First Daughter (20 page)

He'd been living on a knife-edge for almost two years now, the midpoint of the president's second term in office. His stomach always hurt; his nerves vibrated so badly that he couldn't recall the last time he had slept soundly. Instead, he'd taught himself the art of catnapping—five minutes here, fifteen there—during the day. In the dead of night, as one of his days bled into the next, he sipped strong black coffee and carried out the spinning of his web. For good or ill, he was in too deep now to have second thoughts, for if he were to succeed, he needed to commit to his plan absolutely. Any waver of intent would be lethal.

He put on the smile he used for intimates—if one could use that word for those in his inner circle, because Secretary Paull had no true intimates. This the job had taught him a long, painful time ago.

His thoughts threaded away on the spume purling from the sleek bow of his yacht as Nina walked back to where he stood just forward of the cabin. It was a blustery day, spitting intermittently. Not a fit day for a boat ride, which was why Paull was here on the water instead of in an office that might very well be bugged or an open space where whatever he said was at the mercy of a parabolic microphone on the top of some innocuous-looking van. His yacht was swept three times a day for bugs, and that included the entire hull. Plus there were sophisticated jamming devices fore and aft installed by a friend of his at DARPA, the Department of Defense's advanced weapons program.

To the uninitiated, Paull mused, these precautions might seem the product of paranoia, but as William S. Burroughs aptly said,
Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts
.

"That was McClure," Nina said, folding away her phone. "He
wants me to meet him at the headquarters of the First American Secular Revivalists."

Paull didn't like the sound of that. "What's he doing there? FASR is supposed to be Hugh Garner's responsibility."

"Garner's got it in for McClure."

They were into the wind, no one who wasn't in spitting distance could hear them, not even the crew, who Paull had made certain were all inside. "What the hell is McClure up to?"

"I don't know," Nina confessed, "but it seems clear he doesn't believe E-Two is behind the kidnapping."

"Then who the hell is?"

"I don't know, sir, but I have a feeling McClure is closer to finding out than we are."

The secretary looked thoughtful. "From now on, I want you to stick close to him."

Nina took a drag on her clove cigarette. "How close?"

The secretary's eyes bored into hers. "Do whatever it takes to keep him close. We're rapidly running out of time and space to maneuver."

Nina's gaze was cool and steady. "How does it feel, I wonder, to pimp someone else out?"

He waved a hand dismissively. "You'd better get over there pronto."

Nina turned, headed aft.

"And Nina," he called after her.

She turned back, pulled her hair off her face.

"Make sure you start thinking of him as Jack."

I
NSIDE THE
polished mahogany cabin, the yacht's captain ignored the helicopter as its rotors started up. A moment later, it had lifted off with the woman passenger aboard. The captain didn't know her name, didn't care what it was. His job was simple and he was doing it now, transcribing onto the tiny keypad of his BlackBerry from scribbled notes he'd taken of the conversation Secretary Paull had just had with the visitor.
Growing up with a deaf sister had made him proficient in lip-reading. Finished with the transcription, he pressed the S
END
key, and the e-mail was instantaneously transmitted directly to wherever the president was at the moment, no doubt eagerly awaiting its arrival.

His job concluded for the time being, the captain set his Black-Berry down beside the pair of powerful binoculars through which he'd viewed the conversation in question. Then he got back to maneuvering the yacht through the wind-tossed afternoon. He'd never had an incident at sea aboard any of the yachts he'd captained, and he wasn't about to start now.

E
VERY ACTION
invites a reaction. No, no." Kray rocked slightly from one foot to the other. "Every action
causes
a reaction. The religious right's infiltration of the federal government finally has had its proper reaction: us, the enemy. The missionary secularists, the Army of Reason." He laughed. "It seems ironic, doesn't it, that without
them
there would be no
us
. They created us; every extreme gives rise to the opposite extreme."

He bent down, untied Alli's wrists. "Hold your arms over your head."

It was phrased as a suggestion rather than a command. Nevertheless, Alli complied, but after only a few seconds she was obliged to fold them in her lap.

"I . . . I can't," she said. "I don't have the strength."

"I have a cure for that."

Kneeling, Kray unbuckled her ankles and legs. With his arms around her waist, he helped her to her feet. She stood, wobbly as a toddler, her weight against him from her hip to her shoulder.

With his coaxing, she took one tentative step forward, then another,
but her legs buckled and Kray had to hold her firmly lest she collapse onto the floor like an invalid.

"I think you might have to teach me to walk all over again," she said with an embarrassed laugh.

"You won't need me to do that, I promise." He took her out of the room that had been her home for several days. He helped her shower and dress, and she felt neither embarrassed nor ashamed. Why should she? After all, he had watched her defecate and urinate; possibly he'd watched her sleep. Could there be anything more intimate?

There was not an inch of her he didn't know. It had taken just over a week for him to become a part of her.

In the kitchen, he pulled out a chair for her. She sat with one arm on the table, where cartons of orange juice and milk, and several water tumblers stood in a precise cluster. He poured her a glass of orange juice with pulp, the kind she liked best.

He waited until she had drained the glass. "After lunch, we'll go for a walk around the house. You'll get your strength back in no time, you'll see," he said. "Now, what would you like to eat?"

"Eggs and bacon, please."

"I think I'll join you." Kray opened the refrigerator so that the door to the interior was outside of Alli's field of vision. The other girl sat folded, as if she were performing a contortionist's trick. He pulled out a carton of eggs and a stick of butter from the shelf on the door. A pound of thick-sliced bacon was on the lower shelf near the girl's stiff, blue feet. Her skin looked bad now; it was starting to slough off like snakeskin. Very soon now, Kray knew, he'd have to move her, either to the freezer in the basement—though that would necessitate cutting her up into sections—or somewhere else, a landfill or an empty lot, perhaps. But not yet. He was reluctant to let her go. She'd been so useful to him. He'd sedated her while he cut off her hand so as not to cause her pain. She didn't deserve that; she had a home here now, and
he didn't want to abandon her. It wasn't her fault that he'd needed her to make sure the authorities knew Alli wasn't dead and buried. He was on a strict timetable. He required the urgency only a search for a living girl would bring.

Arms full, Kray kicked the refrigerator door closed, lined up the ingredients on the counter next to the stove, placed a cast-iron skillet on the burner, turned on the gas. So as not to expose his fingers to grease, he used one of the gleaming knives on a magnetic wall rack to peel off six slices of bacon, then laid them side by side in the skillet. Turning up the heat made them sizzle. The rich scent permeated the kitchen.

When the bacon was golden brown, he set the slices on a paper towel, drained off the fat from the skillet. Without washing it, he sliced off a thick pat of butter, plopped it in the skillet to melt. Then he put the carton of eggs, a stainless steel bowl, and a whisk on the table.

"How about you scrambling the eggs?"

Once again, it was a suggestion rather than a command. Alli knew she was free to say no. But she didn't want to say no. She opened the carton, broke six eggs one by one on the rim of the bowl, poured in a dollop of milk, then began to whisk the mixture.

"I don't know how anyone can eat those Eggbeaters," she said idly.

"Or an egg-white omelette, for that matter," he answered.

Quite quickly her arm began to tire. But she rested it briefly, then began again, bringing a pale yellow froth.

"Ready," she said.

Kray took the bowl from her, added three twists of salt, two of pepper, then tipped the contents into the skillet. He stirred the eggs a bit with a white plastic spatula.

"White bread?"

"Whole-wheat today, I think," Alli said.

"In the pantry." He put down the spatula, went into the small room. Immediately he turned around, stood watching her from the shadows.
She rose, one hand supporting herself on the tabletop. Then she walked over to the stove. Her hand passed the knives in the wall rack, picked up the spatula. She stirred the eggs in the skillet. She hummed to herself.

Satisfied, Kray found a fresh loaf of whole-wheat bread, tucked it under his arm. Then he reached up, opened the cupboard. Carrie was curled and winding in her dark cave. Her red eyes stared at him enigmatically.

He put a finger across his lips, whispered to her, "Shhh."

Kray closed the cupboard door, returned to the kitchen.

Alli turned her head. "Almost done," she said.

Was that the ghost of a smile on her face?

They ate, sitting across from each other.

"I was right about you," he said at length. "Despite your hothouse upbringing, you're not a fool. You despise privilege."

Alli swallowed a mouthful of egg and bread. "Fear and loathing."

He nodded. "Hunter Thompson."

She looked up, not for the first time surprised by him. "You've read him?"

"Because he's a favorite of yours."

A shiver went through her—of pleasure, not fear.

"Tell me what you liked most about Thompson."

Alli didn't hesitate. "He was a subversive. He thought civilization was hypocritical, he loved to show how good people were at rationalizing their actions."

Kray bit off a piece of bacon. "In other words, he was like us—you and me."

"What do you mean?"

Kray wiped his mouth, sat back. "From my point of view, the civilization Thompson was writing about is inextricably entwined with religion. And what is religion, after all, but totalitarianism? The strictures god presented to Adam and Eve, that both the Old and New Testaments describe, are nothing more than a series of laws so extreme,
so prohibitive, they're impossible to adhere to. In the so-called beginning, in the garden of Eden, god tells Adam and Eve that he's provided them with everything they could possibly desire or ever will desire. The only thing is, see that tree over there? That's the Tree of Knowledge. If you want to find out what's really going on, you need to eat the fruit. But hey, wait a minute, eating the fruit is forbidden, so forget that knowledge thing, who needs it anyway when I've given you everything you want. So, in essence, religion insists we live in ignorance—but that's perfectly okay, because we have our priests and ministers to tell us what to do and what to think.

"Shall I go on? Okay, how about 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.' The commandment doesn't say don't screw another man's wife, that would be doable. Instead, it gives you an impossible task: It forbids you even to
think
about screwing another man's wife!

"You see what's happened here? Religion was invented by men in order to
create
sin. Because without sin there can be no fear, without fear how do you control large numbers of human beings? Add to that an elite theocracy that periodically issues edicts as it sees fit, in order to keep itself in power, and the definition of totalitarianism is complete."

Alli took a moment to absorb what Kray said before replying: "What about the totalitarianism of Hitler and Stalin?"

A knowing smile spread across Kray's face. "The Vatican acquiesced to Hitler. In fact, it rushed to knuckle under in 1933, signing a treaty with Hitler forbidding German Catholics to participate in any form of political activity that criticized the regime. After the war, it provided documents, false passports and the like, enabling Nazis to flee to South America, and no German was ever excommunicated for war crimes. The historical connection of the Christian churches with fascism is undeniable and a matter of public record. Hardly surprising, when you think about it. Totalitarianism attracts totalitarianism. Its members are absolutists—by definition, they cannot apologize for their transgressions. Think about it for a moment. Totalitarianism whether
it be religious in nature like the Christian church or political in nature like history's fascist states is all faith-based. Absolute faith in one's infallible leaders.

"At least we secularists have the freedom—and the duty—to admit our mistakes, and to correct them."

Alli, eyes turned inward, was lost in thought. She was absorbing everything, like a sponge. "It's true. I see things that frighten me," she said at length. "A group of people with tremendous power and inflexible views, everyone else afraid to speak up, more limits put on personal freedoms." She pursed her lips. "What does it mean? It's unthinkable, but could it be that we're inching away from democracy?"

"The very fact that you're asking the question is cause for celebration." Kray pushed his plate to one side. "Now you tell me. Your opinion is as important as mine."

Her lips curled in an ironic smile. "Even though I've lived a life of privilege?"

"Precisely because you've lived a life of privilege," Kray said seriously.

She rose, gathered the plates and cutlery.

"You don't have to do that," he said.

"I'm stronger now." Her hands full, Alli walked over to the sink with decidedly less difficulty. Her back to him, she began to wash the dishes.