Blessed Child (15 page)

“Not many would do what you're doing.”

“Not many have seen what I've seen in the Third World.”

Jason nodded. True enough. She wasn't confined to a wheelchair. Although in many ways the grotesque lumps under her blouse confined her in their own world. She knew that well enough.

“So what do you make of the boy now that you've seen what he can do?” he asked.

“I think he's the same boy who fled the monastery with us a week ago. Even beyond this power of his there's something special.”

Jason nodded. “He's nearly irresistible, isn't he? A perfect package of goodness. I can't get over his eyes.”

Leiah turned to him and smiled. “He has a way of stealing your heart, doesn't he?”

Jason nodded. “I had a son once. Stephen. He died from ALS—Lou Gehrig's disease—when he was four. If he had lived, he'd be about Caleb's age.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“It's okay.” Jason cleared his throat. “Funny thing is we took him to faith healers, you know. We were desperate and turned to the church. It was all nonsense, of course. Scared him half to death, all those fools yelling their prayers over him. But it also raised his hopes and that was the worst of it. They even had me going for a few months.”

“I can't imagine. Someone once suggested I find someone to pray for me. I don't think I ever could. I've learned to accept myself; wanting to be someone else again could ruin me.”

“Caleb makes you think, though.”

“Yes, he does that, doesn't he?”

“It's amazing. Not so long ago the world was flat. Until we discovered that it was round. So now what are we discovering through Caleb? That the human mind is far more powerful than once imagined.”

They'd come to the park and Jason piloted the Bronco through its arching entrance. Cars lined the street; pedestrians loitered on the grass; ahead a crowd gathered around a commotion Jason assumed would be the press conference.

“You were married?” Leiah asked.

“Yes.”

“And what became of your wife?”

“Ailsa? She left me a month after Stephen died. Ran off with someone who managed to distract her from her hell.”

“And you, too, found Africa.”

“Yes. I guess I did.”

He glanced at her and saw that her eyes were on him, blue and soft. He smiled and they drove on in silence.

They followed Nikolous into a side parking lot with reserved space beside a white news van sporting the NBC peacock.

“I thought this was supposed to be a quiet, comfortable setting for him,” Leiah said, looking at the crowd already gathered. “What time is that press conference supposed to start?”

“She said twelve and it's eleven-thirty now.”

Leiah humphed and hurried out. She reached Caleb's door before the Greek had climbed out and she quickly took the boy under her wing. They approached the crowd from the rear, looking for Donna. Nikolous strutted forward in his tailored black suit with the three of them in tow as if their allegiance to him was without question. And he wasn't so wrong—although they could have bolted at any time, it would be a futile run from the law.

Where was Donna? This news conference of hers looked as if it was about to start.

Caleb walked along in his typical posture, gliding on his feet, hardly moving his upper torso or his arms. His belt looked cinched too tight, but only because the new shorts he wore were several sizes too large.

The boy looked at the crowd in a dumb silence, and it occurred to Jason that this was the first time he'd been in public since their first visit to the Orthodox church. Since then he'd spent every waking minute in his new prison. There was the visit to UCLA, but he'd met no one except the doctor there. And prior to the first church meeting, he'd seen nothing that could not be seen from the window of a speeding car—either a taxi or his Bronco. Watching him, Jason wondered how much of Dr. Caldwell's prognosis would bear true.

They skirted the crowd toward the front. For the most part this was a news crowd, maybe a hundred strong with all of their support staff. The candidate's people had erected a podium on a small platform. Behind it a huge vinyl backdrop showed a vivid red sunset. A life-size man and woman had been imprinted on the sunset, standing side by side, each staring intensely at their own knotted fists raised to the sky, as if in those hands lay some deep mysterious secret. Crandal's slogan, presumably that secret, was splashed in a bright blue across their waists:
Power to the People
. The setup looked more like something you'd find at a revolution rally in Russia than at a candidate's news conference.

A very large man with a perfectly bald head strode out to the podium, and applause pattered across the lawn. Charles Crandal's face split to a wide grin, and he immediately became a man who looked pleased with his surroundings. He carried himself lightly, despite his enormous size, and he wore his suit as if he'd been born in the thing. Crandal put both hands on the podium without acknowledging the accolades cast his way from supporters encroaching on the perimeter of the news groups. He scanned the crowd carefully, nodded slowly—as if he approved of this particular group, but just barely—and started to speak.

“Thank you. Thank you for your interest. Thank you for coming.” So this was the man Donna suggested might very well be the next president.

A young man wearing a headset had found Nikolous and now led them quickly to the right of the pack, where Donna stood directing a cameraman.

She looked up apologetically. “I'm sorry, but they moved the press conference up and it started even earlier. If you don't mind, we can shoot him after. It shouldn't be long.”

Nikolous frowned and gazed around. He nodded once.

Donna caught Jason's eye and winked. Aware of Leiah beside him he smiled but just barely.

Donna returned her attention to the stage, where Crandal was making an adamant statement about some budget proposal he assured them would revolutionize American politics.

“It's a plan the American people have deserved for a century but haven't gathered the stomach to insist upon. Until now, that is. Now they insist, and so must I, ladies and gentlemen.” The man's jowls shook when he spoke, but not enough to distract from the force of his words. His voice was low and it crackled, drawing Jason in with the first few syllables. A silence had settled over the gathering, and the words engaged their attention like a bullwhip over the heads of sluggard oxen.

“Mediocrity has taken the teeth out of our lives. Make no mistake about it, I will beg the people to demand their power back, and I will give the people what they demand.”

He delivered his diatribe with precision, like a laser beam that dispensed with the mind and went straight for the spine. His eyes cut across the crowd, deep-set and knowing. They settled on Jason for a moment, and when they moved on, he felt oddly relieved. An uncanny power possessed this man. Politics had never interested Jason much, but standing eight feet from the stage now, listening to this large man demanding their allegiance, he couldn't help wanting to give it. It was more than good sense that flowed from him; it was a raw brilliance that insisted on being honored, if not revered.

A tall man with eyes as black as coal stood in a blue pinstripe suit in front of the stage to Crandal's left, his legs spread and his arms gripped behind his back. He was the kind you might expect from the Mafia—a hatchet man who was clearly more interested in security than kissing the hands of old ladies.

The reporters scribbled notes and listened with rapt attention, and when Crandal ended his three-minute speech, they blurted their questions almost as one. Crandal let them ask, ignoring them as if he hadn't heard them at all. He turned to face the NBC camera and invited Donna with an open palm. “I'll start with you, Donna.”

Donna asked her question, but Jason hardly heard it. He watched her staring at Crandal—the way she carried herself, the movement of her jaw— and it occurred to him that she spoke with an authority that nearly matched Crandal's. He was witness to the making of power. This was how it was done in the greatest of nations. This was how a person rose to command the largest and most powerful army in the world: by engaging a brilliant young reporter with smiling eyes and capturing her heart. Not in a romantic sense, of course, but in a way perhaps far more compelling.

“Well then, we'll just have to see if the people can remember what it means to be American, won't we, Donna?” Crandal said. A few chuckles rippled through the crowd.

“And if you wouldn't mind, sir, what exactly does it mean to be American?” Donna redirected.

Crandal's smile faded and he spoke as if lecturing. “It means we demand freedom. It means we will die for that freedom if need be. And in the event some of you might have misplaced your memory, freedom is a state of existence unrestrained by slavery, regardless of the master, whether he be armed with a hammer and a sickle or a document called the law.” He let the comment sink in and then removed his eyes from her. A dozen questions filled the air.

Yes indeed, the making of power.

Jason remembered the boy and he glanced to his right. The Greek was fixated on the stage, big nose matched by a jutting chin. Leiah stood watching the exchange between Crandal and another reporter. She caught Jason's eye and smiled. The boy was by her side, his hand in hers. He stood stiff like a board and his eyes were glued to the candidate. Yes, of course, Caleb was why they had come in the first place. He looked like an awe-struck child gazing in at a circus for the first time.

For ten minutes Crandal handled the media's questions as if he were in a jousting match and he the repeated victor. The media seemed to sense it too. They knew they were watching a man of destiny, and their eyes were bright with the knowledge.

“And how would you characterize the current administration's proposal to trim the fifth fleet?” a question came.

“I would say that Murdock should spend more time trimming his waistline and less time tinkering with toys he knows nothing about,” the former director of the National Security Agency responded. Now there, only a man who had them on their knees already could get away with a statement like that. Any other political pundit would be beheaded by the press for the comment.

“How do you respond to critics who say your experience with the NSA casts shadows on your political integrity?”

“I suggest they go for a long walk and study our beautiful skies. If they happen to see a MiG screaming out of the sky, releasing a string of nuclear weapons, then I would tell them to vote for the opposition. But if by chance they find the skies clear, then I would invite them to vote for the man who granted them this gift.” They chuckled.

The event felt more like a stage show that topped the best Hollywood could offer than a political rally. According to Donna, the show was scheduled to last thirty minutes today.

But the boy changed that.

It came in a moment of unusual silence that Caleb's soft voice spoke to Jason's right. “He is the Tempest.”

Jason raised his brow. The words were barely loud enough for Jason to hear, much less Crandal, but the man's eyes flickered and blinked three or four times very rapidly. He turned his head and stared at the NBC camera as if lost for the moment. Then his eyes searched each of their faces. Caleb stood wooden, unblinking, placid, except for the trembling in his fingers.

“This man will bring a new tempest to the earth.”

Several reporters, oblivious to the small distraction, resumed their questioning, but Jason doubted Crandal even heard them. His eyes were on the boy now, deadlocked and unwavering. Caleb soaked in his stare without flinching.

Donna looked quickly between the statesman and the boy; she had seen that connection too.

Crandal broke his gaze and faced the crowd. “Well, ladies and gentlemen . . .” He paused, at a loss for words, Jason thought. But he quickly recovered. “All good things must come to an end. Your understanding of the issues we face in this election has once again been stunning for a mob of journalists. For that I thank you. We'll meet again, I am sure.”

With that he turned on his heels and strode from the platform. The tall man Jason had pegged as a Mafia type bolted around the stage, glanced back toward Caleb one last time, and was gone. Immediately the crowd began to disperse.

“What in God's name was that?” Donna asked.

Leiah stared up at the empty stage. “You should ask? That was what you brought him here for.” She pulled the boy to her and turned to leave. “We don't belong here,” she said and walked for the car with Caleb in hand.

Blane Roberts slid into the limousine next to Crandal, his mind churning incomprehensibly. The boy had said Tempest, hadn't he? He had actually identified Crandal as
the
Tempest, which made no sense. Then again, any comment even associating Crandal with Tempest made perfect sense. If he was not Tempest, he had certainly created Tempest. And now a small half-breed had said so. Which was a problem. Not only because no one in this hemisphere could possibly know about Tempest, but because a small boy who seemed to be able to read minds had done so in public. The NBC reporter had heard, he thought.

Roberts closed the car door with a thump.

“I'm not even going to ask for an explanation,” Crandal said without turning. “But unless I'm missing something here, we've got a problem.”

“Yes sir, it seems that way. I'll take care of it.”

“I'm sure you will.”

Encouraged by a red face, a bead of sweat snaked down the candidate's temple. Crandal rarely yelled, at least not with his mouth. But he did wear his anger, and right now it clothed him like a king. His left hand held a tremor, and his jaw muscles tensed as if they were kneading bread. The rear of the limousine was insulated; the statesman could scream bloody murder without a single syllable being heard by even the driver. But for all practical purposes, he
was
screaming bloody murder and Roberts diverted his eyes.