A Hideous Beauty (13 page)

“It appears we do indeed have a rat on board,” he said. “Only it's a passenger.”

He tossed the toy at me. I caught it.

For the next hour I stood in a corner of the back galley and endured the scorn of passengers, flight attendants, the copilot, and the pilot, who left the cockpit to lecture me on why there was no place for practical jokes on commercial flights.

I heard most of it. When I wasn't listening I was thinking about what else was in the overhead bin with the plush toy rat—a Los Angeles Angels sports bag and ball cap, and a child's backpack decorated with angel wings.

When I was finally allowed to return to my seat, I avoided eye contact with the other passengers, buckled into my seat, folded my arms, and closed my eyes, though sleep was the farthest thing from my mind.

It wasn't five minutes later that I heard it again.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

Same sound coming from the same bin.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

I ignored it. I didn't care if the whole plane was crawling with rats.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

Through half-opened eyes I saw a demon fall out of the bottom of the bin and plop onto the back of a seat. It was the same kind of creature I'd seen in Myles Shepherd's office, a three-dimensional spirit resembling a gargoyle.

It looked at me, then jumped onto the chest of the man next to the window with heavy jowls. He appeared to be asleep. The demon clung to the man's shirt, looked at me again, then clawed its way into the man's chest.

I looked around me, hoping that someone else had seen what I'd just seen. No one had. Those who weren't sleeping were glaring at me and shaking their heads with disgust.

The man next to the window moaned and squirmed with a pained expression, but he didn't wake up.

In the front of the plane a man was excusing himself as he stepped over the other passengers in his row, making his way to the aisle.

It was Myles Shepherd.

He looked at me. Nodded. Smiled.

Turning his back, he made his way to the front lavatory.

I bolted from my seat, but was held in place by the seat belt. Clutching frantically at the latch, I freed myself and charged up the aisle.

A few rows in front of me a woman got up, blocking the aisle. She just stood there.

I tried to slip by her. “Excuse me,” I said.

She refused to let me by. “Wait your turn,” she said. Belligerent eyes glared at me from a well-wrinkled face.

“I'm going to the lavatory,” I said.

“So am I, joker. Whatever happened to ladies first?” Mumbling something about the sad state of the world due to an absence
of gentlemen, she made her way forward with a modified crawl, hand over hand clutching the backs of seats.

At first I danced anxiously behind her until I realized that in order to get back to his seat Myles would have to pass us.

Following the woman through the forward galley, when she reached for the lavatory door I said, “I believe it's occupied.”

She swung the door open. “It is now, sonny.”

I craned my neck to look past her. The lavatory was vacant.

The woman pulled the door shut in my face. “Pervert,” she said.

Bewildered, I glanced around. There was no place for Myles to have gone. No place to hide.

I asked the flight attendant if she'd seen a man of Myles Shepherd's description. She said no one had walked by recently.

It didn't make sense, but then nothing about Myles Shepherd had made sense lately. I retraced my steps to the row where I'd seen him exit.

In the window seat a young woman wearing earphones slept with her head against the pane. A curly-headed man occupied the aisle seat. He was hunched over a book of word puzzles.

“Excuse me, I'm looking for the man who was sitting in the middle seat. He's a friend. Do you know where he went?”

The curly-headed man looked at me, then at the middle seat as though he expected to find someone sitting there. “There's no one in that seat,” he said.

“I know there's no one sitting in it now,” I said. “He was sitting there earlier.”

“No one has been in that seat all flight.”

The puzzles must have done a number on this guy's brain. How could he sit next to someone for two hours and not notice him? “He just climbed over you to use the restroom!” I said.

“No one has sat in that seat . . .”

Despite his protests, I reached over him and shook the shoulder of the girl in the window seat. From beneath bangs, sleepy eyes tried to focus on me.

“The man who was sitting in the middle seat, do you know where he went?”

She shook her head. “No one's been sitting there, dude.”

Someone behind me took my arm. The black-haired flight attendant. “Is there a problem, sir?” she asked testily.

“I'm just trying to find my friend,” I explained. “He was sitting in the middle seat and he's not there now.”

“He's crazy,” the puzzle guy said. “There's no one sitting there.”

The attendant looked to the row's other occupant. “Is someone sitting in the middle seat?” she asked.

The girl shook her head.

“I just saw him!” I protested. “He climbed over this guy and went to the forward lavatory.”

The attendant looked to the front of the plane. The forward attendant shook her head. “He asked me. I told him no one had walked by.”

Having finished her business in the lavatory, the woman I'd followed up the aisle was making her way, hand over hand, back to her seat. She pushed her way past us, but not without comment. “If you ask me, he's a pervert,” she said.

I have to give the airline personnel credit. To satisfy me, they politely checked the manifest and showed me the computer printout that indicated the seat in question was open. No one had occupied the seat the entire flight.

I was positive I had the right row. All the other rows around it were full.

My request—all right, it was more of an insistence—to check inside the pilot's cabin was met with an introduction to an air marshal who escorted me back to my seat.

For the remainder of the flight I pretended I was asleep, although in reality I spent the hours cursing Myles Shepherd. He'd haunted me with his success all my adult life; it was just like him to haunt me in death.

I knew one thing, though. If Myles Shepherd didn't want me going to Washington, D.C., I was on the right track.

CHAPTER
10

P
rofessor J. P. Forsythe stared out the library window. He did some of his best thinking here. It was quiet and he was sandwiched between two things he loved, books on one side, a blue sky on the other.

Familiar footsteps interrupted him.

“It's ten o'clock. Do you think he'll come?” Sue Ling asked.

“Grant? No.”

Setting an armload of books on the table, Sue Ling sat down. The professor studied her for a moment with an amused expression. “You were pretty hard on him yesterday,” he said.

“I had my reasons.” She looked away. It was her way of saying she didn't want to talk about it.

“He's on his way back to D.C.,” the professor said.

“He called you?”

“Abdiel told me.”

Sue Ling showed no surprise that the professor would get word of Grant's no-show from an angel.

“He visited me last night,” the professor said. “Abdiel, not Grant.”

Sue Ling's eyebrows rose. “That's unusual, isn't it?”

“He had news. It has to do with our Mr. Austin.”

“Oh?” She made a poor attempt to feign indifference.

“Abdiel knows why Semyaza is interested in him.”

“Why do I think that's not a good thing?”

“Because you know enough to be cautious.”

“But not enough to be scared out of my wits?” she asked.

“Are you?”

“Yes. Shouldn't I be?”

The professor grinned. It had taken a little more than a year of working together for Sue Ling to treat him as an equal rather than a professor. He was comfortable with her familiarity. More than comfortable.

“Are you going to tell me?” she asked impatiently.

“It's not my news to tell. Mr. Austin will have to tell you himself.”

She let out an exasperated gasp. “Why bring it up if you aren't going to tell me?”

“Abdiel brought other news.”

“More news? Oh my . . .” She rubbed her bare arms as though she'd suddenly felt a chill. It didn't go unnoticed.

“You know the account he's been narrating to me?” the professor asked.

“The history of angels.”

“Yes, but more accurately, history from an angelic point of view.”

“Always the professor.” Sue Ling sighed.

“He wants me to write it down.”

It took a moment for her to assimilate the news. She stared at him blankly, then said, “He's changed his mind.”

“I think it was changed for him.”

“I see. Is this because of Grant?”

“He didn't say directly, but I think so.”

“Are you going to do it?” she asked. “You know the risk . . . of course you know the risk. You know it better than anyone.”

She was babbling. It wasn't like Sue Ling to babble.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “It's not me I'm worried about. I want you to move back on campus. Work on your dissertation full-time.”

Sue Ling's chair screeched loudly as she pushed it back abruptly and stood. “I don't see that that's your decision to make,” she said. “And it hurts me that you'd even suggest it.”

“If you won't do it for yourself, do it for me. How can I concentrate on the project if I'm worried out of my mind about you?”

She gathered up her books. “You'll just have to find a way, because I'm not going anywhere. In case you missed the memo, this isn't your personal battle. You're not the one who determines who fights and who doesn't.”

The professor stared at her with sad eyes.

Sue Ling grew angrier. “Don't sit there with that hangdog expression of yours as though you have a say in this. You don't.”

She whirled around to leave.

“I want you to reread Mr. Austin's biography,” the professor said to her back. “Study it. Dissect it. Read between the lines. Grant told me Semyaza claimed credit for its publication. I want to know why.”

Sue Ling turned back. Their eyes met in silent understanding. He was conceding. She accepted with a nod. “Don't ever question my loyalty again,” she said, close to tears.

“I won't.”

Sue Ling moved to his side. “This is really happening, isn't it?” she said.

“To quote Dante: ‘Whatever plot these fiends may lay against us, we will go on. This insolence of theirs is nothing new.' ”

Sue Ling sighed. “The world is crashing down around us and you're quoting Dante.”

“It's who I am.”

CHAPTER
11

W
ith my identity badge clipped to my lapel I approached the metal detectors at the White House. A queue of staff and personnel formed a line in front of me, routinely opening bags, purses, and briefcases for inspection. The chatter was the usual going-to-work banter, but restrained. There's something about men with guns that puts a damper on things.

I'd taken a cab straight from the airport, after spending a couple of hours chatting with security over plush-toy pranks and false alarms. Seeing Myles's ghost onboard set off an alarm in my gut that had no snooze button. Time was short. The president was in danger. I had to get someone to listen to me.

“Good morning, Mr. Austin.”

“Jeffrey. You're looking well.”

The security guard was a large black man with a sweet grin. A man doesn't usually say that sort of thing about another man, but it was true. Jeffrey's grin was powdered sugar on strawberries, the perfect start to the day.

Our usual banter involved an exchange of quips about football. I try to sound optimistic about the Redskins, while Jeffrey's a Raiders fan. But football season was months away, so instead we exchanged pleasantries.

I placed my bag onto the table next to the metal detector. There was nothing of consequence in it. It had already been through airport security at San Diego. As I moved to the threshold of the metal detector, Jeffrey glanced down at his clipboard. He frowned, then looked up at me with an expression I'd never seen on his face before. I didn't like it. He blocked my passage. “Please step out of line, Mr. Austin,” he said.

I grinned, thinking it was a joke.

“I hope you're not going to call for one of your drug-sniffing dogs,” I quipped. “You could be charged with cruelty to animals. I didn't take a shower this morning.”

Hands like vise-grips grabbed my arms from behind while two of Jeffrey's buddies flanked me. Nobody was smiling. Jeffrey's hand rested on the butt of his gun.

“Please step out of line, Mr. Austin,” he said again.

“Jeffrey, it's me!”

Everyone in the vicinity had stopped talking. They were all looking at me, backing away as though I might go off any moment.

Jeffrey snatched my bag from the table as his buddies escorted me to the door. He dropped my bag at my feet and ripped the identity badge from my lapel.

“Go ahead, Jeffrey, do your worst,” I cried. “But I want you to know that no matter how much you torture me, I will never become a Raiders fan.”

“Mr. Austin, I must ask you to leave the premises.”

Not a trace of humor was in his eyes.

“Is something wrong with my badge?”

“Your credentials have been revoked.”

“Not possible,” I said. “The badge worked fine three days ago when I had lunch in the cafeteria with half of the West Wing staff. I have clearance for the rest of the year while we promote the book. Call Chief of Staff Ingraham, I'm sure this can all be worked out.”