Dawn became morning and Mayson could see that the brutal winter had frozen the wilderness outside. Nothing moved or made a sound, except the occasional wind gusts and the groaning trucks at Lacey’s below the ridge.
Yet the quiet hadn’t lulled her into a false security. Neither had the news reports, which put them somewhere in a tri-state region that included Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota. Not a minute passed that she didn’t expect the sky to thunder with choppers. It would happen sooner or later. It was just a matter of time.
Tyler slept like a rock one minute and squirmed the next, as if comfort was a place that couldn’t be found. He should be recovering, but he wasn’t — an observation she kept to herself.
Twice, she’d gone to the inn for supplies and to catch the latest news. It was an arduous trip on her crutches. Yet when he woke, she was always there with the next Tylenol dose and hot soup. Although his vomiting had decreased, his fever and weakness remained, a reality that increased both his frustration and her concern.
Her leg’s new ache was another unspoken concern. Dr. Stanley had said she’d need weekly evaluation, but that was impossible under the circumstances. Then why tell Tyler, if there was nothing he could do?
Stirring, he shivered despite his feverish sheen. “Why is it... so cold?”
Hopping to the bathroom, she returned with a damp cloth to wipe his face and chest. Then drawing the covers around him, she pressed her hand to his forehead. Was it her imagination, or was he getting warmer?
“We need a plan,” he said.
“Hush. There’s nothing to plan except getting you well.”
“But we should be more prepared than we were in... Tennessee.”
“And how do you prepare for a raid, except to be gone when it occurs? Besides, the news gives us a three-state cushion.”
“Cushion, hell!” he grumbled. “A damn cage, since Wisconsin is one of the states.”
“So what do you plan to do? Swim Lake Superior with a raging fever? Or hike across the snow-covered wilderness? No, I’ll tell you what you’re going to do: take your medicine, eat a banana and go back to sleep!”
And he did, much too easily. Putting a fresh log on, she crawled back to wait for the first threatening crack in the quiet wilderness, pray it didn’t come and, in lapses of helplessness, surrender to exhaustion.
The gray afternoon deepened, then drifted into darkness. He woke again, his eyes heavier, his moans weaker. Along with the Tylenol, she gave him antibiotics that she’d found on her last trip to the inn, then fed him hot soup and bathed his clammy skin. Would his fever ever break?
“It’s taken weeks in the wilderness to find out what a big baby you are,” she teased, resettling his head in her lap. “Now go back to sleep, and when...” Her stroking finger stopped on the ridge of his jaw as she realized he’d already slipped off.
The scene was familiar: bikini-clad Kara strolling along the shore, her golden braid swaying, eyes peeled for colored glass. Only this part didn’t make sense: instead of the bucket, he lugged the tree house jar containing her entire collection.
“Kara, it’s too heavy!” he shouted.
Not until he reached her did she finally turn, her stony expression unlike any he’d ever seen, “Didn’t you hear me? The jar...” Dumbfounded, he watched her start off again. “Kara, come back!” But she refused, forcing him to shout over the breeze, “Kara! Kara...!”
Waking to Mayson’s pained eyes, he knew instantly that Kara’s ghost had slipped out again.
“You’re shivering like crazy,” she said.
Crawling from the bed, she put another log on, then retrieved the damp cloth, water and medicines. Administering the medicine, she settled his head in her lap and drew the covers up again. Still, his teeth chattered in a hopeless struggle for warmth.
Had Kara ever seen him like this? Washed the spittle from his face? Given him medicine or held him as he slept? No. Kara hadn’t done these things — which made her unworthy of him. But wasn’t the question not Kara’s worthiness, but Mayson’s own? “Tyler, is there an us? If so, could you define it?”
“Best... friends,” his teeth chattered.
“That’s it?”
“It’s a lot... don’t you think?”
She sighed. “I don’t mean to pry.”
“Of course... you do.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have to if you’d express yourself more clearly — and honor your part of the bargain. I’ve confessed two chapters of my life, and you haven’t shared the first word of yours. Personally, I think you’re blocking out what you don’t want to confront. You need to deal with your feelings.”
“And you need to... quit asking so many goddamned questions.”
Her cheeks reddened. She’d crossed the line, and he’d shoved her back. But he was sick. And hadn’t she once drawn the line even farther back? “What would you rather talk about?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just tired of feeling green. Or gray.”
“At least you’ve changed colors. Maybe pink will be next.”
“I’m sorry for snapping,” he apologized. “You can ask questions. Just not so damn many.”
“You mean, just not the ones you’d rather avoid.”
He soon slipped back into a feverish sleep, and her eyes closed, too, with a prayer: if you dream of her again, please don’t let me know.
Again he woke to the chilling darkness, with his clammy skin stuck to the sheets. Every joint in his body ached. Exhausted, he tried to sleep again but couldn’t. Fever scorched him when the covers were up, and chilled him when they were down. Infuriated, he finally threw them off and planted himself at the window.
“Tyler, what are you doing?” Mayson asked.
Skin prickling, teeth chattering, he refused to acknowledge her. “Tyler, get back in bed.”
“No.”
“Then you’ll just get sick again, and we’ll have to go through all those damn colors. Tyler.”
“All right, goddamnit,” he said, burrowing back in the covers. “Warm me up, please. I’m so cold.”
“What you are is hopeless.” Nevertheless, Mayson wrapped herself around him to share her warmth and whatever else he needed. Would the list one day include her?
“If I could just... sleep,” his teeth chattered.
“You will.” She cradled him. “Now just lie still.”
“Tell me something. Chapter Three, for example.”
“It’s no prettier than One and Two.” She stroked his face.
“All the more reason I should hear it.”
“Don’t say you weren’t warned,” she began. “Let’s see... I was in my second year at Columbia, and working the library’s graveyard shift. One night I came home and Mama wasn’t there. She’d just started a job on the waterfront making ship furniture - hard work for a woman, but she didn’t complain. It took several calls to discover that she’d fallen from some scaffolding and was in the hospital. According to her crewmates, she was lucky to have escaped with no more than a back injury.
“After her release, she returned to work, against Dr. Hoffman’s orders, because she was afraid of losing her job. No one told her she could file for workmen’s compensation — at least not until Stephen looked into it.”
“Is this Chapter Four: Stephen?”
“The same.” She smiled over a man whose memory had once made her skin crawl. “Stephen took Mama to a lawyer and had the claim filed. It didn’t take long for Dr. Hoffman to change his diagnosis. Now we learned Mama had arthritis, a degenerative process that had begun long before her fall, which although traumatic, was unrelated to her back condition. Without medical evidence, her claim was denied, and we were left with enormous medical bills. And worse, without her wages, since her condition kept her from returning to the heavy factory work.
“Once again Stephen came through, helping us get welfare and Social Security. He was there when we needed him. I assumed he always would be.
“Mama’s back condition worsened, until finally she gave up, languishing in bed or on the living room sofa. The TV blared constantly, but I’m not sure she even watched. Her eyes were usually closed, a sign that she was far away. Sometimes that seemed good, other times not. But wherever her reflections took her, I’m sure Papa was nearby. Life for her stopped after he left, her existence reduced to memories. I shared my dreams, hoping that once I began my law practice and was able to take better care of her, that her mental state would improve.
“Just weeks before I moved into the Lyons, I came home one night to find her slumped in the chair, the TV blaring. It was a nightly scene, but somehow I knew this time was different, that she’d passed quietly from this world into the next. Alone. Something that should never have happened. I buried her that Sunday, taking note of those at the graveside, but also of those who weren’t.”
Tyler held her, as she cried softly. “But one person was there,” he said. “One whose love for your mother was never compromised. Who represented her greatest achievement and proved that she hadn’t lived in vain. Whatever her regrets, they were certainly overshadowed by the comfort of knowing that her life’s lasting legacy could have no greater value. One very special person who was certainly the focus of her last thoughts. You, Mayson — you preserved for her what all the others would’ve destroyed.”
Tearfully, her eyes lifted. “That’s the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
Kissing her, he enjoyed her sweet sigh, the familiar curl of her leg, her tender stroke of his neck. “Mayson, you’ve changed so much, it’s almost impossible to believe.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, for one thing, you can go minutes now without even one contentious word. You’re less suspicious of people. And you sing in the shower. Have I left anything out?”
“A lot,” she nodded. “The world looks so different. It’s as if I have new eyes. I see stars where before there was infinite black space. The days also have more color than I remember. And there are people, of all things. I see their faces — Lou, Earl, Dr. Stanley and his fidgety nurse, craggy Brother General Isaiah, taciturn Jeremiah, and the kind-hearted Halo women who took care of me. I see them all — the Halos especially. I feel sorrow over their tragedy and regret over my inability to express my gratitude and prove that the life they saved on that mountain was a worthy one. What scares me most is dying just when I’ve begun to live.”
She kissed him, reveling in the awareness that, for the moment at least, he was hers. Each moment spent with him was a life within itself, warm, happy and complete. If only they could be multiplied to include all the moments they had left. Yet weren’t they? Weren’t they destined to die together, perhaps very soon? “I have faith in God, too,” she said after a time. “Or at least the inspiration to seek it. I guess you could say that I’ve finally seen the light.”
“Harrington would be so proud,” he smiled.
“I’m afraid we don’t believe in the same God.”
“Of course not. Yours is spiritual; his is human. He sees it in the mirror every morning when he shaves.”
His head in her lap, he slept as her soft soprano drifted into the darkness, a sweet eulogy for her life’s three painful chapters that had been closed forever.
Leopold grumbled at the Marlboro pack, but finally opened it and lit the first cigarette. Smoke soon crept up the wall of another cramped motel room — this one in Windy Plains, a little Wisconsin ice hole so obscure it wasn’t even on the map.
The minutes crawled by as he puffed. Christmas was just days away. Would he be back in Houston for the special celebration? The long-awaited Renaissance? With a Christian President and a Christian court, wasn’t its dawning imminent?
Yes, the Chairman would confirm Lamp in his special holiday sermon to be viewed via satellite by millions around the world. The CMA’s Tabernacle Choir would sing in praise as he descended the pulpit to receive the children. First, he’d tell them a Christmas story, and then take each upon his saintly knee as he gave them their presents. Would he be there to share this joyous occasion, or left to watch it on TV in this cramped motel room or another one just like it?
But who said the Lord’s work should be performed in a palatial suite? Deprivations were to be expected. Hadn’t Jesus been born in a lowly manger?
Fugitive sightings had ended days ago, which meant one thing — they’d found a suitable hideaway. The chase had become a seek and find. Or rather, search and destroy. But if the strategy had changed, nothing else had. Despite the millions of dollars and man-hours invested, the fugitives remained no closer to capture than they were weeks ago.
Lighting a fresh cigarette, he limped to the window and gazed at another storm that veiled the frigid night. Did it ever stop snowing here?
For days now, Nicholas’s army had been in Snow Peak, braced for the fugitives’ arrival. But they hadn’t come. Still, they had to assume the fugitives would get as close to Snow Peak as possible. Didn’t it hold the key to their salvation? If the chest wasn’t there, it would at least hold a clue to its location. But why hadn’t it been found?
As this was being debated, a new strategy had been implemented to deal with the lengthening crisis. Nicholas had begun a systematic air and ground reconnaissance of the tri-state region, while he positioned his own men in a 100-mile ring around Snow Peak. He’d taken Windy Plains, the westernmost point, and put Frankie in Crookston to the east; George and Barber were at strategic points north and south. Hopefully, the fugitives would be grabbed crossing the line, either by his men or Nicholas’s.
Wearily, he reviewed the few facts known about the chest. Crenshaw had placed it in his sister’s custody, with instructions not to open it until he directed, or else died. By then, Doreen Markham was afflicted with Alzheimer’s and had forgotten the chest, along with everything else.
For forty years, it sat undisturbed in a Snow Peak bank vault until Doreen’s son, Dale, had finally stumbled upon it while assembling his mother’s assets. Only instead of contacting his uncle’s Florida executor, he’d called his cousin, Jasper, Jr., who — after quickly caucusing with his brother and sister — notified Mendelsohn, who was vacationing on the Outer Banks.
Mendelsohn, no doubt salivating, had flown immediately to Snow Peak. There, he’d met Markham, and the two had driven to the bank where the still-sealed chest was turned over. What happened after that remained unclear, except for the bits and pieces picked up from Markham, and records of Mendelsohn’s activities. Together, they established a confusing scenario of travel and phone calls.
After checking with forensic experts on the steps necessary to authenticate the chest, Mendelsohn had instructed his Wall Street broker to establish a confidential Swiss account for the movement of assets (meaning the payoff expected from Lamp), when they met Sunday evening. Unfortunately Lamp had sent a proxy — Leopold — with orders not to negotiate, but to bring a quick end to the negotiation.
Mendelsohn’s demise had sparked a frantic search for the chest. Post offices, banks, and storage facilities in every conceivable location had been checked, first in Mendelsohn’s name, then every Jew relative and friend. No detail of his life had been overlooked — and still the chest hadn’t been found — leaving more questions than answers.
Why had Mendelsohn checked out of his Snow Peak hotel Saturday morning, dropped his car off at the St. Paul airport and boarded a New York flight — only to get off in Chicago and head for Duluth? And why lease another car and proceed across Wisconsin, as far as Copper Harbor?
They’d traced his movements through the car rental and hotel records, gas receipts and witness accounts. They’d also checked storage facilities along his eastern route, but the effort had turned up neither the chest nor answers to his puzzling activities.
Crushing his cigarette out, Leopold grabbed the phone. “Arch, we’ve had a development,” Harrington reported. “It’s clear now the Lord is answering our prayers. Three days ago, a Great Lakes truck left Chicago with video equipment destined for northern distribution centers. In Green Bay, the driver developed this horrible flu that’s ravaging the Midwest, no doubt the same one that afflicted Corelli. This trucker, however, refused to let it throw him off schedule, and continued west on Route 51. Still, he was forced to stop frequently. Wausau, Merrill, Rhinelander, and... what’s this?” He squinted at his own scrawl. “North...”
“Northwood, sir. It’s a small town on Lake Superior.”
“Yes, that’s it. Anyway, this stubborn trucker made it to Duluth before finally collapsing on the loading dock. The warehouse crew, after getting him in an ambulance, discovered that his trailer lock had been tampered with. They also found blood-speckled vomit. So the fugitives must have been on that truck between Green Bay and Duluth.
“The plan is to seal off this area, then infiltrate it with a large reconnaissance force,” he explained. “Streeter assured me every inch of road, earth and sky will be scoured until our vermin are flushed out and taken to the closest sewage dump. You and your men should maintain your present positions. You’ll be called when the time’s right.”
It was a good plan. The distance between Duluth and Stevens Point was two hundred miles — a large chunk of ground, but not for a massive force of Feds, troopers and choppers. And there were only two primary roads, 51 and 2.
“Arch, I truly believe the Lord will answer our prayers soon. Pray for it — for this dark cloud to vanish and the harbinger skies of our Renaissance to brighten the horizon.”
“I will, sir. Any word from Capitol Hill?”
“Not a peep. If Adamley and Banyon were going public, they would’ve done so by now.”
“And Culpepper?”
“I assume he’s returning to his York estate, but he’s no longer a threat.”
“And the President’s mood?”
“Excellent. I was at the White House for dinner last night. It seems he’s interested in creating a new agency devoted to the nation’s spiritual welfare, which we feel the court will sanction. If government is permitted to protect the nation’s social and economic welfare, why not its spiritual welfare? I believe the court will see this point clearly and give us its blessing.
“But that’s just the beginning. As head of the new agency, I’ll need to put a program together that incorporates rules defining the moral conduct expected of our citizens, and also form solid partnerships with those legislators who’ve been the most sympathetic to our mission. The Lord has decreed that we reward them with important roles in our new Christian government. It’ll be a wonderful Christmas, Arch. And yes, I’m certain we’ll be back in Houston to celebrate it.”