The Artifact (22 page)

“How do I use that, if my fingers can’t punch a keyboard?”

“That should be a long way down the road,” Dr. Claussen answered. “They have voice-synthesized devices that mimic speech now. Computers activated by a stylus held in your teeth. By the time you get to that stage, there should be even more sophisticated technical advances along those lines.”

“The clock started ticking for me almost two years ago, so there’s no guarantee I’ll be on the long side of the average, right?”

Dr. Lawton ordered the papers in his buff folder and closed it preparatory to adjourning the meeting. “Let’s not think about that yet.”

“I have to think about it! I’m in the middle of the biggest news story of my life that I’m damned well going to finish before this friggin’ disease cuts my wind off.”

Dr. Rizzo almost smiled at the second gram of positive news that would come out of their meeting. “You will retain every bit of your mental faculties.”

Dr. Ng added, “Even the ability to engage in sex.”

“Big deal,” Andrea scoffed. “Who’d want to screw a damned corpse?”

No one attempted to answer her obviously rhetorical question, so Andrea referred to their previous topic. “Then my priority, if you’ll pardon the contradiction, doctors, will be my Iraq artifact story. If I’m going to buy the farm in a couple of months anyway, I might as well go out on the only shooting star I’ve ridden in my entire career.”

“What’s the point?” Sammy asked her. “It sounds like you won’t be able to run around the country like we have been. We don’t have a news org behind us to pick up the slack. By the time you’re ready to go on the air....”

Lawton frowned, interrupting Sammy’s argument. “If I understand the kind of work load and stress you’re contemplating, you could not only precipitate a rapid advance of the deterioration, but shorten your potential lifespan.”

Andrea’s laugh was forced. “So what? I’m going to die anyway. I should sit around contemplating my navel, sipping chicken soup, waiting for my last gasp, instead of scoring a mark for myself that few people on this entire planet have a shot at? Doing it your way, I’d make no more of a scratch on history than if I died at birth. Disease or no disease, I have a chance to do myself, and maybe the entire country a good turn. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pass it up.”

The Council delegates were gathered in the central parlor of the lavish hunting lodge located deep in the northwest forest bordering the jutting buttes and barren valleys of Roosevelt National Park in the North Dakota Badlands. They had flown in from various cities around the world at separate times, the final leg of their journey to the remote location by a helicopter provided by the same corporation that owned the rambling retreat, whose outer walls were sheathed in wide, raw planks weathered to gray by the harsh summer sun and winter blizzards.

Reddish-yellow flames reached into the cavernous chimney from the stout logs in the huge fireplace, flickering light and shadow on the five men seated at the rough-hewn table with pristine surface burnished to a tan gloss in the otherwise darkened room, whose long drapes had been drawn against the broad windows and snowy night beyond.

They seemed as awkward in one another’s company as they were uncomfortable in their new woodsmen’s shirts, flannel trousers and hiking boots, gathered around the table in silence as the housekeeper/cook cleared the remnants of their dinner. When she had left the room, a dark haired, sharp-featured man in his forties with a carefully-trimmed Vandyke beard and alert demeanor addressed his associates.

“We all know why we are here and the nature of the problem that our superiors have instructed us to resolve. There is no need to dissemble or speak in obscure terms. The cook is a deaf mute, and our corporate benefactor is sworn to the patronage and secrecy of this meeting. Not a word spoken in this room will ever leave it, because we are not required to report our decision or its resultant action to anyone.”

A ruddy-cheeked ascetic septuagenarian ran a hand over his thick, white mane, speaking in the haughty clipped tone of the British gentry. “People are beginning to gravitate toward her convoluted reasoning. Not our most devout, but lethargic, occasional churchgoers, the vast majority we have always striven to bring into the core fold.”

“At best, she will carve a good number from every congregation,” added the youngest of the gathering, distinguished from his elders by sandy crew cut and Scandinavian inflection. “We all lose, and she sets hundreds of thousands of amoral heretics loose around the globe.”

“We’re agreed on the problem,” an Hispanic man told them. “What shall we do about her?”

The rotund man in his sixties with a bald head, dark skin surrounding close-set eyes spoke with confidence and finality. “She must be stopped.”

“We will allow the good Lord to assign responsibility in this sacred undertaking,” the dark haired man said. He produced a pewter chalice containing five slips of paper folded twice; four were marked with a “0,” one with an “+.” He passed the cup around to his fellow conspirators. “The person who draws the cross will devise the means of executing his task within the next five days. Only the chosen one will know he has been blessed with this holy mission.”

They were silent on the taxi ride back to her condo. Once Sammy had settled her in on the wide sofa with a bottle of vodka, tumbler and ice, she insisted that he leave her alone, which he did with obvious hesitation. He was only partially reassured at her contention that she could use the bathroom from the wheelchair, wincing at her promise not to slit her wrists in the tub until they had said a proper goodbye.

Sammy returned that evening with a brightly gift-wrapped box and brown paper bag emitting the tantalizing smell of Chinese food. She had been sitting in the dark in the same position he had left her. When he turned on the table lamp, he saw that her eyes were red and the liquor bottle nearly empty beside an ashtray overflowing with unfiltered cigarette butts. He placed the package in her lap on his way to taking the debris to the kitchen, ignoring her mute reception and unconcealed distress. He transferred a Chinese meal from the warm white cartons to dinner plates, then arranged the food and place settings on the cocktail table in front of the couch.

Her attitude softened as he sat cross-legged on the rug at the end of the low table, but she continued to glare at him in silence, far less inebriated than she should have been, his gift unopened where she had thrown it on the cushion beside her.

“Timmy called,” Sammy told her. “He got the names of seven experts he’s pretty sure are working to authenticate the artifact items.”

Her words were aggressive, but her tone listless. “Good job, Sam. Go get ‘em, Tiger.”

“I’ll call them first to see if I can verify the item they’re supposed to be examining, feel them out on vulnerability to disclose more if I go to see them.”

“This could be
the
break, Sam. You did great.”

Sammy handed her a plate of moo goo gai pan, studiously ignoring her displeasure. “Let’s wait ‘til we get some real answers before passing out the kudos.”

“I feel so helpless sitting in that frigging wheel-buggy, letting you carry my whole load.”

“Dig in, Princess. You’re gonna need all the energy you can muster helping me track down that treasure chest.”

She continued staring at him for several moments longer, forcing him to hold the plate extended over her knees until she leaned forward to accept it, reached for the utensils and began to eat.

“And you call
me
a pain in the ass.”

“Open your frigging present.”

Andrea burst out with a little laugh in spite of herself. She tore the colorful paper off the box and extracted a devastating Victoria Secret flaming red peignoir, emitting a gasp of delight as she held it up to her shoulders. “I sleep in the buff or a tee shirt, Sam.”

“First time for everything.”

She crushed the gown to her breasts. “Oh, there’s so much I haven’t done.” Tears brimmed her eyes, appealing to him in abject futility. “I don’t want to die, Sam. Not so soon.”

His contrived bravado crumbled as he leaned over to bury his face in her lap, his shoulders heaving in concert with inaudible sobs.

At that moment, Andrea’s door buzzed and the condominium doorman handed Sam a package from Macy’s he told them had been delivered by courier.

“I didn’t order anything,” Andrea said as Sammy set the foot square box on the low table before her.

“Maybe an apology gift from Duncan,” Sam said in jest, as he slit the box open and placed it on the cushion beside her so she could extract the contents more easily. Andrea bent the cardboard flaps of the box fully open and began to lift out a heavy item wrapped in tissue paper and a thick plastic bag. When the outer paper fell away from the inner plastic, Andrea screamed as though she’d been skewered with a hot iron, gave a violent thrust with both hands to the plastic encased object that rolled off her lap onto the table where it bounced onto the floor, shedding its cover, coming to a stop against the base of a floor lamp, revealing the blood-caked, severed head of Lieutenant George B. Mitchell.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Georgetown, DC

November 2004

He had been almost as shaken as Andy by the package containing the severed head of George Mitchell. Sammy had notified the Georgetown police immediately, who had grilled them for almost three hours before concluding that the grisly delivery was probably designed to frighten her into divulging information regarding the artifact theft during subsequent contact. Sergeants Leonard and Kruger had offered police protection, which Andy refused, believing it would hamper their efforts to locate Callaghan now that they had decided to focus on him. She hoped that their search might soon be productive. She did agree to allow the detectives to place their own wiretap on her phone, and was as surprised as the police when the communications tech informed them that her phone was already bugged with not one, but two remote listening devices. Although Sammy felt more anger than invasion of privacy, he realized Andy was greatly disturbed by the unsettling violation of her personal space, and the realization that someone, probably Iraqi terrorists, had invaded her home. He reassured her that he would pack a bag and stay in her condo with her from then on, despite the police car that would be parked in front of her building until further notice.

But two wiretaps? Was that purposeful redundancy by the Iraqis, or had they been under communications surveillance by more than one entity? The miniature devices were different, one in the phone, the other attached to her cable communications connection, but that didn’t mean anything.

Since none of them knew who or where Mitchell’s murderers were, the two homicide detectives had left with the grisly warning, apparently relieved that the killing and decapitation had, in all probability, taken place in New Mexico. They would confer with the FBI, Albuquerque and state police there.

After sleeping late the following morning, Sammy tried to contact Callaghan and Geoff at Fort Bragg. The base operator said that both men were unavailable and told him that neither Callaghan’s battalion clerk or Geoff’s office were answering their phones. After their initial encouragement at finally learning something concrete about the artifact treasure, they were discouraged at their inability to use it.

At 12:30, Sam offered to make lunch, to which Andrea’s response was a disinterested shrug as she turned up the volume on the muted television set on which an intense Shepard Smith was speaking urgently to the camera. “Looks like a special news bulletin,” she observed.

“....just minutes ago,” Smith was saying, “on the outskirts of Winnemucca, Nevada, before a crowd of an estimated 1,000 people. The single, long-range rifle shot seems to have come from a low hillock behind her audience, entering the Preacher’s chest, causing massive bleeding. She is reportedly in critical condition at Humboldt General Hospital. Stay tuned for updates on this tragic incident as we learn more concerning the medical condition and prognosis of the self-styled

religious minister known as the “Preacher Lady.”

Sam and Andy were mesmerized, uttering astonished exclamations, their eyes riveted on the video as Smith continued speaking on the left half of a split screen that began re-running the prelude to the assassination on the right half. The FOX camera in Nevada had established the scene with a wide-angle focus that panned across a background of cars, pickups and RVs parked behind a crowd of screeching protesters waving fists and placards, held back by sheriffs’ deputies, pausing briefly as it moved across rapt assemblage bundled in warm jackets, hats and gloves against the cold sunny day. The cameraman lingered briefly on the people seated in camp chairs or standing in the shallow depression before closing in tight on Preacher Lady Hannah Ogie atop her white van, speaking calmly into her handheld microphone.