He began to turn away as Meg stood up and then he froze. She had a heavy Stechkin APS 9mm pistol in a two-handed grip, rock solid and pointing in the general vicinity of his heart. It was the pistol of choice for Russian Special Forces in Afghanistan. He'd seen plenty of them in the hands of Taliban insurgents himself. Trophies from a lost war.
"Mother warned me that it wouldn't work," said Meg, the gun never wavering. "But I thought it was worth a try."
29
"Pick up the ark," ordered Meg. Holliday did as she instructed, grabbing the lead box and lifting it with both hands. It weighed about forty pounds, too light to be lead sheet unless it was very thin or just a protective veneer over something else, probably wood. Not the heaviest load he'd ever carried but it was going to slow them down.
"We won't make it back to the boat with me carrying this," said Holliday, looking at Meg. Her red hair was flying wildly in the rising wind, her eyes squinting against the whirling sand. She picked up her pack and shrugged it over one arm. The pistol never wavered and she never looked away. She barely blinked.
The religious fervor was gone, replaced by something cold and hard. It was an entirely different creature than the pretty, defensive, red-haired nun he'd met at Mont Saint-Michel. This Sister Meg was capable of putting a bullet between his eyes without a second thought.
He was no shrink, but crazy seemed like a good enough diagnosis. Behind them the ocean roared and crashed as the gigantic rolling waves battered themselves to death on the broad beach, each one clawing itself a little higher up the sand.
"To hell with Gallant and his stupid boat," Meg answered. "We're setting our own timetable. Get moving." They began to walk back along the hardpan, then veered left at exactly the place where they first walked down to the edge of the lake. He could tell because he could see their boot prints in the broken crust of the sand. They followed their own footsteps to the base of the low, hill- like dunes and found the deep cut trail that had led them here. They began heading up the path.
The sense of the Stechkin aimed between Holliday's shoulder blades was almost physical, like a sudden flash of sunburn or an itch. If he remembered correctly the tough little automatic had a twenty-round magazine and a rate of fire that was somewhere around six hundred rounds a minute. That meant she could empty the pistol into his back in two seconds.
"Smart," said Holliday, speaking to the empty air in front of him. "Using lead. There's no real way of dating it and I'm sure whatever little things you've got tucked away are nice and authentic."
"Shut your mouth," snapped Meg.
"You're not going to shoot me," said Holliday, who wasn't quite sure he believed it. "If you were going to kill me you would have done it by now. For whatever reason you still need me." He paused. "By the way, who is your mother?"
"You never thought to ask me what my last name was, did you?" Meg said behind him.
"I didn't think nuns had last names," said Holliday.
"Nuns were ordinary people before they took their vows, and anyway, who said I was a nun?"
"Are you?"
"I was once, not anymore."
"So what's your last name?" asked Holliday.
"Sinclair. My mother's name is Katherine, if that makes things any clearer."
Holliday remembered a piece he'd read in Time magazine a few months ago, something about there being only a dozen female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Kate Sinclair had been number four in a list headed by Angela Braly at WellPoint, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo and Irene Rosenfeld at Kraft Foods. Kate Sinclair ran an amorphous multinational that had something to do with water.
"The water lady?"
"I doubt she'd take too kindly to that description," said Meg Sinclair. "Mother is the CEO and majority shareholder in the American Fluid Dynamics Corporation. A utilities provider. Her son, my brother, is Richard Pierce Sinclair."
"The senator?"
"That's him," said Meg. "The next president of the United States."
"In your dreams," said Holliday. "He's the junior senator from some backwoods state like Tennessee."
"Kentucky," she corrected. "But you'd be surprised what three years and a billion dollars can do for your image. Stop here."
Holliday stopped. They were at the summit of the dune. He looked down onto the narrower north beach and the sea beyond. The Deryldene D was invisible, more than a mile away up the beach. Behind him he heard movement. It sounded as though Meg was looking through her knapsack, maybe distracted. Somehow he doubted it, and it wasn't worth the risk of trying to find out.
He heard something vaguely familiar and then he remembered where he'd heard it before-it was the sound of someone breaking open the cylinder of a revolver, then snapping it back into place again. What was she doing? The Stechkin was basically a machine pistol; what did she need a revolver for?
There was a loud, explosive blast behind his back and then a white-hot hissing that sounded reminiscent of a roman candle going off on the Fourth of July.
Holliday looked up as a trail of white smoke arced up into the dark sky overhead, drifting and smudging in the wind. At the top of the arc it exploded into a bright red ball of light. Of course, thought Holliday, a signal flare. He wondered about Gallant. He'd see the flare, of course, and wonder what it was all about, but he doubted that the lobsterman would do anything about it.
"Move," ordered Meg. Once again Holliday did as he was told and began moving down the sloping face of the dune.
"What was that all about?"
"You'll see," said Meg.
Holliday's arms were beginning to ache from the weight of the ark. He glanced down at the lead veneer of the box and its inscription. By this you shall conquer. Maybe he could fake a fall, go head over heels and drop the box on his way down and make a run for it. Suddenly, from overhead he heard a faint droning sound, the familiar whine of a prop plane, and a fairly large one at that.
"That your ride?" Holliday asked without turning around. He gripped the box more tightly. If there was going to be a chance of getting out of this it would be now. He tensed, trying to judge the exact moment.
"Shut up," Meg said, her voice flat and unemotional. Overhead the buzzing grew louder and suddenly he could see the plane. It was some kind of high-winged utility aircraft like the Defender, the one used by the British military. It was obviously about to use the beach as a runway. "And don't think about making a break for it," continued Meg. "Your body English is betraying you. All that tension in the shoulders and turtleing your neck down like you are."
"I don't think you've got it in you," said Holliday, knowing that his moment had gone. "Maybe you think you're some kind of hard case, but I don't think you're a cold-blooded killer."
"Who knows?" Meg Sinclair answered. "Try me and see."
Off to the left the aircraft was in its final approach, its tail wagging back and forth with the force of the gusting wind. Holliday and Meg reached the bottom of the dune and stepped out onto the beach. Meg Sinclair stayed behind Holliday, giving him no chance to move on her. Carrying the lead-covered box was almost as good as being handcuffed.
The first fat drops of rain were hitting the sand. The drops were large enough to dig their own little craters when they hit. Gallant was going to have a hell of a time, his only advantage being that he would be running before the wind.
"How did the plane know when to pick you up?" Holliday asked.
"Satellite phone, an Ericsson R-290," answered Meg. "They've been flying in circles for an hour, waiting for my signal."
"A satellite phone? Where on earth did you pick up one of those?"