Crane glanced at his gold Rolex. 12:20. He had to get ready for lunch. He was meeting his bankers in a low-profile restaurant near Wall Street. He knew they would have preferred a glitzy Midtown place, but he liked to play the penny-pincher with them and they knew not to cross him on that. There would be the usual veiled objections to his expansion plans in what the financial establishment perceived to be unreliable, if not downright dangerous places. They had acted that way about Iraq and Afghanistan, and he’d proved them enormously wrong. The same would be the case with the new countries he was targeting. The Lord his God was a bountiful god-if only the acolytes of Mammon could appreciate that, their working lives would become much easier.
It was an advantage that the man he would be talking to after the lunch was a business associate. That way, no one would be surprised when he stayed behind. But they wouldn’t be talking finance. No, Xavier Marias might have been a highly talented economic forecaster by day, but it was his out-of-office profile that Rudi Crane valued more. On reflection, it was hardly surprising that a man who had learned how to survive in the shark-infested waters of Wall Street would have become one of the most efficient assassination brokers in the country. The plan to track down his former associate Jack Thomson by framing him and his vile Antichurch for the Hitler’s Hitman killings would not have been possible without Havi’s input, although Crane himself had kept a close eye on the proceedings. Havi had found the assassin and engineered the hits. He had even provided a second assassin to ensure that Thomson didn’t escape. This afternoon, Crane expected Havi to confirm that the Nazi devil worshipper had been liquidated and that his conditioning program was in safe hands. That would be good news to rival the Gospels, indeed.
The confirmation last night that Sir Andrew Frogget had not mentioned the involvement of a Hercules subsidiary in Thomson’s Woodbridge Holdings had been very welcome. In fact, it had led directly to his chastisement of the stewardess. She had accepted the punishment for comporting herself provocatively. Not that he had sex with that woman, oh, no. No bodily fluid of his had entered any orifice of hers, at least for longer than a few seconds-there was a spittoon by the side of the bed, naturally. He had no sin to confess, as he had been thinking of his wife throughout: thinking how horrified and disgusted she would have been if she could have seen them, she the vegetarian, who would never put anything in her mouth that hadn’t been peeled or sliced.
I spent most of the flight to Washington asleep. For a change, I had no dreams-that wasn’t a wholly enjoyable experience, as I didn’t see Karen and our son. Had they finally been swallowed up by the ground beneath? Then I remembered, and my stomach clenched hard. The bodies of my loved ones were in cold storage in the camp in Illinois. Sooner or later, I’d have to decide what to do with them. Not now. I had to find out who was behind the murders and the Hades complex. After that, I’d concentrate on them. The idea that I would have to dispose of their mortal remains terrified me.
Then I had another thought. How had Mary Upson found her way to the Antichurch rite in Texas? Had she evaded the surveillance that Peter Sebastian put in place after her mother disappeared in Maine? She didn’t have the skills to pull that off herself. Had Sebastian let her go to see where she was headed? If so, he had effectively set her up as bait. I wondered what else he might have been capable of. But why would Mary have gone to Texas? Did she know more about the Antichurch than she’d let on, after misleading them?
A trio of men in suits was waiting for me outside the plane after we landed at Reagan National. One of them introduced himself, but I immediately forgot his name. He ran an eye over me and suggested that I might like to change clothes. I was handed a couple of suit bags and ushered to a washroom in the executive lounge. There was a dark blue suit and accoutrements that I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing in one bag. Fortunately, the other contained a pair of casual trousers and a green herring-bone jacket, along with a pair of smart but solid boots and a pale blue shirt. Everything fitted, which showed that someone had done their homework-of course, there was no shortage of information about me in the Bureau’s files. I left the silk tie untouched.
A long car with dark windows took me to the center of the city.
‘The Director will see you as soon as we arrive at the Hoover Building,’ my escort said, glancing at his watch. ‘I have orders to take you to your hotel afterward.’
Rain began to fall as we crossed the Potomac, picking holes in the surface of the gray-green water. I remembered Rothmann’s escape from the boat nearby. Now he was dead, taken out by one of his sidekicks. My urge to kill him had been a waste of time and emotion. Karen and our son were still lost to me. So was Sara. She could be seen as another victim of the Rothmanns’ conditioning, but that didn’t get me off the hook. I still felt sick that it had been my finger on the trigger.
I was whisked up to the top of FBI headquarters in an executive lift and ushered straight into the Director’s spacious office. The tall, distinguished-looking man with white hair whom I had seen on TV rose from behind a huge desk and came to meet me.
‘Mr. Wells,’ he said, with a Southern accent, ‘I am so glad to meet you. Please come and sit down.’ He led me to a three-sided square of leather-covered sofas. ‘Would you like something to drink or eat?’
‘Water’s fine.’
He poured me a glass from the cut-crystal carafe on the central table. ‘Mr. Wells, I-’
‘What really happened to Peter Sebastian?’ I interrupted, determined not to let him run the exchange.
To his credit, he didn’t look either surprised or irritated. ‘Ah, what a tragedy that was,’ he said, his cloudy blue eyes meeting mine. ‘It seems he was the victim of a robbery.’
‘You really believe that?’
Now he did look taken aback. ‘That’s what the police and our people are surmising, Mr. Wells. Do you have evidence to the contrary?’
‘Evidence, no. Suspicion, plenty. He gets killed on the same night as Heinz Rothmann and the assassin Apollyon? It looks to me like somebody’s tidying up.’
The Director nodded. ‘I can see that logic. Do you have any idea who that somebody might be?’
‘That’s your area, isn’t it? Do we know who owned the camp in Texas yet?’
‘Yes, a company called March Violet Partners. It’s based in Liberia.’
‘What a surprise. The partners’ names are presumably straight out of a mystery novel.’
‘So it would appear,’ he said dolefully. ‘We are, of course, interrogating everyone on the scene.’
I thought of the man with the badge that had gone missing from his cap, but I wasn’t going to share that with him. I still didn’t know why he had summoned me.
Either the Director was a mind reader or he wanted to change the subject. ‘Mr. Wells, there are two reasons I invited you to Washington. The first is that I thought you would appreciate seeing one of the survivors of the Antichurch massacre.’
My heart missed a beat. Who could that be?
‘Sergeant Quincy Jerome of the Airborne Division is in Walter Reed hospital.’
Jesus, Quincy.
‘He underwent an emergency operation, but he is out of danger. One of his lungs collapsed.’
I nodded, suddenly doubtful of my ability to speak without breaking down. Only now did I realize how much I’d needed some good news.
‘You will be driven to the hospital in the evening,’ the Director continued. ‘Secondly, I know how much you have been through, Mr. Wells, and I don’t just mean in the past days. Allow me to offer my sincerest commiserations, and those of the entire Bureau, for the deaths of your wife and son.’
I didn’t correct him over Karen’s status. I would have married her if she had survived and would always think of her as my wife.
‘In gratitude for your help in closing the Rothmann case, I would like to invite you to accompany me to New York tomorrow. I have to attend the UN Climate Change Conference, but we will arrange a press conference afterward. The White House has instructed the Justice Department to drop all charges against you regarding the attack on the President at the cathedral here, and I would like the opportunity to clear your name in public.’ He sat back and regarded me with an encouraging smile. ‘As you’ll understand, that will also give me the opportunity to blow the Bureau’s trumpet after the successful end to the operation in Texas.’