From the Ashes (22 page)

Wayne rented a locker inside the station to store his briefcase in; there was no reason to lug it around all day. When this was all over, he’d probably come back and retrieve the briefcase, go back to the library, and catch up on a little reading. Probably. You could never know how these things would end, and there were too many variables to rest on your laurels and bank on any kind of success. Laziness begat sloppiness. And whatever people might have said about Wayne Wilkins, lazy and sloppy were two words that would never have been used to describe him.

Locking the briefcase in the locker and pocketing the key, he entered a tunnel and descended the first staircase, following the signs for the Number 6 line to Brooklyn. He had one more meeting to make, one with a person who the Division had kept on file for years but had been all but certain that the lead had been pumped dry – until Michael Rickner had backdoored his way into the nation’s secrets and changed the game. Just this one last stop, keeping a step ahead of Jon and Mara, before he was ready to put the next phase of the plan into action.

And as plans went, this one was a doozy.

“Gone?”

“Gone,” Jon told Dr. Leinhart on the other end of the line. He and Mara were standing outside on the steps of the library. A chorus of sirens – fire truck klaxon and ambulance wail – sounded from the east. “The librarian had no clue where they went. He was as shocked as we were.”

A distorted noise as the professor sighed into the mouthpiece. “I— God, Jon I don’t know what to say.” Silence, then, “One thing this does tell us, though.”

“What?”

“It’s real. Someone doesn’t want anyone to find what Michael found. I’d say, between this and the guy at the apartment, Michael’s theory was legitimate. Or at least close enough to ruffle some feathers.”

Jon shook his head abruptly. It was both good news and bad. They were, in fact, on the right track. But that track, as Michael had found out the hard way, was extremely dangerous. “Any suggestions as to what to do next?”

Another pause. “None from this end. I’m still plumbing my resources for anything that could shed some light. On my way to class right now actually, so I’ll be out of touch for about two hours. I’ll keep looking, but you guys dig deep. Maybe go back to the notebook. If anyone can pick up the trail, you can, Jon. Michael had nothing but praise for your intellectual acuity and insight. Make him proud.”

Jon allowed himself a small smile. “I’ll try, Professor.” He glanced at Mara beside him, and revised his statement.
“We’ll
try.”

“Good. I’ll let you know if I turn up anything. Good luck.”

“Thanks. Bye.”

“Goodbye, Jon.”

Mara stepped closer to Jon as he pocketed the cell phone. “Any luck?”

“He didn’t have any new info. Suggested we go back to the notebook. He figures the missing microfilm proves that the conspiracy Michael was researching was real, though.”

“Yeah, I guess it does. Well, I suppose that’s
something.”

“Something you can’t really follow up on.” He grunted in frustration. Turned and looked up at the library behind him. “Library,” he said, snapping his fingers.

“Yes, it
is
a library,” Mara said with a slightly sarcastic edge. “We just went in there, remember?”

“No, no, we need to go back in. Surf the Net, google what we know, see if we can track her down that way.”

“If they’ve purged everywhere that’s
hard
to find, why wouldn’t they have purged the Internet? It’d be much easier for them to find the evidence against them with a search engine than in the dark recesses of some old library. Besides, the Web’s only been around the past twenty years, and this article—”

’You got a better idea?” Jon cut in.

“No,” she admitted after a tense pause. “Let’s give it a shot.” Her voice and body language were lacking enthusiasm and confidence in this course of action, but she followed him back inside nonetheless.

They found an empty computer station, pulled up an extra chair, and set to work. “Catherine Smith” returned thousands of hits. “Brooklyn Herald”: none that referred to a newspaper of that name; most were “Brooklyn heralds blah blah blah” – not what they were looking for. “Roger Blumhurst”: only a handful, all but one of which referred to men who seemed to have been born years after the Roger
they
sought had died, the exception being a website listing Korean War Veterans who had given their lives in combat. Roger Blumhurst, 1951 –
not quite,
Jon reflected. “Catherine Smith” with “Brooklyn Herald”: zilch. “Catherine Smith” with “Roger Blumhurst”: nada. “Catherine Smith” with “1957”: nothing useful. Another dead end.

“Wait a sec,” Mara burst in. Jon turned his head from the screen at her sudden show of enthusiasm. “We’ve been looking for phone numbers and street addresses all this time, right? I mean, she’s an old lady by now and all, but what if she’s moved into the twenty-first century?”

“You mean email?”

“Exactly. My Great-Uncle Roland is eighty-four, and he talks with his grandkids across the country via Skype. Very modern for an old guy.”

“Michael’s email. Of course!” Jon pulled up Gmail and typed in his brother’s login and password. Login successful. Jon smiled. Michael still used the same password that the pair had coined years back for access to their “secret hideout” in an abandoned mine in Ecuador, near where their dad was working on an anthropological/archaeological team with some of the tribal natives in a remote mountainous region. Jon himself still used it as his password for some of his accounts. The memory, and the bond it signified, brought a tearful smile to his face.

Even in the few days it had been since Michael’s death, the emails had already started to pile up. A few pieces of junk mail, some newsletters from campus organizations, bank statements, bill reminders, frequent flyer points updates, and the like. Face-book notifications, invites to coffee from colleagues and friends who had fallen by the wayside in recent weeks. Nothing from Catherine Smith. Another dead end.

“Wait a minute,” Jon said, mostly to himself. He pulled out Michael’s notebook and thumbed through to an entry he had just glanced over before. Scribbled in the margin, halfway covered by a newspaper article that had been glued onto the page, was an email address. One Jon had never seen before.
Of course.

Jon logged out of Michael’s personal Gmail account, then logged in to the new account, using the same password as before. It worked. According to the welcome page information, the account holder was one Michael Smith.
Oh, the anonymous wonders of free email services.
Michael had created another account, one not associated with himself at all, exclusively for the purpose of investigating this conspiracy he’d stumbled upon. He was paranoid about anyone finding out about his work, so of course he’d be careful and put some distance between it and himself. And a new email account under a false name – and probably a false date of birth and zip code as well – would have been the ideal tool to use. The most recent email in the inbox was an email sent Sunday evening. Two days after his death. Status:
Unread.
Sender:
Catherine Smith.

Jackpot.

Jon clicked on the subject line – reading “re: Visit” – in the inbox to open the exchange. Both he and Mara hunched over in their seats, leaning closer to the screen, their breaths coming more quickly now. The page loaded with an innocuous message, simply inquiring about the visit Michael was supposed to have paid her the day before, a visit he never turned up for, prevented by causes she apparently wasn’t aware of. She didn’t realize he was dead. Of course she didn’t. How would she have found out? The only one who knew how to find her was Michael, and he wasn’t likely to send her an email from beyond the grave telling her that he had been unavoidably detained and couldn’t make their appointment.

Nothing else in that message, but Jon scrolled down. Michael thanking her for the opportunity to meet with her, and saying that he looked forward to meeting her “tomorrow.” That part must’ve been sent on Friday.

Jon scrolled down more. Bingo. Meeting time (and her long-winded reasoning behind the time she had chosen), conditions on her talking with him (including not having to testify in court and not being quoted in “anymore damned newspapers”), and other particulars. Including her home address.

Mara grabbed Jon’s hand and squeezed. He looked from the address on the screen to her, beaming. He jotted it down on a piece of scrap paper sitting next to the monitor, pulled the address up on Google Maps, and, after checking which subway station was nearest the woman’s home, he logged out of the computer and they headed for the door. They finally knew where Catherine Smith – their last remaining lead – lived.

In Brooklyn.

Jon and Mara exited the library and stood perched at the top of the steps, looking down on Fifth Avenue and consulting the tourist map they’d picked up from a sidewalk stand.

“Well, there’s a Metro station right down there,” Mara said, pointing west down 42
^nd
. “Or, we could hoof it to Grand Central a few blocks thattaway.”

“We’d have to change trains at Grand Central anyway,” Jon chimed in. “Let’s hoof it.”

“Sounds good to me.” Mara pocketed the map, and the pair climbed down the steps, walking north down the sidewalk. They crossed 42
^nd
and made their way east toward a side entrance for Grand Central near Madison Avenue. At the top of the staircase, Jon froze.

Mara was two steps down when she looked back at Jon.

’What?” she asked, oblivious to the Latino man who stood at the foot of the stairs, returning Jon’s look of disbelief.

“Run,”
Jon breathed, grabbing her hand and tugging her up the stairs. The Latino recovered himself and started up the stairs after them.

The pair dashed across Madison, right in front of a bus, effectively slowing their pursuer. And they kept on running, Jon wrestling with the probability that his assailant had followed him to New York, Mara trusting in Jon’s seemingly impetuous judgment. Weaving and pushing through the hordes of sidewalk patrons, Jon chanced a glance back over his shoulder. It
was
the same guy. Latin features, embittered eyes, eyes that recognized and despised Jon. He was wearing a black jogging suit, warm but easy to maneuver in. And to help hide in the shadows, Jon thought. The man was running after the pair, no further than thirty feet behind. And gaining.

“We’ve gotta ditch the bags. They’re slowing us down!”

“No way!” Mara shouted in response. “Besides, that’s
Michael’s.”
Jon knew she was right. He could never just throw away Michael’s bag like that. But he had to do
something
to put some distance between them and their pursuer.

How did they do it in the movies? Knock over stuff behind them, impede their pursuer’s progress, right? Worth a shot, Jon thought as he saw a lightweight folding table on the sidewalk, piles of flyers advocating some social cause littering its top. A few volunteers stood behind it, shouting at passersby and entreating them to support their cause. A donations box sat at the back of the table, its lid partially open. It’d have to do.

When they reached the social cause advocates, Mara kept on running, but Jon grabbed the cheap green tabletop and flung it to the ground behind him. Shouts of “Hey!” and “What the hell?” chased after him as he slid out of the grips of grabbing hands and beat a path down the sidewalk after Mara. The volunteers, as well as several passersby, bent down in the middle of the sidewalk to pick up the contents of the donations box, and to collect the errant flyers that were already starting to disperse with the breeze and be trod upon by the feet of the unaware. Just like Jon had planned. And on the other side of the diversion, their pursuer was forced to slow his pace and alter his course. Jon met his eyes, and the man’s vengeful stare deepened and darkened. Jon shivered, and quickened his pace to catch up with Mara.

“What was that?” she asked in between breaths.

“Diversion.”

The iconic main entrance to Grand Central began to loom in the distance before them. Darting between cars, they crossed Vanderbilt Avenue. Horns blared and tempers flared as they finally reached to the safety of the sidewalk. A glance behind told Jon that their pursuer had maneuvered past the diversion and was nearly at the intersection himself.

“Keep going! Into the station!” Jon shouted at Mara, who was two feet away and already moving as fast as she could. Mara flung open the door as she and Jon hurtled inside down the ramp.

An intersection. Jon glanced left and right as he ran, scanning the signs for the subway, for the Number 6 line. Left to the gift shop. Right to the train station and dining concourse. No sign for the subway. They ran straight.

The next archway did read “Subway.” They dashed through the entrance and into the main concourse of Grand Central Station. Jon halted briefly, lost in the cavernous room, entries and exits in every direction. The squeal of sole rubber sliding on marble behind him caused Jon to look over his shoulder, his feet already in motion again as his mind registered their pursuer rounding the corner behind them.

Directly in front of them, travelers waited in line to purchase their train tickets. Jon smelled a shortcut and another diversion. He and Mara shoved their way across the four lines, knocking people down and drawing the lines into an indignant cluster. Jon shouted an apology over his shoulder and smiled. He saw that the cluster of bodies required the Latino to go around them, a change in route that would cost him a few seconds. And every second counted.

At the end of the concourse, Jon and Mara headed into the tunnel that headed to the Number 6 line.

Jon and Mara’s clamorous footsteps slapped the tile floor and echoed off the walls, the crowded tunnel already full with foot traffic becoming all the more tumultuous with their pushing and shoving to get through. A woman with an oversized Macy’s shopping bag received a particularly strong shove from behind, mainly directed at the arm that held her purchases. Jon could hear her cursing above the din as the contents of her bag spilled onto the floor.