Jericho's Fall, page 21
Her voice was now coldness itself. Pamela could do all the moods at once, a talent that gave her far too many weapons for ordinary mortals to take on in conversation. “As soon as you walk out that door, Sheriff— and I would like that to be momentarily—I am getting on the phone to everybody I know in the media. And believe me, Sheriff, I know everybody. I am giving them all the same story. That the former Director of Central Intelligence, the former Secretary of Defense, has been endlessly harassed during his dying months, and the county sheriff has done nothing to protect him. Finally, he snapped, and, yes, what happened to Mr. Pesky is unforgivable, but the truth is, if the county sheriff had done his job—”
Everybody was standing. Somehow Pamela had maneuvered the group halfway to the door.
“—well, then, Mr. Pesky would never have been on the property, to say nothing of the roof. Oh, and another thing. This is Colorado. Mr. Pesky was a home invader. My father had the right to use deadly force against him.”
“Not once he was off the property!”
Her smile was silky. “I suspect that the media will obscure that particular detail. You know how they are.”
When the sheriff had gone, Pamela lit into the other two women. “Help me out next time. Don’t just sit there like bumps on a log.” She was breathing very hard. “Listen to me. Dad might be a bastard, but they are not arresting him. No chance. We are not going to let that happen. Is that clear?”
Astonished, they watched her stalk up the stairs. And it occurred to Rebecca that Pamela’s anger this time was not at the other women. It was Jericho himself who was the object of her fury. Perhaps for the past; perhaps for the present; perhaps it made no difference. Fathers whose frustrations marked their wives could hardly be expected to be honored by their daughters. She remembered, again, how her mother had shaved her husband before his death. Beck, watching, had thought her mother a fool.
(iii)
The storms had passed. They were out on the deck again, Jericho and Rebecca, enjoying the thin afternoon sun on her final day at Stone Heights. The temperature was dropping, and the forecast for tonight called for sleet or perhaps more snow. Jericho was wrapped in, if anything, more layers than yesterday. He was coughing a lot, too, and she kept urging him to go inside. He refused, and it occurred to her that he was showing signs of the petulance with which he often masked unhappiness.
“So Dak’s leaving us,” he said, when he heard about last night. “Well, well. I guess I scared him off, didn’t I?” Jericho’s eyes followed a small animal skittering along the edge of the woods. He laughed. “It’s driving them nuts, isn’t it? That they can’t figure it out.”
“You’re having fun.”
“I hope so.”
“I talked to your cousin,” she said quietly.
His bonhomie vanished. “What did the bitch want? The same thing as Dak, right? Talk the madman out of wrecking the nation’s security?”
“Something like that.” She discovered that she was holding his hand. “She’s worried about you.”
“The only thing my cousin is worried about is whether to run for President this next time around or the time after.”
Rebecca felt herself bristling, and was not even sure why. She snatched her hand away. “There is such a thing as love in the world, Jericho. Not everybody acts out of base motives.”
“Just me? Is that what you’re saying? Everybody else is noble, I suppose.”
“I just want to know if it’s worth it. If you really want to tell the secrets.” She returned to her question from Sunday. “Is this how you want to be remembered?”
His voice was oddly soft, a sign, she knew, of anger. “Is it my turn, Becky-Bear?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling sullen and hot, already expecting him to out-argue her.
“Fine. Number one”—he took a finger—“I told you already, I don’t particularly give a crap how I’m remembered. Two”—another finger—“if Mr. Philip Agadakos or Senator Margaret Bitch Ainsley think I’m damaging the nation’s security, then they’re welcome to call the gendarmes and have me thrown into Leavenworth. Notice they haven’t done that. Remember not to overlook the obvious, darling.” He tried to bare his teeth in defiance, but coughed again instead. He took another finger. “Three. If nobody’s planning to hurt me, then nobody has anything to worry about, do they?”
“Are you saying that the secrets in question have nothing to do with national security?”
“Is Dak still saying they do?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know what to believe, Jericho. That reporter—your old student Lewiston Clark—he seemed to think the secrets had to do with Scondell Bloom.”
Another derisive hoot. “Now, that was one of my stupider ideas.”
“Is that what you’re hiding? How the money went…wherever it went?”
“Maybe.”
“Dak said it was impossible. There wouldn’t be written records.”
“Not written. No.”
“So what is it? Audiotape? Videotape? What?” She could not hold back. “And if you have records like that, why don’t you give them to the FBI or somebody? Why keep them for your own personal pleasure?”
“Maybe it’s not pleasure,” he snapped. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe it’s justice.”
So Beck fired the only arrow left in her quiver. “The man I used to love,” she said, forcefully, “would not be doing this.”
She had reached him. She could tell. The eyes widened and he leaned away from her, his response somewhere between fear and admiration. For a moment, she almost believed he was ready to give up the whole thing.
Then the animal cunning closed down once more, and he chuckled. “The man you loved died when you left him, Becky-Bear.” Wounding her despite the pleasant tone. He touched his chest. “The man who took his place is going to be dead in a couple of months.”
“That’s not fair!”
Jericho coughed again, then propped himself on an elbow. “Let me tell you a story, Becky-Bear. Back when I was a case officer—the sixties—I had charge of an operation that went bad. Never mind where. Eastern Europe—that’s all I can say. I was running what old Agency hands used to call a réseau. What you’d call a network. I had diplomatic cover, but the spies I was running didn’t. They could be arrested and tortured until they gave up the names of the rest of the members of the réseau.”
He coughed, and for a moment had trouble sitting up, but when Beck moved close to help, he waved her away.
“Well, a couple of the members got blown. Doesn’t matter how. I met one of them. He was on the run. We met in a public park. Lots of people around. Poor man knew it was only a matter of time before the secret police got him and he wound up chained to a wall with his jaw broken and his balls wired up to the house current. He wanted to escape. Demanded money, a passport, everything. I told him none of that was possible. I was going to be expelled any day now for activities inconsistent with my diplomatic status. Then I let the other shoe drop. I told him that we couldn’t let him be taken. That we couldn’t let him blow the rest of the réseau. He looked around. I’d brought a couple of minor goons with me. He knew where this was going. He said, ‘But I’ve done my job! You can’t do this to me!’ All the things you’d expect. I said I was sorry, I had no choice. He tried to make a break for it. My goons got him. The last thing he said was ‘This isn’t fair!’ And it wasn’t, Becky-Bear. He was innocent. Even a hero. He had served our country and his movement, and we had to get rid of him.” His energy gave out at last, and he slid to the pillow. “It wasn’t fair, but it was real life.”
“Did that really happen?” she asked, reeling at this casual lifting of the curtain shrouding the least savory aspects of his work.
The golden eyes were hooded, unreadable. “I was in a grubby trade, Becky-Bear. Dak knows that. And you, my dear—well, don’t let yourself forget. Sometimes your own friends will kill you for the crime of doing what they ask.” He stood up. “It’s late. We should go in.”
He was plainly exhausted. Before he crossed the threshold, she put a hand on his arm. “Jericho, wait.”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Mr. Pesky. What did you find out? Did he tell you who he works for?”
“Whom. It’s the object of the preposition.”
“Did he tell you?”
“Yes,” he said, and went into the house.
But at that last moment, just before they parted, his mask had slipped for a fraction of a second. Beck had read the abject suffering in that familiar face. Maybe the cancer cells were emerging for the last battle. Maybe Jericho was still worn out from his foolish exertions of last night. Yet the romantic in her preferred a third explanation:
That Pesky had indeed told Jericho the identity of his employer; and that it was the knowledge of who had hired him that made life suddenly not worth fighting for.
CHAPTER 24
The Pin Lights
(i)
Back inside the house, the sisters were both busy. Beck had finished reading the Danticat and, although she had a briefcase full of memos for tomorrow’s meeting in Chicago, was in no mood to work. Although it was not yet dinnertime, Jericho had turned in for the night. Finally, she decided to go to the basement and shoot some pool, another joy of their time together. He used to drag her to a now vanished pool hall in town, where he would take on all comers in nine-ball as she rooted for him and, occasionally, played a rack or two. Since then, she had found that the clean clack of the balls helped her to think clearly. And that was what she needed now, a clear head.
Down in the basement, she racked the balls and considered turning on the television, but operating the remote control was as complicated as piloting the space shuttle. She chalked a cue, leaned over, made satisfying contact, watched the balls carom around the table as the worries caromed through her mind. From the moment she had walked through the door, the only bits of truth had been Pamela’s animosity and Jericho’s illness—and, but for that terrible cough and the need to have bribed a few dozen doctors and medical technicians, she might have decided that the cancer, too, was just another wisp. Still, their conversation this afternoon had confirmed, indirectly, the hypothesis she had proposed to Dak.
Whomever Jericho was blackmailing, it was not the federal government or some other interested country.
He was blackmailing the survivors of Scondell Bloom—in particular, the old friend who got him involved in the first place, Jack Notting, formerly of the Foreign Service, postings unlisted, meaning that he, too, had worked for the CIA. She was not sure which of the men had come up with the retirement plan. She had no idea what to do with her knowledge; but she was glad to be leaving tomorrow.
Maybe she should leave the whole mess on Pete Mundy’s desk.
She made a tough combination shot and missed an easy bank shot, and asked herself why Jericho had wanted her here. The answer, she suspected, was hidden in the two conversations out on the deck, and in his repeated questions about why Audrey had quit job and family to become a nun. Dak had warned her to keep clear, and Beck had tried to preserve an emotional distance, but Jericho’s tantalizing clues had enticed her and enticed her until it was Princeton all over again: the Former Everything manipulating Rebecca into doing what he wanted.
Beck realized that she had worked herself into a fury. She tossed the pool cue aside, then played with Jericho’s mesh security gates for a while, making sure she knew how to open and close them. She accepted that Jericho was mad, and that she would never need this knowledge; all the same, she felt better possessing it.
Then she had a thought.
Shutting the gates behind her so that she would not be surprised, she followed the path Pamela had charted Tuesday, down the hallway, into the storeroom, through the reinforced door, up the stairs to the garage. Jericho, she suspected, wanted her to make this visit.
At the top of the stairs, she shoved the door—
It was still locked.
No matter. She knew the combination. Jericho had told her Tuesday with the silly story about giving her a Ferrari on her birthday, leaving it in the garage.
She entered her birthday, date, then month, then year—
And the door swung open, easily.
With a final glance behind, Rebecca stepped into the darkness.
(ii)
At first she was confused. The gloom was too complete. She thought there would be light from the windows. Then she remembered that the windows were covered with fabric. She slid her hand along the wall, searching for a light switch, only to realize that she would have to step away from the door, and that it would close automatically behind her.
Another clever Jericho Ainsley touch: she should have brought a flashlight.
To step or not to step? She shut her eyes, reaching into the darkness with her ears. She heard a thrumming, but that was the furnace wafting up the stairwell. She listened harder. A scratch. A scuttle. Probably mice. Great. She was not afraid of many things, but mice were near the top of the list. She was not sure which was worse, seeing them or not seeing them. She heard something dripping, but could not tell whether it came from in front of her or behind her. She heard a footstep, and it was definitely in front of her, and, just like that, she was back inside the stairwell, holding the door shut with her weight.
“Don’t be silly,” she whispered. “There’s nobody in there.”
This was absurd. There was nothing to be afraid of. Jericho was hiding something in the garage, there was no doubt about that, but whatever was in there had been delivered by a truck from town: crates, Audrey had said. Just crates. And crates that arrive by truck do not usually contain.
—a crate full of zombies—
anything capable of walking around on man-sized feet. The truck might have brought papers or electronic equipment or maybe more guns, enough to start a war with this time. The truck could have brought the secret evidence with which Jericho was blackmailing either his own government or the survivors of Scondell Bloom or something else altogether. But the truck could not possibly have brought.
—zombies—
something alive that was being stored in the blacked-out garage. If she had really heard anything at all, it was surely the rain plinking on the garage roof, for the showers had returned.
She decided to open the door just a notch, to listen again, but it was a good two minutes before her fingers would play.
Then she shoved the door, very fast.
And listened.
No mice, no footfalls, no dripping. Breathing this time. Somebody was in there breathing hard, gulping down the air. No. No. Her fight-or-flight reflex was sizzling, but Rebecca stood her ground. This was imagination. Nothing more. This was her mind inventing voices out of static, just as Audrey had suggested.
She slipped off her sneakers and wedged them in the doorway. Now she had a way out.
Then she stepped all the way inside.
Unable to see, she walked slowly, her hands in front of her. The concrete floor was chilly beneath her wool socks. She moved with a shuffle, more sliding her feet than lifting them. She listened hard, but heard only the occasional skitter of mice.
Her hands struck something.
It took her a long moment to gather herself. She turned around and saw the faintest glow of light from the hallway. This was why there was no illumination on the final stairway up from the basement: Jericho did not want his enemies to have even the slightest ability to see.
She reached out again. Wood. A wood surface, about waist high.
A crate.
She felt the thrumming again, and supposed that the furnace had kicked on once more. She leaned forward and put her ear to the crate, but heard nothing. She had not expected to. Keeping one hand lightly on the wood, she walked around the crate. About two feet on a side, she estimated. She felt a hinge, then a handle.
The top could be pulled open, she realized.
But when she tried, the lid would not budge, and her searching fingers found a padlock. She tugged, hard, but the hasp was closed. A beep made her jump. Somewhere off to the side, some sort of digital equipment had turned on. She saw a pair of fiery-red eyes, but they were only pin lights. She shuffled toward the glow, but another crate blocked her access. She began working her way around the side.
Another beep in the darkness. A series of what might have been numbers appeared on an LED readout, but too far away for her to make them out.
Her cell phone rang.
She shrieked.
She swept it from her hip, and dropped it.
It continued to ring. She got down on her hands and knees and felt around for it, and her fingers encountered bits of trash and wire and wood before she came up with the telephone.
A trembling hand put the phone to her ear.
Static. Whine.
She was about to hang up when she heard that voice again, faintly, shrouded deep inside the cocoon of noise. “Eight hundred acres…Middle of nowhere.”
Imagination.
The virus.
Something worse.
A click. The static ended, and then she heard the best voice in the world: “I have to go, because Grandma is calling me, and I didn’t tell her I’m calling you—Just a minute!—I’m in the bathroom and I guess I better go, but call me, Mommy, okay? Call me soon, so I can tell you about the d—”
The message ended.
Another click. Not on the phone. In the garage. One of the pin lights had winked out.
She stared at the screen across the floor, waiting.
Another red light came on, and a roar of static drowned everything else, followed by a faxlike whine.
Hastily, she pressed the button to kill the call.
The static stopped.
The red pin lights clicked off.
“Not possible,” she whispered. She scrambled for the door, bumping another crate in the process. Another red light blinked as she stooped to get her shoes. She waited, but her cell did not ring.
Shivering, she locked the door securely behind her. She had to talk to Pete Mundy
