Covenant (27 page)

            He returned his attention to the platform.  Even after the doors whooshed closed, and the releasing brakes sighed, and the train began to crawl forward, he still watched.  

            “We’re safe,” Lisa said. 

            The train pulled out of the station. 

            “Sit.”  She grasped his hand, tugged him.  He finally sat next to her, placing the duffel between his feet. 

            “There’s no way they can find us now,” she said.  “We’re off the radar.”

            He nodded.  But when he noticed the surveillance camera mounted in the upper corner of the compartment, his gut tightened. 

45

            Cutty slammed the Suburban’s door so hard the entire vehicle shuddered.

            “Goddamn cops!” he said.  “They wouldn’t let me get near the fucking train ‘cause someone told them I had a gun!  I know it was that goddamn Thorne!  Shit!”

            “Si,” Valdez said in a calm tone.  “No can carry guns on train.  Is law.”

            “It’s not God’s law! 
We
answer only to God—not a couple of prick cops!  I should’ve killed them both!” 

            He punched the dashboard, bruising his thick knuckles against the console, and nevertheless bashed it again, and again.  Valdez watched him quietly, as if he were a child throwing a temper tantrum and she was the responsible adult.  That condescending look of hers put the lid on his rage.  She was the rookie here; he was the veteran warrior.  He needed to act like it.

            After all, God was always watching, always judging, and would not approve of his childish behavior and foul language.  He would need to seek forgiveness for these transgressions.

            But this mission was testing him.  He’d flashed his U.S. Marshal badge at the dolts, a fake that looked as credible as the genuine article, and the assholes had insisted that he wait in their office until they confirmed his identity.  He’d given them the number to call to validate his ID—a number that would be answered by a member of their organization—and the dickheads had said they would follow their own confirmation procedures, thank you very much, sir, come with us, please, at which point he had stormed out.

            The cocksuckers.  They were supposed to obey without question.  They were supposed to be on
his
side.            

            Although he’d come close to blowing the cops away, in hindsight, killing them would have caused more trouble than it was worth.  Their organization had high-ranking servants and powerful contacts in law enforcement, making the police agencies invaluable allies.  Gunning down two officers in cold blood would have damaged those relationships and raised the ire of the Director, who would have been responsible for cleaning up the mess.  The Director had ordered him to eliminate Thorne and anyone who stood in his way, but that command didn’t include a license to murder honest cops.      

            His throbbing knuckles were bright red.  He gently massaged them. 

            “Okay?” Valdez asked softly.

            “I know I’ve said this before, Valdez, but I get so fired up with holy passion, so caught up in doing God’s will, that I lose my head.  I’m not making excuses for my behavior, and I will seek penance later for my angry words . . .  but my Lord, I’m positively
obsessed
with God’s thirst for justice.  That’s the kind of man I am.  You understand?” 

            “Si.  Is okay.”             

            “It is?”

            “Si.”

            Her eyes were so warm, so empathetic.  He had the sudden and almost irresistible urge to kiss her.  It was only by the grace of God that he resisted.  When one was at a moment of weakness, Satan offered the temptations of the flesh.

But a film of cold sweat had beaded on his forehead.  He used a handkerchief to wipe it

away.

“We’ve got to get on Thorne’s trail again,” he said.     

            “They go south, to city?”

            “Probably.  Let’s see what I can dig up on Gen.” 

            He dragged the keyboard onto his lap and accessed the MARTA rail schedules and routes.  The southbound train would make over a dozen stops, the last one being the airport, south of Atlanta.  But there were also trains running east and west, and north.

            Too many possibilities.  He had to dig deeper.                  

            He instructed Gen to tap into the rail security network.  Like most mass transit systems across the country and throughout the world, MARTA utilized surveillance cameras on their trains, and in the stations, too.  Gen could invade the network by stealth, slip into those cameras, and show him what they were recording.

            At five o’clock in the morning, there were only a limited number of trains running across the metro area.  He first checked surveillance video on the southbound line. 

            Each passenger car was equipped with a camera.  He toggled views from one car to the next.

            “Got ‘em,” he said.  “Get on 400 South, right now.”

            Valdez rocketed away from the curb.

            The camera was located in the upper corner of the car, and transmitted images in black-and-white, in real-time.  He clearly saw Thorne and his wife sitting together near the back of the compartment, talking.  He would’ve liked to pick up audio, too, but that wasn’t a component of the system.

            Thorne suddenly glanced up at the lens, as if he sensed Cutty observing them. 

            Thorne’s awareness of the camera was proof that he worried Cutty might be watching.  He obviously was discovering the awesome powers of the Kingdom that he’d dared to defy, and perhaps he was beginning to realize that he’d aligned himself with the wrong side.

            Cutty pressed a button to split the screen into two equal-size panes, shifting the passenger car view to the left-hand side of the display.  On the right half, he scrolled through a list of available surveillance cameras posted at the stations along the train’s route. 

            As soon as Thorne and his wife disembarked, he would get a visual of the boarding platform they would have to walk to leave the station.  They didn’t have a vehicle to facilitate their escape, and few cabs and buses were operating at that hour. 

            They would, at last, have nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. 

46

            As the train blasted south along the elevated rail tracks that cut through the middle of Georgia 400, Anthony continually glanced at the surveillance camera.            

            Lisa followed his gaze.  “You keep looking at the camera.  You think they can watch us?”

            “The camera is linked to a network.  Networks can be hacked.”

            “Why did I ask?”  She ran her hands through her hair.  “Do we have to take a space shuttle to the moon to escape these people?”

            “Come on.”  He grabbed their bags.  “Let’s move to another car.”

            In the next compartment, there were only two passengers, both college-age guys.  One was asleep, head tilted back and mouth lolling open.  The guy sitting beside him listened to loud rock on an iPod and bobbed his shaggy-haired head almost violently.  He looked at them without interest. 

            A surveillance camera monitored them in there, too. 

            “Must be surveillance in every car.”  He turned to Lisa.  “You have some lipstick? A dark shade?”

            “Lemme see.”  She dug in her purse and handed a stick to him.  “This is the darkest color I have.  It’s called merlot.”

            “That’ll work.”    

            He climbed onto the seat underneath the camera.  Using broad strokes, he painted a thick coat of lipstick over the lens.

            The rock fan passenger was watching him.  He grinned and gave Anthony the thumbs-up sign.  “Fucking A, dude.  Big Brother sucks.”

            Anthony returned the thumbs-up, and settled onto a seat with Lisa.     

            “Now we’ve got a little bit of privacy,” he said.  “My guess is that they’ll have cameras in each station, too, but maybe we can throw them off long enough for us to get away.”

            “Where do you want to go?”

            “To Buckhead, maybe.  Somewhere we can find a car to boost.  Unless you have another idea?”

            “Hmm.”  She pursed her lips.  “I was thinking—my baby sister’s in Houston visiting her boyfriend until Sunday night.  She left her car at her apartment, and I’ve got a key to her place.”

            “Isn’t it near a station?”

            “It’s about two or three blocks from the Midtown stop.”

            “We’ll go there then.”

            While Lisa closed her eyes to doze, he rummaged in his duffel and found Bishop Prince’s book.  He stared at the cover photo.

            The bishop’s face still troubled him, for reasons that continued to elude him.  But there was another element of the picture that made sense.

            On the lapel of his suit, Bishop Prince wore the same golden badge that he had seen on the breast pocket of Valdez’s tracksuit.  Although the picture did not provide close-up detail of the emblem’s intricate embroidery—he could make out images of a bird of some kind, a sword, and a cross—the capital letters “NKC,” in a bold, elegant typeface, were easily readable.    

            NKC. 
New Kingdom Church.
          

            He pointed out the badge to Lisa and explained what he’d seen on the woman’s jacket.

            “That sounds conclusive to me,” she said.  “At this point, the accumulated evidence is impossible to deny.”

            “I only wish I knew how my dad got involved with these people.”  He gazed out the window, the urban landscape fleeing past in a dark blur.  Sighing, he examined the bishop’s face again.  “I feel like we’re missing something obvious.”

            “Like what?”

            He shrugged.  “Something.  Maybe in that Bible.  Maybe in this book.” 

            “Well, we’re both tired.  Soon as we can get settled somewhere safe, get some rest, and clear our heads, things will start to fall into place.”

            “But for now, we definitely know one thing for sure.”

            “Which is?”

            He tapped the book, finger stabbing the bishop’s beguiling smile.

            “The face of our enemy.”

47

            By the time the train pulled into the Midtown station, the two college kids had disembarked at a previous stop and left Anthony and Lisa alone in the car. They got to their feet as the locomotive slowed, Anthony craning his neck to find the camera that would be watching the area, while Lisa searched for it, too.

            “There it is,” she said, face pressed to the glass.  “It’s in the middle, above that trash can.  It moves left to right.  See it?”

            He saw it.  Suspended from the rafters by a steel arm veined with black cables, the small camera was one of a bundled pair that scanned the area.  The other one was angled in the opposite direction, to monitor activity on a separate train line.

            “I see it,” he said.  “Stand by till I give the word.”

            Counting under his breath, he began to clock the speed of the camera’s arc. 

            With a screech of brakes, the train drew to a halt.  The passenger doors rattled open. 

            Lisa hung back from the doors.  Anthony waited until the camera had ratcheted away from the train, and said to her, “Now.  We’ll go across the platform and stand by that trash can.  We’ve got about five seconds before the camera swings back our way.”

            Lugging their bags, they hurried off the car and onto the platform.  There were only a few passengers boarding or leaving the rails at that hour, and those that wandered past ignored them in that familiar way that urbanites did, immersed in their own little bubbles.  

            Standing close together beside the wastebasket, almost directly beneath the camera, they waited.  The lens pivoted to the left, sweeping over the train they had exited, and moved its cyclopean gaze to the stairwell beyond the platform.

            When it had reached the limit of its leftward scan and resumed the rightward rotation, he nudged Lisa. 

            “Now.”

            They took off at a jog.  They reached the stairwell and pounded up the steps. 

            Halfway up the stairs, he grabbed Lisa’s arm. 

            “Wait.  Step down.  There’s another one at the top.”

            She turned away, descended a step.  A young woman brusquely rushed by them

            He waited until the swiveling camera had raked past.  “Go.”

            They streaked up the staircase and cut right, to the doors.  Finally, no more cameras. 

            They ran outside into damp air, a cool drizzle, and the drone of the city.  The vaulted sky had yet to release sunshine; dawn was an hour away yet.

            A few vehicles grumbled past on Tenth Street, but none of them were black Suburbans.  That didn’t inspire a sense of security, however—an urban environment offered countless hiding places. 

            “Where’s your sister’s apartment?” he asked.

            “Not far.”  She took his hand, and they crossed the street. 

            They were in the heart of Midtown.  High-rise condos and apartments.  Skyscrapers housing corporate headquarters.  Fashion-able boutiques.  Trendy restaurants.  Yesterday afternoon, he and Lisa had met for lunch at a brewpub only a few blocks away. Their lives had changed so much in the past twelve hours they might have been in a different universe. 

            But if this nerve-shredding ordeal ended with the justice his family deserved, it would have been well worth the pain, stress, and exhaustion.  Worth everything.  A day or two of sheer hell could never compare to the past fifteen years of misery—or the prospect of a future without closure.