The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (25 page)

“I arranged for the bomb squad to raid the three lockers in question,” Zeus told Kimberlain the next morning. They had met by the blind man’s suggestion on the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building. Construction had closed it down temporarily but had ceased on Sunday. The outer promenade was torn up, with brand-new long-range viewfinders ready to be cemented tight.

The wind whipped through Zeus’s surprisingly thick hair as he spoke. “Hermes will be delivering the findings to us up here. He’s good at delivering things.”

Kimberlain smiled at that. The old man loved manipulating, always had. Subtly, without notice or fanfare, Zeus was in control again. The old man returned his eyes, still encased in sunglasses, to the lenses of the viewfinder leaned up against the low wall in front of him. There was a click that Kimberlain knew signaled the end of the time a quarter had bought him, and one of Zeus’s bodyguards came forward and inserted another.

“I was enjoying the view, Ferryman,” Zeus said and swung toward him.

“I can see that.”

“But I can’t, can I? Blind since birth.”

“So you tell me.”

“But the mind has its own eyes, Ferryman. It can sketch any sight requested of it. Would you like to know what I do when I come up here?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “I press my eyes against the lenses and have one of my men describe a sight or a building pictured beyond. I can see it in my mind, and I imagine I can see it through the lens as well. It’s probably the same for you when you’re inside the head of a madman you’re pursuing. Your mind forms impressions based on available data, forms them so well that you know who or what you’re facing before you even see, much less confront, him.”

“It’s important for you to understand that,” Kimberlain said in what had started out as a question.

“You would have expected any different?”

“But it comes down to control again, doesn’t it? If you can grasp how I work, then you’re in a better position to exert your control.”

Zeus turned away almost sadly. “I won’t deny that that’s so, but it’s inadvertent. I didn’t ask to meet up here for that reason. I have just shared something with you I have shared with no other man besides my guards. I wanted to make you a part of it because, goddamn it, I like you, and I want you to like me again.” He paused. “During your final months with The Caretakers, I allowed the wrong people to provide my impressions. Yes, the form sketched was mine entirely and thus the responsibility mine to bear. But it is a picture I gravely regret now and realize how wrong I was in framing.”

Kimberlain did find himself liking the old man and didn’t bother resisting it. “There’s more, Zeus.”

The blind man nodded and tried not to look any more vulnerable than he had already. “The C-12 was my responsibility. A man can survive either by duty or by ideals, but disgrace strips away both.” His dead eyes bored into Kimberlain’s from behind the ever-present sunglasses. “If those explosives are employed as part of this master plan you believe is underway, then I will have nothing. You are the only man who can help me, Jared. It’s why I came to you to begin with. It’s why I wanted you to meet me up here this morning. So you’d understand. You do understand, don’t you?”

Kimberlain nodded very slowly and knew the blind man could sense the gesture. He might have responded verbally if Kamanski hadn’t appeared through the doors leading out onto the west deck of the promenade to join them.

“The lockers were empty,” he reported, which drew a sigh from Zeus. “But the C-12 had been inside them all right. The traces were clear but fading. Report says they were emptied between forty-eight and seventy-two hours ago.”

“Any way of telling how long the explosives had been stored prior to their removal?” Kimberlain asked.

“Best estimates say at least two weeks.”

“The final missing batch of the C-12 was lost three weeks ago almost to the day,” Zeus noted gravely.

“They must have moved it when we started to catch on to their plan,” Kamanski said. “Your visit to Mendelson must have spooked them because of what he might have said.”

“Mendelson didn’t know a damn thing about the explosives,” Kimberlain said. “He must have used the same lockers as a drop point when he delivered the unassembled components of the water cannon. He was just trying to give us a lead. The C-12 being moved had nothing to do with him at all. It was moved just as the schedule had dictated all along.”

“But that would mean it was going to be used here. In New York.”

“A million will die before fifty million,” Zeus reiterated.

“That’s right,” the Ferryman acknowledged. “They’ll die unless we stop it.” He moved to the viewfinder and rotated it, with Zeus’s quarter still clicking away, until he found what he was looking for. “I couldn’t figure out what Jason Benbasset was doing in a rented suite at the Times Square Marriott on Thanksgiving Day. It just didn’t make sense until I read his file. The answer was in it plain as day. Three years ago this Thanksgiving—next Thursday—was the day he was allegedly killed. He and his family took the suite so they could watch a parade go by down Broadway. Here, see for yourself.”

All the breath seemed to leave Kamanski as he focused on the view Kimberlain had left for him. “Jesus Christ, Jared. Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

The sight the viewfinder was focused on was a bold marquee with a banner running beneath it:

M

A

C

Y

’

S

THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE JUST 4 DAYS AWAY!!

Chapter 23

COMMANDER MCKENZIE BARLOW
had drifted off to sleep in his quarters on board the
Rhode Island
when he was jolted awake by the sound of the door bursting open.

“I’m disappointed in you,” Jones said, closing it again so they were alone.

“Excuse me?”

“You underestimated me, Commander. I hate many things, but I hate being underestimated most of all. Others underestimated me once before, and soon they will be made to pay as well.” His eyes had sharpened to match the edge in his voice. “Did you really expect me to allow you to send that follow-up message? Did you really expect me to believe that the ‘repeat status grade’ request from your
COMSUBLANT
had not been engineered by you somehow in a previous report so you could send a more accurate message to them?”

Mac felt himself go cold, the elation of what he had felt certain had been a successful ploy sliding down into his gut like a poorly chewed piece of meat.

“You told them your ship had been hijacked,” Jones continued. “Interesting code, the way it keyed off the numbers in the coordinates you supplied. Very simple to break, however.”

“You switched off the sending relay,” Mac said, suddenly realizing the truth.

“But I wanted you to go through with your show. I wanted you to feel the desperation you feel now in the wake of what you felt so sure was success. It hurts, doesn’t it? I wanted you to feel that so you don’t dare try it again.” Jones paused. “Even if your message had gotten through, they wouldn’t have known where to look for us.”

“They would have known something was up. That would be enough for starters.”

“Would it? I think not. They can’t track us, and they have no conception of where we are because you don’t.”

“But since no reply was sent to their ‘repeat status grade’ request, they’ll fear us lost. They’ll comb the ocean. Sure, there’s lots of water to cover, but at least they’ll be trying.”

“Trying to find a ship which by definition cannot be found. I’d say you’ve outsmarted yourself.”

“Which places us in an interesting dilemma, Mr. Jones,” Mac said, and he knew then that he was about to say more than he should. “If I don’t give you the enabling codes for whatever reason you want them when we get where we’re going, you’ll kill my family. But in the meantime you can’t contact the goons who are holding them while we’re on deep lie passage, especially now that we’re probably thought lost, which means I’m free to do anything I can to stop you before we reach our destination.”

“You want me to tie you up, is that it, Commander?”

“You can’t bind my mind, Jones, and even if you could, you wouldn’t for fear of what the effects might be. I’m too valuable to you for you to take chances with my well-being. So you may have me by the balls, but my fingers aren’t far from yours, either.”

Mac had expected anger in response, even rage, but what he got looked to be sadness. “Keep reaching, Mac,” Jones said placidly. “You won’t find anything because mine had already been clipped off. Years ago. You think I don’t know what it feels like? You think I took your ship simply because I was ordered to do so by some all-powerful force? I only wish it were that simple. But it can’t be, because what I’m doing was set in motion so far in the past. Maybe this will help you understand,” he said as he rolled up the sleeve of his charcoal-gray turtleneck. “Maybe this will make you see how similar we really are.”

Mac’s eyes fell on what first looked like a blackened smudge just below the elbow but then sharpened into a swirl of letters that drove a numbing sensation through him inside and out.

It couldn’t be! It just couldn’t be!

He wouldn’t have thought things could have got any worse, but they just had.

From the Empire State Building, Kimberlain went straight to Roosevelt Hospital, where Dr. Simon Kurtz, the assistant chief of emergency medicine, was waiting to see him. Kurtz had been the chief resident on duty the Thanksgiving morning Jason Benbasset and the others had been brought in.

“Do I remember that day?” Kurtz asked, repeating Kimberlain’s question as he shoveled the overly long hair from his forehead. “I still have nightmares about it. I never saw war, but thanks to that day I know what it must look like.”

“How many people died as a result?”

“I can only give you the figures from this hospital. A hefty number were taken to St. Vincent’s as well. But there were thirty-seven DOA here, and another dozen within the next twenty-four hours. It was hell here. An ungodly mess.”

“Do you remember Jason Benbasset being brought in?”

“I heard talk. Never did examine him personally that I recall. No one was asking names. There wasn’t time. And as for faces, well, several of the bodies brought in didn’t have any to speak of. Benbasset was one of the DOAs, I believe.”

“He and the others, their bodies would have been claimed by the next of kin here, correct?”

“Or as close as we could find,” Kurtz said. “Remember, a lot of the victims were from out of town. It wasn’t pleasant making all those phone calls, and add to that the fact that identification in many of the cases was impossible.”

“But all thirty-seven were claimed eventually.”

“I can’t say for sure but—”

“You can’t.”

“The numbers, I mean. I can check for you. It’s all on the computer.”

“Do it.”

Kurtz turned to his computer terminal and started punching keys. It was two minutes before the information he requested came up on the screen. He looked at the white-on-green message quizzically, as if trying to change it with his eyes.

“That’s odd,” he said without turning back toward Kimberlain.

“What is?”

“It’s probably just a foul-up in the paperwork, or maybe my memory’s going on me, but I show only thirty-six bodies claimed from those labeled DOA. Hold on, let me cross-check the death certificates.” A new set of letters and numbers appeared on the screen. “No, thirty-seven death certificates were issued for the DOAs, but only thrity-six bodies were claimed.”

Kimberlain just looked at him.

“I don’t know what you intend to make of this, but you weren’t there. You can’t know what it was like. There were hundreds of wounded that needed to be treated, on top of the dying and the dead. Mistakes could have been made,
were
made, I’m sure of it. People didn’t have time to keep their clipboards up to date. It was inevitable that certain inconsistencies in the paperwork would show up, but they’re meaningless, I assure you.”

“Maybe,” Kimberlain said matter-of-factly, pulling a photostat of Jason Benbasset’s death certificate from his pocket and handing it across the desk to Kurtz. “I can’t make out the signature on this.”

Kurtz examined it quickly. “Howard Poe. He was one of the neurosurgeons on call that day.”

“Where can I find him now?”

“Private practice on the East Side. Does quite well. One of the best in the business, most say.”

Kimberlain stood up. “Thank you, Doctor. You’ve been very helpful.”

“What was all this about, Mr. Kimberlain? What are you after?”

“Ghosts, Doctor.”

Howard Poe had risen as usual on Sundays at ten
A.M.
He went into his study to switch on his stereo before doing anything else.

“Hello, Doctor,” came a voice from a chair by the window as he reached for the switch.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?” he demanded, backing up toward the door. There was a revolver in the next room. But the stranger suddenly stood before him, and Poe’s bravado vanished.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“To help you, Doctor,” the Ferryman told him.

“What are—”

“Where did the money come from to start your office?” Kimberlain asked before Poe could finish. “I find the timing of your move to private practice interesting. Four months after a certain terrorist strike three years ago. You remember the strike, don’t you?”

Poe’s heavy swallow spoke for him.

“Your signature is on Jason Benbasset’s death certificate. Only he didn’t die. You or somebody else fabricated his death after somehow saving his life. Make a nice story for the newspapers. Maybe even television.”

Poe stood very straight. “Are you here to blackmail me?”

“All I want is the truth.”

“How’d you find out?”

“That’s my business.”

“Why is this important to you?”

“Stick to the issue at hand. You saved Jason Benbasset’s life and then you signed a fake death certificate, correct?”

Poe winced. “I saved him, but then I … lost him.”