White Mountain (25 page)

“More later.”

“My God,” David said, and turned off the TV.
 
“What has Samuel done?”

The others looked as horrified as he did.
 
Never in all their years of working together had they crossed that kind of a line.

“Did you know?” Jasper asked.

David gasped in dismay.
 
“No!
 
Of course not.
 
Did you?”

The others denied knowledge, as well, leaving them to ponder the lengths with which Samuel Abbott had been willing to go to see his work come to fruition.

“What do you think we should do?” David asked.

“We can’t give them back,” Rufus said.
 
“We’d have to explain how we got them, which would lead to why, and, well…you know.”

“Did you catch the monk’s name?” John asked.

David frowned. “Yes.
 
Why?”

“Do you remember the Silvia woman?”

David nodded.
 
“I’m not likely to forget.”

“The name they plan to give their baby if it’s a boy…didn’t the husband say they were going to name him Bartholomew, after his grandfather?”

“Yes.
 
So?”

“The bones.
 
They belonged to a monk named St. Bartholomew.”

There was a moment of shock, followed by a buzz of voices.

“Hush!” David said quickly.
 
The he looked at John.
 
“What are you thinking?”

“That it’s a sign to proceed.”

Even though the vote had already been taken to proceed, David sensed ambivalence within the group.

“Rufus…I can tell you’re having reservations.”

Rufus nodded, absently rubbing his paunch as he paced.

“More than one, yes, more than one.”

Thomas Mowry took off his glasses, then blew his nose.
 
“He’s not the only one,” he said, and sat down with a thump.
 
“I can’t believe we’re going to try this again—and after all these years.
 
I don’t care if this is a sign.
 
If we’ve learned anything from the other projects, it’s that they did not succeed.”

“They didn’t all fail,” David said.

They looked at each other, then nodded.

“That one was different,” Jasper said.

Thomas shook his head.
 
“That’s the point.
 
The one successful implant was different, but we don’t know why.”

“Samuel said—“

“Samuel is dead,” Thomas said shortly.
 
“And so is Frank.
 
I think nature is trying to tell us something here, but we’re not listening.
 
We have had only on success out of twenty projects.
 
That is not good odds.”

“But Samuel said he had perfected the process, remember?”

Thomas slapped his hand on his knee.
 
“How many times must this be said?
 
Samuel is not here.
 
Do you know enough about what he was doing to replicate it?”

David nodded.
 
“Yes…and we have already found the perfect woman.
 
The woman John referred to before.”

Jasper and Thomas looked startled.
 
“But how—“

“It was fate,” David said.
 
“Ask John and Rufus.”

The pair of men looked at each other and then turned to the others.

“It’s true,” John said.
 
“We talked to her only a short while ago.
 
She has an appointment with David at three o’clock this afternoon.
 
If she’s physically able to carry a child, then I say, yes.”

Rufus nodded in agreement, then leaned forward and lowered his voice.

:She has promised her child to God.”

Jasper frowned.
 
“She what?”

“She says she prayed to God to five her a child, and in payment, she will raise the child to live its life in the service of God’s teachings…sort of like the disciples.”

“Is she nuts?” Thomas asked.

David smile.
 
“No.
 
Just determined.”

They sat, absorbing the news and weighing the obstacles.
 
Rufus got to his feet and stared at the wooden box on the floor, weighing what he knew it contained against what they’d been told.
 
Finally he turned to the others.

“If we’re going to make this work, we need to get busy.
 
John, you get one end of that box, and, Jasper, you get the other.
 
And be careful with the contents.
 
We don’t have much to work with.”

David locked his door from inside, putting on the safety chain as well as a dead bolt, then gathered up an armload of lab coats and led the way into his bedroom.
 
He opened the door to the walk-in closet, shoved aside a large stack of sweaters and pressed down on the shelf.
 
Instantly a large panel of wood separated itself from the closet and slid inward into a pocket in the wall.

“After you,” he said quietly.

Then, one after the other, the men stepped into the opening.
 
David was the last to enter, pressing another switch as he did.
 
The wall slid back into place, and the hidden elevator car in which they were standing began a near-silent descent.
 
Moments later, it stopped.
 
The door opened, and the five men walked out into a tunnel and headed toward a phalanx of battery-powered carts lined up against the wall.

They got in without comment, two to a cart, with David taking the lead cart alone.
 
With a turn of the key, he drove forward, guided by recessed lights in the ceiling and the familiarity of having come this way before.
 
The others followed, silent now, as they traversed the tunnel, their thoughts on the task ahead.

Their journey ended a mile from the elevator, deep within the bowels of White Mountain.
 
They got out of the carts and proceeded to a massive steel door.
 
There were no windows or knobs through which to gain access.
 
Only a small black box with a keypad of numbers that had been mounted on the wall.
 
David punched in the access code, and immediately the door swing inward.
 
As it did, the room was illuminated, light spreading from an array of fluorescent fixtures suspended from the ceiling.

The stood for a moment, eyeing the different lab station they had long ago created, as well as the state-of-the-art equipment on gleaming, stainless steel tables.

David was the first to move.
 
He hit a power switch that turned on all the computerized equipment then handed each of the men a lab coat.

“You know what to do,” he said.
 
“I’ll be back later, after I’ve met with Maria Silvia.”

“What if she—“

“It’s too late for what-ifs,” David said.
 
“Just get started.
 
Something tells me we’re running out of time, and in more ways than one.”

When he left, the others were bent over a lab table, watching Rufus removing two ancient bones from the oblong wooden box.
 
David shut the door behind him and then took a cart back to the hotel.
 
He didn’t want to be late for his appointment with Maria.

It was eighteen minutes after three in the afternoon when Jack reached what amounted to a small plateau on the valley side of White Mountain.
 
He’d been hiking for the better part of five hours and still hadn’t come across anything that would convince him the man he was looking for had been hiding in the hills.
 
Added to that, the altitude was killing him.
 
His heart was pounding, and his vision kept going in and out of focus.
 
No matter how badly he wanted to continue, this was obviously as high as he could go.
 
Cursing himself for not thinking to pack a portable bottle of oxygen, he sat down on a boulder, shrugged off his backpack and lowered his head between his knees.

Slowly his heart rate regulated itself and his vision steadied.
 
As he sat, he heard a shrill cry from high above him in the sky.
 
He looked up to see and eagle circling.
 
He watched the great bird’s wings fan in perfect symmetry, catching the air currents, then riding them higher and higher.

“So I’m not the only one out hunting today,” he said, then picked up his backpack and pulled out a bottle of water.

He drank long and heartily, then set it aside, popped a few nuts in his mouth and began to chew.
 
Slowly his equilibrium began to return.
 
Satisfied that he was ready to start down, he repacked his things and shouldered his pack.
 
He started to retrace his steps and then stopped.
 
He’d come this far without finding anything.
 
It seemed a waste of time to go back the way he’d come, knowing full well there was nothing there that would help his case.
 
He pulled out the map of the hiking trails that Isabella had given him and calculated his approximate location.
 
At that point he realized if he went a quarter of a mile east he would cross the other trail that she’d marked.
 
Even if his hunch had been wrong in thinking the killer had taken to the woods, at least he would see new territory on the way down.

Checking his compass, he aligned himself in the correct direction and started walking.
 
Within thirty minutes he had found the other marked hiking trail and started down, guessing that he would arrive back at the hotel just before dark.

About an hour later he stopped to take a drink, and as he did, he realized that he could see the roof of the hotel from where stood.
 
Curious, he took out his binoculars, adjusted them to his sight and began to scan the area.
 
Within a couple of minutes he saw a tiny figure emerge from a shed and knew it must be the gardener, Victor Ross.
 
Frowning, he watched until the man had gone into the back of the hotel, then replaced the binoculars in his pack and resumed his trek.

Later, he would think back, knowing that if his shoelace hadn’t come untied, he never would have seen the small bit of shiny metal half-hidden in the leaves.
 
Curious, he brushed aside the debris and found a small pocketknife, similar in style to what was commonly referred to as a Swiss Army knife.
 
There was a multitude of small blades suited for different purposes, even one that served dual duty as a can opener and a screwdriver.
 
It wasn’t until he began closing the blades that he noticed an odd, unfamiliar mark.
 
He tilted the knife sideways for a better view, and within seconds his head came up and he pivoted sharply.
 
He neither saw nor heard anything that would lead him to believe he was being watched, but that didn’t settle his thoughts.
 
The knife that he’d found wasn’t remarkable, but the manufacturer certainly was.
 
It was Russian made, and the likelihood that the knife had been lost by someone other than the man he was looking for was nil.
 
Jack Dolan wasn’t a gambler, and he didn’t like the odds.
 
Finding this knife changed everything.
 
A possibility had just turned into a probability, which meant he needed to contact Washington at once.

He pulled out his cell phone, but to his disgust no signal was available.
 
Anxious to notify the director of what he’d found, he started down White Mountain in haste, mentally sifting through everything he knew so far, which wasn’t much.

As he came out from beneath a canopy of trees a large bird flew across his line of vision in a steep, unyielding dive.
 
He didn’t know what it was, but from the speed and the size, it looked like a falcon.
 
Knowing their propensity for hunting, he could only pity whatever target the falcon had fixed upon.

He glanced at his watch.
 
It was almost five o’clock.
 
In an hour or so, it would be dark.
 
Not wanting to be caught on White Mountain at nightfall, he lengthened his stride.

To his left, he saw a blur of feathers and realized the falcon had caught its prey.
 
Within seconds of the thought, a memory surfaced and his heart skipped a beat.

“Hawk!
 
Not a falcon—a Hawk.
 
Oh God…that was what he’d been trying to remember ever since he’d seen Victor Ross.

Back in the sixties, there had been a famous Soviet spy known only as Hawk.
 
He had been relentless and personally responsible for the deaths of many, including ten American agents during a government cleansing.
 
To this day, it was a mystery as to how he’d learned their names.
 
There had been only one known photograph of him, taken at an airport in France.
 
The image had been faint and grainy, but the Slavic bone structure of his face had been as remarkable and unique as a fingerprint.