Library of the Dead (37 page)

None of the writers seemed to take notice as Sabeline dragged her in front of them one by one, row by row, until one man raised his ginger head from a page and looked at the girl. He was perhaps eighteen or nineteen. Elizabeth noticed that three spindly fingers on his right hand were stained black with ink. She thought she heard a low grunt come out of his puny chest.

Sabeline yanked the horrified girl away. At the end of the row, Sabeline pulled her toward an archway into a black void. Elizabeth thought it must surely be the gate to Hell. As she passed through it, she turned her head and saw the grunting young man rise from his table.

The void was the entrance to the catacombs. If the first room smelled like misery, the second room smelled like death. Elizabeth choked and gagged at the stench. There were yellow skeletons with bits of adherent flesh piled like firewood in the recesses of the walls. Sabeline held out a candle, and everywhere the light splashed Elizabeth saw grotesque skulls with jaws agape. She prayed she would fall into unconsciousness, but woefully remained sensate.

They were not alone. Someone was beside her. She whirled around to see the dumb blank face and green eyes of the young man blocking the passageway. Sabeline withdrew, her sleeve brushing the leg bones of a corpse, its dry bones clattering together musically. Then, holding the candle high, the nun and watched from a short distance.

Elizabeth was panting like an animal. She could have fled, deeper into the catacombs, but was too afraid. The ginger-haired man stood inches away, his arms limp by his sides. Seconds passed. Sabeline called to him in frustration, "I have brought this girl for you!"

Nothing happened.

More time passed and the nun demanded, "Touch her!"

Elizabeth braced herself for the touch of what seemed a living skeleton and closed her eyes. She felt a hand on her shoulder, but strangely, it did not repulse her. It was reassuring. She heard Sister Sabeline shrieking, "What are you doing here! What are you doing!"

She opened her eyes and, magically, the face she saw was Luke's. The pale, ginger-haired youth was on the ground, picking himself up from the spot where Luke had roughly shoved him.

"Brother Luke, leave us!" Sabeline screamed. "You have violated a sacred place!"

"I will not leave without this girl," Luke said defiantly. "How can this be sacred? All I see is evil."

"You do not understand!" the nun roared.

From the hall, they heard a sudden pandemonium.

Heavy thuds.

Crashes.

Flopping. Thrashing.

The ginger-haired youth turned away and walked toward the noise.

"What is happening?" Luke asked.

Sabeline did not answer. She took her candle and rushed toward the hall, leaving them alone in the pitch-dark.

"Are you hurt?" Luke asked Elizabeth tenderly. He was still touching her shoulder, and she realized he had never let go.

"You came for me," she whispered.

He helped her find her way from the darkness into the light, into the hall.

It was no longer the Hall of the Writers.

It was the Hall of the Dead.

The only living soul was Sabeline, whose shoes were soaked with blood. She aimlessly walked among a sea of bodies, draped on the tables and cots, crumpled in piles on the ground, a mass of lifelessness and quivering involuntary twitching. She had a sick, glassy expression and could only mutter, "My God, my God, my God, my God," over and over, in the cadence of a chant.

The floor and tables and chairs of the chamber were slowly being coated with the blood spurting from the quill-pierced eyes of almost 150 ginger-haired men and boys.

Luke led Elizabeth by her hand through the carnage. He had the presence of mind to glance at the parchments that lay on the writing tables, some of them blotting up puddles of blood. What curiosity or survival instinct prompted him to snatch up one of the sheets as he fled? That would be something he would contemplate for years to come.

They ran up the precarious stairs, through the chapel, and out into the mist and rain. They kept running until they were a mile from the abbey gate. Only then did they stop to soothe their burning lungs and listen to the cathedral bells pealing in alarm.

T
he navy operated a single G-V, the C-37A, a luxury, high-performance business jet favored by the Secretary of the Navy for his personal travel. The twin Rolls-Royce turbofans put out neck-snapping thrust on its steep-angle takeoff, and out its windows, in seconds, the endless incandescence of the Los Angeles night disappeared behind sheets of low clouds.

Harris Lester was running on caffeine after a stressful, time-zone-stretched day that had begun before dawn in his Fairfax, Virginia, home and included stops at the Pentagon, Andrews Air Force Base, and LAX. After a brief layover in L.A., it was wheels up again for the return flight to Washington. His facial tone was slack and unhealthy and his breath was stale. The only things about him that were crisp and fresh were his dress shirt and pressed tie, and they looked like they had just been unwrapped from Brooks Brothers tissue paper.

There were only three people in the passenger cabin, a paneled interior configured in club style, with pairs of plush dark-blue leather seats facing each other over smooth teak-wood tables. Lester and Malcolm Frazier, whose chiseled block of a face was contorted into an immutable grimace, were staring at the man seated across from Lester, who clutched his armrest with one hand and a cut-crystal glass of scotch with the other.

Will was bone-weary but the most relaxed person on board. He had played his cards, and it appeared he had the winning hand.

Hours earlier he had been scooped off the street in Hollywood by Frazier and a team of watchers who were jetted in from Groom Lake to make the pickup. They bundled him into a black Tahoe and sped off to a private aviation terminal at the airport, where they kept him on ice, uninterrogated, in a conference room until Lester arrived. Will had the distinct impression that Frazier would have preferred to kill him outright, or at least inflict a punishing dose of pain; he supposed if someone had shot up one of his FBI teams, he'd have wanted to do the same. But he could also tell that Frazier was a soldier, and good soldiers obeyed orders.

Now, Frazier opened Shackleton's laptop and after a few keystrokes he spat out, "What's his password?"

"Pythagoras," Will answered.

Frazier sighed. "Fucking egghead. P-I?"

"P-Y," Will said sadly.

Then, in seconds, "It's here as advertised, Mr. Secretary."

"How can we be sure you made a copy, Agent Piper?" Lester asked.

Will pulled a receipt from his wallet and tossed it on the table. "Radio Shack memory stick, bought today, postincident."

"So we know you stashed it somewhere in the city," Frazier said contemptuously.

"It's a big city. On the other hand, I could have dropped it in the mail. Or, I could have given it to someone who may or may not have known what it was. In any event, I can guarantee you that if I don't regularly and frequently make personal contact with one or more unnamed parties, the memory stick will be sent to the media." He forced his mouth into a thin smile. "So, gentlemen, don't fuck with me or anyone I care about."

Lester massaged his temples. "I know what you're saying and why you're saying it, but you don't really want this ever to get out, do you?"

Will put his glass down and watched its sweaty bottom make a wet ring on the wood. "If I wanted that, I would have sent it to the papers myself. It's not for me to say whether the public should know. Who the hell am I? I wish
I
never learned about it. I haven't had a chance to give it a lot of thought but just knowing it's there changes--everything." He suddenly chuckled, punch drunk.

"What's funny?" Lester asked.

"For a guy named Will, the concept of free will is kind of important." On a dime, he turned serious again. "Look, I don't know if free will even exists now. It's all laid out in advance, right? Nothing's going to change if your name comes up. Am I right?"

"You got that right," Frazier said bitterly. "Otherwise you'd be in a thirty-thousand-foot free fall as we speak."

Will let the man's venom slide off him. "You've lived with this. Doesn't it affect the way you go about your life?"

"Of course it does," Lester snapped. "It's a burden. I've got a son, Agent Piper, my youngest boy. He's twenty-two and he's got cystic fibrosis. We all know he's not going to have a normal life expectancy, we accept that. But do you think I like knowing that the date of his death is set in stone? Do you think I want to know that day, or have him know? Of course not!"

Frazier had a different take, one that left Will chilled to the bone: "For me, it makes things easier. I knew that Kerry Hightower and Nelson Elder were going to die when they did. All I did was pull the trigger. I sleep okay."

Will shook his head and had another drink. "Therein lies the problem, don't you think? What the hell would the world be like if it was out there and everyone thought like you?"

The high-pitched whine of the engines was the only sound until Lester gave a politician's answer. "That's why we go to the lengths we do to keep the Library a secret. We've had a remarkable track record for over six decades, thanks to the work of dedicated men like Frazier here. We only mine the data for geopolitical and national security purposes. We don't willy-nilly make person-specific queries unless there's an overriding security reason. We are responsible stewards of this miraculous resource. There have been minor--I'd say trivial--breaches and indiscretions in the past that have been dealt with surgically. This Shackleton affair is the first catastrophic breach in Area 51's history. I hope you understand that."

Will nodded and leaned as far forward as the table would allow. He bore into the Secretary. "I understand completely. I also understand leverage. If you ever get your hands on my copy of the database, you'll stick me in the deepest hole you can dig, and to be on the safe side, you'll make sure everyone I'm close to disappears too. You know it, I know it. I'm just protecting myself. I'm not a theologian or a philosopher. I'm not interested in big moral issues, okay? I didn't ask to get involved in your world, but it happened, because thirty years ago I was randomly assigned to be Mark Shackleton's roommate! All I want is to be left alone, retire, and live my puny little life until at least 2027. Your big adversary is a good old country boy who just wants to go fishing." He reclined and watched Lester's sagging face fixed in a passive frieze. "Which one of you boys wants to freshen my drink?"

Back in Washington, he was voluntarily held for a two-day debriefing by Frazier and a group of sweethearts from the DIA who made Frazier seem like a humanitarian. They got him to regurgitate everything he knew about the affair, everything except the whereabouts of the memory stick.

When they were done with him, he agreed to execute the same daunting confidentiality agreement that all Area 51 employees had to sign, and he was released, free and clear, into the waiting arms of his brethren at the FBI.

The FBI director ordered that he not be required to undergo further agency questioning or file a report on the last days of the Doomsday investigation. Sue Sanchez, flummoxed and clueless, offered him a package--paid administrative leave until he had his twenty years, then full retirement. He accepted the deal with a smile, and on her way out he gave her a playful pat on the bottom, and winked when she turned in anger.

Will sat back and listened to the dinner table conversation with quiet satisfaction. There was a domestic feel about it, something traditional and archetypal that put his internal rhythms in harmony. There hadn't been many Piper family dinners when he was growing up, nor could he recall them during the brief time he provided his daughter with a nuclear family.

He slowly chewed his steak and listened to the repartee. His apartment was a pleasant wreck, piled with moving boxes, suitcases, women's clothing, new pieces of furniture, and bric-a-brac.

Laura tried to refill his wine but he put his hand over the glass to stop her.

"Are you feeling, okay, Dad?" she joked.

"I'm pacing myself," he said smugly.

"He's definitely cut down," Nancy said.

He shrugged. "The new me. Same as the old me but slightly lower blood alcohol levels."

"Do you feel better for it?" Greg asked.

"Off the record?"

"Yes, sir, off the record."

"Yeah, I do. Go figure. What's up with the book, Laura?"

"All systems go. I'm waiting on the galleys and preparing myself for a life of fame and fortune."

"As long as you're happy, I'm okay with whatever the future's got in store for you. Both of you."

Greg lowered his eyes, nonplussed by the kindness. The reporter in him still had a burning curiosity about the Doomsday case. He had asked Laura the questions out loud, rehearsing them in case he got the nerve to try to interview Will, but knew the subject was taboo. He seriously doubted he'd ever be told, even if he became Will Piper's son-in-law.

Why had Will been removed from the investigation and declared a fugitive? Why had the case faded from official discussion with no arrests and no resolution? Why had Will been rehabilitated and gently put out to pasture?

Instead he asked, "So what's in store for you, Will? You going to do a little fishing, put your feet up awhile?"

"No way!" Nancy interjected. "Now that I've moved in, Will's going to be taking in plays, museums, galleries, good restaurants, you name it."

"I thought you hated New York, Dad."

"I'm already here. Might as well give it a try. Us retirees got to keep our minds active while the womenfolk solve bank robberies."

Later, when they were leaving, Will gave his daughter a kiss on the cheek and pulled her out of Greg's earshot. "You know, I like your guy. I wanted to tell you that. Hold onto him."

He knew for a fact that Greg Davis was BTH.

Will lay on the bed watching Nancy personalize his bedroom with pictures, a jewelry box, a stuffed bear.

"You okay with this?" she asked.

"It looks nice."

"I mean, okay with us? Was this a good idea?"

"I think it was." He patted the mattress. "When you're done redecorating you should come here and check out your new bed."

"I've slept in it before," she said, and giggled.

"Yeah, but this is different. It's communal property now."

"In that case, I'll take the window half," she said.

"You know, I think you're my type."

"What type is that?"

"Smart, sexy, sassy, pretty much all the s's."

She crawled beside him and cuddled up, and he wrapped his arms around her. He'd told her about the Library. It was something he had to share with one person in his life, and the secret glued them together.

"In L.A., I looked up something else on Shackleton's computer," he said softly.

"Do I want to know?"

"On May 12, 2010, a child is born named Phillip Weston Piper. That's nine months from now. That's our son."

She blinked a few times then kissed his face.

He returned the kiss and said, "I've got a pretty good feeling about the future."