The Hades Factor (38 page)

Jon gazed out the window of the rented Oldsmobile that Randi was driving. As they sped along, she shifted lanes, preparing to leave Interstate 81 going south to join Route 5 east toward where they hoped to find Marty. From here he could see familiar landmarks in the central city--- the historic brick Armory, the Weighlock Building, and Syracuse University's recent Carrier Dome. He was glad the old buildings were still standing, an affirmation that there was some sort of continuity in this precarious world.

He was tired and tense. It had been a long trip from the Iraqi desert to Syracuse, New York. As Gabriel Donoso had promised, a Harrier jet had picked them up and flown them to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. There Randi had finessed a ride on a C-17 cargo jet. Once aloft, she had sweet-talked the copilot out of his notebook computer, and Jon had tapped into the Internet to search OASIS, the Asperger's syndrome Web site. Finally he had found Marty's message on the ABCs of Parenting page, part of the Web site's extended Web ring:

Coughing Wolf,

      A riddle: Who is attacked, separated, stays home with Hart's erroneous comedy 5 ways east, is colored lake green or thereabouts, and whose letter is stolen?

Edgar A.

“That's the message?” Randi had read it over his shoulder skeptically. “Your name's not even on it. And there sure as hell isn't any `Zellerbach' mentioned.”

“I'm Coughing,” he explained. “Think: Smith Brothers cough drops. My uncle who treated Marty swore by them. Marty and I joked about it all the time. Horrible-tasting black things. And what does a wolf do?”

“Howls.” She rolled her eyes. “Howell. Unbelievable. That's really stretching it.”

He smiled. “That's why we agreed to address our messages to each other that way. We figured they'd expect us to use E-mail to communicate, but going through the Asperger's site gave us a place to hide out, as long as we came up with some kind of personal code. For Marty and me, since we grew up together, it's no problem. We have a lot of shared history to draw on.”

“So he fashioned this message from allusions the three of you would understand but with any luck they wouldn't.” She crouched next to him. “Okay, I'm hooked. Translate it.”

“The first two things are obvious: Marty and Peter were `attacked,' and had to `separate.' But Marty `stayed home.' That is, he's in the RV someplace and may still not know where Peter is.”

“Clear as a bell,” she said with more than a little sarcasm. “So where are Mr. Zellerbach and the RV?”

“In Syracuse, New York, of course.”

She frowned. “Enlighten me.”

“ `Hart's erroneous comedy.' ”

“That tells you he's in Syracuse?”

“Absolutely. Rogers and Hart's Broadway musical The Boys from Syracuse was based on Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. So, Marty's in the RV somewhere in or near Syracuse.”

“And `five ways east?' ”

“Ah! That was particularly clever of him. I'll bet we'll find him on some kind of Highway `five' on the `east' side leading into Syracuse.”

She was doubtful. “I'll believe it when I see it.”

They had landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and caught a ride over to Dulles, where they had eaten breakfast and bought new clothes---simple dark trousers, turtlenecks, and jackets. They had discarded what they had worn in Baghdad and boarded a commercial flight for Syracuse. They had been watchful the entire morning, their gazes never ceasing to look for anyone too curious. For Jon, the entire trip had been one of fighting off tension between the two of them. He was getting over the shock of looking at Randi and thinking for a moment she was Sophia. But still, the fact was unchangeable: The face, voice, and body were so close that it kept his pain simmering. He was amazed that they worked together as well as they did, and he was grateful for her help in getting him out of Iraq and back into the United States.

A half-hour ago they had landed at Hancock International Airport northeast of Syracuse, where Randi had rented the Oldsmobile Cutlass.

Now they were on Route 5--- there was no Interstate 5--- watching both sides of the road as they skirted the city.

“ `Colored lake green,' ” he read. “Something on this highway refers to the color green, and it involves a lake. A landmark. Maybe a motel.”

“If you've interpreted the gibberish right,” Randi pointed out, “we could pass something like that a hundred times and not notice.”

He shook his head. “I'll know. Marty wouldn't give us anything that hard to figure out once we'd gotten this far. Keep driving.”

They cruised through the suburb of Fayetteville, still searching for the final references in the message. They were growing discouraged. They passed country clubs, malls, car dealerships, used-car lots, and all the other satellite businesses of the citified suburb that had once been a country town. Nothing rang a bell.

Suddenly Jon froze. Then his arm shot out and he pointed. “There!” On their left was a pole sign at the entrance to a large park: GREEN LAKES STATE PARK. “Both `lake' and `green.' ” His voice was excited. “The message says `or thereabouts,' so he's got to be holed up somewhere nearby.”

Randi's gaze was on the traffic as she expertly moved from lane to lane so they could keep their slower speed without interfering with the flow. “Looks as if you've been right so far. Let's see if I can help. Okay, now it refers to a letter that's been stolen and the message is signed `Edgar A.' ” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “What strikes me is Edgar Allan Poe's `The Purloined Letter.' Does that help?”

Jon was staring off into the distance, trying to put himself in Marty's place. Marty was an electronics wizard, but he also enjoyed arcane information and trivia. “That's it! So where's a missing letter best hidden? In a letter rack, of course, with other letters where no one will notice. The best place to hide something is in plain sight.”

“Then your friend is saying he's hidden where we can see him. What the hell does that mean?”

“He's talking about the RV, not about himself. Turn the car and go back the way we came.”

Annoyed at his bossiness, Randi pulled off into a side street, Uturned, and spun back onto the road toward Syracuse itself. “Did you see something earlier?”

Smith's blue eyes were alight. “Remember those car dealerships lining the road on the other side of Fayetteville? I think one of them was an RV lot.”

Randi began to laugh. “That's just dumb enough to be where he is.”

Watching carefully, they drove through Fayetteville once more. The city seemed longer, more chaotic. Jon was getting impatient.

Then he saw it. “That's it. On the right.” His voice was compressed excitement.

She said, “I see it.”

Ahead spread a mammoth lot crammed with a variety of recreational vehicles, new and used. Sunlight played across them, and the metallic vehicles glowed. There was no showroom, only a wood-sided sales office where a man wearing sunglasses and a polyester suit sat in a lawn chair in front, reading a newspaper.

“Doesn't look busy. That could be a break for us.” Randi drove past, turned the corner, and parked in the shade of a large flaming maple.

Jon decided, “We'd better scout it on foot to be safe.”

They walked back, alert for surveillance. Cars and trucks continued along the busy road. No one sat inside parked vehicles. The few pedestrians strode past without paying much attention. No one leaned against the buildings across the street, pretending to be waiting for someone while in reality they were on watch. From where they walked, they could see the man sitting in front of the sales office. About forty feet distant, he turned the page of his paper, engrossed.

Everything appeared normal.

Jon and Randi exchanged a look and quietly stepped over a loose chain that fenced the lot. They slipped between two RVs and searched the packed area. They sped past row after row of campers, trailers, and RVs. Smith was beginning to think he had been wrong, that this was not where Marty had gone to ground. Finally they reached the last line of vehicles, which backed up to a stand of sycamores, maples, and oaks. A breeze rustled through the woods, disturbing the mounds of colored leaves that had already fallen.

“Jesus.” He let out a long, shocked breath. “There it is.” Peter's RV was at the very back among a long row of dusty used vehicles that appeared to have been for sale a long time. Its metal sides had been ripped up by what had to have been gunfire, and several of its windows were shot out.

“Wow.” Randi took a deep breath. “What happened to it?”

Jon shook his head worriedly. “Doesn't look good.”

No one was in sight. They split up, and, weapons in hand, reconnoitered. When they saw nothing suspicious even in the woods, they approached the trashed vehicle.

“I don't hear anything inside,” Randi whispered.

“Maybe Mart's sleeping.”

He reached to try the door, and it opened in his hand as if it had been closed so hurriedly that the latch had failed to catch.

They jumped back, their weapons ready. The door swung back and forth in eerie silence. No one appeared. After another minute, Smith climbed up into the living room. Behind him, Randi aimed her mini-Uzi around the interior, her fierce black gaze sweeping it.

Jon called softly, “Mart? Peter?”

There was no answer.

Jon padded forward across the cramped interior. Randi, her back to him, advanced in the other direction toward the driver's cab. A box of Cheerios, Marty's favorite dry cereal, stood beside a bowl on the kitchen table. The spoon was still in the bowl, as was a puddle of congealing milk. One bunk had been slept in. It was a jumble of sheets and blankets. The computer was on, but opened only to the desktop, and the bathroom was empty.

Randi returned. “No one up front.”

“No one anywhere,” Jon said. “But Marty was here not long ago.” He shook his head. “I don't like it. He hates to go out in public or to risk contact with strangers. Where could he have gone? And why?”

“What about your other friend? The MI6 person?”

“Peter Howell. No sign of him either.”

They studied the silence and emptiness. There was a sense of abandonment. Jon was at a loss and very worried about Marty and Peter.

Randi was peering at the interior, at the bullet holes that had eaten up sections of the walls and destroyed some of the hanging maps. “There was one hell of a battle, from the looks of it.”

He nodded. “My guess is Peter must have had armor sheeting built in under the RV's metal skin. Look at where the shots landed. The only way the bullets got inside was through the windows.”

“And the fire fight obviously wasn't here. We'd have seen signs outside.”

“Agreed. Marty, Peter, or both escaped in the RV and were hiding out here.”

“We'd better search more thoroughly.”

Jon sat at the computer to look for what Marty had been working on, but Marty had applied some kind of password that blocked him. For a half hour he tried to break through. He keyed in the name of Marty's street in Washington, his birth date, the names of his parents, the name of the street where he had grown up, their elementary school. They were all traditional sources for passwords, and Marty had probably used them in the past. But not now.

Smith was shaking his head in discouragement when Randi called out. He turned quickly.

“Look! Now we know who has the serum!”

She was sitting on the small sofa, all long legs and blond dishevelment. As she leaned forward, her blond curls fell toward her eyes, and her pink lips were pursed in thought. He could see her long dark lashes even across the room. Her twill trousers had pulled up a little, and her slender ankles showed above her tennis shoes. Her breasts were outlined high and round under her tight white turtleneck. She was beautiful. With the intense expression on her face, she looked so like Sophia, and for a moment he regretted agreeing to work with her.

Then he pushed it all away. He knew he had made the right decision, and they had to get on with it. “What have you got?”

She had been going through the piles on the coffee table. She held up a copy of The New York Times so he could see the front-page banner headline:

BLANCHARD PHARMACEUTICALS HAS CURE

He crossed the room in three long steps. “I recognize the company name. What does the article say?”

She read aloud:

      At a special press conference last night,

      President Castilla announced that pre-

      liminary tests showed a new serum had

      cured a dozen victims of the unknown

      virus that is sweeping the world.

      Originally developed to cure a mon-

      key virus found in a remote area of Peru,

      the serum was the result of a decade-long