Shadow Knight's Mate (20 page)

He didn't feel Arden's eyes on him—she was being careful to put no pressure on him, even the pressure of attention—but he felt her curiosity. Finally he said, “How could it be worse, even after she was dead?”

She leaned toward him and her eyes fastened on him. Instantly it was as if they were back inside the dark hotel room, in the center of Jack's story again. But this time his voice was flat, as if he were again in the immediate aftermath of his lover's death, and nothing else could touch him emotionally.

“This is how it got worse. Madeline died in the summer. Two weeks later Osama Bin Laden released a videotape, condemning America, blah blah blah. Just taunting, really.”

He heard Arden's unasked question:
So?

“I was at the tail-end of two weeks of binge-drinking that had become life-threatening, with no one to intervene. I was still in London but I couldn't have told you that. One afternoon I kind of came to my senses in Madeline's apartment with the TV on and there he was, the most wanted person on earth mocking us. Mocking me personally, it seemed like. Then I noticed something strange. Maybe what had drawn my attention was a light coming on on Madeline's television. She was recording this spiel.”

“How did she—?”

“That was the question, right? How did Madeline know, weeks ahead of time, when that tape would appear on the television news? Breaking into an afternoon chat show. I ran it back and played it again. It started me thinking about something other than myself for the first time in a long time. How had this man eluded American forces for so long? A six-foot-four Arab who needed dialysis? So distrinctive looking he was a walking cartoon.

“And let us not forget, I was a member of the Circle. The group whose self-assigned mission for the last two hundred-plus years has been to keep America safe, to protect our country from its own excesses
and
—” He held up a finger. “—to know everything our intelligence services know and more. Forget that Bin Laden was still free. How had he ever happened in the first place? Where was the Circle when America suffered its worst attack on our own soil ever?”

Arden kept watching him and shrugged. She had been a child at the time, with not yet a glimmer of the Circle's existence.

“This was the first question that engaged my attention since Madeline's death. Did we know about the attack in advance? I don't know. If we did know and still let it happen, that's unforgivable. If we didn't know, that's unforgivable.”

Arden answered as if she'd heard this question debated before. “Of course, that's the kind of attack that's almost impossible to
prevent. Twenty fanatics, working in a very tight-knit, homogenous group. No way to infiltrate—”

“Heavily financed and with a lot of ground support,” Jack interrupted.

“True, but still only twenty crazed men. It would have been nearly impossible to infiltrate a group of that—”

Jack stopped her with an uplifted hand. “Actually only nineteen of the twenty boarded the planes.”

Arden stared at him as if reading the lines of his face, then gasped. Jack nodded. “One of the supposed fanatics didn't get on board. At the last minute he had a problem or something else to do. He made sure the operation happened but escaped its consequences himself.” Jack sat as if mulling over an idea, his face calm. Arden's expression grew more and more horrified. If she hadn't known about this possibility before this moment, then she was a brilliant actress. Of course, Jack thought she was. Just as she was about to speak again, he continued. “It sounds like us, doesn't it? Just the kind of role one of the Circle would play in that scenario. Actually we'd usually be much deeper in the background, but this was one that had to be guided personally, right up to the last minute. There have been all kinds of speculation about who that twentieth man was, and suspects named, but we would throw up that kind of smokescreen, wouldn't we? That is, if one of us was the twentieth fanatic.”

Arden had had time to absorb the idea now. “You're just speculating.”

“I was then. But since then I've spent years investigating the possibility. I've particularly wondered whether I was supposed to be personally involved.”

“What?”

“Madeline meeting with the Arab man, remember? I know, I know, London is full of Arab men. But one night I woke up seeing them again, seeing the man looking at me so speculatively, weighing my possibilities. I think I was supposed to find them that day, so he could see me. Maybe he'd already studied my file, but he wanted a personal look. And Madeline just sat there with a little
smile, the way she did at fashion shows where people were looking at her creations.”

“Jack.” Arden's hand reached for his arm, but the gesture stopped before she touched him. Jack sat appearing perfectly composed, no tears hovering in his eyes. “Yes?” he said calmly.

“You think maybe she—singled you out?”

“Do I think maybe it wasn't happenstance? That maybe it was only love at first sight on my part?” He shook his head. “I think she loved me. But that doesn't mean she didn't have another purpose in mind. To recruit me.”

“To what? To be part of this cover-up? How could you have joined in that?”

Jack turned and looked directly at her. He was good at evaluating people. Beyond good. When he was on his game he could almost read thoughts. Emotions were harder. Half the time people didn't even know their own emotions. He studied Arden as he had several times over the last few days, and over the two years since he'd known her. He felt her concern, and thought he felt curiosity. That was what he wanted to know. Did she already know the deep secret he was about to reveal? Was that why she was with him, to keep him from learning anything more?

The question could be put a different way, in a form that had tormented him for more than five years: Did the Chair know what he was trying to find out? And if so, had she told her granddaughter?

The logical part of his mind was evaluating what he should do. If Arden already knew, then what was the harm in telling her? If she didn't, he might be gaining a valuable ally. The danger was in letting her know what he knew if she already was on the other side.

But he began speaking before he'd fully evaluated the risk. The other side of his brain took over. He wanted to talk.

“I believe now that there is another group within the Circle. An Inner Circle, maybe. A core group of us, allied with people outside the Circle. They may have similar goals to the original Circle's mission, but they are much more ruthless. I believe this
group knew the 9-11 attack was coming, even encouraged it, maybe even first planted the idea. But at any rate made sure it happened.”

His voice remained calm, but Jack stared into space and Arden knew he was far away. “You know how you can take a snapshot with your mind, and replay it again, sometimes from different angles, zoom in on something maybe you didn't notice the first time?”

Arden nodded.

“That's what I've done with that scene of Madeline and the Arab man. Nicely dressed man, Saville Row suit, hundreds like him in London. But his ear was distinctive. Pendulous lobe, flat on top. One of the hardest things to disguise. I've replayed his face in my mind a thousand times, and I've also replayed that scene that came on Madeline's TV at just the right time. I think they were the same man.”

Arden gasped. “Osama in—”

Jack shook his head. “This wasn't Osama. But I think he plays him on TV. Someone keeping alive the myth of our great enemy still plotting against us. It makes sense, doesn't it? How has he eluded us so long? Because most of the time he's not Osama Bin Laden. He's a respectable-looking businessman with a legitimate passport. And Madeline was sitting there with him chatting pleasantly.”

Arden stood up, stared at him, then sat again, leaning close to him. “Why on earth would any American help in such a—a mad scheme? How could you think one of us—?”

She sounded angry. The way Jack had reacted when he'd first gotten this idea. He'd had years to calm down, but it was a horrible idea, and watching Arden's reaction made him realize again the horror of it.

“Think about it,” he said, emphasizing the first word. “What happened in the wake of the 9-11 attacks? There was an enormous outpouring of sympathy and good will toward America from all over the world. A new president, one most of us didn't have much confidence in, started his term with more worldwide support than
America has ever enjoyed.
Ever.
That president squandered it all over the next few years, but that wasn't our fault. The attacks made us look vulnerable but also armored us with good wishes. Maybe that day helped define our allies and our enemies in a way the Inner Circle wanted, too. I'm not sure about that part. But it accomplished what they wanted.”

Arden was shaking her head. “We would never—”

Jack grabbed her arms. He talked more urgently then he ever had in his life. It was as if Arden were his own doubts made into another person. If he could convince her he could convince himself.

“No,
we
wouldn't. But I believe this other faction, this rogue component of the Circle would. Imagine it, Arden. You give people behind-the-scenes power for generations. Isn't someone bound to misuse it some time?”

She had calmed down. Her eyes tracked back and forth across the tabletop, then out to the street. Their movement slowed as her mind speeded up. Jack could see it happen, could feel her thinking as if her skin temperature had risen. Her mind explored tangents, then finally returned to him as her eyes rested on his. A smaller but more personal version of her horrified expression also returned.

“Does this mean you think they killed Madeline?”

Jack sighed. “I hope so.”

Because the alternative was that his lost love had been one of the bad guys, and had been trying to recruit him as one of them.

Later they walked into the newer part of Prague. The modern office buildings and occasional McDonald's were much less eye-pleasing than Lesser Town, but also less sinister. Here the streets didn't seem to seethe with plotting. Jack wished he could go back to last night's cafe and talk to his old friend Stevie again. It had been years since he could do that. But he couldn't now. Make minimal contact, get the ball rolling, move on. That was the plan now, just as it had been for years. When he'd first suspected the existence of the Inner Circle, there'd been no one he could trust
except a hardcore group of his old friends, ones he'd known since childhood. Each of them had had people they could trust too. Jack didn't, outside his own family, which was in no way part of his adult life. Now he had trusted Arden, or at least acted as if he had.

She asked, “So do you think this rogue faction as you called them launched these latest attacks against America?” She said the name of her country the same way she'd say England or Italy, like an interesting foreign place. Or maybe that was Jack's imagination.

“No,” he said. “I could be wrong, but I don't think so. I think this took all of us by surprise. This is something new. I don't know the source of it yet. It may have been something the Inner Circle unwittingly set in motion. I don't know.”

“And the attacks on you? The fake Jack-sightings around the world?”

“Now those I believe
are
the work of our old friends the Inner Circle. I guess they've discovered I suspect their existence. Or maybe they just wanted an excuse for the Chair to get rid of me.”

Arden stopped abruptly. “You think Granny is one of them?” She wasn't looking at him.

Jack looked at her, though. She looked like a young woman startled by a terrible idea.

Jack shrugged. “I don't know. I certainly hope not. We're all in deep trouble if she's
their
leader too. But if she's not, and she's so smart, why hasn't she suspected this? Why am I the only one of us who's caught a glimmer of this?”

“Maybe you're not. Have you talked to anyone else about this? Any of the group?”

“No,” Jack said. He didn't include his tiny group of old friends, whom he trusted implicitly. “How can I? Anyone I'd tell might be one of them. Even the Mortensons. Anyone I might tell might be part of the Inner Circle, and that would be the end of me.”

Arden cocked an eyebrow at him. He understood. Yes. There might be others in the Circle who shared his suspicions, but none of them could afford to share them
with
anyone. Anyone who
suspected the existence of this Inner Circle was isolated, trapped within himself by his own suspicions.

That was why it had been such a relief to tell Arden now. Jack felt the rush of relief through his system, relaxing him, almost making him sleepy. At that moment he didn't care if Arden's secret confederates stepped out of hiding and captured him. It felt so good to have let his great suspicion escape. It was no longer trapped within his own mind, banging back and forth against the walls of his brain.

“Do you suspect anyone in particular?”

Jack shook his head, then shrugged. “Craig Mortenson? Look how efficiently he brought down the Soviet Union. But mostly non-violently, I know. Alicia, then? Maybe they're not so joined at the cerebral cortex as everyone thinks. Maybe she guides him, a lot more subtly than he guides world events.”

“I love the Mortensons!”

“So do I. Do you think evil people look monstrous? Or act it? They don't even think of themselves as evil. They just think they're doing what's necessary. From that angle, who's not a suspect?
I
suspect the only woman I've ever loved! How about Professor Trimble? He always seems to be at conferences all over the world instead of teaching. My old mentor Janice Gentry? She's been in some key locations, let me tell you. Then there's…”

Jack trailed off, but Arden knew exactly whom he meant. “Granny? You think so? Wouldn't the leader of this secret group try to stay out of the limelight within the Circle? She wouldn't put herself forward as Chair, would she?”