Ground Zero Part 19

"The same people who've been running western civilization for centuries. The families and financial interests behind the UN, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission."

Jack felt his eyes roll of their own accord. "The New World Order."

"Yeah," Harris said, his tone defensive. "And their head-of-state lackeys. A plan of sorts was sketched out in a book from a conservative think tank just a year before. It's called Rebuilding America Rebuilding America's Defenses, and you can read it yourself. It called for 'a new Pearl Harbor' to get Americans off their a.s.ses and start kicking Middle East b.u.t.t. Well, Bush and Cheney and Wolfowitz and all the rest listened and gave us nine/eleven."

"Who does my sister think is behind it?" Eddie said as he poked disconsolately at his Caesar salad. He didn't seem anxious to hear the answer. Appeared to be dreading it.

"That's just it. She never said. Her posts teased with comments like, 'You've got the right crime but the wrong criminal' and 'It's much, much bigger than an excuse to send America off to war.' " He grinned. "Well, you can imagine how that went over. 'Secret Historian' was branded a heretic and a denier and a confuser sent to sabotage the Truther Movement."

"Did she ever explain the 'Secret Historian' name?"

"No, but she used it on my site and others. She was going around to all the sites, p.i.s.sing them off and acting as a sort of provocateur, but never enough to get herself banned as a troll, because she obviously knew her subject."

"To what end?" Jack said.

"To nudge them out of their Bush-Cheney-Trilateral Commission obsession and start looking for other villains-the real villains."

"And what's her take? What's she think is the real story?"

"She doesn't know. At least that's what she tells me, and I believe her. She knows she's only one person and can do only so much, so she's trying to enlist others to help. She'd love to put together a coalition of these groups and guide them, use them as an investigative team, but she doesn't want to show her face. She doesn't want to be known."

Jack thought about trying to organize and lead a group of these paranoid types. Herding cats suddenly became a snap.

"But she's known to you. She let you see her face."

Harris smiled. "It took quite a while before we got to that stage-lots of encrypted e-mails pa.s.sed between us before we got around to meeting."

"Let me get this straight," Eddie said, his expression grave. "My sister doesn't think al Qaeda flew those jets into the Towers?"

"Yes, she does. Bin Laden and Zawahiri and Atef orchestrated the whole thing. And she believes the Bush administration and whoever they're connected to leveraged that into an invasion of the Middle East. But she says that's not important."

Eddie's eyes widened. "Not important!"

"Right. She told me that al Qaeda isn't the end of the trail and that this is much bigger than we think. That there's another organization or cabal or camorra whatever pulling al Qaeda's strings and using it for its own purposes."

"Who?"

Harris spread his hands. "That's the zillion-dollar question."

Eddie looked at Jack. "Can you believe this bulls.h.i.t?"

Jack said nothing as all the disparate bits and pieces he'd learned over the past few years about the Secret History of the World swirled through his brain.

Yes ... he could believe it.

23.

They found Weezy sitting up in bed sipping water through a straw.

"Wow," she said as they gaped at her from the doorway. "Three visitors at once. I must be popular."

Jack immediately glanced at Harris to gauge his reaction and saw joy and relief in his eyes.

All right, so the guy really cared about Weezy. Why didn't Jack feel he could trust him?

Eddie rushed forward and embraced her. "Weez! When did you wake up?"

"About an hour ago."

Jack noticed that her IV was still running but her catheter bag was gone. He hung back as Harris moved to her bedside and grabbed her hand.

"Louise ... I was so worried."

"Kevin." She looked puzzled. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"When you didn't answer your calls-"

"How was ... Europe?"

"Everything we hoped for."

"Excellent." She looked past him and smiled as her dark eyes focused on Jack's. "You look so different, Jack. I never imagined you with a beard." She held out her hands. "I'd never recognize you except for your eyes. They haven't changed a bit."

Feeling awkward, he stepped forward and grasped her hands. Her skin was smooth and warm. He squeezed. She squeezed back, releasing a flood of childhood memories-school buses, endless bike rides through lazy summers, and the Pine Barrens ... he could almost smell those trees.

"You ... you still look like Weezy."

She released his hand. "But more of me than you last saw."

"You exaggerate. You look great."

No kidding. The extra weight looked kind of good on her.

She looked at Eddie. "Did Jack find me?"

Eddie nodded. "Yes, he did."

"I knew he would." She beamed.

"Do you know what happened to you?"

"Car accident, I'm told. I have no memory of it." She pointed to her st.i.tched-up scalp. "But I think I'll have a nice souvenir."

Jack thought her tone seemed a little too light. Was she putting on a show? Hiding fear?

"What about leading up to it?"

She shook her head, then quickly pressed her hands against her temples and closed her eyes. "Note to self: Don't shake head." Opening them again, she said, "I remember leaving the house and heading for an Internet cafe and that's about it."

"Retrograde amnesia," Jack said. "Happens with head trauma."

"Right. You know about that?"

He winked at her. "I read it."

That had been her mantra when they were kids. She'd spout some tidbit of arcane lore and whenever Jack or anyone else would ask how she knew, that was what she'd say.

But he hadn't read it. Through experience over the past year he'd learned too much about head trauma.

"Were you being followed or chased?" Harris said.

"I have no idea."

"Excuse me," said an accented voice from the doorway.

Jack saw a lean black man in scrubs pushing a gurney ahead of him.

"I must take"-he glanced at a yellow slip in his hand-"Louise for an x-ray. Please step aside."

They complied and watched him wheel the gurney up to the bedside and pull the curtain. They waited, heard a few grunts of effort from her, then the curtain reopened and Weezy, propped up on pillows, was wheeled toward the door. She waved as she went by.

"I think I'm going to head home," Harris told her. "A million things piled up while I was away. Now that I know you're safe, I can concentrate on other stuff."

"We need to talk," she said.

"Do we ever. I'll be in touch as soon as I get home."

When she was gone, Jack turned to Harris. "You might be followed."

He grinned. "If so, I'll lose them. No one's tailing me home."

Jack had said it for effect. He figured if Harris was such a big shot in the Truther movement, whoever was interested in Weezy already knew where he lived. But then again, maybe not.

After Harris shook hands with both of them and left, Jack turned to Eddie.

"Did you give the hospital your address?"

"Not yet, but-"

"Your phone?"

"No, but I will before I-"

"Don't. It can be traced to your home."

"I've got to leave a number. What if something happens?"

"You've got mine. Give them that."

"But-?"

"It's prepaid. No billing address connected."

Eddie nodded and headed for the door. "Good thinking." He stopped at the door. "You're not an appliance repairman, are you."

"You're wasting time."

A few seconds after he left, a smiling Dr. Gupta showed up with a binder in his hand. "Well, well. We've had-" He stared at the empty bed. "Where is Mrs. Myers?"

"Down to x-ray."

Gupta frowned and flipped through the chart. "That cannot be. I ordered no studies, and besides, her chart would go with her. I have it here."

Jack had started moving on "That cannot be." He ducked out into the hall and checked the elevator area. They would have had to take the gurney by elevator. No sign of her there. Already gone. She wouldn't be making a fuss either. She'd be compliant until she realized something was wrong. By then she'd be out of earshot.

Jack took the stairs as fast as he dared. He lifted his shirt and pulled his Glock 19 from the nylon holster nestled in the small of his back. He tended to keep the chamber empty when he was walking around town. He worked the slide to remedy that now, then returned the weapon to its holster.

They'd want to move her off premises ASAP. They couldn't use the lobby because she'd make a scene. Needed a back way.

The hospital had to have a loading dock for food and medical deliveries. After five now. Probably not much activity in those areas.

Okay, if he were going to spirit someone out of here, how would he do it? How about putting her in a box and loading her on a truck? Good, but someone might want to know what he was removing from the hospital. Could be stealing supplies, drugs.

Better: Pretend to be transporting a body to a funeral home. Perfect. People died all the time in hospitals and they weren't taken out through the front door. The two main entrances were on Fifth and Madison, so most likely the loading area would be on a side street.

But how to get there? The medical center covered three square blocks.

He'd have to ask. He hated asking directions.

When he reached the main-floor level he stopped the first maintenance worker he saw.

"The undertakers are taking my mother's body to the funeral home and I need to catch them before they go. Where do I find them?"

The guy sent him down another level. He had to ask again along the way, but finally reached an open receiving area where he spotted the black guy rolling the gurney off the edge of the dock into the open rear of a waiting panel truck. The guy with the bleach-blond hair was helping him. A black body bag lay on the gurney, held in place by duct tape. Whatever was inside the bag was moving.

What? No security?

And then, to his right, he spotted a portly figure slumped over a desk, blood leaking from his scalp.

Jack looked around for somebody, anybody to intervene. No one in sight. That left it all up to him. It meant exposing himself-something he never wanted to do-but he couldn't let this go down.

He pulled his Glock and kept it pressed against his thigh as he hurried toward the pair. He'd loaded the magazine with alternating hardball and hollowpoint rounds. The top round was always a hollowpoint, so one of those was in the chamber now.