First Daughter (44 page)

"As President Lincoln once said, 'We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.' "

At last, he caught a glimpse of Nina, moved toward her. She was standing on the other side of Edward Carson. He risked a glance behind him. Garner, in a classic pincer move, had ordered his two agents to the other side of the dais in order to intercept Jack while he closed from behind.

"O Lord, as we come together on this historic and solemn occasion to inaugurate once again a president and vice president, teach us afresh that power, wisdom, and salvation come only from your hand."

As Brady himself would understand better than most, what Jack needed now was a bit of misdirection. He tried to get Nina's attention, but her gaze seemed fixed on Edward Carson. Beneath the reverend's words, he could hear the commotion closing in behind him as Garner pushed through the dignitaries packing the dais. The missing piece of the last Rubik's Cube was this: Why had it been so easy to stop Alli? No one's lasting legacy—let alone Ian Brady's—would hinge on the actions of a coerced twenty-year-old.

Then, in his head, he heard Emma's voice as clearly as if she'd been alive and standing beside him.
He said that he already had his Myra Hindley
. That was
before
Brady had abducted Alli. So if he wasn't grooming Emma to be Myra Hindley and she wasn't to be Alli, who was his accomplice, whom would he trust to carry out his legacy after his death?

"We pray, oh Lord, for President-elect Edward Harrison Carson and Vice President-elect Richard Thomas Baer, to whom you have entrusted the leadership of this nation at this moment in history. We pray that you will help them bring our country together, so that we may rise above partisan politics and seek the larger vision of your will for our nation."

Jack felt Garner's grip on his shoulder, trying to turn him around. He saw Nina leaning in toward the president-elect. But her mouth was closed, her jaw set. She reached into an inner pocket of her coat, and at that moment Jack knew. The last piece of the Rubik's Cube fell into place. The real Ian Brady had used a woman younger than he for his accomplice, but not so young as his victims, not so young as to be unreliable. Someone just like Nina Miller.

Jack drew his Glock, fired one shot into Nina's heart. He saw her mouth open in shock, saw her body spin around; then Garner slammed
him to the floor of the dais. Someone kicked the Glock away; Garner struck him a blow to the back of his head.

"Use them to bring reconciliation among the races and healing to political wounds, that we may truly become 'one nation under God,' " the Reverend Dr. Fred Grimes intoned just before the screaming began and all hell broke loose.

S
OMETIMES WE
all need luck in addition to skill," Secretary Dennis Paull said. "And you, Jack, had both today."

Jack was sitting in a small cubicle inside the offices of Homeland Security. Across the table from him were Secretary Paull and Edward Carson, the new President of the United States. It was eight hours after the incident. Since then, Jack had been under arrest, in isolation, just as Brady had predicted.

"That was quite a heroic thing you did today, Jack." Carson waved Paull's protest to silence. "You saved not only my life but the lives of hundreds of people, all vital to the running of this country. That was a vial of anthrax Nina Miller was about to open."

Jack moved his head from side to side with some difficulty. His body still throbbed and ached from the beating Hugh Garner and his cohorts had delivered in the aftermath of the shooting. "And the vial Alli was carrying?"

"Confectioner's sugar," Paull said. "Thank God."

Personally, Jack didn't believe God had anything to do with it, but this was neither the time nor the place to say it. "Is she all right?"

"In light of what's happened, she's being evaluated more carefully this time," the president said.

Paull opened a slim file. "The doctors found a small bit of matter encrusted in the fold behind one ear."

"So Brady did drug her."

Paull nodded. "So far, the lab has identified Sodium Pentothal and curare. There's another, more complex substance the techs are still trying to analyze, but they figure it must be something that caused her to metabolize the other substances with unusual rapidity."

"Jack," Carson said, "do you know how he got to Nina Miller?"

"No, but I can make an educated guess," Jack said. "Nina was traumatized early in life. Her brother molested her."

"We know all about that," Paull cut in. "It's in her file. Her psychological profile was perfectly normal."

"Profiles, like Alli's medical exam, can be faulty," Jack pointed out. "Even more so with psych tests. Nina couldn't bear the fact that her brother was a successful married man."

"Wait a minute." Paull held up a hand. "Nina's brother was killed twelve years ago in a drive-by in Richmond, Virginia. One shot through the head."

"Why would she lie to me about that?" Jack's synapses began firing again. "Did the cops ever find out who the killer was?"

Paull shook his head. "Apart from the bullet, there was no evidence—no motivation either. They gave up, said it was a case of mistaken identity."

"What if it wasn't?" Jack said. "What if Nina met Brady twelve years ago? What if he proposed a plan: He murders her brother, and in return, she becomes his accomplice."

Paull began to sweat at the thought of the terrible mistakes he'd made professionally and personally.

"Brady was like a chess master—he planned his moves far ahead of time," Jack continued. "The night he went out the window, he told
me he'd killed his parents. At the time, I thought he was simply goading me, but now I can see a pattern. He felt he was justified in killing his parents, for whatever reason. Taking a look at Nina's file gave him his opportunity. My guess is he sought her out. Nina felt that there was a privilege in loneliness. She said it made her feel alive, introduced her to herself. People like her are split off from themselves. They'll pass even the most stringent psychological testing because at the moment, they believe what they say."

Paull winced. He could feel Nina's sweat-slicked body moving against him, her breath in his ear, her deep groans. He felt quite faint.

Jack shifted to rid himself of a stab of pain. "In the course of my investigation, I met a young woman, tough and smart—in many ways a younger version of Nina. Brady got to her. She was a nihilist just like him. I'm betting he found the darkness in Nina and pried her open. He was a master at mentoring."

In his mind's eye, Paull saw an image of himself walking into the bookshop where he'd ordered
Summer Rain,
Nina's favorite novel. The dealer insisted he examine it before he bought it. It chronicled the struggle of an immigrant family, rootless and uneducated, marginalized by an indifferent society. He'd thought nothing of it then, but in light of what had happened since, he agreed with Jack. Nina's love of the book was a reflection of her inner darkness. Why hadn't he recognized it? But of course he knew. He'd blinded himself to the signs because her detachment, her rootlessness, her lack of desire for commitment or a family made her the perfect mistress.

"Good God." President Carson ran a hand through his hair. "This entire episode is monstrous." He turned his telegenic eyes on Paull. "My Administration will have zero tolerance for psychopathic agents, Dennis. You and your brethren are going to have to devise an entirely different yardstick to measure your candidates." He stood. "Excuse me, I'm going to deliver the same message to the new director of national security."

He leaned over the table, gave Jack's hand a hearty shake. "Thank you, Jack. From the bottom of my heart."

After he'd gone, Jack and Paull sat across from each other in an uncomfortable silence.

Jack leaned forward. "I'm only going to say this once: For the record, despite his best efforts, I didn't kill him, he killed himself."

"I believe you." Paull's voice was weary. "What went wrong, Jack?"

Jack rubbed the back of his head. "Brady—or whatever his name is—was no good to you anymore, sir. All he wanted was to impose a lasting legacy. He wanted to make a statement of the greatest magnitude. I imagine you'll agree that obliterating virtually the entire U.S. government at a time when the reins of power were being exchanged, when the country was most vulnerable, more than qualifies."

"Are you saying he was making a political statement?"

"I doubt it. Brady had moved beyond such considerations. He despised humankind, hated what he felt civilization had done to the world. He felt we were heading toward a dead end."

"You have my personal thanks." Secretary Paull stared at Jack for a long time. At length, he cleared his throat. "On another note, you'll be pleased to know that there's no sign of the organization known as E-Two. Frankly, I suspect it never existed. The former Administration required a domestic bogeyman to go after its main objective—the missionary secularists. Maybe E-Two was fabricated by the former National Security Advisor."

"Or maybe Brady came up with the idea," Jack said. "After all, misdirection was his forte, and those FASR defectors had to go somewhere."

"A bogus revolutionary cell? Could be." The secretary shrugged. "Either way, I've ordered the members of the First American Secular Revivalists released and reinstated. And, by the way, I protected them while they were in custody. No one interrogated them or harmed them in any way."

"I know you did what you could."

Paull rose, walked to the door.

"What was his name?" Jack said. "His real name?"

Paull hesitated only a moment. "Morgan Herr," he said. "Truth be told, I know precious little about him. I'd like to know more, but for that I'd require you and your particular expertise. If you're interested, come see me."

U
NDER THE
buttermilk sky of an early dusk, Jack stood at the front window of his living room, staring fixedly at the bleak view of his driveway. All the crispy leaves were gone. Overnight, a bitter front out of the Midwest had nailed shut the coffin of the January thaw. All day long, the District, home to mild winters, had been shivering.

Earlier in the day, he'd driven the white Lincoln Continental down Kansas Avenue NE. Parking outside the Black Abyssinian Cultural Center, he hurried across the pavement and through the door. There, he collected the month's rent, minus an amount for the time Chris Armitage and Peter Link occupied the back room. The leaders wanted to pay the full month's rent, but Jack said no. He drank a cup of dark, rich African hot chocolate with them, thanked them, and left.

Trashy wind, full of cinders and yesterday's newspapers, followed him down the block to the FASR office. Inside, everything looked more or less back to normal, except that Calla Myers's desk was unoccupied, wreathed in black ribbon. A number of lit candles clustered on the desktop in front of a framed photo of her with some of her coworkers. They were all smiling. Calla was waving at the camera.

Peter Link was out on assignment, but Jack spent a few minutes chatting with Armitage. He knew he'd made a friend there.

J
ACK ABANDONED
the window and its bleak view to put a Rolling Stones record on the stereo. "Gimme Shelter" began, simmered to a slow boil. "War, children," he sang in a melancholy voice along with Mick and Merry Clayton, "it's just a shot away."

He returned to the window, waiting. Tonight, he had a date with Sharon. He had no idea how that was going to go, but at last she had agreed to come to the house, Gus's house, the house of Jack's adolescence. If he and Sharon didn't kill each other, then next Saturday the two of them would spend the afternoon with Alli. It was Alli's idea; maybe she wanted to play matchmaker—or peacemaker, anyway.

He thought about Alli and her effect on him. There was a time when he didn't know himself or the world. Worse, he couldn't accept that he didn't know himself, so he kept pushing everyone away. Without intimate mirrors, you have no hope of knowing yourself. So he kept Sharon and Emma—the two people best equipped to be his intimate mirrors—at arm's length, while he deluded himself into thinking his job came first, that saving strangers was more important than allowing anyone to know him.

He recalled his first encounter with Hermann Hesse's
Steppenwolf
. He hadn't liked the book, because he was too young to fully appreciate it. But with living comes wisdom. Now a line from the book surfaced in his mind. There's a moment when Steppenwolf is struck by a revelation. In order to understand himself, and therefore the world, he needs to "traverse, not once more but often, the
hell
of his inner being." This, Jack understood, was the most difficult thing a human being could attempt. Simply to try was heroic. To succeed, well . . .

He heard the soft crunch of the gravel, and then Sharon's car nosed into the driveway. She pulled in to the right, parked the car, and got out. She was wearing a black ankle-length wool coat, black boots, and
a tomato-red scarf wrapped around her throat. Aching to see her long legs, he leaned forward until his nose made an imprint on the glass and his breath turned to fog.

She stood for a moment, as if uncertain which way to go. Jack held his next breath, wondering if she was contemplating getting back in her car and driving off. That would be just like her—or at least just like the woman he had known.

Low, cool sunlight came through the branches, speckling her face. It shone off her hair, made the color of her eyes clear and rich. She looked young, very much as she had when he'd first met her. From this distance, the lines of worry and grief weren't visible, as if time itself had been obliterated.

Jack saw her gazing at the house, taking in its shape and dimensions. She took a step toward him, then another. As she moved, she seemed to gain momentum, as if her intent had focused down. She looked like someone who had made up her mind, who knew what she wanted.