Wormhole (35 page)

In his office, General Wilson picked up his phone on the second ring.

“Yes?”

“Smythe just ripped down the camera in his cell. Blew the D13 circuit breaker. Should I send in a crew to repair it?”

“No. Reroute power but leave the lights in that corridor off.”

“So you want us to ignore the camera?”

“That’s the point.”

“Yes sir.”

As he hung up the phone, a slow smile spread across Balls Wilson’s face. Unless he missed his guess, they’d just found the first chink in Mark Smythe’s armor.

The last few days had been some of the most draining of Heather’s life, a strange mixture of psychiatric sessions in which Dr. Jacobs worked to exploit her psychosis, interspersed with psychic communication sessions with Jennifer. Like a soldier crawling under barbed wire while probing the ground ahead with her bayonet, Heather navigated a mental minefield that left her exhausted, but unable to stop for rest.

Although she was no longer strapped to a hospital bed, the replacement wasn’t much more comfortable. Sometimes she rested better curled up in the corner farthest from the toilet, pretending to sleep the night away.

Her psychic contacts with Jennifer remained intermittent. Sometimes, depending on the heroin dosage the bastards were feeding into Jen’s veins, Heather couldn’t make contact at all, and sometimes wading through Jen’s mind felt like moving
through a pea-soup fog, Jen’s thoughts like shrouded lamps, dimly visible through the haze. It worried Heather horribly. Images of her friend, physically addicted to the dangerous drug, crowded her tired brain.

For the last two hours Heather had lain on the cell floor, matching her heart rate and breathing to that expected of her sleeping self. Contact had been impossible. She thought about trying to contact Mark, but every attempt at that had met with utter failure. He had erected mental blocks so intense she could barely feel him, much less penetrate them. She could sense that he was close, but whatever torture he was enduring had forced him to erect his mental defenses. Now, as tired as she was, Heather couldn’t bring herself to make another attempt.

Uncurling, she yawned and stretched, her heart rate gradually climbing to a wakeful rhythm. The cell was dark, but Heather didn’t need to see a clock to know it was three minutes past four in the morning, any more than she needed someone to tell her that meant she was 14,580 seconds into her day.

As much as she wanted to indulge in a restful meditation, she needed to work out before her doctors and handlers arrived to soak up endless portions of her time. After all the time she’d been strapped down, her muscles needed to work. Heather had a feeling that, when the time came, she was going to need every bit of strength and coordination she could muster. And her Jack Gregory–filled visions whispered that that time was rapidly approaching.

Shrugging out of the hospital gown, Heather tossed it into the corner, stretched her naked body tall and erect, and filled her lungs with air. Then, breathing out slowly, she shifted into her first yoga pose of the morning.

Warrior one.

Constitution Avenue was crowded with cars, the Washington Mall was packed with people, the early evening was hot and muggy, and some damned country singer roamed the Capitol Stage wailing about how rednecks could survive. Freddy shook his head. He hated these July fourth celebrations. It was just like the government to make a special exception to martial law rules in order to squeeze in such a self-congratulatory ceremony during these hard times. He’d seen enough red-white-and-blue-backdropped fireworks-augmented performances to last two lifetimes, but here he was at another. On top of that, his walking leg was rubbing a blister on what was left of his stump.

But Tall Bear’s message had said to be here, so here he was.

If he’d been thinking, he’d have brought a blanket to spread out on the lawn along with a cooler full of Bitburger Pils. Glancing
around at the security squads roaming through the crowd, Freddy doubted he could have slipped it in.

Something bumped hard against Freddy’s good leg, almost toppling him. He looked around in time to see two fat blond kids chasing each other through the crowd, weaving in and out of seated groups of people, several expressing the annoyance Freddy felt.

Maybe the little porkers would pass out in the Washington heat.

He glanced at his watch. Six fifteen p.m. Tall Bear’s message had said six o’clock. So where the hell was he? Freddy moved a little farther south, his eyes scanning the Capitol steps. No sight of the big Indian cop. At his height and with that long raven hair he should have been easy to spot, even in this mob.

Freddy spun in a slow circle, shielding his eyes from the sinking sun as he gazed westward toward the white spire of the Washington Monument. A flock of birds rose up from the cherry trees near the Jefferson Memorial, their whirling mass swooping across the green expanse of the mall, briefly eclipsing the bright orange orb before settling into some trees beside Constitution Avenue. Freddy was glad he hadn’t parked over there.

If anything, the crowd on the mall was getting bigger as people maneuvered for spots they wanted for tonight’s fireworks show. Looking out at the scene, Freddy could almost convince himself that all was well with the country. But DC was a heavily protected green zone, at least this part of DC. The army, marines, and National Guard had done a good job of expanding the number of areas under their control, but that still left large sections of the country subject to something approaching anarchy. Louisiana had been written off as not worth the effort to police and many of the nation’s sparsely populated rural areas had reinterpreted
martial law as militia law, maintaining local order at the expense of civil rights. Poor inner-city neighborhoods resembled war zones that police feared to enter and the army regarded as nonessential.

On the stage, the country band finished its set, thanked the crowd, and exited stage right, replaced by a congressman from the great state of Maryland. Freddy tuned him out and resumed his search. Frustrated, he jostled through the crowd toward the Capitol building. Maybe if he stood on the steps, Tall Bear would find him. Thirty minutes of standing proved him wrong.

“Screw this,” he muttered, turning to head back toward Union Station and his car.

The thought of his car brought his hand to his pocket. Freddy froze. His car keys were gone. He checked his hip pocket and breathed out a small sigh of relief. At least he had his wallet. But how the hell had he lost his keys?

Instinctively, he patted all his pockets, surprised to feel the key ring bulge in his front left pants pocket. What the hell? He never put his keys in that pocket. Reaching his left hand in to grab them, he felt something else with them. A piece of paper.

Extracting his keys and the paper, Freddy stared down at it. The paper was a neatly folded piece of heavy vellum. It reminded him of something he’d seen before, although he couldn’t place it.

Glancing around, Freddy saw nothing out of the ordinary. But someone in the crowd had picked his pocket, then returned his keys, along with the note, in a way sure to get his attention. Staring down at the paper, Freddy undid the four folds. As he stared at the handwriting, the sense of déjà vu enveloped him so strongly it took his breath away.

This is the second note I’ve sent you, although the first in my own name. You may recall a certain shoebox and necklace that accompanied the first. Be assured, if I wanted to harm you, you’d already be dead. You have some information I want and I believe I can fill in part of the story you’re currently working. If you’re interested, be at the southeast corner of Louisiana and New Jersey at 7:15. I’ll find you. J.G.

A cold shiver started at the base of Freddy’s neck, radiating up his scalp and down his arms like the kiss of death. Jack Gregory. Somehow, in the midst of all this hyper-security, the Ripper had touched him twice and he hadn’t even noticed, despite the fact he’d been actively studying his surroundings.

Freddy folded the note and returned it to his pocket along with his keys, then, with another quick glance around, crossed Constitution Avenue onto First. Taking a slight right onto Louisiana, he made his way past the Taft Memorial, reaching the southeast corner of Louisiana and New Jersey Avenues. His watch said 7:08.

A black Honda Shadow motorcycle squealed to a stop beside him, the rider’s face, hidden behind the helmet’s reflective faceplate, turned toward him.

Freddy nodded. “You’re early.”

“Get on.”

To Freddy’s credit, he never hesitated, at least not for longer than it took him to get his good leg over the seat behind Gregory. The motorcycle pulled into traffic, turned left on New Jersey, leaving the Union Station Plaza behind as it accelerated northeast.

Two hours later Freddy found himself in Linthicum, Maryland, sitting on a couch in Jack Gregory’s room at the BWI Homewood Suites.

“Coffee?” Gregory asked, lifting the in-room pot.

“Black.”

Setting a steaming cup in front of Freddy, Gregory filled his own mug, then settled into the armchair across from the sofa. Freddy didn’t know what he’d been expecting from the killer, but this wasn’t it. At the moment the man looked nothing like any
of the pictures Freddy had seen of him, and they’d been all over the television and print media. His ruddy brown complexion and medium-length coal-black hair gave him a distinctly Native American look that went fine with his jeans, boots, and Western shirt.

Gregory moved in a relaxed, easy fashion that reminded Freddy of a prowling lion. Freddy just hoped he’d make it through the evening without becoming the prey. Well, so far so good.

“Your meeting with Dr. Sigmund on the night she killed herself; tell me about it.”

Freddy sucked in a breath, his heart rate shifting up a notch. How did Gregory know about that? Not through his old NSA ties. Those were as dead as Jonathan Riles. A light dawned in his mind. Tall Bear.

“What do you want to know?”

“Why you arranged the meeting, everything Dr. Sigmund told you, your thoughts and impressions about what she was telling you, why she killed herself. Everything.”

“Why should I tell you when I didn’t tell the NSA? Your note mentioned a quid pro quo.”

Jack reached for the fruit basket on the coffee table, grabbed a shiny red apple, and slowly began peeling it. Freddy hadn’t noticed when the survival knife had appeared in his hand, but there it was, the thin red apple skin curling away from the black blade in one long, thin strip.

“I’ve read your investigative work. Impressive stuff. You show me that same level of attention to detail and I’ll reciprocate.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you’ll find the front page a little sooner than you planned.”

Freddy remembered a line his father had told him. “Son, don’t ask a question if you don’t want to hear the answer.”

Freddy Hagerman shrugged. “Fair enough.”

At two thirty a.m., Jack Gregory leaned over and handed Freddy the room’s key card, then rose and walked out the door. A minute later, Freddy heard the roar of a motorcycle as it pulled out of the parking lot and drove off.

As exhausted as Freddy was, he felt no inclination to sleep. Instead he stared down at his digital recorder, the one he’d played for Gregory earlier in the evening, the one on which he’d subsequently been allowed to record the Ripper’s narrative.

“Jackie boy. Now that’s one hell of a story.”