Near Death (30 page)

Following the lead, Scotland Yard was contacted to check on relatives of Alex Weller. They e-mailed back that he had a brother, Joseph, recently honorably discharged from the British army. Following that lead, a check of flights from British airports showed that a Joseph Weller had entered Boston on a tourist visa seventeen days earlier.

Agents showed his passport file photo to Jane. They had an ID.

In short order, Joe Weller’s photo was disseminated to news channels and Internet sites everywhere, right next to his brother’s. The two came to share the top two spots on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List.

Alex was in the kitchen having a cup of tea with Joe when the breaking news flashed onto the TV. Joe’s photo lit up the screen.

“You’re finally famous,” Alex said.

“’Bout time. Wonder how they found me that fast?”

“O’Malley’s not stupid. Looks like you can’t go home now.”

He snorted. “Don’t want to. I like hanging with you.”

There was a scream from the hall stairs. It was Erica. “Alex! Come!”

Erica and Jessie were at Tara’s bedside. The girl was thrashing, contorted.

“She’s having a seizure,” Alex said calmly. “Joe, you got your wallet on you?” Joe handed it to him and watched Alex work the leather in between her clenched teeth until her tongue was protected. Then he sat beside her, rubbing her cheek, soothing her. “You’re okay, love. You’re okay. You’ll be out of it in a bit. Don’t worry. Doctor Alex is here.” In a minute her body was slack, her breathing normalizing. Alex looked up. “When she’s with it, I’m going to up her dose of meds. She’s precious cargo.”

Jessie looked at him with amazement. She’d never seen him with a patient, never known him to be as tender with anyone other. “You’re wonderful,” she whispered to him.

“Don’t be too impressed,” Joe said, “he’s still a wanker.”

Sam rushed in. “Alex, there’s something on the website. You’ve got to see it.”

Joe punched his brother’s shoulder as he passed. “A cult leader’s work is never done, is it?”

In the dining room, Sam pointed to the computer. “This got logged on to the message board a minute ago.”

Alex sat in Sam’s chair to read it. It was from Cyrus O’Malley, with an embedded photo of Tara.

Everyone who reads this message board needs to know that Alex Weller, the head of the so-called Inner Peace Crusade, is a common and vicious criminal. He’s wanted for murder of a young woman named Amber Hodge and he and his brother are wanted for the kidnapping of my eight-year-old daughter, Tara. He thinks he can make the authorities stop looking for him by holding my little girl. He’s wrong. Don’t buy into his hype about Bliss. It’s a dangerous drug that kills people and ruins lives. And help me find him and get my daughter back. If you’ve seen her, please call the number below anonymously. There’s a $100,000 reward from the FBI and it’s the right thing to do. Please help me find my daughter
.

“What do you want me to do?” Sam asked.

“Take it down. Let’s not confuse people about us.
Later tonight, when the girl looks better, send O’Malley a proof-of-life photo, something with a time- and date-stamped website in the frame but nothing identifiable in the background. Send it to his FBI e-mail address. Tell him if he reposts the message we’ll kill her.”

“Will do, Alex.”

“And get some sleep tonight. Tomorrow we’re going on our first direct action mission. It should be a blast.”

Forty-one

17 DAYS

They packed themselves into Erica’s Dodge van at dawn for the five-hour drive toward Merrimack, New Hampshire. Sam drove with Steve beside him. Alex and Jessie kept low in the back since Alex’s face was increasingly recognizable. Joe stayed at the house on patrol as usual, and Erica, who had bonded the most with Tara, looked after the girl. She tried to make it fun for her, like camping, and to some extent it was working. Tara seemed happy to be getting all the attention and enjoyed her trips down to the rocky shore.

They arrived in Merrimack at lunchtime and immediately drove around the industrial park that was home to Meecham’s Brewery. It was one of Meecham’s six regional breweries, an old red-brick factory that produced millions of cans and bottles of Meecham’s Premium Beer every month. There was a high brick wall around the brewery and an iron gate across the main service road into the complex. A huge billboard across the street from the factory showed a man’s fist
around a frosty amber bottle with the slogan,
When you really want a cold one …

As they drove past the gate, they spotted the curly-haired guard in the security hut, who gave them a thumbs-up.

“That’s our guy,” Sam said.

“You’re sure?” Alex asked.

“Let me park and talk to him.”

Sam got out and approached the security hut. After a minute he returned with a large shopping bag.

“It’s cool,” he said. “Kevin’s a huge supporter. I’ve talked to him on the secure portal a dozen times. He and his wife’ve sold their house and emptied out their bank account. Look.”

The bag contained a couple of dozen ziplock bags filled with white crystals.

Alex whistled. “I’ve never seen so much.”

“What about access?” Steve asked.

“He’s going to unplug the security cameras at the gate and in that building over there for thirty minutes. That’s how much time we’ve got.”

On the signal of the guard, the gate rolled open and Sam drove through. The only condition was that the guard wanted to personally meet Alex. He poked his curly head
through the rear window, held both of Alex’s hands and thanked him from the bottom of his heart for changing his life for the better.

“No, thank you,” Alex told him. “And thanks to you the world’s going to take even more notice of our little movement.”

The guard told Sam where to park and assured him the side door of Building 7 was unlocked.

The heavy wooden doors opened inwards. The four intruders felt dwarfed by the cavernous factory, a maze of piping, catwalks, and two-story stainless steel fermentation vessels. They spent several minutes walking around the brewery floor, trying to make sense of the complicated-looking machinery.

“How do we get inside these tanks?” Alex cried.

“Let me get up on that walkway above the tanks,” Sam offered. “Maybe I can find hatches up there. Kevin said we were on our own to figure it out.”

He and Sam climbed up and inspected the pipes leading into one of the vessels. “There aren’t hatches or portholes. It’s nothing like we thought,” Sam called down. “It looks like the tanks are filled through these pipes and emptied through those over there. It’s a hands-off process.”

Steve called Sam over to inspect something on top of the tank. “I think we’ve got a possibility here. Give me your monkey wrench.”

Steve loosened a huge nut around a pressure valve. When he got it off, he was able to pull the pressure valve and its hose out of the tank, leaving a two-inch opening. He shined a penlight inside and called down. “It’s full of beer! We can use these openings!”

Sam climbed down to the brewery floor where Alex and Jessie were unpacking plastic bags. “How much drug do we put into each tank?” Sam asked.

Alex pulled out a notebook and pen, glanced at the tanks and shrugged. “Give me a minute. They’re bigger than I thought. It’s not going to be easy getting exactly half a milligram into each bottle.” He scribbled some calculations then looked up and said, “Hell, I don’t know. Let’s put three bags in each vat.”

Sam and Steve sprang into action, scurrying to the top of each fermenting tank, unscrewing the pressure valves, funneling in Bliss and carefully screwing the valves back in place. Within half an hour they were finished. Before they left the factory floor they checked to make sure their presence there would remain undetected. The loading dock was piled with cases of Meecham’s Premium. Sam and Steve
winked at each other and soon were loading their booty into the back of the van.

Back at the guardhouse, Kevin asked how they got on.

“We did well,” Alex told him. “How long till this batch hits the stores?”

“I don’t know for sure,” the guard said. “Far as I know, we sell it as fast as we make it.”

Alex laughed. “Let’s hope everyone really wants a cold one soon. Inner Peace, my friend.”

On the return trip, Jessie snuggled against Alex. An hour into the journey she whispered to him something that seemed to have been on her mind. “You’re not going to hurt the girl, are you?”

He patted her on the head. “What do you think I am, a murderer? Of course not. She’s a sick little girl, Jessie. Her tumor’s growing. But when nature calls, if I’m there, I’ll be ready to harvest her. She’ll be in a better place and we’ll have the gift of the finest experience you can imagine: Ultimate Bliss, from a child. It’ll be amazing, I promise. In the meantime, Cyrus O’Malley’s going to have to back off and let us finish our work.”

Satisfied, she fell asleep on his shoulder.

Sam’s cell phone rang. It was one of the prepaid, untraceable units he’d picked up at the Wal-Mart in
Ellsworth. “Yeah? Hey Leslie, what’s up?” He listened for a minute then said, “I’ll tell Alex. He’s going to be stoked. And let Joe know we’ve got a lot of beer for him.”

“What’s going on?” Alex asked from the backseat.

“We got an encrypted message from Japan. This thing is about to go to a whole ’nother level.”

Forty-two

16 DAYS

The annual G8 summit was a careful blend of working sessions and photo-ops. On this afternoon, the pendulum had swung toward style over substance as the leaders of the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, Russia, and Germany convened at the Imperial Palace in Kyoto for a traditional tea ceremony served by the country’s most accomplished geishas.

The Imperial Tea Room was a fourteenth-century pagoda now used exclusively for ceremonial purposes. Once the small house had been swept by security and deemed threat-sterile, representatives of the National Police Agency Imperial Guard joined with U.S. secret service agents and protective services agents of the other world leaders to form concentrically secure perimeters around the royal grounds.

The presidents and prime ministers were in business attire. The geisha who greeted them at the teahouse door asked them to remove their shoes and began a pleasant
running commentary of the history and art of the tea service.

The tea ceremony, she told them, was considered very spiritual and relaxing, tea thought to be a link to nature, to which the Italian prime minister joked, “Give our Russian friend a double dose to calm him down.”

She told them that the Japanese word for tea ceremony was
chado
, meaning “way of tea.” The tearoom had fragrant tatami mats and she cheerfully chided them that Chado practitioners and guests are not permitted to step on the cracks between the straw mats.

The president of the United States, John Redland, was jet-lagged and irritable and was almost tempted to step on a crack to see if there’d be an international incident but he controlled himself. Instead, the Canadian prime minister, who must have had size 14 feet, kept accidentally landing on them with no ensuing calamity.

The room was decorated with beautiful flower arrangements and Zen calligraphy wall hangings. Through a large window they had a postcard view of a traditional water garden. The guests were seated on decorated cushions on the tatami with their legs folded under so that they were sitting on their feet. The geisha demonstrated the proper style but the only man who took to it naturally was,
of course, the Japanese prime minister, who coached his colleagues, particularly the tall American, on how to shift their feet without offending etiquette or disturbing the ceremony.

Before them, a woman in a red kimono stood behind a black-lacquered table and presented each implement for inspection and explained in English their role in the ceremony. The type of tea, she explained, was called
matcha
, a bright green variety with a bitter flavor but pleasant aroma.

She demonstrated that the chado required specialized tools, a bamboo whisk called the
chasen
, hemp tea cloths known as
chakin
, a small bamboo scoop or ladle called a
chashaku
, and the tea container called the
chaki
. Then she proudly held up an ancient black ceramic bowl, the
chawan
, in which the tea was to be served. It was sixteenth-century pottery, done in the Raku ware style, a true museum piece, she said, used only for the most esteemed guests.

In a small room off the main chamber, a butler tended the charcoal fire that was heating the water. The heavy iron pot was simmering. He was careful not to let it get too hot since a boiling temperature was not optimal for the tea. He was alone in his task, listening through a curtain to the geisha’s lecture.

He looked around to make sure none of the police were watching and removed a small appointment book from his inside pocket which had made it past the security screen. Inside was a folded square of paper. It contained a small mound of white crystals that he quickly stirred into the steaming water.

When the geisha lightly summoned him the butler brought out the iron pot and placed it on the table on an iron grate. They bowed to each other and the butler left, his job here done. He managed a sidelong glance at the dignitaries seated before him but his face was stony, betraying nothing.

The butler walked quickly back to the main palace kitchen where he entered a utility closet, found the
tantō
knife that he’d stashed and proceeded to disembowel himself in an efficient act of seppuku.

As he was bleeding to death, the geisha was adding hot water to the chawan and stirring the matcha into the water with a bamboo whisk to ensure a smooth consistency.

When the tea had properly steeped she poured it into fine ceramic teacups and bowed to each man who, in turn, was instructed by the Japanese prime minister how to bow back.

President Redland sipped at the tea and suppressed a
grimace. He didn’t like tea. What wouldn’t he give right now for a Starbucks dark roast?

After tea, each guest was served a small confection,
wagashi
, delivered on a ceramic dish and eaten with a wooden pick. Redland didn’t like that either and resisted the urge to check his watch. He knew he’d have to endure twenty minutes or so of small talk before getting limoed back to his hotel for a shower and a catnap. With the exception of the Japanese prime minister and the French president, who was extremely interested in the geisha, none of the men seemed to be having a rip-roaring good time.