Panacea

  “Somebody at the American embassy?” He sounded like he was clutching at straws, and he was. He didn’t get it.

  Chayat shook his head. “Much too quick for that. No time to query the embassy and have them formulate a reply, especially at night. This came from within. Someone above my clearance level recognized your name and pulled on the reins.”

  “Someone in Shin Bet?”

  He was nodding now. “Where else? You have a friend high up. Any idea who?” His hand shot up, palm out. “Not that I want you to tell me. I’m just curious as to whether you know who it might be.”

  Rick was sure Chayat was dying to know, but since everything was being recorded, he preferred to remain in the dark.

  “I can tell you with all honesty, sir, that I haven’t the faintest. As my passport shows, I’ve never been to Israel before.”

  Right … as far as that passport showed.

  “I have any number of passports,” Chayat said. “How many do you have?”

  “Just that one.”

  Very true … now. But that hadn’t always been the case.

  Chayat slid the passport across the table. “Thank you for removing four threats to the people of Israel. I could say that I wish you had left one alive for questioning, but that would be less than gracious. Bon voyage, Mister Hayden. Or whoever you are.”

  Hiding his relief, Rick grabbed the passport and walked out.

  7

  The knock on the door to his suite at the Sadot Hotel turned out to be Bradsher.

  “Shin Bet is going to release them,” he said as Nelson admitted him.

  “Any clue as to why they were at that dead kibbutz?”

  “Clues, yes. They had coordinates written down and a map with an azimuth plotted from Quintana Roo. They had the degrees of another azimuth from the kibbutz but hadn’t plotted it yet.”

  “Have you?”

  Bradsher nodded, his expression grim. “Roughly. They cross in the neighborhood of the Abbey.”

  “Really.”

  Nelson leaned back. Now that was interesting. The ancient abbey was in the Pyrenees—the birthplace of the panacea … and the Brotherhood.

  Bradsher said, “The road back through the Negev is the perfect place to set up an ambush and—”

  Nelson held up a hand. That was the last thing he wanted now.

  “Not yet. Let her run, let her find the Abbey.”

  “Sir?”

  Nelson felt the need to move. He rose behind the suite’s desk but had to grab the edge as the room made a slight tilt to the left. When it steadied itself, he turned and leaned against the edge.

  “Let’s look at this from another angle. Doctor Fanning has brought forensic skills to the quest. They have taken her in directions we don’t understand. She has this encoded belt that we’ve somehow missed all along.”

  “All the more reason to believe she’ll beat us to it.”

  “It’s also reason to believe she’ll lead us to it.” He paused to let that sink in. “Think about it: A lone woman might be able to succeed where generations of our brothers have failed … simply because she is a woman.”

  Bradsher frowned. “How so?”

  “Many of the panaceans are women, and we’ve long believed they are led by women. So who better to work her way through their layers of deception than another daughter of Eve?”

  He sensed a divine symmetry at work here. The Serpent existed to thwart God’s plans. When Eve accepted the apple from the Serpent, she sabotaged God’s Plan of Paradise for Humanity. Because of her act, God changed His plan: He banished Mankind from the Garden into a life of sickness and suffering. And ever since the Day of Banishment, the Serpent had been trying to thwart God’s punishment. Nelson saw delicious irony in a woman undoing the Serpent’s scheme.

  He had been so looking forward to her demise, but now he knew he must delay that pleasure for a higher purpose. Delay … that was the key word. He was convinced now that the Lord was guiding her—and Nelson through her—so for now he would back off and simply observe the path she traveled. But when that path came to an end, which it eventually must, she would be called to account for the debt she owed.

  8

  Laura used the waiting time to phone home. Ten thirty here meant midafternoon there.

  “I’m glad you called,” Steven said. “Marissa’s running a fever.”

  Aw, no.

  “Any other symptoms?”

  “No. One-oh-one point six degrees, chills, and tired.”

  “Sounds viral.”

  “That’s what the nurse said.”

  “Is it Grace?”

  Grace was experienced with transplant patients and had been on the scene during Marissa’s first weeks home. Child and nurse had bonded, and Marissa was completely comfortable with her.

  “Yes. She gave her Tylenol and her temp’s down. She’s sleeping now. Grace drew some blood too.”

  “Great. Is she still there?”

  “Yeah. Want to speak to her?”

  She discussed Marissa with Grace. Everything pointed to a simple viral illness, but Laura had an ongoing fear of Marissa contracting HCMV—human cytomegalovirus. Her little girl had tested negative before the transplant, which left her susceptible. In a normal child her age, HCMV would be a nuisance infection—a mononucleosis-type syndrome—or might not be noticed at all. Get sick or feel a little crummy, then get better with no specific treatment. Close to eighty percent of U.S. adults had had the infection by age forty.

  But in an immunocompromised child like Marissa, HCMV could prove fatal.

  So Laura told Grace to add a HCMV DNA PCR assay to the tests being run on her blood samples. Just for peace of mind. The PCR was the fastest test. If any cytomegalovirus DNA showed up—even a trace—it meant that Marissa had contracted the infection.

  Laura said, “I hope to be on a flight tomorrow.” To France if things managed not to go to hell here, otherwise straight to JFK. “I’ll call as soon as I land in Paris. If the PCR is positive, I’ll book a flight home immediately.”

  “I tell you what I’ll do,” Grace said. “I’ll put a stat on the order and leave my number. As soon as the results come in, I’ll have them call me, then I’ll text you.”

  “You’re the best, Grace.”

  “Just looking out for my little sweetie. I’m sure she’ll be fine. You take care now and we’ll talk sometime tomorrow.”

  Laura decided to ride Grace’s optimism to a calmer place. She’d had everyone who came into repeated close contact with Marissa screened. She, Steve, Grace, and Natasha all carried CMV antibodies. Odds against Marissa having CMV were high. She’d go with that.

  Next call was to her voice mail. Since that was empty, she called Deputy Phil directly.

  “Hey, Doc. Great to hear from you. How’re things in Mexico?”

  If she told him she was in Israel he’d have a thousand questions. So …

  “Fine. Any new word on our friend?”

  “Sorry. I keep running into dead ends. That could be because they are dead ends, or it could mean they were blocked for a reason.”

  Was Phil getting paranoid now?

  “What reason, for instance?”

  “Don’t know. And I don’t want to sound prejudiced or anything, but if the guy wasn’t an Arab, I might not be so gung ho. But I still remember seeing the smoke from the Towers from all the way out here that day. You don’t forget something like that. So I’m taking nothing for granted.”

  “You have options left?”

  “Yeah. The sheriff’s department’s had a lot of contact with the feds during these joint task force operations. I’m going to see if someone can do me a favor.”

  “Don’t get into any trouble.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t. See you soon.”

  At the moment, no one wished that more than Laura.

  Rick appeared—alone, no handcuffs. He waved his passport then stopped at the desk where he collected the keys to the Jeep.

  “L
et’s go,” he said, walking by her.

  She caught up to him at the door. “What did he want?”

  “Just a few minor irregularities with my passport,” he said, looking straight ahead as they exited the building. “Nothing serious. We’re free to go.”

  “Fine. But where are we going?”

  “To Ben Gurion.”

  Thank God.

  “And from there?”

  “That’s up to you.” He glanced at her. “Europe or U.S.?”

  “Southern France, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “I’m assuming that’s where the lines cross.”

  “‘Assume’? I assume you’ve seen The Bad News Bears.”

  “I have, and the quote you’re about to reference is from the sequel.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She knew having a daughter into baseball would pay off someday. Marissa could recite the entire script … and she loved to be able to say ass without being reprimanded.

  “Since we can’t be sure yet of the path of the new azimuth, we’ll need some time with the map before we decide whether we fly to France or Spain.”

  The Jeep’s lights blinked as he used the key fob to unlock it.

  “Let’s not do it here,” she said.

  “Amen to that.”

  They wasted no time putting themselves on the road to the airport.

  As they rolled along, Rick said, “We okay?”

  “With what?”

  “With what went down at the kibbutz.”

  “Does it matter?” The words came out with more of an edge than she’d intended.

  He shrugged. “Won’t change my job description, but things will run smoother if we’re both on the same page.”

  “And what page would that be?”

  “That I’m gonna do whatever’s necessary to get you back home safe, and making that happen will be easier if you’re not perpetually ticked at me.”

  Laura had never believed the end justified the means, but the end in this case … home safe …

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know. I guess you did the right thing. It’s just…” She ran out of words.

  He gave a low laugh. “Why should I be special, right?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, you seem to be mad at everyone.”

  She hadn’t expected that sort of perceptiveness from him.

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “Uh, yuh. Like some sort of grouchy alien.”

  “Oh, so I’m an alien now?”

  He nodded. “Yup. From the Crabby Nebula.”

  She had to laugh at that, and it broke the tension.

  She leaned back and sighed. “I don’t like it but I can’t help it. Seems I’ve been that way since Marissa got sick. I mean, why her? She didn’t do anything to deserve leukemia. I wanted to point to a cause.”

  “The blame game.”

  “Right. I wanted a vaccine, a toxin, a pollutant, a medication, a food additive, even a relative to blame. Anything. But I had no target for my anger, so I guess I’ve been spreading it around.” She looked at him. “Say, what about your vast, unsympathetic intelligences? Can I blame them?”

  He shook his head. “I doubt they micromanage. They’re more into the drop-a-rock-in-a-tranquil-pond school of mischief. How about God?”

  “Which one?”

  “Take your pick.”

  “I’ll pass. Must be nice to say ‘Let go, let God,’ or ‘It’s God’s will.’ That’s a comfort I’ll never know. The best I’ve got is ‘Shit happens,’ but it happened to my Marissa and it’s left me royally pissed off.”

  “As that Hamas guy who grabbed you found out.”

  “Let’s leave that story back at Gan Yosaif.”

  “Fine, but what do you think about those Hamas guys carrying the 536 brand?”

  Laura shook her head. “I was thinking about that while you were alone with What’s-his-name—”

  “Chayat.”

  “—and no matter which way I turn it, it doesn’t make sense from any angle.”

  “Right. No sense at all in Islamic radicals carving Roman numerals on their arms, unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless 536 is everywhere, unless its membership supersedes national and religious and ethnic boundaries.”

  “But Stahlman said it had Christian origins.”

  “Stahlman could be wrong.”

  She remembered Chayat’s puzzlement: I am having difficulty with the way your arrival in an abandoned kibbutz coincided so perfectly with the raiding party’s …

  She’d assumed it was simply a matter of terrible luck. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  “You think they were there to intercept us? To stop us from finding the panacea?”

  It no longer mattered that she didn’t believe in it. Others obviously did—passionately—and seemed ready to go to extraordinary lengths to keep it secret.

  He shrugged. “What else can we think? But how the hell did they know where we’d be?”

  “Well, someone put a bug in my bag. What’s so hard about putting a tracer in our Jeep?”

  “But a GPS tracer can tell them only where we are, not where we’re going. Those Hamas guys were practically waiting—oh, hell.”

  “The land office?”

  “Right. A 536 member in the ILA would have known.”

  “But didn’t you say the raiders were talking about us as hostages?”

  Rick’s remark about the leader calling “firsties” on their planned gang rape still turned her stomach.

  “Right. ‘Firsties’ and ransom. No other issues. But maybe they thought they could use us as a two-fer: stop us from tracking down the panacea and use us as bargaining chips for the return of some of their own.”

  She leaned back and closed her eyes. “So everybody’s against us. The panaceans don’t want anyone outside their cult to know their secrets, and 536 doesn’t want us to find them either.”

  “The panaceans are simply hiding from us and everyone else. We’re lucky you were able to connect with Ix’chel.”

  You held his heart in your hands? That had been the tipping point for Ix’chel.

  “Right,” Laura said. “Thanks to her we know next to nothing rather than absolutely nothing.”

  “Yeah, but 536 on the other hand … looks like they want us off the playing field, and they’re not afraid to play rough.”

  “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

  “You think Europe will be any safer?”

  She straightened and looked at him. “Won’t it? I mean, it’ll be more civilized—no deserted communes and deserts and terrorist raiding parties. That has to be better.”

  “Don’t count on it. Got a feeling Mexico and Israel make up the proverbial frying pan. Next stop…”

  “The fire?”

  “The fire.”

  9

  When they reached Ben Gurion they dropped off the Jeep and found an empty corner of an El Al terminal where they spread out their world map. The line from Mesoamerica into Europe was already there, as was the test line from Israel. All they needed was the new azimuth from Gan Yosaif. Rick pinpointed the GPS coordinates of the kibbutz and was about to draw a line from there at 293 degrees northwest when shadows fell over them.

  Laura looked up to see two airport security cops—a man and a woman, both young—staring down at them. Both were armed and dressed in light blue uniforms with dark blue trim and epaulets. Each had a shoulder walkie-talkie.

  “What are you doing?” the woman asked in English.

  A simple answer popped into Laura’s head—one that had the benefit of being the truth. She put on her brightest smile and said, “We’re plotting the location of our next destination.”

  Her smile was not returned. “Are you ticketed passengers?” the man said.

  Rick tapped the map and picked up the ball without hesitation. “Not yet. That’s what this will decide.”


  “Come with us, please.”

  This hadn’t been the plan. Now what? More trouble with Rick’s passport and its “minor irregularities?” But the encounter turned out to be a good thing.

  They were escorted to a room in the security area where they explained their quest. The woman security guard wrote down the GPS loci and the azimuths, then walked out. Twenty minutes later she returned with a surprise for them.

  “We have a computer program that plotted it out,” she said, handing Laura a slip of paper. “Here are the coordinates where the azimuths cross.”

  Laura looked at the numbers and degrees and minutes and seconds.

  1° 21′ 36″ E

  42° 47′ 38″ N

  They meant nothing to her.

  “Where is it?” she said.

  “Nowhere—quite literally.”

  “Can we be more specific, perhaps?” Rick said.

  “Midi-Pyrenees. In the mountains south of Toulouse and northwest of Andorra.”

  Rick frowned. “France?”

  “Southern France!” Laura said, giving him a knowing look. “Part of ancient Gaul, to be exact.” She turned to the woman. “Thank you. You’ve just decided our next destination. Looks like we fly to Paris.”

  The two cops did not seem willing to take this at face value. They escorted Laura and Rick to the ticket counter where they stood by and watched them buy their first-class tickets to Charles de Gaulle on the first nonstop out Wednesday morning. They then guided them to Terminal Three’s King David Lounge.

  Rather than go through the hassle of leaving the terminal and renting hotel rooms for the dwindling hours before they’d have to be up and about for their six A.M. flight, Laura and Rick settled into a corner of the first-class section of the lounge to spend the rest of the night.

  Laura pulled out the slip of paper and looked at the coordinates again.

  “If my theory is right, this should be the location of the so-called Wound.”

  “Approximate location,” Rick said. “Totally ballpark.”

  “But that cop lady said she had a computer program that—”