Covenant (27 page)

“My guess is that there aren’t all that many neurosurgeons out there and even less who have had their medical licenses revoked. We have one survivor, and that means whoever did it was competent enough not to kill everybody they tried it on.”

Lopez nodded, but remained unconvinced. “It’ll take a lot of man-hours.”

“Not if we’re on the right track already. Dr. Holloway said that these people with rare blood originated somewhere in Israel, so make your search in particular for surgeons with any kind of connection to Israel.”

“What about Daniel Neville? He’s in a hospital owned by the people we’re investigating. Don’t you think we should get him some kind of protection?”

Tyrell nodded.

“Get on it, and don’t let Powell talk you down. I want an officer guarding that hospital ward until this case is solved.”

AMERICAN EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION
NEW COVENANT CHURCH, WASHINGTON DC

C
asey Jeffs stood alone and immobile in the office of Kelvin Patterson, a towering hulk of a man dressed in blue overalls, his face half hidden by a mop of lank blond hair. Reverentially, he knelt down in front of the small altar and looked up at the towering chromed cross as he clasped his hands before him.

“I din’ mean to cause trouble,” he whispered. “I din’ mean it.”

Jeffs knelt for a long time, grinding his hands before him and closing his eyes tightly, as though the mere action of doing so could wipe away his anxiety and fear.

“I din’ meant it,” he whispered again.

“I know you didn’t, Casey.”

Casey’s head jerked up as he gasped and leaped to his feet, and Patterson saw the flare of alarm in his bright blue eyes, the feeble mind behind them unable to account for Patterson’s sudden materialization. Patterson stepped from behind the altar and shook one of Casey’s giant hands in his. Casey stooped when upright, partly because of his height and partly because he had long taken to hiding from an uncaring world behind his fringe of hair. He glanced behind him at the office door, still closed, and then looked at Patterson.

“Where’d you come from?” he asked, his tone rigid with awe.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, Casey,” Patterson said. “Now, you have something to tell me?”

Casey’s blue eyes flickered anxiously. “They’re not comin’ here, Pastor? That right? The police ain’t comin’ here for me?”

“No, Casey, they’re not coming here. Let’s sit down, shall we?” Patterson suggested.

The pastor lead Casey to the magnificent mahogany desk that dominated his spacious office, a large bronze eagle mounted on one edge and a small American flag on the other. The sunlight flooding the office from beyond the rolling hills and valleys of Virginia flared off the giant chrome crucifix, sending reflections flickering around the room.

Patterson poured Casey a cup of water from a cooler near the window before sitting down opposite him and watching as he sipped.

“So, did something happen today at the hospital?”

Casey’s features were cast in simple slabs, the round blue eyes gazing at Patterson from behind the floppy blond hair.

“The police were at the hospital askin’ questions, though I din’ hear all of it.”

Casey Jeff’s voice was monotone, as though somebody had removed the soul from his chest and replaced it with a recording. Complex potions conspired to quell the wayward neurons of Casey and his fellow patients, stifling their psychosis in a frozen fog of sedatives and binding their self-destructive urges in chemical chains. In the case of Patterson’s loyal protégé, they served well enough to keep him occupied as a useful source of information within the institute, at least until anything unexpected spooked him into fleeing.

“The police weren’t there to speak to you, Casey,” Patterson reassured him. “Just you tell me what you did hear.”

“I couldn’t get close,” Casey mumbled, “but they was talkin’ about experiments of some kind, that Daniel Neville may have been hurt. What does that mean, Pastor?”

“It means that Daniel has suffered,” Patterson said, “and that we should pray for him.”

Casey nodded robotically. “We could help him.”

“Do you think that we should, Casey?”

Casey’s rudimentary features twitched into a smile for the first time since entering the office. Entrusted with a decision, Casey felt secure again. Patterson smiled back on cue as little insects of loathing scuttled across his skin.

The truth was that Kelvin Patterson despised Casey Jeffs. Casey was a psychotic shambles who would be unable to walk the streets were it not for the advances in medical science over the past forty years. But Patterson was also fascinated by the mentally afflicted. How did their minds work? What did they see? Hear? Taste? For Patterson, the conscience of the mentally ill represented a simple and yet unreachable unknown every bit as unfathomable as the nature of God Himself, and the similarities bothered him immensely. Narrow was the line between genius and insanity. Was it not true that the savant was also vulnerable, a genius shackled to the unstable foundations of a crumbling mind?

He looked down at his desk to a drawer where he kept his own medications, those that he took when even the brightest of days seemed overcast, shadowed with dense and bottomless pits of despair that seemed to draw him in with powerful gravitational fields.

“Yes, I do. How should we help him?”

Casey’s voice made the pastor jump. He had briefly forgotten that he was there.

Since his gradual recovery from terminal psychosis, when medical science had plucked him from oblivion, Casey Jeffs had been employed as a handyman undertaking menial tasks at the institute. The employment served as a valuable psychological anchor amid a strange and often hostile world. In these modern days of empowerment to the weak and support of the needy, Casey’s apparent success in leading a near-normal life was held by the institute as a symbol of the power of rehabilitation.
The meek shall inherit the Earth,
Patterson reflected as he looked into Casey’s innocent features. But the meek needed those who could lead the way, the shepherd to their flock. Patterson knew that he himself represented the closest thing to a father and a family that Casey had ever known.

“We should ease his suffering, and help him to find God,” Patterson responded. “Daniel has suffered enough, hasn’t he?”

Casey nodded seriously. “We all have, Pastor.”

Patterson wondered where Casey might have picked up the reply, doubtful that it could have tumbled unbidden from the confused miasma of his own mind. Daniel Neville had been allowed to live in order to study why he alone had survived the experiments, but now he was a liability that Patterson could not afford.

“Did the police officers actually see Daniel Neville?” he asked.

“One of them did.” Casey nodded. “They let him into the room for a moment.”

Patterson nodded slowly, and made his decision.

“You remember what we spoke of, Casey? That we would do it just like we did before?”

The blue eyes twinkled. “Yes, boss, I know what to do.” A flicker of doubt appeared. “Will it be like last time? The police made me think about the last time, about how—”

Patterson overcame his revulsion as he reached out and patted the back of Casey’s hand.

“It won’t be like last time, Casey, and even if it is, I will protect you when you need me.”

The childlike relief in Casey’s eyes contrasted with the lumbering movements of his body as he stood from his chair and loped out of the office. Patterson leaned back in his chair and looked down at his desk. There a broadsheet was emblazoned with an image of Senator Isaiah Black alongside the results of the most recent polls. Patterson bit his lip as he read.

Black’s popularity had increased in spite of, or perhaps because of, his distancing himself from the American Evangelical Alliance. Patterson felt his eyeballs surging briefly in their sockets, and he forced himself to remain calm. The polls weren’t any more psychic than he was, and could change almost literally overnight. As for the police at the institute …

Patterson dug out his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number, waiting for the line to connect. The digital warbling of advanced security functions assured him that Byron Stone was leaving nothing to chance in Israel.

“Yes?”
came the drawling Texan voice as the line picked up.

“There has been a complication,” Patterson said briskly. “One of the bodies may have been identified, and detectives are snooping around. Ensure that the surgeon is close at hand. We may require him to void any investigations.”

The pastor could almost hear Byron Stone’s irritation down the line.

“Your amateurs should never have been employed to transport the remains. Just make goddamn sure you give us enough warning, Pastor, understood?”

Somehow, Patterson managed to rise above the Texan’s imperious tone.

“Of course.”

JABALIYA

GAZA STRIP

AUGUST 26

H
ow on earth did the two of you come to be here?” Dr. Hassim Khan asked.

Ethan struggled out of the chair to which he had been tied. As he stood, he saw that his hands were trembling. He flexed them a few times as Rachel appeared from the tunnel behind him.

“Are you okay?” Ethan asked.

“I’ll be fine,” she muttered coldly, passing by him to perch on the edge of a crate nearby.

Ethan could hardly blame her for being pissed with him, considering the situation they were now in, but it wasn’t like he’d pushed her out of the goddamn airplane. He turned to Hassim Khan and explained how MACE had pursued them, and their escape with the camera footage into Gaza.

Hassim asked Ethan’s captors, “You know of this MACE company?”

“Private contractors,” the younger one said, his features twisted with disgust. “They infect our land like a parasite.”

Hassim gestured to the Palestinian who had questioned Ethan.

“This is Mahmoud. He and his companion, Yossaf, have been protecting me here.”

Ethan wasn’t sure how to acknowledge the men who had moments earlier been threatening to slit his throat. He decided simply to ignore them, keeping the focus of his conversation on Hassim.

“Protecting you from what?” Ethan asked once more.

“From abduction, ironically.” Hassim chuckled.

Rachel frowned as she glanced at the two burly men.

“But insurgents are sworn to Israel’s destruction, and have the most to gain from abductions.”

It was Mahmoud who spoke, his arms folded and his gaze brooding.

“Most Palestinians are not terrorists. Your Western media portrays us all as brutal, killing in the name of Allah, but most of us do not support terrorism. We want our homes and our lives back, but we don’t want to kill people any more than you do.”

Ethan turned to Hassim.

“Who’s orchestrating these abductions then? A splinter faction?”

Hassim shook his head.

“Mahmoud and Yossaf have spoken to everyone they know and nobody is aware of the abductions.”

“Unlikely,” Ethan said, turning to Mahmoud. “Who do you think is abducting Westerners?”

“The company you call MACE.”

“What would they want with my daughter?” Rachel snorted. “What could they gain from abducting people when they’re responsible for
security
?”

“Maintaining war maintains profits,” Mahmoud replied darkly. “And business here is booming.”

“Profits over peace?” Rachel gasped.

“Why not?” Hassim said. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Rachel said, looking at Ethan for support. “If any organization wanted to abduct people, then they would target high-profile individuals like politicians or television stars, not a group of scientists. Nobody would even notice they were gone.”

Hassim nodded.

“Indeed, unless you had other motives that remain out of the public eye.”

“What do you mean?” Ethan asked.

Hassim spoke softly.

“MACE is a powerful supplier of arms and technology to Israel, but is owned by a large church.”