Contract With God Part 22

'All right. Do you want a practical reason? They're in denial. Their work keeps them going.'

'What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?'

'Dr Kubler-Ross's stages of mourning.'

'Oh, yes. Denial, anger, depression, all that stuff.'

'Exactly. They're all in the first phase.'

'The way the professor is screaming, you'd think he was in the second.'

'They'll feel better tonight. Professor Forrester will conduct the hesped hesped, the eulogy. I believe it will be interesting to hear him say something good about someone other than himself.'

'What's going to happen to the body, Father?'

'They'll put it in a hermetically sealed body bag and bury it for the time being.'

Andrea looked at Fowler in disbelief.

'You're joking!'

'It's Jewish law. Everyone who dies has to be buried within twenty-four hours.'

'You know what I mean. Aren't they going to return him to his family?'

'Nothing and n.o.body can leave the camp, Ms Otero. Remember?'

Andrea put the camera in her backpack and lit a cigarette.

'These people are crazy. I hope this stupid exclusive doesn't end up wiping all of us out.'

'Always going on about your exclusive, Ms Otero. I can't understand what it is that you need so desperately.'

'Fame and fortune. How about you?'

Fowler stood up and stretched his arms. He leaned backward and his spine gave a loud crack.

'I'm just following orders. If the Ark is real, the Vatican wants to know, so they can recognise it as the object that holds G.o.d's commandments.'

A very simple answer, quite ingenious. And totally untrue, Father. You're a very bad liar. But let's pretend I believe you.

'Maybe,' Andrea said after a moment. 'But in this case, why didn't your bosses send a historian?'

Fowler showed her what he had been working on.

'Because a historian couldn't have done this."

'What is it?' Andrea said curiously. It looked like a simple electrical breaker switch with a pair of wires coming out of it.

'We'll have to forget yesterday's plan for contacting Albert. After Erling's murder, they'll be even more on their guard. So this is what we'll do instead . . .'

39.

THE EXCAVATION.

AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN.

Friday, July 14, 2006. 3:42 p.m.

Father, tell me one more time why I'm doing this.

Because you want to know the truth. The truth about what's going on here. About why they bothered to contact you in Spain when Kayn could have found a thousand reporters more experienced and famous than you are right there in New York.

The conversation continued to ring in Andrea's ears. The question was the same one the weak little voice in her head had been asking for quite some time now. It had been drowned out by the Philharmonic of Pride, accompanied by Mr Visa Debt, baritone, and Ms Fame at Any Cost, soprano. But Fowler's words had given the weak little voice centre stage.

Andrea shook her head, trying to concentrate on what she was doing. The plan was to take advantage of the period when the off-duty soldiers would be trying to rest, taking a nap or playing cards.

'That's where you come in,' Fowler had said. 'On my signal you slip under the tent.'

'Between the wooden floor and the sand? Are you crazy?'

'There's enough s.p.a.ce. You'll have to crawl about a foot and a half until you reach the electrical panel. The cable that connects the generator and the tent is the orange one. Pull it out quickly; connect it to the end of my cable and the other end of my cable back into the electrical panel. Then press this b.u.t.ton every fifteen seconds for three minutes. After that, get out of there fast.'

'What will that do?'

'Nothing too complicated technologically. It'll produce a slight drop in the electrical current without totally cutting it off. The frequency scanner will only shut off twice: once when you connect the cable, the second time when you disconnect it.'

'And the rest of the time?'

'It'll be in start-up mode, like a computer when it's loading its operating system. As long as they don't look under the tent there won't be any problems.'

Except that there was: the heat.

Crawling under the tent when Fowler gave the signal had been easy. Andrea had squatted, pretending to tie her bootlace, looked around and then rolled under the wooden platform. It was like diving into a vat of hot b.u.t.ter. The air was thick with the heat of the day and the generator next to the tent produced broiling drafts of heat that wafted into the s.p.a.ce where Andrea had crawled.

She was now under the electrical panel, and her face and arms were burning up. She took out Fowler's breaker and held it at the ready in her right hand while with her left she pulled sharply on the orange wire. She connected it to Fowler's device then connected the other end to the panel, and waited.

This useless lying watch. It says only twelve seconds have gone by but it seems more like two minutes. G.o.d, I can't bear this heat!

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

She pressed the breaker b.u.t.ton.

Above her, the tone of the soldiers' voices changed.

Looks like they've noticed something. I hope they don't give it much thought.

She listened more closely to the conversation. It started as a way to distract herself from the heat and keep her from fainting. She hadn't drunk enough water that morning and was now paying for it. Her throat and lips were parched, and her head felt slightly dizzy. But thirty seconds later, what she was hearing made Andrea begin to panic. So much so that, once the three minutes had elapsed, she was still there pressing the b.u.t.ton every fifteen seconds, fighting the feeling that she was about to pa.s.s out.

40.

SOMEWHERE IN FAIRFAX COUNTY, VIRGINIA.

Friday, July 14, 2006. 8:42 a.m.

'Do you have it?'

'I think I have something. It hasn't been easy. This guy is very good at covering his tracks.'

'I need something more than guesswork, Albert. People have started to die here.'

'People always die, don't they?'

'This time it's different. It's scaring me.'

'You? I don't believe it. You didn't even get scared with the Koreans. And that time-'

'Albert . . .'

'Sorry. I've called in a few favours. The experts at the CIA have recovered some of the data from the computers at Netcatch. Orville Watson had a lead on a terrorist by the name of Huqan.'

'Syringe.'

'If you say so. I don't know any Arabic. It looks like the guy was after Kayn.'

'Anything else? Nationality? Ethnic group?'

'Nothing. Just vague stuff, a couple of intercepted e-mails. None of the files escaped the fire. Hard disks are very delicate.'

'You have to find Watson. He's the key to everything. It's urgent.'

'I'm on it.'

41.

INSIDE THE SOLDIERS' TENT, FIVE MINUTES BEFORE Marla Jackson wasn't used to reading newspapers, and that was why she ended up in jail. Of course, Marla didn't see it that way. She thought she had gone to jail for being a good mother.

The truth about Marla's life lay somewhere between these two extremes. She had had a poor but relatively normal childhood - as normal as a person could have in Lorton, Virginia, whose own citizens referred to it as the armpit of America. Marla was born into a lower-cla.s.s black family. She played with dolls and a skipping rope, went to school, and fell pregnant at the age of fifteen and a half.

Marla had, in fact, tried to prevent the pregnancy. But she had no way of knowing that Curtis had put a pinhole in the condom. She had no choice. She had heard about the crazy practice among some teenage boys who tried to make themselves look big by getting girls pregnant before they were out of high school. But that was something that happened to other girls. Curtis loved her.

Curtis disappeared.

Marla left high school and entered the not very select club of teenage mothers. Little Mae became the centre of her mother's life, for better or worse. Left behind were Marla's dreams of saving enough money to study meteorological photography. Marla took a job at a local factory, which in addition to her responsibilities as a mother, gave her little time for reading newspapers. Which in turn caused her to make a regrettable decision.

One afternoon her boss announced that he wanted to increase her hours. The young mother had already seen women emerging from the factory exhausted, their heads down, carrying their uniforms in supermarket bags; women whose sons had been left alone and had ended up either in reform school or shot up in a gang fight.

To prevent this, Marla signed up for the Army reserves. That way the factory couldn't increase her hours because it would conflict with her instruction at the army base. This would allow her to spend more time with little Mae.

Marla made the decision to join one day after the Military Police Company was notified of its next destination: Iraq. The news item had appeared on page 6 of the Lorton Chronicle Lorton Chronicle. In September 2003, Marla waved goodbye to Mae and climbed aboard a truck at the base. The girl, hugging her grandmother, cried at the top of her lungs with all the grief a six-year-old can muster. Both would die four weeks later when Mrs Jackson, who wasn't as good a mother as Marla, pushed her luck by smoking in bed for the last time.

When she was given the news, Marla found she was incapable of returning home and begged her astonished sister to make all the arrangements for the wake and burial. She then requested that her tour of duty in Iraq be extended, and went on to devote herself wholeheartedly to her next stint - as an MP in a prison called Abu Ghraib.

A year later, a few unfortunate photos turned up on a national television programme. They demonstrated that something inside Marla had finally cracked. The good mother from Lorton, Virginia, had become a torturer of Iraqi prisoners.

Of course, Marla wasn't the only one. In her head, losing her daughter and her mother somehow became the fault of 'Saddam's dirty dogs'. Marla was given a dishonourable discharge and sentenced to four years in prison. She served six months. After she got out of jail she went straight to the security firm DX5 and asked for work. She wanted to return to Iraq.

They gave her work, but she didn't return to Iraq straight away. Instead she fell into Mogens Dekker's hands. Literally.

It had been eighteen months and Marla had learned a great deal. She could shoot much better, knew more philosophy, and had experienced making love with a white man. Colonel Dekker had been turned on almost instantly by the woman with the big strong legs and the face of an angel. Marla had found him somewhat comforting, and the remainder of her comfort derived from the smell of gunpowder. She had killed for the first time and she liked it.

A lot.

She also liked her crew . . . sometimes. Dekker had chosen them well: a handful of a.s.sa.s.sins with no conscience who enjoyed killing under the impunity of a government contract. While they were on the battlefield, they were blood brothers. But on a hot sticky afternoon like this, when they had ignored Dekker's orders to get some sleep and instead were playing cards, things took a different turn. They became as irritated and dangerous as a gorilla at a c.o.c.ktail party. The worst one was Torres.

'You're messing me around, Jackson. And you haven't even given me a little kiss,' said the small Colombian. It made Marla especially uneasy when he played with his small rusty razor. Like him, it was apparently harmless but capable of slitting a man's throat as if it were b.u.t.ter. The Colombian was slicing small white strips off the edge of the plastic table where they were sitting. There was a smile on his lips.

'Du scheit' mich an, Torres. Jackson has a full house and you're full with s.h.i.t,' said Alryk Gottlieb, who was constantly battling with English prepositions. The taller of the twins had hated Torres with a vengeance ever since they had watched a World Cup match between their two countries. They had said things to each other, fists had flown. In spite of his six foot two frame, Alryk didn't sleep well at night. If he was still alive, it may only have been because Torres wasn't sure he could take down both twins.