The Glory Hand (5 page)

But her mother wasn't listening to the music. She was halfway across the reviewing stand, heading towards the scaffolding.

'Mother. . .' Cassie stood up, but didn't follow. Ann had to be with him, she realized, even if it meant climbing a precarious staircase, teetering dangerously close to the water.

Ann was forcing herself up the stairs of the scaffolding, both hands on the bannister, one painful step at a time - as if the limp, that vestige of the tragedy aboard the
Pandora,
had suddenly gotten much worse. She was trying to focus her eyes straight ahead, perhaps to avoid looking down through the wide spaces between the steps, but as if against her will, her eyes were drawn to the water. The sight seemed to afflict her; she stopped and rubbed her leg as if it smarted with pain.

Cassie ran towards her.

The steps were slippery with ocean spray, and the flimsy scaffolding swayed in the wind. Cassie wished she hadn't worn Robin's high-heeled sandals that wobbled beneath her, or the skimpy dress that was whipping above her knees. A hundred feet below, water frothed, the poisonous amber of gasoline, and the hiss of blow-torches, the whine of blades sawing through armor plate in the dry docks threatened to throw her off balance. Yet she reached out to her mother, grabbed her hand.

The wind flailed Cassie's hair against her cheeks, shook the planking beneath her feet, but escorting Ann onto the platform, she felt a surge of exhilaration - her mother had needed her and she had helped, and the relief on her father's face told how much he appreciated what she had done.

Close up, the submarine seemed even more enormous, more awesome, than it had from the reviewing stand. A bottle of Moet & Chandon dangled by a satin ribbon from its prow, puny beside the wall of steel. The Admiral shook hands with Cassie's father for the benefit of the cameras below, then picked up the bottle. A drumroll and a fanfare of trumpets echoed off the hull of the submarine as the Admiral turned and held out the champagne.

'Mrs Broyles, we are delighted that you could be with us to do the honors.'

Ann said nothing. She stood, wooden, at Clay's side, as if after all it had taken to reach him, she had no intention of moving.

The Admiral leaned closer to give her the bottle, but her hands were limp her eyes looking right through him. She was staring out at the sea, seemingly hypnotized by the shattered rainbows floating on the oil-slick waves.

Take the bottle.

Cassie tried to focus her mind, to concentrate hard enough to make her mother read her thoughts:
Take it.

Her father cleared his throat, and Cassie's skin beaded with sweat under the gaze of the TV cameras, the eyes of the crowd.

Everybody's watching.

She was sure she could hear cruel whispers from the audience: gossip of a drinking problem . . . rumors of a candidate's wife cracking from the strain . . .

Take it. They're watching.

'Mrs Broyles?' The Admiral licked his lips and glanced nervously at the Senator.

Impulsively, Cassie snatched the champagne out of the Admiral's hand, the bottle so cold and wet it almost slipped from her grasp. Ann didn't seem to notice, but Cassie sensed a flicker of gratitude on her father's face. He smiled down at the audience, as if this had been the plan all along.

What have I done?

The bottle wavered in Cassie's hands. She stepped towards the submarine, too nervous to summon up the smile she knew was expected of her.

What do I do now?

The wind whipped her sundress above her knees, and she felt the urge to drop the champagne and run down the steps. She glanced behind her: her mother's lips had set into a drunken smile that was even more disturbing that the dull stare. And her father - he was nodding to Cassie, urging her forward.

She stepped to the edge of the platform. A dozen feet away, across a watery chasm, the hull of the submarine glinted dully in the sun. The crowd hushed, and she weighed the bottle in her hand she found herself raising her chin, straightening her back, her feet moving instinctively to the third ballet position. For one fragmented moment she was performing a role in a ballet before an audience, and this time, as the band struck up 'Anchors Aweigh,' it was the New York Philharmonic, playing Tchaikovsky. Her mother would have been proud of her poise, she thought -if only she had been watching.

Cassie pulled back the bottle, took aim at the seam of rivets that stitched a scar up the prow. Then she rose up on her toes and hurled the bottle in what she hoped would be a bold, yet graceful movement.

The bottle seemed to hover in the air, and she held her breath, fearing she hadn't thrown it with enough force. Then it shattered against the hull in an explosion of foam.

With a whine, pneumatic sledges thrust the submarine backwards, down the launching ramp. The platform shuddered underfoot and Cassie struggled to keep her balance as the hull slammed into the water. In her exhilaration, the spray that drenched her tasted like champagne.

The band must have started playing, for she could see the drummer's arms flailing, the trumpeter's cheeks bulging as he pressed his instrument to his lips. But all she could hear was the din of the submarine's twin turbines rumbling to life. Red, white and blue balloons exploded in the sky, along with a blizzard of confetti. Beaming, she turned to the crowd, expecting applause for her performance.

But no one - no
one -
was clapping. They were gaping at the other end of the platform.

She whirled around: the pride was gone from her father's face, replaced by . . . She didn't recognize the emotion because she had never seen it there before.

Oh, God.

Anointing her mother's forehead, like a Hindu holy mark, was a single red droplet.

Wo!'

Ann's knees were buckling, but with a twitch of recognition, she reached out. Cassie lunged for her, clutched her hand and held on, even when the sharp, pointed fingers of her mother's ring cut into her palm, even when she felt her hand sticky with blood from where the ring had pierced her skin.

The wake of the submarine churning across the harbor slammed against the scaffolding, and Cassie slipped. The sea wind was pulling her mother away from her, wrenching her out of her grasp. The jewel on her forehead, which at first had been so precise, was trickling over the bridge of her nose, down her cheek, a red tear. With a vicious gust, the wind threw Ann against the railings of the scaffolding and it broke with a sickening snap.

'Mother!'

Slowly (
Don't let her
go!), slowly
(Wait\),
her mother's grasp loosened in Cassie's until the pain from the ring ceased. Ann's eyes turned the green of the sea.

Don't leave me\

At first Ann's body soared out over the water, drifting in an upcurrent of wind, like a gull.

Then she fell straight down.

Cassie lunged into thin air. First her left foot, then her right, stepped free of the platform, stepped into the void to follow her.

Something hit her in the chest hard, wrenching the breath out of her. When she opened her eyes, burly arms clutched her. Runt had grabbed her, dragged her back onto the scaffolding. But instead of gratitude, she felt rage, fury at him for not letting her reach out to her mother, to save her.

Or join her.

'Let me go!'

She fought to tear free of Runt's grasp, her eyes frantically searching the water for some trace of her mother. The froth shimmered with the flare of the blowtorches in the dry docks, waves that swirled and writhed and ate each other, a cauldron of luminous green.

'Let me go!'

Runt pinned Cassie's arm and carried her across the platform, rushing her down the stairs, holding her as brutally as if
she
were the murderer, and suddenly the fear gripped her:
They've killed Dad, too . . .

'Daddy!' She strained to pick him out in the blur of uniforms on the reviewing stand below.

'Cassie!'

The unruly mop of red hair, the rumpled tweed coat - he was flailing out with his fists, trying to fight his way over to her. But it was no use: he was swept away by military police and hustled into a helicopter.

'Daddy!'
the hatch slammed shut, and the rotor blades roared to life, strangling her cries as the helicopter lifted into the sky.

Cassie kicked her legs, beat her fists against Runt's chest as he dragged her off the reviewing stand and carried her across the concrete breakwater. The audience was fleeing too, their folding chairs scattered across the ground like broken toys. They didn't care what had happened to her mother; they were running in sheer terror, and she hated them for that.

Another helicopter touched down and Runt threw Cassie inside, then jumped in beside her. The pilot pulled up on the stick, nosing the helicopter into a steep turn that sent her falling back into her seat.

Over the din of the rotor blades, the radio crackled from the cockpit: '
They've recovered the body . . . wound inflicted by .. . it's hard to tell. . . maybe a small caliber . . .'

The pilot interrupted: 'Whatever it was that got her, I'll lay odds it had the Senator's name on it . . .'

Cassie pressed her hands to her ears: as long as she blocked it out, she could convince herself that it wasn't true, that nothing had happened. She tried desperately to recall her mother's face, to breathe it back to life in her mind:
the gray, almond-shaped eyes, the graceful neck, the high cheekbones of a dancer.
She buried her face in her hands and tasted blood from the cut the silver ring had made in her palm.

The blood . . .
The single droplet on her mother's forehead dissolved the tranquil vision of the face in Cassie's mind. Her thoughts churned like the water beyond the window as the helicopter gained altitude, her emotions tearing at each other, clashing like gulf-stream currents: disbelief . . . fear . . . rage.

Guilt.

Tears were streaming down her cheeks, trickling into her mouth, as hot and salty as blood. Runt gripped her shoulders. 'You're going to be okay,' he mumbled in a gravelly monotone. 'You're safe now.'

'Safe?' She shaped the word with her lips, but no sound came out. Runt's square, pock-marked face showed no trace of sympathy, and his indifference sparked fury. She struck out at him with clenched fists, and he sat there without trying to stop her, as if it were part of his job, as if it were easier to take her punishment than to comfort her.

She pounded Runt's massive chest until her arms ached and her hands were sore, and even the sight of the bloodstains on his shirt from the gash on her palm didn't stop her. As she lashed out at him, she realized she was shouting for her mother, that she had been shouting her name for a long time, crying out in a little girl's wail. She collapsed into sobs and pressed her face against the glass of the helicopter window. It was as cold as a knife blade.

With an enormous effort she opened her eyes: out the window the ocean spanned the horizon. Sha closed her eyes, but the sea followed her, a night sea under a starless sky, storm clouds and wind raising tidal waves. When she cried out for her mother now, it no longer sounded like her own voice. It sounded as if it came from somewhere outside of her, somewhere far away, a voice echoing down the dumbwaiter shaft at Cliffs Edge. Like her mother's voice last night, cursing the darkness.

Her mother had been right. Cassie thought as she brushed the last of the confetti from her hair. Her mother had been right to fear the sea. It was there that the danger lay. She stared out of the window, gazing down at the black and fathomless deep, fascinated and repelled by its lethal magnetism.

And for the first time she, too, felt the Chill.

Chapter 4

EXCERPT FROM THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD: Proceedings of the Joint Select Committee on Assassination. May 12, 2:38 p.m.

Representative Stennis O'Conner of Alabama, Chairman, and Senator Clayburn Broyles, senior committee member, receiving testimony from Seymour Hutton, PhD, Chief of Ballistics, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

REP. O'CONNER: . . . and you have examined the

body of the victim, Dr Hutton?

DR HUTTON: Yes sir, I have.

REP. O'CONNER: When and where did the examin-

tion take place?

DR HUTTON: In the morgue at the Woods Hole Naval Hospital, approximately three hours after the time of death.

SEN. BROYLES: Please explain your findings to the committee.

DR HUTTON: Well, as the report you have before you indicates -

SEN. BROYLES: The report doesn't indicate a damn thing.

REP. O'CONNER: Senator Broyles! DR HUTTON: As the report concludes on page eighty-six, our findings were - inconclusive. SEN. BROYLES: Were the findings inconclusive, or was the staff who assembled them incompetent? The Bureau has spent over a month and God knows how much of the taxpayers' money!

REP. O'CONNER: Senator, please. We know you have

no intention of personally accusing -

DR HUTTON: No, it's all right. It's understandable -