I COME TO WITH A DRIP IN MY ARM, WIRED TO A MONITOR. MY left side is on fire. A nurse orders me to lie still. Time passes. Doctors come and go. I fall asleep again and wake up sometime later. My eyes adjust to my surroundings.
Dimly, I become aware of a shape at the end of the bed.
Reuben.
‘Josh …’
‘Where am I?’
‘Bethesda. Navy Med.’
He tells me it’s five days since the crash at Catoctin Furnace. Everything hurts, but I still feel myself smile at the crazy irony of the name of the location south of Thurmont where the V-22 came down.
I’ve been in an induced coma for part of the time to reduce swelling from the heavy concussion caused by the blow to my head.
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center – ‘Navy Med’ – is a stone’s throw from my old stomping ground. From my bed, I can see the trees bordering the USU campus.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Like I survived a crash.’ My hand moves up to my head. ‘How’s Hetta?’
‘Amazing, considering what you’ve both been through.’
‘How long you been here?’ I ask him.
He looks at his watch. ‘I don’t know. An hour or so.’
‘Mr Kantner has visited every day since you came in,’ the nurse says, as she leans over to check the tube from my drip is securely taped to my arm. She then leaves to go get a doctor.
‘The President—’
‘Don’t go there, Josh.’
‘I need to know he’s OK.’
‘He’s OK,’ Reuben says levelly.
‘What happened in the meeting?’
‘It never happened.’
‘Because of the crash?’
He nods.
‘Reuben …’ I pull myself up the bed. ‘There are some things you and Thompson need to know.’ I focus with great difficulty on my discussion with Offutt. ‘About Jerusalem.’
He holds up his right hand, cups his left hand around his ear and gestures with his eyes to the four corners of the room.
‘We talk later,’ he says. ‘You need to rest.’
I shake my head and wish I hadn’t. ‘I need to get back to work.’
‘No, Josh.’ He holds out an envelope. ‘You don’t.’
I study him for a moment, then take the envelope and open it. Inside is a single sheet of Oval Office headed paper.
I force my eyes to focus. Thompson’s handwriting is distinctive. ‘Josh, I am so very sorry for what happened. Please know that Jen, the kids and I are all praying for your continued recovery.
‘We are so grateful for all the service you have so selflessly provided …’
I put it down. Reuben is on his feet, staring out the window.
‘Is Hetta relieved of her duties too?’
‘That’s not the way it’s being classified,’ he says.
‘Oh?’
‘You – she and you – need time to recuperate.’
‘And then?’
‘You’ll be free to do whatever you want. You can go back to your patients. She’ll be assigned to other duties, if that’s what she wants.’
‘Was that the deal?’
He looks at me. ‘Deal?’
‘With the people you gathered in Aspen Lodge?’
‘Christ’s sake, Josh. You almost died. Every doctor I’ve spoken to says it’s a miracle that you and Hart came through. A few days’ time, you’ll be back on your feet. In a week, she will.’ He pauses. ‘Please, use the time to get some help.’
‘Help?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘The past two days, in your sleep, since they brought you out of the coma, you’ve been doing nothing except talk about Hope. As your friend, I am begging you, Josh. Rest. For as long as you need.’
He takes a breath.
‘Actually, this isn’t a request. It’s an order.’
‘Miracle’ is a word I’ve heard a lot over the past forty-eight hours. I have shooting pains along my left side that baffle my physicians, as they correspond to the damage I sustained in the crash that killed Hope. My left leg, when I walk on it, is painful, even though the radiologists tell me that nothing is showing up on any scans – beyond the fractures that healed all those years ago.
Hetta and I speak on the phone, but exchange nothing more than our war wounds. She has a mild concussion, a dislocated shoulder, cracked ribs and a badly bruised ankle. I have not yet been able to see her in person, in part because I’ve been told by the doctors to move as little as possible, but mainly because there are federal agents posted at our doors. Officially, they’re to keep the media out. Hetta and I are big news. But I can’t escape the feeling they’re really to keep her and me at a distance.
DJ’s raincoat is draped over his right arm. In his left, he’s holding flowers. ‘She says hello.’ He does his best to give me a smile.
‘How’s she holding up?’
‘Pissed, since you ask.’
‘She knows, then?’
‘Yes. SAIC Graham came to see her this morning.’
‘What’s with the flowers?’
‘I forgot she has allergies.’
He drops the stems into a jug of water at the foot of my bed.
‘You probably heard that I’ve been pulled off the church shooting investigation,’ he says after several beats.
I hadn’t.
Gapes’s security classification means the case has been handed to a special prosecutor in the Department of Defense. ‘Where, as we both know, it’ll get snuffed out like it never happened.’ He looks at me meaningfully.
‘Who’s the investigating authority for the crash?’
‘The V-22 is a Marine Corps asset. Where there’s the remotest suspicion of sabotage, unlawful death, a national security breach or terrorism,’ he says, ‘the Bureau is normally involved. Not this time. The Navy’s been given the investigating mandate.’ He pauses. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘You, me, Hart – we all got screwed.’
He heads for the door, stops, turns and hands me a piece of paper. ‘Almost forgot. Doctor gave me this.’
I unfold it.
When I raise my eyes and draw breath he has a finger pressed to his lips.
The note is on the letterhead of the consultant who has been overseeing my recovery, but the writing, in black felt pen, isn’t his.
It has an angular, familiar look.
Consulting Room. Third Floor. Now.
Hetta stands in the shadows to the left of the window. She’s in mufti: faded denims, a white hoodie. Her right leg is encased in a ski boot; her crutches are on the table. DJ is outside, pretending to make a call.
The room looks like it hasn’t been used for consulting in a while.
‘How are you doing?’
‘OK,’ I lie.
‘You see the news?’
I shake my head. ‘No.’
‘Your phone switched off?’
‘I left it in my room. What is this?’
‘Before the crash, while you were with Offutt and Professor van Buren, Wharton met me at Anacostia–Bolling. I told him that I needed two things. Everything that the Bureau had on Ilitch and everything SAIC Lefortz ever told him about the President’s probe. Lefortz never told DJ what it was about, but, at Lefortz’s request, DJ told him a bunch of stuff from way back that Justice, Treasury and the FBI had been doing to help the Ukrainian Government.’
‘Listen, Hetta—’
‘That’s all I know. But it tells me the President has an interest in this that he hasn’t communicated to the rest of us, and that this is what SAIC Lefortz was digging into when he was killed.’
‘Hetta—’
‘Thompson is going to Jerusalem, Josh. He announced it two nights ago in the State of the Union.’
‘I don’t want to know.’
‘He’s dropped the Moscow summit and pulled forward the conference to next month. Next month. What the fuck is wrong with you?’
‘What is wrong with me is that by rights we should be dead.’
‘But we’re not.’
‘The doctors are saying it’s a miracle.’
‘Not the word I’d use, but—’
‘Hetta, this is all academic. Reuben’s told me, and Graham’s told you. We’re off this case. And it’ll be seriously detrimental to your health and mine if they think for a moment that you’re still—’
She cuts me off again. ‘Ilitch is half Ukrainian on his mother’s side, Volga Tatar on his father’s. The Tatars are a Russian Muslim people, Josh. Ilitch’s father, a Muslim, was some kind of Soviet-era racketeer. There is a big Russian connection to all of this: Ilitch, the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, the number fifteen.’
She pauses. ‘In the late nineties, two Ukrainian weapons scientists were arrested for trying to smuggle nuclear material to Al-Qaeda. It was a sting. The FBI was involved in it. I asked DJ to look through the files. It was a part of the joint Justice–Treasury–FBI investigation. Among the materials that Al-Qaeda was trying to buy was something called a ballotechnic.’
She pauses to see if this registers with me.
‘The thing on the wall of the cabin was part of a consignment of nuclear materials destined for an Islamic terror group more than twenty years ago. We’ve got to go see the guy.’
‘What guy?’
‘The guy who knows about this stuff. His name’s Nils Bogarten. He works for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.’
‘Hetta, nobody was meant to survive what we just survived. The people who brought our V-22 down aren’t going to stop until they have taken care of the problem. And you and me are the problem. We’re not going anywhere, you hear?’
It’s useless trying to argue with her. She doesn’t get it.
I tell her to wait two minutes before leaving the room.
Outside, I speak to DJ. If you care about her, I tell him, you’ll get it into that thick, obsessive, OCD skull of hers that our every move is being watched and if we so much as look as if we’re on the case—
He places a hand on my shoulder. ‘Colonel – Josh – I already took care of it.’
She has a brother, he says. A brother who’s a cop.
‘Mikey.’
DJ knows Mikey. Mikey is a good guy.
Their plan is to drive Hetta up to Philadelphia tomorrow. Mikey is taking some leave. He won’t let her out of his sight until she’s better.
‘And you?’ he says. ‘You look like you could use a little.’
‘A little?’
‘Time out from all this.’
I tell him I took the precaution of booking myself into a clinic – an out-of-the-way place four hours from D.C. on Delaware Bay, overlooking the Atlantic. I just about manage a smile.
‘What?’ he says.
‘I helped to set it up.’
DJ ponders this irony for a moment before telling me he’ll drive me there personally. After he’s dropped Hetta with Mikey.