“GIGO, remember? We’re talking about protractor readings taken off some woman’s bare back and off a photo of a tattoo on someone else’s back as they were lined up with the North Star. A degree or two off this way and a degree or two off that way, and we’re talking a target area totaling hundreds of square miles.”
Annoyed, she waved the paper. “Then what good is this? Why did we spend all this time and effort and endanger ourselves if this isn’t the location of the Wound?”
“It doesn’t tell us the exact location, but it puts us in southern France, and gives us an approximate area to search … if you’re right.”
Always that little dig …
“Ix’chel said it points to the Wound.”
Rick shrugged. “Then we’ll go with that.”
Laura didn’t see any other options.
Rick pulled out his phone. “Gonna give Stahlman a call and bring him up to speed. Maybe he’s got some ideas.”
“Let me have a word when you reach him.”
When she had the phone, Laura dug into her shoulder bag and pulled out three folded sheets from her notepad.
“Mister Hayden updated me,” Stahlman said. “This is turning out to be an extraordinary quest. I’m expecting you to tell me you’re quitting.”
“Why do you keep nudging me to quit?”
“I’m doing nothing of the sort—anything but. It’s simply that, according to Mister Hayden, just hours ago you were in jeopardy of what could justifiably be termed ‘a fate worse than death.’ We both know you didn’t sign up for that. So I’ll restate my previous offer of prorating—”
“I’m not quitting.”
The words had popped out as if on a direct line from her subconscious. What was that all about? She’d narrowly escaped abduction and gang rape tonight. If she had a lick of sense she’d take Stahlman’s offer and head for home.
But as much as her heart pointed toward Marissa, another part of her needed to see this through.
Why? Was she starting to believe in the panacea?
No way. But …
“You continue to amaze me. I confess to be in awe of you.”
Nice to hear, but she didn’t need to be stroked. Stahlman needed a cure, but she needed a solution to the mysteries of Chaim and Tommy. She’d been sent to find something and people were trying to stop her. That didn’t sit well with her stubbornness gene, she guessed. She’d find the Wound and see where the trail took her from there. If it ended there, so be it. But if she found another signpost, she’d head in that direction.
“Are you recording this call by any chance?”
“No, but all I have to do is press a button.”
“Good. Press it. I translated Ix’chel’s poem on the flight to Madrid. Maybe it’ll make sense to you.”
After she’d finished her recitation he said, “Makes no sense to me.”
“Join the club.”
“Look, I’m going to put someone on finding you an authority on the pagans of Gaul and Aquitaine you can consult when you get to France. Save the poem for him.”
“Gotcha.”
“Let me speak to Mister Hayden again.”
While Rick talked to Stahlman, Laura texted Steven her flight plan: due to land de Gaulle at 10:05 tomorrow morning, Paris time, which would be four A.M. East Coast time. She’d call when it was sevenish in New York.
Rick pocketed his phone and said, “Aquitaine? Where’s Aquitaine?”
“Right next to Midi-Pyrenees, I believe. Caesar had a battle or two in Aquitania in his Gallic Wars, if I remember correctly.”
He was staring at her. “How do you remember that at all, correctly or otherwise?”
“Beats me.” Truth: She hadn’t the faintest idea where she’d pulled it from. “But whatever, I’ve got this feeling we’re getting close.”
“To what? The Wound? We don’t even know what that means.”
“But maybe some history nerd in Paris can help us figure that out. The Wound is key to the panaceans’ mythology. Find that and we’ll have a big leg up.”
“Let’s hope.”
He slouched back in his chair and closed his eyes. Laura had seen a sign—in both Hebrew and English, thankfully—about shower facilities. She availed herself of those to clean up, then napped as best she could. She dreamed, and in her dream she was firing Rick’s Glock at charging CMV particles that wanted to take Marissa hostage.
10
Bradsher cleared his throat as he put down his phone. “They’re on an early flight to Paris tomorrow.”
“Then get us on a late flight tonight. I want to be there first.”
“It might not be necessary, sir.”
“Why not?”
“As you know, we’ve been monitoring her phone. From what we’ve gathered, her daughter is sick.”
Nelson waved this away. “Children get sick all the time. And isn’t her husband with the child?”
“Yes, but the child had a recent stem-cell transplant for leukemia and an otherwise simple infection can turn serious very quickly.” Bradsher smiled. “A common virus might accomplish what Miguel could not.”
“You mean take her off the trail? But we no longer want that.” If it wasn’t one damn thing it was another. “How real is that possibility?”
“According to her last phone call, Doctor Fanning expects to learn of the lab results on her daughter when she lands in Paris. If the results are bad, she’ll head straight home.”
“We can’t have that,” Nelson said. “Returning to the States will derail her quest. And I have a feeling she’s on to something.”
“We can control the results,” Bradsher said. “No sweat.”
Nelson waved him to silence. Changing results would be easy—everything was stored in computers these days. But that wouldn’t stop the child’s condition from worsening. They’d accomplish only a brief delay in Fanning’s abandoning the hunt, and that was no accomplishment at all.
“Can we control her phone?”
“We’re already in her phone. Not a big step from there. How much control do you want?”
“No voice communication to or from the States. Only texts. And the same with Hayden, in case she wants to borrow his for a call home.”
“Easy.”
“Then I want to control every text that enters or leaves her phone.”
“That can be done but it will require someone on standby twenty-four/seven.”
“Then make it so.”
“Will do.”
Glory filled him as his role in this divine drama took on greater and greater definition. Here was a glimpse at why the Lord had included him: to keep Laura Fanning on the path He had set for her. The Serpent had sickened her child to bring her home. Nelson would see to it that its foul plan failed.
“Oh, and speaking of monitoring her phone,” Bradsher said, “she’s had a deputy from the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department looking into Hayden.”
“Interesting. How’s he doing?”
“Not bad. He ferreted out the Haddad/Hayden connection. Now he says he’s going to use a ‘fed’ contact to help dig further.”
Nelson couldn’t help but smile. “Good luck with that. That information is buried deep.”
Bradsher’s expression showed a mixture of hurt and annoyance. “Yessir.”
“Too bad. The truth might drive a wedge between the two of them. We might be able to exploit that gap if it proved necessary.”
And that gave Nelson an idea.
“Once we get to France, give me all you’ve got on this deputy sheriff.”
France … he really should be headed back to New York and Sloan-Kettering …
But damn the tumors, primary, metastatic, and otherwise, the final phase was going to need his personal touch, more than a little micromanagement.
After all these years of frustration, he sensed they were approaching the home stretch and he wanted to be in on the kill.
And it would be a kill—multiple kills.
The Leviticus Sanction was overdue for a workout.
THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER
1
Damn-damn-damn!
Steven glanced at the clock/radio/iPod port next to Marissa’s bed: 1:08. Add six hours and that meant it was seven A.M. in Paris. Another three hours before Laura landed and he could get hold of her.
Marissa coughed again, and once again Steven laid a hand on her forehead. He didn’t need the thermometer to know she was burning up, but he grabbed it and pressed it against her forehead anyway. He checked the readout:
102.4°F.
Christ! He’d given her Tylenol about an hour ago but it hadn’t dented the fever one bit.
Okay. He couldn’t take this anymore. Brookhaven Medical Center was just up the road. He’d take Marissa to the emergency room there and have her checked out. He didn’t know how Laura would react to that, exposing her to a roomful of sick people and all, but he saw no other option.
Nurse Grace had said it looked like an everyday virus, and maybe it was. But the cough bothered Steven—that and the fever he couldn’t break. What if it was pneumonia? What if the fever kept going up?
Throughout Marissa’s life he’d deferred all medical questions and decisions to Laura—so comforting to have an expert on the premises or available at all times—but now she was thousands of miles and a number of time zones away, and incommunicado to boot. He felt totally at sea, with no land, not even a marker buoy in sight.
He needed help—now.
He pulled out his phone, speed-dialed Laura’s cell, then listened to her outgoing message.
“Hi, this is Laura. I’ll state the obvious: I can’t answer right now, so leave a message and I’ll get back to you ay-sap.”
After the beep he said, “Laura, it’s me. It’s one A.M. and Marissa’s burning up. I can’t break her fever so I’m taking her up to Brookhaven where they can check her out. I know you won’t get this till you land. Hopefully everything will be squared away by then and we’ll be back home. Call me back right away. Talk to you soon.”
He knew she was waiting for test results on Marissa’s blood so he had no doubt she’d check her texts and voice mail as soon as she landed.
Marissa stirred as he bundled her in her bed comforter and carried her downstairs.
She opened her glassy eyes and said, “Mommy?”
“No, it’s Daddy, sweetie.”
But oh, man, does Daddy wish Mommy were here.
2
Bradsher turned on his phone as soon as the plane’s wheels squeaked on the Charles de Gaulle runway. Nelson glanced at his watch. He’d set it back to Paris time immediately after takeoff. It read 9:03—they’d landed two minutes early.
A long flight. The Company had managed to snag two first-class seats on the last Alitalia jet out of Ben Gurion. It involved a two-hour layover in Rome, but it did land them an hour ahead of Fanning. Nelson had wanted to arrive first, and here he was.
Bradsher leaned close and whispered, “Monitoring reports that the doctor’s husband left her a voice mail. The child’s fever is up and he’s taking her to the emergency room.”
Not good, Nelson thought. But nothing that couldn’t be remedied.
He’d had the techs leave Fanning’s voice mail only half blocked: People could leave messages but she could not access them. When she checked she’d hear, “No new messages.”
Incoming calls to her home number and her husband’s cell were being monitored. Any call originating from France, or any European country, for that matter, would trigger an uncompletable-call message. Any calls to her phone from the U.S. would receive the same message.
Text messages would be blocked in both directions and rewritten accordingly.
“Erase it,” Nelson said.
“Will do. Want to substitute something?”
Nelson knew they had the technology to perfectly duplicate the pitch and tone of any voice over the phone. But nuances of speech and inflection were something else. An ersatz message might pass muster between acquaintances, but not spouses. Fanning and her husband might be divorced, but they’d known each other too long for Nelson to trust synthesized speech.
“No. Just make it disappear. If the child is fine and returns home, we’ll unblock everything and they’ll chalk up the missing message to a tech glitch. But I don’t want any distractions getting in her way. I want her focused.”
“Got it.”
He watched Bradsher’s thumbs fly as they tapped out a message.
“Where to next?” Nelson said when he finished.
“We have a car meeting us. We’ll head south to a place called Ballainvilliers. It’s about an hour’s ride, more or less, depending on the traffic. We have a farmhouse there.”
Nelson knew all about the farmhouse. The Company had crammed it with monitoring equipment so it could keep tabs on various radical Islamist groups in and around Paris, and on a few choice French officials as well. That hadn’t been enough to stop the Charlie Hebdo and the subsequent massacres but it would allow Nelson to monitor Fanning’s movements.
“What about living quarters?”
“We use the Relais des Chartreux Hotel on the border of Ballainvilliers and a neighboring district, Saulx-les-Chartreux. We have reservations. If you want to stop there first…”
“I would. We have an hour before Fanning lands. I’d like to be settled in by the time she does.”
Nelson let Bradsher take the lead on an expedited trip through customs, then through the airport to the ground transportation area where a black Mercedes sedan awaited them. Once they were settled in the rear and the driver had them on their way, Nelson removed a sheet of paper from his computer case. He’d written a password on it. He handed it to Bradsher.
In answer to the agent’s questioning look, he said, “Guard dog.”
Bradsher looked puzzled for an instant, then his eyes widened. “I’ve been cleared?”
“I would think the answer to that is obvious, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“But wait until later to read it.”
Pickens hadn’t officially cleared Bradsher yet, but Nelson had no doubt he would. The Company found the episode embarrassing, and with good reason, so it restricted access. But Bradsher would be dealing with the man—indirectly and, inevitably, directly soon enough—so he deserved to know what he was up against.
But Bradsher wouldn’t be alone on the learning curve. Nelson was working on a way to inform Fanning of her guard dog’s true identity. His original plan was to get the same information into the hands of a certain Suffolk County deputy sheriff and have him tell her. But with her phone blocked to calls and voice mails from the States, that wasn’t going to work. No worry, he’d come up with a way.
As they drove through Paris, Nelson was only dimly aware of the mix of the familiar and unfamiliar—something called Flunch followed by a McDonald’s, and then a KFC followed by a Pomme de Pain. He began to feel strange. A slight nausea. He’d never been prone to car sickness, but this could be what it felt like.
Eventually they came to a low-slung hotel behind a high hedge. He was aware of a red canopy emblazoned with Relais des Chartreux Hotel. He began to notice wavy lines of light sparkling in his peripheral vision as he found his room and keyed open the door. Bradsher said something to him as the door closed but it seemed to come from down a long hallway.
The sparkly lights brightened until they consumed his vision. He felt his body shaking like a sapling in a storm, and then the world exploded.
3
“You have no new messages.”
Laura ended the call and tapped her phone against her thigh as the plane taxied to its gate.
Okay. She’d expected that. It was four A.M. back home and no news was definitely good news in this case. The only reason Steven would call her was if Marissa had taken a turn for the worse. She imagined them both sleeping soundly—Marissa in her bed and Steven, all uptight and worried he’d miss something, sno
ring in a chair in her room.
No text from Grace either, but she hadn’t expected one. Way too early for PCR results. Polymer chain reaction tests weren’t like a CBC or a glucose; they took time. But the CMV PCR result was what Laura most wanted to hear.
Negative … please be negative.
“Wow,” Rick said, staring at his phone.
“What?”
“Long-winded message from Stahlman. Better listen for yourself.”
“Bad news?”
“Not at all. Just something he could have said in two or three sentences.” He tapped his phone’s screen. “Here. Let me replay it.”
She put it to her ear and heard Stahlman’s voice.
“Good morning, Mister Hayden. I trust you had a comfortable flight. After our conversation last night, I rattled some cages on this side of the pond and had contacts wake up a few people over there. It seems the fellow you’ll want to speak to is an historian named Jacques Fontaine at Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, but he won’t be available until tomorrow.
“Not wanting to waste time, I gave the matter some thought and realized that a shooting star is prominent in the tattoos, so why not combine astronomy and Gaul and see if there was a comet or meteor shower that had some significance back in those days.
“So I’ve contacted a certain Doctor Simon Duval of the Paris Observatory and put him on retainer to help in any way he can. However, although the observatory itself is in Paris proper—on the Left Bank, as a matter of fact—anyone you might wish to talk to is rarely there. All the astronomers cluster in a satellite campus in Meudon, a suburb on the exact opposite side of Paris from the airport. It’s only a five- or six-mile trip, so you should be able to cab there with no problem. Call me after you’ve spoken to Duval.”
Laura handed the phone back to Rick.
“Gonna save this one,” he said, tapping the screen. “I’ll never remember those names and places.” He turned to her as he stowed it in a pocket. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Wanna talk to an astronomer?”
What she really wanted to do was sleep. Turning this way and that in an airport lounge was no way to get a restful night’s sleep. She’d managed to doze during the flight, and though the first-class seats were wide and reclined almost flat, nothing beat a bed.