Sea of Crises (5 page)

“That’s right,” Krantz said. “He doesn’t exist. The same way you don’t exist.”

It took a moment for the significance of that statement to sink in. When it did, Raen took in a sharp breath. “Shit.”

Krantz nodded grimly.

“Shit,” Raen said again. “How the hell was that not communicated to me?”

Krantz shrugged. “You know how it works. Once you’re invisible, you’re invisible. If you become visible, you become dead. We didn’t put it together until about,” he consulted his watch, “thirty-nine minutes ago.”

Raen was thinking fast, running cold calculations. “Where is he?”

“He’s been living in Idaho, near Pocatello.”

“Do we have assets on the ground?”

Krantz nodded. “Landing as we speak. A full action team. Led by Parker.”

Good, thought Raen. He was working through the logistics of getting himself and his men to Idaho when an important thought occurred to him. “Who is he?”

Krantz didn’t respond immediately. Finally, he said, “His operational name was Marek.”

“Shit,” said Raen for a third time. This time he
really
meant it.

#

Near Idaho Falls, Nate exited the interstate and pointed the car east. Though, on the long drive from Los Angeles, Peter had been his typically voluble self, as they began wending their way through the mountains of southeast Idaho he fell silent, staring out the side window. Nate didn’t need to ask why.

It had been over twenty-five years since Peter had last seen his twin brother, more years, Nate realized with a start, than they’d actually spent together. That, alone, was extraordinary, but it didn’t even begin to tell the story - a story that, to this day, Nate still could not reconcile.

Matt and Peter were identical twins. Almost impossible to tell apart. And, from the day they were born, they’d been inseparable. They possessed very different personalities - Peter, the happy-go-lucky jokester, quick witted, always the center of a crowd, and Matt the quiet one, a terrific athlete and dare-devil, equally as popular, though completely comfortable in his own space. In a strange, almost mystical way, however, they had always complemented each other.

Then, when the twins were in their senior year of high school, everything changed. Peter revealed that he was gay. Though Nate had suspected it for some time, it came as a complete shock to Matt. And he didn’t handle it well. At a time when Peter needed his closest friend, Matt turned his back on him. It was almost as if, overnight, Matt became a different person.

Matt started getting into fights at school, more than one of them, Nate knew, triggered by boorish comments from classmates questioning Matt’s sexuality. Always an excellent student, Matt’s grades plummeted during his final semester, and he almost didn’t graduate. Months before, he and Peter had both been accepted by Stanford on full scholarships. On the day after graduation, however, Matt enlisted in the army. He told no one what he was doing, and he didn’t bother to say goodbye, leaving only a short note on the kitchen counter. Years would pass before Nate again heard from him.

“Look,” Nate ventured, “I know it’s a little awkward.”

“No,” Peter said quickly, turning back from the window, “it’s a lot awkward. I understand why you think we need to involve Matt in this. But I don’t have to like it. And I don’t.” He turned again and, looking out the window, added, “I’m sorry to say this, but I wish he’d just stayed wherever the hell it was he went.”

Nate winced. He didn’t blame Peter, and he wasn’t surprised at his brother’s reaction. He knew deep down that Peter didn’t really mean it this way, but, effectively, Peter was saying he wished Matt was dead.

Or, put more accurately, still dead.

Nate had been in his senior year at Northwestern when he’d returned from a late class one spring afternoon to find a pair of officers in Army uniforms waiting in a car parked outside his apartment building. They’d brought with them the tragic news that his younger brother had been killed in a training accident. The helicopter in which he’d been riding, they explained, had gone down in the Gulf of Mexico. All on board had perished. They hadn’t even been able to recover the bodies.

Nineteen years later, Nate had almost had a heart attack when he climbed into his car late one evening after making an ATM deposit, and Matt was sitting in the back seat. Matt explained to Nate only that it had been necessary to stage his death for security reasons. He gave Nate a scrap of paper with a phone number on it and asked him to come to Idaho when he had a couple of days. Then, as quickly as he’d appeared, Matt slipped out of the car and vanished into the night.

A week later, Nate flew to Pocatello. Matt met him outside the airport and they drove to a cabin Matt had constructed in the mountains. Nate was full of questions, but Matt made it clear that he couldn’t talk about what he’d been doing for the previous twenty-one years. He also impressed on Nate the fact that no one else should know that he was alive. When Nate explained that he’d already informed Peter, Matt insisted that he pass along to Peter the admonishment that he was to tell no one else. And, he told Nate in no uncertain terms, he wanted no contact with his twin brother.

They spent a couple of days dancing around subjects they apparently couldn’t discuss. Nate revealed - or at least thought he was revealing - that Gamma, their paternal grandmother and the woman who’d raised them after their father’s death, had passed away in 1992. Matt, however, surprised Nate by telling him that, not only was Matt aware of her passing, he’d been at the funeral. Nate remembered the relatively small affair. There was no way, he knew, that Matt could have been present without his being aware of it. Nate chose, however, not to dispute it.

Nate tried to get Matt to explain what had happened to him after leaving home, but Matt refused to go into it. Any of it. It was as if Matt had withdrawn from the world. Something, Nate knew, had occurred. Something that had taken away a big chunk of his brother’s soul. He didn’t think it had anything to do with Matt’s falling out with Peter. In fact, the only times over the weekend Matt showed any emotion occurred when Nate endeavored, unsuccessfully, to get Matt to open up on that subject, and, even then, Matt’s reactions were extraordinarily vague. Anyone who didn’t know Matt the way Nate knew him would have missed the tinge of melancholy.

No, Nate reflected sadly, there were things about Matt that he still didn’t understand. As he steered the car through the narrow mountain passes, Nate hoped that, maybe, the silver lining in this new dark cloud would be an opportunity to finally bring some sense to all of the mystery. And, in any event, as Peter had acknowledged, there was no way they could avoid involving Matt in this.

Though Nate had been here the one time before, it had been in full daylight, and he’d not been driving. Now, with the sun low on the horizon, it was difficult making out landmarks, and he almost missed his turn, a narrow track leading off the two-lane highway at a point just beyond a bridge that crossed a small stream. After passing the spot, Nate braked, backed the car up, and turned it down the gravel path.

The lane led straight into a densely wooded area for a quarter of a mile before angling upward and beginning a series of sharp, hairpin turns that took them up the side of a mountain. They finally crested a ridge and, before them, constructed of stone and logs and surrounded by large evergreen trees, sat the comfortable-looking dwelling Nate remembered from his previous visit. He saw that a new covered porch spanning the entire front of the structure had been added. In the gloaming, Nate could make out wisps of smoke escaping from the top of the chimney. But no lights were visible in the house, and there was no other indication that anyone was home.

He parked the car in the large open area in front of the building, noting the absence of any other vehicles. As he stepped out, he realized that the temperature had dropped about twenty degrees from the time they’d last been outside, filling up at a service station north of Salt Lake City. He retrieved his jacket and started for the front door. Peter, with Buster on his leash, hung back.

When Nate gave him a look, Peter said, “We’ll wait here for now.”

Nate nodded and climbed the steps to the porch. He knocked on the front door. After several seconds and no response, he knocked again. A full minute passed. He looked back at Peter standing by the car. Peter shook his head. He was about to knock again, when a quiet voice came from the far corner.

“It’s good to see you, Nate.”

Startled, Nate turned. He’d heard nothing, yet there at the end of the porch, where there was no obvious point of access, stood his brother Matt. Nate paused a moment to regain his wits.

“That’s a neat trick,” he said, finally.

Matt shrugged. “Mountain magic.”

Matt had the fair hair and light skin he’d inherited from their mother. Though the twins barely remembered her, Nate saw her clearly when he looked at each of them, particularly in their open expressions, eyes sharp and penetrating. Nate, in contrast, had the dark, serious countenance of their father. And, at six-three, as their father had been, he was several inches taller than his brothers. People meeting the boys for the first time had wondered how they could possibly be related. But it was a question that never occurred to Nate. Quite simply, the twins were no less a part of him than his own limbs.

Matt stepped forward, and Nate did the same. Matt opened his arms, and they embraced. Then Matt stepped back and gave Nate a thorough appraisal. “You look good.”

Nate smiled, though he knew it was a weak effort. “I wish I felt good.”

Matt continued looking at him for a long time. Then he said, “Yeah, I figured there was a problem.” He paused, then made a vague gesture toward the car. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have brought him.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Peter called out. “I see you haven’t let your age interfere with your immaturity.”

Matt was about to respond when there was a sudden beeping sound. He stopped and reached into a pocket of the nylon vest he was wearing. He pulled out a small electronic device and studied it for a moment. Then he looked at Nate with arched eyebrows.

“Is anyone else with you?”

Nate shook his head.

Matt walked quickly to the front door, opened it and entered. After a moment, Nate followed.

Just inside was a small reading desk on which sat a computer monitor. Matt had his hands on the back of the wooden chair still pushed in under the desk. He was leaning forward, peering intently at the display on the monitor. Without taking his eyes off the screen, he said, “Damn, these guys know what they’re doing.”

He straightened and gave Nate a serious look. “We’ve got to go. Now.”

Nate’s heart jumped. The tension that had been with him over much of the past twenty-four hours returned.

Matt took a step toward the rear of the house, then paused and turned, an enigmatic expression on his face. He tilted his head toward the door. “Get him.”

Nate leaned out the door and gestured urgently for Peter. With a sudden look of alarm, his brother pushed himself off the side of the car on which he’d been leaning and took several steps toward the house. “What’s going on?”

“Someone’s coming. We’ve got to go.”

Peter glanced around as he reached down to pick up Buster. Then he turned and walked quickly back to the car, opened the passenger door and retrieved his computer bag. Slinging the bag over a shoulder, he ran to the porch and took the steps two at a time.

When Peter got to the door, Nate reached out, grabbed the computer bag and lifted it off his brother’s shoulder, throwing the strap over his own head. He turned and looked toward the back of the house. Matt was waiting for them near the end of the hallway, standing half in a doorway on the left hand side. It was a door, Nate recalled, that had always been locked during his previous visit. When they made eye contact, Matt nodded, stepped in and disappeared.

“Go,” Nate said to Peter, and his brother started toward the back of the house. Nate closed the front door, threw a curious glance at the computer screen Matt had been studying, then followed.

Through the doorway at the end of the hall was a set of stairs angling down to the right, headed toward and apparently extending below the rear of the house. Peter, Nate saw, had reached the bottom of the steps. And then he was gone. Pulling the door shut behind him, Nate began to descend.

The steps led down to a narrow passageway, lined on each side with cinder block walls. The floor and ceiling were concrete. Lights placed about twenty feet apart provided illumination. It had the appearance of a service tunnel and seemed to extend forever. Peter, Nate could see, was already a good thirty yards away, moving rapidly. He picked up his pace.

Nate wasn’t sure how far he’d traveled, but, after a couple of minutes, the floor angled downward. At the end of another long stretch, it again leveled out and, a short distance away, he could see an opening. As he got closer, he realized that it was similar to a hatchway on a naval warship. A heavy metal door on oversized hinges had been swung inward.

In the corridor just before the entryway was a small alcove occupied by a desk on which sat another computer monitor. Nate paused and studied it. On the screen was what looked to be a map, with a series of small illuminated dots scattered about. As he watched, the dots moved slightly.

Finally, taking care to duck his head so as not to strike the top of the low entrance, Nate stepped gingerly over the threshold, passed through the hatchway, and, straightening, was surprised to find himself standing in a large wooden structure with a high open-beamed ceiling. Weak late afternoon light filtered through gaps in the walls below the ceiling. Beneath his feet, a thin layer of hay covered a hard packed dirt floor. The air was ripe with the sickly sweet smell of manure.

Peter, still holding Buster, was looking about. “Yep,” he said, after a moment, “I always figured Matt probably lived in a barn.”

They were standing in what seemed to be a stall, the door to which was hanging open. Matt suddenly appeared in the doorway. “Horseshit,” he said, looking at Peter.