The Immortalists (20 page)

Richard and Carly slid to their respective sides of the SUV’s back seat and peered out. In front of them, a man with an assault rifle was waving Xander’s limousine through the gate protecting Chris Graden’s driveway.

They followed, watching the level of activity increase as they got closer to the house. Cars were parked haphazardly at the edges of the asphalt, people were darting purposefully around the grounds, equipment was being unloaded from trucks. They were forced to stop a good fifty yards from the portico, but Xander’s chauffeur was more determined, easing across the grass behind a man walking with what looked like a small satellite dish.

“Mr. Xander would like you to join him,” their driver said, toggling a switch that unlocked the rear doors.

They stepped out and started toward the old man as he was lowered to the ground.

The front door of the house was wide open, and the police tape that had once blocked it was now fluttering in the breeze. Above, men armed with rifles sat on the sills of the upper windows, watching the chaos below through dark sunglasses.

Xander seemed oddly energized. He brushed off the man behind him and used his withered arms to propel his chair in their direction.

“What do you think?”

“Isn’t this a crime scene?” Richard responded. “Is it legal for us to be here?”

“Legal?” he said, a coughing laugh causing his eyes to excrete something approximating tears. “People like me don’t really have to worry about legal.”

Richard saw his wife’s expression darken, and he interjected before she could start an argument about social justice or something equally unproductive. “Who are all these people, Mr. Xander?”

“Mostly former cops. I’ve always liked cops. They tend to be a flexible lot. And then there are all the acronyms you’d expect— people I hired away from the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Handy people to have around and, as you’ve noticed, well connected with the locals.”

“Having the police in your pocket is all very nice,” Carly said. “But what about the people Chris worked for?”

“What about them?”

“Isn’t it possible that they’re watching? That they know we’re here?”

“If they’ve got a problem, they should come and see how their army does against mine. They’re not up against a goddamn cook and a biologist anymore.”

It was obvious that the statement wasn’t intended as an insult—that would imply that they were actually worth insulting. It was more of a dismissal.

“Andreas!”

A fit-looking man in his early fifties appeared on the front porch, and Xander started wheeling toward him. Richard followed, but then stopped when his cell phone rang. He glanced down at it, immediately recognizing the number Burt Seeger was using.

“Hello?”

“Daddy!”

A tightness in his chest that he hadn’t realized was there dissolved at the sound of his daughter’s voice. Seeger was right, though. She sounded tired. Weak.

“How are you, sweetheart? Are you having fun?”

“Sure! We were at the beach, but not for very long, and now—”

“Susie!” he heard Seeger say. “What did we talk about?”

“Oh. Sorry. I forgot. I’m not supposed to say where we’re going. But it’s going to be super cool. Are you coming to meet us?”

Carly was leaning into the phone, listening. “We’ll try, honey.”

“Mom! Do you know what we did yesterday? We went and saw—”

“Susie!” Seeger cautioned again.

“Come on!” she said in an exasperated voice. “This secret stuff is going too far!”

They both smiled. She’d always had a mind of her own, and they encouraged her to use it. The downside was that it made her accustomed to understanding what was going on around her. They’d never been “because I said so” parents. Until now.

“How are you feeling?” Carly said.

Susie’s annoyance grew. How she was feeling tied with math as her least favorite subject. “I feel fine.”

It was a lie that no one but them would pick up on. There was a certain resonance missing from her voice—the sound of it seemed to wander, even when she was angry.

“We went today and watched some kids play on a—”

There was a jostling sound and Seeger’s voice came on. “Sorry. Obviously, we haven’t quite worked out what we’re supposed to be saying and what we’re not.”

“Oh, come on,” came their daughter’s muffled voice. “I can’t say
anything
. You said I can’t even talk about the weather!”

“That’s about the only thing you
didn’t
talk about,” Seeger said. “We’re going to practice some more tonight because you just got a D minus in talking on the phone. Now say good-bye. It’s time for your nap.”

“But we just—”

“We had an agreement, Susie. We’d watch the kids, but then you’d give me a two-hour nap.”

“I didn’t sign anything.”

“Go.”

“Good-bye!” she shouted, and they heard her footsteps fade away.

“Sorry,” Carly said into the phone. “She can be kind of a handful sometimes.”

“That’s the way kids are supposed to be. Don’t worry. I’ll get her trained on the phone thing.”

“How are you doing?” Richard said. “Are you all right? Are you safe?”

“We’re fine for the time being. How about you? Are you making any progress?”

Richard saw Carly take a nervous look around her and guessed that she was feeling about their situation the same way he was. Xander seemed to be a little out of control. It was as though he was courting a confrontation with Mason’s people—the final defiant act of a man watching the last of his vitality and power spin down the drain.

“Things are a little weird right now,” Richard said. “Would you mind keeping her a little longer?”

Over the phone, he heard a door creak and imagined Seeger walking outside. But that’s all he could do: imagine. They had no idea where he and Susie were or what they were doing. No idea if a mistake had been made that Mason’s people could use. It amplified their sense of powerlessness to a level that was almost unbearable.

“I’m getting a little worried,” Seeger said, lowering his voice. “We’re having to move around a lot, and I think it’s too much for her. Plus, she misses both of you. It’s hard for a kid her age to be separated from her parents.”

Carly’s eyes started to well up, and Richard put an arm around her.

“I’m afraid,” Seeger continued. “I’m afraid I’m going to do something—or not do something—that’s going to hurt her.”

“There’s nothing more we could do for her.”

“You’re an expert—you know what to look for if she’s…” His voice faded for a moment. “You could keep her in one place. Calm things down.”

Richard stepped out of the way of a man carrying a box full of papers and computer disks. “I don’t think I’d use the world ‘calm’ to describe our situation.”

“We trust you,” Carly managed to get out. “And we don’t hold you responsible. Just a little longer, OK?”

“OK. Fine.”

“Just keep her resting as much as you can. And make sure she takes her meds.”

“About that. We’re running out of some of them.”

“Carly gave you copies of all the prescriptions. Not all pharmacies stock some of them, so you might have to call ahead. But you won’t have any problems.”

“All right. Look, I’ve got to go. We’ve already been here too long. We’ll try to give you a call tomorrow, but don’t worry if we don’t. I’m not sure we’ll have a signal.”

Chris Graden’s normally immaculate house had taken a serious beating from Xander’s men. Disassembled phones and lamps were dangling from their cords, heating grates had been tossed carelessly on priceless rugs, and most of the furniture was overturned. Richard wasn’t sure what they were looking for, but it if it was there, he was willing to bet it would be found.

They tracked down Xander in an enormous room that Chris opened only for large parties. He was tapping nervously on the arm of his wheelchair as he spoke to the man who had called out to him on the porch earlier.

“Richard! Carly!” Xander said when he spotted them by the door. “Come here. I want you to meet someone.”

They did as they were told, and he pointed to the man in front of him. “This is Bill Garrison, a Harvard boy I stole from the bureau to run my security. This investigation is his baby.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking hands with both of them. His demeanor seemed strangely serene when compared to Xander, who seemed even more agitated than when they’d arrived.

“How’s your daughter doing?” the old man asked as he leaned back in his wheelchair and stared directly at them. His tone didn’t suggest concern for her well-being so much as concern that there was something in his universe that he didn’t control.

“Fine,” Carly responded.

“You should bring her to my house. She’ll be safe there.”

“Yeah, that’d probably be a good idea,” Richard said, feigning enthusiasm for the plan.

“Tell us where she is and Bill can send a team to pick her up.”

“That’s OK,” Carly interjected. “We can have the person she’s with bring her.”

Xander fell silent, obviously calculating whether he should push.

“Did you find anything?” Carly asked before he could decide.

“It was definitely bugged, but the hardware’s been removed,” Garrison responded. “You can’t erase all traces of it, though. Also, we found repairs—very careful ones—of the bullet impacts you described from last time you were here. Other than that, there isn’t much.”

In Richard’s mind, it was a wild understatement. Despite all the people, the place felt empty. Dead. Memories of the good times they’d had there were twisted and grotesque now.

“Don’t worry, though,” Garrison continued. “I’m just getting warmed up—taking the obvious paths first. What we’ve learned so far is that whoever we’re up against is incredibly thorough, careful, and well financed—even by Andreas’s standards.”

“Finally, a worthy opponent,” Xander said.

Garrison seemed a bit more apprehensive. “I prefer them not to be this worthy.”

“Do you think they know we’re here?” Carly said.

“It wouldn’t surprise me. What we can be certain of is that they’ve noticed they’re being investigated. We were following Mason’s money through his maze of bogus charities and offshore corporations when someone started collapsing it all. They’re pulling back, trying to slam the door on anything that could be used to track them.”

“Is it going to work?” Richard asked.

“Hell no, it’s not going to work,” Xander responded angrily. “When Bill gets his teeth into something, he doesn’t let go.”

Garrison acknowledged the compliment with a respectful nod. “It’s going to be tough to penetrate it all. Particularly when the people in this room are the only ones who have the big picture—”

“And that’s the way it’s going to stay,” Xander said. “One leak and we’re going to have every government hack and tabloid reporter on the planet parked on my lawn. As long as no one knows, we’ve got room to maneuver.”

By that, Richard assumed the old man meant that he was free to do whatever he wanted—like ransacking a crime scene and carting off evidence. Or worse. The desperation that made Xander such a valuable ally also made him dangerous. He was a cornered animal, and they were standing way too close.

“Dr. Draman,” Garrison said, “in order to make this drug, I assume they’d have to have some kind of a lab or production facility. Is that right?”

Richard nodded.

“Could you write me up a description of what that facility might be like? What kind of equipment it would have in it, what kind of materials they’d be using?”

“I’d need to think about it.”

“Then think about it,” Xander said. “But we need a list by eight o’ clock tonight. Do you understand? Eight o’ clock.”

Xander watched as one of his security men led the Dramans out, waiting until they were out of earshot before turning back to Garrison. “Have you found their daughter yet?”

He shook his head. “We know she’s with a retired soldier named Burt Seeger. He has a fair amount of intelligence training, though, and he’s being very careful.”

“I don’t want to hear excuses, Bill. Find her. If things don’t go our way, I need to have something the people we’re looking for want. Something I can bargain away.”

Richard settled a little deeper into the backseat of the SUV as it trailed Xander’s limo through light highway traffic. It had been three days since Chris Graden’s house was ransacked, and they’d spent all of it confined to Xander’s compound.

The inactivity was slowly driving him crazy—there was nothing to keep his mind occupied other than staring distractedly at the pages of books he’d found in the basement library or wandering aimlessly around the grounds. Carly had taken over the cooking from Xander’s overwhelmed personal chef and was now leading the team that prepared three meals a day for the ever-expanding security force stationed on the grounds. At least it kept her from spending her days dwelling on their daughter, Mason, and everything else. Like he did.

“How did you think Susie sounded when we talked to her this morning?” Carly said in a tone that suggested she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“I think she sounded fine,” he lied.

Carly lowered her voice to the point that the men in the front seat wouldn’t be able to hear over the road noise. “Do you think we’re making a mistake not having him bring her to us?”

Richard put a hand in hers and squeezed gently. “I miss her too. But we’ve talked about this.”

At first, the army that Xander had amassed was reassuring. But it was becoming increasingly clear that the old man was taunting Mason and his people. That he was looking for a fight.

Better to keep Susie as far away as possible and hope that if Mason managed to get to them, he would lose interest in her. She was no threat to him or anyone else.

“But what if she gets sick?” Carly said. “What if we’re not there?”

“Gets sick” was the euphemism that had evolved for “dies.” Like all euphemisms, though, it had lost the power to hide its meaning after too many years of use.

“I wish I had an answer, Carly. But I don’t.”

They fell silent as they swept through the gate of a private airport and came to a stop in front of a jet with Xander’s corporate logo on the tail. As they climbed out of the SUV, the old man was already rising into the plane on a hydraulic lift. Two guards rode along, facing outward with hands hidden suggestively in their jackets.

“Richard, Carly!” Xander said, waving as they climbed into the plane. “Back here.”

His wheelchair had been secured behind a small table, and they took the seats across from him.

“How’ve y’all been doing? We making you comfortable? I hear Carly’s been cooking up a storm.” He seemed even more manic than he had that day at Chris’s house. It was clear that he was feeding off his competition with Mason, but his increased energy came off as dangerous—the blinding glow of a light bulb right before it exploded.

He opened a folder lying on the table and spread out six large photographs. August Mason was there, but Richard didn’t recognize the people in the other five.

“Who are they?” Carly said.

“Wealthy, powerful men who have died since around the time Mason reappeared, but whose bodies have never been recovered.”

“That seems like a lot,” Richard said.

“It’s more than a lot. It’s a freakishly high number,” Xander said, an arrogant smile threatening to split his chapped lips. “Based on history, the probability of all these men disappearing is more than a million to one. And I doubt that’s all of the people involved. There are probably more still in their natural state.”

“Natural state?” Richard said as the plane began to accelerate up the runway.

“People who are involved but haven’t been treated yet. Like Chris Graden. It’s not easy to orchestrate these deaths, and they’re already pushing it with the number they’ve done.”

Carly tapped the table next to the photos. “So you found these people? Is that where we’re going?”

“Even better,” he said, pressing a button on the wall that released the clamps securing his wheelchair. “Now enjoy the flight.”

They both twisted around in their seats, watching him roll up the aisle and disappear through a curtain near the front. When Richard finally faced forward again, the anger was clearly visible in his wife’s face.

“We’re in the air, and he still won’t tell us where we’re going,” she said.

“He likes to be in control.”

“This goes beyond control, Richard. Haven’t you noticed? He isn’t outraged by these people. He doesn’t care that they tried to kill us or Susie, that they’re keeping a drug that could save millions—maybe billions of people—to themselves. It seems like the only thing he thinks Mason’s done wrong is not include him in their little cabal.”

Richard didn’t respond. He’d known from the beginning that they were making a deal with the devil, but what choice did they have? The only thing that mattered was giving Susie a chance to grow up.

“Do you ever wonder what he’s going to do with it?” Carly continued.

“Use it, I would think.”

“Yeah. But after that. Will he build a company around selling it and become the richest man in the world? Or will he keep it under lock and key?”

Richard leaned his head back and let out a long breath. “I don’t know, Carly. I just don’t know.”