The Caleb Collection Page 36

  Yes, it did happen, Junior. And see Mommy’s skin? That proves it happened.

  Now there was a thought.

  Jason looked in the mirror and pulled his hair forward toward his eyes. The blond curls were short, but long enough to manipulate a little. The day’s growth on his chin would’ve been better if it was black stubble, and he thought about taking some dirt to it. But then, a dirty face might be something that attracted attention more than dispelled it.

  His plan was simple. He would walk in with his head turned from the clerk, make for the hatrack, put a cap on his head, grab a few groceries, and make his purchase at the register without removing the hat. He’d discarded the impulse to do the same with dark glasses as the light faded. Sunglasses at night might raise an eyebrow.

  “Father, help me,” he breathed and stepped from the car. The telephone booth stood at the edge of the lot. He would end his trip there.

  Jason got halfway to the front door before stopping midstride, frozen by the stack of newspapers in a white rack labeled Los Angeles Times. It was the red shirt that caught his attention. His red shirt. The same one he had on right now!

  The picture sported him running offstage with Caleb draped in his arms. The headline told the story. Kidnapped!

  Jason jerked to the window. A large Marlboro sign blocked the view to the store. Thank goodness. He spun back for the car. The yellow Volkswagen gunned its engine and peeled out of the driveway.

  A thought spun through his mind: How much of what was happening at this moment was at the behest of swirling colored lights? His seeing that newspaper, for example—if his eyes were still opened to the other world, would he have seen a bolt from heaven turning his head? How much of the mundane was really crowded with the mystical? More than most could imagine, he suspected.

  Jason clambered into the Bronco’s rear seat and slammed the door shut. He had to get on with this before the clerk came out to see who was slamming doors and wandering around the white Bronco. That would be the end.

  He peeled off the red shirt and foraged around the back for the white T-shirt he used on occasion when he messed with the car. He found it rolled up in the corner and pulled it on. A black KNAC ROCKS logo ran diagonally across his chest. It smelled of mildew and it was wrinkled. But none of this mattered. Not unless he wanted to walk into the store bare-chested.

  He climbed from the car and straightened the shirt. On last thought, he ran his fingers around the rim of the wheel well and rubbed a couple streaks of grease along his cheekbones. He might as well look the part of his shirt. Just an ordinary guy who’d just finished changing a tire.

  Jason exhaled and strode into the store.

  The clerk wasn’t in sight. He hurried down the aisle and grabbed a loaf of bread and some peanut butter. The hatrack loomed, and he slid a green John Deere hat over his head. So far so good.

  Cash! Did he have cash? He couldn’t use a credit card! A tremble took to his hands. Dear Father, please help me. It was amazing how frail he felt back in this skin.

  He approached the counter, slid his rations on the glass, grabbed a two-liter jug of root beer from a side rack, and fished for his wallet. A single twenty sat neatly in the folds. Thank God.

  The clerk emerged from the back, wiping her hands. “I’m sorry. Doing inventory. That it tonight?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She glanced at him. “Hat too?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

  “No prob.” She rung the groceries up, took the twenty, and handed him eight dollars and change.

  “Thank you,” he muttered.

  “Drive safe.” She turned and walked toward the back.

  The minute Jason hit the sidewalk, he bolted for the car. No other cars had pulled in. He started the Bronco, drove it away from the lights, shoved it into park, and hurried for the telephone booth. So far so good. The worst of this mission was behind him. Just beyond his eyesight the air was swimming with colored lights, he was sure of it.

  He pulled Donna’s business card out of his wallet. Leiah had raised an eyebrow when she’d learned he still had it, but she hadn’t argued. He punched the number for her cell phone and waited.

  “Hello.”

  Jason adjusted the receiver. “Donna? That you?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “It’s Jason.”

  “Jason! What are you doing?”

  “I’m calling an old friend for some help.”

  “Hold on.”

  The line went dead for a few seconds. “Sorry. I was in a bar. Where are you?”

  “Never mind that. Listen, I need you to help me. I don’t know what you think’s going on, but it isn’t what it looks like.”

  “They found a gun, Jason.”

  He blinked. “They did, huh? Figures. Who did it?”

  “Is Caleb okay?”

  “This is all off the record, Donna. You’ll understand when I tell you. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “He’s fine. The bullet grazed him. Who did it?”

  “Maybe one of the antichrist gang. A black-hooded man was seen walking toward the upper seats a few minutes before the boy fell. They sure had the motivation. Everyone’s saying that he was shot and that you took advantage of the confusion to steal him away. Nikolous is climbing the walls. You’ve got to come out, Jason. It’s not looking good.”

  “It was Crandal.” He paused and she didn’t object. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think we can put our hands on some solid evidence that might tell us who Crandal really is.”

  “Please. Crandal may have a problem with a boy who walks around telling the world that he’s a bad guy, but that doesn’t make him a killer.”

  “It’s more than that. He’s . . .” How do you tell someone like Donna that the man about to become the president of the United States is really a monster in waiting? “He’s not what he seems. Something happened back in Ethiopia, something that would destroy him, and he’s bent on keeping it out of the news. Even if it means killing Caleb.”

  “Did what in Ethiopia? You can’t just throw out accusations like that. Right now it’s you who has some explaining to do, not Crandal.”

  “You know it’s not beyond him. Tell me you at least suspect that much.”

  She paused, thinking. “Maybe.”

  “So if I could produce some evidence that showed motivation for his threat to Caleb, you would be willing to play along?”

  “Depends on what I’m playing along with.”

  “I want to go public. I want a worldwide exclusive with as much coverage as you can manage. I mean I want every person within reach of a television to be tuned in. I’ll bring Caleb out with Leiah. And I want you to guarantee me ten minutes in front of the cameras without obstruction. The cops can haul me off and lock me up when I’ve said what I need to say.”

  “I can probably arrange that.” An edge had come to her voice.

  “And I want Crandal there.”

  “What!? Come on. Now you’re going over the top.”

  “Am I?”

  “Even if I agreed, how do you propose I get him here? He’s in D.C. now. When would you want this?”

  “Tomorrow. Tomorrow night. If I’m right, he’ll come. You ever blackmail someone, Donna?”

  “Please.”

  “You ever tell someone that unless they do so-and-so, you’ll go public with a story? You must have. You’re a reporter.”

  “That’s not exactly blackmail,” she said.

  “Call it whatever you like. You interested?”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Jason blew some air out and stretched his neck. “Go to my house. 2445 Hollister. You’ll find a key under the planter at the back door. Go in and find the laundry room on your left. In the corner there’s a basket, and in that basket you’ll find a tunic.”

  “A tunic? You mean a robe.”

  “It’s the tunic Caleb was wearing when I took him from the monastery. Take it home with you and look through all of the
hems. If I’m right, you’ll find something in one of the hems.”

  “What am I looking for? I gotta be honest, Jason. This seems a bit—”

  “I don’t know. Something that shouldn’t be there. A note maybe.”

  “I take it you haven’t actually seen this note or whatever.”

  “No. But it’s there. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how I know. But there’s a worldwide exclusive in this. Don’t tell me that doesn’t get you going.”

  “And if there is something to all of this, how do I contact you?”

  “I’ll call you in the morning. Before sunrise. It’s safer for me that way. We’ll decide what to do then.”

  “A tunic, huh?”

  “A tunic.”

  “Okay, Jason. You’re on. And if it turns out your magic tunic is a sham, you turn yourself in to me anyway?”

  “Don’t push it, Donna. We have a deal?”

  “We have a deal.”

  Jason hung up and left the Texaco station. Mission accomplished. He was half a mile from the station before he let out his howl of victory. “Yeow! Thank you, Father!” He pumped his fist.

  It was indeed a good day to be alive.

  36

  Day 37

  ROBERTS STARED AT CRANDAL across the white linen in the private dining room. A basket of English muffins sat untouched with the rest of their brunch. An hour ago he’d been a man thoroughly smug, unable to hide the glow that reddened his cheeks. Now he was having difficulty with a purple that flushed those same cheeks.

  He slammed his huge fist on the table and Roberts blinked. “I’m not about to let a little piece of trash from Africa influence me! Do you hear me? I don’t care what he says he has. Bury them!”

  “We’ve been trying to bury them for four weeks now,” Roberts said softly. Heat tickled the back of his neck. “But you don’t just take out a shovel and start throwing it on the world’s favorite little boy when you’re running for president. We’ve had to move with caution. Either way this was unanticipated. It implicates you directly.”

  “And you actually believe I would consider flying all the way to California because some idiotic reporter says she has something I may want to see?”

  The heat spread over Roberts’s head. “Sir, you’ll have to excuse me for being blunt here, but you’re not thinking clearly.” He sat back.

  “Let me put this in perspective. Imagine waking up tomorrow morning to a headline in the New York Times that reads Baby Killer! And imagine the story going something like this: Ten years ago Charles Crandal, then director of the NSA and an ardent collector of obscure artifacts, stumbled across compelling information putting the Ark of the Covenant in one of northern Ethiopia’s Orthodox monasteries. So what does the man who may be our next president do? Does he take a private trip to Africa to interview priests and ferret out the precise location of the elusive artifact like any sane man might do? No, he goes in with guns blazing, slaughtering priests and pillaging the monasteries in a sweeping search for an artifact he must have.”

  Crandal’s face whitened. “Don’t be a fool! The Ark’s not simply an artifact! It’s a relic that could shift world power! And I didn’t go in there like some gunslinger. Over a year of preparation went into that mission. It was nearly perfect!”

  “I’m just telling you what they’ll write. You may not think of it as gun-slinging, but they will. They’ll make Charles Manson look like a nursemaid next to you.”

  “They’ll never have the chance!” A fleck of spittle rested on Crandal’s lip and he made no move to remove it. He was losing himself to this.

  Roberts lifted an eyebrow. “Worse still, you rerouted arms to Colonel Ambozia in exchange for his invasion to find your relic. They’ll call it treason.”

  “You know as well as I do that the country was already at war. One that we publicly supported.”

  “No, it had just finished a war. But your plan extended that war with this invasion. And after learning that Ambozia’s rogue army was unsuccessful in finding your Ark, despite pillaging eight churches and killing over a thousand civilians, you demanded he push farther south if he wanted his arms. Well, they did push farther south. They didn’t find an ark, but they did manage to kill another two thousand civilians.”

  Crandal breathed deeply and sat back. “You’re telling me what I already know.”

  “But what you don’t know is what I was just told. One of the civilians they killed was a nurse. A Caucasian nurse. An American nurse. An American nurse who happened to be the mother of a son she’d had with a local.”

  Crandal blinked. “Caleb?!”

  Roberts nodded. “Caleb. It gets worse. It was an EPLF captain under Ambozia who took Caleb’s mother’s head off with his sword while she huddled over her infant son. The captain stood there and watched the baby scream, but instead of taking its life, he swept it up and fled, suddenly horrified by the carnage his soldiers had left behind them. You’ll never guess where he took the child.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Roberts. What are you driving at?”

  “I’m preparing you for tomorrow’s headline, remember?”

  “This is all nonsense!”

  “Not anymore it’s not. The captain took the boy to an isolated monastery called Debra Damarro and left him at the front gate.”

  “This is idiotic! How would anybody know any of this?”

  “Well, that’s precisely the problem.” Roberts felt a small surge of power over the man, and it actually gave him goose bumps. “Our EPLF captain was a good Orthodox Christian, you see. And his religion was getting the better of him. Which is why he wrote out a confession begging for absolution and then left the note with the child as a sort of penance. Donna claims that she has the note.”

  Crandal sat very still for a few moments. When he spoke, his words came with a slight tremor. “A note? Anybody could have written a note.”

  “That’s what I told her. But this note came from the boy’s tunic. It was sewed into the hem by his father. It’s written on parchment and in Amharic. She had it translated this morning and says the scholar who examined it is quite certain that it is authentic.”

  “What examiner?”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll be dead by nightfall. But the note is a problem, Charles.” Charles? He was feeling unusually bold, wasn’t he?

  Sweat peppered the candidate’s face. He looked as if he might be coming down with a case of food poisoning.

  “We can’t allow that note to surface,” Roberts said. “Even if you think you can hold on to your lead once the media starts screaming about the baby killer, there’s the issue of treason.”

  Crandal stood abruptly and slammed both fists on the table. A glass toppled over the edge and shattered noisily. “This is hogwash! It’s ancient history!”

  Roberts stood with him, allowing his anger to rise. “It’s the truth! And whether you like it or not, it’s going to come out. Our only option is to meet with her.”

  “Kill her! Kill them all!”

  “By five o’clock tonight? Banks will get the kid and the other two, but you don’t just walk up to Donna Blair of NBC and pop a slug in her head. If we’re not there by five, she goes public. If we are, we at least have some time to reason with her. Give us another evening, and I think we have a better than even chance of making them all dead. But not cooperating now would be a fatal mistake. We have to show good faith.”

  Crandal balled his hands into fists and turned from the table, steaming like a bull. His jaw flexed with the grinding of his teeth. “I swear, Roberts, if this goes bad, I’ll crucify you.”

  “Actually, I think it’s you they’re trying to crucify. I may be your only way out. You should keep that in mind. We’ve got six hours to get to L.A. We should leave.”

  Crandal walked away from the table, unable to hide a tremble in his hands. He walked up to the wall and smashed both palms against the green-leafed wallpaper. The entire room shook. It was the first time Roberts had seen the man hit
a wall.

  The night hunt had gone badly.

  For starters Banks had eased his Monte Carlo down the road for less than two miles before coming to the conclusion that he was passing terrain that would have allowed Jason’s four-wheel drive to leave the road in a dozen spots, given the right motivation. And that motivation clearly existed.

  He had painstakingly covered the first three miles of the seven-mile stretch before deciding to park for the night and resume his hunt at first light. He pulled the sedan out of sight and slipped into a light sleep.

  Problem was, first light came at four-thirty, and it wasn’t the sun blaring through his windshield; it was two headlights.

  A lone driver roared by in the Bronco. Again? Jason was going back out by himself. Banks nearly followed the man before deciding that this actually worked to his advantage. The sport utility would return. And now Jason had inadvertently narrowed his location to the direction from which the Bronco had come.

  The vehicle roared back by forty minutes later, and this time Banks followed with his lights out. He made it another mile before the dust had settled enough for him to lose certainty that the Bronco had passed. But that put them in this last three miles of the road.

  He had taken up the search again at six, with full light, and he’d run into his first logging trail at eight. The good news was that he was certain that the Bronco hid somewhere in these last two miles of road. The bad news was that the only way to search logging trails was to leave the main road and risk missing a fleeing Bronco.

  He decided he would have to accept that risk. He searched the logging trails by foot, keeping the road within earshot. The first trail ended within a hundred yards, and he returned without incident. The second trail was longer, but he came to a large muddy patch under heavy growth that was clearly undisturbed. No vehicle had passed this way. Strike two.

  The search proved much slower than he’d anticipated. But slowly he eliminated road. By three o’clock he was down to the last half-mile and his pulse was feeling it. They were probably camped where the road ended.