Abu Sayeed watched him disappear into the shadows. He would scale the wall at the front of Biddle’s property, where Anneliës would pick him up. With Allah’s blessing, he would return within three or four hours.
FORTY
GREENWICH, CT, JUNE 30
FRED WOFFORD PUT THE LAST of his clothes in the suitcase then held it closed while he zipped it shut. The act felt like a milestone, and he let out a sigh of relief. His wife’s clothes were still strewed over the bed as she hurried to pack and at the same time understand what had possessed her husband, who by his own admission had never done anything spontaneous in his life, to book the Queen Mary Suite on the new QM2.
She was still selecting jewelry and formal dresses when the doorbell rang. Wofford glanced at his watch, thinking it must be the limo driver. The man was at least an hour early, but then better that way than late. It was probably the driver’s intention to bill him for waiting time, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to leave. The sooner he was on the ship, the better. He wanted to be protected by distance, insulated by deniability.
At some level he felt a terrible sense of disloyalty, but his visit to the terrorists had tipped some invisible scales. He’d finally admitted to himself that he couldn’t go along with Biddle. In the final analysis, the wild hope for Armageddon, the belief that an unforgivable act might result in a miracle—none of it made sense. They led Christian lives, and they had every single thing a person could want, including great wealth. Why should they throw it away on a fantasy?
He pulled on a shirt, buttoned it on the way down the stairs, and flipped on the porch light. He opened the door intending to tell the driver to wait in the car, but then he froze. A different man, his face terribly familiar, stood on the porch smiling up at him.
Ten minutes later, wanting her husband’s help in deciding between several dresses, Wofford’s wife called his name. When she heard no answer, went to the bedroom door and shouted again. Again, there was no response. She went to the top of the staircase and called his name again. Typical Fred, she thought.
“Fred!” she shouted, starting to become angry.
She went down and looked in the kitchen, then in his library. Finally, she went out onto the front porch and looked at the empty driveway. Her husband was gone.
FORTY-ONE
OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN, JUNE 30
PRESCOTT BIDDLE PEERED OUT THROUGH his jet’s thick window at the night. He’d been flying for twelve hours, having left Murmansk at ten p.m., and throughout the entire flight darkness had gripped the world. This constant blackness reminded him that he was the avenging Angel of God, racing through the heavens toward his ultimate meeting with the agents of Satan.
His return would surprise no one. He was cutting short his fishing trip because of Dr. Faisal’s murder and the theft of his assets. It was tragic Biddle would tell the press. After their exhaustive background checks and psychological profiles, they had trusted that young man, but obviously they’d failed to find the hidden character flaw. It was heartbreaking, doubly so since Lucas also killed Owen Smythe and his young family.
The one flaw, of course, was that Reverend Turner and the Arab had failed to kill Lucas. Right now, he could be dead or dying of his wounds, but they couldn’t be sure. They had to assume he was alive, and therefore dangerous and unpredictable. There remained the possibility that Lucas would go to the police, but with what? A preposterous story about fake FBI Agents and a fake lawyer who had all… disappeared? No, with Smythe gone, there was no way for Lucas to garner any proof, which also meant that instead of running he was more likely to attack.
Biddle shook his head as he sipped a Diet Coke. He wouldn’t let that happen. He’d found out where Lucas was, and this time his own people were going to kill Lucas and dispose of the body. Even if they had a problem, who would question two sheriff’s deputies who killed a murder suspect? No, he thought, in a country that cared more about abortion rights and gay marriage than the truth of the Holy Bible, it wouldn’t surprise anyone. Brent Lucas would be one more American tragedy, like O.J and Columbine. Yes, Biddle thought, God was looking down into the muck of modern America and watching His Angels of Prophesy. God knew they were taking great risks in His name, and He would ensure their success.
He tried to retain the purity of his focus, but he felt it slip. Try as he did, he was helpless to prevent the next image that took shape in his mind. It was Anneliës again, dancing before him in a smoky light. Shadows ran across her stomach and breasts as she moved, caressing the parts of her that his tongue and fingers had explored so often.
He believed that the holiness of his mission should have lessened his need, but the opposite had occurred. His hunger had grown and raged inside him now, as if his every molecule of sinfulness had been compressed into desire for this woman’s flesh. He’d spent many hours on his knees, praying for strength, but it did no good. Now, he glanced at his left hand where the snake venom had rotted the skin between his thumb and forefinger, leaving a permanent disfigurement as though bitten by the Devil himself.
The plane hit some turbulence, and Biddle turned again to the outer dark and tried to shake off these feelings. He bent his thoughts back to his mission, to Beddington and McTighe and the job they were doing in God’s name. He closed his eyes and said another prayer, asking God to speed their progress, give them steady hands for aiming and strong hearts for killing.
The turbulence ended. Suddenly, the clouds beneath the aircraft gave way, and the full moon reflected off the black void of ocean fifty thousand feet below. As he watched, the reflection appeared to change shape, narrowing into a flame, as if the first fire of Armageddon was already igniting the world. The jet streaked across the sky, and he kept the flame in view as long as he could, counting it as one more sign from God that he would be victorious.
FORTY-TWO
CENTRAL NEW JERSEY, JUNE 30
DARIUS MCTIGHE HAD WORKED HARD to keep the pickup tucked out of sight, but the traffic had thinned and now the only car ahead of him was a VW bug, one of the old ones tricked out with wide tires and mag wheels. The driver was right on the woman’s tail, and if he hung a quick pass and got around her, it would leave McTighe’s pickup sticking right out there naked. They were on 202 North, heading into the 287 merge. He prayed the woman’s eyes were too taken up with road signs to notice they’d been on her tail ever since she left Morristown.
Originally, they’d been parked down at the end of her street waiting for her and Lucas to go to sleep, intending then to slip in and do their job. They’d planned to leave the woman’s body there, making it look like Lucas had continued his murder spree, and then they would dump Lucas where the Arab should have in the first place, about fifty miles straight out from the Barnegat Light where they’d wrap him in chains and sink him in about five hundred feet of water.
Only instead of staying home and going to bed, Lucas and the woman had left the house, and to McTighe’s growing horror, they had driven all the way down to Lambertville, right to his own neighborhood church. It had to mean that Lucas and the woman were close to the truth. Just in case they’d already figured it out and were heading to the cops, Beddington and McTighe had decided to nail them before they got back to Morristown, whenever they came to a deserted stretch of road. Their story would be that Lucas had taken the woman hostage and killed her when she’d tried to escape. There’d be no questions. After all, they were sheriff’s deputies.