn’t able to be here. He would have sent his regrets, but that was impossible. They have probably found him by now with his neck broken and his right hand cut off. Who could have done such a thing?”
Instead, he smiled at the cameras and walked past the security
boxes until he came to Jorgenson’s. He slipped the key in and opened the small door. A bundle of papers and a black velvet bag were inside.
He pulled out the bag and strolled back to the cubicle. The light was better there. He tucked a jeweler’s glass over his eye and spread the contents of the bag on the table. Two dozen large, brilliant diamonds glinted with an inner fire.
Yes, this would do. He would get a quarter of a million, maybe a third of a million, for them if he was lucky. Usually that was chump change, but now money was tight. He had to be more discrete than usual. His last client, Caesar Demas — the international business celebrity, a friend to the vice president of the United States, and a chum of the secretary general of the U.N. — had not paid him for his last job. At least not the second half of the contracted job. That came as no surprise, of course, because the American job didn’t work out the way that he and Demas had planned.
But for Atta Zimler, the customer in the bank’s security cubicle who was impersonating a Swedish diamond broker, there was no such thing as failure. It was just a matter of delay. He had every intention of finishing what he’d started the year before in a New York City train station. And when he was through, and he offered Demas what he still hoped to obtain, then he would get his money from Caesar Demas. Or else.
After he had placed the bag of diamonds in his briefcase, secured the lockbox, and unlocked the frosted-glass cubicle, he strolled back, his Italian-made shoes clicking on the marble floor of the bank lobby.
Always looking for an opportunity, he spotted some mints on the counter outside the window of a pretty bank teller. He walked over. He put his hand into the dish and pulled out a small candy.
“I was looking for something sweet,” Zimler said to her with a smile as he lingered at the window.