31

THEY SPED UP THE 5 FREEWAY pushing the speed limit, frantic and very low on options.

Leiah insisted they take him to a hospital immediately.

“Where’s he bleeding from?” Jason demanded, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Is it critical?”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s critical—we need to get to a hospital now!”

“We can’t. That’s the first place they’ll look.”

“Who cares? He’s dying!”

“And if they find him, they’ll kill him! So take his shirt off and tell me what you see.”

She was a nurse from the war zone; surely she would be able to make some sense of Caleb’s condition. She tore his shirt and examined him quickly.

“It’s in his side. I can’t tell.” She looked up, frightened. “Jason, he really needs some care.”

“Turn the light on. We don’t have a lot of options here. If whoever shot him discovers that he’s still alive, we’re toast. You hear me? Toast. A hospital is our last option.”

The light turned on and she examined him closer. “I think if I can stop this bleeding he’ll be okay for a while. Looks like the bullet passed through the muscle on his right side. As long as infection doesn’t . . . You have a first-aid kit?”

“In the back. What about his illness? I’m not sure it was the bullet that made him faint.”

“Why not?”

“I saw a flash of light from the red seats as I was running to him. At the time I thought it was a flashbulb, but I’m not so sure anymore. He was shot; it could have been the gun. And what if he really was poisoned?”

“There’s nothing I can do for poison here. I don’t like this, Jason.”

“Okay, if his condition hasn’t improved by morning, we’ll get him to a doctor. But we have to think this through.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the hills.”

She was silent for a few moments. “We should pray for him.”

“Yes, we should.”

Jason drove the Bronco north, out of the L.A. basin over the San Fernando Pass toward Gorman, praying softly under his breath most of the way. It was an unusual impulse for him, but the simple prayers felt completely natural now. They reached a small road that cut west from the freeway. Within a mile they passed a lone Texaco station, turned south, and headed out on a dirt road. He’d been back in here a dozen times riding dirt bikes, but it had been some time ago. Headlights glared behind him a couple times and he sped to lose the car. He didn’t need the locals wondering who had driven the white Ford Bronco up the logging road so late at night. Especially once the media got ahold of the fact that Caleb had been kidnapped in a white Ford Bronco.

Leiah had bandaged the boy to her satisfaction. The first-aid kit was a large box with more than most doctors carried in the Third World. Caleb had stirred, awoken for a few minutes—enough time for Leiah to feed him some aspirin—and then promptly fallen back into a deep sleep.

They drove down the rough road for ten minutes before Jason turned onto another much rougher road that snaked up a valley. The Bronco bucked over potholes and rocks to objections from Leiah. Jason eased up and picked his way deeper into the valley.

“It’s pitch black and we’re in the middle of nowhere,” Leiah said. “You’re sure about this place?”

“No. It was here five years ago. Do you have any better ideas?”

She didn’t respond.

He drove over a knoll and the trees gave way to a rolling, sandy meadow. He pulled into the clearing and swung the headlights to his right. The cabin stood in the white glare of the lights, grayed by time but still standing. He breathed a sigh of relief and angled for the structure.

“There we go. Thank God.”

Jason parked the car and shut down the engine. The silence brought a ringing to his ears. “Wait here.” He climbed out, walked to the back, found the flashlight from the roadside kit, and walked toward the cabin.

Stars blinked in the dark sky; it was odd to be in the country again. Depending on how enthusiastic the authorities got, there could be helicopters in those skies tomorrow.

The shack’s rotting door creaked on its hinges when he pushed it open. He played the light on the interior, saw that it was empty, and returned to the Bronco.

“It’s not a hotel, but it’ll do. There’s a couple of blankets in the back.”

She helped him take Caleb from the back seat and followed him with two large blankets. The shack was a one-room affair with a wooden bed along one wall and an old rusted stove along the other. Leiah threw a blanket over the bed and Jason laid Caleb down gently. The boy groaned, rolled over, and lay still.

They sat on the bed and looked at his small frame. The flashlight cast a large circle on the wall. It struck Jason then for the first time that what they were doing was madness. He had rushed out here on impulse, driven by the urge to get away. To free the boy and clear their heads and remove Nikolous from their lives. To protect the boy from whoever had attempted his killing.

But the night was silent and the boy was sick and a quiet desperation filtered through his bones. Caleb and Leiah were depending on him now, and his plan did not extend beyond this moment. He didn’t even know where he and Leiah would sleep. On the hard wood floor he supposed. Maybe outside.

Jason stood and walked to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to hide the car under the trees. Might as well be safe.”

“Don’t you need the light?” she asked softly.

“No. I can see.”

He left them and it felt very lonely in the night. Dear Father, please help me. Please, I beg you.

“No, I’m not saying that we confirmed his death. I’m saying Banks shot the kid and he fell. But Jason took him and ran before anyone could react.” Roberts coughed once and cleared his throat, avoiding Crandal’s glare. “He wasn’t taken to the hospital. We don’t have a confirmation.”

“You’re saying he was shot, collapsed onstage, and then was what? Kidnapped?”

“That’s about it. Yes, sir.”

“So as far as we know, he’s alive and holding a press conference as we speak.”

“That would be highly unlikely. The poison was getting to him again. And he was shot. In all probability he’s dead. We just can’t confirm it.”

They’d been in here before, three stories underground in Crandal’s study discussing death. But for the first time in Roberts’s memory, it was feeling more like their own death than some remote target’s death. Crandal stood from his desk and walked toward a large raised relief map of the United States. He looked at the picturesque map for an inordinate amount of time, silent in thought.

“He’s probably dead,” Roberts said again. “Banks isn’t the kind to slip up.”

The man did not turn. “Roberts, do you know how much power the president of the United States has? The most powerful nation on earth, and he holds the reins. The most powerful person in the world. I used to feel that way about directing the NSA, but in reality I always had to tiptoe around the executive and legislative branches. Now I’m less than two weeks away from owning those branches.”

He turned around and set his jaw. His voice sounded like a tuba in the enclosed space.

“The only thing in my way is a ‘probably.’ And in this business probablies might as well be headstones.”

“We are working to remove the ambiguity from the situation,” Roberts said. “Banks is on their tail. I’ve offered to double his fee if he can confirm his death within three days. Triple if he eliminates all three of them.”

Crandal frowned. “He knows where they went?”

“He followed them from the theater but lost them in the foothills.”

“How does someone like Banks lose a couple civilians?”

“Simple. They’re in a four-wheel-drive Bronco, he’s in a sedan, and they ended up on rough roads.”

“And yet you talk as though you’re confident.”

“Yes, I am. Like you said, Banks is no idiot. Most men wouldn’t have had the sense to follow them in the first place. In addition they’ve removed themselves from protection. They’ve run from the only system that was watching their backs. When he finds them they’ll be easy game.”

“If he finds them,” Crandal said.

“He’ll find them.”

“For your sake, I hope so.” Crandal eased himself into a large armchair and crossed his legs. “There is something we should understand, should this not go well.”

A small buzz ran through Roberts’s brain. They’d had a talk like this once before, when the fiasco in Colombia nearly blew up in their faces.

“We’re entering new territory, Roberts. You know that, don’t you?” He gripped his hand to a fist and gently bumped the wooden arm. “We’re on the verge of taking power—real power—for the first time. Nothing can be permitted to stop that.” He paused.

Roberts sat still.

“This includes an abstract rumor about what might have happened a lifetime ago in Ethiopia. We may have made some mistakes in our past, but this cannot preclude us from running the board now. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“But if there is blame to lay, someone will have to take it.”

“I think you’re overreacting,” Roberts said.

“Maybe. But in the event I’m not. If something were to come out of this nonsense that sounded ugly—something that could snatch this victory from our grasps at the last moment—then I would expect you to step forward.”

There it was. Roberts blinked. He wasn’t sure how to take the directive. “If I can be candid, sir, I had very little to do with the plan.”

“With which plan, Roberts? This particular one? Colombia? How about Indonesia in ’87?”

Roberts knew where Crandal was heading, but he wanted to make his point. “With the plan to pay off Colonel Ambozia’s army to stir up border disputes with Ethiopia on the heels of their liberation from the Mengistu regime in 1991. That plan. The plan to divert over a billion dollars of arms to the EPLF in return for their invasion along the border, all in the name of some cockamamie treasure hunt.”

Crandal’s face grew red. “And how does this plan differ from any other you were involved in? You break one law; you might as well break them all. And for the record, this second invasion was your plan.”

“And the first one was yours. The EPLF slaughtered over three thousand men, women, and children on your crusade. You want me to put my name on that?”

“Don’t be a fool, man! This is no time to find morality. There’s no need for both of us to take the fall. We’ve fought too hard for this moment.”

Roberts took a deep breath and crossed his legs. None of this changed the matters at hand. It was clearly understood that he would take a fall if anything ugly surfaced. Insulating Crandal might not be possible, but they would all swear to their graves that he had nothing to do with it. Still, Roberts wasn’t the kind who would lay his neck on the guillotine for the big man without a good argument at the least.

Either way it was all moot.

“This is premature,” Roberts said. “The kid’s as good as dead. We’re talking abstractions that have no basis in reality.”

“I hope you’re right. Like I said, for your sake.”

“I am right.”

Donna had never seen Father Nikolous as furious as he was in the wake of Jason’s flight. Not that it wasn’t a significant event; the media had swarmed like hornets themselves. But the Greek was presumably a religious man and his actions hardly came off as pontifical. She leaned back and watched him across his desk near midnight, and she wondered if Jason didn’t know some things that she did not.

Caleb had failed twice before a national television audience now, although, as a dozen talking heads were quick to point out, this second episode could not be clearly seen as a failure, because he hadn’t tried anything. He’d fainted before having the chance to perform.

The theories for this latest incident were clearly overshadowed by the general outrage that he’d been kidnapped. True enough, Jason and Leiah were not your typical criminal-looking types, and Donna had gone out of her way to ease the suspicion that surrounded them. But her role in this story was that of an impartial reporter, and Nikolous more than offset her voice of reason with his ranting and raving.

He looked at her with a set jaw. “They have no legal right to take the boy, and I promise you that I will see them behind bars for this.”

“I’m sure kidnapping is looked at very seriously by the law, but I hardly think you’re dealing with a typical case here,” Donna returned.

“Of course not. We’re dealing with something much worse. The world has an interest in this boy. And he’s ill. Perhaps even bleeding. He belongs in a hospital, not in some fleabag motel or wherever—”

“Bleeding?” Donna jerked her head to him. “That wasn’t in any report.”

“We found a few drops of blood where he collapsed. He may have bitten his tongue when he fell, but this is not for the media.”

The news intrigued her. She could not escape the gnawing notion that there was more to this story than met the eye.

“Both you and I know that Jason and Leiah couldn’t hurt Caleb if they wanted to. Please, Father Nikolous, you must see that. If there were any real danger to the boy, they would have gotten him medical attention. For all we know he’s in some vet’s clinic right now, under medication and having his tongue sewed up.”

Nikolous frowned deeply, and Donna thought he looked like a clown she’d once seen. “I do not share your optimism,” he said. “They’ve willfully and knowingly violated the laws of the state. If they are capable of this, there’s no telling what else they’re capable of.”

“Or they have taken the boy out of a situation they see as dangerous to him, and they’re willing to pay the consequences.”

The Father studied her for a few long moments, obviously taken aback by her insinuation. But she hadn’t accused him of anything.

“I’m not sure many people would sympathize with such a rash statement,” he said.

“Maybe. But surely, you don’t think that the world will just stand by and let the boy live under such restraint for long. At some point they will want him to just be a boy. Maybe Jason and Leiah just came to that realization faster than the rest of us.”

“You may not approve of restraint, Donna, but it is my restraint that maintains his innocence. And believe me, whether or not his power comes from God, only his innocence keeps him from becoming just another boy. If that were to happen, the world would scream for the Caleb I give them now.”

Donna smiled and nodded, not wanting to push him too far, but curious still. “I’m curious, Nikolous. Do you care for the boy?”

His eyebrow arched. “Care?”

“Yes. I mean do you find him appealing?”

“My dear, if you were to turn on the television right now, you would find a dozen stations featuring discussion on the boy’s disappearance. The world is in an uproar tonight because of one boy. Why? Because I made him a boy worth caring for. Do you not see this? I made Caleb who he is. Tomorrow morning over three hundred law enforcement officers will go looking for the boy, and by nightfall I am sure we will have found him. And you ask if I care for him?”

“Okay. But you know I’ve had to ask myself that question these last few days because I’m not sure any longer whether I’m more interested in Caleb or the story Caleb has dropped in my lap.”

“Well, he’s brought all of us a little something. Which is another reason we have to find him. Hiding him away like Jason would choose is an immensely selfish approach.”

It was his own use of the word selfish that pushed Donna to her next question. “A little something? How much money have you made off him, Father Nikolous?”

He squinted and stared at her. “Money is not the point. The point is that Caleb has done more good than we can possibly measure with a few dollar signs. And unless we find him, it may be lost. Even if we find him, it may be lost.”

She nodded. No need to push the point at this late hour. In a perverted way his reasoning made some sense even to her. And yet she knew by simple calculation that he had made in excess of ten million dollars off the boy already. If Caleb were to lose his power, no one would pay as dearly as Nikolous.

Donna sat up and stood to leave. “With the effort under way I’m sure they’ll be picked up before long. They’ve got every cruiser this side of Las Vegas looking for the Bronco.” She chuckled. “I always knew Jason was a character, but I never would have expected him to go this far. You might want to lighten up on him, Father. He’s got a good heart, and when this is all over, people are going to see that. If you sound off too much, it could come down awkwardly for you later, if you catch my drift.”

He just stared at her, wearing that great frown of his.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. We have an interview at ten, remember? And don’t worry, I promise I won’t pry. Just the basics. We can’t let our fans down, you know.”

She smiled and left him, still frowning.