Finding North (35 page)

“
He said you wouldn’t like
me because I’m not Irish,” Stefan said.

“
I don’t like you because
you’re damned awful at
lománaíocht
,” Cian
sniffed.

“
You
know
him?” Hermes and Helen said at
the same time.

Cian laughed.

“
We’re on the same Hurling
team,” Stefan said.

“
But you’re not Irish!”
Hermes said. “Only the Irish are allowed to play the holy game
of
lománaíocht
.”

“
I may have exaggerated a
bit,” Cian said.

“
I had Irish roommates who
taught me the game at college,” Stefan said. “I played all four
years. Alex told me about their team, and . . . It
was a nice way to pass the time.”

“
You must be Helen,” Cian
said. “We’ve heard a lot about you.”

She nodded and
smiled.

“
It’s a real pleasure,”
Cian said. “Please, come in. The boys have been beside themselves,
and . . .”

Cian led them into the
dining room.

“
We’re glad you’re here,”
Cian said.

Cian helped Helen with a
chair, and Stefan sat next to her. Neev sat next to
Helen.

“
Alex asked me to help
you,” Neev smiled.

In Neev’s smile, Helen saw
a terrible pain equal only to the one she felt inside.

“
I might understand where
you’ve been,” Neev said, as if she could hear Helen’s
thoughts.

Jack came into the room
with Paddie Hargreaves on his shoulders.

“
I think we can find a way
out together,” Neev said.

“
I hope so,” Helen said.
“Because I have to . . .”

“
Yes,” Neev said. “I’ve
heard.”

Helen nodded. Seeing Erin
standing in the doorway, Helen got up to hug her.

“
You know each other?”
Neev asked.

“
We met through Troy,”
Erin said. “I’m a virologist, and Helen
is . . .”

“
Was,” Helen
said.

“
Once an internationally
renowned theoretical physicist, always an internationally renowned
theoretical physicist,” Stefan said.

“
Stefan!” Erin said. “I’m
so glad to see you.”

Erin looked from Helen to
Stefan.

“
Did you?” Erin
asked.

Helen held up her
ring.

“
Yea!” Erin said. “Sami!
Helen and Stefan are engaged again!”

Samantha came into the
dining room to hug Helen.

“
You know Samantha, too?”
Neev asked.

“
Our parents are friends,”
Samantha said. “And, of course, Troy’s been a fixture at our house
forever.”

“
You knew about Stefan?”
Helen asked.

Samantha and Erin
nodded.

“
Troy told us,” Samantha
said. “When you moved here.”

Helen nodded.

“
Are you
here . . .?” Erin gestured to Neev.

“
Alex said she thought
Neev could help me,” Helen said. “I have to talk to my
dad . . . and . . . He’s
evil.”

Stefan put his arm around
Helen’s shoulder.

“
I need to speak to the
Senator,” Samantha said. “He drugged me and . . .
used me . . . and . . .”

Samantha shook her
head.

“
Next week, I
have
to go to
Guantanamo Bay
to talk
to my horrible ex-boyfriend,” Erin said. “He’s the reason I have a
fake nose and plastic cheekbones and capped teeth
and . . .”

“
Alex wants us to see what
we can do together,” Neev said. “Eoin has already developed
something that might work.”

“
First, you have to eat
breakfast,” Hector James said.

“
It’s the most important
meal of the day,” John said.

He came in holding the
twins. Erin grabbed Joey, and Samantha took Máire from him. He sat
down next to Paddie. Hector James sat next to John, and Hermes next
to him. Cian came in with Ooljee on his shoulders. Ooljee went to
sit with Paddie. Their similar ages and temperaments made them
close cousins. Paddie moved over, so Ooljee could share his
chair.

“
Where’s Grace?” John
asked.

“
She went to school, so I
could focus on what we’re doing with Neev,” Erin said.

“
Grace got to go to
school?” Paddie asked. “How come I don’t get to go to
school?”

“
Katy’s not at school,
love,” Neev said.

“
Oh, never mind,” Paddie
said.

They settled into eating.
Eoin came in the back door and slipped into a chair next to Cian.
With her head down, Helen peeked at the people around the table.
She felt Stefan lean into her.

“
You okay?” he said in her
ear.

“
Yeah,” Helen smiled. “I
think I am.”

FFFFFF
Thursday evening

May 19 — 5:55 p.m. CEST
(8:55 a.m. MDT)

Paris, France

Alex closed the door to
the room they’d drawn — Raz’s bedroom. Trece and White Boy had
drawn Alex’s room, and Zack and Cliff had Max’s room. They had sent
Matthew on his way to his honeymoon in Hawaii around midday. The
rest of the team had pushed the furniture in the main room to the
side and were planning on sleeping in the middle. Everyone was
having a great time. Alex smiled.

She’d spent the last three
hours in a meeting with British and French Intelligence. No one was
sure what had happened today. CNN ran with a story of the upset
caused by a joint French-American military exercise performed in
the middle of a residential neighborhood. The other news services
followed their lead. There was a lively debate on the safety of
such urban military exercises on the political talk shows. To
Alex’s surprise, the world had bought the story, and still, no one
in intelligence was sure how their wires got crossed.

Alex went to the bedside
table and began unloading her pockets. She took out the pocket
computer Sergeant Dusty had given her, a yellow pencil, and a piece
of paper with a note from Dom. She balled up the note and threw it
in the trash. From her other pocket, she removed her identification
badge, a set of keys, and the cufflinks and ring she’d gotten from
the bookstore. Scowling, she bent down to pick Dom’s note from the
trash. She smoothed out the wrinkles and set it with the rest of
her junk. She set her Leatherman Freestyle knife on the table. She
removed her Glock 9 MM from her sacrum holster. She checked that
the safety was on and the chamber empty. She removed the clip and
set the weapon on the table.

She was about to take off
her pants when she felt something in the back pocket. She took out
the odd metal point that Margaret had found. She held the piece up
to the light. It looked solid and sturdy. She set the metal point
next to the cufflinks and went into the bathroom. This was her
designated time to receive her senior-officer privilege of a hot
shower. When she saw the bathtub, she changed her plan. Turning the
water on for a bath, she sat down on the toilet.

The metal point weighed on
her mind. Was it the key? Where did it come from? Why had the
mysterious Eloise Le Grande been so weird about the metal point?
And the cufflinks? And the ring? And Raz’s watch?

Alex flushed the toilet
and went back into the bedroom. Sitting down on the bed, she looked
at the cufflinks. The metal bar was too thin to hold an actual
cloth cuff. She picked up a cufflink and the metal point. She
threaded the cufflink through a small hole near the square end of
the metal point and swiveled the bar into place. The cufflink was a
perfect fit. She threaded the other cufflink through the second
hole. The metal point now had two small compass roses facing one
side and the bars from the cufflinks on the other.

Alex picked up the ring.
The ring was small, possibly a child’s ring. The compass rose was
delicately etched into a flat gold piece on the top of the ring.
The band was also gold. Unless her grandfather had been very small,
he could not have worn this ring. She slipped the ring over the
half-inch metal piece on the end of the point. The ring fit
perfectly.

She held up the point to
look at it more closely. With the addition of the ring, the metal
point held three small versions of the compass rose and eye.
Setting the point down, she went to the pile of stuff Raz had taken
out of his pockets when he’d showered. She picked up the pocket
watch and brought it back to her side of the bed. As she’d
suspected, the watch fit perfectly into the hole in the middle of
the metal point.

“
What the hell?” Alex
asked out loud.

It was only then that she
remembered the book. She went to Raz’s side of the bed and found
the book on top of the dresser. She sat down on the edge of the bed
and flipped through the vellum pages. The book was line after line
of Linear A. Shaking her head, she carried the book to the
cartographer’s tool kit and slipped it into the slot. The book
clearly belonged with the case.

She went to her dresser
and took Ben’s directional compass from her drawer. She tried it in
the cartographer’s tool case. It fit perfectly, as if the case had
been created for this compass. Puzzled, Alex shook her
head.

As fascinating as this
mystery was, Alex did not want to miss out on her chance to take a
bath. She closed the case and set the cartographer’s tool set down
next to the bedside table. She finished undressing in the
bathroom.

Before stepping into the
bath, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her left hip
remained a horror show of scars and shrapnel. The surgical scars on
her left forearm, where she’d broken her arm and then survived
sepsis, were pale in color and almost unnoticeable. She had a large
purple bruise on her left leg from when the SUV had hit the police
cruiser. The more recent knife scar and subsequent surgical scars
on her right chest were red and looked as inflamed as they felt.
Anxiety and a strict exercise regimen kept her bone thin. She put
her hands on her protruding hips. Since working on Linear A, she’d
lost all the weight she’d gained in the last few years. She looked
like a skeleton. Shaking her head at herself, she stepped into the
warm bath.

The warm water embraced
her. She slid down until her head was underwater. For a moment, she
let the quiet warmth invade her sore and tired body. She stayed
underwater until her lungs ached and she longed for breath. She
pushed her way out of the bathtub only to find that she was not
alone in the bathroom.

Zack’s girlfriend Bestat
was sitting on the end of the tub. She was impeccably dressed in a
linen skirt and light-blue silk blouse. Her long black hair was in
a single braid down her back. Her almond-shaped auburn eyes, with
their long eyelashes, had the most delicate touches of makeup. Even
in this bathroom setting, she was stunning.

“
Bestat,” Alex
said.

“
You must leave Paris
tonight,” Bestat said.

“
What?” Alex sat up in the
bathtub. “Why?”

“
Ji Song, son of Steve
Pershing and Song Fong, has been arrested for treason,” Bestat
said. “We have arranged for him and his mother to stay with my kin.
The government of China has agreed to let you, and only you, remove
Ji and Fong from China. They are telling the press it’s a return
courtesy. Did you help them with a hostage situation?”

“
A few,” Alex said.
“China’s a big country.”

“
Well, the government of
China would like to avoid scandal,” Bestat said. “The arrest is not
personal. They are secretly disbanding his entire team. It seems
they ran some missions over the last few years that the Chinese
would like full deniability on. His team is being allowed to
emigrate as long as they don’t emigrate to the US.”

“
Only Ji,” Alex
said.

“
They can’t prevent him,”
Bestat said. “He has dual citizenship.”

“
Why are you here?” Alex
asked. “In my bathroom?”

“
The message came through
the Egyptian embassy,” Bestat said. “My diplomatic group has worked
out the details of the deal.”

“
Why you?” Alex
asked.

“
I think they are aware of
my ties to your team,” Bestat said. “To Steve. If they weren’t
already aware, I made them aware. They will turn Ji and Fong over
to you. You and your team will travel with my diplomatic team to
China. I will brief you on the plane. My kin will ensure your
safety in China. You will travel home with us.”

Alex nodded.

“
You know what this means,
don’t you?” Bestat asked.

“
What does it mean?” Alex
asked.

“
You will not have free
access to the Mogao Caves,” Bestat said.

“
Did I want free access to
the Mogao Caves?” Alex asked.

Bestat gave her an
exasperated sigh, and Alex smiled.

“
My kin works with Fong,”
Bestat continued without answering her question. “My kin has
arranged for you and your Rasmussen to spend one hour in the
caves.”