From the Ashes (29 page)

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you let Michael get killed,” Jon shot back. Wayne just looked at him in response.

Jon shook his head. “So what,” he said somewhat snidely, “you think we’re the country’s last hope or something?”

“Or something,” Wayne replied, quickening his verbal pace. “I have to keep up appearances with my superiors, so I can’t go traipsing around with you two, but I’ll be watching, keeping an eye out for any threat.”

“Any threat? Like the guy who chased us through Grand Central this morning?” Mara said.

Wayne tilted his head downward, his eyes narrowing.

“What guy?”

“The same guy that I got into a slugfest with at Michael’s apartment a few days ago. The guy who seems hell-bent on seeing me dead. Latino guy, angry eyes, maybe five-ten, likes to run around in black chasing me.”

“Shit,” Wayne exhaled under his breath, his eyes on the floor.

“You know him?” Mara asked.

“Know him? Yeah, I know him. He’s one of us. Perhaps the most fanatical of anyone in the Division, except for Director Greer himself.”

Jon exhaled heavily, his eyebrows starting to quiver nervously.

“His name is Ramirez,” Wayne continued. “Don’t let your little scuffles with him thus far fool you. The man is good at what he does. Very, very good. If there’s any one agent I wouldn’t want after me right now, it would probably be Enrique Ramirez. When he sets out to do something, he doesn’t stop until it’s done. Including killing people.
Especially
killing people. I’ll definitely try to keep tabs on him too. To neutralize him before he can get to you.” He looked away again and cursed at the silent stone floor.

Jon and Mara stood in uncomfortable silence until Wayne lifted his eyes again.

“You two be careful, and work fast. Time wasn’t on your side before. With Ramirez on your tail, you’d better really book it.”

Jon and Mara nodded. Jon ran his finger over the edge of the envelope. Mara nervously rocked one of her ankles back and forth, back and forth.

Wayne furrowed his brow at them. “Um, class dismissed? Go already, and watch your backs.”

“Thanks,” Mara said hesitantly as she led the way out of the chapel.

Jon followed close behind. “Yeah, thanks for your help... I think.”

“You’re welcome, guys. Just don’t let it be in vain.
Find those Dossiers.
.”

“We will,” Mara promised as they walked through the gate and into the cathedral proper.

***

Wayne remained behind for a few minutes, staring at the stained glass and mulling over his thoughts. He had felt in his element right then. It had been a long time since the high-school salutatorian and university honors student had interacted with other civilians in an encounter that didn’t end with a body count. But then, this was a mission he could believe in, a mission so very different from the track-aim-kill missions he had been running for years. A mission that seemed somehow more human.

He realized that this was a supremely dangerous game he was playing, especially with the wild-card Ramirez thrown into the mix. Wayne Wilkins had infiltrated terrorist camps, stalked enemy warlords through insurgent strongholds, put his life on the line dozens upon dozens of times. But this time was different. The implication that this mission held for him, and ultimately for the nation, was unparalleled in anything he had done before. The danger of failure was unavoidably clear. This, more than any other operation he had engaged in, was a mission where failure truly was not an option.

He stood, pulled his GPS receiver from his pocket, and turned on the display. The intrepid young adventurers were just south of the west exit of the cathedral. Heading back toward the park. Wayne walked out of the chapel, around to the northern exit, out the doors, and into the growing shadows of evening. Finding a somewhat discreet nook in which to hide himself, he opened his cell phone and dialed.

“Greer,” answered the voice on the other end.

“It’s me.”

“Wilkins, my boy. How’d it go?”

“Like clockwork. They took the bait. Hook, line, and sinker.”

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
~ Edmund Burke

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.
~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Manhattan, Hew York

Back in Central Park, Jon and Mara found a secluded spot off one of the jogger trails, a place where they could open the envelope and discuss their plans in relative privacy. They could hear the drone of car engines below them to one side, traffic backed up on one of the many roads that traversed the park, but it was out of sight from the grass upon which they were seated. Through the bushes, they could see the jogger trail – and any joggers that ran by – but the joggers would likely assume that the young pair had come to this secluded spot for
other
purposes, and keep moving down the path. Satisfied with their sequestered little glade, they sat on the cold gray-green ground as Jon pulled out the aged envelope and opened the flap.

The seal was torn, but the surface underneath – where the adhesive would have held the envelope shut – was fresh and white, a contrast to the rest of the envelope that told Jon that Wayne had likely been the one to open it. The first one to see its contents in half a century. And Jon would be the second.

Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper, folded into thirds. Fragments of handwritten sentences were scrawled on the outside of the sheet. Jon extracted the paper, slowly opening the page. He noted a tear along one side, as though the sheet had been ripped from a bound book, perhaps a journal of some sort.

Mara leaned in for a closer look. “It looks like a diary or something.”

Jon agreed. Both sides of the page were filled with relatively short entries, each dated and ended with a cursory initialing. What looked to Jon like
JDR Jr.

“Is this...” Mara trailed off.

“I think so,” Jon answered, his hands starting to quiver with excitement. “Journal entries from Rockefeller himself. No wonder Blumhurst made a big deal about-” He stopped talking, his eyes fixed to the page.

“What?” Mara entreated at his silence. She followed his finger to an entry, starred in the margin by a different pen, perhaps by Blumhurst years after Rockefeller had written the words.

“‘My punishment for using my power to try to help the people is the gnawing guilt that devours me from within,’”
Jon read aloud,
“‘hidden from the world, borne in silence and suffered in solitude. His punishment was much worse, but he was eventually absolved. He points to the source of my anguish, the first of five’”

Jon and Mara looked at each other, the brains behind the surprised eyes and furrowed brows working in overdrive. A clue? Directly from Rockefeller? It was almost too easy. Jon pulled out Michael’s notebook and thumbed through the pages. The pieces were finally coming together. On one page, Michael had written
‘September 1957 – theft from mansion.’
Jon smiled. Somehow, his brother must have found out about the theft of this journal page from one of Rockefeller’s mansions, and connected the timeframe with Roger’s suicide and the envelope that the agent had entrusted Catherine Smith just beforehand. Such disparate pieces of the larger puzzle, but both Jon and Michael had long possessed a seemingly uncanny ability to see hidden connections where others saw nothing but white noise.

“‘He points to the source of my anguish, the first of five,’” Mara repeated, her eyes locked on the paper. “Five sources of anguish?”

“I don’t know. The big question is
who
he’s writing about. Alright, we know the author is Rockefeller, right?”

“We
assume
so.”

Jon rolled his eyes and shrugged in a conciliatory gesture. “Yeah. Well, let’s just run with that assumption for right now. I don’t think Blumhurst, Catherine Smith, and Wayne would get so worked up if it weren’t.”

“Assuming
Wayne didn’t make this up to screw with us.”

Jon’s tone was suddenly stern. “You got a better plan?”

Mara got quiet. “No.”

“Nor do I.” He shook his head. “Besides, if his story weren’t true, why did he go through all of this instead of just shooting us?”

A pause. “I don’t know.”

“Fine. So what do we know about Rockefeller?” The question hung in the air for a moment, then Jon’s eyes lit up. He reached into the backpack and withdrew the now-familiar worn red notebook. Flipping to the map page, Jon slapped the open notebook upon his lap, the Rockefeller journal page lying on his knee. Circles of ink stared up at him like unseeing unblinking eyes, famous properties all over the island of Manhattan that had some connection to Rockefeller.
Where did he hide it?
inquired Michael’s handwriting, a question that had been passed on to his brother and fiancee.

“It’s in Manhattan,” Jon said, finally revealing what he had realized back in the Cathedral.

“You think so?”

“Michael thought so. And there are enough places here, places he would have felt were secure.
His
properties.” Jon ran his finger from Rockefeller Center to the Museum of Modern Art, to the Cathedral of St. John that they had just left. “And places he had donated his millions to. Places he had donated land and real estate to. Churches, museums, parks, the UN Headquarters. Places that represented spiritual calm, higher callings, higher learning, everything he must’ve felt he had turned his back on. His own personal penance.”

“Did he make
all
of his donations after 1932?”

“Well, no, but apparently that didn’t rule them out in Michael’s thinking. I guess if you endow a museum or church with millions of dollars, or if you founded the darned place, they’ll pretty much let you go anywhere you want in the place. Hide things wherever and however you want.”

“Money talks.”

“That it does. If any man had his choice of hiding spots in the city in the ‘thirties, it was Rockefeller.”

“Which makes our job that much harder.”

Jon grimaced. “Let’s just work the angle we’ve got. The journal entry.” He placed the page on top of the map. “So let’s assume that he wasn’t being more obtuse than necessary and talking about himself in some split-personality third-person.”

“Agreed,” Mara said with a hint of a smile.

“It was someone he sympathized with. Someone he related to. Someone who was punished for ‘using his power to try to help the people.’”

“Abraham Lincoln?”

“Good guess, but I don’t think they ever met.”

Mara rolled her eyes.

“No, seriously though,” Jon urged, “think Rockefeller. He’s the author. What’s important to him? Who would
he
be talking about?”

“I don’t know, Jon. You’re the history buff. You figure it out.”

Jon pretended to ignore her jab and stared at the green of the copse that surrounded them. A car engine backfired on the road below, causing both of them to jump. They looked around in fear, then exhaled deeply. Not a gun being fired. They were safe for now. Then his eyes grew wide in epiphany.

“Fire! That’s it!” Jon exclaimed in the most subdued voice his excitement would allow.

She looked both confused and excited. “What’s it?”

“In Greek mythology, Prometheus was a Titan who defied Zeus and the Olympian deities by taking fire from the gods’ home on Mount Olympus and giving it to man. A gift that he feels will help man, right? What does he get for his trouble? Zeus chains him to a rock and has an eagle pluck out and devour his liver every day.”

“Holy crap,” she said, a look of shock and disgust on her face.

Jon smirked. “Some thanks, right? Eventually, at the pleading of the other gods, Zeus lets him go after a few years of this torment,
absolving
him of his crime. It’s Prometheus, Mara.
He’s
the one who points to the source of Rockefeller’s guilt.”

“Whoa...” Mara sat wide-eyed shaking her head. “Wait, so Rockefeller means the
statue
of Prometheus?
His
statue of Prometheus?”

Jon stood, extended a hand to help Mara up from the ground.

“Mara, I think we have a date at Rockefeller Plaza.”

Dipped in twilight and peopled by a mixture of photo-snapping tourists, oversized shopping bags with the names of high-end retail outfits emblazoned on the side in conspicuous lettering, and diners patronizing the outdoor cafe at tables whose parasols protected those underneath from the rays of a now-absent sun, Rockefeller Plaza was a picturesque microcosm of Midtown Manhattan life. The ice skating rink, made famous by film and popular legend alike, was packed up until next winter, when the selection of the Center’s famous Christmas tree would bring throngs from all over to dance upon razor’s edge across the Plaza – or fall on their faces trying, laughing – in the shadow of that looming triangle of deep green and rich golden baubles. In its stead, the center of the Plaza was populated with pedestrians, diners, shoppers, with nary a Christmas tree or ice skate to be found. And though the iconic four-story
Tannenbaum
was absent, another icon presided over the Plaza – Paul Manship’s famous statue of
Prometheus.

Jon and Mara paused at the entrance to the Lower Plaza, a row of flowers and shrubbery lining the sides of the walk, the hustle and bustle of the scene seemingly unimportant in view of the statue. Immediately before them, a large granite marker held the famous “I believe” statements of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., etched for posterity in gold lettering that twinkled in the twilit ambiance. At the top of the display read the words, “I believe in the supreme worth of the individual, and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” All but completely ripped-off from the
Declaration of Independence,
Jon reflected. But Rockefeller’s gilded words continued on, declaring his lifelong beliefs in free enterprise, in religion, in the responsibilities that every man had to himself, to his family, to his country. And in the plaza below awaited a gilded monument of even greater importance.