Panacea

  He glanced at her hand and she realized what she was doing. She let go.

  He zoomed past the limits of the image’s resolution, then backed up until it sharpened.

  He browsed the shoreline. “No name … no one’s posted photos around the edge … no snack bar, no road unless this brown line is what passes for one. Might be a couple of houses here among the trees, but if that’s what they are, they’re pretty rustic.”

  The view moved across the water to the central island. As he moved down on it, the image blurred again.

  “We’ve maxed the resolution,” he said. “And there’s only an aerial view. Nothing from the side.”

  “If there’s anything on that island, it should be trees. But what’s that brown splotch?”

  He looked at her. “A building of some sort? Holy shit. Could it be?”

  Laura was nodding, barely able to contain a surge of excitement and exaltation. “The ‘house of the fallen godmen’! Could be! Could very damn well be!”

  She stared at the blurry image as Rick scribbled down the coordinates.

  “We started in the middle of Nowhere and now we’re in the hinterlands of Nowhere. There’s not even a road. How do we get there?”

  “No problem. Let’s get back to the hotel.”

  14

  Bradsher put down his phone.

  “That was our man tailing them. He checked their computer after they left the café. They cleared their history in Google Earth but—”

  Nelson held up a hand. “Let me guess: They’ve located the Abbey.”

  “They might have. He got a few peeks at their screen and they were searching that area of the Pyrenees. Which calls Doctor Fanning’s value into question.”

  They sat in their makeshift office in the farmhouse. Nelson’s head throbbed and his vision had gone blurry. He seemed to be viewing Bradsher through a foggy window.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “She’s headed to the Abbey. We are familiar with every nook and cranny of the Abbey. What can she find there that we don’t already know?”

  He could see that Brother Bradsher still had a lot to learn. As an agent he was excellent at taking care of the leaves, but in the course of keeping each one shiny and green, he tended to lose sight of the tree.

  “First off, she found the Abbey. That in itself is an accomplishment.”

  “But meaningless to our purposes.”

  The tree! Nelson wanted to shout. Look at the tree!

  “Allow me to finish, please.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “My point is, she found the Abbey without looking for it. She’s obviously looking for what the pagans call the Wound.” The idiocy of the name never failed to assail him. Logically consistent with their personification of the Earth as a deity, but a planet couldn’t be wounded. “That means she’s been following the pagans’ mythology, and has found the place where they first conspired with the Serpent to create their hellish potion.”

  Even through the Vaseline blur, he could see Bradsher’s expression fairly shouting, So what?

  “Tell me, Agent Bradsher, when has anyone else done that? Ever? We’ve kept it out of the lake directories and off the maps. However, there’s only so much we can do about satellite photos. But still, we don’t know of anyone outside the Brotherhood, the panaceans, and a few local yokels who know about the lake and the Abbey. And we know of no one who has gone looking for it and found it except … Doctor Fanning. So what does that tell you?”

  Bradsher took on a slightly chastened look. “It tells me that she might be on to something … that she might have information we do not.”

  Yes, that could be so. But obviously it hadn’t occurred to him that an unseen hand might be guiding her. Not the Serpent, for the Serpent’s goal was to keep the source of the panacea hidden. That left the Lord.

  Nelson wanted to share this with Bradsher, but a full explanation would mean revealing his cancer, and he wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet.

  “Possibly. We know she was crisscrossing azimuths in Israel and they led her to the Wound. Who knows? She may find another azimuth to follow from the Wound itself.”

  “Why don’t we simply grab her and find out what she’s got?”

  The last thing Nelson wanted—the Serpent would rejoice if they did that. But he needed a mundane rationale.

  He shook his head. “This goose is laying golden eggs. Why kill it?”

  “I didn’t mean kill—”

  “Not literally, no.” At least not yet. “She is following a trail and we are right behind her, step for step. If we interfere, we may compromise her vision, we may interrupt the flow of information someone might be feeding her. Right now she is working for herself. In my experience, people expend their best efforts toward their own goals. If we snatch her she will wind up working for us—and under duress, for that matter. We will see nowhere near the same level of commitment.”

  Bradsher was nodding. “You’re saying she’s like a hunting dog, and they work best off the leash.”

  “Exactly.”

  Maybe there was hope for him yet.

  Nelson pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and slid it across the table.

  “I want you to text this to the good doctor’s phone.”

  Bradsher read it and frowned. “Aren’t you afraid it might throw her off the scent?”

  Nelson had to smile. “Sticking with the bloodhound motif, I see. No, I don’t see that happening. She is not doing this for him. She’ll press on. I’m preparing for the future when we may have to make a move on her.”

  “You think she’ll be more vulnerable without her guard dog.”

  “Immensely so. You read his file. You’ve seen what he’s capable of.”

  “Formidable,” he said, using the French pronunciation.

  “Right. So our best course is to divide and conquer.” He waved at the message. “Text that off right away.”

  15

  Laura had her shirt halfway unbuttoned in prep for a shower when her phone emitted its text-message chime. Phil lit the screen.

  She hesitated. The only reason he’d be messaging her was more info on Rick. Laura didn’t want to hear anything negative. She was starting to like him. Not in that way. As a companion. They’d progressed from barely speaking to a comfortable camaraderie. Yes, he’d lied about the SEAL thing—and kept on lying about it—but was that such a big deal? He was smart and quick and their backgrounds were different enough so that their knowledge bases complemented each other. He was proving an asset on the search.

  Not to mention how he’d saved her from God knows what in Israel.

  She sighed and picked up the phone. Whatever. She’d never considered hiding one’s head in the sand a viable option.

  Hey, Doc. Tried calling but can’t get through. And your voice mail is all screwed up. Keeps booting me out. But that’s okay. Have I got news for you. Wait till you hear this.

  Oh, crap.

  My contact with the feds did a little digging and came up with yet another name for this guy. Get this: His real name is Garrick Somers, and he’s ex-CIA. He was a suspect in a mass murder but they couldn’t pin it on him. They caught him selling classified info to Israel but couldn’t make the charges stick so they finally booted him out. He was never Ramiz Haddad, and Rick Hayden is an identity he adopted to allow him to hide in plain sight. Apparently he made his share of enemies while in the CIA. I’d drop this guy, doc. I mean put some real distance between you and him. He sounds like big-time bad news.

  Shaken, Laura read it again. And then a third time, stumbling over “suspect in a mass murder” and “selling classified info to Israel.”

  She’d seen him kill, and do so with cool efficiency. And even though they’d been questioned in Israel, they seemed to have been sent on their way rather quickly, considering the dead bodies he’d left behind. Could that have been a little payback for passing off U.S. secrets in the past?

  Okay. Enough pussyfooting ar
ound. She’d kept her mouth shut about the SEAL thing and the name change. No more. Time to beard the lion, and she knew the location of his den.

  Rebuttoning her blouse, she strode down the hall and rapped on his door. She wondered for an instant if this was wise. He was a killer, after all. But oddly enough, she didn’t fear him.

  He opened the door and stood there in his jeans and white undershirt.

  “Hey. Something wrong?”

  “Yeah,” she said, thrusting the phone at him. “This. Read it.”

  Frowning, he took the phone and checked out the screen. His frown deepened. Finally he looked up at her.

  “Who sent you this?”

  “A friend who’s been looking into your background.”

  “My background? Why?”

  Why? Good question. Was finding him off-putting at first a good reason?

  “I made it clear that I didn’t want you along, but when Stahlman insisted, I wanted to find out why he was so stuck on you.”

  “Did you find out? Because I’d like to know too.”

  There. He was doing it again. That disarming attitude that he was in the woods too.

  “No, but I found out everything else.”

  “Sure as hell did.”

  That took her aback. “You mean it’s true?”

  “Most of it.”

  “The traitor part too?”

  “Not that part.” He leaned out and looked up and down the hall. “Look, um, could we talk about this inside?”

  Alone in a hotel room with him. Was she crazy not to be afraid of him—still not afraid of him?

  “Will I be safe?”

  “You really have to ask that?”

  She saw the hurt that flickered across his face, but she couldn’t help that. He hadn’t been straight with her.

  “How about we step outside and talk—just until I get the truth from you.”

  He sighed. “Fair enough, I guess. Let me put on a shirt.”

  He handed back her phone and didn’t close the door all the way. He returned half a minute later in the shirt he’d worn earlier and a heavy bottle dripping ice.

  “Champagne?”

  “Hey, it’s France, and Stahlman’s paying.” He held up a pair of flutes. “They sent two glasses. Want some?”

  “No.” She immediately reconsidered. “Yes. I could use something.”

  They went downstairs and stood on the sidewalk as the traffic on Rue Lazare Carnot sped by. He filled the two flutes, handed her one, then clinked his against hers.

  “To setting the record straight.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” She sipped her Champagne. A bit tart, but she liked the bubbles. “So far you’ve been anything but straight with me.”

  “As straight as I could be.”

  “Come on. That whole SEAL thing? You weren’t even in the navy.”

  He put the bottle on a window ledge and leaned back against the wall. He kept his voice low.

  “No. I was a CIA field agent. But I took the full SEAL course and qualified.”

  “So that’s why you’re not listed with any team?”

  “Right. I’m an unofficial SEAL. If I had been in the navy, I would have been on a team.”

  “But why take SEAL training?”

  “Because I was going under—deep under—and no one was going to have my back. You learn a lot of deadly stuff as a SEAL. I wanted the skills to get myself out of a jam should the need arise.”

  “Did it?”

  His eyes went flat as he took a sip of Champagne. “It did.”

  “What about selling secrets to the Israelis?”

  He shook his head. “Never happened.”

  “Then what—?”

  “Framed—very cleverly framed. I’ll capsulize a long, torturous story. I was assigned to go under in Germany. A bunch of native-born Germans, total Aryan types who would have made Hitler proud, adopted Islam as their religion. A very radical form of Islam. Sounds crazy, I know, but they had their reasons. I was to infiltrate them. My way in, believe it or not, was through Israel.”

  “Now there’s a back door if I ever heard one.”

  “Not so crazy when you realize that Mossad—that’s Israel’s CIA—has had quite a presence in Germany since the Munich Olympics. They keep watch on the Islamist groups there. They had connections with these Aryan Muslims and got me into places where I could bump into them. I speak perfect German with a very slight Swiss accent. We hit it off and I was in. But it turned out they’d discarded radical Islam by that time and were into something else, something way-way out.”

  “Like?”

  “That’s not part of the Israeli story. I wanted you to know how I got connected with them. When my Germany assignment was over, I was debriefed by Mossad and I kept in touch with a couple of their people after I returned to the States. Didn’t know it then but keeping in touch would lead to my downfall. Some documents wound up in their hands and all the evidence pointed to me.”

  “Aren’t we allies?”

  Rick grabbed the bottle and refilled her glass. She hadn’t realized she’d emptied it. Where did it go?

  “We have intelligence that we don’t share with them. They have intelligence that they don’t share with us.”

  “They stole it and framed you?”

  “The Israelis stole it but someone on our side framed me. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. My friends in Mossad couldn’t say anything without risking their guy who’d done the real stealing, so they zipped their lips.”

  “And left you twisting in the wind.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t blame them. They had to choose one of us to protect. They chose their own.”

  “Is that why we got off so easy in Israel?”

  He nodded. “That’s my guess. Chayat said word had come down from on high to go easy.”

  Laura didn’t know if she believed that. The reason could be because they owed him for the stolen intelligence. But what of all that stuff about that Sausalito cop?

  “Were you ever in San Francisco?”

  “Absolutely. Spent some time there after Germany.”

  “Posing as Ramiz Haddad?”

  He smiled. “No. Watching Haddad. One of my jobs was tracing his international contacts. He was a member of the Sausalito Police but also attached to a jihadist cell in Frisco. He changed his name to Rick Hayden and used his runs in the Sausalito Marine Patrol to check out the supports on the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  “Oh, no. He wasn’t thinking of…”

  “Oh, yes he was. Took retirement and applied for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area Rangers. Message intercepts concerned a plan to blow up the bridge and he was to learn the best places to set the charges. Then the Israeli problem broke and things got messy for me. Ramiz/Hayden disappeared about the time the Company and I parted ways, so I decided to assume his identity.”

  “What does that mean exactly—he ‘disappeared’?”

  “You know—vanished.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Look. He stopped being a jihadist. What else do you need to know? I didn’t want to be bothered by the CIA or anybody else, so I became Rick Hayden. The high-ups knew what I was up to and they buried it. I didn’t want contact with anyone from my CIA life and they didn’t want anyone contacting me, so it was a good solution for all concerned.”

  “If you say so.”

  Once again her glass was empty and once again she let him refill it. Good stuff.

  “Who’s your source, by the way?”

  She smiled. “If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”

  Now why the hell did she say that?

  He shook his head. “Not funny.”

  “Okay, he’s with the local sheriff’s department.”

  He looked shocked. “Really? You’re not kidding?”

  “Why would I be?”

  “Because when I say the high-ups ‘buried’ my identity switch, I mean they entombed it. I don’t believe someone from the Suffolk County
Sheriff’s Department, even with the help of a friendly fed, could gain access to my file. Someone’s feeding him.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean?”

  “Someone wants you thinking bad thoughts about me.”

  “Why?”

  “So you won’t trust me—that pops first to mind.”

  “I don’t under—”

  “You know we’re not alone in this, right? That 536 has had its eye on us the whole time? The guys at Gan Yosaif had 536 tats, someone tailed us from the observatory, someone was watching us in the Internet café.”

  “You’re paranoid.”

  He pointed to her phone. “That last text was meant to drive a wedge between us. If we split up, they’ve got you all to themselves.”

  She liked the sound of that even less.

  “Did it work?” he said.

  “You mean, are we split? It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On this mass murder he mentioned. What about that?”

  He paused, took a deep breath. “That crazy German cult I told you about. They had this old book and they were doing unspeakable things in an effort to raise someone or something called ‘the Dark Man.’ They all died in a fire—men, women, children, all burned to death. Nowhere near as many as Waco, but a good number. No question about arson, either. The fire had been deliberately set. I survived so I was suspect.”

  She couldn’t imagine him hurting a child, especially after the way he reacted to the little Mayan girl who’d been tortured.

  “That was the night I saw something … something I’ll never be able to explain.”

  “You mentioned that before. What was it?”

  “A man, or rather a shape—oblong and upright—moving through the flames. I could hear the screams of the dying but he or it seemed impervious to the flames, seemed to be wallowing in the screams.”

  “Was he wearing PPE?”

  “You mean firefighter gear?”

  She nodded. She’d once had to perform a post on a firefighter who’d been trapped in a blaze so hot even his gear hadn’t been able to protect him.

  “No. He … it was black. The blackest black I’ve ever seen. Surrounded by fire but it didn’t reflect the light from the flames. Seemed to absorb it.”