Authors: Richard Doetsch
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Frank said. “This is some trick. Cristos must have slipped it into the case to mess with your head.”
“He never had the case; no one has touched the case since I put it down in the Tombs two days ago,
before
I was shot,
before
I crashed through the guardrail and awoke on the riverbank.”
Frank stared at Jack, lost for words before finally realizing. “You didn’t make us pull over to show us this picture. What the hell is going on?”
Jack held out the second drawing. Frank stared at it but didn’t touch it, as if doing so would somehow render it real.
What troubled Jack far more than the fateful image of himself was the one in the second drawing. The picture was of a beach, the first rays of morning peeking over the horizon; gulls hung suspended in the air, scampered along the sand in search of food; gentle waves lapped the sandy shore. And on the rocks was a woman’s shattered body. Jack felt his heart crumble in his chest. No doubt drawn by the same hand, it was a depiction of the future in much the way Jack’s image had been rendered. But this picture drew everything Jack was doing into question, casting doubt on his chances of success, of ever saving his wife. For the picture of the dead woman was of Mia, her lifeless body awash in the first light of dawn.
• • •
“C
RISTOS SAID THAT
our lives are preordained, that certain people within his religion can remember the future in the same way we remember the past.”
“Bullshit,” Frank said from the passenger seat. They were back in the car, heading north, with Joy at the wheel.
“I agree,” Jack said. “But then how do you explain the drawing of me?”
“Why do I need to explain it?”
“If there’s truth to them, then Mia will die at dawn tomorrow.”
“I don’t believe that. The picture of you on the riverbank, what do you see?”
“I see me lying dead on the riverbank.”
“But are you?”
“The newspaper said it—”
“But you’re not, and neither will Mia be if we find her. So let’s keep focused on that instead of all this mysterious magic bullshit. Cristos filled your head with nonsense. Quit dwelling on the words of a psychopath. It’s making you sound crazy.”
Jack said nothing, letting his friend’s words sink in. They finally did, and he smiled.
“No offense, Jack,” Frank said, “but the FBI and Cristos weren’t after those drawings of you and Mia. Not to downplay them, but they are not the earth-shattering type that conspiracies are built around.”
Jack nodded. “No, they were after these.” He held up the two red books, handing one to Frank. “Prayer books.”
“Prayer books?” Frank said as he looked through it. “Why the hell would they be after prayer books?”
Jack leaned over the car seat and opened the book. He took a bottle of water out of the cupholder and poured it on a napkin. He rubbed it on the first page, and the prayers disappeared, replaced by elegant handwriting, small and detailed
“How the hell did you know how to do that?”
Each notation was short, and there were thousands of them. Jack kept wetting the napkin, thumbing through the pages, until he came near the end, where he found a missing page, its shredded edge still bound within the book. He looked back and noticed the last date on the page before it was June 23, the week before. Whatever was missing contained pages either written about the present or blank for future entries. But as Jack turned to the next page, he saw that notations had already been made for the next week. He flipped back to the torn section.
“Whatever was written here was torn out for a reason,” Jack said, not looking up from the book. “Someone didn’t want anyone to see these missing pages.”
Jack flipped forward, looking at dates for the next week, and as he scanned the last notation, he was suddenly shocked. There was a name he recognized, completely out of context with everything else on the page. And while the language was Cotis, there was no question of the anglicized name appearing in the text:
Mia Keeler.
“What the hell is this?” Jack said, turning the page toward Joy.
“Oh, God,” Joy said, glancing over at the book before looking back at the road.
“What the hell does it say?”
“I’ll see if I can find Professor Adoy,” Joy said as she looked at her watch. “But at this late hour …”
“Why would her name be in this book?”
“Guys,” Frank said. He wet the napkin and rubbed the pages of the second book in his lap.
Joy and Jack turned their attention to the second book. Frank was flipping pages, rubbing the wet cloth on them as he went, revealing Cotis text, but the page he was currently on revealed English.
“Oh, boy,” Frank mumbled.
It was all in a similar fashion, but they understood it. Small notations, dates in the corner, and they went on and on, five, ten, twenty pages.
As they continued to read, they began to realize why the FBI and the U.S. government were after this book. It contained every job that Cristos had done, every assassination, every bombing, every act committed on behalf of people and governments whose world image would be tarnished by such allegations.
As they read, they found several jobs engaged by offshore companies for which Jack knew the dots could eventually be connected back home. But on the last page, it seemed that Cristos connected those dots himself, for anyone who read the red book would find written a list of five names. Jack, Frank, and Joy knew them all; each one filled them with ever-escalating shock: a member of the Justice Department; a high-level FBI agent; two Cabinet-level positions in the current administration. And the final name—none of them would voice it, as it filled them all with confusion.
Jack understood where Cristos’s help came from and why he had certain members of the U.S. government at his beck and call, for the imcriminating evidence would doom not only careers but lives for acts of treason.
He understood how Cristos’s execution was a staged event of subterfuge, how he was just a pawn in prosecuting an assassin in a trial whose outcome was preordained by people pulling strings for show. Jack understood how Cristos managed to get the assistance of certain members of the FBI and the Justice Department in protecting him. If they didn’t act on his precise instructions, he threatened exposure; they had danced with the devil and had become his minions.
This book, the one with more than half of its entries in English, was not being sought for national security, as leverage against other nations who had illicitly engaged Cristos; it was being sought by a select few who were operating on their own within the confines of the U.S. government—arranging hits, assassinations, and who knew what in the name of national security while standing in the face of the constitution and laws of the United States.
And those select few, those five, were listed.
Jack was on his way to the first person on that list, someone who knew where Cristos was holding Mia, someone who would tell him even if he had to resort to unthinkable means.
He personally knew FBI Director Lance Warren; he was with him Thursday night, trading handshakes and smiles. There was no doubt he had sent Cristos’s men after him when they left the party. CIA Director Stuart Turner’s success in dealing with foreign governments and hostile adversaries was now clear. And if Jack was to survive this ordeal, he would pay a visit to FBI Agent Gene Tierney and see to it that he was convicted and made to suffer for the rest of his days.
But it was the fifth and final name that gave him pause, that none of them mentioned, that Jack couldn’t understand its presence on the list. And it caused him the most fear. For that name was Jack Keeler.
T
IERNEY WALKED OUT
of the Tombs humbled and humiliated. He had lain strapped to the bed for fifteen minutes, struggling with the leather bindings, before the nurse came in to free them. The two men he assigned to guard the room had left two minutes before him after being debriefed.
No one saw anything. Bullshit. Everyone saw everything. They just weren’t going to cooperate.
Tierney had simply followed orders, orders he didn’t agree with, but that’s what agents did all the time. Once someone didn’t follow orders, the entire system would crumble.
Tierney climbed into his white Mercedes. It was his one indulgence, a gift from his wife, who was the real breadwinner, toiling away her days on Madison Avenue creating ad campaigns for sneakers, soda, and erectile dysfunction medication. He started up the car and let Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Number 21 wash away his everrising stress.
He pulled out of the garage and headed for the Brooklyn Bridge, noticing how the bright lights of the city gave it a false sense of innocence.
Although he was told not to contact Warren, the circumstances demanded it. He tried six times but still had received no answer. The lower level of the Tombs was littered with bodies, and although he made the accusation that it was Jack’s doing, there was little doubt that Cristos had lost control of the situation.
Cristos wasn’t looking for the evidence case for them; he couldn’t care less if anyone’s secret agendas were laid bare. Something else was in that box, something far worse that had made Cristos desperate, that had made him scared. And in Tierney’s mind, there could be nothing worse than a scared, desperate assassin.
Tierney hit the Brooklyn Bridge. It was virtually empty, the city masses having already escaped for the long weekend. He looked to his right out at New York Harbor, at the Statue of Liberty, whose lit torch was held up in welcome.
And as he turned to look back at the roadway, the fabric of the night was shredded by an enormous fireball that rolled up high into the sky, the explosion tearing Tierney and his white Mercedes to shreds.
FRIDAY
, 1:15
A.M
.
A
SINGLE CAR SAT IN
the driveway of the stately white colonial home in Riverdale, New York. While Peter Womack was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, earning the wages of a federal employee, both he and his wife, Katherine, came from money, the trust-fund brigade. Because of their station in life, they were encouraged to give back, to work in the service of the country that had afforded their families a life of privilege.
The porch light was on, and several windows glowed at this late hour. Jack knew that Peter was in the middle of a trial, and he never joined his family out in the Hamptons until all work was behind him. Jack had considered Peter a friend, and although they and their wives had dined out, although they had worked together, Jack admitted to himself that he never truly knew the man. They walked in different worlds, not just federal and local but background, financial circles, and privilege. Jack was a DA because of passion, Peter as a result of duty.
He was not a cynic, but when Jack saw Peter’s name in Cristos’s book, he was not totally shocked. As they drove to Peter’s house, Jack
grew angrier with every mile. It was Peter who suggested that Jack prosecute Cristos; it was Peter who limited the fed involvement, all the while knowing that Jack would do the right thing and get the conviction. And, Jack imagined, it was Peter who was involved with the false execution of Nowaji Cristos, allowing him to live another day.
Jack tried to banish the thought that Peter would have allowed Jack and Mia’s current situation but would withhold judgment until they spoke. But the bottom line was that Peter was connected to Cristos, and if he didn’t know where Cristos was, he knew the people who would.
Jack rang the doorbell as Frank and Joy stood back on the slate walkway.
He waited a moment. No answer. He rang it again.
After a full minute, no sound came from the home.
Without a word, Frank took off around the house, peering through the windows.
Jack and Joy remained at the front of the house as Jack gave the button one last push. But this time, he heard movement.
Someone approached the entrance hall, the lock was unlatched, and the door was pulled open. Frank stood there, his hand wrapped in his sleeve so as not to touch the knob.
“Back door was open,” Frank said.
Joy and Jack stepped inside the small wainscoted foyer.
“Don’t touch anything,” Frank said.
Jack knew full well what that meant as Frank led them through to the study off the living room.
Peter sat behind an antique partners’ desk, a Tiffany lamp’s glow lighting the dark wood surface. The right side of his head was missing, the maroon curtains behind him covered in bits of flesh and bone. A pistol lay on the floor beneath his left hand.
“Look at his neck,” Frank said.
Jack could see a shade of bruising around his trachea.
“Jack.” Frank waited until his friend finally looked up from the body. “The list in the back of that book, the one with Peter’s name
on it, Director Warren’s name, Tierney’s … yours. It’s not the type of list we think. It’s a hit list.”
T
HE HEAVY BOLT
of the lock slipped back with a thud, and the door opened to reveal a man balancing a heavy tray precariously on his right hand. He stepped into the room; the sound of the city flowed in before he closed the door behind him. He slipped the key back into the door lock, securing it with a single turn, tucked it back into his pocket, and took hold of the silver tray with two hands.
“Brought you a little dinner,” the man said with a forced smile.
Mia sat on the bed, her head hung low.
“Sorry we don’t have something a bit more appealing, but this is what we’re all eating.” The tray had two plates covered in cold cuts, two apples, a loaf of bread, and three bottles of water.
“I’m Jacob,” the brown-haired man said, trying to get a reaction from Mia, but she remained silent, her eyes distant. “Well, it’s here if you want it.”
When Jacob leaned down, both hands holding the tray, Mia sprang from the bed and snatched the gun from his holster.
Jacob spun around, but Mia already had the gun pointed at him.