Sherry sat up. “I’m not a prophet.”
“Surprising, isn’t it? Neither was Rahab, in the Old Testament. In fact, she was a prostitute—chosen by God to save the Israeli spies. Or what about the donkey who spoke to Balaam? We can’t always understand why God chooses the vessels he chooses. God knows it makes no sense to me. But when he does choose a vessel, we’d better listen to the message. He wants you to go back, dear.”
“Go back?” Sherry shook her head. “To Venezuela?”
Helen nodded.
“I can’t go back!” Sherry said. “I don’t want to be a vessel. I don’t want to have these visions or whatever they are. I’m not even sure I
believe
in visions!”
Helen returned to her chair and sat without responding.
“What even makes you think that’s what this is about?” Sherry asked.
“I have this gut feeling I’ve learned not to ignore.”
“I’m finally sleeping for the first time that I can remember,” Sherry said. “I just want things to be normal.”
“But you’re running. You have to go.”
“I’m not running! That’s stupid! I want to
sleep,
not run!”
“Then sleep, Tanya.” Helen was smiling gently. “Sleep and see what happens. But I have seen some things too, and I don’t mind telling you that this is far beyond you or me, dear. It began long before you were trapped in a box. You were chosen before your parents went down there.”
“I’m not
interested
in being chosen!”
“Neither was Jonah. But at one time, you must have agreed to this, Tanya.”
Sherry swallowed. The words she had spoken in the box eight years earlier suddenly skipped through her mind—
I’ll do anything.
“It’s Sherry, not Tanya,” she said. “And what you’re saying is crazy! I can’t go back to the jungle!” Coming here had been a mistake. She wanted to walk out then. Run.
“You’ve been swallowed by this thing. Sleep won’t be easy in its stomach. Bile doesn’t sit well with the human condition. By all means, if you can stand it, sleep forever. But if it were me, I’d go.”
Thursday
CASIUS STOOD in the blue phone booth and cracked his neck nonchalantly. “I realize you think my leaving was a mistake. Is that a threat?” Of course it was, and Casius knew it well. But the verbal sparring seemed to carry its own weight in this world of theirs. He ran his hand over bunched jaw muscles and eyed the busy street outside.
“Your not coming in is obviously a problem for them,” David’s voice said over the phone.
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. You can’t spit in their faces and just expect to walk away.”
“And why are they so eager for me to come in, David? Have you asked yourself that?”
The agent hesitated. “You have proprietary information obtained on a classified mission. You’re threatening to go after Jamal on your own, using that information. I see their point.”
“That’s right. Jamal. The man who killed my father in a nightclub. The man who has reportedly been a funding source for some of this decade’s most aggressive terrorist attacks. Who has a price of $250,000 on his head. Jamal. And now I discover that he’s tied to an operation in Venezuela and you expect me to ignore it? I’m going to find Jamal and then I’m going to kill him. Unless Friberg
is
Jamal, I’m not sure I see his problem.”
“You don’t even know if Jamal is down there. All you know is that there’s a man named Abdullah down there who may or may not have ties to Jamal. Either way, it’s the principle behind it,” David said. “I understand why you would want to go after Jamal, but the agency has asked you to cooperate. You’re breaking rank.”
“Open your eyes, David. I’ll tell you this because you’ve always been good to me. Things aren’t always what they seem. They could go badly for you in the coming weeks.”
“Meaning exactly what?”
“Meaning maybe your superiors don’t have your best interest in mind this time. Meaning maybe you should consider going away for a few weeks. Far away.” He let the statement stand.
“What are you saying?”
“I’ve said it.” Casius eased up on his tone. “Call it a hunch. Either way, don’t try to defend me. I have to leave now.”
“Does this mean you’re refusing to come in?”
“Good-bye, David.”
THE SUBURBAN home had been built in the fifties, a two-story farmhouse crowded by an expanding city. He’d purchased it five years ago and it had functioned as well as he’d expected.
Casius ran through the inventory quickly. He estimated the value of the contents alone at over half a million dollars. Most of it he would leave behind for the wolves. He could only afford to take what would fit in a large sports bag. The rest he would have to leave and risk losing to their searches. It didn’t matter. He had millions stashed in banks around the world, most of it taken from one of his very first hits—an obscenely wealthy militant.
Casius strapped each of three canvas cash-packed straps tightly to his waist. The $700,000 would be his only weapon now. He pulled a loose black shirt over his head and examined himself in a full-length mirror, pleased with his new appearance. His hair hugged his skull in a close-cropped sandy brown matting—a far cry from the black curls he’d sported just ten hours earlier. His eyes stared a dark menacing brown rather than blue. It wouldn’t be enough to throw off a professional, but the ordinary person would have a hard time identifying him as the man in the CIA profile. The money belts bulged slightly at his waist. He would have to wear his trench coat.
Casius glanced around the house one final time and lifted the bag. In an ironic sort of way, leaving so much brought a warmth to his gut. It had all come from them, and now he was giving it back. Like flushing the toilet. The system that had spawned men like Friberg was no better than Friberg himself. He wasn’t sure which he hated more, Friberg or the sewer he had crawled from.
But that was all going to change, wasn’t it?
Casius left the house, tossed the bag in the rear of his black Volvo, and slid behind the wheel. The dash clock read 6 P.M.—nearly twelve hours had passed since his call with David. They would be coming soon. Once the CIA discovered his absence, they would follow him carefully, knowing full well that he would kill whoever got in his way.
And kill he would. In a heartbeat. He glanced in the rearview mirror and turned the ignition key. The car rumbled to life. Killing David Lunow might be a problem—he had actually grown to like the man. If there was anyone on the globe he might call a friend, it would be him. But they wouldn’t send David. It had been five years since the man had seen the killing end of any weapon. No, it would be contract killers. By leaving he was practically screaming for a bullet to the head. A chill ran up his spine and he grinned softly.
Casius shoved the stick shift forward and eased the car out of the long driveway, scanning for surveillance as he left the three-acre lot behind. Of course they knew where he was headed—but they would not know his route.
He reached the lake twenty minutes later. A deserted pier stuck over the water like a rickety old xylophone. The moon lit a thin multicolored sheen of oil that rested on the surface. Casius quickly removed heavy wire cutters from the trunk, snipped the chain strapping the gates together, and eased the black car onto the pier. He withdrew the black sports bag and started the car toward the polluted water.
The last bubbles popped through the surface three minutes after the car’s plunge. Only a wide hole in the water’s oily film showed for the vehicle’s pas- sage. Satisfied, Casius slung the bag to his shoulder and jogged toward the city—toward the crowded streets.
Within half an hour he’d hailed a yellow cab. “Airport,” he instructed, climbing behind an Asian driver.
“Which airline?” the man asked, pulling into the street.
“Just the main terminal,” Casius answered. He pulled the bag against his leg and gazed out the window. He had covered his bases. There was no way for them to trace him now. They would scour his house of course, but they would find nothing.
He was going down into the jungle and one way or another he would put Jamal to death.
Friday
THE GOOD news was that Sherry slept long and hard that night.
The bad news was that her sleep was filled with a hollow scream that could only have been shaped in hell itself.
Sherry doubled over on the sandy beach, throat raw and wailing.
Oh, God! Oh, God, save me! Oh . . .
She was running out of breath and panicking and unable to stop her shrieking. She was dying—a slow death caused by the acid that sizzled on her skin. The pain raged to her bones, as if they had been opened and molten lead had been poured into them. All around her the people were crying and toppling onto the sand, skeletons.
Sherry bolted upright in bed, still screaming. The room echoed with her hoarse voice and she clamped a hand over her mouth. She breathed heavily through her nostrils, eyes peeled at the soaked bed.
She wasn’t dead.
The vision had come back. Stronger this time. Much stronger.
“Oh, God,” she whimpered. “Oh, God, this is worse than the box . . . Please . . .”
Helen!
Sherry didn’t bother brushing her teeth or dressing. She threw her bathrobe on and ran for the car.
Helen answered on the second knock, as if she’d been waiting.
“Hello, Tanya.”
Sherry walked in, still trembling.
“You look a bit ragged, my dear.” Helen looked her over and then walked for the living room. “Come on, then. Tell me again.”
She walked in and sat.
“You did not like the bile, I take it,” Helen said.
The bile?
Helen must have seen her expression. “The stomach of the whale. Jonah. The acid.”
“The bile,” Sherry said. She dropped her head and began to cry.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” Helen said gently. “Really, I am. It must be painful. But I can assure you that it won’t end. Not until you go.”
“I don’t
want
this!” Sherry cried.
“No. But you’re not sweating blood yet, so I suppose you’re all right.”
Sherry stared at her through blurred vision, at a loss for what she could possibly mean. “I can’t go through another night like that, Grandmother. I mean . . . I really don’t think I can. Physically.”
“Exactly.”
“This is
mad!
”
“Yes.”
Sherry lowered her head and shook it. Helen began to hum an old hymn and after a while it had a settling effect on Sherry.
Wiping her eyes, she lifted her head and studied the older woman.
“Okay. So what you’re saying is that God has chosen me for some . . . some purpose. I have to go back to the jungle. And if I don’t he’ll torment me with these . . . these . . .”
“Pretty much, yes. I doubt he’s the one doing the tormenting, but he isn’t getting in the way. It seems that you’re needed.”
“Do you have any idea how absolutely stupid this all sounds?”
Helen looked at her for a few seconds. “Not really, no. But I’ve been through a bit.”
“Yeah.” Sherry’s mind swam at the thought of returning to her past.
“I don’t see how that would be possible,” Sherry said.
“Why not?”
“For one thing, the place was overrun by soldiers! Who knows what’s there now.”
Helen nodded. “Father Petrus Teuwen is there. Petrus. Not where your parents were, but in Venezuela, on a mission station farther south, I believe. My husband knew him well when he was a boy. I talked with Petrus yesterday. He’s an exceptional man, Tanya. And he would welcome you.”
A small buzz erupted between her ears. “You talked to him? He knows about this?”
“He knows some things. And he knew of your parents.”
“So you’re really suggesting I pick up and go down there?” Sherry asked incredulously.
“I thought I said that yesterday. You weren’t listening?”
“For how long?”
“Until you have had enough. A week, a day, a month,” Helen said.
“Just up and fly all the way to South America for a day? It takes a full day just to get down there.”
Was she serious? Of course she was serious! Maybe God was calling her as he had called her parents nearly twenty years ago.
But the irony of the thought. Helen was right. Sherry
had
spent eight years running from her past and now she was suggesting Sherry just step back there. Like it was some kind of booth at a fair she could walk in and out of at will. But it wasn’t some booth—it was the house of horrors and the last time she’d gone in there the lid had locked shut.
But then that was Tanya Vandervan. She was Sherry Blake. The changing of her identity suddenly struck her as absurd. Goodness, her mind couldn’t see what her hair or eyes looked like. The mind was on the wrong side of the skull, where the visions and nightmares wandered around at night.
The silence was stretching.
“You’re free to go now that you’ve left the hospital,” Helen said. “Do you think this is by chance? Think about it, Sherry.”
She did. She thought about it, and the thought that returning might bring justification to her leave of absence from the hospital felt strangely warm. “So just buy a ticket and show up on Father Teuwen’s doorstep?”
“Actually, I’d get word to him. But basically, yes.”
Sherry sat for a long time and tried to wrap her mind around this call of God’s. But the more she thought about it, the more its madness faded.
She spent most of the day with Helen, who took it upon herself to make some phone calls. Sherry mostly sat in the big armchair, crying and asking questions and slowly, ever so slowly, warming to the idea that something very, very strange was happening. God had his purposes, and somehow, she had been pulled into the middle of them all.
DAVID LUNOW sat in the director’s office with legs crossed and palms wet. He had been brought in to discuss Casius, of that he was sure. The large desk Friberg sat behind was made of a wood that reminded him of oak. Of course, it couldn’t be oak—oak was too cheap. Probably some imported wood from one of the Arab countries. Two high-backed chairs faced the desk. Mark Ingersol sat in one, David in the other. He couldn’t remember spending so much time with the brass.