Search: A Novel of Forbidden History (41 page)

J.R. let his head slump back on his antiseptically white pillow and stared at the ceiling. “I want a lawyer.”

“Civilians get to talk to lawyers. Military captives get to talk to me.”

J.R. glared at Lyle. Lyle didn’t look away. “Something to say?”

“I wanna talk to my father.”

“I can arrange that. All you have to do is tell me where he is.”

J.R. blinked, finally awake enough to realize the game he was actually in.

“That’s right. He got away,” Lyle continued. “The big fish. But, as consolation, we have you. Pulled out of a hole in the ground in England. A country, by the way, that has no record of you having entered it. Impressive, but also confirmation that you have sophisticated partners. In the conspiracy.”

“There’s no conspiracy. My old man—” J.R. caught himself.

“Your old man what?”

J.R. closed his eyes. No doubt, Lyle imagined, visions of life in maximum security danced in his morphine-addled mind.

“What do I have to do?”

“Answer some questions.”

“Like what?”

“Where Holden Sr. is. Where the database is. How he got it. Who he’s selling it to. What—”

“He’s not selling it to anyone!”

“What’s he doing with it, then?”

“Looking for . . . for that underground pile of crap you pulled me out of. Ruins, you know? He’s found a couple of those old places. All over the world.”

Score one for Roz,
Lyle thought. “Who’s helping him do that?”

J.R.’s face twisted. He winced at the pain the movement caused him. “Nathaniel Merrit. He’s the bastard who left me down there. He does all my old man’s dirty work.” He looked Lyle in the eye. “There’s your killer. It’s not me.”

Lyle concealed surprise, changed tactics. He’d been expecting J.R. to name China or Russia or some other unfriendly country as the entity helping Ironwood exploit the SARGE database. Not an individual.

“Who’d he kill?”

“I tell you what I know, I don’t go to Leavenworth?”

“You cooperate, I cooperate. Remember what I said: You’re not the big fish.” Lyle left the rest of the deal unspoken. It was still too early to expect Junior to give up Senior. He’d have to be eased into it. “Now, this man Merrit. Who is he? What’s his connection to your father? And who’d he kill?”

J.R.’s mouth twisted into an unpleasant grin; then he groaned as his cracked lip split.

But he told Lyle
everything.

“Yes, I know, I know, it’s a real mess,” Ironwood said to his wife of thirty years. “Never really thought it would get this far. Bet you never did, either.” He paused, pensive. “What was that you’d always say? ‘Holdie, the trouble with you is that when you want something, you want it all. Never did learn to settle. Or share.’ ”

Ironwood sighed and scratched his head through the straw hat he wore. The Vanuatu sun was strong this afternoon, and the sweat rolled down his scalp and face in a never-ending trickle. Still, it’d been almost three years since he’d last talked to Nan. He could take the heat a bit longer.

“Never did,” he told her. “Never did at all.”

Bracing one hand on the white marble gravestone, he awkwardly knelt to adjust the bouquet of flowers he’d brought. Birds-of-paradise. Her favorite. Just as this island paradise had been. “Let me get that,” he said. He brushed aside a few yellow leaves that had fallen from other bouquets, the ones he had delivered every day. “Have to talk to Etienne about that. Got to have you looking neat. Know how much you . . . Aw, Nan. Miss you, Little Girl. Miss you something terrible.”

He put both hands on the gravestone incised to Nancy Lou Ironwood, beloved wife and mother, and rested his head against his arms. “But I had this all worked out from the beginning, and we’ll get by,” he whispered to her. “We always do. You and me.”

He heard footsteps in the gravel and looked over his shoulder.

Crazy Mike was standing twenty feet back along the white gravel path that wound through the low shrubs and fluttering palm trees of the cemetery. Crazy Mike was native to the island. He ran the main house here and drove the Rolls as needed.

The young man scuffed his sneakers in the gravel again, not wanting to interrupt, but he held out a phone.

Ironwood gave a grunt and pushed himself to his feet, brushed the white stones and dust from the knees of his khakis, and straightened his hat. “What’ve you got there, son?” He started back down the path to his driver.

“Phone call, Mr. Woody. For you.”

Ironwood hesitated. There were maybe ten people in his head office who knew how to get in touch with him, but they used the encrypted satellite phone back in his house on the harbor. He had no idea who among them would know that Crazy Mike was his driver, let alone know his driver’s mobile number.

“Who?”

Crazy Mike shrugged, shoulder bones jutting sharply through his blue-and-white-flowered shirt.

Ironwood took the phone. “Who the hell is this?”

“Holden Ironwood?”

“I asked first.”

“That you did. Jack Lyle. Air Force Office of Special Investigations.”

Ironwood waved his driver away and began to walk along the path. “You’re a resourceful man, Mr. Lyle. Is it ‘Mister’? You got a rank?”

“Agent Lyle will do.”

“ ’Course it will.”

“And I’m not that resourceful. I got this number from your son.”

Ironwood felt an icy band around his chest. “Did you now.”

“I need you to come home, Mr. Ironwood.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Up to you. Technically, you’re untouchable. But you know that. No extradition agreement between the U.S. and Vanuatu. Not even formal diplomatic ties. And I understand Ironwood Industries has made some significant investments in schools and infrastructure down there, so I’m guessing the local government wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to change the status quo.”

Ironwood wasn’t about to be taken in by Lyle’s easygoing manner. Sharks swam in those waters. He used the same technique himself.

“If you say so, Agent Lyle.”

“That’s technically, of course. Operationally, well, you know the United States government isn’t in the habit of letting its enemies walk around free in any country
.
So one way or another, you
will
be coming home. It’s just that if you fly back in your own plane, it’ll be a more pleasant experience than returning in a cargo jet. Bound and gagged.”

“I’m not sure I understand, sir. What’s this talk about me being an enemy?”

“Let’s not play games. You know what you stole. Your son’s told us everything. Even told us where to find Frank Beyoun’s body.”

Ironwood came to a sudden stop on the gravel path, as startled as if he’d been slapped. “Frank? What happened to Frank?”

“No games. Your son’s already talking. We show photos of what’s left of Beyoun to the rest of your ‘Red Team,’ you can count on them wanting to start talking, too.”

Ironwood stared at the horizon, at the soft white clouds above the blue Pacific. Didn’t see any of it. “What happened to Frank?”

“Your man murdered him, Mr. Ironwood.”

“My man?”

“Nathaniel Merrit. Head of your security. Former marine. Though I doubt they’d want to claim him as their own. We have him down for at least two other murders as well. All on your orders.”

Ironwood erupted, shocked to his core. “That is a lie!”

“Not according to your son.”

Ironwood took off his hat and wiped his brow. This was wrong. Horribly, impossibly wrong. “Listen to me, and listen good, Agent Lyle. I never gave Nathaniel Merrit or anyone else such ‘orders.’ ”

“Then come back and we can straighten it all out.”

Ironwood looked around the cemetery. Couldn’t see a bench, didn’t want to sit on a gravestone, but he couldn’t stand.

He saw a twisted root stump and dropped down on it to catch his breath, his legs spread wide in front of him, hand on knee to brace himself.

It had been such a simple undertaking. Dave’s genetic clusters, the SARGE database, underground maps leading to alien outposts. Evidence of visitation . . . it all would finally turn the world on its head with the truth. How had something so straightforward, so
necessary,
led to murder?

“Mr. Ironwood?”

“I’m here.”

“Will you come home, sir?”

Ironwood looked back to Nan’s gravestone. There was space in the plot beside her. Eventually, he’d be there beside her. Not just yet.

“Agent Lyle, we’re going to sort this out.”

“I agree. Best place to do that is back here.”

“All right. But first you’ve got to do something for me.”

Far too quickly, far too smoothly, Lyle answered,
“I’m listening.”

Ironwood shook his head. The poor SOB. Expecting him to strike a deal. More like a bargain, and one he planned to cram in the agent’s craw. “I’m going to presume you found a copy of your database in my casino.”

Lyle said nothing.

“I’m going to further presume you’ve seen one of the products of that database. A printout, let’s say, of a site in Cornwall, England. Is that right?” Ironwood took a deep breath, prepared if need be to wait for kingdom come, because the first person to break silence would be the one with the most to lose.

Finally,
“That’s correct.”

Ironwood released his breath. He was still in business. “Good man. Then, if you haven’t already done so, Agent Lyle, I suggest you have an expert examine that printout. To figure out how much information is in it. And then tell you how the heck all that information got squeezed out of your precious SARGE. You following me?”

“Don’t make such a big thing out of it, Mr. Ironwood. We know you accessed another database.”

Gotcha,
Ironwood said silently. He closed his eyes to savor the moment. “No, Agent Lyle, I did not. You tell your expert all that information came out of
your
database, and your database alone. If he can’t tell you how I did it, I can. And that answer fits on one computer disk. You tell him that, and then you call me back and
I’ll
tell
you
what kind of a deal I’ll cut for you to get that disk.”

“You don’t want to play it this way.”

“You set the rules, son, so don’t throw a tantrum just ’cause you lost a round. By the way, in case you want to go changing those rules or something foolish like that, so far I’ve had no intention of turning SARGE over to someone who doesn’t share my love for my country. But I promise you, any of your friends come parachuting out of the sky to throw me into a Globemaster or what have you, then SARGE and my disk are going to end up exactly where you don’t want ’em to end up. You got that?”

“I gave you a chance to do the right thing.”

“Now I’m giving you the same opportunity. When you get your head straight, you call back. Have a nice day.”

Ironwood snapped the phone shut. He had to make this right. If he didn’t, how could he ever face Nan again?

“At least the Cornish temple was destroyed.”

“That is the least of it, Andrew,” the Defender of São Paolo hissed into her microphone. “They’re
both
still alive!”

The silence that followed was oddly flattened by the noise suppression built into the headphones she wore, essential for helicopter flight. In theory, the elegant cabin of the Foundation’s Dauphin Eurocopter was quiet enough for passengers to carry on an unassisted conversation. Nevertheless, when the aircraft transported the Family’s defenders, for privacy and security the pilots and passengers wore communications headsets.

“Cross found them once,”
Andrew finally said.
“So they will be found again.”

Su-Lin didn’t think that was likely. Jessica was too much like her aunt Florian. She’d be aware what the Cross attack in the temple meant: that all her efforts to cover her tracks had failed. That the Family had been literally minutes behind her.

“Jessica will not repeat anything she’s done since we lost her in Boston. She won’t use public airports. Who knows how many passports she has, but she won’t use any of them more than once. She’s going to be impossible to follow now.”

Su-Lin looked out the large passenger window at the lights of the city. Different parts of Zurich glowed different colors, reflecting the era of the various lighting systems clustered below. Rich orange in the oldest sections. Actinic blue along the modern thoroughfares. Sickly yellow where newer lights strove for anemic efficiency. It was a jigsaw pattern of time, and Su-Lin thought it fitting that she was above it all, just as her ancestors had remained behind the scenes of the city, from its beginning.

It was intolerable that she even faced the prospect of losing her position, and her power, all because of other people’s mistakes.

“Perhaps we don’t have to follow her.”

Su-Lin had no idea what he meant. “Give up, you mean?”

“Not at all. Consider her position.”

“Andrew, if she has even a tenth of Florian’s wealth, she has all the options money can buy.”