“Get in, Senator,” Rudiger ordered. “No time to argue.” He kept his fingertip on the pager button.
Sidams looked over at Jonas.
I sure hope you have a plan
, his face said. Then he climbed in next to Stages.
Jonas no longer knew what was right. He thought there would be a better opportunity to fight Rudiger and save Anne, but now he wasn’t sure. A powerful sense overcame him, a feeling of certainty. If we get into that van, it’s all over. We’ll all die, including Anne.
Rudiger’s voice seemed to drop an octave. “Get in.”
“You have to promise to let her go. Whatever you do to us, promise to let her go.”
“There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to
keep thee in all thy ways.”
Jonas did not understand but knew he had no choice. He climbed in the truck, and Rudiger lowered the cargo door and locked it from the outside. Seconds later the van was moving, pulling tightly to the left, and Jonas knew Rudiger had likely eluded the FBI for enough time to get away without being tracked. They probably wouldn’t realize the men were in the back of the U-Haul until the security tapes from the outside the hotel showed what happened. And by then the van would be long gone.
Jonas hoped he was wrong about his intuition. About his feeling of impending doom. For once he wanted to be wrong.
Then a small metal canister dropped through a hole in the van’s cab. The cylinder rolled around on the bare floor of the cargo space, stopping when it wedged against the Ambassador, who hadn’t moved since getting inside.
When smoke started to pour out of the canister, Jonas knew his intuition hadn’t failed him.
It was all over.
RUDIGER TOWERS
above them. They’re naked, except a small cloth wrapped around their waists. Gotta have a little respect. It’s what God wants.
The men are sleeping, and he guesses they’ll be out for at least another hour. Maybe the fat one will sleep longer. He’ll wake once it all starts though. No way he’ll sleep through that. No way.
The two criminals are bound to their crosses. Wrists and ankles eaten by ropes. Crosses still on the floor, but not for long. Got it all rigged to a pulley system. Help to raise the crosses into place when it’s time. Still be easier to do the nailing while they’re on the floor, though.
The temperature inside the old airplane hangar soars, the heat stifling.
Good
, he thinks.
Should be hot
.
He walks around his work, checking every detail. It all seems, well, just right. Just right this time. Pride flirts with his mind, but he pushes it away. Pride is wrong. No room for it here.
Over to Jonas. He’s not on the cross. He’s in a metal chair, thick rope around him. Legs bound together at the ankles. Not going anywhere. Rudiger squats in front of him and studies the man, lifting his head by the chin. Jonas sleeps hard. Rudiger runs his fingertips along the man’s nose, cheekbone.
“You were there at the beginning, Lieutenant,” Rudiger says. Jonas sleeps.
He pushes a bead of sweat along the man’s forehead and wonders if he’s dreaming. What’s in that mind right now? Does he know what’s going to happen? Does he know the magnitude of it? Could he possibly understand?
All the scholars in all the world over all the centuries, and no one would have guessed it. Christ is returning, and it’s all gonna happen in an abandoned airplane hangar in the Colorado plains. Rudiger smiles. Only he knows. Only He knows.
Rudiger peels off his clothes, leaving on only his underwear. The still air clings to his sweat. He folds his clothes neatly and puts them in the corner of the room.
Rudiger waits.
He’s surprised at his own serenity. The quiet calms him. He keeps his radio off, not wanting to know what’s happening outside. Oh, they’re looking. Looking all over the place. Looking for a U-Haul van. That FBI lady certainly had them pull up video footage of the hotel exterior, and they probably tracked them all to the parking lot. But it don’t matter if they find the van. By then it’ll be too late, and the world will just thank him for it anyway.
He shines a flashlight beam along all the old magazine and newspaper clippings, though he’s read them a thousand times. The light settles on one article in particular.
From
People Magazine
, the pages wilted by heat and time. An interview with his daddy.
The face meant nothing to him when he’d first seen it two months ago—he barely even recognized his old man. Cragged lines on weathered Irish skin.
Rudiger shines the light and stares into the face that stares back at him. Steel blue eyes. Flecks of gold.
He remembers him now. Not a lot, but enough. Flashes of a childhood. A time before the badness.
• • •
A trip to the beach, sandcastle eaten by waves. That fleshy Irish face looking down at him. A hand tousling his head. It’s okay, the man says. We’ll build another one.
But the waves will just keep coming, won’t they?
Yes, son, they will. They’ll always keep coming. That’s jes the nature of things.
Rudiger sees him clearly, thinks he can smell the spice of his aftershave mixed with the scent of the ocean. Waves crash behind them, filling the air with the static of sloshing water.
Let’s make this one different, he says. Different how?
Different special. Because you’re special, aren’t you, Rudy?
Special how?
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he grabs a waterlogged stick washed ashore and writes in the wet sand. The letters clean and neat.
RUDIGER
What do you see? he asks. I see my name.
What else?
He thinks for a moment. Ride rug, he says. The man nods. That’s right. Ride rug.
A wave comes in and licks away the letters. The man writes again.
OCEAN
Now what do you see?
The boys stares. Ocean, he says. And canoe.
Good, Rudy. Very good. The man leans down and kisses him on the forehead. You’re very smart.
Sometimes I don’t feel smart. The father smiles at his son. You’re smarter than me, he says.
Will you take me in the water, Daddy? I don’t want to go alone.
Yes, the man says. Of course I will. But you’re braver than me. You should be the one taking me into the water.
Don’t be silly.
They walk into the water, the salt stinging a recently skinned knee. The boy holds his father’s hand as the water comes up to his thighs, then waist. It is forceful and gentle, this water. It guides him and protects him, but it could kill if it wanted to. It chooses not to. The boy doesn’t really feel afraid. He doesn’t feel much of anything, like usual.
Here, the man says. He reaches and grabs both of the boy’s hands. Learn to float.
How?
Hold my hands and let the water do the rest of the work. The boy does as his father tells him. His feet leave the mushy sand and his legs come to the surface. His eyes are closed for a moment, but once his bare belly breaches the surface, they open. His daddy looks down at him, his smiling face blocking the sun.
That’s it, Rudy. That’s it.
The man moves a few inches and the full power of the sun bursts down upon the boy’s face. It’s brilliant. The boy must close his eyes, but does not want to. The light lifts him.
I am very pleased with you, my son.
The boy says nothing. His eyes closed once again, he feels his father’s hands let go, and on his own, the boy floats, the water lifting him and the tide pushing him, pulsating with the current, only inches at a time but oceans over a lifetime.
• • •
Rudiger reaches out and touches the glossy magazine page, touching the face of his father. Two months ago the memory came to him, and it is the one memory he needed, the one that solved the puzzle. Since then, there has been no need to search. To find clues. To kill.
There has only been the need to prepare.
“You were right,” Rudiger tells the wall. “I am special.” His thoughts are interrupted by a sound from behind him.
It’s the Ambassador. The first one to wake.
Rudiger is mildly surprised. Thought the fat one’d be out longer.
The Ambassador begins to scream.
JONAS WOKE
up to screaming, but it all still felt like a dream. There was a dream, wasn’t there? A snake slithering up his legs, coiling around his body, squeezing the life from him, letting him exhale but not inhale.
He opened his eyes and first saw his knees, but just barely. There was some light, but just a few ghosts of it, not enough for him to understand anything at all.
The heat was stifling.
He was sitting in a chair, that much he understood. He tried to move his arms but couldn’t, and then his eyes adjusted enough to the dark to let him see the rope around his upper torso.
The screams continued.
Jonas turned his head and threw up, the vomit dribbling down his shoulder and onto the floor. His head throbbed.
The gas, he thought. He remembered that much. The van. The canister. The gas. Coughing and holding his sleeve against his nose, knowing it wouldn’t help.
But he wasn’t dead. Neither were the others. The gas was just to knock them out, make them easier to transport and contain. Nobody was dead. Not yet.
Another scream and then a gurgling sob.
Jonas moved his head again, this time slowly, and looked in the direction of the sound.
They were about thirty feet away. The room was large, whatever it was. Rudiger was standing over Bill Stages. Rudiger wore a headlamp, the light from which poured down over the corpulence of the Ambassador, who was naked save what looked like some kind of loincloth.
Rudiger was hitting him with something.
What is that?
No. He wasn’t hitting him, he was hitting a large spike. With a mallet. The spike was going right through the wrists of Bill Stages and into the wooden cross underneath him.
Jonas coughed and another wave of vomit spewed from him.
Rudiger stopped pounding and straightened. He turned in Jonas’s direction, the light filling the dark void between them. Jonas looked directly into the light but couldn’t see the face underneath it. Rudiger said nothing, and after a few seconds went back to work.
“God, no, please...no more...” Stages’s voice was weak. A crying child. He would die soon, Jonas knew. From shock if nothing else.
Where was the Senator?
Jonas looked around but couldn’t make out enough of the room to see if the Senator was even here.
He felt more awake now, the adrenaline rushing through him. He strained his arms against the rope again, to no effect. Too tight.
Goddamnit. He was the one who made them come here. He was the one who said everything would be okay. Nothing was okay. They were all going to die, and it was all his fault.
For all he knew, Anne was already dead. “Rudiger,” he said, soft at first. “Rudiger!”
Rudiger’s hammer did not cease. Nor did the screams. “Rudiger, goddamnit, stop! Just let me talk to you.”
The hammering stopped. So did the screams. Stages either died or passed out. Probably didn’t matter too much which one. The end would all be the same.
Jonas watched as Rudiger bent down and picked up another spike. He shifted over to Stages’s feet, placing one on top of the other.
He’s not going to talk until he’s all done, Jonas knew. “Rudiger, please, for Christ’s sake just stop. Just for a second.”
Jonas thought he heard a muffled laugh before the hammering resumed. The spike pinned Stages’s feet to the wood beneath, but the Ambassador didn’t make a sound. He was lost in his own black world of silent horror.
Jonas prayed the man was dead. If he wasn’t and he regained consciousness, the pain would be unbearable.
Rudiger dropped the hammer on the ground and then picked something else up. Jonas only saw a brief glint. A shimmer of steel.
Knife.
He watched as Rudiger bent over the Ambassador’s face and grabbed the side of the man’s head. Then Rudiger began to saw, back and forth, and Jonas realized he was removing the left ear of William Stages.
The Ambassador made no sound, which was almost the worst part of it all. Almost.
Jonas closed his eyes.
This isn’t happening. Please God, make it all stop.
Eyes opened once again, Jonas saw Rudiger drop the severed ear to the ground, as if giving a scrap of food to a patiently waiting dog.
Rudiger then picked up the base of the crucifix, heaving it a few feet to the left. He lowered it with precision so the base lined up with what looked like a small hole in the ground. Next he pulled on a piece of rope that dangled from the dark ceiling like a vine. He looped it around the top of the cross and cinched it tight. The other end of the rope floated a few feet away. Rudiger donned thick work gloves and pulled on the rope. Jonas could only see what Rudiger’s headlamp illuminated, but it was enough. He knew what was happening.