A Triple Thriller Fest (132 page)

“The sky is clearing up,” Niels said. “Someone is going to see that fire, and if not we’ll build a huge raft or something once the rest of those guys leave the island. One way or another, I’m not sticking around.”

As if in answer, they heard a low thump from the east. An orange Coast Guard helicopter approached from the direction of Plattsburgh, New York. It circled over the castle for several minutes while Niels and Tess waved desperately, then disappeared in the same direction from which had come.

“They’ll be back,” Niels said. He turned with a sudden grin and gripped her in a hug.

“We won,” Tess said. She hadn’t quite believed it until then that it was over.

“It’s because of you,” Niels said. “Superior leadership beats superior forces.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Yes you could have.”

“Well, it certainly made it easier that you were on my side.”

His smile grew wider. “That, in fact, is true.”

The help, when it came, arrived in the form of uniformed special forces, armed with machine guns. Every man, woman, and child left on the island was whisked away by helicopter to an undisclosed location in Upstate New York and there interrogated without benefit of phone calls, lawyers, or the rights promised to them by American and international law. Some would eventually find their way to even darker, more secret locations around the world.

Chapter Forty-seven:

It was a comfortable cell, as things went, much better than what Tess had subjected Dmitri to in the dungeon below the keep. Tess had a view across a pond, to a snow-covered ring of pine trees like so many flocked Christmas trees.

There was a bed and a bookshelf filled with what she thought of as airport novels, all of which looked to have been purchased within the last week. She’d read a thriller set in World War I, but found nothing else worthy of more than a casual skim. Mostly she stared out the window and rehashed the events of the past couple of weeks. At least she was bathed and dressed in clean, comfortable modern clothing.

Her handler, a man who’d introduced himself only as Mike, came into her room, flanked by two men armed with machine guns. He held a manila envelope in one hand. Tess rose from her bed and gave him a friendly smile, though inside she was seething from three days with only questions, questions, and more questions, and no answers, not even to tell her who had lived and who had died, or what had happened to Nick.

“You’re done,” Mike said. “I’ll drive you out of here just as soon as we can get a few details straightened out.

“Yeah, just like that?”

“Nearest we can tell, you’ve been completely straight with us. At least, nobody else contradicts your story and the only man who might is dead.”

“You mean Peter Gagné?”

Mike didn’t answer that question. “I know you’re angry, but we’ve been keeping you, in part, for your own protection.”

“I think I’m capable of protecting myself.” She shrugged. “But that’s not what makes me angry. I know what happened out there and I know what could have happened. But I don’t see why you couldn’t have told me what was happening with my son.”

“You mean Nicholas Gagné? That wasn’t my choice. He’s with child protective services in Manhattan. We won’t prevent you from contacting the boy.”

“As if you could.”

Mike cleared his throat. “Well, actually, there are a few details we need to agree on before you leave. After that, I’ll drive you out of here and you can fly back, or take the train, if you prefer, to Manhattan.”

“What sort of details?”

“First, your complete silence as to what happened on King’s Island. Leave aside the absolute panic you might cause in the global financial system, I’m not telling you anything you probably haven’t figured out, but this has created a very sticky international incident. Several foreign governments are very motivated to keep this quiet.”

Tess waved her hand. “Sure, whatever, I’ll sign that. Don’t worry, I have no desire to see myself on TV, or anything like that, you can believe me there.”

“And it won’t make your next book?”

“Absolutely not,” she said.

“You might be tempted to aggrandize your role in all of this, take some glory from the tragic events on the island.”

“Glory? What are you talking about? I wasn’t fighting for glory or to aggrandize myself, I was holding on for dear life. I’ll keep my mouth shut, I have no reason not to.”

“Very good, we appreciate your cooperation. We will, of course, take certain measures to enforce your compliance. And for your safety, we suggest—no, insist—that you avoid any foreign travel for the next five years.”

She frowned at this one. “Anything else?”

Mike removed a sheaf of paper from the manila envelope. “You are forbidden from ever contacting the people on this list.”

She took the paper. Some of the names she didn’t even recognize, but there were several that she did: Niels Grunberg, Miko Talo, Lars Nilsson, Hao Chang, Rick McIves, and Susan Hartford.

Tess handed it back. “No, I won’t do it. These others, fine, but Niels and Lars are off the table. You should know by now that they were totally innocent.”

“I don’t know them, or their level of involvement. We’ve got people in Europe investigating those two. Once we’ve decided they had nothing to do with it, we might be willing to compromise.”

“What do you mean by ‘we?’ Just what agency do you work for, anyway?”

Mike didn’t answer.

“Fine, forget the question. I won’t make any promises about those two friends, but I’ll sign anything else you want. Now, are you going to let me go, or keep me here?”

In the end, they let her go. No more lie detectors or men with machine guns. Mike drove her from the wooded compound, through a gate controlled by two guard towers manned by men with machine guns. Tess found herself studying the gates, thinking how she would best defend the compound from attack. The trees were too close to the fence. An enemy could sneak right up and…she shook her head to rid it of such thoughts.

The nearest city was Rochester. Once they hit the turnpike, Mike gave her a prepaid cell phone so she could call friends in the city and begin to track down Nick.

They passed a gas station. The price was double what it had been before leaving for King’s Island. She did a double take as they zipped past.

Mike said, “Now you know why the turnpike is practically empty, and they say it will get worse before it gets better.”

“How bad?”

“Europe is in rough shape. An oil pipeline is out of commission in Russia. Some problems in the Persian Gulf, too. We caught most of that money before it took down the financial system, but stock markets in emerging economies are off about 80%. The DOW is down 30%, but it’s stabilized for the moment. The dollar is holding its ground, finally.”

“It’s a big system with a lot of momentum,” Tess said. “You could hit it pretty hard and I’m not sure it would all come down.”

“Neither am I. But we’d be a fool to take chances.”

He dropped her at the Amtrack Station in central Rochester, near the river. She had the cell phone, a new winter jacket, a train ticket, and a hundred bucks that she’d stuffed into her front pocket.

“I don’t know everything that happened on that island,” Mike said as she opened the door, “but I heard enough. Once everything calms down, we could use someone like you.”

Tess blinked, surprised. “I think you heard wrong. I was just trying to stay alive, I did what I could.”

“And that’s all we’re trying to do, too. Stay alive. Keep all of this running for a few more years, and it means we have to stand in the way of people like Anton Kirkov and others who want to destroy it.”

“There have always been anarchists and nihilists,” Tess said. “Terrorists, the like.”

“Right, but not like now. You put all this stuff together—9/11, peak oil, radical Islam, global warming—and you give the crazies more toys to play with than ever before, and the world becomes a dangerous place. Look, just put it in the back of your mind somewhere. We’ll be in touch.”

She shut the door and he drove off. Tess watched him go, thinking about what he’d said for a long moment, then she zipped up her coat and turned toward the train station. Thirty minutes until her train left. In the meanwhile, she could go for a good cup of coffee.

#

Tess and Nick walked hand-in-hand through Central Park. It was three days before Christmas and there was a display of twenty foot Christmas trees in a semi-circle near The Obelisk, behind the Met. A light snow flocked the top of the trees, which blinked with red and green lights. It was the first snow of the year for the city. The chill in the air and the smell of pine trees reminded her of King’s Island.

A group of musicians played medieval Christmas hymns with lutes, pipes, tambourines, and a horn with a turned up bell—a buisine, Tess thought. A woman in a green velvet gown with a fur-trimmed V at the neck sang lyrics in what sounded like German, but Tess later realized was Middle English.

Nick grabbed her hand when she went to move on. “Come on, let’s stay.”

“No, not today, Nick.”

“Come on, please?”

“Okay, but just for a minute.”

It was too much, too familiar, and the memories were still too close to the surface. Peter’s cremation and service was less than two weeks old. Nick was still weeping and withdrawn when she’d pulled him out of child protective services (with the help of Peter’s will and affidavits by Peter’s sister and mother), but the boy had recovered quickly. He wanted to talk about his papá at least five times a day, but already, he was recovering. If only adults could heal so quickly.

The music was beautiful, professional, really. A man dressed like a jester, complete with bell-tasseled hat, pointy shoes, and floppy, oversized shoes walked among the audience with an overturned tambourine for donations.

Tess and Nick stood apart from the rest of the small crowd and the jester almost didn’t see them. He stopped and came with the tambourine outstretched. He pointed to his oversized, upturned nose with a grin and Nick laughed.

She fished in her purse for some money, which she stuck in the tambourine among the other bills and coins.

“Is that all?” the jester asked without glancing down.

“That’s twenty bucks,” she said. “I should demand a CD for that kind of donation.”

“Ah, but I heard you came into some money recently, so I was hoping for a bit more.”

She squinted at the man, suddenly suspicious, before her eyes opened wide in recognition. “What, no sword this time?”

“And let you kick my ass again?” Niels asked. “I thought if I wore a silly nose you might let me off the hook with nothing more than a few biting retorts.”

Tess was so happy to see him that she almost grabbed him in a hug before she remembered that someone might be watching. She nodded toward the musicians. “But how did they let you out of Germany?”

“Easy, nobody took my passport. I’ve taken some dark warnings about ‘consorting with suspicious figures’ but no specific prohibitions, so I booked at flight for the States and nobody said a thing at the airport, they just stamped my passport and waved me through.”

“Fantastic. Are you here just to track me down, or something else?” Nick was pulling away, so she let him move closer to the music, but kept a close watch.

“I came to help spend the billions you inherited,” Niels said. “Live the good life, and all that. I figured you could show me a good time, even if they never let you out of the city again.”

“Ah, so you’re a gold digger, is that it?”

“Tess, I’d dig you if you were living in a cardboard box down by the docks. Does Manhattan still have docks?” He was smiling, but it was a serious smile. This was something more than banter. “I’m more of a direct assault kind of guy, storm the gates and batter down the defenses, so I’ll just come out and say it.”

“I didn’t realize I was under attack. Give me a second to raise the drawbridge and throw some crocodiles in the moat.”

He laughed. “That was your chance to stop me, instead of stringing me out and letting me make an ass of myself.”

“I’d rather see what you’ve got before springing my counterattack.”

“I had this all planned, but now the words are all jumbled up in German and don’t want to come out. Not sure why I feel so nervous.”

“Have you looked in the mirror? You’re wearing a clown nose and a floppy hat. Come on, just spit it out. Don’t make it into a big speech.” She glanced around to see if anyone was watching, then took his hand. It was warmer than hers, dry and strong. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m nervous, too.”

Niels took a deep breath. “Tess, I don’t know if I can handle you. I don’t know if anyone can, maybe some billionaire or head of state, I don’t know. Frankly, you terrify me. But I also find you sexy as hell, and smart, and funny, and confident, and…well, I’d be an idiot not to tell you and see what happens.”

“First of all, why on earth would you find me terrifying? It’s not like I’m swinging a sword at your head. I’m just a teacher, when you get right down to it. A teacher, and a writer. How scary is that?”

“Is there a second of all?” he asked.

“Truth is, your timing sucks. Mentally, I’m a wreck, and there’s Nick to think about, and a huge load of financial stuff that I’m trying to figure out, not to mention the shadowy, quasi-government types who may or may not be watching me right now.”

“But that’s all that’s standing in your way?”

“That’s all,” she said. “Your interest is, uhm, reciprocated.” She felt herself blush. “Give me your phone number and I’ll find a way to contact you. We’ll arrange an illicit rendezvous, get to know each other better. How long are you in the city?”

“As long as it takes.” He gave her his number, which she wrote down and tucked into her purse.

“I’ll call,” Tess said. “Now go, before someone gets suspicious. Oh, and one other thing,” she added, reluctantly letting go of his hand. “No oversized nose next time. I’d kiss you, but I’m afraid of losing an eye.”